How Bad Were The Moderators…

…of last night’s CNBC GOP debate?

Even Brian Williams is saying he wasn’t there”
— Mark Okern (from Facebook)

I watched the first half of yesterday’s GOP debate, before I had to go do some family stuff.

There had been some hope that CNBC – an ostensible financial network – would ask some substantial questions about financial policy.  And there were a few, sort of, in a way.

But “are you an evil comic book villain?”

John Harwood came across as a Liberal snidely whiplash. Becky Quick…wasn’t very.   Carl Quintanilla sounded like he was hosting a cable access production of Jimmy’s First Debate.  And Jim Cramer?  I don’t know if he was on cold medicine or had taken a couple of shots to the head before he went on the air, but good lord, that performance will be taught in broadcast schools for decades to come as an example of how not to sound when reading off a teleprompter.

It’s entirely possible (except for Harwood) that they were just trying to come across as tough, hard-nosed “journalists” – an effect that lasts precisely until the phrase “evil comic book villain” came up.

But the hour I spent was worth it, if only for this; Ted Cruz’ jeremiad against the media was one for the ages:

Glorious.

“But he should have answered Quintanilla’s substantive question!” Er, did you catch the question? “Does your opposition to a “moderate” budget deal mean you’re unqualified?”

UPDATE:  As I put this morning’s piece together in my head last night, I thought – as I often do when matters of discerning bias in others come up – “Am I right, or is this just confirmation bias?”

Well, it’s not just me; Roger Simon torched the moderators pretty ruthlessly:

The big story — the A-story — on Wednesday night — the actual full blown case of seppuku — was CNBC.  The network will never seem the same.  Their moderators — Becky Quick, John Harwood, and Carl Quintanilla — were so obviously biased you would have thought it was a parody, if you hadn’t known it was real, a kind of black comic nightmare out of a leftwing theatre of the absurd.

I thought that very thing as I was sitting at O’Gara’s watching the show last night; “this is like an SNL sketch”.

And there was this bit, that I didn’t catch last night; as part of the moderators’ attempt to gut-shoot Rubio, the non-Trump front-runner, John Harwood doubled down on a lie he’d already apologized for:

But more than that, the debate revealed something I had thought about before, but never seen so clearly — how bias can affect the brain, almost make it dysfunctional.  I assume John Howard is an intelligent man.  He writes for the New York Times. (Make of that what you will, but I did write for that newspaper myself once upon a time, so mind your manners.)  Nevertheless, Harwood did something extraordinary.  He lied about Rubio’s tax plan in the exact same way not once but twice — once at the debate and once about two weeks before the debate.  What made it extraordinary was that Harwood had apologized for that same lie the first time on Twitter on October 14 and then lied again Wednesday night as if he didn’t remember his own apology and correction.   (The Federalist has the full story  with the tweet – Surprise! John Harwood Lied About Rubio’s Tax Plan…)

Simon continues – pervasive bias acts as a form of cognitive disorder, blotting out right and wrong in extreme cases.

It’ll never get in the DSMVI, but we all know it’s there.

4 thoughts on “How Bad Were The Moderators…

  1. One thing Cruz should have done is to point out as well that the budget deal is not moderate, and we have this “little” issue of 18 trillion dollars in official debt and another hundred trillion in unfunded liabilities that the Obama administration is determined not to deal with. How is it “moderate” or “leadership” to perpetuate that?

    Don’t get me wrong; the moderators deserved every bit of Hell they got from Cruz and others, but I noticed Quintanilla was smiling during his browbeating–was this intentional drawing Cruz out?

  2. Harwood is a well known Democrat boot licker. I don’t know what Preibus is thinking.

    That being said, the candidates did a fine job of putting the children in the corner.

  3. I was legitimately expecting one of them to ask when did you stop beating your wife?

  4. IMO the only reason Becky has a job at all, is because she’s married to a CNBC producer. She’s nothing more than a liberat attempt at eye candy.

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