Obama's Next Campaign Stop: Chat Rooms!
President Obama has scheduled a "hangout" in a Google-powered video chat room, apparently to attract hip young voters who use all that newfangled social media stuff, according to a White House announcement Monday. 
Basically, here's how the chat -- scheduled to take place Jan. 30 -- works (and gives you a false sense of having a voice in the American political system).
You can upload questions to YouTube, and the queries which are said to be most popular -- as tallied by users' votes -- will be answered by the president in a live, 45-minute video conference on Google+ Hangout.
This is kinda like several of the YouTube-based "Town Hall" meetings Obama has hosted in the past, except some of the individuals who submit questions will be asked to "interview" Obama directly, via a live video stream.
Call us old fashioned, but something leaves Runnin' Scared to think that maybe -- just maybe -- you lose that whole holding-electeds-feet-to-the-fire thing when you don't have IRL interviews, where reporters and non-media folk alike can catch a pol off guard.
But, you know, who doesn't like some well rehearsed quotes -- those perfect little sound bytes that just cheerlead a nation in peril?
Anyway, the chat is part of the Obama Administration's efforts to bolster social media engagement, The Associated Press reports. For the rest of the week, officials will be using Tuesday's State of the Union to springboard discussions. You can see the rest of the schedule here.
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