The daily digest of Twin Cities culture | Secrets of the City

Even as Wall Street continued its end run into a cold nuclear winter's meltdown, leading some former investment bankers to seek comfort in the warm heaving bosom of Craig'sList fueled depravity, our presidential candidates took a break from their vital work distracting their congressional colleagues from hammering out a bailout plan to provide just under 90 minutes of "unscripted" entertainment. Sadly, instead of the amateur porn featuring Cindy McCain and Sarah Palin the public so richly deserves, given the sheer amount of tax dollars Congress is about to hand to the very people who engineered the current crisis, they provided a debate moderated by Jim Lehrer that offered both candidates a pass on the most pressing issue of our day.

Sure the initial plan for the debate was to focus on foreign policy, but when the economy is melting down in ways Britney Spears has only dreamed of and America can't seem to find its own James Spears to reign in our depraved behavior, it would only make sense to shift gears and ground the event in something vaguely resembling reality. Instead, apart from a cursory quiz on whether the candidates will vote for the bailout - not even specifying which of the competing proposals on the table Lehrer was asking about - there was barely a nod toward the crisis our country finds itself in.

It's not as if it's poor fodder for debate either. Since 1995, when regulation of the finance sector ended for all intents and purposes, Wall Street has made unholy amounts of money on more and more complicated and questionable securities. Now that we've reached the tipping point, at which the financial products in question have all the value of Jimmy Kimmel's used boxers, it'd be profoundly refreshing to hear how the candidates, if they had their way, would address the crisis at hand.

Instead, Lehrer showed an almost Winehousian lack of judgement, allowing both candidates off the hook after a suitable amount of waffling and enough posturing to qualify for a Madonna video. Even now, when Congress is set to take a vote on a combined package of buyout installments and optional mortgage insurance that is only the inflamed tip of a new wave of regulations designed to reign in the naturally rapacious instincts of the average capitalist, we've yet to hear much more than hemming, hawing and hand-wringing from the candidates.

Bottom line, it's a sad day in America when more meaningful and substantive debate is available from interstitial bumps during Adult Swim from a pair of anthropomorphized pets than during the first of our presidential debates.