shelbinator.com

Last weekend I was feeling election fatigued — even partisanship fatigued. I was nauseated by most of the things I saw going on at McCain-Palin rallies, from their lunatic fringe of bigots to their core message that people like me aren’t “pro-American” enough. But I also knew there was plenty of hate coming from the left against the right, particularly against Sarah Palin, easy target though she may be. So this is what I whipped up for my Street Team video commentary:

I’m not so sure I’m feeling that warm and fuzzy anymore, but since the other side does have most of the guns, I guess I’ll keep an open mind to playing nice.

I’ve been meaning to write over on Blog for Democracy about a certain Republican Congressman who is really showing us up on the new media front, using Twitter and Qik — personally, not just via a younger, hipper staffer — to communicate with his constituents (okay, let’s get real about TX-7; with the national cadre of poligeeks) in ridiculously real time.

And then Rep. John Culberson had to go and screw it up by being hysterically partisan, in 140 characters or less at a time.

Yesterday Rep. Culberson began some Chicken Little tweeting about the sky falling, claiming “I just learned the Dems are trying to censor Congressmen’s ability to use Twitter Qik YouTube Utterz etc - outrageous and I will fight them.” The problem is, he was basing this on a memo he saw from — and a conversation he may have had with — Rep. Mike Capuano (D-MA) about some proposed updates to the antiquated rules governing “official” House communications. These updates Capuano was proposing were intended to expand the ability of Representatives to use external social networking sites (specifically video hosts like YouTube) and not to restrict the use of Twitter et al any more than they were already being restricted by rules written by people whom my mom could out-internet blindfolded with a gimpy mouse.

As “evidence” of this Dem conspiracy to choke off free speech, all Rep. Culberson could produce was this memo (excerpted below) of 6/24/08 from Rep. Capuano to the Committee on House Administration. Capuano’s intent was basically to say, 1. The current House system for hosting and playing official videos on house.gov websites sucks, hardcore. 2. Current House rules of official communication prohibit Representatives from using sites like YouTube for better hosting of such videos. (Capuano apparently told Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-IN, in conversation that scores of Representatives do it anyway with a wink and a nod, and it’s just time to update the rules to reflect that.) 3. The House really ought to let Representatives use external hosting sites for videos, because these communications are a good thing. And 4. In order to keep up with the “decorum” of the House, they ought to find a way to do so that doesn’t get too tangled up in commerce or political campaigning due to free market forces (i.e., if you watch a Representative’s “official” YouTube video, it might be unbecoming if the three “related” videos that pop up in the YouTube player after it’s over were a racist anti-Obama ad, a pitch for Viagra, or candid footage of Britney Spears’ crotch). Not unreasonable suggestions, I think.

Apparently the guv’mint was already talking to YouTube about finding a way to do this, and YouTube was willing to create a “clean space” for official civic communication, according to this WaPo article. But Rep. Culberson grabbed Rep. Capuano’s language about how the updated rules should handle the hosting of video content — including a “this is official House bizniss” type notice at the front and the non-commercial entanglement concerns — and ran with it, screaming bloody murder, as if House Democrats woke up one recent morning and decided to enact a “rules change” to crack down on his Twittering and any other innovative use of new media.

But again, the problem with Congressional use of new media is that the rules already don’t allow for the use of commercial third party sites that might commingle the official with the unseemly. Rep. Capuano’s attempt to expand the ability of our Representatives to use the YouTube might be, at worst, a rather narrow-minded and poorly-worded proposed change to the rules that would create no extra wiggle room for people like Rep. Culberson to do things like Twitter (which are already against the rules as they stand anyway). But hey, I guess it’s not as easy to say, in 140 characters or less, that “ZOMG! House Dems are going to update the rules to expand Congressional use of social media in a very limited and non-forward-looking fashion, but still an update that House Repubs never got around to considering in 2006!” than it is to claim the House Democrats are taking away your Twitter because they hate free speech. (Sure enough, the right-wing screed blog Hot Air ran with the headline for Rep. Culberson’s plight, “Why do Congressional Democrats fear free speech?”) But even that kind of “non-forward-looking” allegation wouldn’t have been fair to Rep. Capuano, given this particular chunk of his letter:

While the above recommendations will help CHA as it seeks to provide House Members with the ability to post official video materials on the Web in an efficient and economical way, further changes to CHA regulations and practice may be necessary to account for the continual emergence of new technologies. I encourage CHA to view these recommendations as the first step in a process towards modernizing the regulations that govern communications of Members.

