How not to use reason and still win a discussion?

Sitting in front of the TV, my usual evening pleasure, my thoughts sometimes fly out all over, like well-documented streams of conscious novels.

One day, I had one of the news channels on and heard a discussion, or what purported to be a discussion—it was something one would associate with a squabble in a fish market, rather than a rational discussion amongst ‘educated’ and well-paid experts. The quality of debate, the tone, the demeanor, and the general language reminded one of the school yard.

My daddy can whip your daddy.
No he can’t, ‘cause my daddy is the strongest person in the world.
No he ain’t.
Yes, he is too.

Although these words may have not been used, yet the logical development of each person’s argument was as puerile, emotive, and substantive as third graders trying to prove their point. The argument was all about out-shouting the other person. I left the TV on, while my thoughts flew back to my childhood. I had grown up in a very Victorian household; it was a highly structured and disciplined one. Each evening, after supper was over and the dishes cleared from the table, my father would generally start a discussion between us five siblings—actually, there were six of us, but my youngest brother was years younger than the rest of us—the discussions would run the gamut of topics. From international affairs; some poet or his or her work, eastern or western, it did not matter, something. We had to have a discussion; it was something we were all into. My father had one rule for the debates or discussions: Raise your voice; lose the argument.

Today, as I watch TV talk shows—I rarely do nowadays, because the hollering, and screaming, particularly on FOX is a sure formula for a headache—I ask myself, is it me, or has the world suddenly become wacky? What happened to rational discussions? What happened to facts and logic? By the amount of shows, and many people on the panels, there appear to be experts galore; however, the few times I have surfed between these talk shows, all I got were panels that were loud, crass, and totally illogical. In almost all cases, it was about ad hominem, rather than attacking the problem. Yet all of these opinion-spouters are apparently highly educated. I mean, am I missing something here?

Why can’t educated and rational adults have a well-thought discussion and then leave it to their target audience to decide? Isn’t the job of the panel to inform the audience? After hearing all of the hot blown up on most of these shows, ask yourselves, how informed were you about the subject before and after you hear each speaker blow his or her particular trumpet?

If you have not been edified, I have a suggestion to make. Simply stated, let us all unite and insist that all TV panels must have a judge presiding over all discussions. Thus, if anyone deliberately defames, vilifies, or slander, anyone on the panel or amongst the audience, the judge could hit him with fifteen days in the cooler. This will ensure that the panelists do their homework, rather than hollering and screaming, but then they will become, The Bill Maher Show, and we can’t have that, can we?????? We need to have the O’ Reillys, the Limbaughs, and other of their ilk, after all—that is entertainment, right!!!!

Riaz Sahibzada