Thursday, November 29, 2007
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YouTube A, CNN F
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Posted by:
Patrick Ruffini at
2:49 AM
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A little after 1 a.m. eastern, CNN released the following statement to the press gathered in St. Pete:
Following the debate, CNN learned that retired brigadier general Keith Kerr served on Clinton's lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender steering committee.
CNN Senior Vice President and Executive Producer of the debate, David Bohrman, says, "We regret this incident. CNN would not have used the General's question had we known that he was connected to any presidential candidate."
Prior to the debate, CNN had verified his military background and that he had not contributed any money to any presidential candidate.
Following the debate, Kerr told CNN that he's done no work for the Clinton campaign. He says he is a member of the Log Cabin Republicans and was representing no one other than himself. This of course is not the first time CNN has played games with the questioners, lobbing the tasteless "diamonds or pearls" question at Senator Clinton in the Las Vegas debate and failing to check the campaign affiliation of another "undecided voter" in that MSM debate. Their selection of "undecided voters" in their first New Hampshire GOP debate was laughable too -- and let's remember that was a traditional debate as well.
The case has been made against CNN's influence in this debate. But, YouTube format or not, there seems to be an endemic problem with CNN's screening process. Overall, the YouTube format seemed to reduce the tactical "gotcha" questions (it was left up to Anderson Cooper to ask Rudy about the Politico hit piece). Nothing as trivial as "diamonds or pearls" got asked -- though I found the Bible and Confederate flag questions pretty far afield.
Here's how it seemed to go down from the back rows of the orchestra.
After Kerr had continued his tirade for what seemed like close to a minute, he started getting boos and catcalls from the audience for his overstepping his bounds (and essentially repeating his question word for word, wasting valuable airtime). His audio was pulled. Anderson Cooper seemed to gesture that his mic be turned back on and pretended it was a mistake, though it was pretty clear what the control room was trying to do.
Ironically, an audience member had asked Cooper "How many Clinton planted questions here tonight?" during the pre-show.
UPDATE: Captain Ed offers his take on the debate. Read the whole thing.
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