As TechPresident's Joshua Levy pointed out yesterday, this next video is so meta, it hurts. And I love it.
I'm telling you, man. It's all about user-generated content. I mean, name the last memorable online political video or advertisement you saw that was paid for or developed by a campaign itself? The Mike Huckabee/Chuck Norris video comes to mind, I guess, but that was memorable precisely because it played upon the DIY/meme culture inherent to the Internet. Other than that, though, nothing comes to mind.
Certainly, people have tried. You might've seen "Hillary and the Band", Hillary Clinton's grab at the youth vote from a few weeks ago. It has all the hallmarks of what the kids like, right? Ironic Photoshopping! Rock and Roll! The Blogs! Right. It's about as inspiring and/or entertaining as it sounds. Witness:
Clearly, strategists and campaigns have witnessed the power of the Internet as a content delivery system. Why they haven't been able to replicate the success found by other, independent sources is a question whose answer is going to make someone very rich someday. My guess? It all goes back to authenticity. Commercialization be damned, the Internet is still a populist place. Netizens (*cringe*) have finely tuned bullshit meters, and can sniff out pandering from miles away. Huckabee's video worked because his campaign demonstrated familiarity with this fact and decided to play along. Clinton's video failed because hers didn't.
[Steve Novick] is a progressive Democrat running for US Senate in Oregon with a very grassroots campaign. This generated 28,000 hits in 24 hours, all from blog posts and people sending it virally. Now it's at the top of YouTube's political page for the day.
I think this is a great model for grassroots campaigns, activists, etc. to get the news out there. Because of this video post and its views, many mainstream media outlets have taken notice and written articles about this. People are buzzing about it around the country. It's amazing how a little Internet coordination in Portland, Oregon can make ripples around the country. Ah...my geekish heart just skipped a beat.
I touched on net neutrality and its growing impact on the campaign landscape a couple of posts back, but I would be remiss if I didn't share this video. Apparently, it's been around for a while, and I'm not sure how it took me 18 months to see it, but that's how it goes. If this is old or uninformative to you, I apologize. However, if I know my audience (and I think I do), then the cameos alone will be worth your price of admission.
Interested? Let Leslie Hall of GemSweater.com tell you more.
Now there are two causes I can support: keeping the internet free, and lovingly chronicling some awful fucking sweaters. Head to their website, linked above, to learn how you can get involved.
And, just for fun, here's a less political recap featuring a few other net residents.
A quick programming update before I hop the next train back to Washington. Wednesday night, after the no doubt farcical exchanges of the Republican YouTube debates, CNN will actually air a program I'm interested in for once. Entitled "Campaign Killers", the show is a part of CNN's Broken Government series. This particular episode deals with negative campaigning and its effect on the American political process. While I'm not exactly sure what bases they'll cover over the course of an hour, a press release from earlier this month promises some interesting coverage:
The documentary examines political mudslinging, the history of negative advertisements and the role of the Internet as a viral weapon in politics today.
Nice to hear the Internet mentioned in the same breath with important political discourse that doesn't primarily involve fundraising. One of the most interesting media developments in the last couple of election cycles has been the ease with which individual citizen can personally affect a candidate's campaign. Before this, voicing your opinion required organization; even as late as the 2004 presidential election, the major sources of ads and media, outside of the campaigns themselves, were PACs and other interest groups. Now, anyone who has access to a camera and an opinion can, with a little talent, a few well-placed connections, and some luck, produce a video that can garner national attention over night. While this kind of impact seems like a logical step towards greater political freedom, it remains to be seen how the candidates and their campaigns can exploit this new communication tool.
Sadly, the good old days.
One obvious double-edged sword in all of this is the potential for responsibility-free negative campaigning. Traditionally, campaign ads have an easily-traceable origin point. While people can debate the intentions and validity of groups like the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, they remain an identifiable group. Placing the advertising online at sites like YouTube makes that kind of background check almost impossible. Candidates could, conceivably, run a proxy smear campaign online with much less chance of immediate repercussions than they could using the Internet's broadcast-style predecessors. Though the people have more power, they also have a higher chance of attracting focused manipulation on the part of the candidates.
How do we deal with this?
Or this?