This post at TechDirt nails the analysis on the head, as far as I’m concerned. The right-wing bloggers parroted Rep. Culberson’s rather hysterical partisan interpretation. Even the social media powerhouse blog, under the steady hand of Mark “Rizzn” Hopkins (whom I’m biased against anyway after he blew off our Street Team ‘08 Super Tuesday stunt), put the disclaimer “This isn’t a knee-jerk post” at the top of a knee-jerk post that used its headline to perpetuate Rep. Culberson’s partisan myth. And to think I was intrigued when my Twitterrific feed asked me, “Why are the only people spun up about House Net rules on the right? I’ve seen nothing from lefty friends? Where’s the transparency crowd?” But I quickly realized that the answer was, “We aren’t sucking down your spin because the story has no merit.”

It’s even funnier when you put Democratic and Republican memos right next to each other for comparison, as TechnoSailor does. First he presents Capuano’s “letter sent to the Democratic House majority leadership to silence [social media like Twitter and Qik.” He, too, parrots the Culberson mythology at first, calling Capuano’s memo “ridiculous.” He later posts “the GOP response to the [Capuano] letter,” from Reps. Ehler, McCarthy, and Price, which in itself contains language that totally highlights Rep. Culberson’s Twitterspasm for the partisan smokescreen it is.

Committee rules that apply to these [web-based] services and technologies, however, significantly pre-date their invention. In some cases, Members have begun using these services and technologies despite being in violation of existing rules.

Despite being in violation of existing rules. So sayeth the Republicans themselves. And yet Rep. Culberson has stirred up this tempest in a teapot (via Twitter! against the existing rules!) suggesting that somehow the Democrats are suddenly out to censor him with new rules.

The Republican letter goes on to suggest updated language that highlights another inconsistency on Rep. Culberson’s part.

Toward that end, we request that the Committee consider adopting the following updated policy language.

With regard to the Internet
Members may use technologies, websites and services (paid or unpaid) to communicate with their constituents via text, video, or audio so long as the content posted by the Member complies with House rules and Franking content regulations.

(Emphasis mine.)

And yet, one of the particular things that had Rep. Culberson all up in arms was his interpretation of Rep. Capuano’s language here, which is hardly different:

Official content posted on an external domain must be clearly identified as produced by a House office for official purposes, and meet existing content rules and regulations;

As for what “clearly identified” entails, there is nothing in the letter to suggest that Rep. Capuano and the CHA wouldn’t be satisfied with some language on the main Twitter profile page of any Representative using Twitter. It’s a stretch to suggest, as Rep. Culberson does, that they would be forced to include a “disclaimer” in each single tweet that would exceed the 140 character limit by default, because in the memo Rep. Capuano is talking about video content only. But Rep. Culberson also zeroed in on the “existing content rules and regulations” phrase in a response he tweeted to all of us who questioned his allegations:

@shelbinator Look at page two - note each Twitter etc must meet “existing content rules and regulations” that means prior approval/rewrite 05:41 PM July 08, 2008 from web in reply to shelbinator

Huh. If it’s the House Democrats who are “trying to censor Congressmen’s ability to use Twitter” because of the “existing content rules and regulations” suggested in Rep. Capuano’s letter, then what the heck are the House Republicans doing so much better by recommending that “the content posted by the Member complies with House rules and Franking content regulations?”

Oh. Right. Absolutely nothing. Rep. Culberson is just acting like another extreme partisan trying to fan the flames of a fake fire so he can pretend to be the guy fighting the good fight. On his House.gov website — which apparently is unencumbered by any Franking Commission rules that might prohibit lies and bullshit malarkey^* — he alleges,

Democrats are looking at restricting Member content on websites outside the house.gov domain. Websites such as Youtube and other social networks would have to comply with government regulations before Members of Congress could post content on them.

He claims this despite the fact that (1) Democrats are looking at removing restrictions, as I detailed with self-admitted neophyte Capuano’s own language above (indicating that more evolution of standards will be necessary), and (2) the Republican letter to the CHA recommends the exact same compliance with regulations that Capuano’s does.

