"I will bet you that no one has bombed harder than me."

For reference, here's the famously terrible intro routine from the 1989 Oscars:

Truest oxymoron of the day: "Aggravating Snoozefest"... "CNN Turns Debate Into Aggravating Snoozefest."

I'm checking the headlines at Real Clear Politics:



That last headline goes to a "no longer available" dead end at The Washington Times, but I've got to admit that I was aggravated and I also snoozed.

I googled my way to what I assume is the article: "CNN turns GOP debate into aggravating, irrelevant snoozefest — as planned." Oh! As planned.

By keeping the stage crammed with a couple of actual front-runners and cluttered with has-been also-rans like Ohio Gov. John Kasich, debate moderators are managing to do what once seemed impossible: Boring voters even though real estate mogul Donald Trump is still on the debate stage. They will stop at nothing to water down the goliath front-runner for the GOP nomination....

Instead of a substantive debates with actual front-runners, we get these shoutfests with nine people, each one wasting their microphone time to complain about getting short-shrift or barking at one another over irrelevant details....

It doesn’t help that just about every question begins with, “Donald Trump said …”

It is like some kind of therapy session for a group of people suffering from Donald Trump Derangement Syndrome. It got so bad Tuesday night that Mr. Trump himself finally called out moderators for making him a star of even the undercard GOP debate — that he wasn’t even in!

“It was Trump this, Trump that,” Mr. Trump said, rolling his eyes. “I think it was very unprofessional.”

Adding to the bizarreness was some person off camera who kept coughing and sniffling into a microphone. Was that one of the candidates? One of the moderators? Or was it some kind of special effect that was piped in from the outside? Message: GOP has sniffling, coughing fits.

ADDED: The question of who was coughing consumed social media.

Has no one at #CNN production heard of a cough button? Good Lord! It sounds like someone's dying up there. #republicandebate

— Rob Lowe (@RobLowe) December 16, 2015

Suspicions converged on Ben Carson:

If it is, you'd think he'd take lozenge. Man's an MD!! https://t.co/pUrBQoDlEe

— Rob Lowe (@RobLowe) December 16, 2015