Prime Time? Not the Point
(CBS/YouTube)
Listen, I've said repeatedly here that YouTube is the bull in the political china shop. But let's not oversell this upcoming debate, either. The fact remains that the videos from YouTube will still be vetted by CNN, and … this debate will be little different from a town hall debate held on a college campus – young voters, youth-oriented questions.We continued by saying that while the submissions would be amusing, electic and off-the-wall, it wasn't as if they'd actually end up surfacing in the debate. So today's story on the New York Times political blog didn't exactly strike us as Dog Bites Man:
"Bjorn," an imposing figure in a two-horned Viking helmet and a thick, black beard – the stick-on kind – wonders how the candidates plan to deal with illegal immigration. Someone else has "a very, very serious question" – about aliens: Will the candidates agree to Congressional hearings on the existence of extraterrestrials? There's the chatty Kermit the Frog hand puppet who sends in a message to the candidates from East Lansing, Mich. And, "Jackie and Dunlap," who pose on their own political satire site as a beer-drinking, cigarette-smoking pair, are dying to know what role each of the Democrats would play if they could be on "Law and Order" just like Fred Thompson …We're not sure whether debate organizers will be won over by the creative use of presidential action figures, either.But it was at this point – upon reading the media coverage today – that we began thinking "Maybe the point isn't to 'Be Ready For Prime-Time.'" Maybe it's enough just to be part of the discourse. Kermit or the Viking guy can't (we hope) really expect to pose a question of Joe Biden, but the fact that they are on YouTube being seen and heard by the plugged-in online audience is a small victory unto itself.
While we remain unimpressed by just how innovative the end result will likely be – familiar questions posed by 'safe' participants should rule the day – it's obvious that the YouTube forum is reaching out to an audience that may otherwise have felt less connected to the process. And maybe, just maybe, we'll find out which candidate is willing to expand his or her stance on immigration to its impact on extraterrestrials.