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My cellphone began to buzz happily at the beginning of Monday night’s debate as people began to inform me of my next several seconds of fame: my purty face went up on the big screen as Anderson Cooper chastised the Biden campaign for attempting to “stuff the ballot box” with the “Then What” question initiative I helped out on:

I had a feeling that would happen once I saw the revised question script; its short-interval repetition of “Joe Biden” and other buzz-phrases made it feel like a product of the Ron Paul-bots. But hey, it still got the question right out there front and center!

At the Google after-party (stay tuned for dazzling video), I snagged a couple minutes with heart-throb Anderson Cooper and asked him what he thought of the debate format, much as I discussed with John King. This time, however, since he was particularly control-freaky with presenting the questions the way he wanted, I asked about the issue of user input on which questions were selected.

(Download Quicktime format)

Cooper: “The technology is evolving so quickly that I can certainly foresee a time in the not-too-distant future where we can certainly figure out some way to have it be a much more inclusive process in terms of picking the videos. I would certainly hope so.”

Well, according to Prezvid.com, that not-too-distant future is now; sorry, CNN. ABC is hosting a Republican presidential debate on August 5, and they’re soliciting video questions from voters and allowing us to vote and comment on them. “Ratings won’t be the sole determinant of what is used, but it will influence ABC News,” reports Jeff Jarvis, and the video questions won’t be the only ones asked, with George Stephanopopoulopopoulus providing his own. Considering how much talk time AC2pi got on Monday, I don’t think that’s a big difference from CNN.

It’s a good thing I’ve got a video outlet to try and ding Rudy on his lousy foreign policy perspective, because I just read on TechPresident.com that Giuliani is the first Repub to bolt from the scary scary YouTube format, bowing out of the next CNN debate.

Tags: anderson cooper, cnn, youtube, giuliani