I’m getting myself a new dictionary. This is the definition mine offers for the word ‘debate’:
Noun. A formal contest of argumentation in which two opposing teams defend and attack a given proposition.
We had a debate here the other night, the only one for this short election campaign, between the Leader of the Opposition and the Prime Minister and based on that, here is the new definition I am submitting to those dictionary types.
Debate: noun. A demonstration in watching paint dry; without the paint.
That is so wrong.
My God, it was the dullest piece of television I have ever seen and I’ve watched almost an entire half-episode of ‘Friends’!
I would have preferred to watch a boxing match in which both boxers had their arms tied behind their backs, were blindfold and required to sit in a wing-backed chair in their own corners for the whole match.
I thought at one point that one of them was about to say something interesting but it was just a cough coming on.
I think both of them have been to the Obama School of Public Speaking, where the main lesson is to learn to speak with the unerring beat of a metronome. Listening to Obama and these two is like listening to Miles Davis being played on cheap KMart keyboard stuck on the Jazz autoplay function.
Bland and mind-numbingly dull was, I am sure, the goal and I can imagine the minders greeting their leaders at the end of the hour (it was only an hour!) and saying to them. ‘Congratulations you didn’t say anything! Good for you.’
What a strange world we inhabit, an hour of prime-time exposure you would think would increase the likelihood that I might want to vote for one of them right? I mean, I’m no political scientist but wouldn't that be the point?