Bi-Cateral Parliament

I’ve been thinking about how politicians try to be cool by using social media a lot lately.  It really doesn’t work out for most people, except Obama.  Every time a politician is on.. say youtube for example I think to myself, ‘haha dork’.   It’s like watching your technophobe grandparents try to use a mobile phone.  It’s even worse when its user created content, search Kevin Rudd in Youtube, go on do it.  It’s all bad, except when it’s Obama.  Every time I ask someone about it I get the same response “yeah, but ____ isn’t cool, Obama’s cool”.  What does that even!!…..

Ok so first of all this annoys me because, why is Obama cool? This warrants the same response “he’s just…cool”.  Is it because he’s young, is it because he’s ‘progressive’ on most social issues.  I don’t know.  

Secondly, a society where people vote on the ‘coolest’ politician is a very scary thought to me.  I mean could you imagine if social media was around for any of the great dictators, ESPECIALLY for the cool ones?  Imagine if the internet was around long ago and people though someone like Stalin was cool.  “Hey I’m not a fan of his ‘erasing people from existance’ policy, but man that guy looks cool with a saxophone in his hands”. 

Don’t get me wrong here I’m not comparing Stalin to Obama, but I’m just pointing out that if we vote people in for being cool, you’re heading down a dangerous path.  Sometimes that dorky looking old man need to run the place, after all, he’s a dork, you know?

OBLIGATORY CAT LINK!

Cats are pretty cool, but I wouldn’t vote for mine over…. well I know we don’t have very good candidates right now but you get my point.....

 

I was also thinking about the use of twitter in politics.  Did you know that Bob Katter has a Twitter account?  No seriously look it up.  Again, the use of social media by politicians can only work with politicians who those on the internet like, and more importantly who people think are cool.. so yeah basically Obama, and maybe someone like Nick Xenaphon if he were like.. running for prime minister or something.  Even then politicians should really keep clear.

Back to twitter and politics, I’m really hating on those tweets at the bottom of political TV shows like Q and A.  I went on twitters site about it, and they were talking about how twitter is integrating social media with traditional media and giving us the chance to have our voices heard, but is it really?  Networks still ultimately control what goes on air, so really we’re only ‘free’ to say what they want other people to see.  Only a very small number of tweets make it on to these shows, which means it’s people’s job to pretty much make sure only a few voices get heard, and they have complete control over which ones. 

There is this though.  I was reading up and apparently current T.V, which are like an internet parody company were presenting a live twitter feed along with the 2008 Obama/McCain debate.  This would be interesting, because a parody website would be more likely to allow some of the more offensive, crude and controversial tweets. 

                             
                       "We want our audiences to take over the process”- Joel Hyatt: CEO current

This is a good message to send across, but think back about what I said about Obama being ‘cool’.  Do we really want people who vote on who they think is the coolest to have more power in the democratic process?