Candidate debates can be like the Twilight Zone

In my continuing effort to be informative to my readers, I watched another couple of presidential candidate debates. Well, OK, I watched them somewhat, maybe a little, possibly just a tad, all right already, between commercials. It still counts!

As I’ve said before, you can take away a lot of information from these formats. Honest discussions about honest issues are something that allows you to make informed decisions that will affect the future of all Americans. I actually got this off the back of a cereal box.

After listening to the candidates for a few minutes though, the one question I came away with during these debates was, “Is there life on other planets and have they already arrived on Earth?”

Still, I listened some more about views on their economic policies. It seemed confusing, but I might have been sitting on the mute button, since I didn’t hear anything. And the candidates were acting like they yelled dibs on the Family Feud. The moderators weren’t much help either; their accusatory tone, according to one reporter, being one of some old geezer yelling, “Get off my lawn!” No offense, Bernie.

So my follow-up question quite naturally was, “Is it too late to book into the Mars Hilton for the holidays?” And I’ll need that answer in the form of a question. Seriously, was this a debate or Jeopardy?

There were only two candidates during the opposing party’s previous debate a few weeks ago, either that or I watched an old episode of a documentary on Woodstock by mistake or it was a pilot for a new episode of Back to the Future. At least that’s what showed up on the screen.

I can remember we had a debate team in high school. I know this because under a couple of kids’ yearbook photos, it said, “Debate Team.” Usually this was the only thing printed under a picture of a boy with black-rimmed glasses and a plastic pen holder in his shirt pocket.

Occasionally there was something else frivolous listed like, “Science club, math club, calculus club, honor society.”

No one knew who these kids were or what happened to them. All right, some of them went on to win prizes like the Nobel or Pulitzer, but I think splitting the atom and authoring books on neogenetics at age 5 is overrated. No, these kids I can remember wore ties and jackets and carried briefcases. I think some of them were on the cover of Time Magazine. But like I said, we never actually spent any time with them.

Of course, most of us were busy with other academic projects of our own like making Homecoming floats out of Kleenex and paper towels. This is not as easy as it sounds. There was a lot of debate about how to twist and stuff it into a wire mesh to make the shape of life-sized people.

Those historic models were either JFK or Jackie. It was important that they didn’t turn out to resemble J. Edgar Hoover or the school janitor, which often happened because of all the fooling around and the spiked punch. Forget balancing the budget, try doing that!

And then there were a lot of discussions on how to get the kid that got stuck under the float out from the wheel shaft as he was being dragged a couple of blocks.

Finally, let’s get to the elephant in the room, the moderators of the debates. A lot of viewers were disgusted with their below-the-belt questions. But to me they were actual proof that there is alien life in the galaxy.

You’ve known these people all your life. They are the Eddie Haskells of “Leave it to Beaver.“ You heard them before, “I love that dress, Mrs. Cleaver.” They’re here!