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When I lived in DC some years ago I got to know the colorless way government types live and speak. Parliamentary debates on BBC are refreshing. If MPs can speak like that and still preserve their self-importance, why can't US Congresscritters and Senators?
Galloway's testimony played extremely well to us frustrated Democrats, because he said all the things we never got to say on the mainstream news, at least not that way. It's one thing to earnestly mutter them on Air America, NPR or leftist blogs, ignored by anyone outside the left mediasphere; it's another when bigger outlets like CNN, Fox, MSNBC and the original Big Three are compelled to carry those remarks because they make such great TV.
George not only refuted the charges but he showed them to be a pointless sideshow, despite Sens. Coleman and Levin trying to get narrow answers and avoid dealing with the larger questions.
That tactic is used by all sides, and that Coleman and his committee used it as well. Ask the wrong questions to draw attention from the right ones; when the respondent refuses to bite, call it evasion and proof that one has won the argument.
The White House and the Right are trying that again with the Koran in the toilet story. Since they caught Newsweek out on that one, they hope it somehow cancels out all the other abuses well-documented elsewhere. Newsweek are supposed to deliver up a few heads in a ritual of submission, as CNN and CBS did, but they're not having it, and it won't stop the riots anyway.
Another example is pointing to a few holes in evolutionary theory as proof that it's all false and therefore creationism is true.
The tactic might work in court in front of a jury, because the judge would probably strike Galloway's remarks not addressing the narrow question. The court record would show only that the narrow question wasn't answered completely or at all. The rest would be ignored. But Senate isn't a court, so the rules are different. And of course there's TV. |
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