Letters to the Editor
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KEEP THE PRESSURE ON, GLENN
Glenn, I was so angry yesterday after the ABC 'Debate' debacle that I e-mailed (at great difficulty, I might add - just installed a new computer that's running VISTA - aaagh!) the following to ABC:
To ABC NEWS, George Stephanopolous and Charlie Gibson:
I was absolutely appalled at the Presidential Debate last night.
First, you devoted the first hour to trivial and useless information concerning “Rev. Wright,”, “bitter,” “landing in Bosnia,” and a Mr. Ayers, who was apparently a Weatherman 40 years ago. This is apparently the standard operating procedure now at ABC News: get the talking points from the Right Wing Noise Machine, i.e., Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and others of their ilk, and use them to smear the Democratic candidates up and down. As you could probably tell by the boos in the audience, America has had enough of the useless crap that passes for news these days.
Second, Charlie Gibson should be ashamed of himself, for his persistent questioning of Barack Obama’s proposed tax increases on people making more than $200,000 a year, or for a capital gains tax increase, as if either proposal actually affected the middle class. The capital gains tax only affects a very small number of Americans, despite his quote of the statistic that 100,000,000 Americans own stock. The reality is that only a very small percentage of people own significant quantities of stock, those in the top 1 percent. He is out of touch with the vast majority of the American people.
I will oppose any further efforts by ABC to moderate the fall debates, unless you show a radical change of heart in how you formulate the questions and run the debate. It’s time to get back to the real issues affecting America, such as ending the disastrous invasion and occupation of Iraq, and preventing a second Depression from developing. Leave the right-wing talking points to the Right Wing Noise Machine, and not to a supposedly mainstream media outfit such as ABC.
I already got a reply from the local (SF) station manager, saying that she would forward it to the appropriate people.
Let's keep the pressure on ABC and any other media that reduces our political discourse to the trash that brought us George W.