Category: Uncategorized
Benchmarks for 2010
It isn’t the most refined ad in the world, but in a post at RedMassGroup Massachusetts Republican Congressional candidate Tom Wesley is holding incumbent Rep. Richard Neal’s vote in favor of the health care bill against him:
Neal is pretty entrenched in MA-02, having not even faced a Republican challenger since 1998. No Republican has represented the district in Congress since 1949. But with depressed, blue collar economic areas such as Springfield and Chicopee, there may be a chance for Wesley to at least make a representative effort if the Republicans can hang the health care bill (and it’s price tag) on Democrat incumbents. While 45% of the vote in November 2010 wouldn’t put Wesley in office, it might be a sign that Congressman Neal would head back to Washington, D.C. in the minority party.
How big was the fall of the Wall?
Today, the world commemorates the symbolic victory in the Cold War against Soviet Communism. It is telling about the nature of humanity how that oppressive regime, despite having occasional military advantages, collapsed under its own weight.
There is no shortage of excellent intellectual commentary about what the Berlin Wall meant – and means. But sometimes it is the mundane or non-intellectual items which put the development in the best perspective.
When the news of the wall falling broke, my fifth grade history teacher told me that it was one of the most significant events of my lifetime. Still, it was hard for a ten-year-old to grasp history. A few years later, I heard an Elton John song from the mid-80s with the line “The reputation / of the woman you’re datin’ / Is ’bout as nasty as the Berlin Wall.” As poetry goes, it wasn’t Bernie Taupin’s best effort. But the fact that the Berlin Wall was such an easy simile puts the wall itself in perspective. It wasn’t just a dividing line – it was a kill zone for anyone seeking the fundamental human right of freedom. Nasty indeed.
The relief the world felt after the wall unofficially ended a half-century of nuclear brinkmanship was also chronicled by songs that actually made it to the top 40 charts. Trite? Maybe. There are millions people unshackled from Soviet slavery who could offer poignant, personal testimonials about what the fall of the Wall meant to them. But what better way to see the broad impact of an event than to examine how it seeps into society’s personal time – such as art and pop culture?
I thought the people against health care overhauls were the aggressive ones
Earlier this week, the Leadership Institute’s Campus Reform blog told the tale of a conservative student group at Slippery Rock University running afoul of the campus librarian. (Seriously.)
Apparently, the story got even jucier after the cops were called:
Mr. Tramdack claimed, to wit: “I have a copyright on everything I say and do. If you are willing to sell me the copyright, if you are willing to endorse that I own the copyright to this video, I will license it to you for $50,000. If I write a shopping list that says toilet paper to go to the supermarket tonight, that’s copyrighted. You need to learn about copyright laws…You have a potential libel suit coming down on you.”
Mr. Tramdack’s outburst demonstrates not only a stunning lack of professionalism but a disturbingly inaccurate understanding of copyright for a campus library director.
One more reason it’s always good to have a video camera nearby.
(This would have been discussed earlier, but it’s been a busy week…)
Sunday Funnies: THIS is how you win a Peace Prize
Sunday Funnies: Postseason Edition
Baseball’s postseason started this week, which means it’s time to buckle down. No one knows this better than the Dodgers’ hitting coach, who hit .417 in his only postseason action. He might have won a softball championship as well, if he hadn’t gotten kicked off the team:
Macaca vs. the Thesis
The comparisons are being made between the flap over Bob McDonnell’s thesis and George Allen’s infamous gaffe that opened the era of YouTube politics. The comparisons to the 2006 Senate election are apt – but not in the obvious way.
Allen’s “macaca moment” was a key reason he lost his Senate seat, but it didn’t happen in a vacuum. Opponents had long alleged that Allen was a closeted racist and Confederate sympathizer. His verbal gaffe gave those opponents visual evidence – and another chance to dredge up those accusations. Macaca wasn’t the issue, it was just the event that exposed a major issue.
Through “Thesisgate” the Deeds campaign is seeking to re-define McDonnell by exposing old writings which suggest his views are out of line with the electorate. In the 2006 race, the obvious parallel actually came later on, when desperate Allen campaign blasted eventual victor Jim Webb for novels which he had written depicting graphic and bizarre scenes.
Facebook… without the “not sucking”
FamousDC and Politico have both already weighed in on “Republicanville” – which is, apparently, supposed to be a Facebook-type social network for Republicans. Meghann Parlett at TechRepublican has the best take on it, and it only takes two words: she calls it a “walled garden” – an online utility exclusively for Republicans that doesn’t really help counter the left-leaning tendencies of other social networks, online news sites, or (most importantly) the last two election cycles.
For the last few years, this has been a consistent trend. I’ve seen people try to bill themselves as “conservative comics,” and they almost always suck. “Conservative filmmakers” tend to make good factual documentaries (sometimes), but lousy dramas and comedies. Conservative alternatives to pop culture entities are never as cool as those entities because the “conservative alternative” is by definition all about politics first, rather than entertainment.
That’s not to say that Republicanville will be a wasteland – surely, with enough financial backing, they will recruit membership. But “walled gardens” aren’t the places to make a difference.
More people will agree with you if you serve punch and pie
A YouTube channel with TV ads is basic blocking and tackling for a giant trade group like the National Association of Manufacturers. But beyond ads opposing cap and trade, the NAM YouTube channel is more than just a political sounding board; NAM uses their channel to tell stories about the people they represent: workers and businesses who make stuff.
Beyond driving home the message about the importance of manufacturing America, NAM provides genuinely interesting content that establishes the importance of manufacturing jobs – and provides users with information they didn’t already know. Ice cream is always a welcome addition, too:
(In the interest of full disclosure, I worked on a project for NAM once. It had nothing to do with their YouTube Channel – but I really wish it had.)
Jim Eltringham 