... when they could have chosen the advantage of going second in the closing arguments. It's easy to see why it's good to go second in the closing arguments, but the Biden people ceded that advantage to Trump, because they saw a stronger advantage in appearing on the right side. What's so great about the right side?
I found this answer in the Times of India:
Experts note that viewers are inherently drawn to the right in a two-figure setting, which will likely result in Biden receiving more attention by default, assuming viewers can look past Trump’s potential antics and interruptions.... This phenomenon is often cited as the reason why nearly every late-night TV host, from Jimmy Fallon to Steve Allen, has been positioned to the right of their guests....
In a 2010 article, Slate explained that stage right positioning often conveys a sense of power, a concept rooted in old-school royalty practices. "In the theory of stagecraft, it’s understood that a rightward placement telegraphs royalty," the article noted. "So no matter how famous the guest may be, sitting to the left makes him or her seem subservient."....
From the comments over there: "Who cares in India where Biden sits or stands? Colonial mentality, when will we get rid of this?"
Here's the 2010 Slate article, which also says:
Here's Trump, back in the 80s, displaying his awareness of the power structure in stage placement:In Western culture, we read from left to right, and we watch theater and television that way, too. Our eyes end up on the right side of the screen—where the host sits (also known as stage left). In the theory of stagecraft, it’s understood that a rightward placement telegraphs royalty. So no matter how famous the guest may be, sitting to the left makes him or her seem subservient. Late-night hosts also sit slightly upstage (farther back and slightly elevated) from their guests, which likewise reinforces the notion of a power imbalance....
Biden can’t go second in the closing arguments because that would require him to rebut Trump’s closing argument. That would require him to think on his feet. He would either give some enraged reaction to jabs Trump deliberately seeded in his closing, or he would try to give an ex tempore well reasoned argument and wind up talking about Aunt Wuggathenisla….winning the gold medal in permabiasennn….at Trenzasimmmzzzzz….
With the first closing argument, Biden can just deliver some prepackaged memorized zingers and hope for the best.
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Which side will they be sitting on and what order will they speak when I skip the debate and read the transcripts the next day?
If Biden drifts off or even just zones out during the debate, positioning him where people’s eyes are drawn to him will not be good. They must have a lot of faith in their pharmacist.
King Biden.
Sad that Ann has to go to The Times of India to get the news.
Well, that was fascinating. I can't recall ever knowing anything about Trump but his name before The Apprentice came on (and I never saw the show) - was he a Democrat back when that interview took place? If so, goodness, how the Overton window has shifted. Because he sounded then exactly the way he sounds today.
Biden can’t go second in the closing arguments because that would require him to rebut Trump’s closing argument. That would require him to think on his feet. He would either give some enraged reaction to jabs Trump deliberately seeded in his closing, or he would try to give an ex tempore well reasoned argument and wind up talking about Aunt Wuggathenisla….winning the gold medal in permabiasennn….at Trenzasimmmzzzzz….
With the first closing argument, Biden can just deliver some prepackaged memorized zingers and hope for the best.
JSM
so, a serious question:
as we all heard.. The Mic's will be muted when a person's turn is over..
HOWEVER, The Fine Print says: "the Mic's MAY BE muted when a person's turn is over"
The question is: HOW OFTEN will they allow Biden to talk over Trump?
If they ALWAYS let him do it (while ALWAYS muting Trump), it will be Obvious to ALL.
So, HOW OFTEN will they allow Biden to talk over Trump? I think about every third response.
Of course, this All Depends on how fast they can get responses to resident Biden..
Follow up: Does ANYONE believe that it will be live? as opposed to a 'slight' tape delay?
You can do A LOT with a 'slight' tape delay
Then the question becomes, why would Biden's people want him getting the focus this time around? Do they really want America keeping it's eye on Joe as he stares with eyes bulging from the vita-chemicals flowing through his veins that night, looking like he's ready to gut the guy next to him? Or will Joe slumber off, or get one of those 'freezing' moments he's become so famous for- where he just stops and gets a glazed look...for long periods of time.
So many Joe's could show up that night. I'm not sure the best strategy is to have people staring at him. It'll be like watching a wild intersection in a busy city, knowing an accident is going to happen today, just a matter of when.
Yet another good reason for me to not watch the debates.
Biden is the incumbent president.
There’s a reason he should be the focus of the question presented by the debate: whether Joe Biden should be replaced as president?
They are going to cut-off Trump's mic to the hilt. blame it was technical difficulties.
In the 2020 debate Biden was on the right side of the screen. Maybe it feels lucky to him.
