LAS VEGAS, Nevada — For those University of Nevada students who
wanted to think outside the box of the large progressive-friendly
magnetic poetry set CNN had provided near the
site of last week’s Democratic debate, the network also built an
official “graffiti wall” upon which deep thoughts could be
transmitted to the masses with several bright Sharpie markers.
Framed by scribbled pontifications such as I may suck at
Calc, but I can add to 7 trillion, Black Votes Were Not
Counted! (Florida 2000), and I’m 18 and finally get to
vote for Obama!, the graffiti wall center pled for several
hours, in large block letters, Please, no planted
questions…That means you Hillary! In the Rebel
Yell, UNLV’s biweekly campus newspaper, CNN Washington Bureau
Chief David Bohrman commiserated: “Nobody wants or expects planted
questions,” he said. “We booked the crowd and we pretty much
know what their interests are. We think we’ve eliminated any
plants.”
Now, how a network’s “pretty much” knowing what the audience
members’ “interests” are before allowing them into the debate hall
is supposed to allay fears over “plants” is fairly mysterious,
since, by definition, individuals pre-screened for their political
leanings are plants. And, as blogger Doug Ross’s quick,
impressive research suggests, planted questioners may
ultimately be of more immediate concern than planted
questions.
At any rate, in the wake of UNLV student Maria Luisa’s “diamonds
or pearls” finale — “Do you prefer diamonds or pearls?” she asked
Hillary Clinton — to the Ordinary People segment of last week’s
Democratic debate, and her subsequent MySpace repudiation of her own question as one
of many “pre-planned and censored” by CNN, Bohrman’s Rebel
Yell declaration has achieved a entirely new level of irony.
Not quite as ironic as, say, calling yourself “The Most Trusted
Name in News” while “keeping to yourself” the atrocities of a tyrannical
butcher, but impressive gall nonetheless.
Luisa’s easy invocation of censorship is more than a
bit hyperbolic, more so, even, than the sadly predictable lefty critique over at Daily Kos that the
question focused on Hillary’s “appearance and devotion to
consumerism.” After all, the “diamonds or pearls” question was one
of several Luisa submitted to CNN producers, who, in turn, chose it
over what she assures us was a brilliant query on the nuclear waste
repository at Yucca Mountain. The producers even offered the
opportunity to back out of asking it, but, as she explained to the New York Times,
“Because I was on national TV, I felt hesitant, but then I felt
like, ‘Oh my God, I’m on national TV, I’ll just ask it.”
A young woman embarrassing herself by asking her own silly
question out of a self-professed desire to be on “national TV” is
not a convincing case of censorship. Luisa had her chance and the
joke fell flat. If the entire country had responded with one great
appreciative giggle, Luisa would almost certainly not be crying
censorship and making ridiculous statements to the New York
Times like, “The media should be more democratic and be better
able to reflect our democratic process.”
Yes, the girl who asked Hillary the “diamonds or pearls”
question during a televised debate in front of more than four
million viewers is now explaining to us what is wrong with our
democracy, which in turn, oddly enough, explains to us what is
wrong with our democracy. A more impressive stand against inanity
was possible. Instead of bellyaching Ralph Nader-style to the
New York Times, for example, Luisa could have agreed to
ask her stupid question and then, once the microphone was safely in
hand, asked the question she wanted to. What was CNN going to do?
Put her on a plane to Pakistan to be interrogated by the ISI?
Collude one day, complain the next: A new formula for instant
celebrity.
THE MARIA LUISA INCIDENT comes quickly on the heels of what will
doubtless be known in its movie-of-the-week incarnation as
Plantgate: The Beginning, a sordid tale in which
idealistic Grinnell College student Muriel Gallo-Chasanoff was
prodded by a Clinton staffer to ask a question about the long-term
effects of global warming at an Iowa campaign event.
Like Luisa, Gallo-Chasanoff only later ran
to the Scarlet & Black, Grinnell College’s version
of the Rebel Yell, with accusations of “canned” questions,
leading to an exclusive interview with — drum roll, please —
CNN during which the student angelically mused that she was pulling
back the Wizard of Wellesley’s curtain, “just so that people could
know the truth.”
Again, as great and terrible as the pressure necessary to coerce
a liberal college student into asking a question about global
warming must certainly have been, standing up for truth in the
moment — “Mrs. Clinton, your staffer wanted me to ask a
question about global warming, but what I really wanted to know
is…” — would have carried a little more weight. Instead, as
the video clearly shows, Gallo-Chasanoff happily supplicated in the
moment. “It seems silly, but it really just didn’t occur to me what
the implications could be until a long time afterward,”
Gallo-Chasanoff told CNN.
ALAS, SADLY FOR THESE two wayward young women, the most substantial
implication of this dual storm over planted questions is that the
participant and victim roles are equally cherished by those
constantly touted as our future leaders. Neither the Clinton
campaign nor CNN, for all their flaws, are in the business of
creating Manchurian questioners. Luisa and Gallo-Chasanoff
programmed themselves, and now, moments after deprogramming, they
want to lecture the nation about truth and the state of
democracy?
Sergeant Raymond Shaw certainly never had it
so easy.
