Happy Turkey Night, everyone. After an entire day devoted to food, football, and lounging like a hedonist, I'm actually looking forward to doing some work for a change. I might have a couple of entries cooked up for the weekend (or even later tonight, depending on how much energy this Colt-Falcons game takes out of me), but until then, it's time to give thanks. Here are a few things that make my world better these days:
- The Capitol Limited. For my money, the best way to travel the DC-to-Chicago route.
- The Vice President, for cracking a joke that's actually sort of funny, coming from a cyborg deathbot.
- The Internet, and all of the interesting freedoms it promotes and defends. Something tells me that I'm not alone on this one. Youhearin'us, candidates?
- Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parades, from today and yesterday.
In the Shreve High football stadium, I think of Polacks nursing long beers in Tiltonsville, And gray faces of Negroes in the blast furnace at Benwood, And the ruptured night watchman of Wheeling Steel, Dreaming of heroes.
All the proud fathers are ashamed to go home. Their women cluck like starved pullets, Dying for love.
Therefore, Their sons grow suicidally beautiful At the beginning of October, And gallop terribly against each other's bodies.
Substantive reporting returns when my turkey coma wears off. Until then, have a wonderful night, and leave some things you're thankful for in the comments, if you're so inclined. If not, I'll see you on Black Friday.
First, there was Chuck Norris. Then, Ted Nugent. Now, finally, Mike Huckabee has hit the trifecta of roughneck celebrity supporters. His latest find? The Nature Boy himself! From CNN:
Huckabee is getting ready to rumble: wrestler Ric Flair, a.k.a. The Nature Boy, is supporting the former Arkansas governor in his bid for the White House.
CNN has confirmed the former WWF and WWE star wrestler is on board with Huckabee, and will co-host a campaign tailgate with the candidate at the South Carolina vs. Clemson football game on Saturday afternoon in Columbia, South Carolina. More details are forthcoming.
Man... I'll say it again: we're entering the realm of real entertainment. With that in mind, have a few Ric Flair clips to brighten up your morning.
For those of you who're too lazy for radio, here are a few of the key points brought up during the program:
- When asked to comment on the success of online campaigning, many people on the panel were quick to point out all of the great things being done with politics on the internet. Cyrus Krohn, however, gave a more realistic assessment: when it comes to the effectiveness of internet campaigning, it's still too soon to tell. He mentioned the ebb and flow of site popularity, and the fact that we still don't have enough net-mediated elections under our collective belts to begin drawing serious patterns. With all of the techno-utopianism that accompanies a program like the one I'm in, it's always nice to hear someone admit that, really, we're still not exactly sure what we're doing.
- Later in the panel, Krohn had his feathers ruffled by Adam Green's comments regarding MoveOn's lack of a right-wing equivalent. Green's argument was that, while progressive causes like the ones championed by MoveOn tend to lend themselves well to grassroots organization, the right tends to support causes better suited to what he referred to as a top-down "culture of disempowerment" that favors interests and politicians over voters. Though Krohn offered some interesting thoughts on MoveOn's Petraeus ad, I felt that the real counter-example came from Dottie Lynch, who pointed out the internet's role in organizing the Harriet Myers backlash from a few years ago. She noted that, while it may not be considered grassroots, the Republican presence on the internet is still a powerful one.
Also, as someone in my group pointed out, it's ironic that Green would criticize the Republicans for lacking bottom-up, grassroots chops. For all of its plays towards citizen activism, MoveOn is primarily run through ordered, top-down direction.
- I was also glad to hear someone bring up 10Questions.com and their recent success regarding Barack Obama and net neutrality policy. For anyone interested in the site, check it out. It really might be the antidote to those dog and pony shows that are the YouTube debates. Also, for anyone interested in Barack Obama's stance on net neutrality and other technological matters, check out this question and answer session from Wednesday evening.
- Finally, the panel also had some interesting views on the viral video phenomenon that I touched on last week. Most of the panelists were split when it came to deciding if these easily-disseminated, unscripted moments were good or bad for the political landscape. Jeanne Cumming claimed that the threat of embarrassment would cause candidates to stick to the official message more, rendering them lifeless, while Green claimed that this new form of citizen journalism would lead to a "cleansing of the idiots", weeding out the slow and uninformed. Cummings also brought up an interesting point: in the case of viral videos, the subject matter is always negative. Why do you suppose that is? Why don't videos of Barack Obama helping old ladies across the street or Mitt Romney getting cats out of trees make the rounds on YouTube? Are we just not interested?
Anyway, that's your preview. To hear the panels opinion on the youth vote, the internet's role in local organizing, user-generated mudslinging, and more, tune in.
