I just flipped over to the nation and saw a great statistic. A 34-minute speech by Sen. Obama is the fourth most popular video (at least when the article was written). The bickering between Sens. Clinton and Obama far, far behind.
Now, I know the number of hits for the debate has to be diluted because one must imagine more people posted, but for such a long speech to generate that much interest is a beautiful thing.
Disclaimer: I've wanted Sen. Obama to run for president since I saw him in the Illinois primaries for Senate, though I was figuring it would be further down the the road. But, this article has nothing to do with who I want to win. It has to do with Democracy and what people want to hear.
Also, if this has been up earlier let me know and I'll pull it immediately. I did a cursory search, but can't imagine I'm the first to see it.
According to the Nation, Sen. Obama's 34-minute speech at the Ebenezer Baptist Church on Saturday made it to number four on the most watched video list Tuesday and was the second most highly-rated.
Now those numbers come a day after the most combative debate of the season, one chock full of soundbites and interesting clips.
Which one dominated the news today, I have to watch TV news as part of my job, believe me there was barely a mention Sen. Obama's speech outside of the fact he made it, but I saw enough coverage of last night's debate I could recite some parts verbatim.
The Senator's speech Saturday did earn laurels and the attention of 53 major newspapers, the Nation writes, but nothing compared to the debate.
On You Tube though people are flocking to hear Sen. Obama expound on his ideas and to me that is the most beautiful thing that can happen in a campaign.
People aren't going for the quick clip of what they heard about all day on TV so they have something to talk about around the water cooler, they want to hear the distinguished gentleman from Illinois* expound on his ideas.
Who knew people wanted to hear full thoughts and complete sentences
larded with polls and meta-analysis, while top bloggers increasingly talk strategy
? We could not have. TV didn't tell us so.
It really gives me hope (sorry, next I'll be saying "change") that maybe the new medium will end the compression television and radio forces and campaigns will evolve into scenarios where candidates have a limitless platform to expand on their ideas and let the people decide what they think.
There's real potential there and I could explain it better; I just wish it gets developed.
*couldn't resist
UPDATE I didn't think about this in my initial excitement and when I went for the embed it reminded me, it hit me. Sen. Obama emailed the speech to his supporters, which naturally will inflate the numbers. But, still over 300,000 for a 30 min video is pretty stinkin' good. I thought this should be added in the interest of full disclosure