Yeah. I think bullshit is being too forgiving, even of a Congressman from Texas.

And that’s so, so very disappointing from somebody who really displayed a lot of initiative and openness by embracing these emerging technologies to open Congress up to the world. Too bad he thought it was just another medium he could use to pull the standard Republican playbook move: make up a lie, then repeat it as loudly and as frequently as possible until people dumb enough to fall for it start repeating it for you.

* Hat tip to my boy Joey B.

UPDATES:
1. Rep. Capuano brought the smackdown too.
2. ZOMG someone in Speaker Pelosi’s office apparently read this blog and got her to link to it (fourth paragraph) in a response to Leader Boehner! Leader Boehner!
3. I think we’re all going to put down our partisan guns and get behind the Sunlight Foundation’s Let Our Congress Tweet push. I’ll defend Democrats against exaggerated partisan claims, but I’m not going to let them have the dumb if they can’t brain the internet.

If you’ve got some kind of political addiction or think you need to be punished for having too much fun last night, I’ll be providing live video as opportunities arise (cat fight!) at the 5th district DNC delegate caucus starting around 11.

You can access archived recordings and chat with me live at my Qik page.

Hillary Clinton was chomping at the bit as hard as John McCain to attack Barack Obama this weekend for being so “elitist” and saying things that don’t mesh with her idea of “American values,” after the so-called gaffe discussed here yesterday. She then went into the heart of middle (”Don’t call us small!“) America and attempted to out-America Barack Obama by “bellying up to the bar” (as the Sunday pundits loved to repeat) and double-fisting with a beer and a shot of whisky.

The widely-reported shot of whisky was Crown Royal. Crown Royal Canadian blended whisky.

FAIL.

Sen. John McCain swung through Atlanta for a minimum $1,000 a head fundraiser on Thursday. The variety of protesters outside, though, from anti-illegal immigration conservatives to anti-war liberals, told the real story about the image problem McCain will face going forward.

In bringing people of diverse views together, however, if only to protest his presence, John McCain was truly a uniter.

Click through for video.

John “Straight Talk” McCain will be clogging up Buckhead traffic during rush hour today, dropping in for a minimum $1,000 fundraiser at the Westin.

Meanwhile, the state Democratic party is using the occasion of his visit to call, as many others already have, for McCain to denounce, reject, or maybe even denounce and reject the endorsement of some nutty evangelical preacher from Texas.

While McCain was effusive in his excitement about the right-wing pastor’s endorsement, he has been strangely silent when it comes to disavowing [John] Hagee’s extremist, hate-filled rhetoric. Hagee has endorsed a “slave sale” at his church, and advertised that, “Slavery in America is returning to Cornerstone [Church].”

Dr. Joseph Lowery, of the Coalition for the People’s Agenda, said, “It’s a shameful display of racism and bigotry, and I just can’t imagine Senator McCain, who wants to be President of the people, not repudiating these comments.”

While slavery is an obviously uncool concept, and here in America it is represented in our history by how we shamefully treated blacks for the first few centuries of our time on this continent, as far as I can tell from limited excerpts about the incident, Hagee didn’t say anything about selling people of any particular race as slaves for the fundraiser. And given the generally reactionary, Biblical-era worldview of people like Hagee, one could suppose that he planned on “enslaving” people that looked just like him, much like some indebted slaves of antiquity.

Still, not the kind of substitute for a fish fry you want on your list of endorsements.

Here in Georgia, where nearly every single post on the AJC’s political blog has some bizarre anti-Catholic “fifth column” conspiracy rant of a comment from the moniker Will Jones, there might not be much of a Catholic voting bloc to rile up by repeating Howard Dean’s criticisms of Hagee’s rabid anti-Catholic statements. But these charming views are much less equivocal:

The televangelist, San Antonio megachurch leader John Hagee, has referred to the Roman Catholic Church as “the great whore” and called it a “false cult system” and “the apostate church”; the word “apostate” means someone who has forsaken his religion.

He also has linked Adolf Hitler to the Catholic church, suggesting it helped shape his anti-Semitism.

No mention of that part of Hagee’s “hate speech” here today. Fine. Be that way. We have the Google, and I’m here to cite it as your friendly neighborhood indignant Catholic.

