I’m in England at the moment, where I’m getting an, um, interesting perspective on the American presidential campaigning. So just to be perverse, all this week I’m highlighting YouTube video of Republican candidate John McCain, for two reasons. 1) He’s a nut, and as many people as possible need to know that before they go to the polls on November 4. And 2) The possibility that McCain could potentially be derailed as a candidate through his own words — as propagated on YouTube — is a banner moment for the Internet. Theoretically, this kind of material has always been available before… if the mainstream corporate media deigned to air it. Today, we can see it for ourselves… as long as the word about it gets out.
Weird: McCain insists that the substance of what would be the answer to the reporter’s question, were he to answer it, is already well known, but he won’t talk about it. Weirder: how comfortable he is abusing a reporter when he knows he’s on camera.
(In the interest of equal time, I welcome hearing about any similarly scary YouTube video of Barack Obama. Just drop me an email with a YouTube link.)
God, what an a$$hole that guy is. If ever there were a man tempermentally unfit for the presidency, he’d be the one.
Surely you’re fucking kidding. That video is obviously fake censored in the style of Jimmy Kimmel’s Unnecessary Censorship.
This is the original video, and it was well documented everywhere, in newspapers, blogs, cable news channels. You’re railing against the mainstream media like you’ve discovered some guerilla underground shit that no one laid eyes on. Old and fake, so fail on both counts.
Sadly, the cursing IS a fake. And the really annoying thing is that it’s not necessary to digitally alter this clip, because the real video proves quite clearly that McCain can be a scary, short-tempered loose cannon who does not think before he speaks.
As to mainstream media vs youtube or other ‘viral’ media, there are plenty of undoctored moments caught on film and available on youtube that have, in fact, been totally ignored by the mainstream. Some because they are irrelevant, certainly. But there’s plenty of revelent and revealing stuff on the internet that never sees the light of CNN or Fox.
We all have to guard against “confirmation bias”, the tendency to believe what we want to believe. As Obama himself said during the debates, in fact, McCain and Obama agree on quite a bit (witness this bailout). And yet their advisers play upon our prejudices to drive a wedge between us.
I was interested to see that in the biggest vote this year – the most liberal Democrats and the most conservative Republicans got together to defeat the “bailout”. These wedges that the professional consultants insist are so important are really just manufactured by the political process. We can use the Internet to disintermediate the professional politicians – the people we need to get rid of are Steve Schmidt and James Carville.