What the Pf**k?

Jon Stewart had a fabulous bit on McCain spokeswoman Nancy Pfotenhauer's hunt for Real America, and Sarah Palin's framing of pro-America parts of this country, of Michele Bachmann's call to find out who's pro-America. Jon has a helpful formula: "Right now you may be asking yourself, 'Am I one of these un-Americans I've been hearing so much about?'"

Daily Show also had a hilarious segment on what it's like to be the Mayor of Wasilla.

Oh and Resident Congressional Nutjob Michele Bachmann said today on Politico that she never called all liberals anti-American, and that she often "reaches across the aisle"... to brand some with a Scarlet "A-A" for Anti-American no doubt.

Once again, I have to marvel -- what did we ever do before YouTube? I feel like there's twice as much energy around this election as any other I've seen in my life, and I believe it's due in great part, to the advances in Net technology. Now you can watch speeches, gaffes, examine photos in ways we never could before, and more people are participating because of it.

Arianna Huffington points out the enormous role that the new media has played in this election. "The Internet has enabled the public to get to know candidates in a much fuller and more intimate way than in the old days (i.e. four years ago), when voters got to know them largely through 30-second campaign ads and quick sound bites chosen by TV news producers. Compare that to the way over 6 million viewers (on YouTube alone) were able to watch the entirety of Obama's 37-minute speech on race -- or the thousands of other videos posted by the campaign and its supporters. Back in the Dark Ages of 2004, when YouTube (and HuffPost, for that matter) didn't exist, a campaign could tell a brazen lie, and the media might call them on it. But if they kept repeating the lie again and again and again, the media would eventually let it go (see the Swiftboating of John Kerry). Traditional media like moving on to the next shiny thing. But bloggers love revisiting a story. So when Palin kept repeating her bridge to nowhere lie, bloggers kept calling her on it. Andrew Sullivan, for one, has made a cottage industry of calling Palin on her lies. And eventually, the truth filtered up and cost McCain credibility with his true base: journalists.