I always enjoy reading about the rules for the presidential debates. For example sometimes they have a rule that the candidates may not point out audience members or bring props. The rule against props is presumably so they don’t start pulling documents out of their pocket and going “Right here it states, oh my most ‘honorable’ oponent, that …”; but the rule always gets me to imagining they are going to start juggling, set their hair on fire, break out in song, or something.

Presumably the only reason why the uTube debate stunt makes any sense at all is because these random uTube dudes can speak truth to power since unlike a full time journalist they have zero chance of every getting asked back again.  They can burn their bridges with every question; and use props!

If you have participated about in topic-free email lists for any period of time you’ll know that if a topic arises all possible positions on that topic  will, sooner or later, be trotted out. Ask about your crab grass problem and before long people will be suggest: gobal warming, ferrets, lack of good personal hygiene, while others will point out these suggestions are likely illegal or unethical. It’s part of the fun to try and predict which points that haven’t been made yet will be raised before the thread dies out.

So the whole uTube debate thing is totally bogus. They solicited questions from the masses; and presumably they got a reasonable sample of every question that could possibly be asked. Then somebody selects from the set of all possible questions the ones that actually get asked.

Who ever selected the question controlled the agenda. Pretending otherwise is just silly. The only question I have is exactly how big a Cheshire Cat smile they adopted each time one of their more edge selections was played. Pretending that this is somehow more democratic is either lying or naive.