The Republican Debates

I haven’t watched any of the debates in anything approaching their entirety but as a frequent viewer of both The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, I have seen clips from many of them. Though the words falling from the candidates’ mouths are often reprehensible, pandering and self-serving, even they aren’t the primary cause of the feeling of horror these debates engender. No, that feeling is primarily caused by the hooting, hollering and booing that comes from the audience and not the noises themselves, but rather their juxtaposition to the action on stage. Almost without fail, when something horribly antisocial and atavistic is expressed by one of the candidates, it is met with roars of approval that drown out both the moderator and candidate; when the candidate fails in his mission of providing seamless inanity and mistakenly expresses an opinion that could be construed as even partially enlightened, subsequent conversation and thought is likewise drowned out by the audience, this time with a tone of menacing disapproval. In the clips I’ve seen or heard, I haven’t seen the audience, but my mind fills in the gap with an image from an older film starring Tina Turner and Mel Gibson, Mad Max Beyond the Thunderdome.

Audience at the Republican Debates