Infiltrating the MTV Casting Call

[Geee]

Human Events:




The good news: President Obama is going to take questions from audience members at a live town hall event on Thursday, October 14. The bad news: You have absolutely no chance of being in the audience, and even if you did, your questions would be pre-screened and written for you.

The live, commercial-free town hall will air on Thursday at 4:00 p.m. EDT on MTV, BET, and CMT—the co-sponsors of the event. Two hundred and fifty slots were made available to young, attractive liberal audience members. For a chance to win one of the seats, all you needed to do was answer a few questions and send a headshot of yourself to MTV.

The call for audience members spread online quickly last week. MTV was seeking “males & females, 18+” with “diverse interests and political views” to sit in the audience and possibly ask President Obama a question. Two of my colleagues were completely honest on their applications and listed themselves as “conservatives.” Unsurprisingly, they didn’t make the cut.



I decided to be a bit more tactful. I listed myself as a “moderate,” which is a relative term and also casually mentioned I attended President Obama’s inauguration, which was true. As a kicker, I threw in another fact: I was Jewish. I was essentially hedging my bet.

A few hours later I received an email that read, “Thank you for inquiring about the town hall with President Obama. We would love to meet with you to get to know you a little better.” Success! The email continued, “Please note this brief in person meeting is meant to ensure that our audience represents very diverse interests and political views.”