Better get home and pack up my camera; I hear there will be anti-war protesters rubbing elbows with anti-Mexican protesters (who will probably be throwing elbows).

Edited to add: Need a little more insight into my bizarre reasoning? Check the comments.

Hoo-boy, the GOP is trying the new media thing again! This time, the NRCC has a contest out urging folks to make web video ads based on the slogan that won their previous contest: “Has the Democratic Congress Worked For You?”

Let’s just hope — for their sake and for that of our eyes and ears — that there are Young Republicans who are less tragically 80s in their creative tastes than this steaming pile:

And in case you’re wondering, no, that theme music did not come from Jan Hammer.

Like bookends on a week of stupid, MIT tries to one-up UF.

While quite possibly as stupid as Andrew Meyer is nuts, Star Simpson was wise enough to comply with law enforcement.

Shame, ’cause I’m already bored with YouTube again.

Well, things started off so well; I barely snuck into the first round of HuffPo’s new citizen journalism project and landed my first project right on the front page, if only for several hours. Who knows, maybe this thing would turn into a portfolio that could mutate my engineering resume into an advocacy one.

But now I’ve got all kinds of problems with the kids at my new virtual lunch table.

On an organizational conference call with the project leaders for Off the Bus, the new Editorial Coordinator Marc Cooper — a faculty member at the USC Annenberg School for Communication — made the distinction between the kind of “venting” that belongs on a blog post and the somewhat more even-keeled approach we’d like to take with OTB pieces in the interest of “citizen journalism.”

Now, I’m not entirely clear on the makeup of the larger Huffington Post proper; sometimes it seems like it’s just a fancier, more highbrow version of DailyKos with more “credentialed” bloggers, because a lot of what I see on HuffPo is precisely “blog posts,” a term that Cooper seemed to use to differentiate it from our ostensibly less biased OTB products. Still, the fact that they’re kind of selective about what gets promoted to the front page of HuffPo leaves me with the impression that there’d be some kind of editorial scrutiny for what gets such high profile face-time, and I’m just not sure what the standard is.

When it comes to telling the facts, that standard is, apparently, pretty low. I first saw the kerfuffle about wacky young Andrew Meyer getting tased on Blog for Democracy, and Catherine kicks things off by being legitimately concerned about the level of force used in restraining a paranoid screamer with his stupid pants down around his ass (to paraphrase liberally). I myself fall more in GriftDrift’s camp, especially after looking at all the video angles he’s collected there to see just how erratic Meyer was behaving — including some post-tasering footage of the guy talking about how the police are going to turn him over to the government to kill him (weee!). This clip is particularly illuminating, and the poster explains that he (presumably like all the other amateur videographers) busted out his camera because Meyer ran into the room already in crazy mode with the police in tow. Starting off on the wrong foot, Meyer only makes things worse by brushing off the cops, causing quite the disturbance when asked to leave, attempting several times to flee from officers, and spending a good minute and change physically struggling with the officers as they attempt to eject him. Once he saw the taser drawn from its holster, he chose to struggle more and ask not to be tasered instead of, oh I dunno, going limp and putting his hands behind his back.

So what does this have to do with me and HuffPo?

Not one but two posts spent the day on the front page of the Post that tried to address a legitimate issue by starting off from the position of complete fallacy. First, Greg Lukianoff kicks off the oversimplification with

take a look at this University of Florida student who was manhandled and tasered by university police for taking too much time asking a question at a John Kerry speech.
…
And, of course, common sense (which too often differs from legal sense) will tell you that the threat of being tasered if you talk too much could certainly have a chilling affect on speech! Good lord. Half the people I knew in college would have been tasered routinely if this was response was considered acceptable back then.

I’m almost willing to forgive his complete cluelessness if that highly truncated CNN video he linked to was his only exposure to the event, because that does kind of jump straight from the question to the tasering — except that basing an article on one edited source (particularly from ADD-stricken CNN) is just crappy research, so no, no credit for that half-assed effort. Next!

Naomi Wolf comes along five hours later to shill the same oversimplified misrepresentation for the sake of shock value over accuracy — that way she can call it a “shock moment” (har! har!):

Today’s news shows a recognizable shock moment in the annals of a closing society. A very ordinary-looking American student — Andrew Meyer, 21, at the University of Florida - was tasered by police when he asked a question of Senator John Kerry about the impeachment of President George Bush. His arms were pinned and as he tried to keep speaking he was shocked — in spite of begging not to be hurt.

