Last week, FX served up the first two episodes of ENGLISH TEACHER, a new sitcom from WILL & GRACE's Brian Jordan Alvarez. Alvarez spent three seasons on the NBC reboot playing Estefan -- Jack's boyfriend and then husband. This time around, Brian's a producer on a series he created and he's also writing and directing some episodes.
The set up? Brian plays high school English teacher Evan Marquez who is coping with a break up with his ex-boyfriend Maclom (Jordan Firstman) while new hire Harry (Lagston Kerman) catches his attention. His friends among the faculty include his best friend teacher Gwen (Stephanie Koenig) and gym teacher Markie Hillridge who expectx Evan to be the go-to for all things LGBTQ+.
We'd argue the show -- which is very funny -- would be even funnier in front of a live audience. However, it's nice to see a single-camera set up comedy that doesn't yet again rip off Christopher Guest. All those 'mockumentaries' owe penalty royalties to Chris -- MODERN FAMILY, PARKS & RECREATION, THE OFFICE, 2015's THE MUPPETS, ABBOTT ELEMENTARY, TRIAL & ERROR, ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT, and many more. They should also pay penalties to the audiences who had to suffer through the meaningless garbage that stole from Guest but brought none of his hilarity.
The eight episodes fly by quickly and set a high water mark for the other fall programs that will follow.
They won't follow this week, however.
No, this week's big program will air live on Tuesday: The debate between the Democratic Party's presidential candidate Kamala Harris and the Republican Party's presidential candidate Donald Trump.
The debate will take place in Philadelphia at The National Constitutional Center and supposedly the moderators are David Muir and Linsey Davis. Supposedly? A presidential debate is a bit more significant than WHAT'S MY LINE? -- which means moderators do more than fired off questions in a functioning world.
In June, the Convicted Felon debated President Joe Biden. Ashley Lopez, Stephen Fowler and Mara Liasson (NPR) noted:
LOPEZ: This was an opportunity for both Trump and Biden to make a pitch to those voters, to provide maybe some clarity on big issues policy-wise that the country is facing. I got to say, I don't know how anyone walked away from this debate with, like, a better picture, specifically on policy. Some really important issues were brought up, like inflation and childcare costs. And I don't know. I didn't hear many lucid, clear policy proposals. And I mean, a lot of this got mired in, kind of tangential conversations. Like, I mean, what was that conversation about golf? I mean, I can't even. How is this, in the 90 minutes we have to debate the future of this country - how is this taking up this much time? It was really kind of striking to me.
FOWLER: There's the hypothetical meme about, oh, what does the average voter in a diner in the Midwest think about this? I mean, honestly, they might talk about the bickering back and forth over the golf scores and who's more physically fit, but honestly, not in a good way for the future of democracy, which also was a topic of discussion.
LOPEZ: And we're definitely going to talk more about that soon. For now, a quick break, more in a second.
And we're back. And I want to pivot to talking about the moderators, Jake Tapper and Dana Bash. There seems to have been a choice made by CNN to let the candidates speak and not interrupt them even to offer sort of basic fact-checking. Stephen, can you talk to me about the kind of position this put specifically Biden in but also how this kind of frame the debate?
FOWLER: Yeah, so it's never easy to wrangle a live debate. It was definitely a choice during this debate to just let the two candidates largely go and largely say things that weren't true and largely just let it happen and let it ride. What this does is it doesn't really give people a sense of what's actually true about these major topics like immigration, about the economy. I mean, both Biden and Trump said things that weren't true. But if you're listening to that in real time, which - let's be honest; most people aren't - it allows them to fudge the record a little bit and kind of create moments that aren't as grounded in truth and reality. And it's honestly another negative against the utility of debates because you don't get their stances. And as another point, along with the fact-checking element of this, there were plenty of times where Trump and Biden were asked questions and reasked questions that they just decided not to answer.
LIASSON: Right, and voters will have to decide how important those nonanswers are, such as the times that Trump was asked, would you accept the results of the election, even if you don't win? And he refused.
