Talking Without Listening

I'll never forget the opening ceremony to the Olympics in 2004 in which Matt Lauer and Katy Couric proceeded to talk through the performance of Bjork, choosing to comment on the length of her dress rather than let the viewers watch the performance. She's a singer for god's sake!

I wrote a letter to NBC in frustration, which in my opinion did result in less chatter during the closing ceremonies.

However, the trend of talking without listening seems to spill over to other areas. Such an example might be made of tonight's debate. Wolf was talking incessently with Candy Crowley, even as he sat down to moderate the debate. Even as candidates tried to talk seriously about immigration, Wolf chose to bait Obama into mocking Hillary. Even as Hillary tried to talk about her war vote, Wolf continued to bait her about a 'nieve vote'. Thus causing the audience to 'boo' the moderator, further distracting us from the conversation.

Had he been in the moment, rather than attempting to turn this into a sound-bite, conflict laden debate, (sorry South Carolina will only happen once), he might have noticed a full blown substanative debate was taking place for the benefit of those of us trying to make a rational decision. Just as Matt and Katie fucked us over in Atlanta, so did CNN in Hollywood. Too much talking, too little listening.

This is why CSPAN is far and above the best network. You get to be in the room, a fly on the wall, a judge. As boring and non glamourous as CSPAN might be, it teaches us to watch and listen. Without talking.