Last night a group of Pacific Standard staff members watched the presidential debate together. As news/politics junkies, we of course had lap tops open, smart phones at the ready, Twitter flowing and a steady stream of the cable TV talking heads giving pre- and post-debate analysis. By the end of the night we had heard the opinions of Ezra Klein, David Plouffe, Laura Ingraham, Steve Schmidt and everyone else who had a microphone or a Twitter account.
With the flood of information we started wondering what people thought who had only watched the debate and didn’t have any of the surrounding hoopla analysis. So, we asked our moms. As moms always do, they provided us with a bit of wisdom:
Editor Maria Streshinky’s mom said: “I think both of them threw too many statistics out. I was watching with my 13-year old grandson and he was trying to follow it and just couldn’t. I don’t think it should be gauged to 13-year-olds, but it was all going over his head. I felt it was too full of detail and Obama did not make a clear-cut case for what the real differences between the two parties are, and he could have. He didn’t need to mention the 47 percent, but he could have brought it out in a different way. I was disappointed in Obama… And I was offended at the aggression by Romney.“
Fellow Michael Fitzgerald’s mom said: “I always liked that Obama is extremely polite. But he was sort of a wet rag. I think he should leak it to the press that he had West Nile Virus.”
And my mom said this: “There was a moment when Obama was talking about his grandmother, and the camera showed Mitt Romney smirking, and I decided that I just couldn’t stand to look at that man anymore.” So she turned it off.
What did your mom say?
