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Archive for the 'Instant Messaging' Category

Holy Cojones of Steel, Batman!

Published by Not Paul Begala on October 9, 2006 in C-SPAN, Instant Messaging, Midterms '06, NRCC and National Politics. 1 Comment

[Note: Not Paul Begala rides again.]

Carl Forti, I’m so sorry for ever doubting your prowess, your skill, your utterly amazing intestinal fortitude at being able to convince yourself that what you utter is The Truth™. Ironic, since I just watched “Thank You for Smoking” this weekend — throw it in the queue, it’s worth it.

And onward to a display of balls so awesome that I think Stephen Colbert would choke had he been watching. Here’s Forti on the 10/8 edition of C-SPAN’s Washington Journal (go to 33:40):

Steve Scully: Carl Forti of the National Republican Congressional Committee. Is the Foley situation managable? Carl Forti: I think definitely. I think if you look at newspapers around the country and look at individual districts, it’s really not having that much of an effect.

Bam! Shake it Up! Shake it Up! and on to the next mothaf*&#! question. He didn’t say, “Well Steve, I think it’s really not having an effect” — he informs the viewer that they must read regional papers and look at individual districts before they can come to the conclusion that “it’s not having much of an effect.” A display of omniscience any mouthpiece would be proud of.

So awesome.

Maf54, Where Are You?

Published by Olly Ruff on October 8, 2006 in Blog Fights, Instant Messaging and Republicans. 2 Comments

After several days of Foleymania, the blogosphere has spoken: It is resolved that absolutely virtually everyone agrees that middle-aged congressmen should not be exchanging sexually explicit IMs with teenagers of either gender, especially if they’re under 18 (but even if they’re not), especially if it also constitutes workplace harassment.

Now, the fun part — that of figuring out how much this is going to hurt the Republicans and whether there’s any conceivable way of blaming it on the Democrats or ABC instead — is only just getting started, and a small sub-fight — that of deciding which side of the blogosphere is proving itself to be the most hypocritical/opportunistic/crazy — is also bubbling away nicely. As with every other news story of the last five years, the Foley scandal exemplifies the culture of corruption imposed upon Washington by a power-mad Bush administration, while simultaneously revealing the tragic consequences of the heathen licentiousness promoted by Democrats across this great land. Also, there has to be something here that can be blamed on Glenn Reynolds:

There are other sites, large and small, that have linked to Wild Bill as well — that’s also wrong. We won’t be providing links to any of these posts.
concludes the above-linked Think Progress post, primly. Not wanting to link to “Wild Bill” — the blogger who printed the former page’s name along with a bunch of pictures — is understandable, but not linking to a guy you’re claiming did link to it is problematic when he actually didn’t. (James Joyner analyzes this error here.) The trouble with this supposedly-principled omission of links is that people using Think Progress as a clearinghouse don’t necessarily check these things.

The link is the currency of the blogosphere, and any post that omits links is always the more suspect for it. “Read the whole thing” may be one of the most banal things a blogger can say to their audience, but that doesn’t make it bad advice.

Speaking of bad advice, attempts to quibble over the age question don’t seem likely either to make the story go away any faster or to make Foley suddenly appear sympathetic. Also, it’s hard to see the percentage in fretting over the fact that Democrats are getting as much electoral mileage as they can out of the erstwhile Maf54’s astonishing lack of discretion or propriety. Why shouldn’t they? Politics is full of lemons, but on those rare occasions when you’re handed a glass of lemonade, the thing is to enjoy drinking it.

Some kind of medal, though, must be reserved for the peerless Ben Shapiro, who follows up a predictable non sequitur claim that “studies show that homosexuals are disproportionately prone to pedophilia” with this gem:

On what moral basis do Democrats condemn Foley? They have no basis for moral outrage, since they have championed the destruction of traditional morality for decades.
With this kind of adept spin management, we can expect to still be hearing about Mark Foley well into the 2008 primary season*.

  • In fairness, the scrum begins November 8, 2006.

Blame Al Gore?

Published by William Beutler on October 5, 2006 in Al Gore, Asymmetrical Media, Instant Messaging, Seriously and YouTube. 1 Comment

That’s what the Hotline [$] suggests in a tongue-in-cheek Spotlight only available behind the pay wall:

There’s lots of blame within the GOP over the Mark Foley scandal, including Denny Hastert’s screed in today’s Chicago Tribune that somehow links this mess to Bill Clinton and George Soros, of course. – But a better foil may be that guy who invented the Internet. When all is said and done in the ‘06 midterms, if the Dems win both houses of Congress, Al Gore may be his party’s unsung hero. – The Internet’s role in the GOP’s problems continues to grow. It started with YouTube and “macaca,” which put a previously safe SEN seat into play. Now, “instant messaging” could lead to the downfall of a Speaker and his fragile House majority.