Yeah, but no, not so much, Naomi. No matter how many times you try to parrot the “tasered for asking a question” meme, it won’t make it true. Fox News tries to do that all the time but it doesn’t make global climate change go away, either.

I don’t watch Fox News because I prefer my news with a reality bias. Why would I want to contribute to the online left-wing version of Fox?

Freakboy was tased for physically struggling with police officers after being generally disruptive. I’m sure he had a legitimate beef with the officers for raining on his parade, but there comes a point when you have to realize you’ve lost this battle, and you’d be wise to cut your losses and take it up with the media after you’ve been processed. That point, for the record, is right before, “Don’t tase me, bro!”

So maybe these are only “blog posts” where “venting” is allowed (hello, you are reading a giant vent sandwich here), but when they are put on the front page of something like Huffington Post — which I thought was supposed to be something more than just a community blog — that changes things, or so I assumed. Snark and slanted analysis is fine, so long as you start from the facts, not simplistic and truncated versions of events. I’d expect this kind of distorted screed on DailyKos, which is why I don’t hang out there. And now, I’m not sure I want to hang out with the HuffPolians, either.

Not without a Taser of my own, anyway.

One thing I haven’t seen much discussion about (nary a mention on DailyKos) regarding Sen. Larry Craig is just how pathetic the reaction from the Log Cabin Republicans (”People in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones, so we made ours out of wood! Try to blow our wood down, we dare ya! Go on, blow our wood!”) has been. You would think, in a moment where one man’s career has been destroyed and their beloved party’s moral superiority on family values continues to take the beating, flogging, spanking that it royally deserves, they might take this opportunity to appeal for some reason, tolerance, and open-mindedness for the good of their other, non-social political endeavors. They might put a stake in the ground and say that this is why we, the Log Cabin Republicans, stand for gay equality in the GOP, not just as a matter of civil rights, but for political expedience: let us not lose any more hard-working, otherwise conservative Republican lawmakers to scandal just because their psyche can’t handle the kind of self-loathing, dissociative disorder-inducing, ultimately destructive pressure to stay in the closet that would make the Catholic Church and Jewish mothers file a class-action lawsuit against the GOP for monopolizing all the guilt-tripping left in the world.

The first day of the breaking news was as close as the LCR came to being sympathetic:

Log Cabin strongly opposes outing. It’s unproductive and distracts people from the real work of convincing more Americans to support equality for gay and lesbian people. It’s not for me to speculate about Senator Craig’s sexual orientation. However it’s clear that whether it’s Jim McGreevey, Ted Haggard, or someone else, life in the closet often leads to destructive, harmful, and reckless behavior.

That was, of course, after questioning his ability to continue serving in the Senate. But now it’s all “Don’t let the stall door hit ya where who knows split ya,” as they don’t touch his dirty, naughty lifestyle choice with a 40-foot pole and focus only on his law-breakin’ ways:

Senator Craig made the right decision in resigning from the U.S. Senate. He lost his credibility to serve the people of Idaho and his actions damaged the credibility of the Republican Party. Senator Craig had no other choice but to resign—for the good of his State, the good of his Party, and the good of his family.

His actions in Minnesota and the way he handled this situation showed terrible judgment. Senator Craig obviously failed to live up to the principles he espoused as a lawmaker. His explanation for pleading guilty was absurd and his denial was not believable. Senator Craig had hoped a guilty plea would sweep this matter under the rug, but it clearly backfired on him. Hopefully his resignation signals his willingness to take responsibility for his illegal actions and terrible judgment.

The LCR blog maintains that “Craig’s criminal conviction is the biggest reason for the differences in Republican reaction to” Craig versus Vitter, who at least had the decency to consort with lady prostitutes; nevermind that Craig’s criminal conviction, on the record as “disorderly conduct,” is about as exciting as jaywalking. Hell, I was ticketed for disorderly conduct once for saying I thought Savannah sucked in front of a Savannah cop. Am I barred for life from running for office? Or just from tapping my foot in men’s rooms?

Oh, Log Cabin kids, the things you will subject yourselves to in order to save a little money on your taxes. Sad, so sad.