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Archive for February, 2007

Marcotte Polo

Published by Olly Ruff on February 16, 2007 in Blog Consultants, Blog Fights, Democrats, Elections and John Edwards. 2 Comments

Amanda Marcotte’s account of her short stint on the Edwards campaign is up at Salon, and a good read.

“Reasonable people,” I thought, “can tell the difference between a personal blog post and those I’ll write for the campaign.” What I naively failed to understand was that there is no relationship between what reasonable people think and what will be used in a partisan bout of mud-slinging.

This, by the way, from someone who watched a goofy burger-themed parody of “I Am Woman, Hear Me Roar” last year and was moved to write this marvellously overwrought thing. Overall reaction to the Salon piece splits fairly predictably, with some of the choicest parting shots coming from those who have previously been on the receiving end of Marcotte’s legendary reasonableness.

There has been widespread bipartisan blogger sentiment that the Marcotte-McEwan scandal was blown wildly out of proportion, largely because there is also widespread bipartisan blogger sentiment that Bill Donohue is a ludicrous person to whom no political campaign should be paying attention. After minimal exposure to Bill Donohue, it is hard not to sympathize with this to some extent. On the other hand, what credible presidential campaign allows itself to be so successfully mau-maued by his Catholic League of America? (Well, Kerry-Edwards ‘04, for one.)

Moreover, as Bill previously asked, what the hell were Edwards’ people thinking when they hired Marcotte, anyway? Assuming they gave her blog at least a cursory inspection before making the offer, this cannot possibly have come as a surprise to them: the reasons she’s unemployable as a campaign staffer are the same reasons she’s popular and successful as a rabble-rousing blogger. (Then again, if a relatively large constituency on the internet translated proportionately to the real world, then Ron Paul would be a viable presidential candidate.) If any leftish bloggers are still surprised at the feeding frenzy that took place, imagine Michelle Malkin being hired as the online face of the McCain campaign and then claiming that “In Defense of Internment” wasn’t a big deal.

Hopefully, it’s not all bad news for Marcotte: her blogosphere Q rating — in both of the crucial love-her and love-to-hate-her categories — is higher than it was a month ago, and this will presumably open some other doors (as foreshadowed by Michael Bérubé here). She doesn’t have much of a shot at a career in mainstream politics, but that was never really in the cards in the first place.

And sometimes, amidst all the partisan mud-slinging, it’s hard to tell who the reasonable people are anymore.

Triumphalism in Excelsis

Published by William Beutler on February 13, 2007 in Barack Obama, Facebook, Netroots and Technorati. 4 Comments

Collected on the Internets, about Sen. Barack Obama, today:

Incredibly Sloppy Thinking

“[C]learly the Facebook organizing is working.” Who said this? No peeking at Technorati!

Consider, the news articles linked above were to the Des Moines Register and Manchester Union Leader, neither of which mentioned Facebook. Neither did the rest of the post. And not to belabor the point, but none of the above mentioned any specific turnout by college students.

Here’s Not Paul Begala and yours truly, just a little while ago:

Not Paul Begala and William Beutler on IM

So, who is actually responsible for this incredibly sloppy bit of blogosphere triumphalism? The answer is embedded somewhere in this post. If nobody guesses (or Technoratis) correctly by Friday, Blog P.I. will provide the answer in this space.

Update: Congratulations to JeffL for correctly guessing (or Googling) the answer. Congratulations are also due to Timothy for finding the embedded answer. You should all feel… like you read blogs too much.

Will Matt Gross Resign, Too?

Published by William Beutler on February 13, 2007 in Blog Consultants, Campaigns, Democrats, John Edwards, Netroots and White House '08. 5 Comments

No thanks to work and other obligations, I didn’t find a chance last week to weigh in on the controversy surrounding John Edwards’ hire of blogger Amanda Marcotte — including, but not limited to: the Bill Donohue hypocrisy angle, the Pat Hynes equivalency angle, the progressive Catholic angle and the netroots overreaction angle, among others. I may still assemble the notes I have, but I’ll have to check the sell-by date first.

But I do have a small opening to comment because, as the political blogosphere by now knows well, last night Marcotte resigned her position with Edwards ‘08, citing her continued employment as a potential liability for the rest of the campaign.

