Communicative Action

iProgress

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Plugh) — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 03:01:00 +0000

Communicative Action is now closed for business. For my current work, please head over to iProgress at wordpress. Thanks.

Rhetoric vs. Reality and The Disappearance of Childhood

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Plugh) — Mon, 04 May 2009 23:10:00 +0000

Here's a perfect example of how the public falls in love with novelty, especially when it comes to our politics. Ironically, the same Republican Party who likes to paint Obama as all talk...an empty suit...is in love with this 14-year old conservative.

Jonathan Krohn is a bright kid, who articulates his thoughts in an unusually mature fashion. In part, the intellectual training he undertook while in front of his radio, listening to conservative talk, is parroting, but it would be a mistake to attribute his ability to brainwashing alone. He's bright. At least in the technical sense. He wowed a crowd of loonies at the 2009 annual CPAC event by passionately speaking on the meaning of conservatism.

The problem I have with Krohn is that he's actually the type of "empty suit" that the Republicans called our president, a self made man, a product of Columbia and Harvard Law School, the President of the Harvard Law Review, and an extraordinarily gifted community organizer who was never afraid to get his hands dirty working to improve the lives of others. Krohn is an adolescent.

By what context should we judge Krohn's rhetoric? Is it possible for a 14-year old from Duluth to have built sufficient cognitive connections to the reality he's attempting to define with his words? Well...it's possible, but it's not the case in this instance. Someone would have to show me the hours and days and weeks and months that little Krohn has spent among the poor, the disenfranchised, and the underrepresented to begin to convince me that he has a shred of actual experience in the matters he purports to understand. Beyond that, it's impossible for me to accept that this child understands what it's like to wake up in the morning to go to work to support children of his own, to be accountable in a way that means life and death, or starvation, homelessness. He has no clue what it means to be so ultimately responsible not only for himself but for a family. He doesn't know what it's like to stare a parent in the eyes as they lie on a hospital bed unsure of whether they will ever get well, or if they might die. He has never faced the prospect of being unable to pay for food or medicine or rent or diapers or milk or anything of consequence.

The phenomenon of Jonathan Krohn reminds me of Neil Postman's "The Disappearance of Childhood" in that Postman argues that commercialization of mass media and its messages subjects children to ideas for which they are incapable of making rational transactions. It's argued that this is the point after all, that commercial messages are intended to be felt rather than rationalized, which is precisely the point of talk radio. The messages of Rush Limbaugh and Glen Beck and their ilk are intended to be felt...in the gut...rather than rationalized. The fact that this child is able to articulate the messages in a way that simulates rationalization is merely an illusion for the lack of contextual definition available to him.

He's the perfect combination of a bright child, exposed to messages for which he is totally incapable of rationalizing, being sold on a commercial message. It's the product that is conservatism that he has internalized rather than the actual experience-based conclusion that the process of living affords us. Now they want to use him to be the pusher of their messages. Brilliant.

Our Political Map is not the Territory

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Plugh) — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 02:41:00 +0000

I was watching the video podcast of NBC's Meet the Press this morning, and a particular comment by host David Gregory caught my ear and prompted me to do some thinking (and blogging). It's a question of General Semantics and the relationship between our names for things (words as abstractions) and the meaning behind them.

Gregory posed this question to White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs:

"MR. GREGORY: There are those who say this is a president who's playing politics. He is straddling this issue because he wants to appease his liberal activist base who very much wants accountability from the Bush years over this issue."

As a member of President Obama's "liberal activist base" I would support Mr. Gregory's assertion, but I don't think the issue he was attempting to explore is limited to a "liberal activist base" in the way he was framing the conversation about justice, torture, and political maneuvering. I could spend an entire post on the words "liberal" and "conservative" as descriptors of our national system of political beliefs, but I don't think that those words are the relevant concerns in this case. In fact, I think they're nearly irrelevant to my point.

The term "activist" is used in this example, and in many others like it in the institutional media, to frame a group of people who are engaged in the issues, particularly with respect to applying political pressure for desired outcomes. The higher levels of abstraction, I would argue, also contain a sense of radicalism, or a highly polarized position on the traditional right-left political line. I believe the attachment of the words "right" or "left", or their counterparts "liberal" or "conservative" enhance or solidify that sense. When a journalist or pundit describes "activists" it is generally in the context of a particular situation that is problematic for a political figure who is trying to sit on both sides of the fence. These people are the citizens likely to pick up a phone, mail a letter, send an e-mail, or walk a picket line in support of their own position on said issue. The visual reinforcement of the "activist" in the television medium is an aging hippie protestor, a grungy, pierced anti-globalization youth, or a Christian conservative soldier of the anti-abortion/anti-gay marriage wars. There are several symbolic reinforcers to the definition of activist in the institutional media, which are marginal in their representation of the more nuanced "reality" that persists in actual political claims.

Is one not an activist if they lose a child to toxic waste pollution in their local water system and sues the polluter for reparations and/or justice? Is one not an activist if a large corporation decides to build a 10-story building across the street from their house, engulfing their home in shadow for most of the day, and writes a letter to their Congressman for help? Is one not an activist for voting for the President of the United States? In the sense that one takes action, particularly in the form of a claim of some kind, we all are activists to some degree. Without acknowledging that fact, we resign the label of activist to the abstract and to the symbolic charicature of the institutional media.

The term "base" is also problematic for me. The intent of the journalist is to suggest that there are a group of people who must be won over for a political figure to gain election or stay in power. The so-called base are a collection of true believers on one side of the partisan divide or the other that drive the political bus in fund raising, policy making, and agenda setting. This collection of people is the alpha and omega of political support and must be appeased, as Gregory suggested in his comment. From a purely practical standpoint, I think this idea is generally false. Obama was elected by a broad coalition of people with varied interests, sensibilities, and claims. If he lost any one of those coalition members, John McCain might be President today. Certainly, the base determined the outcome of the Democratic Primary, but is it so easy to say that the base who voted in the neighborhood of 18 million for Hillary Clinton is somehow the same base that voted in the neighborhood of 19 million for Obama? If they were the same, they would have all gone one way or the other. The same can be said for John McCain. If the Republican base were the radical Right that serve as the symbol for the partisan divide in the institutional media, Mike Huckabee would have been the runaway nominee.

The notion that there is a "base" in the sense that Gregory and others suggest seems inaccurate. It connotes something solid or permanent, when we know that political claimants and their interests tend to shift over time, moving from one alliance to another. There may be some general trends in identifying the loyalties of these claimant groups, but it's a mistake to assume that they're fixed. A political base may trend to a particular set of issues and/or claims and the groups who identify with said issues and/or claims, but it requires a far more nuanced investigation to determine the make up of these coalitions and the interaction of their claims to determine an individual politician's base. In fact, I guarantee that within these coalitions there are more than a few contradictory claims that complicate the definition of specific membership characteristics in any accounting of support groups.

When Gregory, or his peers, simplify the notion of claimant groups and political support by drawing on the left-right, linear definition of political claimants, adding in a symbolic connection to our collective image of radical activism, rooted in a foundation of power identified as a base, they miss the point and actually end up misinforming the public in the process. The reason that it hit home in this particular example is that the issue of torture, and the morality of it as a national intelligence feature, is hardly an issue to be attributed to partisan activist bases. To whatever extent we define particular collections of claimants as activists and to whatever extent those people are members of a supporting coalition for our President, in this case, there is truth in Gregory's statement. The problem is, I don't believe that the outrage over the things we now know were conducted by the intelligence community at the discretion of the Bush Administration and their legal allies, is limited to a narrow group of activists in Obama's base.

There is outrage over the idea that the United States drowned people to the point that they were on death's doorstep as a way to elicit information. As the details have been spelled out more clearly in the institutional media, the public has become more familiar with methods that would be hard to characterize as anything other than torture. The only claimant group that appears to be arguing anything to the contrary are the roughly 25% of the country that indicated support for President Bush throughout his presidency, and the people they elected to Congress. It would seem that President Obama is going againt the wishes of roughly 75% of the American people that would like to see the rule of law upheld, rather than some "liberal activist base" lurking to pounce on the 1st opportunity to smack the President if he fails to do our bidding. I don't have the numbers handy, but I would bet that any poll conducted regarding the public's wishes for investigation and/or prosecutions in this case would at the very least hover at 50/50. To paint it as an issue for the "liberal activist base" is an oversimplification of the conditions on the ground in the United States, and demonstrates quite clearly how the Washington Press Corps is living in a very narrow set of definitions of the political environment set by self-fulfilling symbolism, abstractions, and "storylines." These "storylines" are the standard stories of the Washington insider crowd that help to define their position and interests with respect to the various claimant groups in the general American political system. For more on what I mean, I suggest reading up on Charles Tilly.

