"You're not the press...you're just totally a Democrat and you're totally with a camera that's used for one opportunity for me to slip."
—Chris Shays, at a recent press conference
Yes, Shays' flip-out was bewildering and amusing – not because he let the veil slip (he did so on purpose, believe me), and not because I was actually pointing a camera at him (I wasn't), but because he chose to stage this particular hissy-fit at his own press conference.
It illustrates an interesting point about the changing relationship between those who make the news and those who consume it. It occurred to me, in doing my little write-up of the event, that those reading MLN really know the backstory to an appearance like this, and you're already familiar with the bullshit lines that make up the carefully-designed pull-quotes laid for the pros to pick up.
When Shays said that I was not a journalist, I think he recognized something that I didn't until just now, which is that I (and a lot of us here) are not especially interested in the artifice that he wishes to present by holding this kind of event: I want news that I can use, and am happy to discard the husks of puffery and revisionist history that he surrounds it with.
Shays, to his credit, is taking a principled stand, and not just against partisan bloggers: in one particularly intense exchange this spring, the Congressman revealed that he genuinely believes that the American media – by offering coverage that focuses on the loss of U.S. military – is literally creating the conditions for our "defeat" in Iraq. The logic goes that if the narrative weren't established that U.S. military deaths made the entire war effort less desirable, those killing troops would lack a reason to continue their attacks.
The implications of an elected Congressman espousing this view are remarkable – it is the worldview of a dedicated propagandist, who utilizes his office and bully-pulpit to create narratives and stories intended to dominate alternate perspectives. He appears to see his role as a propagandist as the real core of his job.
But just as I don't think Shays' real issue is with blogs (or me) so much as with the re-emergence of media that doesn't play along with his "I'm an honest broker" shtick, the real issue for me actually has very little to do with Shays, either.
If you look at the medium of this site and some of the projects the MLN community has been undertaking – substantive coverage of specialty topics, editorializing based on a shared and linked body of knowledge, comments, user diaries, community ratings, enabling small-dollar online contributions for state candidates, lobbying on bills, working on local campaigns and institutional actions, running for office, and now hosting and collecting questions for a primary debate in the state's largest city – I think that we're really doing two major things.
First, it seems to me that an increasing number of us move somewhat comfortably between being news-consumers, voters, journalists, news-makers, campaign workers, party officials, and candidates / elected officials – that there's a generally accepted continuum of citizenship that we're comfortable moving along, depending on our time and interests.
Second, there's a growing recognition that getting involved in some or all of the above kinds of activities is worthwhile, interesting, and in ways we're all still cultivating, fun to do. And that's what's dangerous to Shays – that challenging the father-knows-best routine that he and others like him (Broder, Lieberman, the DLC et al) have used so successfully to dominate the bounds of acceptable discourse is becoming popular, and the path is being forged by people like CTBob, Maura, and the Kiss Float crew that constantly make sure that getting involved in politics is a lot of fun.
In one way, I think we already accept the terms Chris Shays uses to conceive of his role in our civic life: we are citizens with interests that we will fight for, and persuading our peers is one of the most important things we can do to effect the changes we're after. If my Congressman wishes to call me a partisan propagandist, then so be it: it would never have come to pass, were it not for the media and political culture that he helped to create.
But I'm personally glad to do my part in cultivating, in the term Molly Ivins used to describe the Wellstone family, a "joyous, battling spirit" – that seeks to make political engagement and activism a way of life. And, it's becoming clear that all of us are getting better at it all the time.
Shays can bluster, but it does precious little to hide how demoralized he's become. He knows that his war – fought for keeps on the stage of public opinion, from the broadsheet to our hearts and minds – is as lost to him as the one being waged on the dusty streets of Baghdad.
Given the content of some recent diaries, here is a quick reminder of some general guidelines for diarists at MLN:
1. Do not copy and paste entire copyrighted articles. Such usage is a copyright violation. You may excerpt articles according to "fair use" guidelines only... a good rule of thumb is no more than a few paragraphs, and always with a link provided.
2. Cross-posting from your own blog is welcomed. But please cross-post your entire piece, and not just a single link to your blog.
3. MLN is a community website for progressive Democrats. Those who are or would like to be members of the community, and who are neither of the above, should keep this in mind when participating.
4. Here's a useful post from last year about how to go about posting a diary, step-by step. Imageshack.us is one of many free image hosting sites with instructions on how to post an image.
Seriously, he's spent at least a year covering both the Connecticut and national progressive blogospheres (here he is last July talking with Howie Kurtz about the "tremendous" impact blogs were having on the Lamont-Lieberman race)... shouldn't he be well aware of the fact that My Left Nutmeg is not and never has been Matt Browner Hamlin's personal site?
Dodd's tech staff comprises Tim Tagaris, 30, a veteran of the Democratic National Committee and last year's Senate campaign by Ned Lamont; Tim Cullen, 33, a former software developer who did similar online work in Dodd's Senate office; Matt Browner-Hamlin, 25, known in the blogosphere for his myleftnutmeg.com site; and Brett Schenker, 28, a political consultant who is considered an expert on discovering new technologies and making them work for campaigns.
