Did anyone else see this? You can watch now at MySpace (though it isn't working for me right now), and at MTV.com. Here's the thing. In theory, it was a great idea. Get a candidate to have a conversation with actual young people, and let other young people submit questions and their reactions online, all at once. The tool they used is called Flektor, which certainly sounds fancy enough.
The problem was, as one of the other bloggers who attended mentioned, is that the event really felt like the same old boring town hall meeting candidates have been doing forever. John Edwards can talk passionately about a lot of things, but today he kind of droned on until the last 10 minutes. if the point is getting a lot of information to the (ugh, terrible phrase) MTV generation, you have to be a little more interesting, and for the love of Gideon, brief. Though, he did end up with something like 93% approval from web viewers, so maybe I just have a sort attention span.
I'm pretty sure I don't have to tell you that feminist issues were not a large part of the event. However, the word feminist was uttered. By a student talking about the need for more diverse authors in college curricula.
Now that I've talked a lot of shit about the event, let me tell you what I liked. The fact that they're trying. This morning we had a chance to talk to Jeff Berman, SVP of Public Affairs at MySpace, and former Chuck Schumer staffer. He talked about harnessing the power of MySpace's huge network to make democracy more participatory, especially for young people. Yes please. So, overall it was fun. Got to meet some nice poeple, and I think this format has promise, it just needs some development. Anyway, most of the other candidates have agreed to participate in the future, so we'll see how it develops.
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I enjoyed it! But . . . I'm also an Edwards supporter. So I'm really not incredibly neutral.
I agree that at times it did get boring, but for me that was largely the fact that I follow the election coverage closely and therefore have heard a lot of it before. I do think that as far as candidates go for this type of events, Edwards is one of the best for taking at length.
I mean, you're right that nothing was particularly innovative. But I do think that it's a step in the right direction, and I think that he did well.
I'll have to watch this...
I got a good impression of Edwards during the debates for 2004, but this time around I feel like he's been craftily sidestepping debate questions, which puts me off a bit.
MySpace does have a huge potential to reach people, but the fact that it's owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp makes me wince when I hear it's getting involved in politics.
I know the republican debates are not the happening place to be - but I am worried that we feminists are stopping the questions at abortion - knowing that they are anti-choice. But here's something more to ask them about. What do they think about EC or RU486? Gotta get these people out of office and out of the courts.
My speakers went out right before the debate so I watched it later on MTV. I do admit it was a lil boring. I was kinda dissapointed my question via im wasnt asked. Did anybody else notice that every im that that guy read he had to make fun of the screen name first?
I only saw the last 30 minutes of it, but from what I saw, I really liked it. It was a bit like normal town-hall discussions, but the "town" was asking good questions, and ones that younger generations care about. I think Edwards was a good choice for the first run, because his strategies and beliefs seem to match up extremely well with those of our generation. I certainly gained a lot of respect for him during some of his answers.