At any rate, it's important to challenge the accuracy of the language used to define the terms of our own engagement in our human environment. In this case, I think it's quite clear how inaccuracy in mapping territory with particular words can lead to a misinformation at best and outright propaganda at worst.

Digital Sinclair

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Plugh) — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 03:01:00 +0000

In 1906 Upton Sinclair penned his famous work "The Jungle," in hopes of highlighting the working conditions of laborers and immigrants in the meat packing plants of Chicago. Sinclair's vision was to inform and move the public to action on the behalf of the laborers suffering through unspeakable work conditions. His vision was to move the proletariat to action. In the end, what most people remember of "The Jungle" was it's graphic depictions of the meat industry and the conditions of our national food supply. Pools of blood, diseases carcasses, and all manner of contamination of our very sustenance came to light thanks to his undercover work. His work and subsequent correspondence even moved President Theodore Roosevelt to reform the industry and address at least some of labor's issues, although not to the extent Sinclair would have preferred.

Several years ago Eric Schlosser wrote a modern equivalent of "The Jungle" when he penned "Fast Food Nation." That work was later transformed into a feature film, perhaps as a reflection of our modern media evironmental sensibilities demand. Who reads anymore, right? Schlosser, like Sinclair, spent a great deal of time in his book dedicated to the plight of the immigrant worker and the terrible injuries and servitude that they are subjected to in the meat packing plants that serve our international fast food jones. Also, reflecting our expanded sensibilities, Schlosser described the terrible ecological impact of these factory farms and meat processing plants, both on the natural ecology and the man made ecology of local communities.

The message that Schlosser ended up communicating to his audience, however, was that our food is filthy and polluted. The worker and the immigrant and the ecology of our nation fell to the bottom rung of the ladder as footnotes to the most titilating theme of the book, our foodstuffs.

In a sign of the times, in recent days, the New York Times, the Huffington Post, and all manner of other major and minor news outlets have featured the story of two Domino's Pizza employees who tampered with their product in some truly unsavory ways and then posted their shenanigans to YouTube. The video and it's subsequent fallout have cost the Domino's Pizza company both the money and the faith of their customers. After having witnessed the hideous display of kitchen hijinks and its mucus membrane detour, it appears as though people are thinking twice about eating Domino's. The company has done everything in its power to apologize and assure its customers that this is an isolated incident. It's used the same viral means to reach the consumer that initially highlighted the damaging behavior of the two food-handlers.

From the perspective of a media ecologist, the actual food-handling and inexcusable "tampering" are secondary to the communication of the story itself. Upon reading and watching the story on-line, it occurred to me that I was witnessing a kind of Digital Sinclair. The workers, themselves, had exposed the horrific treatment of our food albeit without fully considering the consequences. (They have been arrested on felony charges.) The exploitation of labor was lost on Sinclair's audience, and perhaps again with respect to Schlosser. Perhaps it was the very exploitation that each man sought to describe that drove the two Domino's employees to perform their raunchy acts, and also to show them to the world at large. Perhaps the unspoken, psychological impact of thankless and robotic work in the fast food factory environment pushed them to abuse our food supply and then pushed them to cathartically demonstrate it to us. I'm only an amateur psychologist, but in terms of the medium, it appears as though the Internet and it's many communication environments has taken the printed word, distilled it into the instinctive reactionary elements that touch us at some fundamental level, and eliminated the rest.

We still are given access to the horror, to revel in its raw power, but we are left without the depth of analysis and the contextual treatment that the literate-minded Sinclair, and his modern counterpart Schlosser, provided. The outcome is potentially the same. The sensational aspects of each story are what remain. The YouTube version of the story simply cuts out the wordiness of print and hits us where we react most instinctively. In the gut. If the outcome is oversight and reform, each of these examples spoke to the communication sensibilites of its public. If it's understanding of the issue in a more complex and interconnected sense, with respect to its impact on labor and the human condition, it most certainly will fail. The critic will shout from the rooftops that this new medium is failing in a very specific sense, but I wonder if that critic might be forgetting the lessons of Sinclair's experience.

In the end, as we might relate this to Meyrowitz' "No Sense of Place," the new YouTube medium allows us not only access to corners of the world previously mysterious and unknown, but also allows us the ability to show them to the global audience. Where we once cringed at the stories our high school buddies told us about the practices in the Burger King kitchen, we can now access them for ourselves in a truly visceral and impactful way. As a literate-minded person, I choose to seek out the level of information that only the printed word has given us until today. I want the context and the background and the details that help to inform me and guide me in an ecological sense. I want the message about labor. As a consumer of edible products of various kinds, I want the YouTube clip that makes me sick to my stomach. As a visually-oriented creature, the sight of food and muscus intermingling in an unholy way is more likely to get me on the phone with my Congressman or to start me on a path to an organic diet. No one is going to consider the reasons for these employees misbehavior in the end. No one is going to connect the dots to the psychological impact of fast food work environments and food abuse. That's something for books to deal with. The YouTube clip will move some to action (at least temporarily, until the next outrage comes along) and a few uncomfortable news cycles will pass for the executives at America's fast food giants. Some token reforms will be made. Still, until we understand the roots and context of this bad behavior, no one is going to convince me that the next wave of disposable fast food employees won't be messing with the special sauce. How will they stop it?

At least there's YouTube, our Digital Sinclair.

Media Ecology: A Brief YouTube Look

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Plugh) — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 06:51:00 +0000

I've been browsing the net for items related to the field of media ecology, to which I'm permanently and blissfully attached. One regular stop in this exploration is my mentor Lance Strate's blog "Time Passing." While examining the blog today, I discovered an excellent interview conducted by a Brazilian group with Dr. Strate on the Fordham campus.

If you ever listen to me prattle on about Media Ecology, or you are in search of the same things I am, this interview ought to help make some sense of the field. Enjoy.

When Last I Left You...

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Plugh) — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 00:11:00 +0000

It's been a long time since I've wandered into these parts. Blogging has taken a backseat in recent months, but I'm committed to getting back in the business again. A bullet-point recap of important things that have transpired since my last post, the 2008 Presidential Campaign Haiku...

* The Economy Collapsed
* Barack Obama Ran Away with the Presidential Election
* The Economy Got Worse
* George Bush Wasted Away into the Fog
* Dick Cheney was in a Wheelchair
* Barack Obama made 1000 Press Conferences during the Transition
* 2 Million People Attended the Inauguration in January
* The Economy Got Worse...More
* President Obama Closed Guantanamo, Effectively
* President Obama Signed the Lilly Ledbetter Act into Law
* President Obama used Web 2.0 Media to Communicate to America
* President Obama Passed an $800 Billion Stimulus Package without the GOP
* President Obama Passed a Homeowner Assistance Package without the GOP
* President Obama Made a Historical "Non-State of the Union Address"
* LA. Governor Bobby Jindal Made the GOP Rebuttal as 30 Rock's Kenneth the Page

There's a lot more in between the points, but that's off the top of my head. There's more about Afghanistan and Iraq as well as with respect to the Auto Industry and Transparency and a host of other crucial items on his agenda. He's the most ambitious and daring and optimistic president in my lifetime, to be sure, and I would wager that no one since JFK has put forth such a progressive vision for America's future. He's challenged with some of the most pressing and difficult problems in modern history, but those challenges offer the nation a chance at rebirth, evolution, and a re-focus on our collectivity. For Obama, it offers an opportunity at immortality in a way that even the ordinary president doesn't get.

In coming weeks I plan to blog about governance, democracy, politics, and media of various kinds. I plan to talk about specific items as well as more broad, philosophical concerns. It's just good to be back.

