It's the YouTube Gab Fest. This is the Slate Political Gab Fest for Friday, November 30th, 2007. I'm Dale Willett. On this week's agenda, YouTube debates, the Middle East peace talks hiddenapolis, and blasphemy in Sudan.

And now, to introduce the discussion, here's John.

Hello and welcome to the Slate Political Gab Fest.

I'm John Dickerson here with David Plotz, Emily Bazelon, in the Slate offices in Washington, D.C.

And that extra presence you feel, that sense of authority your feeling is Andy Bowers, is here in the studio with us. Have you done this before, right, Andy? Stay on topic, John. He's so authoritative. He's not even cracking his smile. I know. Yeah, he's not getting into the kind of vibe anyway. No one cares about me, John. Also, don't you keep the way he's doing that whole NPR voice thing?

I know.

That's sort of commanding. That is putting us to shame. He's showing us up. Yeah. All right. Well, that's not the podcasting voice, Andy. That's not the voice that people out there in iPodland want to hear. Yeah. They're tired of your NPR bullying voice. I'm going for Carl Castle's job.

Well, that's the Smarmy introduction. They're tired of your NPR bullying voices. I'm going for Carl Castle's job.

Well, that's the Smarmy introduction that we do at the beginning of the Gab Fest.

And now we have the first topic, which is politics.

There was a, on the Republican side, there was a YouTube debate in Florida.

And on the Democratic side, there's just been more tumult and excitement in Iowa where polls show a back and forth between Obama and Clinton and Obama and Clinton and with John Edwards still sort of clinging on a little bit.

Either of you watch the debate?

No.

Would you stop having that?

You know, I even went down to watch it last night because I wanted to be able to say yes to that question.

It was over by the time. You couldn't stand. Well, it was, you know, it was these YouTube questions, which topics not discussed include Iran, health care, education, the energy problems of our country. And so that was, the huge chunks of this election

not discussed, there was talk of guns and abortion and lots of sort of hot button issues.

I just want to make it clear that you watched the whole debate and wrote about it to all our

listeners who sometimes think that none of us know what we're talking about. In fact, one of us does.

Wait, and I read a huge amount about it. Yeah, I read about it too. Well, so what struck you and what you read about it? Because that's how most people will intersect with this event because very few people are like me and actually watched it. I mean, not very few, but, you know. So what came to you through the papers that you apparently didn't actually read? No, because now he's going to like lord it over us to be like, no, you actually, your impression was wrong, David. I mean, it wasn't that way. No, I, why don't you talk about what you saw? And then Emily and I will give the critical appraisal. I just thought it was a big nothing. It started off with this spad.

Well, you're wrong about that because in my encounter with it, it sounded like it was very important.

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