Mtv politics game

How do your players earn points? Based on information from PBS NewsHour and CQ Roll Call on presidential and congressional candidates, their stock can go up for town halls, tele-town halls, press availabilities and other key ways they make themselves available to answer the questions posed by voters. MTV will also award points for engagement on Facebook and Twitter and for players who share political news they find on sites like BuzzFeed and Politico.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning fact-checkers at Politifact will help determine points lost and gained based on the truthfulness of candidates' statements on the campaign trail and MTV will offer up bonus points to candidates who openly disclose campaign funding and dock points for those who don't.

Nobody said politics was pretty, but we'll also award points based on how well candidates focus on the issues instead of making personal attacks in their ads. Then again, we'll deduct points from the ones who air an excessive amount of uncivil, personal attack ads.

Lastly, RealClearPolitics will help us track which candidates do a good job of connecting with voters and as their poll numbers rise they'll earn points in the game.

As they fall, well, they're going to lose points. The reason should be obvious to anyone who lived through the presidential election of Clinton and his optimistic vision for America spoke to me as a young adult; he was the first president in my lifetime to truly reach out to the youth in a meaningful way and value their involvement in the political process and in building the country's future.

Later, of course, we'd find out that the hand he was extending to the female youth of America was aimed mostly at their breasts, but it's not like I knew that at the time. Clinton got me excited about politics, about America, and about my role in our democracy in a way that no one had before; he made me believe that I mattered; that the course the nation would take depended on me and those my age; that I indeed had a voice and a responsibility to use it -- and so I rewarded him with my support and my vote.

While the Clinton campaign will always be remembered for its canny use of youth-oriented media in its effort to mobilize young adults -- the Arsenio Hall sax solo is still the stuff of pop culture legend -- it was actually the juxtaposition of Clinton's treatment of MTV's political coverage versus his opponent's that hammered home the reason I needed to not only put my vote behind Clinton but deprive the incumbent of another term.

While Clinton treated MTV like a useful tool in his goal of bringing his message to a new generation of American voters and its audience as brimming with potential political savvy, George Bush showed aloofness, arrogance, and visible disdain for the network and the fact that he was expected to pay it any attention whatsoever.

In one particular interview with MTV News's Tabitha Soren, who was the face of the network's "Choose or Lose" campaign of the early 90s, I'll never forget the expression on Bush's face, the pissy, irritated condescension he heaped on Soren -- who was, as much as Bush didn't want to believe it, an actual journalist worthy of his respect -- for forcing him to suffer through such an indignity.

Watching that interview was what made me say, out loud, "Screw this guy. But 20 years later, MTV has changed -- drastically. Its programming is now the worst kind of noxious crap and any hint of actual social or political consciousness has long since been abandoned in favor of consistently vulgar stupidity; where there once were music videos and a surprising variety of passionate, creative and independent voices being mainlined into the pop cultural blood stream, there are now marathons of Jersey Shore and Teen Mom.

And before anyone points out the irony, no, this opinion doesn't stem from my having morphed, over the past two decades, into George Bush. MTV's nearly-all-reality format acts as a kind of cancer on youth culture, incessantly dumbing it down rather than adding anything meaningful to it. If you're a kid and you watch a lot of MTV, chances are you're an idiot. With that in mind it's no surprise that MTV has just announced, presumably for the benefit of the audience it's helped to turn into a bunch of chimps pounding at buttons and throwing feces, that its contribution to getting out the youth vote this election will be a fantasy football-style online game, only with politics.

In fact, the game is actually called "Fantasy Election " and will involve the user joining a "league" and putting together a team of potential political leaders who'll then be regularly scored according to their behavior by, God help us, Politifact, as well as Project Vote Smart.

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