Debra forwarded along a Poynter column about Barack Obama's (perhaps) unprecendented use of interactive media in an online campaign ad that hit several major markets this week... I thought of it as I was checking out the MTV Think site from this week's readings. First of all, I had an admittedly hard time deciphering the actual content here. There was a lot of nothing much going on on the surface of the site, and had to dig in a few links to find: a text message interview between AIDS activist Suzanne Engo and MTV personality/actor/entertainor Nick Cannon. Cannon has been stumping for Obama...

Again, I had a hard time even reading the interview, appreciating just how important form can be and how this interview utterly lacked it. But I pressed on, through the "uhms," "lols" and "how r u's" to get to this little bit  of Nick explaining what he  does for the campaign:

NC: It’s a little bit of both , you’ve gotta show them your personality, they’re kinda shocked that I know so much about the Senators policies and all those things but you still gotta speak their language, you can’t talk over their headz and that’s one thing that’s dope about Obama is that he speaks their language

 

AFRICA:What do they ask you in that setting?

 

NC:It’s just a lot of stuff that they talk about… u know like local concerns, kids are definetly concerned about schooling, and uh and all the students are clearly concerned about education, student loans, gas prices, all of those things…

There are some people reading this who probably got to this faster than I did, taking no issue with the informality of the whole affair, and who are that much more into Obama because of this guy's ability to "speak the language." On one hand, it seems a little strange for an established candidate to utilize such unconventional (read these White House hopes: "Yeah we are going all the way till we are partying in the white house till we are at Pennsylvania Ave gettin it POPPIN HAhaha!") methods to reach out to younger voters, but then again, I've personally been waiting for the political establishment to do just this for some time. I guess I never imagined it would involve lots of "LMAO" (laughing my ass off).

-- Amanda, 3.4.08