Dan is once again providing thoughtful commentary, this time on the AP’s article that says that bloggers are “feeling their way.” No kidding!

1 Comment »

View from Blogger Blvd

Rebecca Blood and Dave Winer in Bloggerland

Edwards pauses while the crowd cheers

Press banks on the floor

At the DCCC & Google party

Rebecca Blood sees the sign of the end of blogging as we know it

Bloggers party. Can you spot the garofalo?

Granny D, not walking across America

Jessamyn West, with Christian Crumlish in the shadows

5 Comments »

Last night, in a self-reflective capstone to the list of weird media moments at the Convention, Melissa Fitzgerald — CJ’s assistant, Carol, on The West Wing — came by to talk with the bloggers. She was there to promote Environment 2004’s ecological agenda. Why come to the bloggers? Because we’re the future of the media, etc. etc.

Being a celebrity, um, camp follower — and having utterly failed to satisfy my children’s requirement that I come back with photos of The Daily Show correspondents — I interviewed her. What’s her political background? Her parents know Gov. Ed Rendell and she’s been around politics all her life, and she’s happy to be on a show that has social relevance. Ok. Then she told me what issues she’s here to support. As one of her Environment 2004 handlers had said, she was articulate: She rattled off the mercury in the fish and the Clear Skies Act oxymoron stuff. After she’d made her way pretty far down the list, I asked her if she thought anyone in the stadium disagreed with her. No, she said, but some people may not know the facts.

So, here was a multi-level disconnect. She’s a good actor, but she failed to read my face that was practically screaming “Stop the list! You’re telling me stuff I know.” But, so what, it’s not like my time is so valuable that I can’t afford to spend an extra 45 seconds listening to an actor on one of my favorite shows. But, what does she expect me to write about in my blog, other than the meta crap I’m writing right now? Melissa Fitzgerald came by to tell us that Bush sucks on the environment, a point of view I’d ignored until it came from Carol on The West Wing?

I spoke with her handler afterwards, mainly because I was recounting the interview in rather arch terms to Steve Soto, who I’ve gotten to know and like a great deal, not realizing the handler was standing next to me. I tried to say that if Fitzgerald wants to further her cause among bloggers, she should find something interesting to say, but I’d been so rude in my overheard comments to Steve that the handler was in no mood to listen. And I don’t blame her.

I’m being snarky and I don’t mean to be. I love her on the show and I’m happy she’s hitting the hustings for a cause she cares about. It was just a failure of sympathetic thinking by the PR folks, which is hardly a big deal.

Melissa Fitzgerald visits the troops stationed in Blogonia

2 Comments »

The bloggers’ credentials allow us to go onto the floor only if we get an hour’s special dispensation from the media papal office. So, yesterday I did a tour just as the post-dinner speakers began at 6:50.

My view was skewed by the fact that, as a visitor, I had nowhere to sit, although I did ease my aching dogs for a few minutes by perching in the press galleries that flank the main stage. The galleries have about ten vertical rows of blue-marble formica desks that look out over the floor. Surprisingly, the section to the left of the stage has no view onto the stage and there are no video monitors. I watched the press people sitting there as Jesse Jackson spoke; they might as well be listening to it on their car radios. They do have an excellent view, however, of the glitzy signs hung by the major media, marking their elevated press booths: NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN, Fox, PBS News Hour…the stadium is ringed by these brightly lit re-programmed lite beer signs.

I looked up to the 7th floor Blogger Boulevard. You know how when painters depict a crowd scene, you can see every whisker and wrinkle on the people in the front, but the further back you go, a daub of paint suffices for the eyes, and then for entire faces? Well, we bloggers were where the artist loads a brush with a bluish color and does a hundred people with each jab.

Meanwhile, on the floor, delegates sat in their designated seats. A minority are wearing outfits selected to increase the odds that they’ll be shown on tv…cheese hats, red white and blue pants, hats with entire dioramas on them. And, of course it works. TV cameras are everywhere, bending over the delegates like herons fishing for fish either too slow or plump to ignore. We civilians are there to serve.

