Torn about the MySpace/MTV Edwards dialogue

Did anyone else see this? You can watch now at MySpace (though it isn’t working for me right now), and at MTV.com. Here’s the thing. In theory, it was a great idea. Get a candidate to have a conversation with actual young people, and let other young people submit questions and their reactions online, all at once. The tool they used is called Flektor, which certainly sounds fancy enough.
The problem was, as one of the other bloggers who attended mentioned, is that the event really felt like the same old boring town hall meeting candidates have been doing forever. John Edwards can talk passionately about a lot of things, but today he kind of droned on until the last 10 minutes. if the point is getting a lot of information to the (ugh, terrible phrase) MTV generation, you have to be a little more interesting, and for the love of Gideon, brief. Though, he did end up with something like 93% approval from web viewers, so maybe I just have a sort attention span.
I’m pretty sure I don’t have to tell you that feminist issues were not a large part of the event. However, the word feminist was uttered. By a student talking about the need for more diverse authors in college curricula.
Now that I’ve talked a lot of shit about the event, let me tell you what I liked. The fact that they’re trying. This morning we had a chance to talk to Jeff Berman, SVP of Public Affairs at MySpace, and former Chuck Schumer staffer. He talked about harnessing the power of MySpace’s huge network to make democracy more participatory, especially for young people. Yes please. So, overall it was fun. Got to meet some nice poeple, and I think this format has promise, it just needs some development. Anyway, most of the other candidates have agreed to participate in the future, so we’ll see how it develops.