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September 16, 2004
Steve Johnson has a good piece on the absurdity of the press whining about the lack of substance in the campaign. He looks at the serious issues discussed on the candidate’s web sites but ignored by the press. “Just don’t complain about our declining political discourse when you’re the one dragging it down,” he tells the media.
Scott Rosenberg puts well what should be our dismay about the return of Russia to authoritarianism. Snippet:
So what if Russia’s “war on terror” is an entirely different conflict from the United States’ “war on terror”? Let’s roll these conflicts up, unite our enemies and delude ourselves that Russia’s decade-long war with Chechen guerrillas is morally aligned with the U.S.’s struggle against the perpetrators of 9/11.
Yup, President Bush looked into “Pooty-poot’s” soul and saw a good man. Now we see what happens when you base politics on appearances instead of facts..
September 15, 2004
Mitch Kapor explains why he and his wife have started the Baobabs project:
…along with my wife and partner, Freada Kapor Klein, I have created an initiative to reach out to college campuses in order to get students involved in this election. I want to help get computer science students involved in building the election tools and political community necessary for a healthy and dynamic politics.
Or, as it says in the sidebar:
We’re looking for innovative college students in swing states, to work with our tools and network to raise democratic turnout and participation on their campuses. Stipends of $1,000 are available. Diversity and inclusiveness are core values of College Labs.
Each student organizer will receive a civicspace website that feeds into this site, research support, a strong network, and an Advokit (open source voter file) toolkit. If you have questions, email and we’ll answer them.
Brian Reich at Campaign Web Review is researching what will be a series of posts about convention blogging. To that end, he’s posted some questions for convention bloggers. As a credentialed blogger at the Democratic National Convention, here’s my take on some of them:
What did you think of the Convention?
What does David Letterman’s couch think of David Letterman? We were all just props for the TV. I ended up staying home the night of Kerry’s speech so I could watch it on TV to see how it really was.
That aside, the convention was both exhausting and exhilirating. It is empty ritual and true show biz, but it also builds community.
What did you want to do that you couldn’t, or didn’t get a chance to?
I had no expectations, and every one of them was met!
I thought the Democrats treated us extraordinarily well.
What did the bloggers add to the Convention?
Aside from dancing like monkeys for the mainstream media, I thnk we added little to the Convention itself. We added something to the coverage of the Convention, though … if the Convention and its coverage are separable, which they’re not. I think I can be quite precise about what the 35 bloggers added: 35 points of view expressed in 35 voices. Anyone who expected more than that doesn’t understand what blogging is about.
What is your take on the media fascination with bloggers?
Through the lens of the media, bloggers look like itsy bitsy media. So, of course the big media want to know how the itsy bitsy media are going to affect them; that’s just natural. But bloggers aren’t journalists (except for the tiny handful who actually are). We’re not wee broadcasters. We’re something else.
What would you do differently for the 2008 Convention(s)?
I’d stop credentialing bloggers. Instead, I’d credential the few people who publish their journalism in blogs. I’d then provide very cool blogging services to the convention attendees — from delegates to security guards — who write blogs anyway: a great, open aggregator, wifi everywhere, “DNC Blogger” buttons, etc.
What do you think are the most exciting developments in online politics in 2004?
The way campaign blogging for a while threatened to let campaigns sound human again, and the way trusting and empowering your supporters got raised as a possibilty before the professional politicians in the Democratic Party decided that would be a distraction from their non-nonsense, hard-ball drive toward defeat.
What will political blogging look like after November (if President Bush wins re-election or if Senator Kerry wins)?
If Senator Kerry wins, blogging will continue as before. If President Bush wins, there will be no reason to do anything ever again.
September 12, 2004
In 1948, the young Richard Nixon made his bones by questioning Alger Hiss . And it all depended on a discussion of fonts.
Alger Hiss was an aristocratic lawyer who worked for the State Department, and was prominent enough to have served as Secretary General at the founding meeting of the UN. Whittaker Chambers was a grubby-looking ex-Communist who claimed before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) in August 1948 that Hiss was a close friend and a member of the Party. Hiss — at the time, the president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace — demanded to address the Committee where he insisted he had never been a Communist and had never met Chambers. Hiss was so convincing that it looked like HUAC had made a mistake. But one Congressman, Richard M. Nixon, pressed on. The Committee charged Nixon with discovering which of the two witnesses was lying.
Nixon held first-ever televised hearings (to a grand total of 325,000 existing TV sets in the US) where he questioned Chambers about the details of his alleged friend. Chambers seemed to know details only a friend would know. Hiss then admitted that he might have known Chambers passingly under a different name. Hiss came out of the hearings looking like a liar.
