Monday, July 23, 2007

The YouTube Democratic Presidential Debate


I am sitting in a hotel room in St. Louis right now watching the democratic presidential debate on CNN and it is so stupid I can't not blog about it, and I don't even care about politics!

I have four questions:

1. Does anyone really believe a word that these guys utter? How can you when all it consists of is false dichotomies and gross oversimplifications of all the issues? For example, talk about "The American People" - can you really lump us all into one category worth speaking about?

2. Does YouTube rule the world now?

3. Can someone explain to me how this serves any purpose other than a glorified popularity contest?

4. Is John Edwards the presidential version of Joel Osteen? Give this a try: When John E. talks, close your eyes and picture J.O. The similarities are scary.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I don't know man - I was pretty fascinated by the format and thought it was very interesting. (And I HATE politics!! Cant' stand it!) But this seemed to be more real than other debates I've seen, and many critics commented on that. The candidates truly didn't have any preparation time or chance to be coached on the questions - so they were fairly more spontaneous than I've seen before, as critics mentioned also. Sure, there's your normal amount of BS, but that's always going to be there. They're doing a republican debate coming up in Sept. the same way.

And ya - I think it's already been proven that general public generated video, input, experiential, etc. in news and events IS taking over. The first reports from the Virginia Tech shootings came over Face Book. The only actual video captured of the shootings (from outside the building) were captured by a kid on his cell phone. Media and news outlets are trying to figure this all out as viewership goes down, and viewership of youtube and others continues to go through the roof. I'm not for or against . . . just what I've read as what's taking over.