The Times mistakenly calls the position stage right and then later correctly calls it stage left. It kind of makes me think that the whole article is written by someone giggling up their sleeve.
I think john mosby is correct.
The juxtaposed choices were bullshit. The obvious strength of being the last word (assuming Trump is concise enough to avoid getting cut off) makes the choice a no-brainer if Trump won the toss. Either way they could be sure that Biden could give a prepared speech first.
It’s the facts folks and the opening statements presentation of them. First narrator wins the narrative. All this side of the stage is nonsense.
I would guess it has more to do with an eye that won’t focus or a neck muscle that doesn’t respond.
"...Slate explained that stage right positioning often conveys a sense of power, a concept rooted in old-school royalty practices. "In the theory of stagecraft, it’s understood that a rightward placement telegraphs royalty,"
Going for a monarchy over a republic?
Is this lowering expectations or adding to them?
I thought the choice of where Biden would stand might have been because that required the least amount of walking to get to his podium.
In the first Nixon/Kennedy debate, Nixon was on the right side. That didn't do him much good, though. I'm not sure about the ones after that or how who stood where was even decided.
Maybe rather than a coin flip, there should be some kind of physical contest required. Trump and Biden could do a Jack Palance, see who does the most one arm push-ups and the winner gets to pick where to stand and the order of the closing statements. Let's think outside the box people!
Which side of the stage has the sandbag?
Perfect comment from john mosby.
Biden's podium is closer to the bathroom.
Team Biden won the coin flip, but his people made the decision about where he was to sit?
Sounds like standard operating procedure in the Biden Regime.
In Western culture, we read from left to right,
As a consequence a lot of our punctuation marks appear on the right side ad well. If Trump were on the right he would either be a period or exclamation mark. Biden seems more like an ellipsis...
In the interview staging, the interviewer has the power hand, no matter where they sit relative to the interviewee. Tapper and Bash are the interviewers in this case.
traditionalguy said...
It’s the facts folks and the opening statements presentation of them
The agreed format does not include opening statements.
"Kate said...
In the 2020 debate Biden was on the right side of the screen. Maybe it feels lucky to him."
He doesn't remember 2020. These days Biden's life begins every moment.
@john mosby, + 1
Perhaps it’s as easy as to explain as, ‘ he prefers his ear bug in his right ear’.
I think it was a combination.
I think John has a good point.
Also as I look at pictures of Biden his right eye looks a little squinty. He definitely has two sides of his face and they decided to cover both weaknesses.
With no audience and muted mikes are they going to really be doing side by side shots? A talk show is "intimate" so the close shot, with the host higher, further back and in the clip, brightly lit in comparison to Trump's dark suit works. But in a debate, that has interjecting "moderators"....
Biden gives his closing argument and then the microphone malfunctions and they can't get it to work at all for Trump's final words.
Voila! Biden had the final say.
So that means if Biden does something stupid viewers will be drawn to it... and Trump, having the last word, will point it out to the viewers to..
Ok.
What's the betting line for whether Biden will be wearing a diaper?
cfs - exactly.
more happy coincidences for the corrupt left.
That clip of Letterman interviewing a much younger Trump was terrific.
Can we see a clip of a much younger Joe Biden, say as chairman of the Senate Judicial Committee?
Biden will probably have a high-tec ear bud for sure.
I want images of both of Biden's ears. checking Crook Husk-puppet Biden's ears should be a requirement from Trump's team.
I think Trump did an excellent job in his Letterman interviews. Clear,cogent soft spoken responses presented in a humble manner with some self irony where appropriate.
What happened to that Trump? That guy would win in a landlside. Would even get my vote against Biden, and I'm presently never Trump.
Mr. Mosby and Big Mike both have excellent points.
Why do Biden's handlers believe that he will benefit from the spotlight.
I have not seen if the agreement specifies how the camera will be used.
Is the one speaking full screen, or do they do split screen so that both men are visible all the time.
It would be interesting to see Biden's face when Trump is speaking.
How much prednisone is too much prednisone?
So he chose form over substance? Sounds about right…
Seems to me, if I recall correctly, the hildabeast chose the right side of the stage as well.
We're all right-bigots.
I think lefties are Satanic or some damn thing.
Nobody likes lefties except in baseball.
When the right-wing seized the word "right" they grabbed the popular word for the next 1000 years.
Those French leftists are so stupid, they can't even sit in the right place. Losers!
I think the plan is to house arrest Trump and force him to debate via Zoom call.
I've not seen anything about this but I hope Team Trump has its own camera.
