Barack Obama is hosting some town hall for the youths tomorrow on their favorite channel, MTV. He asked for free time, MTV said "okay." But what about the Republicans? Why won't MTV give them time to interact with stupid tweens?

Conservative mag Human Events asked a spokesperson for Viacom, the distant spaceship that owns MTV, what the deal is here. Why isn't MTV giving a free hour to the current Republican president, too?

MTV denies that the Obama hour of TV is political, despite the timing, weeks before the midterm elections.

"We're not giving an hour of free time to the president to freely express his views. We're hosting a town hall with 250 young people to ask questions of the president,"Viacom spokeswoman Kelly McAndrew said to HUMAN EVENTS.

"This is not a campaign appearance. This is a town hall discussion."

[...]

Viacom is adamant that the across-the-board network airing of the Obama hour is not political, and therefore does not demand equal time for a Republican.

This is obviously political. But being able to do these things is one advantage of having the presidency, so... yeah.

There's absolutely no reason, however, for MTV not to offer RNC chair Michael Steele a free hour of airtime with the kiddies, for balance. I think we'd all like to see that.

[Image from 2007 MTV town hall via AP]