The political world has a lot of catching up to do when it comes to internet campaigning. At worst, the focus on user-generated campaign materials signals a potential excuse for laziness on the part of the political strategists. After all, why would they spend valuable campaign dollars on internet marketing when we have supporters who will do a decent job for free? However, that kind of attitude risks ignoring the innovations possible when investment dollars and talented minds collide. So far, this election has shown that the internet isn't going away. Whether or not a candidate can exploit the true potential of internet organizing and advertising in the next 12 months, however, remains to be seen.
That said, have a personal question about negative campaigning: why are the Democrats so bad at it, especially in the general election? My friend Lisa and I talked about this last week, and we couldn't figure it out. During the primaries, the knives come out, and the vitriol spews. Just ask Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and John Edwards. Once the nomination is sewn up, though, a strange thing happens: everyone becomes nice. All of the anger and frustration that the candidates aimed at each other disappears once the real opponent enters the room. What's the deal? Is it a moral highroad issue? Are Republicans just meaner? What's behind the Democrats' lack of teeth when it comes to advertising?
One thing that I've been really rotten about when it comes to this whole blog assignment is actually keeping up with the mandatory postings. For instance, did you all know that I've been charged with weekly book reviews? No hands? I'm not surprised. Well, in the interests of catching up, here's the first of four belated book reviews.
Today's book is Seth Godin's much-lauded Unleashing the Ideavirus. When I first started reading this examination of the new start of marketing in the 21st century, I was expecting something akin to the starry-eyed proclamations usually reserved for something Scott McCloud dreamed up after reading old Katzenjammer Kids strips backwards while double-fisting purple drank. That is, something revolutionary in its unreality. However, Godin's ideas remain firmly grounded in the implementable, and, though sometimes colored by a little irrational exhuberance, remain solid strategies for marketing in a new landscape.
One of the ideas that really struck a chord with me was Godin's thoughts on access in relation to products and ideas. He notes early on that "one of the dumbest things marketers do is put artificial barriers in the way of trial". While it seems like common sense to say that, in order to become popular, a given object or idea has to be available to the right people at the right time, we don't have to look very far to see that companies still haven't quite grasped this inevitability, especially in the digital marketplace. From the recording industry to Major League Baseball, old-school organizations continue to frustrate users and drive down sales through the use of antiquated, protectionist DRM schemes. Instead of protecting the integrity and pocketbooks of the artists and corporations who use them, these obstructions of use and ownership are simply fueling a consumer-led backlash. Why buy from iTunes when you can slip over to eMusic and get mp3s that are actually yours?
Where have we heard that before?
As Godin point out in his book, digital media, when freely distributed, is one of the best ways to get people hooked on not just a song, but a band's entire output. This kind of loyalty is exactly the type of behavior that Godin looks for in taste-makers from all venues, people that he refers to as "sneezers":
Music execs know that you’ll pay nothing to hear a song on the radio, but if you like it, you’ll gladly pay $15 for the CD. And that if you love the CD, you’re more likely to pay $40 for tickets to the local concert, where you might be converted to a raving sneezer, much more likely to infect your friends and neighbors with raves about the band, the song, even the souvenirs!
Now that I have some of that DRM-rage out of my system, I'd like to turn my focus onto how all of this applies to politics. Now, I think it's safe to say that, generally speaking at least, creating and maintaining the same kind of ideavirus that Godin talks about is harder to do in the world of politics than it is in the world of product marketing. As an example, here are videos from two memorable viral videos that have emerged in the political world over the past few years: the "Hillary 1984" clip, George Allen's "Macaca moment", and
Clearly, these clips had some impact: the 1984 clip generated some serious buzz and cost its creator, Phillip de Vellis, his job at Blue State Digital, while Allen's slip was used deftly by his opponent, Jim Webb, to sway voters in Virgina's ultra-close Senate race (which Allen went on to lose by a razor-thin margin). What made both of these videos so powerful was precisely the thing that is the hardest to recreate: spontaneity. No one scripted the macaca comments, and no one hired de Vellis to make his commercial. Both events occurred outside the realm of planned marketing/image-making, a world which was then forced to respond. While examining the strategies that each campaign employed after the release of the videos may be telling, it ignores the most important part of the equation: the lightning-in-a-bottle nature of most videos.
