New Crossfire! Yay?!

CNN in revamping Crossfire, a cheesy political debate show that was on from 1984 to 2005. Because it was a show about debating and this is a blog about debating, I think I should probably at least mention that it is starting up again.

So here we are.

The previous one is notorious for sucking. My hero, Jon Stewart, went on the show in 2004 and took on both hosts and devastated them. After his appearance, the show was canceled and it's end is often linked to Jonny Beefstew's destruction of the two hosts.

Here is the clip:

I dislike hosting videos on my blog (and prefer linking to them instead) but this one will be the exception.

Short Review
 
This is a great debate and Stewart does a great job of making Carlson look ridiculous. As in the debate between Louis CK and Bill Donohue, Stewart is lucky in that he is a comedian. His job isn't to present the tough questions and hard hitting news, it's to make people laugh at the fact that there is a town in Iran called Qum, for FSM's sake! The other guy just panders to the liberal audience, really.

But in the interview, Stewart mentioned that the concept of the show was great and needed to be apart of the MSM, but that the way it was functioning at the time, was awful.

Technical: Poor VQ and the AQ is alright. I think the syncing is off, a little.

Now Tucker Carlson and the other guy are gone and a new show is coming back on the 16th of this month. The new hosts will be Newt Gingrich and S. E. Cupp on the right, with Stephanie Cutter and Van Jones representing the left.

The only one I am familiar with is Gingrich and though I dislike the guy, I don't dislike the choice because he was picked to be a representative of the conservative side and in one interview, Hitch claimed that he was taken aback at how formidable Gingrich was as an opponent in a previous debate that had.

S. E. Cupp is original in that she says she is an atheist but apparently holds all the terrible positions the religious right are known for expressing. It's novel, but ultimately uninteresting. But I like the idea that there are women included as hosts. Maybe I will watch this, though I didn't watch the last one and it will mostly be on politics...

The Wikipedia articles mentions some changes that sound like they're at least trying for a more genuine show:
-There will be a "Cease Fire" round that has the two hosts trying to find some common ground at the end of every episode.
-As mentioned earlier, there are two women hosts.
-There is no longer going to be a studio audience because they don't want the folk to just "play to audience".

The latter one makes sense and all, and I complained about this very thing in my review above, but I still think there should probably be a live audience. Maybe because this is cable they're afraid of dealing with the types of audiences that frequent Bill Maher shows or something, so I can see why they'd opt to ditch the live audience.

Maybe I'll check the show out and tell you guys about it.