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.
My last post introduced my dissatisfaction with the clusterfuck that is the primary debate system, but simply putting up a video of Dennis Kucinich being even weirder than usual didn't satisfy my need to vent about, and perhaps propose a solution to, this latest problem on the political landscape.
To put it simply: the debates that we've seen so far this season have, plainly, ranged from unsatisfying to downright detrimental. On the low end of the problem spectrum, the YouTube debates wrapped style over substance in the attractive papers of voter interaction. What should have been an interesting exercise in political participation devolved quickly into a cavalcade of schmucks and amateur actors all trying to out-quirk each other in hopes of their 15 minutes. The point, as they say, was missed.
Now, in the latest example of gimmick politics, we've been presented with the latest ratings-grabber: the Lightning Round! What a great way to derail an otherwise passable debate: with outmoded gameshow strategies!
Seriously, enough. Enough now. This has to stop. I'm as politically charged as the next Georgetown student, but if I have to see one more waste of airtime like this, I'm buying a yurt and moving to Montana. Instead of engaging in real discussion and, you know, debate, the candidates are once again reduced to soundbites. Oh, and often, too. By my (read: Wikipedia's) count, the Democrats and Republicans will, by the end of the primary season, have combined to engage in 36 of these dog and pony in just under nine months.
Wow.
As I stated earlier, I'm all for debate. However, to really catch my interests, it has to fulfill two very important criteria: it must be fair, and it must be in-depth. The primary debates tend to miss both of these by wide margins every time they hit the air. The sheer number of candidates, coupled with the media's maddening desire to turn everything into a horse race, tends to lend itself to exclusion rather than inclusion. Front-runners get most of the airtime, while great policy minds like Joe Biden and Chris Dodd are left to fight their way out of their very own Catch-22 - they don't get the coverage because they're not popular, but part of the reason they're not popular is because no one's talking about them. Thus, you end up with these disadvantaged candidates resorting to sniping or outlandish statements as means of getting ink.
As you might've figured, the well-reasoned portion also goes out the window as soon as you start factoring in the numbers. With all of these candidates trying to make their own mark on a discussion that covers a wide range of topics, the audience ends up with all breadth and no depth. Nowhere is that more apparent than the latest inclusion of a Lightning Round, but it does get worse. Does anyone else remember the debates this summer that actually made use of show-of-hands voting to settle the important issues?
Fuck me. Are we in 6th grade again?
All of this talk about the problems with the primary debates reminds me of what Neil Postman said in Amusing Ourselves to Death: television, at its core, is primarily an entertainment medium designed around selling advertisements. Whenever you try to mix it in with serious discourse, bad things tend to happen.
Now, while I don't completely agree with that sentiment in regards to this situation (these debates tend to be covered without commercial interruption, for instance) I still think that we can do better. An, in the interest of not bitching without offering a solution, I think I have a few suggestions.
1) Themed debates. This would completely clear up the problems inherent in trying to cover all of the issues in every debate. Maybe, in addition to a few all-purpose debates scattered throughout the season, the candidates could participate in debates centered around narrow, predetermined topics. You could tune in to Hillary Clinton explain herself in "The Democratic Healthcare Debate", for instance, or listen to John McCain pop a few veins in his forehead during "The Republicans present: The War in Iraq". This type of setup would not only would this give the candidates ample time to touch on the finer points of a given debate without the distraction of other topics, but would also aid viewers who are more interested in some topics than others.
2) Showdowns. The media wants a horse race? Let's give them one. What if, instead of pitting all of the candidates against each other during every debate, the networks instead devised a system of head-to-head debates between each of the candidates? It could be like watching the NBA draft: each match-up could be randomly selected, giving lesser known candidates the chance to steal the spotlight from one of the big guns. Who wouldn't love to see Barack Obama get into an honest, lengthy debate with Dennis Kucinich? Once everyone's gone around once, maybe there could even be a second round featuring different pairings. With the natural lure of competition that's so attractive to our sporting culture, we could even open this whole thing up to voting. Perhaps an expert panel, plus some input from the public, could decide who moves on and who plays for consolation. Why not have a debating tournament? Maybe it's the NFLer in me, but if we can do this every weekend in January at high schools around the country, why can't we do this with our politicians?
Are these the perfect solutions? Of course not. Do they open up some interesting possibilities? Maybe. Are they better than what we've got so far? Well, obviously, I think so. What about you?
PS: For those of you really interested in the whole debate scene, check out this section of the New York Times' coverage. Personally, as someone who's had to slog through transcript after transcript from these kinds of events, this service is remarkable.