Godin tells us that, when marketers beat people over the head with ads and come-ons, they tend to be ignored. However, in national politics, a land of ideas and heavy scrutiny, there isn't much room for developing secret campaigns. If you're not found out and laid bare to begin with, chances are good that your plan will be identified strongly enough with marketing strategies that many people will be turned off. For a viral video to really work in politics, it has to come from someplace outside of "the system". Fortunately, as citizens become savvier with net video technology, more and more of these homebrewed political commentary clips will pop up. Of course, it then becomes an issue of weeding out the good from the bad, but the blogosphere hasn't had much of a problem so far, so it's unlikely it'll develop one out of thin air.
Take that, Andrew Keen.
The real problem comes when they people don't want to talk about the same things that you want to talk about, or when the wrong people are doing the talking. Going back to some of Godin's ideas, it's fine when a candidate has the support of influential sneezers who are out there taking their message to the streets, but what about candidates who are on the outside looking in? How does a campaign drum up grassroots support (and content) without creating a little of its own first? I don't know the answer, exactly, but that's why I'm not the one writing the books.
Of course, this doesn't take into account attempts at politics-related humor that go viral. In cases like this, standard rules apply, I guess.
However, other sites have tried to blend humor with genuine campaigning. Some of the people behind the "Obama Girl" video, including actress Amber Ettinger and writer Leah Kaufman, are on record as willing to use the viral credibility earned from their first video to develop other videos across candidate, and party, lines. Call it viral-for-hire, I guess, though I have a feeling that the good feelings earned from the initial video could wear off quickly if we're faced with eight or nine more.
The curse of the one-trick pony?
Godin is right when he notes that maintaining these kinds of viruses is challenging work:
People no longer clamor to dance the Hustle or to get into Studio 54. They don’t visit the once hot jennicam website or pay a premium for front row seats at Cats. Why? Because instead of institutionalizing the process of improving, honing and launching new ideaviruses to replace the dying ones, the “owners” of these viruses milked them until they died.
Does anybody need Giuliani Girl? Probably not. By focusing on replicating the past instead of innovating towards a new, desirable form of video, sites like BarelyPolitical.com guarantee themselves a short cultural half-life. Again, it's an interesting challenge.
The challenge of replicating viral marketing in political forums might be best-suited for local or state elections, where focused campaigns, a narrower market, and a relative lack of big media scrutiny might afford political marketers some of the mystery and allure needed for these ideas to catch on. Nationally, however, hoping the replicate artificially the power of naturally-occurring viral media is a disaster waiting to happen.
For more on Seth Godin, check out his site for more insights and optimism. And, for those of you who love political videos, here's a countdown of the 10 best, according to these guys.
I'll be back later with my reviews of The Interplay of Influence, The Cluetrain Manifesto, and News That Matters, along with the usual pithy banter.
Some candidates are known for their strong policy positions, while others rely on personality quirks to help separate them from the rest of the crowd. Then, in some years, when the mood's just right, there are the candidates who are able to get by on name alone.
This next gentleman... is not one of those candidates. His name's just silly.
Here's Mike Huckabee (R-AR).
FACT FILE: MIKE HUCKABEE ACCOUNT NAME: ExploreHuckabee NUMBER OF VIDEOS: 92 NUMBER OF SUBSCRIBERS: 1,097 TOTAL CHANNEL VIEWS: 206,333 TOTAL VIDEO VIEWS: 362,803
Huckabee's video content is quite different from that of the previous two candidate that we've looked at. While his early videos lay out his basic principles, the focus of the efforts quickly shifts to two key areas: personality and live coverage from Iowa. While Tancredo and Hunter both exhibited elements of this approach, neither of them took it as far as Huckabee. When you peruse his channel, however, the difference is obvious. Huckabee's campaign shies away from highlighting the same kind of powerful, if divisive, issue content that the other two seem to favor. Instead, they recast the candidate's values in the light of both his supporters and his humanity.
The Iowa videos are particularly interesting. Instead of using testimony from media talking heads or other politicians, Huckabee's campaign uses normal Iowans as the emssangers of support. They also manage to work in the ever-catchy "I Like Mike" slogan.
While some of these videos feature the same kind of language found in other, more inflammatory offerings, the use of actual citizens seems to soften the blow.
