Vox Populi

Guess what? I liked the questions.

YouTube rocks!

I was, I admit, a skeptic. I thought the average folks' questions might be so general that the candidates would tap-dance around them, and CNN would be left with a snoozefest.

But what made last night's debate different, besides the disembodied nature of the video interrogators, was that they asked questions that journalists would not ask.

The guy who asked Barack Obama whether he was black enough, prompting Anderson Cooper to plead, "Not my question"--way too un-PC for a journalist to ask, even though it's been written about and chattered about quite a bit. Obama said it was still hard for him to get a cab in Manhattan.

Hillary Clinton got to answer the same guy about her gender, and she proudly embraced being a woman, while deftly noting that she has no choice. Another man asked how Hillary, as a woman, could negotiate with Arab and Muslim leaders (she played the first lady card and ticked off other female heads of state).

Is Hillary a liberal? She prefers "progressive."

What Republican would you name as your running mate? Joe Biden got to further complicate Chuck Hagel's life in the GOP.

Two gay women asking why they can't get married--it just sounds different, and more poignant, coming from people who would be affected than with some reporter framing it as a purely political issue.

What are we going to do about Darfur? Let's face it, since there's no congressional debate about sending troops, the genocide in Darfar has largely remained off the media's radar screen.

Would you send your kids to public or private school? Have any of you talked to your children about sex? Would you take the presidency for minimum wage? (Clinton and John Edwards said yes; they can afford it.)

And no self-respecting journalist would ask who was your favorite teacher, though it produced something of a human moment.