A few excepts from the 19,000+ comments on abcnews.com

“Absolutely disgusting. I realize that journalism is dead but Gibson and Stephanopoulos dragged the body out and kicked it some more. You have done a tragic disservice to our nation.” 

“It’s refreshing to see that my impression of the debate was shared by so many others. A full 45 minutes of trivial stuff that was simply gotcha “journalism” - asking inane and stupid questions while our economy is going down the tubes, gas is over $3.00 a gallon, we have lost over 4,000 brave servicemen and women in Iraq, and we have a health care crisis. And yet the priority items were ways to try to catch the candidates looking foolish. We are trying to elect a president, not play “gotcha”! This debate was a pitiful waste of time when it could have been an exercise in educating the American electorate about each candidate’s positions on important issues of the day. Barack Obama tried to make the point that this kind of “debate” is what makes people so cynical about politics. As someone else said, ABC and Fox “News” deserve each other. I guess I’ll stick to the likes of PBS and other reputable news organizations. Shame on you, Charles Gibson and George Stephanopolous! You behaved like entertainers, not journalists! I would have expected better of you.”

“This undoubtably was the worst excuse for a debate that I’ve ever seen. I’m not interested in Charles or Georges personal opinions which permeated the entire 90 minutes. What I’m interested in is the policy positions of the candidates. This was totally ignored in the first hour. Shame on Charles, George, and ABC.”

Update 4-21-08: Many sites are know calling for a boycott of the ABC network and its advertisers. It is intended to send a clear message to all the networks that they lease the public airwaves from the citizens of this nation. It is not acceptable to turn our democratic process into a sensational reality tv debate.