(SOUNDBITE OF CNN PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE)
DANA BASH: Will you pledge tonight that once all legal challenges have been exhausted, that you will accept the results of this election regardless of who wins, and you will say right now that political violence in any form is unacceptable?
DONALD TRUMP: Well, I shouldn't have to say that, but of course, I believe that. It's totally unacceptable. And if you would see my statements that I made on Twitter at the time and also my statement that I made in the Rose Garden, you would say it's one of the strongest statements you've ever seen, in addition to the speech I made in front of, I believe, the largest crowd I've ever spoken to. And I will tell you nobody ever talks about that. They talk about a relatively small number of people that went to the Capitol.
LIASSON: Donald Trump has never said, since 2015, that he would accept the results of an election that he lost. He said it all - it depends if it's fair, fair according to him. But I do think, Stephen, we have to be fair. They both said things that weren't true, but there's no comparison between the number of lies, flagrant lies, that Trump told compared to Biden. To say that he was responsible for insulin coming down to $35 is just false, and there were, like, dozens of other things. But I agree with you. The fact that the moderators decided not to fact check helped Donald Trump because he's the one for whom lying is a superpower. Unchallenged lies are even a bigger superpower.
And the other thing that helped Trump was the new rules of shutting off mics after your time is up. In 2020, Trump probably was perceived to have lost the debate where he continuously interrupted Biden. But this time, the microphones being shut off gave him a kind of discipline that he might not have brought on his own.
If you missed it, Donald insisted that Tuesday's debate shuts off microphones -- mainly because he's unable to shut his mouth on his own. Former WASHINGTON POST ombudsperson Margaret Sullivan wrote about the June debate at THE GUARDIAN:
Donald Trump had a thuggish look, but he seemed vigorous and energetic. He seemed … the same.
Then the barrage of lies started, as they always do with Trump.
Among
them: Democrats favor post-birth executions. The former president never
slept with a porn star. The 2020 election was riddled with fraud. Trump
never called prisoners of war losers and suckers. Biden would quadruple
people’s taxes.
On and on and on, in nearly every Trump sentence. Biden had occasional moments, too, of exaggeration or misstatement. But there is no comparison.
No comparison – and no fact-checking by the moderators.
That was the policy going in. CNN’s political director, David Chalian, made that clear a few days ago when he said that debate moderators shouldn’t make themselves into participants but remain mere facilitators. There would be no live factchecks during the debate.
After the June debate, AP noted CBS news anchor Gayle King's observation that the lack o fact checking (or follow up questions) benefited Donald, "If
you don't know the facts, you'd think he was making a lot of sense." Gale is correct. At THE WISCONSIN EXAMINER, Ruth Conniff weighed in:
But the absolute worst performance of the night came from CNN anchors Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, who gave Trump a complete pass on all those whoppers.
When Trump claimed that “every reasonable anchor” has debunked the story that there was a riot by violent white supremacists in Charlottesville, anchor Jake Tapper said only, “Thank you, President Trump” and moved on.
The moderators gave the same response when Trump said that the federal government was behind his felony convictions in the New York hush money trial — a state-level prosecution in state court that had no connection to the Biden administration or federal prosecutors.
They gave the same response to Trump’s preposterous claim that “everybody wanted” Roe v. Wade overturned and that before it was overturned, Democrats were allowing “after-birth” abortions.
Trump also lied repeatedly about sanctioning the Jan. 6 Capitol attack, saying that he had nothing to do with it and that he tried to send in 10,000 National Guard troops to protect the Capitol. The violence committed by his supporters was all Nancy Pelosi’s fault, he said, because she didn’t accept his offer of help, and, he added, she has admitted as much in a documentary film.
As Politifact’s fact-checkers explained, it’s a lie Trump has rehearsed many times: “This remains False. In a brief video, Pelosi said, ‘I take responsibility for not having them just prepare for more,’ referring to U.S. Capitol security, not the National Guard. No member of Congress has the authority to activate the District of Columbia National Guard. Only the president, defense secretary and U.S. Army secretary do. Records show that Pelosi approved a Jan. 6, 2021, request to seek support from the National Guard and pushed to get National Guard troops to the U.S. Capitol when their deployment was delayed by hours that day.”
