Is there anything really "new" about the media?

It seems to me what's really new is not so much content as the speed with which it's shared -- and the numbers of people who can share it.

The much-buzzed about Bill'n'Hillary Sopranos spoof is really an old hat trick for the couple, who made pioneered parodic videos during his eight years in the White House. In 1994, the Clintons satirized the "Harry and Louise" ads that helped bring down her health care plan in a video made for the annual Gridiron Dinner.

In 1994, played the "Harry and Louise" health care in front of the Gridiron Club; another year, it was Hillary as Forrest Gump before the same audience of newspaper reporters, publishers and assorted Washington VIPs. The tour de force came in 2000, when Bill Clinton brought down the house at the White House correspondents dinner with a video that showed him as a lonely lameduck house husband, watching the laundry tumble in the White House basement, while his wife hurried off to her campaign dates. (In one scene, he chases her car down the White House driveway, paper bag in hand, hollering "Honey, you forgot your lunch.").

The difference is that this time around, the Clintons' initial audience was the world at large. The earlier videos aired before the Inside the Beltway press corps, like an off-Broadway tryout, before they were released to the news shows by the White House.

To me, this demonstrates two things: 1) the democratizing force of the Internet -- no longer is it just a privileged few who get to see the nation's powerful poke fun at themselves and 2) in an online world, politicians need to take more risks. No longer can you afford to try out your jokes before the hometown crowd to see if they work. Now you go straight to the mass audience. I wonder if it will liberate some, but intimidate others from trying at all?