These debates have been pretty comical over all on the American political scene. Following them can be excruciatingly painful at times as the candidates appear more and more as simulated caricatures of politicians. Part of this is obviously how the media frame the debates both communicatively and visually. All in all the candidates seem to play out their pre-scripted roles, nailing their talking points on que, or not. Occasionally a little personality squeaks through the stage managers carefully orchestrated production. Senator Joe Biden can be very funny and this from last nights Democratic debate was just too funny.
Giuliani is "probably the most underqualified man since George Bush to seek the presidency, Rudy Giuliani - there's only three things he mentions in a sentence: a noun and a verb and 9/11."
It's quite interesting right now to compare both the media coverage and debate formats in the US and Denmark. I think some comparative analysis of various political and media styles between the two countries could be interesting.
I've been looking at campaign uses of websites and web 2.0 Internet platforms and am working on an Op-ed piece for publication. Last night I spent an hour or so looking at the Danish campaign websites and thinking about not only how they incorporate new media but also what their web presence and use of communication technologies tell us about their ideology. Radikale Venstre is probablly leading in online messaging and internet based social networking. I'm at a disadvantage in that my Danish is only passable. I think there could be a great article written for a Danish newspaper. Contact me if anyone is interested in working on a collaborative comparative article for either a Danish and/or English market.
Finally, and this is mostly for the graduate and Ph.d students, I've got some platforms available for getting readership exposure on some of the U.S. based political and academic blogs. This could be a good platform for working on your 'intellectual public writing' as Shelly Fisher Fishkin suggested. Some of these blogs have reached a fair level of notoriety and many are attracting academics and established journalists. As a non-published graduate student I see writing and publishing on the periphery as an avenue for writing development and low-barrier publication.
