BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from the Feehery Theory
This may sound counter-intuitive, but I kind of feel sorry for Bobby Etheridge.
He is the North Carolina Congressman who is the new YouTube hero. He is the guy who attacked some college kids who had the nerve to ask him if he supported the Obama agenda on camera.
The flip-cam is becoming the bane of every elected official.
Flip-cams are small little cameras that often have high-definition quality, don’t require lights, and pick up every utterance on tape.
Both Republicans and Democrats and their campaign committees use college age kids to harass vulnerable politicians into saying something stupid or doing something stupid on a flip camera, and then having those clips from the flip cam uploaded virally on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter etc.
The first politician to be YouTubed was George Allen, the former Virginia Senator who was expected to run for President. Legend has it that Allen lost his reelection campaign in 2006 because, in small part, he was caught calling a college kid a Macaaca, which apparently is some sort of racial slur on camera. That video was uploaded on YouTube, it made its way onto to CNN and the rest is history.