New media vs. old

So I was going to try to do a dust-up drag-down dissection of last night's Democratic primary debate (free video from CNN), but why bother when the Washington Post's Media Notes have done it for me?

I do have to say, though, that John Edwards -- you're breaking my heart. What an awesome performance! What an excruciating gaffe! I'm talking about the asinine final question of the night, an invitation to say something each candidate liked and didn't like about the candidate to their left. (Am I watching a middle school sleepover or a Presidential debate?) John "Better For Women Than Hillary" Edwards turns around to Hillary Clinton, praises her husband, and then disses her jacket. Wow, John. For a committed feminist... The Washington Post's Ruth Marcus gives him hell for it.

So: Did it work? What do you think?
The low point of the evening for me was when Anderson Cooper backpedaled after asking Barack Obama if he was "authentically black" --

COOPER: Senator Obama, how do you address those who say you're not authentically black enough?
(LAUGHTER)
OBAMA: Well...
COOPER: Not my question; Jordan's question.

CNN exercised full editorial responsibility and selected the questions themselves. It wasn't huge, but, dear CNN, you can't have it both ways. If the users are in the drivers' seat, that's fair, but when you pick and choose, you can't blame your sources.

I was generally fairly impressed by the depth and passion shown in the questions CNN chose but I was struck by the deep sense of what Obama called "cynicism about the capacity to change this country." The best questions were very pointed -- and very skeptical. The worst questions were arid and ignorant. I felt like a lot of the most interesting questions were passed off to "bit-part" candidates like Kucinich or Dodd. Take the question about Darfur. First it went to Richardson (who gave a very nuanced answer) and Biden -- both of whom have made their feelings about Darfur clear in prior debates -- then punted to Gravel (what?) before going to Clinton to give it a sheen of legitimacy. I'm caught really just wanting to lock the top three in a room and realizing that the system is much stronger for the participation of characters like Kucinich and Gravel that probably won't win but have a chance to influence the shape of the debate.

Come back tomorrow: we'll be thinking about ways to use Web 2.0 technologies (particularly the new Facebook applications platform) in activism.

Hello, Internet!

Welcome to Parallax's inaugural post. I'm Tim Smith from Fairfax, Virginia and it's a pleasure to be speaking to you as one of the voices of Parallax. As originally conceived, this blog was to represent a collection of voices from across the political spectrum. (I'm the angry liberal oh, excuse me, I meant to say campus progressive.) We'll see over the next few weeks how this vision will develop.

What is Parallax?

In astronomy, which is where we came by the name, parallax is the difference in the observed position of a relatively nearby celestial object against far-away background stars when viewed from different points. If you know the distance between any two points of observation, you can calculate the distance to the nearby body.

More poetically, it's the perspective you get from seeing something from more than one side. We want to provide a bit of that. And it's not just about us -- we want to hear what you think, too. We're looking forward to your comments I hope we'll be able to get some lively conversations started.

So wait. How does this make you any different from any other Joe Politiblog on the Internet?

We'll try not to be self-important and vulgar. At least not simultaneously.

And on that note of resounding sincerity, I present: Parallax.