Candidates Unplugged

[MrSoundAndVision]

The following is on http://www.tompaine.com/:

Micah L. Sifry is a senior analyst with Public Campaign. Most recently, he co-edited The Iraq War Reader: History, Documents, Opinions (Touchstone, 2003). The views expressed here are his alone.

I knew last night’s CNN/Rock the Vote forum for young voters and the Democratic presidential candidates was going to be bizarre as soon as I saw the “Condom-Sense Party” candidate outside Faneuil Hall during the pre-debate scrum. Wearing a boot on his head and holding a six-foot-high phallus covered in pink, white and blue plastic, he asked placard-waving supporters of Howard Dean and John Kerry, “Does your candidate measure up?” Mocking the sloganeering of all the candidates, he promised to “make a real vas deferens” if elected.

Satire seems the only rational response to the spectacle put on by the real candidates, the debate sponsors and the media herd. Historic Faneuil Hall, known as the Cradle of American Liberty for its use by patriotic rebels during the revolutionary period, felt more like the Crib of American Marketing, as CNN flacked the event all day with promos selling the prematurely gray-haired Anderson Cooper to younger viewers supposedly bored with hard news, and old-fashioned wooden signs and exposed brick were enlisted to lend authenticity to old-fashioned wooden politicians and their exposed banalities.

Once the forum began, it was unpredictable and uncensored, though not unscripted, despite CNN’s ballyhooing. (Reporters in the filing center, which was located—I kid you not—in the “Comedy Connection” across from the hall in Quincy Market, were given a list of the kids Cooper was going to call on, in order, along with their mini-bios.) And, just as a pre-teen reporter once exposed Dan Quayle as a blithering idiot when she asked him if he would force her to carry a baby to term if she was raped, the Democratic candidates unwittingly demonstrated how far out of touch they were with America’s youth.

EDITED BY ADMIN: COPYRIGHT

[UpInArms]

1. this reminds me

of a media campaign that concentrates on clothing -

what was that .....

oh yeah, the Al Gore changes wardrobes - wearing brown and green ---

this is just a pile of steaming dogshit

[DeepModem Mom]

2. My daughter was at Rock the Vote, and disagrees....

She volunteers for a candidate, and pays attention to the campaign. She thought the debate pretty good, a lot better than previous ones, because of Anderson Cooper as a moderator, and better questions coming from the kids than from tv journalists. She thought most of the questions were straightforward and not confrontational, and that Anderson's low-key moderating (contrast Judy Woodruff) was in sync with kids her age. She says they don't like confrontational. They want to ask a straightforward question, get a straightforward answer, and make up their own minds. (They get most of their info from the net, on their own terms, with less media "filter" than tv, or even newspapers -- as when Al Gore was on his way to concede after watching CNN, and some kid with a blackberry got raw results from Florida, and said, Wait a minute.)

She didn't much care what the candidates wore. She thought Dean looked great, and natural, in his prepster button-down-shirt; she thought few men could carry off the all-black look, but Clark did; she thought Edwards connected because he was the only one on the stage who still looks young! She thought most of the 30-second spots were old peoples' idea of what kids would like, trying to look like MTV videos. She did like Clark's -- unlike the writer of the article above, she thought the joke was that, of course, Clark is her dad's age, and probably doesn't know the first thing about Outkast; he was poking fun at himself, and the kids were in on it.

She thinks kids her age are very skeptical about advertising, a lot of things about consumer culture, and attempts to sell them anything. But the kids I've observed up close, through her, aren't as cynical as the writer of the article. They want to believe in something, and that's why everyone my daughter met at Rock the Vote, loudly supporting different candidates, was there.

[Eloriel]

3. FYI -- and your daughter's, Dean's 30-sec was put together

BY his young supporters.

Eloriel

[DeepModem Mom]

4. Thank you, Eloriel...

I meant no offense to Dean, about whom I've written favorably on this board many times. I think I've written my last word here, however, about any of the candidates. It brings nothing but grief....