I like the fact that the Obama administration put up a site – Change.gov – for the transition within a couple of days of winning the elections. I like that it has a blog. But it isn’t yet a real blog. It’s a news page, written in the safe voice of the trained professional.

It’s early days, so I mainly want to appreciate it, not criticize. But there are reasons to think a White House blog is always going to tend towards the bland.

A president could blog, speaking in his or her own voice. But, have you seen the list of what President Obama has to deal with? If he has time to blog, he’s not paying attention.

But maybe the White House could blog. The problem is that America is a big and diverse country. Some of us are Democrats and some are Republicans. Some of us like our news straight up, and some of us don’t respect it without a side order of snark. Some of us think the world is too serious to be made fun of, and some of us think the world is too serious not to be made fun of. Some of us want lists and footnotes, and some of us want videos and typos. So what do you do? Come up with an informative-but-bland blog that offends no one?

Or perhaps you offer a full plate of bloggers. A White House online magazine, so to speak. Lots of voices, opinions, and styles. A Greek chorus for the President, made up of divergent voices. How divergent? For an official White House blog, I would think it’d have to be pretty mainstream, because it’d be speaking for the President’s administration. Even so, knowing that this blogger is an amazing font of facts about telecom policy, and that one is able to put industrial policy into an historical context, and that other one is capable of occasional crackling sarcasm when discussing energy policy, well, that’d be extremely cool.

It’d take courage … and some grade-A metadata to remind people that bloggers speak more loosely than the press secretary does. But by having, say, a dozen in-house people blogging to start, the administration would have a unique way to keep citizens informed, would continue to build trust and intimacy with the American people, and would be able to try out and improve ideas in the cauldron of public conversation…for comments would definitely have to be turned on.

This may be a terrible idea. In any case, I think it is a very unlikely idea. The risk would be high: Political opponents would certainly seize on posts at every opportunity. But how long can we live in fear of being taken out of context? At some point, don’t we just have to trust the American people to understand that it’s important to be able to talk like human beings amongst ourselves?

I dunno. I’d love to see it. Or, preferably, a much better idea. [Tags: e-democracy obama ]

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I don’t know enough about economics to fill a Powerpoint slide, but Robert Reich’s argument for government spending makes sense to me. Unfortunately, that translates to: “It seems coherent, even if it is factually wrong, and, besides, I like Robert Reich.”

[Tags: economy robert_reich ]

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I like this video:

You could take it as yet more feel-good Obama propaganda, which it is. Or you could take it as a celebration supporters are entitled to, which we are. Or, you could take it as progressives (or liberals or lefties or whatever you want to call us) folding themselves back into the patriotism that the right had appropriated for itself, which is why I like it.

You could also replace those “or’s” with “and’s”. [Tags: obama election patriotism star_spangled_banner ]

And no comment needed:

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I had a birthday recently. I find the happy birthday greetings sent from computer lists — the Prius Chat Forums and from UnusedWidget.com — to be merely inept marketing. But the jovial greeting from my dentist’s clinic sticks in my craw.

I have no personal relationship with the Prius or widget software, but the dentist is a guy who sticks his fingers in my mouth and asks me to spit in his presence. That’s intimate. So, getting a generic birthday greeting from his clinic’s computer is less than meaningless. If next time I’m in he wants to ask me how my birthday was, that’d be a reasonable topic of discussion. If he were to to call me up to wish me a happy birthday, I’d find that a little forced and weird. But having his computer set to send me wishes for a day that no human there observes, notes, or acts on, well, what type of fool does he take me for?

Of course, you don’t want to express that to someone who puts literal sticks in your craw, and who with a single tap can say, “Yup, that one’ll need to come out.”

I’m fine with telling you that I was born in 1950, but I don’t announce my birth date precisely so people won’t feel obliged to say “Happy birthday.” So, just skip it. I am, however, open to receiving presents. Year ’round. I’m a size should-lose-some-weight, who loves the works of artists-he-never-knew-he-liked.

[Tags: birthday dentist personalization one-to-one_marketing marketing cluetrain crotchety_old_man ]

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Yesterday, President-Elect Barack Obama received his first deep intelligence briefing, also known as The Bad News. Here is what he learned:

1. Chief source of carbon emission: Printing money for the bail-out.

2. The jobless rate counts looking for work as a full-time job.

3. Loose nukes now available only in blister-packs of six.

4. The Taliban are now twice as fierce, having discovered the awesome power of having a good breakfast.

5. World of Warcraft: Totally fact-based.

6. American is unprepared for any biological attack that involves nookie.

7. The fate of the earth depends upon the President taking time every summer to personally fight the invasion of demonic space aliens who look surprisingly like brush.

8. The Constitution was suspended by secret Presidential order in 2002. The country is now governed by a Magic 8-Ball in a secret annex of the National Archive. The good news: Signs point to yes.

9. Sarah Palin accidentally was briefed first. So, yes, Alaska has been engaged in a secret air war with Russia, Africa is now a country…

10. The Iraq War has actually been over since 2005. What’s been going on since then is what counts in Iraq as peace.

11. As the result of extensive plastic surgery, Osama Bin Laden has successfully penetrated this country, and, what’s especially awkward for you, Mr. President-Elect, is that he’s been living in the Chicago suburbs under the name … wait for it … “William Ayers.”

[I know that’s eleven of them. That’s so you can disregard the one you like least. And thanks to Crosbie Fitch for coming up with this idea in his comment on a prior post. Crosbie also points to South Park‘s take on it.] [Tags: obama politics humor ]

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Yesterday Obama received his first “Here’s what’s really going on” intelligence briefing.

[Tags: obama ]

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David Chalmers and David Bourget are creating a taxonomy of philosophy. David C blogs about it here.The notion of conceiving of philosophy as a tree, with each topic in one right spot, strikes me as both a producing of meaning and a paring down of meaning. But, if it’s useful in some contexts, then great. [LATER: This link back to this post is really informative and interesting.]

[Tags: everything_is_miscellaneous philosophy taxonomy ]

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Obama has posted his tech policy.

It’s like someone who understands and values technology and the Internet was elected president.

By the way, the Change.gov site welcomes our comments.

[Tags: obama net_neutrality e-politics democracy technology ]

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John McCain’s site lets you send him a private message, but there’s no place there that I can find for people to leave comments in public. What a shame. His supporters could console themselves there, and start to build the communities they need to push ahead with their goals and ideals.

And I’d like a way to reach out to them as a fellow American.

By the way, the Obama site continues to urge us to contribute money, although now it’s being directed to the Democratic National Committee. The blog features front pages from around the nation. And the comments are open and overflowing.

[Tags: ]

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I’m listening to Bob Kuttner on Fresh Air talk about the topic of his book, Obama’s Challenge. He’s saying that FDR led in part by seizing opportunities to teach us, including his very first fireside chat.

Interesting. We are certainly in a “teachable moment,” as they say. And we have a president-elect who is a learner and has actually been a teacher. I’m so ready to be taught. (Of course, I’m so ready for our new president to do everything that our current president can’t manage to do, including learn and lead.)

Here’s Peter Leyden’s talk in Copenhagen last month about how the Obama campaign used the Internet.

[Tags: obama leadership peter_leyden e-politics ]

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