The Tavis Smiley Presidential Forums: Showtime at the Apollo!
by Leutisha Stills, senior correspondent, CBC Monitor
"I've attended and written about Tavis's events before. As always, I hope for the best, and this was no exception. "
Despite the
claim of at least one Democratic candidate, there still is a Black America and the social, economic, social and political gulf between it and white America remains very real. So a presidential debate with questions from African American journalists on topics of particular concern to black voters and communities was an exciting prospect. But the disappointing product Tavis Smiley delivered last Thursday showed the limits of what African Americans can expect when we confuse black celebrity with leadership and black marketing with journalism.
I've attended and written about Tavis's events before. As always, I hope for the best, and this was no exception. This time, I imagined that we might come away with something more constructive, comprehensive and decisive as to which candidate would be the best one to lead America. I hoped we might see a discussion particularly sensitive to the issues of Black America, one that would not take our vote for granted. In other words, I wanted - we wanted - these Presidential candidates to actually hear our cry, our complaints and our concerns, and not buy us off with platitudes and canned rhetoric to make us feel good.
"The Tavis Smiley presidential forum was fairer than CNN's."
First the good news:
The Tavis Smiley presidential forum was fairer than CNN's. CNN grouped its favored candidates Clinton, Obama and Edwards together at center stage, and managed to give them not just all the best camera angles but most of the question time, too. By contrast, Tavis promised to assign candidate positions randomly, and to give everyone the same amount of time.
The Smiley forum did feature questions from three journalists of color (DeWayne Wickham, Michel Martin, and Ruben Navarette, Jr.), who presumably played some role, along with Tavis, in selecting the questions. Tavis also allowed members of the public to submit proposed questions in advance over the internet.
Smiley's studio audience was mainly black, and a black man, Tavis himself, got to sit in the moderator's chair. The affair was held at historically black Howard University.
There were questions you'd never hear in front of white audiences on such topics as the racial selectivity of the nation's criminal justice system, and the black AIDS rate. There was even a question on the right to return for those dispersed by Katrina.
All the candidates seemed to agree that mandatory minimum sentences were part of the problem, not part of the solution.
And now for the bad news.
The bad news was that it wasn't a debate. Not at all. No point and counterpoint, no follow-up questions or rebuttals. After nearly half an hour of overlong Negro Introductions and perorations about the event's historic importance candidates were allowed no more than 60 or 70 seconds per question, sometimes as little as 40 or 45 seconds. Within this format sound bytes often triumphed over substance. Hillary Clinton sidestepped a difficult question about black women and AIDS with a pandering line about how if AIDS were the number one cause of death among white woman it would be dealt with differently, a mu
mbled sentence or two in the middle and another flourish about dealing with AIDS the way they used to when it was a gay man's disease in the golden age of her hubby's presidency. Time's up. Next contestant, next question. It was closer to being a game show than a presidential debate. Senator Chris Dodd accurately gauged the mood of the affair, volunteering to take "Global Warming for $600!"
"It was closer to being a game show than a presidential debate. "
Presidential debates and forums usually include some ordinary folks, either as audience members or sometimes as questioners. But Smiley's studio audience seemed to be mainly people like himself -- black A-list celebrities and entertainers, many of them guests on his shows, with a thick layer of current and former black elected and appointed officials. Studio cameras cut restlessly back and forth between the candidates and Al Sharpton next to Harry Belafonte, Michael Eric Dyson, Terri McMillan, Iyanla Vanzant, Ruby Dee and Sonia Sanchez, members of Congress Rangel, Waters, and Jackson-Lee, that guy from the Young & the Restless, and many more.
It wasn't exactly BET or the Image Awards, but it made me wonder. Was this a presidential debate? Or was it another marketing opportunity? Does Tavis think black people won't watch a presidential debate without black celebrities on camera? Or was Tavis just flexing his own "star power" - reassuring audiences and sponsors that any time they see him they might see some other celeb too? Journalists and media people of all types including this correspondent were exiled to another room.
The candidates were never directly asked a "when will you get us out of Iraq" question, despite the fact that African Americans are more against this war than anyone. One would think we deserve to be able to evaluate the candidates on this important issue side by side.
"Tavis accepted the generous offer of Frank Luntz, a helpful Republican pollster, to explain the reactions of an African American focus group, supposedly standing in for all of us"
Finally no presidential debate or forum is complete without its own spin cycle, its explanation of what the candidates said and what we should be hearing. So Tavis accepted the generous offer of Frank Luntz, a helpful Republican pollster, to explain the reactions of an African American focus group, supposedly standing in for all of us. Tavis himself explained it in a Democracy Now interview last Thursday:
"What Mr. Luntz has been asked to do, what he quite frankly offered to do, was to set up a people-metering room where some thirty African Americans -- they're all black, they're all Democrats, they're all voters -- are going to be asked what they think of the debate, the forum, as it unfolds... we'll be able to read the data as to what they thought about every person on the stage answering these questions... Mr. Luntz has been a guest on my program a couple times, as has Newt Gingrich and any number of other Republicans... And the role he's playing is helping us to understand what the top line is for what these African American Democrats had to say."
Frank Luntz used to work for Newt Gingrich. He's the Republican propagandist who gave us the 1994 "Contract For America," and who came up with the idea of calling the estate
tax the "death tax." His latest book is titled "Words That Work: It's Not What You Say, It's What People Hear." Who could be better qualified, Tavis must have asked himself, to interpret the African American reaction to this historic political exchange?
"People metering" is when you give each person in your focus group a little panel with five or six buttons that might be marked "strongly agree," "somewhat agree, neutral," "somewhat disagree," and "strongly disagree" or a similar range. Your group members push one button at all times, and you electronically monitor the results from second to second as the candidates talk. It's a glorified applause meter.
Leave it to Tavis Smiley to turn a Democratic presidential forum into a star-studded episode of "Showtime At The Apollo."
It gives me no pleasure to call Brother Tavis out like this. But giving us a Republican-spun, sound-byte driven game show front-loaded with self-important speeches and explained to us by a pollster who worked for Rudy Guliani's last three campaigns is not a service to black America, or the black consensus. It does not showcase African America's political concerns, it trivializes them. What a letdown.
CBC Monitor senior correspondent Leutisha Stills can be reached at leutishastills1(at)hotmail.com
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