Anything but a true “undecided voter”
It’s not that hard to get a friendly audience if the audience is on the payroll. Contrary to CNN’s description of questioners at the Las Vegas Democratic debate using the neutral term of “undecided voter“, it appears that they had a more robust connection with the goings-on than John or Jane Doe. For example, LaShannon Spencer, who was described as an “undecided voter,” is apparently the same LaShannon Spencer who was Arkansas Democrats’ director of political affairs in 2003. Indeed, Doug Ross characterized the six questioners this way:
A Democratic Party bigwig
An antiwar activist
A Union official
An Islamic leader
A Harry Reid staffer
A radical Chicano separatist
Harry Reid staffer? Who was that? Why, it turns out we already had commented on that one. We wrote the other day about the case of Maria Luisa, the UNLV student who was made to ask the dopey diamonds or pearls question at the Las Vegas debate. Here’s a little more information on the situation. The Las Vegas Sun gives her full name as Maria Luisa Parra-Sandoval. A UNLV website provides the further information that she is slated to “serve as the political communications intern for Senator Harry Reid in Washington, D.C.” So indeed it would appear fair to call Maria Luisa a Harry Reid staffer.
Now there is nothing wrong with having a friendly audience in a debate. That which is merely boring and unwatchable could become the Jerry Springer show otherwise. However, there is something deeply wrong with a television network mischaracterizing party activists and employees as “undecided voters”, as opposed to, for example, “undecided Democrats” or perhaps more appropriately, “party activists and employees.” The network’s responsibility in this regard is transparency, not collusion with an intricately stage-managed partisan event.
November 19th, 2007 at 4:04 pm
Why would CNN took the risks of having so many insiders ask the questions, when they could have used less-connected and thus safer persons to ask the same questions? Possible options:
1. They never imagined they would get caught.
2. There were no less-connected people available in that audience, or they didn’t want there to be.
3. CNN had nothing to do with it – the DNC ran the whole show.
This doesn’t let CNN off the hook – they seem to be proven to be one (or more) of:
1. totally clueless
2. totally corrupted
3. totally irrelevant
November 19th, 2007 at 6:13 pm
Maybe the Democrats refused to debate on Fox out of suspicion that a Fox debate would get rigged against them. At the very least, Fox would have reported the hanky-panky that CNN was willing to allow.
The Democrats also had a legitimate pretext to avoid Fox:
“Freedom depends on fairness in the press”: right. From the Ailes transcript:
This, after the blowback from Trent Lott’s Strom Thurmond remark (of course, Trent’s Senate buddies have restored him to the Republican leadership).
A plague on both their houses.
November 20th, 2007 at 9:30 pm
Democrats and their stooges in the liberal media have to lie & cheat about everything.
Deception is in their DNA — it has to be.