Penn State does a great job of scheduling entertainment for the community. Next week we will be treated to a "Healthcare Debate" between Howard Dean and Karl Rove.

No subject is more in need of serious discussion, but I wonder if a mano-a-mano smackdown between two partisans is really what we need to get to the bottom of healthcare reform.

Media debates in American popular culture have become a kind of Kabuki theater between the "left" and the "right." Next Tuesday, we will see a complex set of issues divided accordingly.

Dean will push the public option to hold health insurance monopolies accountable, and Karl Rove will recite free-market pabulum and frighten the audience with warnings about "Big Government" and "socialism."

The audience will be titillated, but in the end, we will have learned nothing that we couldn't have learned just by turning on the TV.

Here at Penn State, we have experts in public policy, medicine, systems management, medical ethics, business and many other matters that should be included in a serious discussion of health care.

Instead of a debate that might help us understand, we get talking points, buzz and entertainment. And it hurts.

Matt Jordan

assistant professor, media studies