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YouTube Twists On Politics

CHARLESTON, S.C. The headline atop the Charleston City Paper, the weekly newspaper here, summed up the mood best: "Somebody save us from a YouTube democracy." And that was from this city's alternative paper. Weeks before the CNN-YouTube Democratic presidential debate got underway last week , the prevailing wisdom in the political press corps was that the new format -- "an experiment," as moderator Anderson Cooper called it -- was nothing more than a stunt. YouTube, known for its goofball videos, wanted to be taken seriously. CNN, not exactly high on the hipster scale, was begging to be cool. Or so the thinking went. That the format resulted in the liveliest, freshest debate of the campaign so far came as a surprise to many.

So, from a reporter who writes about the marriage of the Internet and politics (and whose eyes are still burning from watching about 2,000 of the nearly 3,000 video questions submitted), here are five myths about politics and YouTube to consider, in plenty of time for the Republicans' turn on the CNN-YouTube stage, on Sept. 17 in St. Petersburg, Fla.

1.Journalists ask better questions than citizens do.

Arguably the most nuanced question of the night -- resulting in continued tongue-lashing between Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Sen. Barack Obama's camps -- was whether, as president, the candidates would be willing to meet with leaders of rogue nations such as Cuba, North Korea, Syria and Iran. (Obama: Yes, we should! Clinton: Not so fast, kid!) That was preceded by a direct question to Clinton wondering if, as a female president, she would be taken seriously by Arab states in which women are often treated as second-class citizens. And that was preceded by a question about whether women, like men, should register with the Selective Service when they turn 18.

2. It doesn't matter who asks the questions; what matters is that the question is asked.

Sitting in front of three American flags that had covered the coffins of his grandfather, father and oldest son, Gary Berry wanted to know how many family members each candidate has serving in uniform. Jordan Williams, who's black, was curious about how Obama will answer critics who say he's not "authentically black enough." Both were powerful questions made even more powerful by who asked them. It's one thing for CNN's Wolf Blitzer to ask about same-sex marriage, which he did in last month's Democratic debate in New Hampshire. But it's quite another for Mary and Jen, a lesbian couple from Brooklyn, to ask the candidates if they'd let them get married.

3.YouTube is for kids.

Berry is 56. Williams is 20. Enough said.

4.The debate was just another town hall meeting.

At a luncheon with journalists hours before the debate, YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley said that the format effectively pushes for a "national primary" in which folks "who don't live in Iowa and New Hampshire" can participate in "a national town hall meeting of sorts." Indeed. The 39 selected questions came from all parts of the country. Anyone with a computer, high-speed Internet and a webcam could send a video. Actually, you didn't even need a webcam. Twenty-year-old Sushanne Sinclair used her cellphone camera to record her 13-second question, which she quickly uploaded to YouTube. "It took about two minutes to do," Sinclair, a student at Liberty University in Lynchburg, told me. "It's kind of nice to be able to just use my cellphone to ask a question about Darfur to a presidential candidate." (Sinclair's video wasn't selected.)

5."Anyone can participate in this debate."

That quote is from David Bohrman of CNN, which tirelessly promoted the event. Truth is, not everyone can. There's a rarely discussed digital divide in America. In Charleston, 40 to 45 percent of the population subscribes to a high-speed Internet service, about the same as the national average. In a state where half of the primary voters are black, a study released last month by the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that broadband use among blacks, though rising, continues to lag behind whites and English-speaking Latinos. In many parts of the country, particularly rural areas and poor inner cities, access to high-speed Internet is not the norm. In fact, less than half a mile from the Citadel, the site of last week's debate, sits the Cooper River Courts public housing project, where owning a computer and subscribing to the Internet are considered luxuries.

vargasj@washpost.com

Jose Antonio Vargas covers politics

for The Washington Post.