Coupled with Huckabee's focus on the everyday person is his effort to put a human face on his hilarious name. When we see Mike in the newer videos, he's rarely debating or being interviewed. Rather, he's more likely to be found doing mundane tasks, like surfing the web, or just plain rocking out:
Huckabee also takes time to address so-called liberal concerns like arts education, the first signs of cross-party appeals that we've seen so far:
Finally, on a completely unrelated note, here's another hilarious, Huckabee-connected name. Everyone, meet Chip Saltsman!
What has this feel-good, non-confrontational approach gotten Huckabee? Well, not much. Currently, despite his videos' best intentions, he trails even Hunter and Tancredo in channel and total video views. Strangely, however, he still holds an edge in total subscribers among the three. This seems to suggest that, while many people find his message palatable enough to support, his unwillingness to tackle inflammatory, divisive issues may sap his campaign of some potential coverage. I mean, I came out of this experience liking Huckabee more than I thought I would. Then again, I'm not exactly his intended audience.
Maybe that says it all.
Also, nice guys finish last. Just ask Green Day.
Tomorrow, we keep the good Republican vibrations rolling with Sam Brownback, cousin of Danger Mouse villain and anthropomorphic toad Silas Greenback.
The next candidate to undergo the YouTube review treatment that I mentioned yesterday has the eyes of a serial killer and the foreign policy of... a mass murderer!
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Representative Tom Tancredo (R-CO).
FACT FILE: TOM TANCREDO ACCOUNT NAME: TeamTancredo NUMBER OF VIDEOS: 133 NUMBER OF SUBSCRIBERS: 795 TOTAL CHANNEL VIEWS: 437,140 TOTAL VIDEO VIEWS: 514,771
All kidding aside, Tancredo's people are far more involved than Hunter's when it comes to maintaining their candidate's YouTube presence. Part of this comes from simple participation; staffers are still logging in daily, interacting with supporters and posting new videos (the last update, as of today, came yesterday afternoon). However, the Tancredo campaign's strategy goes deeper, and is best reflected in the content of the videos themselves.
Now, make no mistake: Tancredo still spends plenty of time making sure everyone knows where he stands on hot-button conservative issues like immigration, federal debt, and the war in Iraq. However, unlike Duncan Hunter, Tancredo doesn't stop there. Among the videos, there are traditional television spots, staged interviews, and calls to action against opponents both Democrat and Republican. However, the majority of his videos fall into two categories: highlights of debates and interview appearances, and informal, candid discussions about his stances and beliefs. Given his status as a fringe candidate, this approach makes sense. Without the face time or coverage of the other candidates, Tancredo has to get his name into the open somehow. If the media isn't going to give him the time he needs, YouTube is a natural alternative.
However, this approach is still hampered by the candidate's relative lack of recognition. Tancredo, much like Hunter, has to spend the majority of his time getting people to remember his policy, a tactic which leaves little room for spotlights on personal character or non-issue related interests. We get little to nothing about Tancredo's past or personality from these videos. In the end, we may know Tancredo the politician, but we still don't know Tancredo the person. For a candidate with limited exposure, this is a prime example of an opportunity wasted.
Personally, I certainly know more about Tom Tancredo now than I did before, at least as far as his political leanings and media coverage go. I still think he's basically crazy, but I do appreciate his humorous response to the whole "John Edwards and his $400 haircut" debacle from a few months back. If we can't laugh at ourselves, who can we laugh at?
Though Tom Tancredo has little hope for a successful nomination bid, his strategy when it comes to YouTube promotion seems to follow the standards set by some of his more popular counterparts. Though he doesn't go far enough in terms of content variety, the videos are a step in the right direction. In that hands of a more high profile candidate, I think we'll see a very different mixture. Only the analysis can tell for sure.
Tomorrow, head back here to see how the candidate with the silliest name since Dale Bumpers approaches the YouTube challenge. That's right: it's Mike Huckabee.
Since this entire blog was started as a class assignment for my Media and Politics class, I figure that it's high time I start looking deeper into the connection between those two concepts. Thus, it's time for a new project.
What does that mean right now, you ask?
It's time to review the candidates' YouTube sites.
Over the next couple of weeks, I'll be featuring video samples and reviews of the YouTube offerings from each of the 17 remaining presidential hopefuls. As a new form of direct politcal communication, I have a feeling that the usefulness of these videos goes far beyond their scripted content. What do they tells us about the candidates and their campaigns? Why, let's find out.