No doubt, YouTube and AIM have played prominent roles this election cycle, as blogs did before them. Of course, blogs haven’t gone anywhere — they’re sending politicians and candidates into conniptions more than ever.

But by now it’s passé to note that bloggers are pushing stories into the press that the electeds don’t appreciate. Which, all else being equal, is probably for the better.

Real Scandal, Fake Blog

Published by William Beutler on October 1, 2006 in Asymmetrical Media, Blogs vs. MSM, Daily Kos, Elections and Instant Messaging. 29 Comments

The House Republican leadership knew of now-ex-Rep. Mark Foley’s inappropriate e-mails to Congressional pages a year ago, and ABC News didn’t report on them until the end of this last week — but if you were reading the right blogs, you’d have gotten wind of it nearly a month ago: As Clarice Feldman, Tom Maguire and others are pointing out today, the Stop Sex Predators blog that first made the Mark Foley e-mails available last week is highly suspicious, to say the least, as is Daily Kos two-comment wonder WHInternNow, who first mentioned Foley’s page problem on Sept. 5:

Daily Kos' WHInternNow on Mark Foley, Sept. 5

They are probably also the same person: On Sept. 24, WHInternNow posted a dKos diary about the SSP posts almost as soon as the scans went up, but claimed to have innocently stumbled upon them via Google. Yeah, right.

And earlier this last week, before ABC’s Brian Ross obtained the more-damning Foley IMs and took the story national, Wonkette’s Alex Pareene took notice of SSP’s e-mails, and was uncharacteristically constrained in deeming the e-mails false (somehow I don’t think Nick Denton is paying him to be responsible). To be fair, the skepticism was certainly warranted. Feldman explains why:

In July a blog appeared, designed it said to trace sex predators. Few posts were made in that month or the following month. All recounted years old stories. Then on September 18, the blog printed the fairly innocuous email exchange [Note: That is not how I'd characterize them.] between Congressman Foley and an unnamed page. … How likely is it that this site with virtually no readership , few posts and hardly any history or posts of interest suddenly receives this bombshell? I’d say slight. About as likely as Lucy Ramirez handing Burkett Bush’s TANG papers.

Yesterday morning, I sent a message to stopsexpredators@gmail.com asking whether they could dissuade me from my own suspicion that the site was created in late July with the intent of eventually releasing the Foley e-mails. Needless to say, I haven’t received a response.

What I find interesting — baffling, really — is this: Why did the blog’s creator(s) even bother with the unpersuasive posting history? Why fake it if you can’t be convincing? As we’re seeing, it didn’t take very long for questions to arise about the source of this information. This hack job only makes it more likely it came from an interested DC group rather than, say, the pages who received them in the first place. If SSP’s author had merely posted them to a brand new Blogspot page without the shoddy posting history, the Foley e-mails might’ve been taken more seriously. At least the situation doesn’t lack for irony: The facts reported by the blog appear to be legitimate, while the blog itself appears to not be. Is this a new variation on that storied phrase, “fake but accurate”?

Questions also remain about why this blogger didn’t release the explicit IMs. One possibility is that they didn’t have the IMs — but considering the deliberately clandestine moves by SSP’s anonymous author, this seems unlikely. Feldman fingers the lefty watchdog group CREW as a possible source for the IM conversations, and it certainly is their kind of issue — but evidence is lacking. For want of a better explanation — and Foley’s hometown paper sure isn’t providing it — I’m inclined to go with Maguire here:

Maybe the blog author was an unwitting catspaw, but I would want some assurance that this was not simply a successful attempt to promote a story that wasn’t quite ready for the Mainstream Media by laundering it through some blogs.

If we’re defining success as getting the story into the mainstream media without the source being publicly identified, then yes, it was a success. If success is defined as getting the story into the blogosphere without the vehicle being identified as an impostor, not so much.

P.S. The House Republican leadership is already on the hot seat over its previous investigation into the matter, even with partisan Republicans. (So too is the St. Pete Times, but their editors aren’t coming up for election soon.)

Lately, conservatives have resigned themselves to hoping the Republicans would lose control of the House, as a necessary measure to put the party back on the right track — but one imagines they didn’t want it to happen quite like this.

P.P.S. This is not at all surprising. It sounds like it was conventional wisdom on the Hill that Foley was bad news for underage Hill staffers, which makes it all the more interesting that neither the St. Pete Times nor the House leadership asked enough questions. The left is attacking Hastert et al, and the right is attacking the media. They’re probably both right.