Other Than That, Mr. Hewittt, How Did You Like The Debate?

Hugh Hewitt:

I took to calling CNN "the most busted name in news" during the Eason Jordan meltdown in early 2005. Since then it has grown addicted to Lou Dobbs' pseudopopulism while maintaining an hilariously lefty attitude towards most news. The networks two best talents, Wolf Blitzer and Anderson Cooper, are surrounded by a cast of agenda-journalists who, like Penelope unweaving her tapestry each night, undo each day all the good work that Blitzer and Cooper attempt to accomplish. CNN isn't a cartoon network, but a network of cartoon figures like Jack Cafferty and Dobbs pretending to be objective journalists. Now we have proof positive that the backroom producers are as biased as Cafferty and Dobbs.

Last night's fiasco was so thorough that it will take a while to settle in just how damaging it was to CNN's reputation as a news organization. From the awful judgment displayed with the opening guitar serenade through the preposterous selection of topics and questions right to the stark reality that CNN either was easily and completely manipulated by the Dems with planted question after planted question or were totally complicit in the hijacking of a Republican debate designed to serve Republican primary voters about who ought to be the Republican nominee. The network is either incompetent in a way no serious news organization should be, or wholly captured by agenda journalists of the left.

No serious anchor would want to be where Cooper is today, at the center of a vast train wreck which cannot be explained away as the inevitable result of the sudden appearance of big news in a difficult setting, as with hysterical Katrina coverage of bodies stacked in freezers and gun fights in the Superdome, or the result of the input of bad data, as with the early call of Florida for Gore in 2000.

No, this premeditated mediocrity. The network had months to prepare and consider and execute. But even with all that time, it lacked the minimal talent necessary to produce a serious debate about important issues using new technology. All it could deliver was a carnival of bad taste, trick questions, and full frontal left wing bias.