{"id":13619,"date":"2007-11-16T13:20:05","date_gmt":"2007-11-16T18:20:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/13619.html"},"modified":"2007-11-16T13:20:05","modified_gmt":"2007-11-16T18:20:05","slug":"diamonds-pearls-and-planted-questions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/diamonds-pearls-and-planted-questions\/","title":{"rendered":"Diamonds, pearls, and planted questions?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The very last question in last night’s debate<\/a> for Democratic presidential candidates was probably the dumbest of the year.<\/p>\n

MALVEAUX: Maria, would you stand, please? Give us your full name.<\/p>\n

Q: Maria — (inaudible) — and I’m a UNLV student. And my question is for Senator Clinton. This is a fun question for you. Do you prefer diamonds or pearls? (Laughter.)<\/p>\n

CLINTON: Now, I know I’m sometimes accused of not being able to make a choice. I want both<\/i>. (Laughter.)<\/p>\n

MALVEAUX: Do we get to ask any of the other candidates or, I suppose, just Senator Clinton? (Cross talk.)<\/p>\n

Q: It’s the only thing shiny up there.<\/p>\n

MALVEAUX: Okay, thank you so much.<\/p>\n

BLITZER: All right, so on that note, diamonds and pearls, I want to thank all of the Democratic presidential candidates for joining us….<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Now, as regular readers know, I’m not a prude<\/a> when it comes to frivolous questions. Sometimes, off-the-wall inquiries can force candidates to be creative on the fly, and think quickly on their feet.<\/p>\n

But this was just dumb. Worse, it was insulting — the first credible woman presidential candidate in U.S. history is fielding a question about her preferences in jewelry? Please.<\/p>\n

What viewers at home did not know, however, is that Maria Luisa, the UNLV student who asked about this wanted to pose an entirely different question — but CNN “encouraged” her to go with the “diamonds or pearl” question.
\n
\nMarc Ambinder reports<\/a> on Luisa’s comments in response to criticism she received after the event. Apparently, she wanted to ask about the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository, but CNN pushed her in a different direction.<\/p>\n

“Every single question asked during the debate by the audience had to be approved by CNN,” Luisa writes. “I was asked to submit questions including “lighthearted\/fun” questions. I submitted more than five questions on issues important to me. I did a policy memo on Yucca Mountain a year ago and was the finalist for the Truman Scholarship. For sure, I thought I would get to ask the Yucca question that was APPROVED by CNN days in advance.” […]<\/p>\n

“CNN ran out of time and used me to “close” the debate with the pearls\/diamonds question. Seconds later this girl comes up to me and says, “you gave our school a bad reputation.’ Well, I had to explain to her that every question from the audience was pre-planned and censored. That’s what the media does. See, the media chose what they wanted, not what the people or audience really wanted. That’s politics; that’s reality. So, if you want to read about real issues important to America–and the whole world, I suggest you pick up a copy of the Economist or the New York Times or some other independent source. If you want me to explain to you how the media works, I am more than happy to do so. But do not judge me or my integrity based on that question.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It’s probably worth noting that CNN has played fast-and-loose before. Remember this one<\/a> from 2003?<\/p>\n

A college student who asked the Democratic presidential candidates at a debate whether they preferred the PC or Mac format for their computers says the question was planted by CNN.<\/p>\n

The news network acknowledged Tuesday that a producer went “too far” in telling Brown University student Alexandra Trustman what to ask.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Josh Marshall concludes<\/a>, “Can we just close down CNN?”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The very last question in last night’s debate for Democratic presidential candidates was probably the dumbest of the year. MALVEAUX: Maria, would you stand, please? Give us your full name. Q: Maria — (inaudible) — and I’m a UNLV student. And my question is for Senator Clinton. This is a fun question for you. Do […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13619","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13619","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13619"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13619\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13619"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13619"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13619"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}