Tales from the Mashup: Charlie Rose, Bill Maher, the Ten Commandments and Elizabeth Taylor's 7th Husband
When Kit Seelye of the New York Times asked about our thinking going into planning our first-ever online-only Candidate Mashup, I told her that putting on a presidential debate these days is a bit like being Elizabeth Taylor's seventh husband. You know what to do, but you don't know how to make it different.
Well now, our candidate mashup puts you in charge of shaping exactly what kind of viewing experience you want to have. For details on how this will work, click here.
Phase One of the Mashup was completed Wednesday afternoon when Charlie Rose finished questioning each of the eight Democratic candidates, using questions from the thousands that were sent in to Yahoo!, Slate and HuffPo. Charlie's intimate, personal style was perfectly suited to the online universe.
And then, after questions on Iraq, health care and education (Hillary Clinton made news when she took a hard swipe at Obama and Edwards as "inauthentic" for slamming her for taking money from lobbyists while they accept money from the people who employ those same lobbyists), there was the "wild card" question asked of each of the candidates by Bill Maher, eliciting some of the most provocative answers of the day. Don't miss Bill grilling Obama on the contradictions in the Ten Commandments or asking Chris Dodd about legalizing medical marijuana.
To catch a sneak preview of some of the video from the event, read John Dickerson's account in Slate and see our HuffPost Reports coverage of some of the questions by clicking here and here and here. Now that the Mashup player has gone live on Yahoo!, you can take control of designing the debate you want to see -- picking and choosing what issues you want to hear about and which candidates you want to hear from. Watch it all or slice-and-dice. Dig deep into one issue - or put two candidates head-to-head.
The questions have been asked. The answers have been given. The video is categorized and coded. The rest is up to you. Get ready to Mash.
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As to why our elected representatives "voted for the war",it seems that everyone is enamoured with power(why else do politicians vie toget elected?)and what better way to demonstrate power than to authorize a war. It is apparently human nature--otherwise why are computer war games so popular.
thank you AH, excellante, maybe next time, let each segment have 15-minutes.
I tried out the Yahoo debate site. Brilliant! Congratulations! This is an excellent idea. Being able to sequence the statements in any order feels like an actual exploration of the ideas.
Also, it seems like the candidates were afforded a little more time than in the normal debates. This is also a huge improvement.
Thank you for being creative.
This is the first time I'm reading cogent, logical and thoughtful responses by viewers. What prompted this? I suspect the liberals are slowly waking up from their steady dose of brain sedatives. So now your fiesty? Good! What are you prepared to do about it then? I look forward to the next few weeks as more liberals get angry enough to stop typing away on the internet and instead start some serious civil disobedience. Better to die on your feet than live on your knees! This IS the last gasp of democracy.
anybody else notice how nervous bill maher made hillary, obama & edwards?...."that bill, he's so funny...blah,blah,blah..."
maybe it's because bill does ask the right questions, the ones they're not prepared to answer.
and as for joe biden...totally lost my respect. does everything have to be about terrorism? doesn't he realize that everyday issues like corn syrup in our kids food and pollution in our air are important to us "little people".
For a critique of this "mash up", go to http://www.npr.org. On a show called Day to Day, you will find an interview with Jeff Jarvis and his take on this. A small spoiler, it's not positive. But you're big enough to take bad reviews along with the good ones, right? And perhaps make the next one better?
Hey, did anyone notice that our national debt just crossed the $9 Trillion threshold in the last week or two? That is trillion, with a "t"!
Holy shit, does anyone care? What do the candidates think? Do they care?
And while we're at it, what do the candidates think about our burgeoning trade imbalance? Do any of the candidates care about that?
Withdrawal reduces the chances of pregnancy while the failure to withdraw increases what you are trying to avoid. Perhaps this explains why most women object to continuing Bush’s war.
Is it me or did Hillary seem crazy when she answered Maher. That cackle sent chills down my spine.
Is that the Dean Scream Redux?
I am a big fan of Huff n Maher... How 'bout we put Hilary in the whitehouse, Barak as VP so he can get the next 8 yrs and Edwards as Speaker of the House. We need a team of dems that won't just turn a blind eye to the needs of the ppl or just do what their "cronies" pay them to do. Gotta stick Dodd in there somewhere, cause he's for the stoner's.
