Saturday, March 29, 2008

Ok, maybe she did lie--the digital cultural divide.

I loved the bolded phrase in this sentence: "That Mrs. Clinton’s campaign kept insisting her Bosnia tale was the truth two days after The Post exposed it as utter fiction also shows the political perils of 20th-century analog arrogance in a digital age."

Frank Rich's article touches on a highly fascinating fact. Obama, who is 46, is light years ahead of both Clinton and McCain in his use of the internet, and specifically web 2.0. Obama is raising more money on line, getting his information out better online, etc. etc. etc. Some smallish examples:

Obama's youtube channel has accumulated 13.2 million views
Hillary's
has accumulated 1.4 million views.

Obama's youtube channel, and all the videos associated with it, have a very kewl, very gnarley, very useful little google checkout window embedded where you can donate money to the candidate. I think these are fairly new. I started noticing them 8 days ago, on march 21.
Hillary's youtube channel *doesn't* have them. Even though she's had at least 8 days to copy Obama on it.

Obama's speech on race, some 37 minutes long, has been viewed in it's entirety 3.6 million times since he gave it less than two weeks ago. That means ~1% of Americans have seen not just snippets or sound bites, but a full exposure to his thoughts/ideas on the subject. Think about -- 37 MINUTES in our sound bite age. Obama is effectively ... bypassing the news media and getting his message straight to the voters.
Meanwhile, good luck finding a full version (here's the *text*) of Hillary's latest major speech, delivered at George Washington University on March 17, about the Iraq War. Instead, you'll find segments of it in a CBS news report that shows that she was fabricating--a video that has had 1.7 million views in just the last 5 days.

In light of all that--imagine the generational disconnect with regards to politics and culture overall. I don't think it's simply that Obama is a lot more savvy politician than Hillary (although it's fairly clear he is). I think it's that Hillary is 60 years old, and she learned to do life, and politics, before personal computers and the internet were around. I'm not saying she can't learn. I'm just saying ... it's different for her than for someone born even 15 years later, and different again for someone born 15 years after that. Very different. It's just interesting to ponder.

1 comment:

Alex said...

obama connects more with people...i'm just waiting for hillary's concession speech.