Interactive Politrix

Peace Everybody... it's Naijankee here...your favorite halfrican from the East Coast.

This evening, I am watching MTV2's interactive dialogue with presidential candidate Sen. John Edwards. I am wary of this $80 haircut sportin', Southern drawlin', tax baitin'...man. However, I am watching; challenging myself to become increasingly knowledgeable with regards to mainstream politics ( AND boosting my B.S. endurance factor!). As I watch John Edwards dodge questions and dance around difficult dialogues, I am astounded by the intense, politicized energy exploding from the live audience (composed entirely of students from the University of New Hampshire), as well as the young adults also questioning Edwards via Instant Messenger. Shocking as it may be, MTV and Edwards' (tired) campaign are co-terminously engaging young people...many genuinely hungry for real talk. Talking in the real terms of those of us who have only gained the right to vote within the last decade, the Internet is central to the moderation of Edwards' stage time. Young adults IM questions while they simultaneously measure their perception of John Edwards performance with an online polling pie chart...demanding that politics be a show that is at least as interactive as it is semantic and deceptive.

MTV must be putting the same "magic" in their programming that McDonald's puts in its fries...because I was soon enthralled by this whole political theater with John Edwards and my own dis-ease with white, privileged, heterosexual male politics in an overgrown slavocracy/heterosexist/capitalist hodgepodge heightening the drama. I delved even deeper when a young sista who reminded me so much of myself in the first year of college nervously gathered her thoughts to ask a provactive question of a luke-warm candidate. Her presence was as profound as her question---the tensions of polite bull ishing, socioeconomic consciousness and taking up the burdened voice of marginalized "Others" weighing her voice down---as she composed herself to ask a question that presses us all. While watching her, you feel for her...as you will also feel her...having been that "wobbly-voiced" sista trying to speak-out in (what likely presents itself as hostile and) an uncertain place.

However, my elation with Black women (literally) speaking to hegemony and political access in the real-time terms of contemporary political participation was quickly kicked in the proverbial gut when Sen. Edwards opened his mouth. He is seldom innocent of bifurcated thinking...constantly using polarized examples race and religion to create trite responses to complex questions and this instance was clearly no exception.



His response to this young Sista of the Sun was not only flattening but also indicative of his allegiance to liberal ideologies that encourage band-aid measures of systematic cruelties.

John Edwards...you solidified my dislike of you when you purported yourself to be the Good O'l' Boy candidate in a presidential campaign bid against a white woman and a biracial man, but now the power of global information access and a courageous young sista have largely exposed you as what many of us already knew you to be: short-sighted and ill-equipped to challenge the disparity you claim you've got the critical insight to correct.

Sis, what do you think?