Every open pore is filled with people who have no seats but are not allowed simply to stand. We are required to keep moving by the guards stationed so that one will always be within prodding distance. Rather than falling into the brownian motion characteristic of parties, we form shuffling streams. First we walk north, then we walk south. Tiny step, tiny step, maintaining the requisite two-inch Margin of Personal Comfort. Pause to take a picture or, God forbid, think, and a Stream Keeper will stick his paddle into the waters. “Keep moving, sir. We can’t have you standing still.” No no. That’d be a security risk because it’s well known that terrorism begins with stillness.

Jesse Jackson spoke and the delegates cheered, waved and stood with the spontaneity of people bursting into song when the lights go out and a birthday cake is brought in: We know what’s required of us. Likewise, when Wyclef Jean sang a dreadful, rejiggered version of a popular song, delegates stood and did the shoulder-dance the middle-aged do to embarrass their children.

It’s hard to convey the hyper-unreality of it. It’s a roundelay of media, by the media and for the media with as many overlays of social complexity as a high school reunion where everyone has to dress up as how they think people saw them. One’s attention has no place to wander except into cynicism. Yet, the delegates are here playing the media game because they’ve worked damn hard and care so much. Union people, teachers, local organizers, veterans…the event may be calculated down to the fonts used in the electronic displays, but the delegates are here participating in the media event because they are believers and heroes.

We don’t have the vocabulary to assess a single cheer during the Jesse Jackson speech. Cheering for Jesse, cheering for the TV, cheering for being together cheering. How do we apply terms like “sincere,” “authentic” or “manipulated”? Whitman’s barbaric yawp now has four orders of abstraction layered on top of it, and sixteen more reserved for the analysts.

The studied, impassive and total silence of the press bleachers as Jesse tells us “Hope is on the way, hope is on the way” is no less complex.

1 Comment »

Beyond convincing us that he’s a sincere, good, strong, caring, brave person whom we actually like — which is purely a technical problem that his Media Engineers undoubtedly have prototyped successfully — I want Kerry tonight to put some substance into the phrases we’ve had drummed into us for three days. For example, I want him to list ten things that his administration will do to make us safer. And after each one, I want him to leave four seconds of silence so we can think to ourselves, “Holy cow! You mean we’re not doing that already? What’s wrong with these bozos? $200 billion sunk into Iraq and we still haven’t ____?”

Howard Dean said in one of his speeches the other day that Kerry has assured him that the first bill to come out of the Kerry White House will be health insurance. Great. But why did we have to hear that from Dean? More like that! Strong shmong, heart shmart … tell us what’s on your to-do list, John!

That’s what I want, anyway. But I’m not undecided, so I don’t count. (See previous post for more whining about this.)

1 Comment »

I didn’t see the Edwards speech on TV, so I’m not entitled to have an opinion about it. Worse, I had to follow along in the transcript in order to parse the few sound waves that managed to drag themselves up to the 7th floor Valhalla where the bloggers sit in judgment. Nevertheless, I hereby judge him absolutely, and in four categories:

1. Content. I like the Two Americas theme and the recognition that race matters in this country. With these, Edwards uttered truths we all know but that need to be said flat out instead of studiously ignored…as with Kerry’s focus on the middle class. And I appreciated the few policy details Edwards served up; at this point, I am duck-billed by the platitudes.

2. Role. Edwards role was, it seems, to help the Party step into its asbestos underwear, including laying the Negativity Trap for the Republicans. Since the entire campaign is focused on the Undecided — come on, people, what more do you need to know?? —I wonder if the Democrats really can win without going negative. I dunno; I’m just a nosebleeding blogger. I thought he and the Convention overall have done a good job neutralizing the Democrats-are-girlie-men meme.

3. Performance. Eh. He’s not a fiery orator that yokes your ankles to a chariot of rhetoric and drags you around the arena three times. He’s an intimate speaker, and you can only achieve intimacy in a 7-story sports stadium by being a sophisticated phony. So, I sort of don’t care. But I do care if he can reach those Undecideds in whose hands my children’s fate rests. And I don’t understand those folks at all. What, are they in a coma? Are they too thoughtful? Perfectionists? Slightly retarded? Will someone please explain it to me?

