"FLASH: TV RATINGS FOR VP DEBATE DOWN SHARPLY... DEVELOPING... "

Says Drudge, in all caps, which... isn't that yelling? I'm tired of all this yelling!

CBS 10.4 MILLION
ABC 6.9 MILLION
NBC 6.8 MILLION
FOX 5.3 MILLION

*CABLE NUMBERS LATER TODAY...
**69.9 MILLION WATCHED IN 2008...

As I said, I'm tired of the yelling. I found the debate really hard to watch, but I kept watching because I was committed to live-blogging. Even still, I got catatonic. There was a point when I didn't write anything for 20 minutes and then I said:

Biden has been yelling at Martha Raddatz for the last 15 minutes (as the subject is war). It's so inappropriate!

The previous post had been:

The stress level is rising. Biden is so angry. Why is he yelling? Ryan needs nerves of steel not to lose his cool. I'm impressed that Ryan, when he gets his turn, is able to speak in an even, natural voice. It's hard to concentrate on the policy itself, because the emotional static is so strong.

That shows how I felt: pain. So here's my question. Ratings were down, I see, but when were the ratings taken? In the beginning? How did the ratings drop off over the course of the 90 minutes? Who was still around when Biden was yelling at Martha Raddatz for 15 minutes? How did the gender balance change over the course of the evening? I'll bet people — especially women — left in droves and the ratings were overall much worse than those already-low numbers say. And for the people that instinctively — with good human sense — clicked away, what was lodged in their mind was revulsion toward Biden. That's what happened to me. But then I stuck around, enduring the (second hand) brow-beating and bullying.

You know, I have an aversion to politics. If you've been reading this blog for a while, you might remember the old subtitle "Politics and the aversion to politics...." That was absolutely sincere. I am one of the many people — sensible people, many of them women! — who naturally withdraw from the political debate. It's just not worth it. Life is short, and much of it is beautiful and full of love. I want to go somewhere else. But somewhere else for me has been writing — ironically, about politics. That's an odd thing about me, but it puts me in a position where I can see some things that typical political junkies don't see. And I think I speak — in some way — for the people who would not watch that debate, certainly not much more than 20 minutes of it, with Biden's childish, clownish rudeness.