And for my next trick, I will write for the same magazine Henry Rollins writes for. I’m ecstatic to announce that I’ve started writing for The Big Smoke. The Big Smoke has been very successful in Australia and now they’re publishing a US version of the magazine. “Our writers are influencers and mavericks..” Yes, I’ve found a home. I told them I’d only write about small topics like religion, social change, and politics. They agreed. I’m happy to share my first article:
Debate on Debates
One of the very first U.S. political debates on record was in a senate race between Stephen Douglas and Abraham Lincoln and this only happened because Lincoln followed Douglas around on the campaign trail and heckled him from the crowd. Finally, Douglas agreed to a series of debates throughout seven of the nine congressional districts in Illinois. In this debate they had no moderator but spoke about equal rights for all men and the immoral nature of slavery. In 1948, Republican presidential contenders Dewey and Stassen had up to 80 million radio listeners as they argued about outlawing communism in the U.S. The first debate that was televised had a calm and collected Jack Kennedy against a sweaty Nixon with a five o’clock shadow and this helped the younger underdog beat the more experienced Nixon. In 1976, while debating the then-obscure Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford told the world, “There is no Soviet domination in Eastern Europe.” This of course was news to people living in East Germany as well as the people in the U.S. Ford lost support soon after.
This year, fifteen minutes into the third official Republican debate the pale and doughy faced junior Senator from Texas and Canadian-born U.S. presidential hopeful had run out of patience with the questions from the three moderators. Instead of answering a focused and topical question on the U.S. debt limit, he took his opportunity to chide the moderators, “The questions that have been asked so far in this debate illustrate why the American people don’t trust the media.” He was on a roll, so he kept going, “This is not a cage match. And you look at the questions—‘Donald Trump, are you a comic-book villain?’ ‘Ben Carson, can you do math?’ ‘John Kasich, will you insult two people over here?’ ‘Marco Rubio, why don’t you resign?’ ‘Jeb Bush, why have your numbers fallen?…
For the rest of the article please click on the link and then check out the magazine:
Sean Davis 