The Straw the Broke the Camel's Back

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Plugh) — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 07:29:00 +0000

First a visual haiku that represents this campaign better than anything I could possibly write here. Enjoy for a moment of zen.......

Did you let that image soak in? A cool, composed Obama walking away from a badly sputtering McCain...left in the dust of electoral history, choked and gasping for relevance. In reality, that's a screenshot from the end of the final debate. McCain, in his inimitable way, exited in the wrong direction, caught himself, and corrected. However, rather than correcting himself in a dignified and statesmanlike way he chose his preferred gaffe-correction strategy of calling much greater attention to his mistake by dancing a jig, sticking out his tongue, and bobbing his head like a chicken. That's not a mean-spirited jab at McCain. That's actually what he does in those awkward situations. It's very hard to imagine him staring into Putin's eyes and winning a contest of wills.

I've written on debates in the past, so I won't belabor the point, but the entire series of television events went the way of the medium. The cooler candidate won. In fact, speaking of electoral politics in the television age, my mentor Lance Strate once noted that no "hot" candidate has ever won a presidential election. McLuhan's "hot versus cool" comes in handy to understand this little side note.

One bit of common wisdom I've heard spoken among presidential politics scholars is that an election rarely shifts after October 15th. People's choices solidfy by that point, and if this election is now solid, McCain will lose a landslide and the Congress will shift even further to the Democratic side. As a fellow believer, I look forward to seeing what kind of chops a good Democratic government has, however I want to see a good Democratic government first. Obama's leadership will make or break that, and his historical position is met by historical circumstances. If ever we needed a leader of great character and brilliant mind, it is now. I believe we have that leader, and his campaign message of hope is now solidifying in my mind as more than a slogan. It's a promise and, yes, something to cling to in these hard times.

What Wins a Debate?

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Plugh) — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 04:44:00 +0000

I'm writing this in the wake of the 1st presidential debate between Barack Obama and John McCain, and after a rather long absence from posting. I'd like to hit one general election point before I get into the meat of this debate post. The economy.

There have been two elections so far. The first was a test of popularity, media-friendliness, and style. McCain won the opening salvo of that election by dropping Palin into our laps with a rush of mythological gobbledy-gook about a moose-hunting, reformer, hockey mom from Alaska who killed the "Bridge to Nowhere." He won by hitting Obama in the media early and often with nonsense about lipstick and Paris Hilton and so on. The long, and I mean looooooong, election campaign had lulled the American people into a daze of sorts, where the Clinton/Obama sparring had set a particular tone. That was the primary, and it seems the McCain people learned some lessons from the late primary season, when Clinton began to make up some ground on Barack with distractions and little things.

The problem with that thinking is that this is not the primary. This decides who the next president and vice president will be in the wake of a disastrous Bush administration. This is the final plunge into the deep end. The Palin pick began to unravel before our eyes as she stepped into the spotlight and Obama began to punch back hard. The meme switched. It changed to a focus on McCain's lies, distortions, and poor management/judgment. That seemed to stick just in time for part two of the election to begin. The economic crisis.

The bailout talks couldn't have come at a worse time for McCain. His trajectory was already on a downward path and the public saw Palin for what she is, a moron, and got back to the issues. The issues had Obama surging just in time for the issues to smack us all in the face with the fall of Wall Street. The seriousness of this choice hit home harder than ever and the primary tactics that had worked for a short time began to make McCain look amateurish and insubstantial on most important matters in the news. The debate seems to have been a push by all common wisdom, although some polls seem to suggest Obama came out ahead. This is the end of the beginning of the end for John Sidney McCain's bid. The end will come when Palin has to sit across from Biden and talk about the country.

Now to the debate. For the record, I think this was one of the highest quality debates in recent memory. It still wasn't a debate, but it was more substantial that any of the events we've witnessed in this election cycle and in the more recent history of the presidential elections. Lehrer did a fantastic job, although having the two men sit next to each other would have had them interacting directly rather than the podium set up that they employed. There was no incentive to confrontation standing 3 meters apart at lecterns. The major problem that I have with any debate analysis is that it covers what happened just after the broadcast. The test of the presidential debates is what people will remember 6 weeks, 6 months, 6 years, and a generation later. The impression matters more than the substance. The human memory maps out the events it witnesses in such a way that landmarks often dictate the territory more than precise accounts. This is an issue of General Semantics and Alfred Korzybski if anyone cares to look it up.

The map of these debates brings us the Reagan moment against Mondale, where the former Hollywood star defends the issue of age by flipping it on Mondale, saying that he won't hold his youth and inexperience against him. It's the Quayle/Bentsen moment..."You are no Jack Kennedy."

These moments are the long term mapping that ultimately decides who won. At this early juncture, thanks to YouTube and the progressive blogosphere the following moment seems to be the lone map moment in the debate tonight.

If that moment sticks, and the polls in the morning papers say Obama won, guess what? He won. As a keen political observer, I'd say that it was largely a tie on substance. Obama's overarching vision is more attractive and future-reaching than McCain's, but McCain articulated his adherence to the Reagan doctrine very well and made a good case for that wing of political thought. The substance was fairly clear, unambiguous, and the voters could choose based on their particular sense of what direction is best for the country. These debates, however, are not about substance, but mapping, and it's safe to say that Obama won.

More soon....

Bombs Bursting in Air

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Plugh) — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 00:11:00 +0000

Things have been quiet here at Communicative Action recently. The fact is, I've been a spectator more than a commentator for a while, limiting my conversations on the net to microblogging via Twitter and comments on other people's work. I'm back and ready to talk about two things that are important in the current news cycle.

1. The Democratic National Convention

Several things stick out to me about the convention. First, the media coverage was built on the Clinton-Obama rift, party unity, and hitting McCain. Narratives that are pre-determined are the stuff of modern, institutional media coverage but fail the public in a fundamental way. Like the Downing Street Memos and the Bush administration's case for war, the media narrative is a way to fix the coverage around the story. The story is determined by pundits and insiders and everything that unfolds is fit to that story. Barney Frank sneezes during Hillary Clinton's speech and suddenly there's a story up somewhere about a fractured Democratic Party on the issue of gay marriage.

The story that comes out of the convention from my perspective, based on what happened rather than what happened in relation to pre-determined narratives, is a story of legacy. It's a story of leadership. The convention was most effective in driving a line between the Kennedys, Clintons, and now the Obamas. I felt that the party would almost be better served including the Roosevelts in the mix, but I think that must be ancient history for too many viewers and likely they couldn't find anyone to take the stage with that mantle. The Democratic Party brand has suffered through long periods of leadership void. The charismatic qualities that provide enduring legacies of leadership in American history books are difficult to find and almost impossible to fake. The GOP has done a very good job of building a late-20th century Reagan legacy that was supposed to run through the Bush's and now McCain. The problem is, that legacy is basically lost. Both Bush presidencies were pale in comparison to the large shadow of Reagan and McCain just can't stack up. The GOP will need to reinvent itself in the same way the Dems did with Clinton if they hope to start any kind of lengthy tenure at the head of the nation again.

Obama capped off a forceful, and vibrant convention with a masterpiece. The Ted Kennedy speech, the Clintons dueling speeches, Governor Schweitzer, and the Kerry/Biden 1-2 punch provided lasting memories and excellent branding opportunities for the party. They were reminders of past success, links to the legacies of successful Democratic leadership, and forceful defenses and projections of our ideals. Obama had a tough task to live up to the building momentum, but he delivered his most impactful speech, if not his best. It is a moment of historical significance for America on so many levels, but the immediate importance was the ability of the nominee to take the torch for its final leg and make his case as a logical successor to the Democratic leadership. He did so and more, and I think he gave America a reason to trust him and support him, and yes, to follow him.

I would be remiss in failing to mention the gracious and powerful moment that Hillary Clinton provided in ending the roll call to the nomination. In the primary campaign she hit Obama hard. Yes, there are probably some hard feelings and some bitterness, but she put her nation and her party ahead of herself. She stands to gain respect, power, and future opportunities for her selfless act, but historically that moment will be remembered for its symbolic importance. It will be remembered as one of the great moments in party history. That brings me to the second issue in the news cycle.

