Ron Paul Fielding Questions After The CNN YouTube Debate

Congressman Ron Paul has a one-trick-pony approach to his candidacy that is based on classic conservative ideology. In this video made after the CNN / YouTube Republican Debate, we see how Ron Paul adresses questions.

CNN / YouTube Debates - My Message To Steve Grove and Dave Bohrman

This video and post present my message to Steve Grove, the News and Politics editor for CNN, and to Dave Bohrman, the Executive Producer of the CNN / YouTube Debates for CNN.



My take is that CNN/YouTube was lucky to realize the ratings record that was set for the debate, and this was achieved for two reasons: 1) the time of year -- it's the fall holiday season, and 2) the fact that all of the Republican Presidential Candidates were there, which is no small feat.

Still, CNN/YouTube handled this debate differently than the Democratic Debate. First, the level of promotion of the event was dramatically scaled back compared to the first. Second, there were fewer questions picked out of the 5,200 that were submitted : 34 questions versus 43 for the first debate. Third, there was an annoying tendency to pick Blacks who submitted questions about Black issues, when there were videos from people who were not Black, but did ask questions about Blacks and the Republican Party.

(As a momentary aside, I think that practice shows an America that does not exist. It shows an America where only Blacks care about Black or minority issues, and not the real America, where a diverse set of people care about all Americans, and will ask questions regarding how Blacks are treated. To not show this -- the real America -- is criminal and paints America as far more racist than it really is. This country has come a long way and is better than it's ever been.)

CNN/YouTube also didn't handle its video talent properly. In the video I present myself as an example. In the begining I was -- and still am -- part of the sample video for the CNN/YouTube Debates. I'm also on the YTDebates channel, at least as of this writing and you can see my photo on the channel here in this blog post. So when I learned that YouTubers were being flown out by Google to the debates, I thought -- rightfully -- that somone would call.

Nope. Didn't happen.

I also sent an inquiry to determine if this was the case, and didn't get an answer from Steve Grove.

So it makes one wonder -- in this case, me -- what's going on over at CNN / YouTube and why they treat people in this way - or at least me. But given the thousands of people who have made and submitted videos, and the other talent that was promoted, I can't believe it's just me that had the problem.

CNN itself showed little regard for my time when they contact me for the first debate. Three show producers contacted me separately and in one case I thought I was to get on a flight. Then didn't get a call back. Then was essentially made to wait for a few days, then got a call saying I wasn't being flown out, only to get a call from another show flying me to New York.

Nuts.

What bothered me this time around was not that I was not called, but Steve didn't answer my emails attempting to learn what he and YouTube were going to do. If they'd said "Zennie, we don't need you this time", or "Hey CNN thinks you're an Obama supporter, and they've got a problem with that" then I'd be fine. I just wanted communication. I didn't get it.

As for the debate itself there were a lot of problems in addtion to the ones I discussed above. Not a single video question on Health Care was presented, leaving one to think the Republican Party doens't care about it. Is that CNN's call or the Republican Party? One has to assume they were working together. But in eliminating that series of questions, CNN / YouTube and the Republican Party pissed off a country.

Plus, CNN / YouTube did't tell video submitters they were going to do this, and the video makers -- given the Democratic Debate with YouTube, had full reason to think they would do so. Moreover, CNN / YouTube didn't tell anyone what they were going to do -- I learned it from CNN's David Bohrman being quoted in the New York Times.

That's not good.

In closing, I think CNN / YouTube owes YouTubers an appology and I'm also disappointed with how Steve Grove handled things this time around. I have high standards for him and I expect that -- givent the historic nature of what he's doing with YouTube and CNN that he will reach and maintain them. It's not personal -- I like Steve -- just professional.

I don't know Dave Bohrman, but I expect that he's a fine and upstanding person who will take these crticisms to heart and act on them. I think all of us want to see the CNN / YouTube system reach its potential.

CNN / YouTube Debate - Nursing Homes & Private Equity Firms

There's a disturbing trend in the nursing home industry today, and forms the basis for my CNN / YouTube debate question submitted at 10:45 PM PST, 11-25-07, just under the deadline!

The question is are you as a presidential candidate concerned that private equity firms are buying nursing homes, laying off staff, and pocketing the difference, resulting in poor service? If you are concerned, what will you do about it?

CNN / YouTube Republican Debate On Wednesday - Not Too Late To Get In Your Video!

A creation of The CNN / YouTube Debate System

On Wednesday, the CNN / YouTube Republican Debate will be held in St. Petersburgh, Florida. This is the long-awaited second of the debates of the successful CNN / YouTube partnership. I expect the star of the debate not to be the videos, but exchanges between Ron Paul and the other GOP candidates -- forget the "Quarter Question."

As some of your know who are regular visitors to this space, my question -- "The Quarter Question" -- was part of the Democratic CNN / YouTube debate process. And as some of you remember, I was a guest on the CNN Roland Martin Show as well as on local Channel Five here in Oakland. So basically CNN and YouTube launched my career as a political commentator. But because of that, my questions may not be picked this time around. I submitted nine of them, and I've got one more up my sleeve before the November 25th deadline.

