[NYTr] Gore Vidal on the Democratic Debate Debacle

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

TruthOut - Dec 18, 2007
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20071218_whither_dennis_kucinich/

The Democratic Debate Debacle

By Gore Vidal

I don’t know how many of you were as appalled as I was at the way that
the presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich was totally erased from the
last Democratic debate held in Iowa.  This was a decision that was
made, I can tell, jointly by the one-time voice of AIPAC, Mr. Wolf
Blitzer, and, at the same time, The Des Moines Register—or whatever it
is called—a paper of no consequence for the United States of America.

Elements of right-wingism are keeping his voice from being heard, even
though there are many millions of us (Kucinich is ahead of both Biden
and Dodd in the national polls) out here who like to hear his voice.
He is in the great tradition of the original People’s Party of the
1880s; he is in the tradition of George Washington and of Thomas
Jefferson, and to silence him with a bunch of political hacks who have
made such a mess of our political system, pretending these were the
only voices who could talk as presidential candidates ... is it because
of their campaign budgets?

Now, I know, as all of you know, that people can come in with millions
of dollars, like Romney and so on, and can buy time in Iowa and in the
North Pole or wherever it is they are running.  They can buy it, but to
get an honest member of Congress speaking out for the people of the
country is a great and rare thing.

I have listened to many political debates in my lifetime, if I may pull
rank because I have been around longer than anybody else, and here is a
voice not only against the war but the entire course leading us to it.
I haven’t heard anybody who has ever listened to Kucinich who didn’t
say, “Oh yes, yes, what he says is true, but nobody will ever take him
seriously.”

Well, of course nobody will ever take him seriously, because they won’t
let him on TV to stand side by side with the other candidates—some of
them attractive candidates but whose roots are not as deep as his in
what we may call “American life.” Dennis Kucinich was brought up in
poverty, something the other candidates talk about but he actually
lived through.  He has known poverty in the richest country on Earth, a
country that is constantly boasting, that seems to be out of control
with self-love.  Well, I say let’s have less self-love and pay some
attention to our serious critics—and he is one—and his is a voice
that’s showing us how to get to the exit from the box that we are all
in.

It is so typical for CNN, a lousy network, and whatever that awful
newspaper is called.  Do we want to listen to them at the close of a
primary campaign in a key state?  They have nothing to say of any
interest, and so they eliminate any voice that might say something
intelligent.  I have never felt more ashamed being an American than
when I saw how this debate was handled.