2. Sarah Palin

Others are already saying it for me, but this pick for McCain VP is an unmitigated disaster. There are a few sparkles of potential brilliance behind the pick, but I'm tempted to stand firmly in my assessment of this pick as a huge political blunder. This was a desperation pick. It was a pick aimed at attracting disenfranchised Clinton supporters, but actually demonstrates why the GOP is all about appearances rather than substance. They don't get that the Clinton support wasn't a gender-based support alone. It was the notion that a woman of her qualifications, and 35-years of hard work in a male dominated society could crack the glass ceiling and take what is rightfully and deservedly hers. Obama proved to overcome that by offering something a bit different. His story was equally compelling and came at a time when a fresh start is on the minds of the American people. Clinton, otherwise, would have been crowned in Denver.

Palin is an outsider and an interesting character. She could help to rebrand the GOP in a way that is desperately needed. They are the party of the old white hawk now, with ties to big oil, big business, and Minneapolis men's rooms. Palin is a person with an interesting back story and the label of reformer. She's sufficiently weak a political character that neither of those points would actually get in the way of the good old boys network that runs the GOP, but appearances are everything in branding. The Clinton network, however, understand that Palin has done nothing to deserve the VP spot. She has no qualifications for the office, or for potentially being president when a 72-year old former POW with skin cancer is in the top spot. She hasn't earned it. She is everything the anti-Affirmative Action naysayers criticize in condemning the practice. She is taking a position that she has no business occupying simply for the purpose of advancing the image of the GOP with women.

Time will tell if McCain can sell this choice as a part of his mavericky-goodness, but I think the stakes in this election are too high, and the American people know it. I have a theory about the vice presidency for what it's worth. It's called the "close your eyes test" and it helps to easily determine whether the choice was good or not. Let's face it the VP is really only important to people because they're a heartbeat away. Otherwise, the person is a figurehead or a sidekick or a foil. That's the perception.

The "close your eyes test" asks you to close your eyes (surprise) and picture a situation where the president has died, become incapacitated, or is unavailable in some way. A crisis has emerged of dire proportions. A Cuban Missile Crisis type event that is turned over to the VP and the Cabinet. The VP is in the Oval Office delivering an address to the American public in an attempt to inform and project confidence in the government. If you can picture the person in question handling this effectively, they pass the most basic test of the VP position. If there are doubts about their capacity to deliver that address believably, they are a negative in the position. Biden clearly passes that test. He might not be the guy we choose to run the country on a daily basis in a generic situation, but the "close your eyes test" is a no-brainer with him. He can handle it, inspire some level of confidence, and project presidential qualities in sufficient measure to hold down the fort. For the GOP, Romney would be the same kind of character, as would Tom Ridge or even Condi Rice for that matter. I would be upset and I'd have my doubts, but they would be ideological rather than practical.

Those GOP types may even be incompetent and screw everything up, but the projection of authority and leadership are important to maintaining order in the nation. Chaos is bad. Pawlenty doesn't pass the test. Bayh didn't either. Kaine really didn't. Bill Richardson might. Clinton clearly does. Huckabee....eh...I guess. But, Palin? Not in a million years. Ask the American people, Democrat, Republican, or Independent if they would feel comfortable with her as president in a time of crisis. The answer is brutally obvious, and that's what makes this choice a disaster for McCain. The short term purpose of this pick is a huge failure, I believe, even if the long term success is a perceived inclusion in the GOP brand. I just think he shot himself in the foot. Time will tell.

Vote From Abroad

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Plugh) — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 02:40:00 +0000

Just a quick note today about people like me, living abroad and voting in the 2008 election. Watch.

GOP Hypocrisy on Obama Worship

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Plugh) — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 05:18:00 +0000

Cross posted at Daily Kos:

The last few days have seen former RNC eCampaign director, webmaster for Bush-Cheney '04, and former Giuliani '08 advisor Patrick Ruffini hitting Barack Obama hard on his campaigning initiatives overseas, particularly with regard to the Germany event and the flyers printed By Obama for America.

In a recent post on the subject, Ruffini calls out Obama as arrogant, saying:

The sea of Germans drummed up by the Obama campaign will be used as props to tell us Americans how to vote, and the campaign isn't trying to pretend otherwise. That's breathtakingly arrogant, and par for the course for Barack Obama.

Ruffini's been hitting it hard via Twitter as well. A few of his more select comments (top to bottom, most recent to older):

The Obama for America Graphics Team really messed this up.

We still expect our politicians to act like statesmen when abroad, not candidates drumming up crowds at rallies. Jarring.

Anyone who thinks that the issue is a German flyer in Germany is a nitwit. The issue is electioneering on foreign soil and personality cult

Covering Flyergate by 9am: Politico, Instapundit, NRO, Hot Air... more to come

Obama for President of Earth: http://www.pajamasmedia.com/instapundit/archives2/022030.php

Senators' trips abroad should be above this kind of electioneering

Obama German flyer story has legs... pickup by @benpolitico and @LaiStirland.

You see that I particularly highlighted the notion that Obama is a product of a personality cult. This is the official GOP meme to explain why their rotten, old, bitter, washed up, absent-minded, liar of a candidate is being throttled to death by an energized nation looking to a inspiring leader for something...anything. Hope is the keyword, but it's about vision.

The hypocrisy is absolutely stunning. Yes, Obama might border on arrogant, looking ahead to the presidency, if you choose to view it from that perspective. I don't even care about that too much. He went to listen. Arrogance manifested in this way is okay with me. Arrogance manifested in the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld model is not okay. Remember when Cheney replied, "So?" when asked about American's overwhelming opposition to the war. And they dare to frame Obama as arrogant? In fact, Ruffini tags his blog entry on the Obama flyer as 'arrogance.'

The cult of personality is really sensational to me. I'm getting more entertainment from the "Party of Reagan" accusing Democrats of being wrapped up in a cult of personality than at any other political angle out there. It's classic. Remember, this is the party that held a primary debate at the Reagan National Library in front of his airplance, with his wife in the front row. In order to be nominated by the GOP you have to douse your head in the bottled sweat of Ronald Reagan as a baptismal of prairie goodness.

To illustrate the hypocrisy and hilarity of this framing, I decided to go back and pull a few telling snippets from a 2004 WaPo piece by George Will on the legacy of Reagan.

In the uninterrupted flatness of the Midwest, where Reagan matured, the horizon beckons to those who would be travelers. He traveled far, had a grand time all the way, and his cheerfulness was contagious. It was said of Dwight Eisenhower -- another much-loved son of the prairie -- that his smile was his philosophy. That was true of Reagan, in this sense: He understood that when Americans have a happy stance toward life, confidence flows and good things happen. They raise families, crops, living standards and cultural values; they settle the land, make deserts bloom, destroy tyrannies.

Good actors, including political actors, do not deal in unrealities. Rather, they create realities that matter -- perceptions, aspirations, allegiances. Reagan in his presidential role made vivid the values, particularly hopefulness and friendliness, that give cohesion and dynamism to this continental nation.

...Reagan understood that rhetoric is central to democratic governance. It can fuse passion and persuasion, moving free people to freely choose what is noble.

He understood the axiom that people, especially Americans, with their Founders' creed and vast reservoirs of decency, more often need to be reminded than informed. And he understood the economy of leadership -- the need to husband the perishable claim a leader has on the attention of this big, boisterous country.

Typically, Will tries to will (no pun intended) his subject into the realm of epic heroism. He is eulogizing Reagan in an effort to make him Homer (not Simpson, that's GWB). The key points to illustrate are in bold. The notion that rhetoric fuses passion and persuasion to move free people to freely choose what is noble. Just words? Kind of throws the criticism about Obama's speech making back in their faces, huh?

The creation of realities that matter, including perceptions, aspirations, and allegiances borders closely on propaganda, but much of political rhetoric is propaganda. All speech is designed to construct. Quality speech can construct quality characteristics in a people, if done effectively. The worship of Reagan is a product of his mythical self, as much as anything else, since he really engaged in some wicked and diabolical things while he was in office. Whatever Obama does with his power, the worship that has begun now is a product of the same inspiration and leadership that the GOP felt for their hero. If they want to pile on Obama, they ought to look at themselves in the mirror a bit more.

