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| Thursday, June 26, 2003 |
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Shore leave 
| | Back when I was in radio, sometime in the Pliocene, we used to say we were "on the beach" when we were between gigs. Now that the whole business is pretty much washed up, I suppose it doesn't matter. |
| | But the expression came to mind when I saw that Gretchen has taken a "blog vacation," complete with an illustrative beach scene. |
| | Seems a good time to make a confession of my own: I'm tired of blogging about blogging. I kinda OD'd on it in Boston a couple weeks back, at the bizblog conference there. Fun as it was, a room full of bloggers blogging about blogging, mostly (it seemed to me at the time) for each other, seemed almost a parody of a parody of itself. It came mighty close (again, for me) to the kind of thing Andrew Orlowski likes to harp about. Not that good stuff wasn't said, and not that it wasn't a swell conference in many ways. It just started to seem a little too circular after awhile, like snake eating its own tail. |
| | No, I'm not taking a vacation from the subject; just confessing to a discomfort with the obsessivities of it. (And it seems we're taking care of some business pretty well, no?) |
| | That's why I find blogging about politics, which normally bores my ass off, much more interesting. |
Blog voices settling the wilderness of politics
| | Why did Tom start his weblog? "I wanted to develop new forms of political participation, particularly with communities that weren¹t really that involved in politics," he says. Tom says that when he started he had a "vanity website: a big photo of me, with details of my surgery [constituency office] hours". He quickly recognised that he needed something different. |
| | He¹d never even heard of weblogs, but Tom did some searching on the Web for something that would satisfy his needs. "I wanted to convey information very quickly and do it myself. I wanted to be relevant." He found weblogs. |
| | "For me, it was a huge risk," he says. "I¹ve taken a few hits in diary columns and most of the people in Parliament just don¹t get it. But the community I was talking to knew what I was on about and understand." Tom spends an average of one hour a day on his weblog, which he admits is "a big commitment for an MP". |
| | Although he didn¹t start his weblog for either his constituents or the media, both are beginning to take an interest. A few of Tom¹s postings have developed into news stories in the national press, and he says some of his constituents now read the site. |
| | However, it isn¹t about electoral advantage. "If I get half a dozen additional votes at the next election because of my blog, I¹ll be surprised," he says. "It¹s not a campaign tool. It¹s a political ideas tool." |
| | For the first time I'm starting to believe we are reaching the implementation stage of Cluetrain in politics: The point where voice and authenticity matter more than any campaign strategy. When serving finally means more than campaigning. When sharing ideas in a place where they grow and change matters more than calculated, and usually intransigent, positions. |
Sound out on blogs and blog tech
| | Speak Out! What Do You Think About RSS and the Echo Project? We've produced a new feature called IT Conversations: recorded audio interviews with smart, interesting people. I'm currently planning a Conversation about RSS and The Echo Project, but with a twist: I'm going to include recorded comments from the blogging community at large. |
| | If you have something to say about the history and future of RSS, The Echo Project, or weblogs in general, I'd like to hear it, and possibly include your comments in next week's IT Conversation. |
| | If you have something to say, here's what to do: Call my office telephone and leave your comments on my voicemail. (Yeah, I know...it's so 20th century!) I'll edit the comments and use the best of them as part of next week's show. Since it's a first-time experiment, I don't have a dedicated phone line for this--you'll be calling my regular office telephone. (If this works well, I promise I'll get a dedicated line, perhaps with an 800#, before doing it again.) The trick--from my end--is that I can't answer the phone, so please call only during the following times: |
| | Call: (U.S.) 415.453.1400, only during the following hours... |
| | Thursday, June 26, 10am-11am Pacific time (1pm-2pm Eastern)
6pm- 8pm Pacific time (9pm-11pm Eastern) |
| | Friday, June 27, 10am-11am Pacific time (1pm-2pm Eastern)
6pm- 8pm Pacific time (9pm-11pm Eastern) |
| | At other times, I'll likely answer the phone, and you'll have to talk to me! |
| | Help me spread the word to those in the blogging community with strong opinions about the history and future of RSS. |
Playing the doctor card
| | I just noticed something. |
| | It would be a far better world if more politicians spent more time pounding the flesh rather than pressing it. Every minute Clinton spent banging Monica Lewinski he wasn't screwing the rest of us or the world. Every time she knelt before that mighty cigar - she was a heroine. |
| | Because - unlike most Americans - She could take everything a politician could put out - and swallow it ! |
| | Result - the greatest economic expansion ever - a massive decline in the murder rate - the biggest corporate party that anyone has ever attended - and something close to world peace was achieved. |
| | Monica Lewinski deserves a frigging medal for all that. |
| | After she stopped seeing the president, this country started going to hell. |
| | (Mike, you got your asbestos suit? You're standing in the blast zone, dude.) |
| | Think about it. Doctors, at least professionally, aren't afraid of sex. Thanks to professional training, good doctors are fearless around the whole damn thing. It ain't no big deal. Fucking is fine. Blowjobs are fine. |
| | (I loved The Onion's story "Clinton Emotionally Ready to Start Getting Blow Jobs Again".) |
| | Anyway, seems to me there's a connection between the Fear Thing and the Sex Thing. |
| | Not fearing sex is great training for not fearing anything else. Including how you look and sound on TV. |
| | The democrats need to be The Fuckit Party this year. They need to be straight and honest and remind Americans of what they're giving up to the droning fearmongers who run the country right now. |
| | Here's Bush's weakness: He can't ad-lib anything but platitudes, and he sucks at that, too. Yes, he's a wartime president who looks and acts the part; but he has trouble talking his walk, no matter where he's going. |
| | Of course, if he nails Saddam and Osama, brokers peace between Israel and Palestine, and gets a decent government working in Iraq, give it up. It won't matter how bad he talks. Deeds trump words. |
| | "God told me to strike at al Qaida and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did, and now I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East. If you help me I will act, and if not, the elections will come and I will have to focus on them." |
| | Thanks to Max for the link. |
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