Last night, I delivered a presentation at the Ignite Portland event titled "That's Entertainment: Politics as Theater in Campaign '08."

Ignite is an eclectic event where a series of presenters each get five minutes and 20 slides (advancing automatically every 15 seconds) to discuss virtually any topic they want. The event organizers captured each of the presentations on video. A YouTube video of my presentation follows below. As the slides themselves were often not in the camera shot, here are PDFs of the presentation slides and notes.

Here's the summary of my presentation last night:

Ignite Portland takes place as presidential primary voters go to the polls in 24 states in what is being billed as "Tsunami Tuesday." But what could be the decisive day for both the Democratic and Republican 2008 White House hopefuls arrives even as the transformation of American politics into theater is almost complete.

Politics must now compete with an oversupply of entertainment and information sources, from television, radio, books, newspapers and magazines to web sites, blogs, online video, Podcasts and more. The result is a 21st century "infotainment complex" where politics, news, opinion and entertainment merge. Politics itself is now entertainment, part drama and part competition in a passion play where confrontation, conflict and good versus evil rule the day. The journalistic search for objective truth is replaced by the presentation of ideological clashes with two - and only two - sides.

This talk examines the disturbing implications for campaign '08 and American democracy itself when a well-informed citizenry devolves into what Al Gore deemed the "well amused audience."

For more about Ignite Portland, visit the web site here or this feature story from The Oregonian.