Daily Digest: Waiting to Change Congress

The Web on the Candidates

• After Barack Obama gave his big speech, a lesser-known video seeking to tie Obama more closely to Jeremiah Wright and more radical black politics has been gaining in popularity. The Politico’s Jonathan Martin tracked down Lee Habeeb, the co-creator of the video, who told Martin that he and his unnamed partners were “trying to join the YouTube generation and have some fun. We wanted to see if we could get in circulation.” It’s getting there; more than 38,000 people have viewed it so far. Habeeb, the director of strategic content at the conservative Salem Radio Network, may just be having fun, but by invoking figures like Public Enemy, Malcolm X, and the Black Panthers he’s seems content to stoke racial flames.

• As we know, Bill O’Reilly is fond of tying controversial posts on community web sites to the owners of those sites, no matter how often folks like Chris Dodd try to explain to him this whole “community blogging” thing. So it isn’t surprising that O’Reilly’s network, Fox News, took Barack Obama to task for something a supporter wrote on the my.barackobama.com sub-site. An article on FoxNews.com headlined, “Obama Gets ‘Panther’ Ok” pointed to a pro-Obama post from someone purporting to be from the New Black Panther Party, thus implying a connection between the Black Panthers and Obama (the headline was soon changed). Either the online producers still don’t understand the distinction between the voices of supporters and that of a campaign, or they don’t care. (via OpenLeft)

• Imagine Digg for the media bias set, and you get Skewz.com. See an article that’s tilting to the left or right? Bookmark it on Skewz and the community will rate its level of political bias. All you have to do is get used to the word “skewz,” as in, “get out of the room, Grandpa has skewz!” (Thanks for that one, Micah).

• We’re patiently waiting for Stanford law prof Larry Lessig’s Change Congress site to launch. Lessig, who briefly flirted with a run for Congress from his home district in Silicon Valley, will announce the effort — he calls it a “movement” — today at 1:30 pm. Look out for our coverage.

• NetSquared, the yearly conference celebrating the web and social change, is hosting a Mashup Challenge for which developers and activists have been submitting ideas for socially aware mashups. Go ahead and check out the Project Gallery and vote for your faves; voting ends tomorrow.

The Candidates on the Web

• As we noted above, the video of Obama’s speech is catching fire online, becoming the most-viewed video on YouTube at the moment. The official version has been viewed more than 2,000,000 times, and there have been more than 500,000 additional views of unofficial versions. The Nation’s (and techPresident’s) Ari Melber writes that at this rate, “it will be the most watched contemporary political speech in Internet history,” emphasizing that the speech is 37 mintues long and YouTube only counts full views. Our YouTube charts are bearing witness: views of Obama’s channel have skyrocketed — again — since Tuesday’s speech.

In Case You Missed It…

Yesterday I received notifications that a slew of new Twitter users like FredThompson 32, JohnMcCain43, and DennisKucinich4 were following my tweets. Obviously someone is up to some twitchery, and I was half-determined to get to the bottom of it.

Micah Sifry asks the big questions: Will Barack Obama’s big speech on race in America be remembered for the sound-bites our broadcast media system chooses to amplify, or for the sound-blasts that our networked internet media system chooses to share and spread? To help find out, he used TagCrowd.com to boil it down to its 50 most-used words.