Re: Kamala Town Hall Attendees Barred From Asking Questions: "All Pre-Determined"

On 2024-10-23 6:40 PM, moviePig wrote:
> On 10/23/2024 3:05 PM, BTR1701 wrote:
>> On Oct 23, 2024 at 9:39:35 AM PDT, "Ubiquitous" <[email protected]> 
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Vice President Kamala Harris held an event in Michigan on Monday that 
>>> was
>>> billed as a "town hall"-- but when attendees asked if their questions 
>>> were
>>> going to be answered, host Maria Shriver admitted that all of the 
>>> questions
>>> had already been pre-determined.
>>>
>>> The video showed Shriver, who is the niece of former President John F.
>>> Kennedy, responding to an audience member who asked whether anyone 
>>> present
>>> would be allowed to ask a question of the Democratic presidential 
>>> nominee--
>>> which traditionally is the point of the town hall format in the first 
>>> place--
>>>
>>> and she told them that they would just have to rely on her to ask the
>>> questions that they would most want to have answered.
>>>
>>> "You're not, unfortunately, we have some pre-determined questions and I
>>> hopefully will be able to ask some of the questions that might be in 
>>> your
>>> head, I hope so," Shriver said.
>>>
>>> "And this woman-- Maria Shriver, no less-- cosplays as a journalist 
>>> at NBC
>>> News!" Curtis Houck, managing editor of NewsBusters, responded.
>>>
>>> "Nothing says 'town hall' like predetermined questions," another 
>>> social media
>>>
>>> user said.
>>
>> Wasn't it Shawn that was castigating Trump for his performative 
>> politics just
>> a few says ago? Well, here you go. Kammie's no better.
>>
>>> A number also argued that if the questions were pre-determined, it 
>>> was likely
>>>
>>> that Harris and her campaign team had access to them and had prepared 
>>> their
>>> responses prior to the event. Still more noted that, after nearly 48 
>>> hours of
>>>
>>> Democrats and media complaining about how "scripted" former President 
>>> Donald
>>> Trump’s visit to McDonald's had been, it seemed a little on the nose for
>>> Harris to do a "town hall" without a single surprise question.
>>
>> Yep. All those bitching about Trump's staged appearance-- even those 
>> on this
>> newsgroup-- are strangely silent when Kammie pulls the same sort of 
>> stunt.
>>
>> What was the audience even there for? If it's not really a town hall 
>> format
>> and no one gets to ask questions, Shriver could have just done an in- 
>> studio
>> interview with Kammie and left it at that. But no, instead Kammie's 
>> people go
>> to all the trouble to bring in an audience under the ruse of it being 
>> a town
>> hall when all they really wanted was a room full of people to act as
>> background props for her campaign.
> 
> 'Ruse'?  You think the audience showed up to ask questions?

Read the original post: clearly, at least one person thought they'd be 
able to ask their own questions - as is traditional at town halls.
> 
> Seems it was a live interview conducted before an audience (...without 
> whom we'd be again hearing the Right's claims of "malicious editing"). 
> If that's not a 'town hall' in your lexicon, then what is it?
> 
> 
An interview with an audience is exactly that: an interview with an 
audience, just as if she was on Colbert or Kimmel or whoever. A town 
hall is a place where (some of) the audience is able to ask questions of 
their own, like when Joe Biden accused that woman of being a "lying 
dog-faced pony soldier" in 2020.

-- 
Rhino