Those examples barely scratch the surface of the nonstop 90 minutes of lies spewed by Trump — about the economy (which was far from “the greatest in history” in the Trump administration — wages and GDP went down), jobs numbers (which have improved dramatically under Biden), the spike in border crossings (which started on Trump’s watch, not Biden’s), crime (which has gone down, not up, under Biden) and the “pants on fire” claim that “millions of immigrants” have come to the U.S. illegally from “jails, from prisons, from insane asylums, from mental institutions.” Giving Trump a platform to spread hate and lies and providing no check whatsoever was a gross dereliction of journalistic duty by CNN.
We know the other argument, and we've made it ourselves, it's up to the candidates. But it actually isn't. When a known liar is given air time, it's incumbent upon the network to fact check. With Donald, we're talking about a man who spoke at the press (not to, not with) for an hour last month and, as Domenico Montanaro (NPR) noted, lied 162 times -- 162 lies in one hour. The June debate had approximately 53 million viewers. And there was no fact checking. Now, in the past, you had serious airtime given in the days after a debate in which fact checks took place. That did not happen with June's debate. As we noted in "Media: It's Time For Joe To Go:"
Aided by a bored and lazy media, in the 24 hours after the debate ended, concerns over Joe's ability to handle a second term soared. Efforts on his part to reassure voters the day after the debate with speeches -- including one at Stonewall -- failed to stop the media-created tsunami.
As the days piled on, so did the garbage. Norman Solomon -- who used the public airwaves in 2008 to advocate for Barack Obama while pretending he was objective and that he wasn't, in fact, a pledged delegate for Barack -- showed up this go round pretending like he was sincerely concerned. He wasn't. He'd led an earlier effort to prevent Joe from running for a second term. He's as a big a liar as Roseanne Barr -- a Trump supporter who Tweeted the night of the debate that she felt sorry for Joe, genuinely sorry, honest, no fingers-crossed, for reals.
People like that, more than actual Democrats, created a drip-drip that wouldn't cease and kept the topic the focus of the media -- a media that failed repeatedly to hold Donald Trump accountable for his non-stop lying in the debates or for The 2025 Project.
It shouldn't take Taraji P. Henson, at last week's BET Awards, talking on stage about The 2025 Project for the media to finally pay attention to it.
But
that's what's happened. And even so, Donald's gotten a two week pass
where serious issues of substance were only fleeting media
conversations. The drip-drip was very good for Donald and very bad for
Democrats.
[. . .]
We say Joe won the debate -- in part due to Donald's lies. And it goes to the media and the male dominance of the media -- especially our so-called 'independent' media on YOUTUBE -- that something as ridiculous as Donald Trump claiming women were aborting babies right after they gave birth to them was not the biggest moment of the debate and a non-stop ridicule in the media as just how stupid Donald is.
But
what women grasp, apparently men don't -- neither do male-identifying
women who'll do anything to get by in the male-dominated media.
The liar should have been crucified for the insane lie that women were giving birth and then aborting the infant that had just been born. But the media let it pass. They didn't do their job. And we're not going to pretend that they did. Day after day, for over a week, we heard about Joe Biden's energy levels but there was no similar coverage of the lies that flew out of The Convicted Felon's mouth.
Years ago, we called out fat ass Candy Crowley in 2012 for injecting herself into the debate. But we called her out because she got her facts wrong and because she cut off the candidate she was correcting (Mitt Romney) in mid-comment. Last week, at POYNTER, Angie Drobnic Holan explained:
Moderators shouldn’t waste time on fact checks that aren’t important. An example of what not to do came when CNN’s Candy Crowley fact-checked Mitt Romeny in a 2012 debate with Barack Obama. The incident has been debated for years whether Crowley got it right or not. The problem here was that, while the fact check was about an important topic, the fact check itself drilled down on a process detail that wasn’t so important. Let’s review.
The topic again was Libya, and Romney’s attack line was this: “It took the president 14 days before he called the attack in Benghazi an act of terror.”
Crowley contradicted Romney, saying “(Obama) did in fact, sir. … (He did) call it an act of terrorism.” Obama seized the moment, saying, “Can you say that a little louder, Candy?”
