Malor at Ace's Says We're Focusing on the Wrong Aspects of the CNN/Youtube Sham

I disagree.  Malor argues that we're losing what's important here, and what is important is how the candidates did and what they said.  To an extent, yes, I'll cede that we should focus on some of the answers.  However the point that's getting flogged in the dextrosphere is entirely valid. 

Malor is missing the point, and Ace addressed it effectively here, its not even the questions that were the problem, its the framing of the debate, and the comparative treatment of the GOP and the Democrats and the operative handicap it places on us.

Many of the arguably Republican questions were asked by minstrel versions of conservatives.  This drags down the entire debate, attempting to smear the GOP candidates by association with said Republican minstrels.  If we had the same opportunity to do the same to the left, this would be acceptable, turnabout is fair play, after all, but that isn't ever going to happen.

The worst part about the outraged protestations I’ve read is that they rely on a series of ever more outlandish assumptions. With the exception of the general, none of the questioners were inappropriate and none of them were “plants.” Michelle Malkin spent the day updating her lead story about the questioners who have been discovered to be supporting Democratic candidates. The only way her outrage works is if we make a wild assumption: the questioners were supposed to be conservative or Republican.

It’s silly to pretend that we thought the questioners would all be Republicans. The YouTube submission contest noted that it would take questions from all comers. The candidates at both this debate and the Democratic one in August understood that they would face questions from people of all political affiliations. You’ll note that if this debate had been moderated by CNN anchors like Wolf Blitzer or Anderson Cooper, such an understanding would have been patent.

This point is only valid in a bubble.  But we're not in a bubble.  When the Democrats did the Youtube debate, their questions were mostly asked by liberals, with a few Republican minstrels thrown in for Democrats to slap around.  Had we had honest questions from real conservatives, who don't look like liberal-created minstrel versions of conservatives, and the occasional goofball leftist to slap about, there wouldn't be this uproar, because we would have received equal treatment.  And before I get jumped on for calling for a softball debate, I'll address that later.

We didn't expect that the GOP would get questions by conservatives, for conservatives, no one did.  We knew we were going to see attempts to sandbag, tar or otherwise take swipes at the GOP.  We didn't expect it to be this egregious.  Had the Democrats been treated the way the GOP field was treated last night, the candidates would have ripped off their mics and walked out. 

How sad is it that we’re reduced to crying for CNN to go easy on us? It’s just not fair, we (and every 13 year-old teenage girl in the country) whine. Disparate treatment between the political parties is certainly objectionable. But the solution isn’t to complain that the question selection made Republicans look bad by liberals.

Nobody's crying.  That's not what we're doing.  Until we effectively assemble a news system that rivals the current level of power that The Deciders wield, we'll continue to operate at a massive disadvantage, until then, we'll continue to be made to look like some savage exotic beast on Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom. 

I'm all for throwing tough questions at our GOP candidates, and as conservatives, we should be ready to smack down any attempted sandbagging like what happened yesterday, but we need to focus on building a rival media system, and that means a combination of tearing down The Deciders while building up our own system  The central goal of the conservative movement online is to work to expose egregious bias, lies and double standards of The Deciders, so that we may break this handicap we have.

On a side note,

More than that, as commentators like Michelle Malkin, our own Moron-in-Chief, and even Glenn Reynolds, try to outdo each other on the outrage-o-meter while they work themselves and their readers into a scorn-lathered orgiastic spasm of victimhood, we are largely missing the real stories that came out of last night’s debate. Today, the legacy media did better than us at reporting on the content of the candidates’ answers and the debate’s impact on viewers. With a very few notable exceptions (thank you, Slublog), we’re wasting our energy on a silly process story.

I find this pretty obnoxious, considering our Moron-in-Chief is giving Malor his site to use as a personal soapbox, not to mention Malor's sliming his readers.  Classy.

Malor responds to myself and others in Ace's comments,

*snip* I don't believe I did insult Ace or the readers. I didn't call them names. I just disagreed with them. Forcefully. I understand that you disagree with my characterization of the escalating outrage as a "scorn-lathered orgiastic spasm of victimhood", and I'm glad you told me why.

First, he's wrong, that's not what Ace, Malkin, Insty and everyone else on the dextrosphere are doing.  This isn't about victimhood, this is about exposing and discrediting a corrupt media.  Second, he basically calls Ace and his readership a bunch of spazzy whiners.  I don't care that he tries to insult me, but he owes Ace a little more respect.  You don't take a swipe like that at the guy who gives you his soapbox.

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