New York's Michael Bloomberg and ABC News have offered to host the first if the (possible) presidential townhalls. Both campaigns responded with a swift smackdown. The McCain camp says, "the town hall meetings will be open to press but not sponsored or moderated by the press.” Ooh. That sends chills up my spine. The Obama camp goes even further: "any additional appearances will be open to all networks for broadcast on TV or internet like the presidential commission debates rather than sponsored by a single network or news organization." It'll be on the YouTube! And won't be moderated by Charlie Gibson! This is possibly the first time in memory that the media's actually suffered for doing a bad job, They pissed off both candidates with their shoddy debate moderation during the primary campaign, and so now they're being shunted aside from the bigger prize: The townhalls in the general. It's sort of beautiful.
