Wednesday, September 17, 2008

k-mad's debate plan

Two podiums (podia?), two microphones, a button on each podium. A clock on the front of each podium; each clock shows 60:00 (sixty minutes). When a guy hits his button, his clock ticks down, his microphone goes on, the other guy's clock stops, the other guy's microphone goes off (sorta like a chess clock). No phokking stooge like Cholly Gibson or Stephanobrainless or Bernie Shaw asking asinine questions. Just talk til you say what you want to say and then let the other guy talk for a while. But don't stand there talking for an hour, or the other guy gets the whole second hour.

There would be a few things to work out, like how the opening scrum for the conch should work, and how to keep both guys from just banging on their buttons repeatedly like lab rats pounding compulsively on their pleasure buttons. Also gotta figure out how you could keep one guy from going four corners on the other dude and letting his clock run down (maybe the button should turn your microphone off and the other guy's on...) But imagine what it would do to campaigning if they could ask each other questions like, "Why did you run that ad where my face morphs into a weasel?"

2 comments:

Corms said...

That's a brilliant idea.

Fungster said...

Perhaps a minimum amount of time before an interruption would be allowed, like 1 minute or something. If the other guy stops speaking/lets go of the button, then you can start talking b4 the minute is up.

Otherwise if every question that would be asked is steered to talking points anyway, may as well just have them say those over & over again - see who can memorize the most. I vote for k-mad's debate plan too.