For this election, we do have a few sources that are better than we've
had
in the past. And the instant feedback to the politicians doesn't hurt,
either.

Do you really think that will make any difference ?

It may. The whole thing is in its infancy, but it seems to have already
influenced the campaigns. Their reaction time is now being measured in
hours, instead of days.

...politicians
only think of what will affect their snout and what they can get out
of the trough.

The point is that they're being scrutinized to an unprecedented degree, in
unprecedented ways.

The press traditionally has gone fairly easy on the candidates in major
elections, reporting on what they say and do and leaving it to the
opposing
candidates to deal with the questions of exaggerations and misleading
statements. They'd run editorials, but, in the midst of a campaign, you
wouldn't see much real scrutinizing going on, and never a relentless
scrutiny like we're seeing on the major newspaper blogs and sites like
FactCheck.org

Now we're seeing some of the candidates' flip-flops and deceits exposed --
often with video -- before they've gotten back on the plane to go to their
next stop. It must be driving the campaign directors absolutely insane.

What effect it will have this time is an open question. The new media are
just beginning to show their potential effects. But it's a harbinger, I
hope, of what is to come.


Maybe this is the future. It was on Larry King's show the other night. There
were three guests. One was a right winger. One was a liberal. Each of them
was shown in their own window. The third guest was a woman from Fact Check.
She was in a window in between the other two. So you had a conservative on
one side a liberal on the other and a fact check representative in between.
Then after each partisan made some comments the fact check person told what
was actually true. It was pretty funny by accident. I think they had a skit
on Saturday Night Live one time that was something like that. Of course,
nothing could compare to the skit they had where the news was reported by an
anchor and then Garret Morris gave the same news but to the hearing
impaired. The anchor spoke the reports normally and Morris shouted them out
for the hard of hearing. I always laugh when I remember that skit.

Hawke