While the Beat the Press media punditry traded barbs and elevated their own insights about who does and doesn’t deserve to be included in the gubernatorial debates that help determine who will be our next governor, there was only one clear voice among them who spoke up unequivocally for the voters’ right to decide, and that was Callie Crossley.
Margery Eagan, author of this hit piece on democracy and one half of the Eagan/Braude team who arbitrarily decided to exclude the ballot-qualified candidate Stein from their radio debate, makes a weak case for exclusion. Proclaiming to protect the voters by excluding Stein, she made it clear that it’s all about Jill Stein’s fundraising prowess, asking “where’s the Green Party’s cash” and stating that Stein doesn’t rise to Margery’s required level of credibility.
Most of the panel was wishy-washy, agreeing that Stein doesn’t have a chance and perhaps does not deserve to be in all the debates.
Callie Crossley, on the other hand, stood apart from the pack, and stood up clearly for democracy:
“I am Pollyanna about this, I am Citizen Vote. If they make the ballot, if they get the signatures, they ought to be in all the debates. I am more than creeped out by the consortium setting a set of criteria. They just came up with a set of criteria, and so it’s arbitrary, and I find that distasteful.”
She even continued on to criticize the Commission on Presidential Debates for kicking out the League of Women Voters and putting influence-peddling rules in place.
Please take a moment to THANK Callie Crossley for standing up for our democracy when her colleagues would not. Add a comment to her “whiteboard” here, or to the story here.
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As the power of traditional media declines, they grow ever more hysterical in their claim for the authority to wield it.
“Fruit loops,” “fringe,” and “disruptive” sound to me a lot like labels that would been used in Boston two centuries ago,when the Sons of Liberty were demanding that the colonists also be given a voice. Translation: “I don’t think that parties that introduce new paradigms that they didn’t teach me in grade school should be permitted in.”
This is the great “myth” of the liberal media. Sure, the mainstream media (news, entertainment) tends to lean Democrat; but like the Democratic establishment, they’re firmly wedded to the status quo, as I’ve argued elsewhere.
Ive suggested in the past that the Greens and other parties not whine overmuch about exclusion until they make the ballot. That’s a legitimate benchmark. What’s amusing, now, is the whining tone on the part of the Eagans and Rooneys, as though they’re somehow being victimized by third parties who will detract attention from the really exciting, meaningful canned statements by the frontrunners.
Aside from sports, I don’t know when I last turned on the radio or TV. Stuff like this reminds me that I’m probaby not missing much.
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are the true fruit loops.