Rheingold Sprouts

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Plugh) — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 02:07:00 +0000

I've been following various fascinating micro-bloggers via Twitter recently and really sneaking in the backdoor on some "conversations" around the web related to new/social media, journalism, and politics.

One of the great debates going on (thanks Jay Rosen) is the battle of newsroom traditionalists to save their profession in the face of almost certain extinction. Newspapers, and to some extent television organizations, are now forced to compete with interactive media which can be generated and disseminated from anyone's laptop. This isn't to say that the skills, wisdom, and resourcefulness of journalism are on the way out. On the contrary. They'll be in greater demand than ever, but the paradigm has shifted and public communication doesn't look the same as only a few short years ago. The gap will surely grow exponentially in the coming few years.

Another fascinating collection of material comes from technology/communication guru Howard Rheingold of Smart Mobs fame (among many other things). Thanks to following his tweets I managed to discover a new widget generator from Sprout(beta) that has many, many potential applications. I created a personal promotion widget in about 20 minutes, which you can find if you scroll all the way down to the bottom of this blog, just above my sitemeter. (I would have it in the sidebar at the top if it fit, but Blogger isn't very module friendly. I'll work on it.) Howard's widget features a teaching application with an RSS feed and a presentation video. I'm embedding it here:

The potential for mass communication of various kinds is interesting, given the opportunity to share this widget with others. The idea that one could build an entire community of widgets to generate content and promote communication is very interesting. "Gluing" these widgets together could build a mosaic of content that would certainly resemble a quilt or mosaic of individual content. I'm going to keep up on this and see where it goes. I think, technically speaking, there's a lot of room for improvement, but the concept is good.

I've Soured on Obama

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Plugh) — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 11:56:00 +0000

Cross posted at DailyKos:

Yes. That's right. I've soured on Barack Obama. Sour. Lemony sour. The thing is, souring on Obama is like eating a bag of Sour Patch Kids. Something about it just makes you feel off, but you can't stop eating until they're gone. At some point you wonder if you should keep eating and if it's going to make you feel sick, but you don't.

Sour Patch Kids test you. They make you question whether candy has to be sweet to keep you coming back. For sure they're not for everyone and the traditional lollipop crowd may not go in for them, but they are candy and they do call to you when you see them in the candy aisle. You bought them once and you'll keep on buying them because despite the fact that you have misgivings about them, they satisfy some unspoken desire that lives deep down inside for a different candy. A candy that breaks the mold of the everyday sugar fix. There's a built in mechanism with Sour Patch Kids that forces you to stop. You can't eat two bags. They're just too sour. Your stomach will turn. They are the politician class of American candy. The candy that you shouldn't count on to do everything, but that work when asked.

I'm being funny here (I hope), but I have a point. I was an Edwards supporter and gradually latched on to Obama as his star rose and the promise of his 2004 convention speech came to fruition in his 2008 campaign. Yes, I was sucked in, but I'm no dummy and I'm no cult member. I'm far too smart and far too cynical about politics to fall for the glitz of hope on its own. For me, Obama represented a model of modern politics that promised to match the 21st century paradigm that most weathered old veterans of the game just don't get.

He knows how to communicate in the mode by which the country is proceeding, by and large. He knows how to stand in front of the masses and ask us to follow him. He admits that he'll make mistakes, but that we'll collectively find the best path to restore America. Obama is complex. Thankfully, he's complex. We've had enough of this simplicity:

In a television feed of the event, Bush at one point can be seen putting his arm around Nigerian President Umaru Yar'Adua.

"You're a good man, you're a good man," says the president. Bush then wipes his finger below his nose and calls for the attention of Harper.

"Yo Harper. The president of Nigeria."

I can go on and on about what I like about Obama, but we all know what got us here. We also know what's shaking the confidence he built in us. FISA was wrong. Bending to meet the Republican framing of various issues is also stupid. Not being clear and definitive in the populist portions of his platform is also troubling. In essence, the candidate that we "hoped" to have has been replaced by the candidate that we'll somewhat optimistically settle for, at least at this point.

Undoubtedly, a rousing speech in Denver will revive some of the enthusiasm. Until that point, the dynamism of Obama is missing. The Obama of the general election lacks a polarizing figure on the other side between which sparks and lighting bolts fly. The unintentional brilliance of John McCain is his damning lack of charisma. He's so mind-bogglingly uncharismatic in fact that it's hard to imagine why anyone would pay attention with more than half their focus. I call this unintentional brilliance because it turns off the electorate to a certain extent. It dampens enthusiasm and it forces Obama to shadow box with his primary campaign identity. It's a fight that he can't win, but it's also not going to help McCain beat Obama either.

What we're seeing is Obamafebruary vs. Obamajuly in the media. That's the narrative. McCain is so inept and uninteresting that the only compelling story remaining for the media to tell is the Star Trek TOS "Mirror, Mirror" version of the 2008 presidential campaign. You know what I'm talking about. The one where Kirk finds himself in the mirror universe where Spock has a goatee and therefore is evil. Charles Gibson and George Stephanopolous are looking for a fake goatee and some glue in anticipation of an ABC debate.

The reason I posted this diary is because I think a lot of people are missing the identity of Barack Obama, at least as far as the presidency is concerned. I expect certain things of Obama after his inauguration and I think he'll deliver.

1. I believe he'll do something about slowing the Iraq Occupation to a minimal crawl and that he'll eventually get us to the point where there is a small US military footprint in Iraq to protect our diplomatic interests.

2. I expect he'll try to pass healthcare reform, but I don't hold out any big hope that it will get done satisfactorily. That's not a knock on him, but a cynical belief that roadblocks in the system will prevent him from achieving more than a bland, compromised version of his platform.

3. I believe he'll invest in green energy. I believe he'll do it in a semi-free market manner that opens the door for Wall Street to reap huge profits, while appealing to the entrepreneurial spirit of Americans ready to take on the challenge of shifting our infrastructure. I think there will be some capitulation to big business in his program, and I think there will be wailing and gnashing of teeth from some labor unions about his fluidity with respect to championing their cause.

4. I think Obama is going to put people on the Supreme Court that balance things out, but I don't think his choices will appeal to the left. I think his appointees will be heavily centrist politically and that he will appoint at least one, if not more, woman to the Court. Abortion will be safe, but I don't expect a liberal Justice from Obama.

5. I bet at least once that Obama is going to have a FISA moment as president where he capitulates with the right wing and pisses off the progressive base of the Democratic Party. He's not through upsetting us, yet. It may be on drilling in ANWAR or in some neoliberal economic decision, but something will burst the bubble that he's a pure left thinking politician, if there are any of us still holding that belief after FISA. I can't say what it is yet, but at least once he's going to set the NetRoots on fire.

6. Obama is going to do stupid, wasteful things to appease the immigration-crazed Lou Dobbs crowd. He'll spend a billion dollars on another electronic fence or something and we'll throw up our arms saying, "WTF?" This particular example is meant to illustrate how the complexity of Obama's position as "President of the whole United States" which is going to get him in trouble with some kind of expensive, senseless pander.

I could go on, but you get the point. Obama is a progressive in the sense that he sees places that need to be fixed and he is going to fight to fix them. He wants a fairer government and a more balanced opportunity for the entire population of the country. He wants to assure strong diplomacy and a commitment to sensible, pragmatic governance. He also represents the interests of business and speaks optimistically about market economics. He isn't all that clear on gay rights and parrots the tired old, "I support civil unions" compromise that falls short of recognizing the issue as one of human rights and equality. He's often too diplomatic in his rhetoric and fails to take clear and firm stands against propagandists like Fox. We may not see a huge shift in the way the FCC operates, for example, and deregulation will likely go untouched.

I'm convinced that Barack Obama will be a good president. I'm convinced that he's the best person for the job right now. I'm convinced to vote for him and support him and work to see his vision of America through. I'm also convinced to challenge him. I'm convinced that he's going to piss me off. I'm convinced that the promise of a grassroots paradigm for American politics is still far enough away that we have untold battles ahead of us, and that some of those battles will put us in direct opposition to President Obama.

