The touted ‘people’s debate’
Just about every time I turned on CNN over the weekend – all weekend long – and through Monday morning, they were wallpapered with their YouTube debate promotion. I don’t know, this overkill across the programming clock seems to me like maybe they’re worried, so they have to ‘sell’ the public on the merits of the thing. Being the free-for-all that YouTube is, that’s understandable.
Yes, this is still the YouTube you know and love: The guys from redstateupdate.com want the male Democratic candidates to take off their shirts for an abs contest.
The odds are CNN will not choose that video to air at tonight’s first-of-its-kind U.S. presidential debate in which candidates will answer questions submitted by YouTube users on video. But along with the wackiness, YouTube users are showing their serious side for a chance to have a voice in the presidential race…
More than 2,000 video questions have been submitted, representing a cross-section of issues and coming from as far away as Spain, Panama and Chad…
Some are wacky, some are rants, but most are from people asking real-life questions. Among them: a question on the crisis in Darfur, filmed from inside refugee camps, and one about health insurance, delivered by a woman with breast cancer.
But…
Then there is the seven-second snippet of a black cat with a caption asking: “How can you protect my food in the future?”
Cat owner Brandon Mendolson, a 24-year-old grad student in New York, said he is concerned for his six cats, including Molly, who appears in the video, after the recent recall of contaminated pet food. He doesn’t even plan to watch the debate but hopes that enough people will find his video on YouTube and e-mail their representatives about the issue.
And that’s only one of the wacky ones. They abound.
I’m wondering….any questions about abortion and, say…informed consent laws that protect women, perhaps? Because this is the opportunity for the really informed people to ask the right and tough questions that reporters most often don’t ask.
But…these 2,000-plus video submissions are being screened by CNN. So what we see in the two-hour ‘debate’ will be the product of their collective – and selective - reasoning about what is most important to ask a presidential candidate.
CNN interviewed a teenager on the morning news who will be voting for the first time in the upcoming election, and his most pressing question is ‘Among all the other candidates up there on stage with you, what qualifies you to win?’
I would rather hear what qualifies them to lead.
There’s a circus-like atmosphere around this event, some are making the most of it, others at CNN are trying to ground its setting in smart politics. Not the YouTube setting…..the other setting.
South Carolina primaries are all about the base. That’s true for both parties…
For Democrats, it means African-Americans, who make up about half of the voters in the South Carolina Democratic primary. The main reason the Democratic Party is allowing South Carolina to hold an early primary is to give African-American voters a bigger voice.
Wait….isn’t this really being ‘held’ in cyberspace? How are the African-American voters of South Carolina going to be heard?
Last night, CNN’s John Roberts finished off his coverage previewing the YouTube debate by telling viewers: “We’ll be watching, and we hope that you will, too.”
Oh, we will.