Brokaw’s Town Hall for Dummies

On a bright summer morning in 1969, L.A. Police were called to a grisly murder scene at the hilltop home of Film Director Roman Polanski and his actress wife, Sharon Tate.  The blood soaked bodies of Ms. Tate and four other people were found in the house, on the lawn, and in a car in the driveway.  “PIG” was scrawled on the front door in blood.

Thus began the opportunity of a lifetime for local reporter Tom Brokaw to appear daily on TV screens across the nation. Early media speculation about celebrities, drugs and sex turned out to be tame stuff compared to reality, the seventeen month, made-for-TV investigation and outrageously bizarre trial of Charles Manson and his freaky, female cult followers.

The Manson trial propelled Brokaw from reporter at the local NBC affiliate to national reporter at the network, and eventually to the NBC Evening News anchor desk.

Today, after four decades of reading teleprompters, Tom Brokaw is the Eastern political-media establishment’s semi-retired News Personality Emeritus, who is called forth whenever the appearnace of sage wisdom and gravitas seems appropriate.

Last night Mr. Brokaw demonstrated the power of a professional media personality to dumb down what we were promised would be a lively “town hall style” debate, with questions from “real people.”  John McCain, we were told, is most effective in the town all format, exchanging ideas directly with regular Americans.  This debate would be his moment to shine.

Eighty “Real People” who claimed they were “undecided but very interested voters” were picked by the Gallup polling organization.  Each offered a question he or she wished to ask the candidates.  Also, the Internet flood gates were thrown open to several million suggested questions.

But the catch was that News Personality Emeritus Brokaw was appointed sole decision maker, to determine which of the eighty audience questions, and millions of Internet questions would be presented to the candidates.  Not surprisingly with so many choices, he managed to cull out the very questions he, himself would have asked, had there been no input at all from the Real People.  Then, the Real People in the audience whose questions had been picked were forced to stand in front of the camera and act like mechanical replicas of themselves, stating their questions as briefly as possible, forbidden to interact with the candidates.

Finally, as if his power over the process wasn’t complete enough, Brokaw inserted several additional questions of his own, between the selected, Real People questions.

So, what was billed as John McCain’s shining moment, in spontaneous give-and-take with voters, turned out to give the advantage to Barack Obama, whose skills are best suited for the tediously predictable,  personality driven TV format.

Whoever McCain trusted to negotiate the rules for this sham town hall should resign in shame.  Tom Brokaw might well have succeeded last night in his transparent attempt to make sure Barack Obama wins the Presidency.