So, the next time you feel like I do when watching Obama speak, that his rhetoric is getting thin and drips with questions, remind yourself of Sour Patch Kids. Remind yourself that you're not going to be able to consume a bag of Obama everyday and that sometimes you're going to have to opt for what you know is better. Remind yourself that more often than not you're going to be satisfied by the experience, knowing what it is when you get into it. The truth is, Sour Patch Kids and Obama are both excellent choices on any given day and deserve a premium position in their respective categories. Just don't think they're something that they're not.

Twitter and Tweet

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Plugh) — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 02:57:00 +0000

I've been lax about posting here in recent weeks due to my inordinately busy schedule. Thesis writing, countdown to baby#2, and moving house have all been on the agenda and I've had little time to devote to blogging. In a way, it's been a very good thing. I've accumulated information, participated in some discoveries about new media use, and social networks. I'll do my best to share these things with you over the coming summer months. Going forward, Communicative Action will be undergoing a transformation of sorts in order to account for the sensibilities I hope to project via this forum.

Several years ago, I ran a website called Ital Stew, dedicated to US Politics and such. It was a heavy duty project, owing mainly to the use of FrontPage to build and update. The advent of Blogger and the ease with which we can all communicate via the web eliminated the need for such cumbersome tools and I've found a nice niche doing various things via blog. Politics at Ital Stew was presented in a pseudo-newspaper form with a front page and several dedicated sections. I enjoyed running that site although no one ever looked at it, and there were few means by which to promote it broadly.

How things have changed in 3 or 4 short years. Politics and new media are a marriage made in heaven in some respects. The ability to operate and transmit across the web to millions of people is facilitated by various means in 2008, and the capacity to build networks of people invested in communication grows by the day. Over the course of those same 3 or 4 years, my interest in media environments has grown to equal or surpass my interest in politics and democracy. As a result, I find myself engaged in writing a thesis on that very subject. This blog, as an evolution of my own interest, will branch out officially to include discussion of media, communication, democracy, politics, and related matters. Truth be told, I've already dabbled in that variety of work here over the last 6 months or so, but the mix will become more balanced, and the variety of work will become broader and more inclusive of the thematic nuances that exist across the spectrum of my interest.

Anyone who's been here before will notice several things immediately. In the right margin (toolbar) I've added a FeedBurner RSS feed to replace the standard Blogger Atom feed. Clicking there will allow you to subscribe to Communicative Action. Below the RSS button is a Share This rotating icon, which allows you to share Communicative Action with your network of friends and associates via e-mail, social networking sites, and blogs. One of these days, I'll figure out how to embed that in each post. Continuing down, you'll see the search widget for Lijit, which allows you to travel across the internet to my various social media pages, including Facebook, MySpace, Digg, Reddit, Flickr, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Twitter. It also allows you to search the entire body of sites for whatever you're interested in. Give it a whirl. There's a Technorati widget in the mix here, which allows you to share my blog via Technorati's service, and there's currently a fundraising widget that I made at Change.org, a progressive social network site, for Human Rights Watch. As usual, you'll find various links below all that mess.

During my transition, the site will undergo some construction periodically to make it a well oiled machine. In the meantime, I suggest you subscribe via FeedBurner and jump on Twitter to follow my micro-blogging adventures. Twitter is a preferred medium for quick updates on whatever I'm putting together at the moment. It's also a fascinating form of communication that will be getting bigger by the day. The title of this post is "Twitter and Tweet" to promote this facet of my new media arsenal. There's a Twitter feed in the right margin (toolbar) that updates whenever I do. As a final bit of promotion for this concept, I direct you to 10 Downing Street's micro-blog of the current G8 Summit in Hokkaido, Japan. Prime Minister Gordon Brown's people are blogging, tweeting, and flickring from Japan and it can all be followed here. The micro-blog that 10 Downing Street is employing for the G8 Summit will be an important model for Communicative Action going forward and I hope to eventually incorporate a flickr feed, YouTube feed, and other means of communication readily available to build a personal media empire. Keep on the lookout.

1992 vs. 2008

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Plugh) — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 04:35:00 +0000

It's easy to forget in this fast paced media environment how political elections were once covered. In fact, leaving out the election meme, it's easy to forget how television looked, period.

This YouTube clip features the 1992 Presidential Election coverage of CBS, featuring Dan Rather at the anchor desk. The things that stand out to me are:

* the simplicity of the set
* the calm tone
* the lack of slick graphic packages
* the reliance on journalists, rather than pundits
* the lack of music
* the lack of commercial interruption
* the amount of face time Rather gets

I consider all of these things a preferable style of coverage than we get today. That's not to say that the current style of coverage isn't improved in some respects. Appropriate set changes are great, especially when they involve a break from the studio, for example. Hits from the campaign trail are valuable ways to take the pulse of the electorate. The urgency and hyperactive presentation of modern political coverage may be a way to duplicate the immediacy of the internet. Just a theory, but when you really want to know something you often click between several sites, or hit refresh on your browser. TV drama may be a way to duplicate that sense, or it may simply be a technique for scaring viewers out of changing the channel.

The overproduced opens, bumps, and closes are hokey and John Stewart/Stephen Colbert do a fine job of mocking them. The good graphic additions have been those dedicated to data or to electoral maps. There are, however, too many flying pie charts and bar graphs of minutia that need to be cut.

The use of journalists for the primary coverage of events is something long since passed away. Pundits rule the airwaves now, so much so that anchors are often pundits themselves. The art of journalism is such a thing of the past that far too many Washington Correspondents are actually op-ed types who have an agenda. A lot of these people get cushy TV jobs and don't want to give them up. Who wants to do all the hard work behind the scenes without a by-line? Better yet, who wants to do all the heavy lifting in the field and have some hairsprayed goon get all the credit, especially when I can be a hairsprayed goon.

The point about music goes hand in hand with the graphic packages. The news used to avoid any music whatsoever to remove any subliminal, psychological tone that might skew perception in one way or the other. Now, music is integrated just for that purpose. Thanks Fox.

The commercials in the 1992 clip are simply 5 second taglines accompanying a corporate logo. Would that fly in 2008? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAA!!! Right. The news are corporate logos already. They are brands in and of themselves. They spend more time promoting their own coverage than actually practicing any journalism. The advertisers rule the airwaves now. That cat's out of the bag. Remember that next time you're watching CNN cover environmental issues (you'll have to watch very carefully for the 2 minutes a day they want to promote "Planet in Peril") and the logo and tag for "Clean Coal" comes up.

Rather is one of those "last of the good ol' boys" anchors, who actually paid his dues in the field prior to becoming a talking head. Now we're so specialized that the anchor is little more than a traffic director who spins you around between pundit one, pundit two, graphic mashups, ads, and pundit three. Think Wolf Blitzer.

I'm including a clip from the 2008 Primary coverage to give a little contrast. See if what I wrote isn't accurate, and also think about how political news (elections in this case) are best presented. TV is an entertainment medium, so the answer is unquestionably 2008, but for the purpose of an informed democracy, I'd have to go against the ecological grain to say that it fails on too many levels. My reasoning? The points made above show how the information value of political coverage has been drowned in the entertainment value. That's the nature of the medium. The problem with leaving it at that is that drowning information for the sake of entertainment may work for the bottom line, and it may work according to the logic of television, but there is still room for journalism in entertainment. There is room for entertainment and information to work together successfully. One would argue that television can never be the most effective means of acquiring and integrating political information, but it can be better than it is now without sacrificing its own nature to the doldrums of 1992.

The internet has changed the way we cover news, and politics, just as it's changed the coverage of sports. They are all one and the same. The horse race wins out over the wonkish policy issues. Wonkishness on the internet works by integrating media forms. The long form text of the internet allows for detailed information to be communicated, while hyperlinks and video embeds give a more dynamic and entertaining vibe. The embedded YouTube clip, for example, is the sauce or the salt or the chocolate topping. It's the part of the information that you WANT. The text is the vitamins, minerals, protein, etc...it's the information you NEED. Television has less opportunity to do this, but it can still make a better attempt.

Twittering a McCain FCC

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Plugh) — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 12:48:00 +0000

Cross posted at DailyKos:

In a recent first, the Personal Democracy Forum held a "Twitter Debate" between Obama and McCain surrogates. The PdF is a really interesting collection of people from various backgrounds, who jointly hope to promote, understand, and evolve technology in democratic uses.

