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ABC debate was trivial pursuit

A few minutes after the Democratic debate in Philadelphia ended Wednesday night, I channeled my outrage toward ABC News into to an open letter on my Attytood blog. Here's an abridged version:

A few minutes after the Democratic debate in Philadelphia ended Wednesday night, I channeled my outrage toward ABC News into to an open letter on my Attytood blog. Here's an abridged version:

Dear Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos,

With your performance tonight - your focus on matters that were at best trivial wastes of valuable airtime and at worst restatements of right-wing falsehoods, punctuated by inane "issue" questions that in no way resembled the real-world concerns of American voters - you disgraced my profession of journalism, and, by association, me and a lot of hard-working colleagues who do still try to ferret out the truth, rather than worry about who can give us the best deal on our capital gains taxes.

But it's even worse than that. By so badly botching arguably the most critical debate of such an important election, in a time of both war and economic misery, you disgraced the American voters, and in fact even disgraced democracy itself.

You implied throughout the broadcast that you wanted to reflect the concerns of voters in Pennsylvania. Yet you asked virtually nothing that reflected our everyday issues - trying to fill our gas tanks and save for college at the same time, our crumbling bridges and inadequate mass transit, or the root causes of crime here in Philadelphia.

Instead, the segment asking Obama whether he thought his pastor "loved America as much as you do" and then suggesting that Obama himself is somehow a hater of the American flag, or worse, was flat-out repulsive.

Charlie, I'm going to sign off this letter the way that you always sign off the news, that "I hope you had a great day."

Because America just had a horrible night. *

Read the entire post or add to the nearly 200 comments posted there since Wednesday night at Attytood.com.