(Before we begin, I'd like to thank the fine people at TechPresident.com for sparking my interest in the topic and providing some hard numbers to work with. Also, as a show of good faith, I've decided to let the Republicans go first.)
REPUBLICANS, PART I - THE STATISTICAL OUTLIERS!
It's a cold, hard fact of political campaigns: in a crowded field of candidates, not everyone gets equal face time. Sometimes, they lack name recognition. Other times, they're completely batshit loco. With no realistic chance of actually winning the nomination, these candidates are often looked upon with a mixture of pity and morbid curiousity. And yet, they soldier on, and in great numbers. For every glamour candidate like Mitt Romney or Fred Thompson, there are two schmendriks like Tom Tancredo and Duncan Hunter skulking listlessly in the wings, waiting patiently for their time to shine.
That time, of course, is today.
FACT FILE: DUNCAN HUNTER ACCOUNT NAME: GoHunterGo NUMBER OF VIDEOS: 20 NUMBER OF SUBSCRIBERS: 695 TOTAL CHANNEL VIEWS: 372,889 TOTAL VIDEO VIEWS: 425,979
Rep. Duncan Hunter(R-CA)'s YouTube channel tells the tale of a man who appears to be one more failed straw poll away from packing in this whole president nonsense and heading home to America's Finest City for some reflection, soul-searching, and fish tacos.
Though Hunter saw some early success in the nascent stages of the campaign, he's basically fallen off the map in terms of legitimate candidacy, and his YouTube content reflects that in a big way. In fact, his site features all of the hallmarks of surrender: no one from Hunter's staff has logged in for almost a month, the last content update came in July, and the total number of clips is the lowest of all candidates by over 40 videos. If I'm wrong, and this is Hunter's idea of some kind of passive success strategy, he may be a genius. If I'm not, he may be off the ballots.
In terms of content, Hunter's videos are mostly of the position paper/debate clip variety. The videos focus simply on getting Hunter's own politcal beliefs out into the open, eschewing the humanizing, personal insights and fiesty saber-rattling found in some of his fellow candidates. He also manages to call Ann Coulter a "a very articulate spokeswoman for the conservative view", which should win him points with... well, Ann Coulter. Maybe.
Blogosphere shotouts aside, Hunter's videosaren't going to wow audiences any time soon. The low number, coupled with the rudimentary focus, renders the videos ineffective outside the "getting to know you" phase. Devoting an obviously limited interest to such a narrow focus might suggest that, in reality, people might just not be listening.
Tune in tomorrow for the second half of Part I, featuring Mr. Hunter's fellow unlikely candidate, and the field's resident glassy-eyed nutball, Tom Tancredo.
The ethics of political persuasion is a business of fine lines and stretched truths. Whenever I tell people that I'm majoring in political communication, the general response involves lots of knowing "aaaaaaah"s followed by some form of the phrase "you're going to be a spin doctor!" While this outcome isn't a forgone, or even desirable, conclusion, it's the first thing most people think of when they hear about someone trying to craft and mediate political messages. Alongside "rhetoric", "spin" may be one of the most villified terms in the political world.
This is not my job.
With all of this in mind, I'm glad to see that some people out there are helping popularize the other function of an education in political communication: the ability to debunk your opponent (or, in this case, all of the candidates at once). This is the aim of the washingtonpost.com's Fact Checker service. Intended to "shed as much light as possible on controversial claims and counter-claims involving important national issues and the records of the various presidential candidates", the site offers in-depth breakdowns of candidate claims and advertising, along with relevant outside information that the original sources neglected to mention. In the end, each story is graded using the "Pinocchio Scale", a ranking system designed to guage just how big of a fib the original sources were offering.
While readers should come for the commentary (which includes a point-by-point examination of the MoveOn.org ad covered on this very blog a couple of weeks ago), they should stay for the chance to get in on the action themselves. The traditional investigative journalism on the site is augmented by a blog-style push for collaboration. As the group's mission statement notes -
We rely on our readers to send us suggestions on topics to fact check and tips on erroneous claims by political candidates, interest groups, and the media. Once we have posted an item on a subject, we invite your comments and contributions. If you have facts or documents that shed more light on the subject under discussion, or if you think we have made a mistake, let us know. We also want to make sure that the authors of questionable claims have ample opportunity to argue their case. We plan to issue our own opinion on factual disputes (see Pinocchio Test below), but it can be revised and updated when fresh evidence emerges.
