"Hey, something's not right here.... Feels a little creepy... We're not thinking straight... I need sizzle..."
It won't be long before you can look into a tiny YouTube window and see a man or a woman who would be President standing behind a podium looking up at a YouTube Window. What will be along right after that will be a YouTube video of a candidate viewing that YouTube video and so on into the infinite image echo chamber all these personalities are now trapped inside.
In the famous 1984 Apple commercial, a Big Brother image looms over the huddled grey masses until a hammer wielding super hero runs in and smashes the image.
This has since been sent up in a number of ways. The most recent being the video in which Hillary Clinton replaces Big Brother as Big Sister.
But today we see that life trumps satire once again when the rag-tag collection of comb-overs, makeovers, and mascots that constitute the Democrats offerings for President stood on a stage and let the new Big Brother, "You," loom over them and deliver a hodgepodge of questions. It was a moment fraught with irony, satire, and new depths discovered in the abyss of the asinine.
CNN and YouTube (Google) made sure to milk this moment for all it was worth even down to bringing in the now ubiquitous "body language" consultant to read the auguries of how the candidates handled themselves, and remark on the feminization of Hillary. The main message seemed to be that it was "You" -- in control at last through the power of "new" media -- that were at last "making a difference." This is of course utter crap. The dual filters of CNN and YouTube/Google made sure that only a carefully shaped "selection" got through and got played.
For those that actually got their "question videos" ("39 out of 3,000") screened during this daisy chain I'm sure it was a high point of their online lives. For the candidates I'm equally sure it was a low point, to date, of the long and winding and low road to ultimate power.
What amazes me in this endless road show is how much crap a candidate will eat and for how long, but then again I cannot comprehend how the mind of a professional politician actually functions in this environment. In an era that cries out for great men and women to step forward, we seem to field only those made of cardboard; two dimensional souls for a four dimensional world where image is the alpha and omega of all things political.
And over all the image of a hazy projection of various souls bleating out on their pro/am videos the questions that most compel them at this point in this era. The shoddy productions were only outdone by the shoddier concept.
Still there were a few points of light in the entries, but those were the videos made in the sure and certain knowledge that they would never, ever make the CNN airwaves. Case in point, this one (among others) from Stephen Green at Vodkapundit:
As the first dot.com boom became a bomb a handy stock maneuver was the classic "hump-pump-and-dump" in which a brand is hype, hyped higher, and then dumped leaving the suckers to hold the bag. We're seeing the same thing made manifest in dot.bomb 2, AKA "the social web." It would be, in more normal times, just something that could make paupers of suckers at the point of implosion. This time, however, the humper-pumper-dumpers seem to be looking to take down the political system along with them. And they will do it all in the name of "You."
Posted by Vanderleun at July 23, 2007 7:09 PM | TrackBackI can understand this sort of idiocy occurring with the Democratic candidates, but why are the GOP candidates repeating the farce next week?
Posted by: Pappy at July 24, 2007 5:40 PM"It is impossible to speak in such a way that you cannot be misunderstood." -- Karl Popper N.B.: Comments are moderated to combat spam and may not appear immediately. Comments that exceed the obscenity or stupidity limits will be either edited or expunged.