The moderator of this debate was none other that Wonkette Emeritus herself, Ana Marie Cox. The surrogates in question were RNC Director of Communications, Liz Mair and Michael Nelson, Clinton's Director for Technology Policy at the Federal Communications Commission, IBMer, and Visiting Professor of Communication, Culture, and Technology at Georgetown University.

First of all, this exercise was a fascinating use of new media. Twitter is a fairly untapped tool at this point, and the variety of applications that are being generated in support of it are adding to a new landscape of old media forms. The Tweetboard application that hosted the debate is little more than a glorified conference call, using chat style instant messaging as its code. The Lincoln-Douglas debates, which lasted for days are being played out over the course of days again via the PdF's Twitter experiment, although I think it's safe to say that the number of words communicated per second/minute/hour/day pale in comparison to the oral presentations of 1858.

For those of you interested in seeing this media technology in action, just follow the links above. Also, feel free to add me to your list of tweeters by clicking here.

Beyond the technology, one of the interesting things that's come up in the course of this communication was the name dropping that Ana Marie Cox engaged in when asked about potential FCC appointments by John McCain, were he to be elected president. The direct cut and paste (bold mine):

anamariecox: (Jun 21 20:12:00) Forgot "#pdfdebate" in my last q. Asked both @LizMair & @MikeNelson abt possible FCC chair. Will return 6ish for today's last round of q's.

LizMair: (Jun 21 21:33:43) @anamariecox Just a few big names for you, beyond C Fiorina: Meg Whitman, John Chambers, Chuck Fish.#pdfdebate

LizMair: (Jun 21 21:38:42) @anamariecox And I have to plug my boss, Cy Krohn (ex-Yahoo and Microsoft) who's RNC eCampaign Director :)#pdfdebate

Let's review the names for a moment to see who we're dealing with.

1. Carly Fiorina (from her Wikipedia page)

Her tenure as H-P's leader included a 50% drop in the company's stock price, and thousands of employee lay-offs (done to cut expenses quickly). She was fired by H-P's board of directors due to dissatisfaction with her performance, in February 2005.

Fiorina is also a contributor on the Fox Business Network.

Bad CEO-ing and then a job with Fox. Sounds like someone we'd be thrilled to see working at the FCC. Another reason to soundly reject John McCain as president.

2. Meg Whitman

Whitman, like Fiorina has been bandied about as a potential McCain VP. She joined the McCain campaign as Finance Co-Chair after serving with Romney in his failed bid for the nomination. She's been rumored as a political figure for some time, but only after leaving eBay to support Romney did this materialize. A number of very unpopular fee increases and some shady happenings with the auction mega-site left Whitman the target of a massive user boycott this past year, although it's been argued that the effect of the boycott on eBay's bottom line was negligible. The real critique of Whitman's performance was made by Silicon Alley Insider, Henry Blodget:

In the past few years, as eBay's core business has matured, Meg has overseen several decisions and non-decisions that were, at best, weak:

* Failing to move the eBay brand perception beyond "auctions"--a retailing concept that will forever appeal to only a small segment of the overall retailing market.

* Failing to focus on the core site interface, which for more than a decade has been considered a joke.

* Buying Skype, which never had any real strategic synergy with eBay (despite several years of management insistence to the contrary), which distracted eBay from its core business, and which ultimately disappointed.

* Failing to kill, buy, copy, or at least partner with Amazon, whose superior customer service and site has now become the gold standard for any consumer interested in an end-to-end research, buying, and fulfillment experience.

Kim Peterson at MSN's Money Blog also had this analysis of Whitman's recent tenure at eBay:

Putting politics aside, is it time for Whitman to step down? If you're an eBay shareholder, you might think so. The stock was abysmal in 2006 and continued to disappointment in 2007, staying mostly in the $30-$35 range when companies like Amazon saw shares go through the roof. (Ebay closed yesterday at $32.49.)

Ebay has seen huge growth and international expansion during Whitman's 10-year tenure as CEO. The company is in nearly 40 markets, and has about 250 million registered users. Ebay says it has 100 million listings on its site at any given time, with 6 million added each day.

The company is undoubtedly an auction powerhouse. The problem is that it has remained just that, despite numerous attempts to expand to new areas. Perhaps the biggest black mark on Whitman's time at eBay is the $2.6 billion acquisition of Internet calling company Skype in 2005. What an expensive mistake. Skype never meshed with eBay and should be spun off as soon as possible.

Ebay is trying other things, like introducing its own "Neighborhoods" social networking service, but so far that doesn't seem to have taken off either. (Check out eBay's sad, sad iPod neighborhood).

Whitman has more to crow about than Fiorina, but still leaves something to be desired as an FCC Chair.

3. John Chambers

Chambers, the chairman and chief executive of technology giant Cisco Systems Inc., was tapped to serve as the national co-chair and economic and technology adviser of McCain's presidential exploratory committee. He previously served on the education committee of President Bush's transition team and on a Bush admin advisory council on national infrastructure. He also worked on a trade policy committee under Bill Clinton.

The ties to Bush and infrastructure and education would seem to be an automatic two strikes for Chambers, as would be his role in trade under Clinton a check swing, but this interesting note from a March article at Networkworld may be something positive:

Chambers and Bostrom outlined Cisco's efforts to cut carbon emissions in the way it runs the company and also in the power consumption of its products. The company has what it calls the Eco Board, a group of employees charged with finding new ways to cut emissions. Chambers said the company cut its carbon footprint 20% and saved $150 million after it was challenged by the Clinton administration to do so.

Chambers said businesses seemed to be taking more concrete steps than government, but he agreed that leadership from the United States and China - two of the biggest polluter - would be a big step toward solving the problem. "In Silicon Valley we can make dreams come true," Chambers said, "but you can't do it without government leaders."

I have some questions about Chambers and his attitudes towards deregulation, since Cisco has taken great advantage of it in India to score a huge vertically integrated stake in their national IT infrastructure, but I also don't come across anything overtly dangerous in my quick research of his past statements. In fact, I like what he had to say back in 2001 about broadband penetration:

Korea has the highest broadband deployment in the world because it has subsidized a build-out to the tune of $7.5 billion over five years. John Chambers of Cisco says, "I'd like to see the administration and Congress, both the Democrats and Republicans, make this a major project, like putting a person on the moon. Let's give broadband to every American home by the end of the decade who wants it." Of course, such a program would be a boon to Chambers' company. But it might also help recharge the economy.

4. Chuck Fish

Fish is a member of the Advisory Committee to the Congressional Internet Caucus, where the following bio excerpt can be found:

Chuck Fish is Vice President & Chief Patent Counsel of Time Warner Inc. He is a 1984 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, where he was a national champion parliamentary debater and achieved two coveted Black N awards. After commissioning, he served on a destroyer and a Patrol Wing Staff in the Western Pacific until "President Reagan won the Cold War and we ran out of targets." He then attended Wayne State University Law School, graduating cum laude in 1992. While in Detroit at Wayne State he founded the Wayne Law Film Society and was active in the Federalist Society.

Hmmm....until, quote, President Reagan won the Cold War and we ran out of targets, unquote. That's not good. Also, active in the Federalist Society isn't a promising start. I see that Fish has worked on the Telecomm Immunity issue for the McCain campaign. Maybe he's had something valuable to contribute (although I suspect not):

"First, we need to be explicit we are not talking about granting indulgences," Fish said, clarifying that he meant forgiveness must be matched with repentance.

"There would need to be hearings to find out what actually happened and what harms actually occurred," Fish said, adding that immunity would need to be coupled with clear rules to make sure private records would be protected in future.

In the wake of that statement, the McCain campaign had to reassure their friends in the industry that they are still very much for complete and unequivocal amnesty. Julian Sanchez of ars technica summarizes the discussion held between Fish and Obama surrogate Daniel Weitzner, giving us this look into the future at a McCain administration:

Fish outlined the four core principles that would guide a McCain administration's approach to technology. First, ensuring the availability of risk capital in order to promote investment and innovation.

