Sporting a Digg t-shirt from her CBS News office chair, anchor Katie Couric addressed Digg.com from YouTube. She prodded the geek-chic crowd there for questions to ask at the Democratic National Convention.
Take a moment. Let that set in.
Now, think back 20 years (that’s 1988!), crawl into your own head, turn off the White Snake and look around at the world you knew then. On the TV, on CBS, is Dan Rather, likely talking about the Vice President’s run against a diminutive and generally unexciting Michael Dukakis. The Summer Olympics are on, there are tensions with Russia, especially regarding a small Soviet state asserting its independence, and in the midst of a major banking crisis Dan Quayle is comparing himself to John F. Kennedy.
A lot has changed in 20 years, huh? Well, if you can’t pinpoint exactly how it’s changed, refer to the introduction to this article. In that 1988 world (hey, nice boom box—is that a mix tape?), could it ever include you in your Thundercats boxers positing a question to Vice President of the United States of America George H.W. Bush, care of Dan Rather?
Um, yeah, so Dan (nom, nom, nom on a Fruit Rollup), ask Bush if he’s buying this whole Perestroika thing Gorbachev is selling—And what’s with that birthmark anyway? Oh, and tell him I bet Quayle can’t even spell Kennedy.
No. No way that could have happened in my 1988. In 2008, we have YouTube and we have Digg, and this time—so long as Couric doesn’t pull a CNN move and yank the tough questions ahead of time—we, the people, have more direct access to a government that has far outgrown us. It’s kind of beautiful, don’t you think?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2a40UTcqm0
Digg seems to be taking the invitation seriously, unlike the commentators at YouTube, who, in this instance, represent the dark side of Web 2.0—nothing like a little misogyny flavored with masturbatory anchorwoman-in-a-Digg-shirt fantasies.
Ahem, back to Digg, where things are uncharacteristically mature: Ask McCain why he feels the Iraq war is still justified. Ask Obama why he’s not a fan of global free trade. Ask Katie if she’d like to have dinner.
Well, you didn’t expect the brow to remain quite so high, did you? They also want to know how the candidates feel about Net Neutrality, about whether the Republican Party has been hijacked by big government, corporation-loving neocons, about the abandonment of the No Child Left Behind Act, about healthcare, marriage, taxes, torture and spying, and about exactly when the candidates feel it is justified to lie to the American public.
And yes, where, Katie, did you get that awesome t-shirt?
You gotta admit those are decent questions pumping out of the oft-maligned “wisdom of the crowds.” Perhaps even better than “Where’s your flag pin?” or “Are you sure you’re not a radical Muslim bent on destroying America?”