Just set it up in the back with a good Mike, turn it on before the candidates enter, off after they leave. Give cnn a grace period of a couple days exclusivity.
Then post the raw video on rumble or truthsocial.com
Keep cnn honest. No stealth edits.
John Henry
Biden would have given his prepared closing speech regardless of the coin flip. Had he chosen to speak last, no one would have noticed or cared that he didn't address Trump's closing points and questions to him. C'mon, he's going to be ignoring Trump's points and questions throughout the whole "debate." No one will care and no one in the MSM will even mention it.
It occurs to me that I haven't heard Biden speak at any length, either in a prepared speech or extemporaneously, in a very long time. I assume this is my own failing - I don't like listening to speeches, and I also avoid the media outlets where Biden would receive the most favorable coverage. For all I know, he actually can pull it together sometimes.
All I've seen or heard for many months is his glitches: the one where he reads the word "pause" off the teleprompter, the one where he tries to sit? during the D-Day ceremony while everyone else remains standing, the one where he freezes while everyone else is dancing for Juneteenth, the one where he wanders off to talk to the parachute handler while everyone else is facing in a completely different direction... I have only been exposed, I have only allowed myself to be exposed, to Biden's most depleted states.
So - can anyone point me to a recent clip, not a transcript but actual audio or preferably video, where he does well? I'd like to see for myself whether he appears capable of carrying off this debate. I'll go looking myself, but - given the ready availability of glitches and the paucity of counterexamples - a Biden sympathizer or someone with a more balanced media diet than mine could save me some time.
Going for a monarchy over a republic?
Or fascist dictatorship
But that is already here.
John Henry
That's an interesting belief that right dominates. I feel like I'm drawn to the left side of the screen. I always figured that's why late night hosts were to the right, because their guests were the focus.
Stage right, a description that is from the debaters' point of view by the way, in a debate hall is seen as left for the audience in the hall, too- not just television. So, is it the case that stage right has long been considered the position of power in debates? Whenever I am asked a question by someone facing me whether something is left or right, I always answer with the questioner's perspective, not mine, unless it is absolutely clear that the question is to be answered from my perspective.
This is my way of answering that I think the entire issue an inside joke of some kind- it is all but certain it makes no difference at all to the people watching who is on their right and left visually- it is far overwhelmed by the men themselves. Like Mosby above, I suspect the real motive was to not have Biden needing to rebut a final argument- there may also be other motives for having Biden on the left side of the stage that are particular to the room itself- like the need to coach visually during the debate.
Remember the 9 second clip where Brandon challenged pedjt to a debate.
In that 9 seconds there were 5 edits Brandon can't even get out a whole sentence, on tape, with unlimited takes.
John Henry
"It occurs to me that I haven't heard Biden speak at any length, either in a prepared speech or extemporaneously, in a very long time. I assume this is my own failing - I don't like listening to speeches, and I also avoid the media outlets where Biden would receive the most favorable coverage. For all I know, he actually can pull it together sometimes."
He still gives longish (30-35) minute speeches with teleprompters at least once a year at the state of the union. However, every non-teleprompter interaction I have seen over the last two years, and I do watch a lot of his interactions with the public and reporters (far more than I do for Trump), it is clear 100% of those are also scripted- Biden literally has cue cards for all of them- he even lets the cat out of the bag most of time without realizing it. I am certain he will have cue cards for the debate since he and his staff will have been given the questions beforehand by CNN.
Wasn't he on the right in 2020? Good luck charm. No malarkey.
where is best target acquisition by sniper through repositioned Overton Window?
Alternate Times of India headline: Sorcery Will Save Us.
I’ll note, perhaps pedantically, that the positioning they’re describing for Biden is not, in fact, “stage right.” It is audience right, which makes it stage left.
I feel like I'm drawn to the left side of the screen.
I remember reading, long ago, that because we read from left to right in in English, it's a frequent trick of horror movie directors to have scary things enter from the right - more unexpected.
“ Stage right, a description that is from the debaters' point of view by the way, in a debate hall is seen as left for the audience in the hall, too- not just television. So, is it the case that stage right has long been considered the position of power in debates? Whenever I am asked a question by someone facing me whether something is left or right, I always answer with the questioner's perspective, not mine, unless it is absolutely clear that the question is to be answered from my perspective.”
The post and the linked article are perfectly clear that we’re talking about the right side of the screen, which is the viewers’ perspective. We’re not talking about stage right.
john mosby said...
Biden can’t go second in the closing arguments because that would require him to rebut Trump’s closing argument. That would require him to think on his feet.
