McCain: "I Would Rather Win an Election Than Keep My Soul..."

Andrew Postman, son of the late media scolar and educationist Neil Postman, wrote the following in an e-mail to the Media Ecology listserve:

While I honestly respect opinions on both sides of the political divide, certain behavior in the last couple of weeks finally moved me to action. Over the weekend, I taught myself iMovie and made this movie, which is now on YouTube. It will take under four minutes to watch. If you think the video is of use to pass along to others or post somewhere, please do. If not, not. I realize there are people out there who will disagree with my conclusion. I respect that.

I am more than happy to accomodate Andrew's request.

It is a good first-time video and shows the power of this new converged technology. Anyone -- even a "grown-up" educated in the tradition of literacy -- with a computer can find both a public voice and a public forum for his/her ideas and views.

While the mainstream mass media keep America IN THE DARK, the internet, blogs, vlogs, YouTube and other new media might just be the thing to keep some semblance of democracy alive. To be sure, as Neil Postman has pointed out, it is not going to be democracy as we have previously understood it, and we should not take that fact lightly or face it without some degree of trepidation.

But the alternative is to give in to just the kind of forces that Andrew Postman points to in his debut video.

I hope we see more from him.