{"id":1198,"date":"2006-12-12T09:25:58","date_gmt":"2006-12-12T17:25:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/?p=1198"},"modified":"2006-12-12T09:25:58","modified_gmt":"2006-12-12T17:25:58","slug":"la-times-does-this-debase-debate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/2006\/12\/12\/la-times-does-this-debase-debate\/","title":{"rendered":"LA Times: Does this debase debate?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/news\/local\/la-me-debate12dec12,0,6392794,print.story?coll=la-home-headlines\"><i>Los Angeles Times<\/i><\/a>:<\/p>\n<p><i><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>IMAGINE a presidential debate in which John McCain answers Hillary Clinton&#8217;s arguments by stripping down to his underwear or breaking into a rap song.<\/p>\n<p>Strange as it might sound, such tactics are gaining cachet \u00e2\u20ac\u201d and victories \u00e2\u20ac\u201d in a top breeding ground for future politicians: America&#8217;s college debate circuit.<\/p>\n<p>In recent years, renegade rhetoricians from Cal State Fullerton and other underdog schools have clobbered debate kingpins from Harvard and UC Berkeley with a hodgepodge of unorthodox methods known as &#8220;performance debating.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Instead of relying on scholarly research to foil opponents, the teams employ guerrilla tactics such as reading from Dr. Seuss, impersonating pirates or ballroom dancing with a chair.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;People call us the terrorists of debate,&#8221; says Fullerton student Brenda Montes.<\/p>\n<p>The goal of performance debate is threefold: Knock rivals off stride, impress judges with creative forms of argument and open the heavily white-male field to new voices.<\/p>\n<p>. . .<\/p>\n<p>When performance teams face each other, things can get pretty weird. Long Beach State once faced two women from Concordia College in Minnesota who stripped down to G-strings and talked about reclaiming their bodies from objectification by men.<\/p>\n<p>The all-male California team couldn&#8217;t get past the distraction. &#8220;Their brains left them,&#8221; said Neesen, their coach.<\/p>\n<p>Another contest pitted a Fort Hays student dancing with a chair against a Northwestern team reading the script of &#8220;Dr. Strangelove.&#8221; The topic was federal control of Native American land.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It was a wild debate,&#8221; Shanahan said. &#8220;Strangelove&#8221; prevailed.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Los Angeles Times: IMAGINE a presidential debate in which John McCain answers Hillary Clinton&#8217;s arguments by stripping down to his underwear or breaking into a rap song. Strange as it might sound, such tactics are gaining cachet \u00e2\u20ac\u201d and victories \u00e2\u20ac\u201d in a top breeding ground for future politicians: America&#8217;s college debate circuit. In recent years, renegade rhetoricians from Cal State Fullerton and other underdog schools have clobbered debate kingpins from Harvard and UC Berkeley with a hodgepodge of unorthodox&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"aside","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[50,115],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1198","post","type-post","status-publish","format-aside","hentry","category-domestic-affairs","category-los-angeles","post_format-post-format-aside"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4uks-jk","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1198","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1198"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1198\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1198"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1198"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1198"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}