Aside from the content of the answers, I have issues with the so-called "mashup" format. I feel like I was given the wrong idea of what it was going to be. I expected it to be composed entirely of questions submitted by HuffPost readers. Instead, it's almost entirely questions from Charlie Rose and Bill Maher, who don't need a "mashup" forum to ask their questions.
Much as I like both of them, this mashup is nothing more than a technological gimmick which would have just as easily been accomplished by slicing and dicing into topics the candidates' appearances on Rose's and Maher's respective shows.
Sorry, Arianna, this just plays as a couple of your pals getting an inside track to ask questions that they as media heavyweights could ask on their own shows.
Good questions for Hillary and co.
http://OsiSpeaks.com or http://OsiSpeaks.org
Get wildcard questions from your readers instead of your celeb bloggers. I really don't think you're going to get a provacative response from any of the candidates.
Did anyone ask Hillary about nearly letting a modern day Hitler slip away from justice, did anyone ask Hillary about the social security surplus of I think 500 Billion that the conveniently used up to "balance the budget," did anyone ask Hillary abuot her failure to modernized the defense department at least with better and more body armor, did anyone ask Hillary about what good bedfellows Iran was with Bill and herself, did anyone ask Hillary why she thought it was the most democratic campaign strategy to get into a race in record early fashion, despite having another full time job, and doing so hoping to lock up the big money and thus prevent party opponents from standing a chance with just the little peoples money, did anyone ask Hillary to just please release what is left of her White House papers so we can find out if she has proof of the "experience" she claims she has? Not sorry I missed it.
That same 'Hitler' that Commander Codpiece doesn't think it worthwhile to pursue - for over 6 years now? (Hitler was dead in his bunker long before that amount of time lapsed.)
The SS surplus has always been used by the gov for spending, but is still there in the form of iou's, which, with all the tax cut and pork barrel spending of the Republican power trip of the last 7 years + has made SS more vulnerable and the iou's more worthless. Remember "privatize"? And where would you have put your privatized account - in high interest promising mortgage loan companies?
The dismantling of US combat forces in lieu of techno-weaponry, i.e., we can kill more by the use of remote push buttons than the use of combat brigades, a la 'shock & awe', was the brainchild of Reaganesque Starwar policies and the Cheney Defense Dept. during the 1st Bush presidency and carried forward. (Who, besides sonny-boy, was ever planning for a troop invasion of a foreign nation bigger than Granada?) The 1st Gulf War was a coalition of combat troops from many participants and afterwards was not judged to be needed anymore. And don't forget who profited most from those troop cutting military decisions - the Raytheons, Halliburtons, and General Dynamics of our beloved military industrial complex, who, btw, have historically been the big pocket friends of the GOP -oh, and in case you hadn't noticed, Cheney's old firm, Halliburton, just stopped doing business with "Axis of Evil" Iran, in freaking APRIL of this year! Contractual agreements and all that, you know.
Get your facts and military ideologues right, bub.
Questioners avoid asking: Why are we fighting a tribal war in Iraq?
Who are our enemies? Sunnis? Or, Shiites?
Both hate each other, and they hate us.
Elements of Al Qaeda in Iraq are not the terrorists we want to stop. Kill 50, and they're quickly replaced.
We should be tackling infiltration by Al Qaeda into America. Borders and especially ports of entry should be our strong holds against admitting more of these radicals who set up cells and train kids to hate us.
No? Take a look at what happened in Leeds, England. Remember the buses blown apart? Who did it? Radical Islamists who fled their own countries and set up cells in English mosques where they train kids how to become suicide bombers.
The two most recent attempts to blow up Britain failed, when the bombers either chickened out, or, forgot how to press the right button.
Our own shores should be the main concern. We can never undo what we have done in Iraq. The Middle East has a history of being invaded by colonial powers.
Dennis and Barrack are more forthright in their opinions on the mess in Iraq. Richards also stands tall on the issue too. Now Biden is talking tough.
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Posted September 13, 2007 | 12:28 AM (EST)