You say we have a revolution?

A few ramblings about Monday's YouTube debate:

1) CNN tried hard to play up the "revolutionary" angle, but there really wasn't anything super exciting about the debate. Sure, the moderator was young, hip, sexy (ask any girl I know...) Anderson Cooper, but the debate was basically a town hall format transposed to the 21st century. Questions were, after all, screened by CNN, so nothing revolutionary was going to get through.

2) Instead of revolutionary questions, CNN focused on unorthodox delivery. I'm a huge fan of YouTube humor, and rednecks are funny, but is having people dressed as rednecks really informative in any way, shape, or form? And I'm not going to lie: I cried inside when they had a snowman ask the question on global warming. Here's a surefire way NOT to get one of the most serious issues facing America taken seriously: animatronic snowmen. I can just see Inhofe playing that clip on the Senate floor.

3) As always, the biggest problem was the format. Seven and a half people, standing side-by-side on a stage, delivering their own little 90-second soliloquies with the occasional Anderson-moderated response. Wouldn't it be infinitely more exciting and revolutionary to just let the candidates go at it?

All told, the debate was a huge improvement over the last few, but still left me disappointed-- not in our field, which is by all accounts terrific, but in the media that mangles politics time and time again. Until they get it right, I'm going to go watch Gordon Brown fisticuff his parliament on Question Time.

Cheers!