COLUMN: Debate

I wish I remembered more from college. The older I get, the more I feel like I'm forgetting knowledge I once paid a good deal of money to acquire.

When I was younger, I was convinced that I was destined to be the next Casey Kasem, spinning Top 40 hits on-air for years to come. Yet here it is, decades later, and I've yet to make even ONE long-distance dedication. But collegiate Shane was convinced his future was in radio. At Augustana, that meant becoming a Speech Communications major. That's right, I am officially trained to speak.

In all honesty, I probably attended (well, at least sometimes attended) college at the absolute worst time. When I was at Augie, the internet was in its infancy. If I remember correctly, we had one shared computer in a common room of our dorm that was hooked up this new-fangled thing called the World Wide Web. When I bought my first PC out of college, I went overboard and loaded it up with ONE gigabyte of memory. "That's crazy," my friends said to me at the time. "No one could EVER fill an entire gigabyte!" 

I learned a great deal about radio at Augustana -- all of which was made irrelevant five years later with new tech. I'll let you guys in on a secret: radio stations today are pretty much run entirely on autopilot. Disc jockeys aren't jockeying any discs. Many just sit in front of a microphone waiting for a computer screen to display "TALK NOW" and giving them a timer until the next song starts. Sometimes when you hear a DJ on the air, they recorded their voice days earlier. I was once driving to the mall listening to a DJ friend of mine on the radio and then bumped into him at JCPenney's five minutes later.

I, on the other hand, went to school to learn such valuable skills as how to splice a reel-to-reel tape together -- so if see one of those in an antique store somewhere, I'm your guy.

But there was a whole lot more to a speech major than playing around on the radio. I had to take classes on small group communication, interpersonal communication, political communication, communications ethics, etc. I had to read seriously heavy textbooks full of complicated theory and endless discussions on the science of communication and how the way we communicate impacts society, understanding, and even human thought. It was pretty interesting stuff -- most of which I've forgotten completely. 

Every once in a while, though, bits of Comm Theory class come creeping back into my brain -- and nothing draws them out faster than watching debates.

Why we're even having debates at this point is beyond me. If there exists such a thing as an undecided voter by this point, I'd like to meet them. This election has polarized our nation. I don't know anyone who's not either reeeeeeally onboard the Trump train or reeeeeeeeeeally hoping it derails. No one I know is sitting around going, "Well, let's see what they have to say before I make up my mind." Instead, the debates have turned into popcorn viewing, a spectacle for the sake of spectacle.

Marshall McLuhan was a philosopher and media analyst popular in the 1950s-1960s who some thought a crackpot. In actuality, he ended up being a little ahead of his time, having invented the term "global village" and predicting the internet way before it was even a glimmer in Al Gore's eye. He's the guy who pops up in "Annie Hall" with his catchphrase diss, "you know NOTHING of my work." I can't begin to simplify all of McLuhan's theories (mostly because I've forgotten them, never understood them in the first place, and "I know NOTHING of his work,") but he's most famous for his assertion that "the medium is the message" - that WHAT we say isn't half as important as HOW we say it.

A good example of this was the first televised presidential debate: Nixon/Kennedy, 1960. Polls taken after the debate show that folks who listened on the radio overwhelmingly thought Nixon won it. Folks who watched on TV thought Kennedy was the clear victor. Why the disparity? Because Kennedy came to the stage a young man oozing with confidence and plastered with stage makeup. Nixon refused to wear makeup and ended up looking like a sweaty ghoul on camera. For folks watching on TV, it didn't matter what either candidate said. It mattered more how they looked and acted.

That's why the first Trump/Biden debate last week was so infuriating. As polarizing as that performance was, I doubt it changed many minds. In fact, it probably just made us double-down on our candidate of choice. Biden supporters thought Trump's constant interruptions were reprehensible. Trump's fans probably thought it was great fun. No one watching went, "Hey, that plan makes sense, I'll vote for THAT guy." I never heard any plans. I just heard insults and frustration and name-calling for an hour. If you watched it on TV, I'm sure it was entertaining. But try reading a transcript of that debate without losing your mind, I dare you. There was no substance. The medium was the ONLY message.

This column will run long after tonight's debate has ended and been talked to death by analysts, but mark my words. I bet the stories in the news today won't focus on the content of the debate. I'll guarantee the star of the discussion will be a flimsy plexiglass divider [Update: And maybe a fly. And maybe pinkeye.]

I might have a diploma saying it's my specialty, but I'm sick of the talking -- and the arguing and the tweeting and the eleventy-kajillion e-mails I get every day from candidates begging for money. I just want it all to be over. Do I have an outcome I'm rooting for? You bet I do. But mostly I just want it to be over. You know, when you're playing Scrabble and your rack is full of crummy letters, you're allowed to lose a turn, re-draw, and hope for something better. I think we've all lost a turn in 2020. Maybe it's time for some new letters.