As my headline asks: What about Matt Gross, Edwards’ Senior Advisor for Online Communications*/Chief Internet Strategist*/general adviser on all things bloggy? Will he resign, too?

Consider John Dickerson’s report in Slate last week, which gave some insight as to how things went down at Edwards HQ:

The senator read some of the offending postings. He asked to talk to the bloggers, whose work he’d not read before and whom he’d never met.

I can certainly believe that Edwards had not read Pandagon (or Shakespeare’s Sister, whence he hired the somewhat less-controversial Melissa McEwan) but I cannot believe that Matt Gross has not. If there was one person on the campaign whose job it was to vet potential blog hires, it was Gross. And it’s not like he just missed a stray posting where Marcotte went a little too far — her quick temper and salty word choices are a big part of what’s made her so popular.

Gross certainly knows this, but from what I can tell, it did not occur to him that her incendiary rhetoric could pose a problem. As a veteran of the Howard Dean presidential campaign, Gross of all people should be familiar with the public relations problem off-message bloggers can present. Even Ezra Klein, one of the co-founders of Pandagon, seemed to second-guess the decision at his own blog last week:

Look: I thought the Edwards’ campaign made a surprising choice when it picked up Amanda. She throws elbows, to say the least. And her focuses, and opinions, are not always popular in contemporary American political life. It seemed an act of bravery and conviction, though I wasn’t sure what, exactly, the upside was. … I don’t envy them the controversy. But they made their own hiring decisions.

Now, Dickerson didn’t mention Gross or his position with the campaign. Actually, I can’t find any blogger from the past week mentioning Gross’ involvement in the fiasco. This surprises me, and I find it curious Edwards put himself out there to settle the issue last week. Had Edwards decided to fire them then and there, I believe then he would have had to issue a personal statement, in order to show the netroots that he personally was not rebuking them. But given their decision, there’s no reason Gross couldn’t have handled that — and kept his boss above the fray.

I don’t know Matt Gross and I wish him no ill will. Until the Marcotte hire, I thought the Edwards online campaign was head and shoulders above any other (so far), and the most savvy since, well, the one he helped run for Howard Dean. All of the technological things that made the Edwards’ online campaign great are just as they were two weeks ago — but in online politics, technology is secondary to community. And that’s where Edwards’ problem lies.

P.S. And now, McEwan has followed suit. I hesitate to make any quick pronouncements, except that I should emphasize I never found her comments as objectionable as Marcotte’s. I agree with Rick Esenberg’s argument that the real issue with Marcotte was

that one cannot help but conclude that she hates – really hates – these people

whereas the general thrust of McEwan’s controversial post struck me as agreeably libertarian (although I can’t defend the use of “Christofascist” (and it wasn’t the only time she used it)).

I don’t think this episode has to do material damage to the Edwards campaign. Who really cares what bloggers do, especially this early in the campaign? On the other hand, bloggers are not inconsequential, and this does say something about the inner workings of the Edwards camp.

Opposition Research Goldmine

Published by Not Paul Begala on February 13, 2007 in Oppo Research, Rudy Giuliani and White House '08. 4 Comments

Tough day, Rudy.

Thanks to the Internet, and with the explosion of blogging especially, all of a sudden we political types have an easier time spreading around our dirt. In the past, we used to have to play by the rules of the old media: space limitations, kissing reporter’s butts and packaging the story just right.

Now, and especially for big campaigns, all you have to do is leak it to a blogger, or in this case, The Smoking Gun.

The fascinating thing to me is the reasoning behind the leaks. Before, you wanted to get something into a newspaper or TV so you could cite it in your advertisement as a legitimate news source. Now, they get it into the bloodstream early so reporters define candidates in their coverage.

Giving it to TSG wasn’t exactly the best way to write a narrative, but the blogs will take it from there. My guess is that now, for a cycle or two at least, the “Rudy is damaged goods” story goes up a notch.

WWB Update, Feb. 17: Guess not. The Edwards blogger fiasco was the online story this week. Meanwhile, not too much on Giuliani’s second cousin wedding/annullment (FDR and Eleanor were distant cousins, right?). And one could argue Romney has it the worst.

