[quote name=\'Matt Ottinger\' date=\'Aug 16 2003, 07:25 PM\'] Congratulations on getting it right on the third time, though if you had noticed there's already a pretty long thread going on in The Big Board about this well-publicized special, you might not need to have bothered.
On a bigger issue, why is it that so many of you seem to see this one-shot special as some terrible abomination against humanity? It's not like GSN doesn't KNOW that it's a goofy idea. That is, in fact, the reason they're doing it. And it's not as though they're causing irreparable harm to the democratic process. No serious or "respectable" candidate is going anywhere near this. And you certainly can't have a problem with the format, since you don't even know what it is yet.
GSN needs attention, and it got some with this special, even before the thing airs. The local Los Angeles media were all over this story on Monday. It's hardly as though GSN is the only one mining the humor here. Jon Stewart and the other late night comics are going to live on the recall election for the next two months. Do game shows really need to be taken so seriously? [/quote]
1) I didn't think to look in the non-GSN section of the board for an explicitly GSN-related piece of news. I'm completely anal about looking for things in their proper topic hierarchy. My bad.
2) Of =course= it's a goofy idea. Doesn't make it a =good= idea, though. It's bad, in fact, not so much because it's so \"goofy\", per se, but because it's a =worthwhile= idea being perverted to purely goofy ends.
Look, I was born and raised in Cali. I lived through the Moonbeam Era. I lived through the Duke Era. What I never lived through was an era where anyone really had any idea whether or not the people who were attached to those (or any other) eras had any idea what they were doing.
Now, here comes Cronin with his idea to test the candidates about their Great State with a contest about the Great State over whose governorship they're contesting -- in effect, proposing to verify their bona fides as sufficiently competent in the issues and the history to be minimally competent ifelected.
But who does he line up? Bustamante, McClintock, Simon, Huffington and \"Ah-Nuld\"?
Oh, no.... he gets a minor planet in the galaxy of porn -- and the \"other Arnold\", Arnold =Drummond=.
In other words, he takes something potentially momentous, and effectively writes it off. And he cheapens the political process by focusing on its fringe excesses, almost as an afterthought.
The people of California won't know whether Bustamante knows Barstow from Bakersfield, but they =will= know if five media hounds do. And it didn't have to be this way. GSN doesn't have to be thought of in this way.
I suppose the notion is that they're being thought of =at all=, and it doesn't matter why, if it means more eyeballs passing by and landing on the channel. But if you're going to make headlines with a special like this, why not do it with something less cringe-making? Why not with something that people won't feel slightly..... =unclean=..... about watching?
