In a year where there is a lot of concern about the youth vote, a good palliative is to check out:
http://www.slambush.net/index.html
Click on the image to the upper right to see (and hear) a very clever video that does a surprisingly good job of making it look like Bush is debating a young poet. An angry young poet.
What is a "slam"? For those unfamiliar with the form, it is an organized presentation of short street-influenced poems, delivered with passion and clever word plays. Poetry Slams are common these days, and are noted by some as a welcome return of poetry to its roots, as a vivid form of expression, not as a dry subject to be taught in school. This site leads you to a series of "Slam Bush" competitions being held around the country this year, with a $5,000 prize for the one judged the best overall. One also presumes a laurel wreath goes to the winner? This is getting nationwide publicity, on a range of media that normally is apolitical, and reaches a wide demographic.
Guess what else is going on this year? There is an entire cycle of rap songs that urge the listener to vote against George Bush, because he is (according to the songs) a liar, a murderer, a criminal, etc. These are powerful expressions, powerfully expressed. You and I will probably not run across them on our favorite radio station, but guess who is listening to them? The 16 to 30 year old demographic that every political party is dying to enlist. These artists are determined to hand every non-white vote in the US to Kerry, in order to "stop Bush". Some lyrics are in Spanish, most are in the difficult-to-follow rapid-fire argot of hip-hop. I can't easily follow it, but I promise you that my kids can.
For those of you who can recall the music of the late sixties and early seventies, this would be familiar material... but a lot harder-edged. Bush may have been fooling most of the people, most of the time, but he was never fooling these artists.