Second, creating a skilled work force, by means of education, but also tax and immigration policy. (On the latter front, Fish claimed that for each H1-B visa hire, 20 domestic jobs are created. I have only been able to find a study supporting the far more modest claim that H1-B visa requests are correlated with 5–7 new domestic jobs, which may simply indicate that expanding firms hire more workers, both local and foreign. Fish did not respond to an e-mail seeking a source for his claim.)

Third, Fish stressed the importance of a employing a light regulatory touch and respecting open markets. He noted that misregulation can impede innovation, and invoked what he called the "futility principle": There are some genuine problems that are only made worse by attempts to meliorate them.

Finally, he stressed McCain's "commitment to discovery," and noted that while we currently spend some 2.7% of GDP on research and development, "more can be done."

Just what I expected from a Time Warner VP. A strong commitment to deregulation, or non-interference in markets. Bah. Enough of him already.

5. Cyrus Krohn

From his Personal Democracy Forum bio:

Cyrus Krohn is Director of the Republican National Committee's eCampaign Division. Prior to joining the RNC, Krohn developed election websites & political advertising programs for Yahoo and Microsoft as well as launching Slate.com, formerly owned by Microsoft.

Krohn has no shot at the Chair of the FCC and it's clear that Mair was just giving her boss some kudos, but the irony is that he's probably just as qualified to hold that position (if not more) than the people named above. He's the only one (that I can tell) that has a blog, several social networking profiles, and direct hands on experience with the web. The field here is unsurprisingly heavy with CEOs of major corporations, primarily fallen or lackluster CEOs and I'd have to say that only John Chambers seems remotely promising as a potential McCain administration FCC Chair. Ugh, just typing that is painful.

For the record, Mike Nelson took a pass on naming names for the Obama side. I give you the pertinent debate comments here:

MikeNelson: (Jun 21 21:48:19) I do policy, not personnel. The list of talented, senior people supporting Barack who COULD be FCC Chair is a long one. #pdfdebate

MikeNelson: (Jun 21 21:49:05) Here's the list of tech supporters from last November: http://www.barackobama.com/2007/11/1... #pdfdebate

MikeNelson: (Jun 21 21:50:24) The requirements for FCC appointees: 1) believe in open, transparent processes and 2) understand new and old media. #pdfdebate

Vague, but not altogether unexpected. One might look over the list of Obama supporters named in the link embedded in Nelson's 2nd comment, but there are far too many people to draw any serious conclusions. In the end, I'd expect Obama to pick a CEO of some kind for the post as well. I operate under no illusions that the FCC is going to be run by real communications thinkers anytime soon. I hope I'm surprised, but I'm not counting on it.

The PdF debate continues today. Look in via Twitter and the Tweetboards and post your comment below on what you see there, and what you think about the people floated for McCain FCC Chair.

McCain: You....Tube? What's that?

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Plugh) — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 12:36:00 +0000

Jonathan Alter speaks to Keith Olbermann about the impact of YouTube on the modern political campaign....at John McCain's expense. Enjoy.

War is in His Blood

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Plugh) — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 01:21:00 +0000

John McCain launched the 1st ad of the general election today, featuring an "I Hate War" theme. The problem is, his grandfather fought, his father fought, he fought, and now his son is fighting. In some ways this is honorable patriotic duty that should be commended. In other ways this is evidence that John McCain is blind to the idea that war is a last resort. Avoiding war is harder work and far more honorable a pursuit that fighting it. The people who hear honor in this ad will vote for him anyway. The people who know his record and want this war to end, and the fighting to stop should hear the hypocrisy in it.

I hear both, but I face reality knowing the hypocrisy of this war and that far too distant war in SouthEast Asia that were both fought on the backs of the poor and disenfranchised over the wealth and power of a few. John McCain would keep the military-industrial-complex churning away to suit his own "family business" sensibilities and that is something we can't allow to happen.

Worst. Speech. Ever.

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Plugh) — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 11:19:00 +0000

The reaction to the McCain speech is priceless and dead on. The notable speakers in this clip are the people at Fox News, who should probably be touting the speech's brilliance, but who know just how awful it was.

There's some interesting advice for McCain's people at Politico today, which I generally agree with, but I think the only thing that's going to save McCain in 2008 is a combination of straight ticket Republican voters in the reddest of the red states, and racists. Oh, and maybe a handful of disgruntled and utterly stupid Hillary Clinton robots that will scuttle the Democratic Party and their own reproductive rights over a cult of personality. The question is, are there enough of any of these people to stave off the Obama tidal wave? I think not.

Presumptives

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Plugh) — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 13:55:00 +0000

First, McSame:

Then, Obama:

Can we vote today? This thing is over.

Story of the Decade

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Plugh) — Fri, 30 May 2008 01:54:00 +0000

Leave it to Keith Olbermann to do the job. Scott McClennan is this generation's John Dean. This will go to Waxman's committee and impeachment of Cheney will be on the table. Keep yourself up to date on this story:

The Real John McCain

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Plugh) — Wed, 28 May 2008 02:27:00 +0000

I'm about to post a YouTube video produced be the people at The Real McCain, but I want to provide a short disclaimer about my own take on the video first. I think that everything in the video is true, but the presentation is very dangerous. The truth is there. It's well documented in lengthy expositions about who John McCain is, what he's done, what he's likely to do in the future, and the flip-flops he's had over the years on key issues important to the American people. That's not an issue to me. The disclaimer here is necessary because I believe that we rely on short, edited clips of media appearances to make the case far too often in 2008, and it does a disservice to the truth.

Truth is a highly subjective thing in many cases. Never more so than when we attempt to portray truth via fast impression, video/audio bites that appear to make the case, but don't do much more than scratch the surface of the truth at best. That is what you'll find in this YouTube clip. "Truthiness" vs. truth. I post it because I hope the truthiness presented in the clip will prompt people to investigate the reality of the so-called truth more carefully on their own. More truthiness is found at McCainPedia, produced by the DNC and only accessible for editing by the DNC. This is a tool which should prove quite useful at engaging the truth about John McCain far more accurately than the truthiness we get in the mainstream traditional media. No one gets at real truth in this day and age. Truth lies in deeper, lengthier investigation. Please do that on your own, if possible. In the meantime, here's a bit of truthiness that should counter the other truthiness you get via TV and newspapers.

Is Hillary a Racist?

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Plugh) — Fri, 23 May 2008 01:56:00 +0000

People have been writing a lot about Hillary Clinton's support among racist voters in Appalachia recently. My contention is that she is simply a political opportunist who needs whatever edge she can get to steal the nomination from Barack Obama. That's politics. It's ugly but when the most powerful job in the world is at stake, it gets ugly. The thing is, Clinton worked her entire life to uplift the condition of African-Americans by many accounts, and I was willing to give her the benefit of the doubt. I abhor the racists that you can see in the clip embedded in my last post, and I think she should come out to reject their votes on principle, but it is what it is.

She's started to repeat certain talking points about her support from "hard working voters, white voters" and it's raised some eyebrows around the US. The media has been giving it to her pretty good over those remarks. So what do we make of these remarks:

Why does the gas station owner have to be Indian, and why does he have to have the name of the single greatest populist leader of the 20th century? Isn't that racist, or dangerously close to it? In fairness, I've been known to make fun of Apu on The Simpsons over the years. A good friend brought it to my attention that there may be something racist in that impression, or at the very least racially insensitive. I've done my best to change my ways, and hope that I'm a far more mature and sensitive person at 37 than I was at 27 or 17. Hillary Clinton HAS TO know better than this. It's a shame that she's sunk this low.

My Old Kentucky Home

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Plugh) — Wed, 21 May 2008 01:31:00 +0000

All you need to know about Hillary Clinton's big victory in Kentucky. We have a lot of work to do Americans. A lot of work.

The DNC's McCainPedia

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Plugh) — Mon, 19 May 2008 11:09:00 +0000

All hail the new media revolution. The Democratic National Committee has launched a new research/framing tool for the 2008 Presidential Election called McCainPedia. It's a wiki-esque database of information about John McCain designed to frame his candidacy in a way that is friendly to the Democratic chances for victory. It's not open source, however, and should be taken with a grain of salt. Still, it shows why the Dems understand new media and the GOP is being left in the dustbin of history. Enjoy.