Scot Returns From Oblivion/Patsy Explores Oblivion Options

I write this really depressing post about hi-tech stalking and then disappear for almost a week. One might get the indication I put my head in an oven or something. Not true, in fact a glorious week all around (weather especially), marred only by being too busy to get to this all-important informational resource.

That's Burque Babble I'm talking about...and quit laughing.

And it wasn't because of a dearth of things to write about. That great sucking sound you hear is either Jeff Armijo or the New Mexico Lobo football team. New Mexico has officially changed climatologically from semi-arid desert to temperate rain forest. Bill Richardson did what he does best and left New Mexico to go sit down for drinks with some foreign guy and get somebody released from something.

And I could give tired, dated responses to those events, but instead I see this morning that Patsy Madrid is skirting a televised debate with Heather Wilson. There's really no other way to see it, if the Trib story has it right. And that ain't good for Patsy....and what's bad for Patsy is bad for the universe as I see it.

Because as we all know, the Patsy v. Heather battle is bigger than Star Wars, Lord of the Rings and Futurama all rolled together. This is a seminal, fundamental and elemental battle between Good and Evil here, and Good just decided to hide out in the closet (no, no THAT closet).

Given the amount of money in this race, Madrid's decision to not do a TV debate should be good for about 3,000,000 Wilson ads lambasting (a word I simply can never avoid using) Madrid for ducking with titles like "What's she got to hide?", "What Madrid isn't telling you!", and "Patsy Madrid is Satan, Pol Pot and Simon Cowell genetically combined!".

I hate TV debates. I don't watch TV debates, nine times out of ten. They are a stupid way for voters to decide who to vote for. They are really just a way for supporters of a particular candidate to be entertained by the screw-ups of the opposition. I've always held with great skepticism the theory that undecided voters can be swayed by a TV debate. Undecided voters don't watch debates. In fact, I'm not sure if undecided voters do much of anything. I wonder sometimes if they are capable of breathing and locomotion.

What a few undecided voters might be swayed by would be an onslaught of punditry following an unwatched TV debate, and I'm not really sure that makes much of a difference, either.

So why is Patsy ducking the TV debate stupid? It's stupid because ducking it becomes an issue, and thus dilutes the real issues of this race. Even if Madrid showed up and bombed it would have less effect than her ducking the shindig. And that's assuming she would bomb versus the Cheney Stepford Wife Wilson.

Of course TV debates are the absolute stuipidest debates because of the whole video/image thing. We've all been bored to death at this point by those old-timers telling us that people listening on the radio thought Nixon WON that debate way back, while TV viewers thought Nixon was Bela Lugosi, only scarier. Still...the truth is that we humans have not quite evolved to the point where we 100% overlook looks and just focus on the facts.

We are all superficial, yet roughly half of us have voter registration cards. This fact makes us dangerous, and I'm wondering if the Madrid campaign was more worried about human superficiality when it comes to looks than it was about something stupid Patsy Madrid might say during a TV debate.

I'm just gonna let that point die slowly for a few moments while I look out the window this fine Saturday morning.

Nevertheless, I still think it's a bad idea for Madrid to avoid TV debating Wilson. Besides the reasons listed above, Television is THE supremely arrogant medium of our age. Mere human politicians who refuse to become assimilated into the capricious wiles of Borg-like TV are treated as inferiors. Hallway conversations are held between TV people, snarky e-mails are sent, certain attitudes blossom.

Despite Television itself being Borg-like, its component nuts and bolts are human. Not to go overboard syllogistically, but we might remember I said humans are superficial. Even, to an extent, professional TV journalists ones. Hard to believe, I know.

I fully expect a slew of follow-up stories about this, many including rational defenses for why Madrid will be unable to TV debate Heather. I'm afraid they won't matter much, however. I know the Tribune has a circulation of about twenty now, and that the Journal has been far too busy posting poll results to do much of anything else political, but I'm guessing this Tribune story will grow, fester and metastasize into an ongoing issue, while Iraq/Health Care/Oil and the other real issues get that much less coverage. We'll see...I've been wrong so many times before, and I wouldn't mind a bit if I was wrong this time.