From a terrific piece in the Washington Post by Jose Antonio Vargas:

After Obama’s speech on race, cable news anchors repeatedly replayed sound bites from the Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s sermons, which were uploaded on YouTube and linked on countless blogs. Videos of Obama’s 37-minute speech, however, surpassed those clips in views. So far, Obama’s speech has been viewed more than 4 million times, making it the most viewed video uploaded by a presidential candidate yet on the site.

As Jose has pointed out, YouTube only counts completed views in its totals, which means not only have more people started watching Obama’s 37-min clip, millions finished watching it. (It’s tough to count the total number who have watched Wright clips since there are 1,200 hits at YouTube on “Jeremiah Wright,” but not all of those are the relevant clips.)

This reminds me of Jeff Jarvis‘ comment at a blogging/journalism conference at the Berkman center back when journalists were in denial about the disruption they (and we) are facing. “Mark my words,” said Jaris (although probably not exactly in those words). “The media is going to obsessively cover the Michael Jackson trial, but it’ll barely make a ripple in the blogosphere.” Right on the money.

The corollary of this is: The world is far more interesting than the mainstream media have let on. Blogging is all about discovering just how interesting the world really is.

Anyway, Jose’s article is a great overview of the changes in politics the Net is wringing. He makes a case for hope. Yes, hope is possible, permitted, and perhaps required.