Crowley then hedged: “He did call it an act of terror. It did as well take — it did as well take two weeks or so for the whole idea of there being a riot out there about this tape to come out. You (Romney) are correct about that.” The tape, for those who don’t remember, was an American-made video mocking Islam, and for a brief time it was thought to have provoked a spontaneous riot at the U.S. mission in Benghazi. As evidence developed, it was clear the attack was pre-planned.
This exchange got a huge amount of attention about whether Crowley was successful in her fact check or not, and unfortunately it all hinged on a parsing of what words Obama used at a Rose Garden press conference. (Read longer fact checks here and here.) Was Obama calling Benghazi an act of terror, or was he just speaking about violent acts in general and placing Benghazi in that context? This hardly seemed the most important part of the Benghazi attack.
Lost
in the fray about what Obama said when was the actual policy response
to Libya, or ways America could have saved lives or protected its
foreign policy interests better.
That's a solid point and she's correct. It's not the minor details but the big picture. And the big picture needs to be fact checked. Approximately 53 million people watched a debate last June with no fact check and no push back and no follow up questions. That's not journalism. That's a live reed, not journalism. 53 million people were not served by the pretense that what CNN provided was journalism. As POLIFACT's Samantha Putterman observed on PBS, "But as journalists, it's also their job to hold powerful people accountable and check them when they are being inaccurate with the American people, especially during a high-stakes presidential election. I don't think they could have fact-checked every false or misleading claim made last night, but they could have done their due diligence to correct for the record frequently false claims made on incredibly important topics like abortion, economy, and immigration. The American people deserve to know when a presidential candidate is spreading falsehoods, especially on issues they will be voting on." Rachel Leingang, Chris Stein,Maanvi Singh and Carter Sherman (GUARDIAN) observed, "Moderators in the first presidential debate in 2024 took a completely hands-off approach to factchecking the candidates, letting lies and half-truths, most frequently from Donald Trump, remain unchallenged. The former president frequently ignored the questions posed by CNN moderators Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, instead talking about whatever he wanted."
And the few moments, in the days after the debate, in which a few networks offered 'fact checks' wasn't helpful either. PBS' THE NEWSHOUR, for example, thought it was fair to note a Joe Biden distortion or lie and a Donald Trump distortion or lie. This made it appear that both lied equally. Even CNN did a better job than that online (if not on the air):
Trump made more than 30 false claims at the Thursday debate. They included numerous claims that CNN and others have already debunked during the current presidential campaign or prior.
Trump’s repeat falsehoods included his assertions that some Democratic-led states allow babies to be executed after birth, that every legal scholar and everybody in general wanted Roe v. Wade overturned, that there were no terror attacks during his presidency, that Iran didn’t fund terror groups during his presidency, that the US has provided more aid to Ukraine than Europe has, that Biden for years referred to Black people as “super predators,” that Biden is planning to quadruple people’s taxes, that then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi turned down 10,000 National Guard troops for the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, that Americans don’t pay the cost of his tariffs on China and other countries, that Europe accepts no American cars, that he is the president who got the Veterans Choice program through Congress, and that fraud marred the results of the 2020 election.
Trump also added some new false claims, such as his assertions that the US currently has its biggest budget deficit and its biggest trade deficit with China. Both records actually occurred under Trump.
Biden made at least nine false or misleading claims in the debate.So what's the answer? MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell has rightly noted that, the way TV works, a running fact check could be done onscreen during the actual debate. We have no problem with that.
In addition, however, we're aware that there will be two breaks in the debate. Instead of wasting those on commercials, they should be used for fact checks. Three or four journalists should immediately begin letting viewers know what just happened. They should do that during both breaks and as well as right after the debate ends when a third fact check should take place -- no lingering over the candidates on stage, go into the third fact check immediately.
Tomorrow night, ABC will most likely fail at any kind of accountability or fact check during the debate itself. If that is what happens, we all need to grasp that journalism was not practiced. Asking questions is not enough. Your job also includes informing the audience when someone lies and holding them accountable.