4. Swim suit. Oh yeah. A perfect face in which you can read nothing. No clothing can do that face justice and makeup can only detract from it. Every night before I drift to sleep, his is the face I see. It’s a tragedy what being VP will do to that punim.

6 Comments »

I looked up “Valhalla” in Google to see if I’d spelled it correctly, and above the entries, Google offered to show me a map of Valhalla…Valhalla, NY, that is. Still, it took me aback.

Are there other fictitious places for which Google provides above-the-results maps?

4 Comments »

John Edwards – The forgotten Osmond Brother – knows how to build applause by waiting it out. And he knows how to accept applause while looking embarrassed at it.

He opens with sentences that serve the purpose of pumping in the key phrases: volunteers, respect others, valor, what he’s made of. It’s how you make the character argument.

Trying to set the terms of the rest of the campaign, reject negativity. Great if it works. Doubt it.

Trying to beat the Big Lawyer rap.

And into the Two Americas, a narrative central to populism that we’ve forgotten. Of course, it requires Americans to vote for the sake of others – the way it ought to be, but necessarily a tougher sell than “Tax breaks just return your money to you.”

“What’s the first thing that goes? Your dreams.” Not much applause, but I thought it was affecting.

Some specifics about tuition tax breaks. Excellent! I’ve been hungry for a few damn details.

“Moral responsibility” for eliminating poverty. Yes! We need to have this discussion elevated to the moral plane. And he goes after minimum wage. I wish he’d said how much working fulltime for minimum wage amounts to – around $11,000 a year. “Not in our America.” Damn right.

He is setting the table. Now it’s bringing race into the discussion. This is just what he should be doing: define the terms of the campaign, and leave plenty of room for Kerry to plop the main courses onto the plates he’s set out. (Hmm, if I worked on it, I could probably come up with a worse analogy.)

Terrorism: Well, this one’s already on the menu. I hope Kerry does the Clinton thing of listing 40 things he’s going to do to make us safer, steps Bush has not taken. “I’m strong, we’re strong, and together we’ll be strong” is not doing it for me.

Appreciating our soldiers: The Democrats make a believable support-the-military party, IMO.

Details about how we can be safer. Why the hell aren’t we doing this stuff already? I like details.

He’s telling us about a hypothetical mother. This sort of stuff loses me. It goes all sentimental. I can’t tell if it works. It just makes me wince.

We don’t have to fight alone. Yes.

Hope is on the way. I always like a good call and response. Plus, I do believe and have believed that this year it’s all about the hope. Hope vs. fear.

We choose hope over despair. Damn. I want him to hang W with fear, not despair.

There’s been a lot of talk at this convention about “one America.” Unusual rhetoric f or a party in an America more divided than any time since the Vietnam war.

3 Comments »

At 8:50 this evening, CJAD, 800 on your AM dial, reported that John Edwards accepted the party nomination and recounted what he said in his speech. Only problem: It’s now 9:50 and Edwards has yet to give his speech. Apparently, Canadian Press jumped the gun with the transcript – explicitly embargoed – circulated by the Democratic PR folks, and CJAD ran with it.

Not surprisingly, it made the top listing at Google News.

Foolish, naive blogger boy! 53 years young and I didn’t know that real journalists ignore the explicit embargo. For example, the NY Times site also ran an article about the speech before the speech, although they said “in remarks prepared for delivery” (The CP article skips the qualification.) But don’t you usually see that locution in print articles that had to be put to bed before the event actually transpired? What’s the ethical justification of running embargoed news in real time on your web site?

Sheesh. All part of the weird set of conventions that constitute delivering the “news” in a “timely” way..

1 Comment »

Dan Bricklin writes about the experience of blogging events with an acuity that is eerie.

Gets me to thinking someone should do the Five Stages of Large Event Blogging…

1 Comment »