While I think that's true, what no one has commented on is the time factor.
We all agree Joe's going to be on some sort of drug cocktail to keep him going, right?
If he went second, that cocktail would have to last longer. As they have no idea how long it will actually last (and the more they test it on Joe, teh less effective it will be), they're clawing for every second they can save.
Personally, I think having Joe on the right, visible all teh time, would be horrible for them. Is it really going to be split screen the entire debate?
I agree that the choice was driven for the order of speaking. I don't place much stock in the importance of stage positioning, that mostly only matters for the live audience. The network has more than one camera to deploy, so the logic of an advantage of right-hand side placement seems limited to those instances when the camera angle is capturing both at once. Once the candidates start speaking, I think the online camera will be one that is trained on the speaker, with occasional cuts to capture both in order to see reactions.
Wasn't Trump on the left-hand screen for the Hillary debate? Didn't both of them walk around quite a bit? I bet Trump takes the opportunity to walk around and show fitness and agility. Provided they don't cut his microphone off, for walking around.
I understand that Althouse, but there were debates long before television and the article makes it seem like this was a well-known thing before television- that holding the right side of the stage was seen as powerful.
See Apprendi v. New Jersey, 530 U. S. 466, 501 (2000) (THOMAS, J., concurring) (“[A] ‘crime’ includes every fact that is by law a basis for imposing or increasing punishment” (emphasis added)).
That is from Thomas's concurrence yesterday in Erlinger
And is one of the reasons why the Bragg case against Trump is utterly doomed: The judge's jury instructions to the contrary
"Exit, stage left." - Snagglepuss (Which would be the right side of the TV screen.)
First, do Biden's people want everyone concentrating on Joe?
The mumbling, the drooling, the parchment skin?
Second re: Trump and Letterman...it is obvious that Letterman's desk is at least 6 or 8 inches above the floor and he likely has a chair that elevates.
Trump is at least 3 inches taller than Joe.
A salient question is if Biden goes space cadet, staring at the pretty, imaginary stars, will that time be stricken from his allotment or retained?
loudogblog:
"Exit, stage left." - Snagglepuss (Which would be the right side of the TV screen.)
Not always.
That's an interesting belief that right dominates. I feel like I'm drawn to the left side of the screen. I always figured that's why late night hosts were to the right, because their guests were the focus.
Incumbent = host. Challenger = star.
Unless you believe Trump is, in fact, the incumbent.
The first thing that Trump needs to calmly ask is "Who was running the country while you spent the week preparing for the debate"?
He also needs to calmly ask if anyone on the Biden team was given the questions or any hints as to what the questions will be.
Be smart Don! Put them on the defensive so that you don't get stuck on the defensive. It doesn't matter where anyone is standing.
Note that Trump deftly dominated Dave Letterman from the left in that clip.
Right-side so that ear-piece can hide in his left ear, to feed him his words. Hopefully he'll be able to repeat prompted-script without too many pregnant pauses, misspeaks, and malapropisms, or unprompted, wanders off stage-right.
After watching that almost 40 year old interview, Donald Trump is still Donald Trump. The humor and repartee is there. The same message is there.
So what has changed other than the histrionics from the media and the powers that be?
I am not volunteering, but someone could go back as far as Kennedy - Nixon and see what side of the stage produced the most winners.
This is NOT the SOTU speech where Adderall and cue cards will carry this demented (in so many ways) fake president to the finish line. No cue cards as in his other short speeches.
This is not four years ago either. His deterioration since then is very evident. Only a drug cocktail and cue cards can get him through. I cannot wait until Biden thinks he is landing a haymaker comment regarding DJT as "a convicted felon". That will be an hilarious, Bidenshiteinhispants moment.
Good point, Marcus
It took about 15 seconds to find on youtube.
Kennedy on the left side of my screen, nixon on the right, moderator in the center.
But a quick scan all the way through shows that, other than right at the beginning for a minute or less and a 30 second outro, it never showed both at the same time. The camera showed whoever was talking, by themselves.
An exception was a 20 second shot from Nixon's left side across the stage. Nixon was speaking and Kennedy was far in the background.
The other except was a shot across the stage from Kennedy's right rear. about 15 seconds. JFK speaking Nixon in the distance.
Kind of wierd staging.
John Henry
Biden should wear his aviator sunglasses to hide those satanic looking eyes.
I expect there will only be one debate. I expect CNN to play around with that "slight delay", and I expect Trump's campaign to live record what actually occurs, and then play that in commercials, and CNN and Biden to cry foul and refuse to stage another debate.
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