July 30, 2004
Friday Funny
Two of my favorite blogs are ones I've just recently gotten to know. Jay Pinkerton, recently of the National Lampoon and a moderate blogosphere hit, makes me laugh almost the same that Sam Henderson's Magic Whistle does. Currently, he's winding his way through the "News Skim Comics," which starts thusly:
Spamusement is a clever concept: silly one-panel comics inspired by familiar spam "Subject" lines, like "Never be sick again," "We have located several horny women in your area!," "you were wrong cabinet sanchez" (which is of the variety that starts with a real phrase and then appends two random words), and possibly my favorite: "Tiny teen takes on the giant one-eyed monster!" (Not to worry, all work safe)
Spamusement is a clever concept: silly one-panel comics inspired by familiar spam "Subject" lines, like "Never be sick again," "We have located several horny women in your area!," "you were wrong cabinet sanchez" (which is of the variety that starts with a real phrase and then appends two random words), and possibly my favorite: "Tiny teen takes on the giant one-eyed monster!" (Not to worry, all work safe)
July 29, 2004
I'm Smitten
I'm watching pretty much uninterrupted coverage of Kerry, Edwards et al. at a concert with the Boston Pops and a massive fireworks display over Boston (on Fox News of all places), one last finale after the convention. And Teresa Heinz-Kerry is standing with everyone watching the fireworks go up in time to rousing music like the 1812 Overture, but every once in a while she goes off in her own little world and does a little air conducting. As The Ride of the Valkyries starts, she makes little short, rapid motions mimicking the violins, and then throws her body into it as it climaxes. It was like she was a little kid! Yeah, she's an eccentric billionaire and has some weird tics, but this moment was pure, unadulterated Teresa. I loved it.
Vote With Your Dollars
Catching up on some convention blogging … Interesting observation from Matt Ygelsias over at the American Prospect:
The point is that voters get engaged early and send the party a message to ensure they get the candidate they want. Problem is, it's hard to get people to care about general elections, let alone the period well before a primary. And once the main force focusing people's attention on politics goes away - W - it may be hard to sustain the grassroots netactivism that has sprung up in the past few years. The national party might default to self-financers in the "lean" years when interest is down.
If the party leaders had had their way, not only would Obama not have been delivering the keynote address at the convention, he wouldn't be the party's candidate for U.S. Senate at all. Plan A was to hand the nomination to Blair Hull, a millionaire who could have self-financed the race. That's a recruiting tactic the party's increasingly relied on since the early 1990s; as we saw last night, it can deprive the country of some of the most dynamic and committed public servants out there in exchange for bland nonentities like Herb Kohl. Money matters in politics and I wouldn't suggest the Democrats try to ignroe [sic] it, but this just brings home the need to expand the sort of fundraising success Howard Dean and John Kerry have had at the presidential level further down the ballot.Thinking about the Daily Kos' dKos 8, it seems like the effort is there. I don't know if any of the 8 were written off or challenged by the national party, but I believe the criteria for selection included that they were enthusiastically supported by the grass roots. Visitors to the site have raised several hundred thousand dollars - not much more than a drop in something like a U.S. Senate race, but they're getting hundreds of new donors.
The point is that voters get engaged early and send the party a message to ensure they get the candidate they want. Problem is, it's hard to get people to care about general elections, let alone the period well before a primary. And once the main force focusing people's attention on politics goes away - W - it may be hard to sustain the grassroots netactivism that has sprung up in the past few years. The national party might default to self-financers in the "lean" years when interest is down.
July 28, 2004
Google As Your Hard-of-Hearing, Conservative Grandfather
I was checking the Polis referrer logs, and noticed that some visits had come via the Google query "Reactions to Obama's Speech Last Night." Of course, Google sometimes doesn't hear exactly what you say:
Obama and the Sports Metaphor
It's irresistable to journalists, the framing of success in any field in terms of sports. It's obvious why this is the case; it's easy and it provides a common, understandable context especially when dealing with a subject or people that may not be that widely known.
By far the most common phrase used in the past two weeks to describe Barack Obama to the larger public is "rising star." Which can evoke "sports star," but just as easily "movie star," there's some neutrality there. But after last night's keynote success, the sports metaphor has taken over.
David Brooks, immediately following the speech on PBS, said it was like "watching Tiger Woods play for the first time." Today's Trib editorial, The Phenom ("phenom" rarely without modifiers like "tennis"), starts off with a baseball analogy, and they brand Obama the "can't-miss kid." Archpundit says "he hit it out of the ballpark."