Hiss sued Chambers for libel, claiming $75,000 in damages, and required Chambers to produce any and all correspondence that might be relevant. Chambers went to the home of his nephew’s mother and pulled out an envelope from a dumbwaiter. Inside were 65 typed copies of State Department documents and four written by hand, along with 5 strips of 35mm film. The HUAC got wind that there was yet more evidence, for which Nixon issued a subpoena. Chambers led investigators to a pumpkin patch on his farm and pulled five rolls of film out of a hollowed-out pumpkin. The film turned out to contain photos of government documents from the 1930s.
Because of the statute of limitations, Hiss couldn’t be tried for espionage. So he was tried for perjury. After besmirching Chambers’ non-aristocratic life, Hiss’ lawyer claimed that the documents were forged and the whole event was timed to hurt Truman’s electoral campaign.
Most damning to Hiss’ case was testimony by an FBI agent that, based on analysis of the typefaces, the letters had been typed on Hiss’ old typewriter. Hiss argued that he’d given the typewriter to a domestic servant before 1938. Three members of the servant’s family supported that claim. But Hiss’ wife had told the grand jury that he might have given it away as late as 1943. Plus, she was caught on the stand lying about whether she had ever been a registered Socialist.
The jury was unable to decide on a verdict.
At the re-trial, a psychologist brought in to show that Chambers was a “psychopathic personality” was famously shredded on the stand. Hiss’ lawyer admitted that the documents had been typed on Hiss’ typewriter, but argued that Hiss wasn’t the typist. Hiss was found guilty and sentenced to 5 years in jail for perjury.
The case made Nixon into a hero. In 1952, Eisenhower chose him as his running mate. Shortly afterwards, Joseph McCarthy began his own hearings, supposedly to ferret out spies within the government. Ronald Reagan said that Chambers’ autobiography was the catalyst that converted him from Democrat to Republican; in 1984, Reagan posthumously gave Chambers the Medal of Freedom.
Hiss maintained his innocence until his death, even in the face of the release of material from the USSR released in 1996 that seems to indicate that he was indeed a spy.
Sources and links:
Douglas Linder, The Trials of Alger Hiss: A Commentary
Stanley Cutler’s review of Alger Hiss’s Looking Glass War, a book by G. Edward White
Susan E. Evans’ “The Alger hiss Case: The Real Trial of the Century”
Court TV’s “The Shadowy Mr. Crosley” has dramatics excerpts from the Nixon interrogation of Hiss.
Here’s a pro-Hiss site managed by the lawyer who represented Hiss in his later attempt to get his conviction reversed. At that site is a deposition from an expert claiming the Hiss typewriter had been deliberately altered, a mainstay of the liberal defense of Hiss. Plus, newsreel footage!
September 11, 2004
From the AP:
Indicators measure the nation’s unemployment rate, consumer spending and other economic milestones, but Vice President Dick Cheney says it misses the hundreds of thousands who make money selling on eBay.
“That’s a source that didn’t even exist 10 years ago,” Cheney told an audience in Cincinnati on Thursday. “Four hundred thousand people make some money trading on eBay.”
What next will the Bushies dredge up to convince us that the economy is swell? The value of shared MP3s should count in the GDP? Add offshore employees to the ranks of the newly employed?
When you can’t tell the AP from The Onion, you know we’ve entered the realm of the post-ludicrous.
This t-shirt that promotes Jonny for president in 2004 is just ridiculous. Everyone knows that 2008 is Stewart’s year, when he’ll be running against the Schwarzengroper. C’mon people, get real!
September 10, 2004
Looking at the course of this election, can you find anything left of our democracy?
September 9, 2004
When candidates – or CEOs – lie about their service record, don’t they generally get forced to resign? Isn’t that the norm? Just wondering.
The following passage from Salon is merely coincidental:
In 1978, during an unsuccessful run for Congress in west Texas, Bush produced campaign literature that claimed he had served “in the US Air Force and the Texas Air National Guard.”
George W. Bush was never in the US Air Force.
September 7, 2004
Zephyr Teachout, one of my very favorite faves from the Dean campaign, is heading up the oddly-named Baobabs College Labs Project, funded by Mitch Kapor and Freada Kapor Klein, intended to get out the college vote. From the press release:
The campaign is targeting a dozen universities in swing states such as Ohio, New Mexico, Arizona, and Pennsylvania. Selected progressive student organizers on these campuses are given stipends, support, and online community building tools developed on the Howard Dean campaign.
…The effort hopes to spread online beyond the initial schools using such web tools as Civic Space, formerly “Dean Space,” Advokit, open source GOTV software, and Forwardtrack, open source petition software.
The project hopes to use blogs as a way to organize and inspire. The name comes from an African tree that looks like its been turned “roots side up.”
Go Zephyr! Go college organizers! Get out the vote! Get out the right vote!
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