You Got to Have Faith

Published by William Beutler on February 12, 2007 in Barack Obama, Religion, Social Networking, Startups and White House '08. 1 Comment

Pointed out to me earlier today is this screen shot from the Create Your Profile page at My.BarackObama.com:

MyBarackObama does not list religion/faith among the potential interests of supporters

No category such as “faith/religion”? If you say so. Not only has Sen. Obama has faced unfair but persistent questions about his faith, but the entire Democratic Party has been trying since 2004 (at least) to demonstrate that Republicans don’t have a lock on “moral values.” Sure, it’s just the initial launch of a website intended for those who already support Obama, but it’s still worth asking how they let this one get by.

And while it certainly is easy to nitpick and second-guess someone else’s hard work, I still have to wonder: If “This Campaign is About You,” then why not provide a box for you to fill in your own most important issue?

Republican Party Reptiles

Published by William Beutler on February 12, 2007 in Barack Obama and Leftosphere vs. Rightosphere. 5 Comments

Every political blog is an inkblot test of some kind or another, but Little Green Footballs is more of one than most: Los Angeles Magazine called it “constitutionally-protected hate speech” for its adversarial view of (radical) Muslims, while it is championed by allies as an exemplar of “anti-anti-Semitism.”

But there is a crucial disconnect between the site’s defenders and detractors. The former, such as NRO’s Cathy Seipp, focus on the front-page blogging of (software-programming, jazz guitar-playing, bicycle-riding) Charles Johnson; the latter zero in on the self-named Lizardoids, members of the closed-registration commentariat that typically adds hundreds of comments to each posting. LGF Watch, arguably the longest-running blog watchdogging another single blog, finds most of its (legitimate) material in the comment sections. (What’s more, this being the Internet, there is always someone on hand to watch those who spend their time watching the watchers.)

LGF Lizard Lounge Logo by Cox & ForkumWhich is why my interest was piqued when I first saw a link to the “Lizard Lounge” — a chat room linked in the upper right-hand corner of Johnson’s website. It seems to have opened in November 2006, and like the primary LGF community, is restricted to the registered. There’s no telling when, or if, registration will be opened again.

Johnson is already known for putting comment-submission filters on unambiguous slurs. But people will always find a way, and the comment restrictions may have helped spur along more, um, creative slurs such as “moose limbs” and “Koranimals.” Could the creation of a Lounge, off-limits to detractors such as former business partner Dennis the Peasant, be another way to shelter the community from criticism?

That answer probably depends on one’s existing feelings about LGF. However, with at least an attempt at objectivity, I compared the LGF archives from October 2006, the first month before the Lizard Lounge went online, and January 2007, the most recent calendar month for which it has been open.

Survey says? I got nothing. I find no drop-off in comments in January that would suggest the Lizardoids had taken their less defensible slang behind closed doors. And though LGF Watch can hardly be considered a disinterested arbiter of Little Green Footballs’ rhetoric, they did post 9 times more in January than in October.

That said, just this weekend the watchdog site did identify some objectionable comments about Islam and race vis-á-vis Barack Obama. So if the Lizard Lounge was supposed to keep the more incendiary stuff beyond critics’ reach, it doesn’t seem to be working.

Additional links and material provided by Olly Ruff.

When IC is Just PC

Published by William Beutler on February 11, 2007 in Democrats, Language, Republicans and Rhetoric. 2 Comments

As both a political junkie and the recipient of a degreee in English, I’ve been a longtime observer of the Republican tendency to use the noun “Democrat” as an adjective, as President Bush recently caught flak for doing in (what was supposed to be) a conciliatory State of the Union address.

In almost every case, it’s not a mere courtesy to append an -ic to the end of the word — it’s proper English. But Arnold Zwicky at Language Log points out one case where the Democratic usage is probably something besides good grammar. From the Feb. 6 New York Times:

Politicians are weighing in on the subject as never before, especially with the advent of a Democratic-led Congress.

Upon which Zwicky went to work:

My first reaction was that with “Democratic-led” the paper was bending over backward in its attempt to avoid things like “the Democrat Party” for “the Democratic Party” (a Republican practice we’ve commented on a number of times on Language Log, most recently here). And maybe it is. But “Democratic-led” actually beats out “Democrat-led” by a fair margin, despite the fact that “X-led” ‘led by X(s)’ normally requires a noun in the X slot (as do “X-V-ed” ‘V-ed by X’ compounds in general). So if this is a formation motivated by political politeness, there’s a lot of politeness going around.