I don't want to make too much of this: it was an exciting moment, and we want to convey that excitement and the relationship between expectations and performance under pressure which is such a core piece of major league sports. But it's just a wee bit depressing to hear this metaphor applied to a multiracial man, whom most would identify on first sight as black, who's just had a major achievement in a field which has chronically restricted access to and representation of people of color. As in, we can only make sense of this if we frame it in terms of a context where, fairly or unfairly, the general public have seen blacks as having the most success.
I want to be clear, I don't think any condescension was intended in any of these pieces, and clearly it's not anywhere close to racism. But perhaps because this is such a sensitive point, writers could go out of their way to avoid using the sports metaphor in this sort of case, even if they have or will use it with white politicians.
By far the most common phrase used in the past two weeks to describe Barack Obama to the larger public is "rising star." Which can evoke "sports star," but just as easily "movie star," there's some neutrality there. But after last night's keynote success, the sports metaphor has taken over.
David Brooks, immediately following the speech on PBS, said it was like "watching Tiger Woods play for the first time." Today's Trib editorial, The Phenom ("phenom" rarely without modifiers like "tennis"), starts off with a baseball analogy, and they brand Obama the "can't-miss kid." Archpundit says "he hit it out of the ballpark."
I don't want to make too much of this: it was an exciting moment, and we want to convey that excitement and the relationship between expectations and performance under pressure which is such a core piece of major league sports. But it's just a wee bit depressing to hear this metaphor applied to a multiracial man, whom most would identify on first sight as black, who's just had a major achievement in a field which has chronically restricted access to and representation of people of color. As in, we can only make sense of this if we frame it in terms of a context where, fairly or unfairly, the general public have seen blacks as having the most success.
I want to be clear, I don't think any condescension was intended in any of these pieces, and clearly it's not anywhere close to racism. But perhaps because this is such a sensitive point, writers could go out of their way to avoid using the sports metaphor in this sort of case, even if they have or will use it with white politicians.
July 27, 2004
He Did It
I'm having a hard time coming up with something to say about Obama's keynote. It was exciting, emotionally and rhetorically satisfying, it lived up to and I believe exceeded expectations, and I'll leave it at that. One observation I made was that the halting, almost formal rhthym of his speech, something that's apparent even in the stump speeches I've seen, was not present: maybe it was the nervous energy of the moment, but in any case tonight he was fluid and flowing, especially as he settled in.
No surprise to us Illinoisans, but he really is the real thing.
No surprise to us Illinoisans, but he really is the real thing.
Convention Night 1
For what it's worth, with respect to my previous post, I thought the convention speakers last night hit the right balance of incumbent criticism and affirmation of their candidate, and have allayed my fears of a neutered argument. And they didn't dodge the war: Gore said that "no challenge is more critical than the situation we confront in Iraq." The tone they struck should insulate them from "hate-fest" accusations.
Heck, you don't need to believe me: take it from … Andrew Sullivan?
Heck, you don't need to believe me: take it from … Andrew Sullivan?
July 25, 2004
No Alarms and No Surprises
It was clear to me today watching Barack Obama on Meet the Press, Face the Nation, and Late Edition that the DNC has the up-and-comer on a very short leash. When asked by Tim Russert about his previous remarks criticizing the Iraq war, Obama played them down, especially the criticism of Bush. Today's Times (quit asking for my login to read the dern news!) lets us know that the Dems are going to tone down the anti-Bush sentiment this week and present their "positive" and "affirmative" positions.
This seems to me a strange choice. First, it blunts and homogenizes your best and brightest -- like Obama and Michigan Governor Jen Granholm, who also popped up on Face the Nation. Obama is by no means a fire-breathing partisan, and nor has he made Bush or the war central to his campaign, but Iraq is a huge and indictable issue for the President, and Obama has taken him to task for it on the campaign trail. Instead, you have the droning repetition of the talking points -- values, strength, safety, etc. -- that gives the inherent charisma of Obama and Granholm no where to go. Second, it gives your base no red meat. Dean proved that anger with Bush was not just an irrational or self-hating position amongst average Democrats, it was demonstrative of serious grievances that prospective candidates needed to acknowledge or risk irrelevance. The DNC should use the convention to fire up the core partisans, much like the Edwards selection did. There will still be plenty of time to strike up the moderate and compromising language that's required of a national general election in the early fall. Since the convention means nothing in terms of actually choosing a nominee, take it as your last opportunity until November to let Democrats be Democrats. Republicans are supposed to be the ones who have to hide their true voices from the mainstream (cf. Santorum, Delay not speaking at their convention).
