A Messed-Up Debate Mashup

Internet and political junkies were excited by the prospect of the first ever online-only "mashup" presidential debate sponsored by Slate, the Huffington Post, and Yahoo! this week.

That is, until they saw what it was.

For those less familiar with the YouTube-generation vocabulary word "mashup," a mashup occurs when somebody creates an online feature using multiple sources, such as overlaying Google maps with crime statistics to show where all the burglaries occurred in your neighborhood.  The first prominent political mashup for this election was a video created by Phil de Vellis portraying Hillary Clinton as Big Brother in an Apple computer ad.

That said, the original idea for the "Democratic Candidate Mashup"  was that voters would log on to their computers and ask questions directly to the candidates, participating in the debate in real time. Internet users would also have access to the video footage to splice, dice, and remix at their will, allowing them to create video mashups.

However, that all changed. While users apparently chose the questions moderator Charlie Rose asked the candidates, there was no engagement in real time. And Wired magazine reported on Yahoo's decision earlier this week to nix the mashup part of the debate, allowing users only to choose the candidate and issues they wanted to view and not giving them access to the raw footage.   Wired's Sarah Lai Stirland wrote that this move on Yahoo's part "[reduced] the once bold experiment to little more than a fancy online version of an on-demand cable television offering." Jeff Jarvis of PrezVid.com gave it an even harsher critique, calling it "a pathetic insult to the voters that is years behind in Internet culture."

Despite the criticism, there were quotable moments amid the assortment of videos that users could choose to view, especially the ones where comedian Bill Maher questioned the candidates. He asked Hillary Clinton, "Why should Americans vote for someone who can be fooled by George Bush?" She cackled and then explained why she voted to authorize the Iraq war. He asked Mike Gravel whether Americans were getting fatter and dumber. Gravel said yes.

A similar debate is supposed to be planned for the Republicans. But by the looks of it, the CNN/YouTube debate format was more popular with Web-savvy audiences. The Republican version of that debate is scheduled for November 28.

~Nikki Schwab