Another View: On the presidential campaign and the Internet

The Associated Press offers a look at editorials from across the country and around the world

Have to admit, this is fun.

Thanks to the advent of viral videos, this is becoming the most entertaining presidential campaign since Ross Perot blamed “Republican operatives” for attempting to sabotage his daughter’s wedding.

Thank you, young techno people with lots of time on your hands, for sexing up this presidential campaign with the hoochie-coochie girl in “I got a crush ... on Obama,” a low-budget, independent video spoof that quickly exceeded a million views in just four days after its release last week. ...

Thank you, whoever captured John Edwards proving he didn’t get his money’s worth with his $400 haircut. There’s Edwards on camera, spending two full minutes fussing, coiffing, spraying and finger-combing his ‘do into place, in a video set to the strains of “I feel pretty.”

... And thank you, Internetizens, for breaking the candidates’ traditional lock on their own usually banal messages, and revealing just the right smidgen of subtextual truth. ...

Are the candidates’ positions on Iraq, health care, poverty and taxes obscured behind this push to turn politics into a Fluffernutter sandwich? Sure. But maybe, once they’ve lured people into paying attention, they’ll blind-side them with some substance.
——Chicago Tribune, On the Net: http://www.chicagotribune.com