Suddenly, the public has control of media watchdog powers and, what's more, they don't even have to go to the trouble of creating their own blog as a vehicle for sharing their ideas. The site not only acts as a clearinghouse for political advertising, but it does so through the collective efforts of journalists working in tandem with anonymous citizen researchers. As I said last week, the Washington Post seems to grasp the concepts of Web 2.0 better than some of their counterparts, and this lends further credence to that idea. Whether or not that translates into a major shift in media practices, or whether or not enough people are paying attention to make a difference, remains to be seen.
Keith Olbermann called it "a signal moment in the history of American television". In the fight to respond to George W. Bush's address Thursday night, John Edwards decided to cut out the middleman by, well, paying a different middleman. Edwards hedged his bets and, in an unprecedented move, purchased two minutes of commercial airtime devoted solely to responding to, and in most cases rebutting, the president's address.
This subversion of traditional information channels is a hallmark of Joe Trippi, the Democratic strategist whose reinvention as an Internet-savvy campaigner is credited with the early successes of the Howard Dean campaign in 2004. Trippi, who now serves as a senior strategist with the Edwards campaign, is known for pushing the envelope. However, this most recent move by the Edwards camp brings up serious questions regarding the ever-changing role of advertising in politics.
In the days of the 24-hour media cycle and highly focused online campaigning, traditional political advertising may be facing an "adapt or perish" situation. Edwards' latest move seems to support this. With broadcast channels on the decline, television advertisements may become more specialized. In Edwards' case, his commercial granted him a guaranteed forum in which to express his ideas to a wide audience. Though his move may be out of need rather than the spirit of innovation (Edwards currently sits in a distant 3rd in the latest AP poll, behind front-runners Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama), it's intriguing nonetheless.
Personally, I'm ambivalent towards the idea of advertising as a form of discourse. While the idea that anyone's free to take out a commercial and express their views, the prohibitive costs (the New York Times article linked above notes that Edwards' two minute spot cost upwards of $100,000) mean that it's still the rich who dictate what goes on the air and what doesn't. However, it would be interesting to measure the effectiveness of highly focused, targeted advertising in local elections where candidate airtime might come at less of a premium. What doesn't work for John Edwards might prove might effective for an alderman or councilwoman near you.
Another thing that bothers me is the idea of lending gravity to commercial airtime. Edwards' choice of a commercial medium as the forum for disseminating his message seems to bestow a sense of credibility that may not be completely warranted. Whenever the line begins to blur between serious discourse and this...:
Speaking as someone who bought into the spirit of community activism that the people at MoveOn.org offered in the months leading up to the 2004 Presidential election, it's really disappointing to see how out of whack their sense of the country's political climate has become. The same people who once decried the negative advertising from groups like the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth as "outrageous" continue to confound their own goals by engaging in the same kind of juvenile, school yard name-calling that they claim to be above.
Does this mean that the people at MoveOn don't have valid points to make? Of course not. General Petraeus deserves to be under the fullest scrutiny we as a nation can muster, and if something shady is, in fact, going on, then by all means, let us know. Just find a better way to do it than with a New York Times ad that apes "Seinfeld" without retaining any of the original's charm, timeliness, or yadda yadda yadda.
These guys? Clever. Churlish PACs? Not quite the same.
What pisses me off the most is that stuff like this plays directly into the hands of thosepeoplewholiketopaint progressive Democrats as godless, baby-spiking milquesops. Ads like this don't advance the conversation; rather, they make that little vein on Harry Reid's forehead come that much closer to just ending it all right in front of everyone and force the party to trot out old standbys like John Kerry to dismiss the ad's claims as "over the top". Are they? Again, not necessarily. But, by putting them in the context of vitriolic attack ads, MoveOn forces the Democrats to tiptoe and vacillate instead of focusing on the actual particulars of the Iraq mission. You catch more flies with honey than you do with lame puns, and MoveOn needs to hurry up and realize that. To steal from "Seinfeld" yet again, these ads just give the Republicans all of the hand in the relationship. The Democrats? No hand!
Hand: tough to get.
Man... I hate it when they make me agree with John Kerry. It's really no way to start the week.
