Flaunting My Ignorance

The first ever YouTube debates happened a couple of days ago. There's been plenty of comment around the blogosphere about 'em, and even a fun hoax which claimed that somehow the goatse had made it on to CNN. I don't want to say any more about the goatse. Look it up on Wikipedia, and even follow the links if you want to know more. You'll be sorry.

I didn't watch, perhaps out of goatsephobia, but mostly because it's too damn early. The campaign cycle is criminally lengthy and I don't need these people shouting VOTE FOR ME in my face when we all know that a year and a half from now the elections will have been cancelled because Dick Cheney has declared martial law. I've got to buy a barrel of rice and a water tank and shotgun shells. YouTube! Ha!

Also don't fool yourself that opening up the questions to WeThePeople was somehow more democratizing than the normal debate format. The questions were screened, and there were many thousands to choose from. Even taking out anything with goatse footage, any question a moderator would have asked on their own was surely supplied by SOMEONE in YouTubeniverse. If you think the debates are normally sealed off from reality, this is worse because it has the appearance of not being so. Which is more dangerous, a Terminator that's a titanium skeleton or a terminator that appears to be a flesh and blood policeman? I think you know the answer to that!

At this early stage it's not only safe to ignore the candidates posturings, it's VITAL. This is their training period. Pay attention next year. If you must vote in the primaries, start looking at them in that final month when they have their messages all polished up. If they can stay on message and only use small, easy-to-digest sentences -- vote for the other guy.