Which reminds me to tell you that there's still time to get your questions in. Regardless of what CNN does with me, I think it's the greatest debate format ever done and is so right for its time, it could not have been done even four years ago.

Now as far as advice, my suggestion is to stick to questions that concern the Republican Party. I've noticed that a heck of a lot of the submissions -- including mine -- have a "democratic" bent to them. I also read in the NYTimes that CNN Washington Bureau Chief David Borhman has stated that questions which pander to CNN will be rejected, so that excludes one question I submitted and was inspired by a segment of last week's "CNN Situation Room."

But, in their racially ignorant way, the NYTimes -- which employs a writer who managed to present me as two different people in two consecutive paragraphs in an NYT article before the last CNN / YouTube debate -- managed to miss the obvious question to ask Bohrman: if by picking questions that deal with "Republican Issues" they will skip questions concerning race. At a time when the party's beset by divisive questions regarding how it treats African Americans, I can't imagine a debate that avoids that issue.

We shall see.

Zennie's Vlog Of The CNN Roland Martin Show

This is a vlog not so much of my trip to New York to be on the CNN Roland Martin Show, but of the time leading up to the show in the green room and the show itself. It features all of the CNN / YouTube Stars who appeared on the show: CNN / YouTube debate stars, Kim Friedrich, Lucas "Brown Eyes", and Lori Harfenist aka "The Resident" and me. (Almost forgot about me.)

This video's for anyone who wonders how a person comes to be on a TV program and how they're taken care of by a network. It was a great experience. I have a lot of people to thank which I do in the video. This is also for the others who were on the show, but may not have gotten a copy of their segment.

I-35 Minneapolis Bridge Collapsing | America Ignored A $1 Billion Problem

This is the terrible result of an infrastructure problem that's been known for decades and has yet went unadressed and ignored -- perhaps until now.

Way back in 1999, we were warned :

"The American Society of Civil Engineers has released a Report Card for America's Infrastructure, assigning letter grades for the nation's public infrastructure and environment. The ASCE gave the U.S. an average grade of "D," and said it will require more than one trillion dollars and a new national public-private partnership to fix it."

The same one trillion that we're now spending on a needless war in Iraq.

CNN / YouTube Debates - Send The Republican Presidential Candidates A Message

Many in the YouTube community are very upset that several Republican candidates -- Sam Brownback, Rudy Giuliani, Mike Huckabee, Duncan Hunter, Mitt Romney, and Tom Tancredo as of this writing -- have refused to participate in the Republican CNN / YouTube Presidential Debates. My idea is to simply send each one a video message. For more information, click on the video!

CNN / YouTube Debates - Senator Joe Biden Answers My "In God We Trust" Question

This was my question number 36 in the list of videos presented at the CNN / YouTube Debates:

The cathedral behind me is the perfect backdrop for this question. This quarter reads "United States of America." And when I turn it over, you find that it reads "liberty, in God we trust." What do those words mean to you? Thank you.

CNN/YouTube Debates - CNN Not Community Should Pick Videos

Read the latest update on the debate process from CNN!


I listen to NPR and heard CNN Washington Bureau Chief David Bohrman talk about the upcoming CNN / YouTube Debates on Wedneday of this week of this post.

The anchor paired him -- for a moment -- with Joshua Levy from TechPresident.com, and Josh made a statement which caused me to shudder: that the community should select the questions online.

Absolutely not.

The reason I state this is that as one who works online, has been a YouTube contributor, and make simulations online for students in the classroom, I can tell you that people send to vote with their libido.

In other words, if the question's posed by a lovely white woman, it's more likely to be selected over a question by someone -- like myself-- who's black and male, and this even if the former's question was not in compliance with rules!

YouTube seems to attract a segment of society that not only is racist, but expresses it in different ways. This is not the majority, but it's a group that's disproportionately young and very misguided. But that group aside, the habit of clicking on a cute female face is the number one YouTube habit.

Thus, it's good for CNN to be "the leveler" if you will. I've never favored "mob rule" and I certainly advise against it here. If you look at the range of questions asked thus far, the vast majority concern education, as well as -- I count -- at least 25 on Darfur!

People use this event as a medium to communicate their personal concerns and not so much questions that we can use to determine who the best presidential candidate is.

At any rate, keep up the great work on this, CNN and YouTube (Steve Grove, specifically). Also I must add that the number of submissions is about the max you're going to get for this. It may be at about 2,000 by the time the deadline's reached. Given that there are four barriers to entry: time, equipment, knoweldge, and software -- and the marketing effort, which is great -- the number of respondents dwindles to about that number we see.

Also, I'll bet $$ that about 50 percent of the questions were made with Apple Computers, as it's easier to make a video because Macs come equipped to cause that. I have two Mac Books, for example. I can tell when a submitter used a MacBook by where their head's placed in relation to the camera.