HT: Planetizen

Civic engagement denizens, be careful what you wish for. A New York Times article elaborates on the Strange New World of Public Participation resulting from the traveling “town-hall-meeting-palooza” of the past two weeks:

The result was a series of made-for-YouTube moments, with video clips played endlessly on the Internet and cable television, the logical extreme, perhaps, of an era when Joe the Plumber is really named Sam. Along the way, another kind of Joe — Joe Six-Pack, the average Joe — seemed to disappear, pushed into the background by crowds bearing scripted talking points and signs.

“We’re living in the era of the viral town meeting,” said Ross Baker, a political scientist at Rutgers University who once worked as a Senate aide. “I remember back in the ’70s getting identically worded telegrams in the thousands. What’s happened now is the technology of protest has metastasized, and it threatens to overwhelm the relationship between members of Congress and their constituents.”

The advent of the Internet has created “hyper-public” spaces where the object of “discourse” (I’m being generous calling it that) is an audience of millions even if the pretext is a town hall meeting of dozens. Here’s Arlen Specter getting bum-rushed (I know, I’m 39, what do you want!) by his constituents.

The combination of a contentious issue, public forums, cell phone cameras and You Tube is a primeval soup for loud, outrageous rhetoric that can fill the 24 hour news hole. The question is whether members interpret this as the pulse of their constituents or an orchestrated set of activists using new technology effectively. I find all of this wanting…. If you’re going to make a scene at a town hall meeting, it should look like this:

Zuma Dogg Fights City Hall – Watch today’s top amazing videos here

I’d like my own Johnnie Cochrane team