E-bama
Why Barack is the kids’ new bicycle
BY Chandler Levack
“You’re into border security, let’s break this border between you and me,” sings the sultry Obama Girl in the satirical music video viewed 9 million times on YouTube, “I got a crush on Obama.” The internet sensation may be expressing the views of many enamoured with everyone’s favourite presidential candidate, but she also represents an unprecedented level of election populism, which has exploded in 2008, thanks to the internet.
A 2008 study by internet “fact tank” Pew Internet Project found that more than a third of Americans have viewed political videos online, three times more than during the last presidential election. Ten percent said they have used social networking websites to become more informed, while 28 percent agreed that the internet has made them feel more connected to the campaign.
The web was around for the last presidential campaign hoopla, too. But four years is a long time on the information superhighway: YouTube didn’t exist when John Kerry was campaigning in 2004, and Facebook and MySpace were small-time campus curiosities. It’s no exaggeration to say that the internet is to Obama in 2008 what television was to Kennedy in 1960. Technology not only makes winners and losers, it radically redefines how the entire game is played.
The popularity of last year’s audience-driven CNN debates broadcast on YouTube has shown that TV has no monopoly on electoral spectacle, and, in September, the high church of the internet, Google itself, plans to sponsor a presidential debate in New Orleans, also to be broadcast on YouTube.
Obama has been particularly gifted at tapping into web culture, not only in fundraising millions of dollars, but also in engaging America’s youth—whose political participation looks much different from their parents’. Obama may be on the front page of The New York Times, but he’s also got a Facebook, a MySpace and even a Twitter account (Twitter is a microblogging service that allows followers to receive regular updates of what Obama is doing moment to moment).
The political race has provided rich fodder for communities of bloggers, jokesters and artists, who are analyzing politics in whole new ways. In February, Toronto novelist Sheila Heti launched twin blogs, I Dream of Barack and I Dream of Hillary—later joined by I Dream of McCain—to capture the public’s descriptions of their interactions with Clinton, Obama and McCain during their non-waking hours. When Heti stopped posting new dreams in May, Obama won the REM election with 150 dreams to Clinton’s 129, while John McCain pulled in only 20 sleep stories. (The dreams and their interpretation are still posted online.)
The website Barack Obama Is Your New Bicycle—which has to be seen to be properly understood—probably best epitomizes the inanity of online Obamamania. The super-simple site consists only of a screen-filling, randomly generated message describing how the candidate supports you—refresh “Barack Obama has bought you a puppy,” and you’ll get “Barack Obama bookmarked your website.”
On the Republican side, Things Younger Than John McCain pokes fun at the 72-year-old, pointing out that The Wizard of Oz, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the six-pack are all more youthful than the senator. Perhaps the site was inspired by comedian Chris Rock’s quip about McCain—“How are you going to make decisions about the future when you aren’t going to be here?”
At the last YouTube debate in November 2007, when everyday Americans questioned Obama’s positions on reparations for slavery, Clinton’s definition of the word “liberal” and Giuliani’s stance on rooting for the Red Sox, commentary went nuts. Critics love to decry the internet as propagating the trivial elements of politics, but it’s those trivialities that draw in younger voters, engaging them in the political process.
A time of “change,” the forthcoming U.S. election will be the first to allow voters to place the president in their topfriends list on MySpace. Such seemingly interactive communication with a presidential hopeful is illusory: do we know Barack Obama better because we can track his every move on the internet, or do we just know more about him? It can be hard to tell the difference.
