Yeah, it lets people blather on to a larger audience than they had in the past, but it also means reality can intrude on rhetoric, and fact-checking and audio-video proof can be put out there for everyone to see. For example:
Once upon a time, there would be rumors bandied about that someone had said something as asinine as “liberals hate real Americans that work and achieve and believe in God.” But they would have been just rumors, and Rep. Robin Hayes (R-NC) would have, as he did in this case, just issued a categorical denial. And if the mainstream media didn’t roll the film or the audio on the nightly news, it would simply be a he-said-she-said situation.
Now, though, everyone’s recording this stuff, and putting it up on YouTube, and everyone can hear it. And know that Rep. Hayes is (there’s no other way to put this) a liar in making his vehement denial.
Sure, you can mix and edit and screw around with these sorts of things — and we’ll see more of that in future election cycles, too. But the dispersion of the Internet as a way of letting everyone get info out to everyone else removes so many choke points for information, politicians are going to have to really watch what they say, and think not whether it will juice up the audience their addressing, but how it will play to every other audience.
Novel idea, that.
For the record, I wrote the above on my own before I ever even caught a whiff this article. Really truly.
In honor of going to see Avenue Q tonight I’ll remind everyone that it’s all well and good to use the internet for ‘fact checking,’ but we must remember that “The Internet is for P##n.” (exed that out to keep the annoying connection bots at bay!)
Hooray for silly musicals!
“Well, what do you think he was doing *after* he posted on politics?”
“Ew!”