I can practically hear the internal rationalizations of the Shrums, Cahills, and McAuliffes: we can't leave ourselves exposed to Republican attacks during the convention by taking any chances with our rhetoric; we must present only a positive, upbeat message or we'll risk being labeled as relentlessly angry and pessimistic by the other side; the race is so close and we've taken only careful, measured steps up till now, so we mustn't give the media or the RNC attack machine any off-message stories; etc. The problem with this is that no matter what Democrats do, the GOP is going to try to define them and Kerry the way they want, and they have been doing that for months now. Democrats might as well give the narrow slice of undecided voters a proud and honest glimpse of the party.
I was really looking forward to Barack's keynote, but now I fear it will be just his mouth moving someone else's focus-grouped, safe words.
This seems to me a strange choice. First, it blunts and homogenizes your best and brightest -- like Obama and Michigan Governor Jen Granholm, who also popped up on Face the Nation. Obama is by no means a fire-breathing partisan, and nor has he made Bush or the war central to his campaign, but Iraq is a huge and indictable issue for the President, and Obama has taken him to task for it on the campaign trail. Instead, you have the droning repetition of the talking points -- values, strength, safety, etc. -- that gives the inherent charisma of Obama and Granholm no where to go. Second, it gives your base no red meat. Dean proved that anger with Bush was not just an irrational or self-hating position amongst average Democrats, it was demonstrative of serious grievances that prospective candidates needed to acknowledge or risk irrelevance. The DNC should use the convention to fire up the core partisans, much like the Edwards selection did. There will still be plenty of time to strike up the moderate and compromising language that's required of a national general election in the early fall. Since the convention means nothing in terms of actually choosing a nominee, take it as your last opportunity until November to let Democrats be Democrats. Republicans are supposed to be the ones who have to hide their true voices from the mainstream (cf. Santorum, Delay not speaking at their convention).
I can practically hear the internal rationalizations of the Shrums, Cahills, and McAuliffes: we can't leave ourselves exposed to Republican attacks during the convention by taking any chances with our rhetoric; we must present only a positive, upbeat message or we'll risk being labeled as relentlessly angry and pessimistic by the other side; the race is so close and we've taken only careful, measured steps up till now, so we mustn't give the media or the RNC attack machine any off-message stories; etc. The problem with this is that no matter what Democrats do, the GOP is going to try to define them and Kerry the way they want, and they have been doing that for months now. Democrats might as well give the narrow slice of undecided voters a proud and honest glimpse of the party.
I was really looking forward to Barack's keynote, but now I fear it will be just his mouth moving someone else's focus-grouped, safe words.
July 24, 2004
Barack Obama on the Sunday Morning Talk Shows
Just a quick note that Barack will be making the Sunday morning talk show rounds tomorrow:
- (CBS) Face the Nation: 9:30am
- (NBC) Meet the Press: 10:00am
- (CNN) Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer: 11:00am
July 07, 2004
Obama Raised $4M Last Quarter
July 02, 2004
Polis Humbly Offers Webmail Independence
I have three (3) Gmail invitations to give away. For those of you who aren't obsessive technology nerds like myself, Gmail (that's not really fair about the "nerds": it has achieved pretty broad awareness) is the Google solution to free web-based email, like Hotmail or Yahoo, but it's cleverer (it uses nifty JavaScripting techniques to behave more like a desktop app) and they give you a whole gigabyte (1 GB) of space! I know! It's in invitation-only beta for the time being, so only powerful Internet mavens like myself can bestow the honor upon you. Or if you had just started a free Blogger (also Google) account. You know, either way.
To get an invitation, post a comment below, but (and here's the catch) write a few words about why you read Polis. Really. We have no idea. It's a mystery to us, even.
This also signals rather light posting for a few days as Scott and I regroup and think about which Congressman or other candidate for office to embarrass next. Kidding! They bring it on themselves, am I right, people?
UPDATE: Whoops, I forgot to mention that we need your current email address in order to invite you to Gmail. So send us a note with your address to polis.chicago@gmail.com.
To get an invitation, post a comment below, but (and here's the catch) write a few words about why you read Polis. Really. We have no idea. It's a mystery to us, even.
This also signals rather light posting for a few days as Scott and I regroup and think about which Congressman or other candidate for office to embarrass next. Kidding! They bring it on themselves, am I right, people?
UPDATE: Whoops, I forgot to mention that we need your current email address in order to invite you to Gmail. So send us a note with your address to polis.chicago@gmail.com.
