What I Meant to Say Was...

My pal and colleague Robbie recently sent the following to me:

"If you're as fascinated as me about the role of the web in this year's big election, check this out:

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/07/mccain-campaign.html."

One of the most effective tactics a politician can use against an opponent is to show them contradicting themselves.  To that end, an automated "change-tracking" service called Versionista has been employed by the McCain campaign to compare Barack Obama's tweaks to his policy statements regarding the Iraq War.  Versionista is based on the same concept as Wikipedia – that encyclopedia of democracy – where updates people make to entries are followed over time so you can watch the world argue with itself over what constitutes the "truth."

Back in November, the DNC launched "Flipper TV," the video equivalent of Versionista, which pools and compares campaign footage filmed by citizen journalists with digital cameras.  The idea behind both concepts is to capture contradictions that candidates make during campaigns.

Check out the article; it's an interesting side-by-side comparison of how a candidate's views reflect the audience they're addressing and the changes in popular opinion that influence their rhetoric... This is what mash-ups were meant for: using technology to help you evaluate your options. 

Welcome Back, Gary Trudeau

Is there any form of political discourse more enchanting that the cartoon?  What a righteous tradition of satire and commentary, celebration and commemoration. 

As I'm probably the only person who still reads the LA Times in paper format, I always feel compelled to share with others what cartoonists are talking about.  My husband finds this totally unfunny.  Interestingly, the Times is almost pathologically "fair" in its balance of liberal and conservative political viewpoints in the funny pages.  For that matter, it equally represents nearly every ethnicity, race, gender, age and sexual orientation, including talking animals of both the mammalian and reptilian persuasion.  Never have I seen such democracy in action as in the LA Times comics.

But to the point: Gary Trudeau went on a sabbatical for a while.  And I felt like I'd lost my perspective on things.  

If you've followed him over the decades, you've watched him, for lack of a better word, mellow.  His observations, while still delivered on the tip of a razor-sharp scalpel, are more considered.  For example, while his disdain for the Bush administration is as pointed as ever, his commentary on the war in Iraq – and more accurately, the soldiers in Iraq – is heartbreakingly beautiful.  I poked around on his site to find out how long he'd be incommunicado, and I found a really surprising thing: a section on doonesbury.com called The Sandbox.  It's a blog made available to servicepeople in Iraq and Afganistan, allowing them to document their experiences and thoughts for readers around the world.  It's a treasure.

Welcome back, Gary.  All is right in the world again.

Softball

I'm feeling ranty today, regarding the frustrating state of political debate.  As the blogosphere twitters on about yet another piece of campaign propaganda, I wonder why people who profess to have a genuine interest in how technology and the political process have intertwined can so easily become cheerleaders for its lowest-common-denominator use.

If you think of Yahoo!'s candidate mash-up from earlier this year, you saw a brilliant use of technology to help people form educated opinions.  While it's certainly the nature of culture – and especially digital culture – to create memes, it's just so... intellectually lazy.

Today's poster child is the video "I'm Voting Republican."  It's a kind of sophomoric attempt to frame the right as the source of all evil, not to mention quite mindless in their pursuit thereof.  As of this morning, it's been viewed by over 3 million people.  Understandably, it's been commented on by nearly 30,000.  The discourse is not exactly give-and-take, nor especially eloquent (my personal favorite rebuttal: "I'm voting Democrat because I want free stuff.  Abortion is murder."), it's a fairly predictable response to polarizing campaign rhetoric.

If your attempt to position yourself by framing your opposition, expect the counter-attack.  It's Marketing 101.  If you claim to stand for something great by claiming your opponent stands for something worse, you don't change minds.  And so we death-spiral into five months of unenlightening generalization-lobbing.  I feel sorry for those folks who really do want the kind of meaningful information that can help them decide, if this is what cheerfully passes for "campaigning."