FLASHING HOWARD DEAN: Last night a buddy of mine invited me to come to the city tonight and take part in two separate activities-the next big flash mob, followed by a Howard Dean For President campaign rally. I said no thanks, much as it would've been sort of cool to conflate the two big internet phenomena of 2003- sort of like finding some way to combine "All Your Base Are Belongs to Us" with "The A.I. Game" back in the summer of '01.
I'm not a Dean supporter, and while personally, I thought the flash mob phenomenon was funny at first, it's sort of gotten tiresome now that it's going on just about everywhere in the country, if not the world. Still, I don't see too much in common between that craze and the rise of Howard Dean- one is the faddish, internet-driven, soon-to-be-flash-in-the-pan venture of a bunch of bored and misguided kids with nothing better to do. The other is flash mobs.