MTV Screens Obama Town Hall Audience for Political Views, Good Looks

A planned MTV "town hall" for Obama is being pitched as a way for the president to reach out to young voters with tough questions as the midterm elections draw closer, but a casting call posted for the event suggests it will be a carefully crafted event, complete with hand-picked audience members based on their stated political views and physical attractiveness. 

The casting call requires hopeful youngsters to submit “a recent photo and short description of [their] political views,” in order “to ensure that the audience represents diverse interests and political views.”

Kelly McAndrew, a spokeswoman for Viacom, which owns MTV, told Politico that the screening was aimed at attracting a diverse audience.:

"We’re just trying to get the broadest, most diverse audience possible," she said, denying that either Republicans or ugly people would be screened out. "We want to have divergent points of view – we’re not looking for a single-view audience."

"We’re going to have a very diverse looking audience," McAndrew said. "We want gender diversity, we want ethnicity diversity, we want religious diversity, we want political view diversity. We want diversity of all kinds." (emphases mine)

It looks like they are going to work really hard to make sure this event is diverse.