We still have some post-debate steam left in us, particularly with respect to post-debate programming. Did anyone else almost fall off their chair hearing CNN's resident energizer bunny Rick Sanchez welcoming viewers to a post-debate post-mortem show featuring so-called regular people, called "You Say WHAT?" Yes! Just like that! But it wasn't only the title of the show, which seemed tantamount to "What'choo talkin' bout, Willis?" — it was also Sanchez, the wildly mugging, broadly gesticulating Sanchez, who, viewed with the volume off, could certainly been confused with someone vigorously and enthusiastically rendering the discussion in sign language. With the volume on, however, it was possible to hear Sanchez interacting with his group of regular-people voters from across the spectrum (the liberal lawyer from New York, the Republican Vietnam vet who wanted the troops 'freed up to do their job already,' the Arab guy who was shushed almost immediately after straying into the Arab-Israeli conflict) — and by "interacting" we mean "interrupting as soon as they had a thought halfway out their mouths," often with an urgent flail of the arms and brilliant flash of the teeth. In an additional bout of weirdness, Sanchez read the voice-over to the news-flashes that bookended each segment between commercials, but the modulation of his tone never changed, despite the relative somberness of the news he was relating (alas, my DVR kept me from rewinding and the transcripts page is letting me down, but trust me, it was like Guy Smiley reading the obits).
For a sense of Sanchez's antic body language, see below for a representative sampling — it shows a rate of one larger-than-life hand gesture every 1.2 seconds or so. About right.
NB. Taken in conjunction with "The Newtster" we wonder if "You Say What?" represents a new, hipper-according-to-the-definition-of-someone-who-is-not-hip direction for CNN. Developing...