[NYTr] Chorus of Groans: Univision's Prexy Debate Historically Lousy

[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


Al’s Loup

Univision’s presidential debate was historic… and lousy

By Alvaro F. Fernandez

“[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.” -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. Today’s 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 I’ve 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 Univision’s 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 we’d
all be right. Another Ramos question was also a doozy… 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 don’t 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, “We’ve arrived; we just don’t want
to rock the boat too much. We know our place…”

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 senator’s 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 (it’s 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.