The famous question seventeen-year old Laetitia Thompson offered Bill Clinton on the Washington D.C. set of MTV’s Rock the Vote during the 1992 presidential campaign should never have been answered. She asked, “All the world’s dying to know — boxers or briefs?”

I doubt the world was really dying to know. The question was chosen to titillate and to draw attention to Ms. Thompson. We weren’t aware at the time how obsessed Clinton was with what goes on below his belt so instead of ignoring her with a polite “Thank you, next question,” he gave the moment traction and answered, “usually briefs.”

Thus the trivialization of the process began, demeaning the presidency to a degree Bill himself exceeded with Monica Lewinsky. If Monica ever runs for office might we expect an MTVer to ask, “All the world’s dying to know — circumcised or not circumcised?

But Thompson’s question got press attention and helped establish a new paradigm — presidential candidates are folks just like us. And what better “just like us” vehicle for this year’s excruciatingly long presidential excesses than the ubiquitous YouTube, which is comprised of just-like-ussers.

I don’t see how much lower the political process can get than the spectacle of Democrats and Republicans being subjected to the allegedly random questions of the ultimate just-like-ussers — YouTubers. As a forum for political debate, YouTube is farcical, even more immature than the Rock The Vote session, which at least didn’t have a snowman asking a question. Democrats were subjected, though, to the mandatory Oprah touchy-feely question, “Look to your left and say something you like about the candidate and something you dislike.”

Before the Democrat debate, CNN showed rejected questions: one questioner was in a chicken costume, another in a Viking outfit and a five year old asked about social security. The most viewed questions was whether Arnold Schwarzenegger was a cyborg sent to save the planet Earth, while the runner up was “Will you convene a national meeting on UFO’s?”

Does CNN think these people have a real interest in the political process other than to leech out their three minutes of notoriety? Cheap, coarse and degrading doesn’t begin to describe this catastrophe from a so-called news organization.

The Republican YouTube debate began with a guitar-picking yahoo singing a song about the candidates. One wished Harry Truman or Dwight Eisenhower were on stage so they could just walk off the stage. Hell, I wish Ross Perot was up there. He’s the only recent candidate I can think of who might have told CNN to stick it.

But, no! Candidates resist the media beast at their own risk. We are in the age of media scrutiny and it holds candidates and The People hostage to their intrusive, incessant coverage of every nook and cranny, dust bunny, crumb and tidbit about candidates to create a story that will give them ratings or push their agendas.

And agendas are pushed. The questions chosen by CNN were dripping with anti-Republican drool. A question about the Confederate Flag, for example. If that’s an issue, why isn’t it one for the Democrat candidates? Farm subsidies — as significant an issue today as Quemoy and Matsu were in 1960 when JFK brought it up.

Some of the questions were trip-wired to explode if not answered very carefully: “On the death penalty, what would Jesus do?” or “Do you believe in every word of the Holy Bible?” Democrats weren’t asked such questions because religion and Jesus are as far removed from their lives as 50 Cent is to Enrico Caruso.

Then a retired general, self-outed as gay, decried the “Don’t ask don’t tell” policy. Excuse me! Bill Clinton came up with this policy, but so what! Any question designed to make Republicans seem anti-gay is fair game. And then it turned out that the general, Keith Kerr, was in the audience and was a CNN plant.

Folks, the enemy is not Iraq or Iran, not liberals or conservatives, Democrats or Republicans — it is the liberal media. They frame how issues are presented and coarsen the process in the service of filling the endless hours of face time they have at their disposal. Fox News, the Great “Right” Hope of newsdom, is often indicted as cherry picking facts, but not a critical word is heard about the cherry picking of the media on the left. It is why talk radio is so popular. It is the corrective to the mainstream media outlets like CNN. That it is primarily conservative only means that much of the country is conservative.

And conservatives or Republicans, for all their faults, are not inclined to ask “Boxers or briefs” of anyone who wants to be our president. I’d like to think we’re better than that.