Radar media critic Charles Kaiser on "don't ask, don't tell," and the Republicans' dodgy debate

ASKING AND TELLING Keith Kerr

Last week, Keith Kerr, a retired brigadier general with 42 years of service (who also happens to be gay), asked a perfectly reasonable question at the Republicans' YouTube debate: "I want to know why you think that American men and women in uniform are not professional enough to serve with gays and lesbians?"

Mitt Romney, the man who's never met a conviction he couldn't jettison to pander to right-wing Republican primary voters, said he no longer looked forward to a time when gays and lesbians could serve "openly and honestly" as he did in 1994, because now "we're in the middle of a war." California congressman Duncan Hunter said this isn't like Britain or Israel—where gays have served openly for years without causing a problem—this is America, where most soldiers are "conservatives with Judeo-Christian values" who shouldn't be forced to work in a "small, tight unit" (indeed!) because it would go against their "principles" (of bigotry).

Mike Huckabee fell back on the old "unit cohesion" bugaboo, and John McCain said he was certain that the "present policy is working" and "we have the best military in history"—so why would you want to screw that up with a lot of gay people serving openly and honestly? Needless to say, as General Kerr himself pointed out, none of the candidates had actually answered his question. Nevertheless, when the debate was over, Bill Bennett, that great expert on journalistic ethics, seized the moment to point out that the general was part of Hillary Clinton's gay advisory board—and therefore his question was completely out of order. You remember Bill Bennett—that paragon of virtue whose gambling addiction has cost him somewhere between $500,000 and $8 million, but who, naturally, remains a highly sought-after conservative commentator on important cable networks everywhere.

Bennett's gambit led to several idiotic decisions. First, CNN decided it was so terrible to have allowed a Clinton supporter to ask a question that, when the debate was rebroadcast, the whole exchange was expunged—without any notice to the viewers. Then, New York Times television writer Jacques Steinberg devoted a whole piece to this appalling breach of journalistic ethics (the question-asking, not its expunging—Steinberg missed the censorship part) and Jon Klein, the president of CNN's domestic networks, promised to redouble his network's efforts to vet the campaign affiliations of questioners at open-forum debates.

The lone island of sanity in this sea of stupidity was provided by the estimable Peter Baker, a White House correspondent for the Washington Post. Writing in a Post blog, The Trail, Baker managed to ask the only questions that actually mattered: "Why should candidates be shielded from being asked questions by people who don't necessarily agree with them? Isn't that what a 'town hall' is supposed to be all about? Shouldn't a future president be tough enough to face dissent? Won't a future president be president of all the people? In the old days, when candidates had real town halls that weren't moderated by television stars, real voters could show up and ask questions even of candidates they didn't support. Somehow the assumption now seems to be that Republicans should only face questions from Republicans and, presumably then, Democrats should only face questions from Democrats. But at the CNN/YouTube debate featuring Democrats earlier this year, there were questions from obviously conservative voters—one from a gun rights advocate comes to mind—and why should they not have to explain to a gun owner why they support restrictions on their ownership?" Bravo, Peter.

The same day as Steinberg's piece, the Times ran another article, which revealed that 28 retired generals and admirals had signed a letter urging Congress to repeal the "don't ask, don't tell" policy. The retired officers estimated that 65,000 gays and lesbians are currently serving in the military, and there are approximately one million gay veterans.