During the show, CNN put up a clip from Jeff’s campaign to get users to submit questions for candidates via YouTube. An admirable goal, indeed. When asked how he found the questioner – Jeff said he met him at a conference and it was just a “man from the heartland.” Indeed – and impressive, too. The question for Mike Huckabee is a well thought out, articulated – and most important – well delivered on camera. Who could this talented amateur be?
Only a guy that spent more than a decade on television as the anchor for WTAE-TV in Pittsburgh, that’s all. Kudos to Jeff for using a producer’s eye to find what I have to imagine was the single most skilled television personality at the entire conference. :)
Just got home from the CNN studios in DC, after a short piece on Howard Kurtz’ Reliable Sources show with Jarvis. Topic? Web video, anonymous politics, etc. I think my take is a simple one: more speech = better. Restricting that speech, through regulations or law = an awful idea. If I have to listen to the same people complain that we spend $1 billion on political campaigns (slightly less, btw, than this country spends on potato chips every year) whine and cry about all the “nefarious” ways people can use the new internet – I’m going to have to put a fork in my eye.
Just in case you needed any more convincing that Scientology is creepy, crazy, nutty, and a little scary – an enterprising type has put an entire 10-part Scientology orientation video on YouTube.
This is my favorite so far, in which we hear how L. Ron Hubbard used his newly-found skills at Dianetics to foil the government’s mind control tactics.
Grab em fast before the jack booted lawyers from the Cult of Xenu raid the YouTube offices.
This all, of course, raises the interesting dynamic that the web – starting with blogs and text, now spreading to widely available means of publishing rich content, is a tremendous threat to closed organizations like Scientology. Long famous for their intimidation and scare tactics – towards everything from Google to Governments – that genie is slowly getting out of the bottle. Or more precisely – it’s once again out of the bottle, and no court will be able to wedge it back in.
UPDATE: Well, that didn’t take long. The creepy nutjob fanatics at the L. Ron Hubbard Memorial Insane Asylum have laid the hammer on YouTube. Never fear – they’ll be back sometime soon.