Daniel Greenfield write in his excellent blog,  Sultan KnishA Debate in the Land of the Deaf, 10/3/12

Any political campaign today is short circuited by group interests. Like a broken marriage the whole thing shamelessly dissolves into a custody battle over idiot voters with both embittered parents promising the brat that they will buy him more stuff so long as he denounces the other one. They lie of course, but the brat never learns that no matter how many times they promise him a 4×4 and leave him with a matchbox car and a huge bill.

And so this brings us to Campaign 2012 with Daddy Romney trying to be non-threatening and Mommy Obama screaming that he’s a selfish bastard who will never buy them all the right toys. Ideas swiftly give way to sentimentality with pain-feeling empathy sessions and more hard luck tales than a convention of inspirational speakers could gin up. Everyone quotes numbers and those numbers just become more counters in an unreal online debate where one side just makes things up and the other side tries to show that it’s operating in a completely unreal universe.

The debate, like most reality show showdowns, will come down to editing room shenanigans and the pre-existing narrative that the producers are determined to push regardless of the results. The viewers who have yet to decide are not there for answers, they are there to see who has the best catchphrases and who flinches or says something dumb. They are there to be entertained.

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