Paris Hilton votes! Oh, wait, she just pretends she does. Does it matter?

The conventional wisdom says that we are in the middle of a political revolution. Politicians are hitting every stop on the information superhighway, and the public can’t get enough of this new-found intimacy with politicians — or at least the parodies of them.

OK, I realize it’s not the type of revolution you were hoping for. No regimes are toppling. No war is ending. And, until an election proves otherwise, young people still don’t like going to the polls.

But earlier this week I could get a live stream of Chris Dodd’s campaign headquarters … for free!

Ah, the more things change, the more the political process finds a new way to bore us out of our minds — and our desire to make a genuine difference.

By the way, you can still get politics on TV — although truth, unless you’re watching C-SPAN or the Colbert Report, is a little harder to come by.

Reliable Resouces, however, is attempting to bring integrity back to broadcast political coverage. A product of the Norman Lear Center at the USC Annenberg School for Communication, they have decided not to give up on television, which is still where more Americans get their news. Their mission is to develop “a set of tools designed to help news managers improve the quality and quantity of campaign coverage, and keep viewers both engaged and informed.”

If you’re like me, you’ve starting reading and watching more politics online — not because the online world is a bastion of hard-hitting, old-school journalism — but simply because the personality-driven shows at Fox/MSNBC/CNN are unwatchable, obsessed with image rather than genuine public policy issues.

So Reliable Resources has a point. Unfortunately, their “How to Improve Television Political Coverage 2008 Tip Sheet” (pdf) — which is a beautifully concise and moving statement of journalistic ideals — comes across as a list of everything that’s wrong with television news, rather than a guide to get us out of this mess. I can almost imagine the television news managers laughing at this utopian vision, wondering, “Where’s the sex?!?”

For many, debates are one of the last bastions to hear a genuine political conversation. Forced to think on their feet, politicians — not matter how well-rehearsed — inevitably offer us moments of humanity.

Depending on your perspective, though, we are either witnessing the end of debates as we know them or we are finally marshaling debates into the 21st Century. The next Democratic debate on Monday will get its questions from YouTube, from a selection of over 1300 video submissions. It’s a either a “cultural milestone” or a “superficial” gee-whiz exercise.

A subsequent AFL-CIO-sponsored “forum” will be hosted by MSNBC “anchor” Keith Olbermann — a YouTube sensation in his own right who scares many people with his center-left bombastic and self-referential sense of humor. (If you listen to him in his quieter moments, though, he a pretty sharp, self-aware guy, who knows he plays a dangerous game by becoming the type of TV personality he likes to mock).

Oh yeah, and my title promised politics on iPhones. OK, this is more about the politics of iPhones — which became the subject of a debate in a House subcommitee hearing. Annalee Newitz sums it up: “The iPhone is political because it somehow manages to capture the essence of authoritarianism in its shiny little box. Totally locked down, it runs only preapproved software on a prechosen phone network that is subject to government surveillance. Long live the iPhone! Long live democracy!”

Finally, are you wondering why you can’t just talk to a politicians face-to-face anymore? Just blame Frank Fahey from Claremont, N.H.

It appears — as has always been the case with politics — it’s not the medium that matters, it’s the questions that we ask.