Second thoughts

Okay, that last post was a little cranky. I better repent, before someone says I’m a dinosaur who doesn’t get it.

How about this. Let’s embrace this exciting new showcase for citizen creativity — and simultaneously devise a way of sustaining (or even starting) widespread interest in the race for the presidency. Let’s have a parallel competition, a sort of talent show of candidate questioning. Let America vote (via text message obviously) for their favorite YouTube question-videos in each debate, judging them on creativity, production values, originality, and, if you like, substance. The top vote getters get to ask another question in the next debate — although of course they’ll also continue to compete against others who have advanced, in an ongoing, elimination-style tournament.

As the number of questioners gets whittled down, more of each debate broadcast will be devoted to learning about them — who they are, what their aspirations are, how much their new branded T-shirts cost and where we can buy them, etc. At some point, all the remaining questioners should probably have to live together in a loft-style apartment, maybe in Ohio. As their fame grows, the candidates will be expected to ask them questions.

Then the final showdown: After the primaries, we have not only two presidential candidates going through the motions of the familiar leader-of-the-free-world thing, but two YouTube question-video makers, squaring off to be America’s Next Top Citizen-Celebrity! (If Bloomberg or another independent gets involved, we could bring back some of the more annoying eliminated questioners in some kind of sudden-death YouTube press conference format.)

Fun, right? See, I get it!