The ABC News-moderated debate between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, April 16, has been universally panned. Most commentators have pointed to ABC's highlighting of gaffes, scandal, and personality in the effort to get the candidates to snipe at each other rather than talk about issues that people care about. Especially disturbing about ABC's farce was the racist character of the questions George Stephanopoulos and Charlie Gibson chose to put forward.

For example, one question directed at Barack Obama accusingly asked about his decision to express patriotism in ways other than wearing a US flag pin. Gibson worked hard to turn the question into a real issue. "It comes up again and again when we talk to voters," he insisted.

Obama responded, "I have never said that I don't wear flag pins or refuse to wear flag pins. This is the kind of manufactured issue that our politics has become obsessed with and, once again, distracts us from what should be my job when I'm commander in chief, which is going to be figuring out how we get our troops out of Iraq and how we actually make our economy better for the American people."

In perhaps the most embarrassing performance by the media in a major presidential debate in years, ABC News hosts Charles Gibson and George Stephanopolous focused mainly on trivial issues as Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama faced off in Philadelphia.

Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the health care and mortgage crises, the overall state of the economy and dozens of other pressing issues had to wait for their few moments in the sun as Obama was pressed to explain his recent "bitter" gaffe and relationship with Rev. Wright (seemingly a dead issue) and not wearing a flag pin while Clinton had to answer again for her Bosnia trip exaggerations.

Then it was back to Obama to defend his slim association with a former '60s radical -- a question that came out of rightwing talk radio and Sean Hannity on TV, but delivered by former Bill Clinton aide Stephanopolous. This approach led to a claim that Clinton's husband pardoned two other '60s radicals. And so on.

Walter Shapiro, the former USA Today political writer, declared in Salon, "Broadcast to a prime-time network audience on ABC and devoid of a single policy question during its opening 50 minutes, the debate easily could have convinced the uninitiated that American politics has all the substance of a Beavis and Butt-Head marathon."