In crafting the concept of extreme debate, we tried to keep two major facts in mind. First of all, people's attention spans are short, though hopefully not too short to prevent them from reading through this whole rant. Secondly, we still wanted debate to be a battle of words. That said, I have no doubt that a random act of violence speaks at least a thousand words. So you're going to have to talk really fast if you want to defeat an opponent who's currently giving you a smackdown with a folding metal chair. Which would be quite the challenge, given the difficulties of talking while, you know, getting smacked by a chair. Actually, this brings a third indisputable fact to mind. Namely, that foreign objects are accepted and expected. Especially if they're affiliated with linguistics. Can you imagine the hitting power of a thesaurus?
So what did we come up with? Well, the first order of business was to come up with a catchy acronym to denote the new extreme sport. After all, nothing says extreme quite like an unnecessary acronym. I think a good one would be WMD -- the World Masters (of) Debate. Sure, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but at least we could use a bunch of George W. Bush's old stump speeches as advertising. And by association, we would prove that we're not unamerican. The format for debate would also have to change. It normally includes teams of two going head to head, but with only one person allowed to speak at once. This clearly has to go. We envision a more tag-team style event, wherein debaters could be tagged in mid-speech if their partner ever gets stumped. Instead of just making mere verbal heckles, you would also be able to throw stuff. Like punches. And the aforementioned foreign objects. Such as foreign language dictionaries. Which would earn you points in the valuable puns category. Garnish all this with some over-the-top trash talk, cliches like this week's quote and some color commentators and serve to what will surely be a most appreciative audience. Of course, the judging categories typically used in debate will have to change. Instead of wussy categories like parliamentary procedure and evidence (my worst nemesis!), the judges could rate you in such areas as Flamboyance, Violence and Accuracy, which would reflect the accuracy of your attacks rather than that of your arguments. Fortunately, debate already employs timekeepers that could be called in to perform the final 3-count.
As you can probably tell, I have lots to say on this topic. Certainly more than I have time to type up here. But before I sign off, I should give credit where it's due. Many of these ideas were raised by some of my debate colleagues, who could also see the merits of this new style of clashing. In addition to thanking all of them, I also want to pass out some words of appreciation to John, who actually came up with this week's quote, and was the main inspiration for this whole extreme idea. He's clearly an amazing athlete!
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