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As I'm looking around for post-debate analysis from the talking heads, when I come across Chuck Todd's immediate thoughts at First Read, I am forced to dust of my copy of Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulation that I haven't looked at since my first year of graduate school. The sign isn't referring to reality, the sign is reality itself, if such a thing as reality there be:
QUICK POST-DEBATE IMPRESSIONS
If the last debate was the moment where Democrats realized that the Clinton coronation was, at least, postponed, this one will be known as the debate that seemed to sharpen the contrast between Clinton and Obama and create a gap between the big two and everyone else. The sparring between Clinton and Obama on a number of issues is likely to set the tone for some time. Edwards was hurt, partially, by the fact that Clinton and Obama were next to each other, while Edwards was off to the side.
This debate was about Clinton effectively fighting back, Obama sticking to his guns and separation between those two and everyone else.
Inventing a media narrative is the lead piece in your "quick post-debate thoughts?" This is really what pops into your head immediately after a debate? Chuck, you do know that the media narrative is an artificial construct, and that there is no natural law compelling you to shoe-horn everything that happens into a contorted narrative, such as this debate being "about" the top two separating themselves, right? Reading this is like listening to children analyze how the quality of their presents at Christmas are related to the quality of the letter they wrote to Santa Claus. Reading this is like a character from a fictional story come to life, say Princess Leia, and for her to still be convinced she is still leading the rebellion in the Star Wars Universe. Or, perhaps more accurately, it is like a child inventing a detailed imaginary universe, and then for that child to become convinced that the world he created is actually real.
Truly bizarre. Dude, your media narrative is fake. Please, for the good of our referent forests that have been hit so hard by signifier warming in the postmodern age, don't pretend otherwise. And yeah, there is no Santa Claus, too.
The odd thing is that Todd's throwaway thoughts at the end of the post are actually the smart ones that refer to reality. Maybe that I see it that way simply refers to the different way the brains of bloggers and the Kool Kidz are wired, but everything he writes as throwaway lines actually refer to reality:
Obama got his YouTube moment when he got to challenge the moderator on the issue of being a pessimist. Look for THAT in an email box near you VERY soon.
One final Clinton v. Obama point. Clinton really benefitted from the audience responses; I'd love to know who got tickets for this debate, whether one campaign was allowed to get more tix than another. Because the booing by the Clinton supporters when Edwards or Obama confronted Clinton were distracting to the candidates and did throw them off every now and then.
As for the rest of the field, Biden, again, had a good night. He keeps doing well at these debates; we'll see if he can use this to propel himself in Iowa. Richardson, btw, had one of his better performances, possibly his best. Dodd didn't get a lot of time but when he did speak, he seemed to be on message. Still, I bet the Dodd folks are lighting up CNN over the lack of face time.
Yes, the non-normative stuff here all seems correct. Obama probably will put that moment on You Tube. The boos probably were coming from Clinton supporters. At the Drexel debate, I saw several of them really pissed off outside, so I bet they were ready this time. And yes, the Dodd team probably will point out the lack of equity in talk time, not to mention that Dodd supporters online will probably email CNN about that en masse. Yes, that is all real. However, immediately tossing some sort of media narrative onto the debate isn't real at all, just like it wasn't real seventeen days ago either.
Unfortunately, in the end, it will be the post-debate narrative that actually defines the result of the debate. The only people to whom the candidate's actual performance will matter will be to the small number of people watching the debate and, much more importantly, to the several dozen reporters and pundits who will write about the debate. The fact is, post-debate coverage lasts much longer, will reach more people, and can be much better edited into a neat package than the debate itself. And so, in the end, the reality isn't the referent (the actual debate) but rather the signifiers discussing the debate (the post-debate coverage). And really, when you think about it, we only know that this debate exists because it's not any of the other debates, and there is no unsignified signifier of debate holding the center of the debate system together. Which means, of course, that not this debate actually equals this debate.
Wow, I'm totally blowing my own mind. This post-debate coverage is deep.
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