As Matt himself noted in a comment, this was not the only factual error in Lightman's exceedingly sloppy article about the Dodd campaign's tech team (he also blatantly misattributed two quotes from different people to Matt and apparently completely mischaracterized a quote by Andrew Rasiej).
One need only look at Lightman's headline description of the campaign's team as "young" (four people straddling either side of 30 years old is hardly "young" for an internet team on a campaign) and his pejorative accusation that they were "defensive" during the interview to get an idea of where his biases lie.
But there's a more basic dishonesty - and/or complete ignorance of online politics - that lies at the core of Lightman's criticisms of the Dodd campaign's online efforts. The metrics he uses to compare Dodd to top-tier candidates - the number of eyes on Hillary's theme-song YouTube challenge, the number of friends Barack Obama has on MySpace, the poll numbers that (shock!) didn't move in the hours following the campaign's website revamp - reveal nothing about the actual impact of the campaign's recent efforts. For instance, their pioneering use of UStream to provide unvarnished, unedited live presentations of the campaign in action and behind the scenes, in tandem with the candidate's strong leadership on Iraq and other issues, has given Dodd some real traction online in the past couple of weeks. Look at opinion leaders in the blogosphere, and there's ample evidence that what they're doing is working. Such movement obviously takes time to percolate in the polls (or on YouTube or MySpace), and there's no guarantee that it will continue (watch the next dKos and MyDD straw polls if you want a better metric). But it's ridiculous to imply that Dodd's online efforts - which started up in earnest only a couple of weeks ago - are falling flat because there's no immediate bump.
Given Richardson's very subpar and haphazard performances recently and Biden's innate foolishness and increasing forays to the right on Iraq, Dodd stands a real chance of moving to the top of the second tier in the coming weeks. And if he does, it will likely be due in large part to the campaign's successes communicating directly to voters online in innovative ways - with about one quarter the staff of the top-tier candidates.
As usual, Lightman is not giving the Dodd team anything approaching a fair shake here. But more fundamentally, he is showing that he understands very little about how the blogosphere functions... or that if he does, he's willing to pretend he doesn't in order to slam his favorite target.
(Disclosure: I did a few hours of freelance graphics work for Dodd in February, but no longer do.)
I'm very happy to announce that I have been offered and accepted a position on Senator Chris Dodd's presidential campaign. I moved to Washington DC on Sunday and today is my first full day in Dodd HQ. From this point forward I will only be publishing my writing in an official capacity for the Dodd campaign on its blog and on progressive blog community sites around the net.
A bit about the job. I will be blogging for the campaign alongside my friend Tim Tagaris and others. More specifically, I will be traveling with Senator Dodd as he campaigns around America. I will be posting videos of Senator Dodd and the people he meets at campaign stops nationwide. In many ways my job will be to give the American public an unprecedented window into the Dodd campaign.
The question most of you are probably asking yourselves is "Why Chris Dodd?" I believe that America needs a leader who can solve the problems facing our country with poise and conviction. Thanks to the Bush administration's failures, our next president will enter office will little margin for error. I believe Chris Dodd is best person to fill this national need because he's already doing it. By standing up to the Bush administration and calling for an end to the Iraq War, by fighting to restore the US Constitution and the right of habeas corpus, by protecting Americans working families from predatory lending, by strongly opposing the nominations of John Bolton, Sam Fox, Porter Goss and Michael Hayden, by working to increase make college education affordable through Pell Grants, Senator Dodd has repeatedly lead through his actions. That's what America needs today - action, not rhetoric. That's why I'm going to work for Senator Dodd.
As an activist and I writer I have spent the last two and a half years blogging about the things I want Democratic politicians to do in service to America. In Chris Dodd, I find a man who has time and time again done the right thing without having to be asked. I deeply respect his active commitment to democratic ideals in a time when we've watched far too many politicians shirk their responsibilities to the American public. I look forward to helping him win the Democratic nomination and become the next President of the United States.
Yesterday BranfordBoy posted a diary featuring a quote from Salon that asserted Amanda Marcotte and Melissa McEwan had been fired. I took issue with that and rather than posting comments with my views or emailing or calling BranfordBoy to ask him to post an update to the post, I went in myself and edited his post.
I apologized to BB last night, but wanted to apologize to this community as well. What I did was wrong. It created a situation where I was working against another community member. It is not what this community is about and it is not, I like to think, what I am about.
Most importantly it undermined the strength of our community by circumventing it's most powerful part: discussion of disagreements. By editing the post I disrespected BranfordBoy and this community. Again I apologize for that.
We will have differences of opinion and we will have objections to each others writings. But we must always respect them, else we risk losing the will to work together. I jeopardized that yesterday and I assure you that I will not do so again.
Animal rights activists, environmentalists, bloggers, anti-war protestors, Greens, feminists, and labor organizers have something in common: the government thinks that they're all potentially dangerous to public safety.
What may surprise you is that this isn't a new idea, or even one plucked from the world of neocon fantasy, but rather, a basic assumption of traditional democratic theory, relating to the way individual opinion is transformed into public action. A long description over the fold.
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