[NYTr] Chorus of Groans: Univision's Prexy Debate Historically Lousy Date: Sat, 15 Sep 2007 06:00:37 -0500 (CDT) Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit Chorus of Groans: Univision's Prexy Debate Historically Lousy [This debate sounds utterly utterly dreadful. It was technically terrible, Fernandez says, id not comic, and the content was even worse. Fernandez hits the low points: The Cuba Question must be the lowest of all. Are you ready? Not travel, not trade, not the blockade. "What will Cuba be like after Castro?" [GROAN] That's got to be the only question that absolutely everyone who knows nothing about Cuba is always guaranteed to ask first. And if not first, then certainly second, because the first is sometimes "How did you get there?" (Like there's a magic transporter. They never seem to believe the answer: "You get on a plane and go." Any more than they understand the other answer "What will happen? Nothing. Cuba will continue to be Cuba.") The other brilliant queries included asking shouldn't Spanish be made the official 2nd language in the US. DOUBLE GROAN: What sane candidate would even answer that? And the junior high question: What is the most important thing Hispanics have contributed to the US? (TRIPLE GROAN) And this absurd event was held in MIAMI, in SPANISH (with translation, apparently very bizarre, since the monolingual Dem candidates couldn't be expected to speak anything but Anglo, of course. Joe Biden was the smartest of the lot - he stayed away.] Progreso Weekly - Sep 13, 2007 http://progreso-weekly.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=139&Itemid=1 Albs Loup Univisionbs presidential debate was historicb& and lousy By Alvaro F. Fernandez b[Edmund] Burke said that there were Three Estates in Parliament; but, in the Reporters' Gallery yonder, there sat a Fourth Estate, more important far than they all.b -Thomas Carlyle, Scottish historian and essayist Another Miami weekend saw the continued entourage of presidential candidates visiting our area. Democrats -- except for Sen. Joe Biden who opted out -- were here for the presidential debate held Sunday night at the University of Miami. It is being called a historic event. Todaybs marketing geniuses tend to want to label everything. The debate may have been historic; I would add that it was also historically lousy. Historic because it was the first time U.S. presidential candidates debated before the nation in Spanish. Lousy because the format turned out to be difficult to follow. First, answers were hard to understand in any language -- translators spoke too quickly and over the voice of candidates (whose voices in the background got in the way) creating, at times, a chaotic situation. Second, because of the speed of answers given by candidates, the translations were poor. There were a number of words used by the translators Ibve never seen in any Spanish dictionary. Worse yet, though, were some of the questions asked by the moderators -- both experienced and the top Univision anchors. Three questions stood out as particularly baseless. The last question of the night was delivered by Univisionbs Jorge Ramos. He asked what the candidates felt is the biggest contribution by Hispanics to this country. The question was open-ended and can be answered differently by all 44 million of us who live here. And webd all be right. Another Ramos question was also a doozyb& He wanted to hear candidates commit to making Spanish the second language of the country. Stupid, polarizing and a question not one of the candidates dared address. I donbt blame them. What about the Germans, French, Italians, Poles, Chinese, Japanese and so many other ethnicities who live here? Should we rank their languages in order of importance to the country, Mr. Ramos? Finally, the Cuba question -- and there had to be a Cuba question since the debate was held in Miami -- was useless. What will happen in a Cuba without Fidel Castro? they asked. So, I suppose, Univision is looking for a philosopher president in 2009. There were numerous relevant questions that could have been asked regarding Cuba: Will you support an embargo some of you have called pointless and failed? Are you in favor of limiting family travel to once every three years? Do you agree with the fact that this country refuses to deal with the realities of Cuba today? Relevant questions were out there by the score. Univision and their moderators seemed to not want to ask them. The debate gave you the impression that Latinos were saying, bWebve arrived; we just donbt want to rock the boat too much. We know our placeb&b Then again, the debate did take place in Miami, a city where few news mediums dare challenge the status quo -- so who was I to think the Cuba question asked would be relevant to the times we live in? On Saturday, for example, Sen. Chris Dodd, the democrat from Connecticut running for president, held a press conference at the Biltmore Hotel. During the hour-long event he laid out plain as day his Cuba policy: elimination of the embargo and TV Marti were two of the major points. I was there, along with about 10 other Cubans from the Miami community who support many of the senatorbs ideas on Cuba, standing behind Sen. Dodd. NOTE: You can see the video of this Dodd press Conference at The Progreso Website at the URL above. -NYTransfer] A television reporter from one of the Spanish-speaking stations asked the senator how he would deliver the message to Cubans in Miami who generally oppose such ideas. I looked around at the others standing with me. Are we not part of this community? I wondered. And are we not Cuban? again turning to look at my compatriots. The fact is that behind the senator stood persons like Alfredo Duran, who once headed the Democratic Party in Florida. Also there was Tony Zamora, once a Cuban American National Foundation lawyer. And what of Annie Betancourt, the first Cuban democrat ever elected to the Florida legislature? Or is the fact we all oppose what this reporter seemed to think was the status quo here make us invisible in this area? In the end what this awful Univision debate (which had the potential to be a truly important event on the way to the presidential election of next year) and the Dodd press conference demonstrated, one more time, is that in Miami the media is a great big part of the problems we face. They seem to forget that journalists are there to help bring about solutions (itbs why they call us the Fourth Estate). But too many South Florida reporters (and the medium they represent) seem to want to be protagonists in this lousy soap opera we live in. * ================================================================= .NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems . Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us . .339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org . List Archives: https://blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/ . Subscribe: https://blythe-systems.com/mailman/listinfo/nytr =================================================================