Zwicky goes on to demonstrate what he means by “X-led” and the like, with the parties Democrat, Republican and Labour as examples — handy not just for language geeks but for partisans familiar with the practice but unfamiliar with the functional linguistic differences between those party names.

I certainly try to keep my “Democrat” and “Democratic” usage in order, although in speech I sometimes get it wrong. On the other hand, a few times I’ve been called out for what I believed was correct usage — so I find Zwicky’s post is all the more interesting. And woe to the commenter at a liberal blog who accidentally types “Democrat Party” in the middle of a thread.

But there is no doubt that the Republicans who would rather antagonize their loyal opposition rather than express themselves correctly have won this one, much as they have persuaded liberals that they should call themselves “progressive” instead. Not only do Democrats have to nitpick a matter of linguistics, but they’re reduced to asserting themselves as an adjective rather than as a noun. That might seem an esoteric distinction, but in politics even subtle suggestions and inchoate feelings have an impact on voters.

If I didn’t know better, I would wonder what Frank Luntz would say about that. But late last month, in (what was supposed to be) a conciliatory entry at the Huffington Post, the Republican wordsmith deployed “Democrat” as an adjective, and much like with the president, the usage was like nails on a chalkboard to Democratic ears.

Whoops! Maybe using the phrase “Democrat Party” doesn’t always redound to the benefit of conservatives.

Weekend Update

Published by William Beutler on February 10, 2007 in Blogs vs. MSM, Entertainment, Leftosphere vs. Rightosphere and Newspapers. Closed

The Iraq war-supporting and -opposing halves of the political blogosphere don’t agree on much, but one thing they do have in common is an abiding mistrust (or distrust) of the mainstream media, especially when the subject is Iraq.

This lack of trust often begets outright derision, sometimes even overt attempts at and references to comedic entertainment. Today, as juxtaposed at Memeorandum, the Washington Post takes a whack from the right and the New York Times takes one from the left:

Neo-Neocon, on Walter Pincus and R. Jeffrey Smith’s “Official’s Key Report On Iraq Is Faulted”:

Neo-Neocon and Emily Litella

A Tiny Revolution, on Michael R. Gordon’s “Deadliest Bomb in Iraq Is Made by Iran, U.S. Says”:

A Tiny Revolution and Michael Gordon

There’s some mild irony here — the editorial division of the New York Times has mostly opposed the Iraq war, while the Washington Post’s editorial page has mostly supported it. Of course, today’s complaints are directed at the ostensibly impartial news division. Editorial editors may have their fans, but among partisans, the straight news reporter has no advocates.

Only in American TV News

Published by Not Paul Begala on February 9, 2007 in CNN, Cable News, Entertainment and Seriously. Closed

I had no intention of posting about Anna Nicole Smith, but… damn you CNN!

Don King on CNN about Anna Nicole Smith

Maybe the Yul Brynner reference was out of reach, but was the Jodie Foster/Chow Yun-Fat one really worth it?

The Rule of Thirds?

Published by Not Paul Begala on February 7, 2007 in Barack Obama, Fundraising, Hillary Clinton and John Edwards. 3 Comments

The WSJ [subscription required] pegs the number at $30 million for Hillary Clinton’s first quarter fundraising.

The strategy in the expectations game is always to lowball your own figures and highball everybody else’s. Howard Wolfson set Edwards at $20 million and Obama at $40 million, so they figure neither will hit that goal and HRC will easily surpass her opponents.

But openly admitting to $30 million is a big sign for the insiders. That would be one third of the so-called opening bar price of $100 million that the media expect of a presidential campaign.

Compare that to the Casey-Santorum Pennsylvania Senate race, which was one of the longest, most expensive races of 2006. Their combined spending topped out atabout $41 million.

HRC’s people are nothing if not calculating and goal-driven. I’ll bet you they are shooting higher than one-third. My guess? Hillary gets within $4 million of that — and I’m not sure I would limit it to $4 million under.