Debate

My final week of classes at Pearl Harbor (Naval Shipyard Apprenticeship Program) features a surprise debate (not mentioned on the syllabus) between teams in each class. With a bit of manipulation on the part of Darth Salling each class chose an excellent topic for debate:

Resolved: The first recipient of the Annual Media Ignoramus of the Year Award (known as the IgnorIMUS award or the “Imus” for short) should be Alec Baldwin. In the alternative, the negative teams may argue that the award should go to either Imus himself, or to Michael Richards of “Kramer” fame. (Mel Gibson will undoubtedly receive a lifetime achievement award at some point in the future.)

Resolved: If the Congress were to immediately pass legislation similar to that vetoed by the President on May 1st, 2007, which appropriated more money than asked for to support the U.S. military in Afghanistan and Iraq, and contained a mandatory date to begin troop deployment / withdrawal from Iraq, as well as a non-binding benchmark for final withdrawal, the President should again veto such legislation.

While the Iraq debate is far more important, the IgnorIMUS debate will of course be more fun, so I’ll direct my self to that in the next update to this post (to follow shortly.)

It's now half an hour later:

The top three reasons chosen by my students to support the AFFIRMATIVE case in the IMUS debate are as follows:

1. Baldwin was stupid enough to record himself calling his 11 year old daughter IRELAND a "rude, thoughtless, little pig...."

2. Baldwin used his 11 year old child to vent his anger and frustration with ( ex-wife Kim Bassinger, the courts, lawyers, etc.)

3. Baldwin acted impulsively and arrogantly considering the negative financial consequenses not only for himself but for countless others dependant upon the success of his film and television career.

4. Baldwin did serious if not fatal damage to his credibilty as a spokesperson for various liberal and "do-gooder" causes.

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The top three reasons chosen by my students to support the NEGATIVE case in the IMUS debate are as follows:

1. Imus should get the award named after him because he was stupid enough to air his slurs to an audience of millions.

2. Imus should receive the first annual award because it was a public remark of a seriously insulting racist and sexist nature that was personally damaging and demeaning to the young women of the Rutgers team and their coaches & team staff, as well as to their families, all who look up to them as role models, the extended Rutgers family, and last but not least, to womens' athletics in general.

3. Imus should get the award because of the negative financial consequenses not only for himself but for countless others dependant upon the success of his radio and television career.

4. Alec Baldwin is attempting to use the incident in a positive way. He has taken steps to reconcile with his daughter by apologizing to her and (on "The View") to anyone else who was hurt or offended by his remarks. Baldwin is using the gaffe as an opportunity to advance understanding of the court system and the problems with child custody litigation in America; it is thus likely that Baldwin's image will be enhanced at the end of the day (certainly this will be the result in the case of millions of "downtrodden dads" who feel they have been abused by the courts, not to mention their wives and girlfriends who are often more frustrated by the tactics of the former spouse than the male is.) Baldwin's ex-wife (or whoever was responsible for turning over the recording to outsiders and creating a media frenzy in the process) owes an apology to young Ireland for involving her in such undignified, publicly humiliating news coverage.

5. Both Mel Gibson and Michael Richards are more entitled than Baldwin to become recipients of the IMUS


The best media account of this "black on black" farce / tragedy that I've seen can be reached using the link below:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/showbiz/showbiznews.html?in_article_id=451268&in_page_id=1773