Dean Scream
First of all, it was the "insiders" who promoted the Dean scream. And enormously distorted the context.
Second, the "scream" was turned into a "gaffe" because the established media pushed the idea that it was so, and crafted the narrative around that idea. If that video clip had been taken by a random audience member and posted at YouTube, sans distortions, nobody would have thought it particularly remarkable, and no narrative would have developed.
In fact, most people who DID see the video independent of the media chatter about it basically asked, "What's the big deal?"
No such ambivalence with George Allen. He made a blatantly racist comment, TWICE. There's no way to spin that away.
I don't know the detailed history of that 'Dean scream' clip, but someone must have digitally altered the audio track in order for the 'scream' to get so much resonance and clarity. (In other words, someone 'sweetened' the sound -- probably by: (1) copying sections of 'scream noise' on the audio track, (2) then pasting those copied sections OVER the existing background noise, then (3) recalibrating the audio frequencies on the tape. It simply defies logic that the 'scream' would have been so dominant in a room with crap acoustics.)
I'd bet that "Dean scream' was classic disinformation, done by someone(s) with a sinister, sink-Dean agenda. Someone must have digitally reconfigured the audio track of that incident. Then, the press carried it: over, and over, and... over... and...
As for the George Allen clip, I don't believe it was altered. That's part of why it's so shocking and obscene.
Nevertheless, all the whining and wailing about how YouTube is changing things is silly. Social structures all over the world have 'flattened' and YouTube is consistent with this phenomena. Wailing about it, or trying to legislate about it, makes about as much sense as telling Prometheus to go give all the fire back to Zeus and let the poor humans starve and freeze in the dark.
I recognize that YouTube undercuts the influence of some very well-paid people. I recognize those people will wail and whine about YouTube. They're missing a much larger, more important set of dynamics.
They're spitting into the wind.
