Fundamentals of Interactive Journalism

The Republic National Convention posted a video online this Saturday alleging that Obama might not be speaking with complete candor on his relationship to the Blagojevich scandal. The video titled “Questions Remain” is a bit reminiscent of a 1950’s newsreel which is appropriate for a piece of work so explicitly Mccarthy-like.

Cast in all black and white the piece attempts to show Obama’s connection to the governor because Obama helped with Blagojevich’s campaign in 2006. I wonder if the guilt-by-association trick will work better this time around than during the election. But this case is certainly an even more bizarre attempt at a connection – what kind of headline do the Republicans hope to make:
OBAMA HELPED FELLOW STATE DEMOCRAT TO CAMPAIGN FOR REELECTION

Pretty unimpressive stuff.

Mccain is distancing himself from the attack ad (aren’t those over?!) – perhaps uncoincidentally during an interview when he said he might not support a Palin presidential bid. The whole venomous attack thing is something that has hurt Mccain several times. Bush used it on him in 2000 and his own attempts to play those hands might have cost him this past election.

Which makes me rather wonder what the RNC is up to on this. What will de-legitimizing and incoming president during a time of grave crisis do for them? Is it just a reflexive blow from punchers that have trained to hard to miss a small opening?

I would like to see some good analysis on this folks.

In both of those cities there are many many more women – and therefore more single women – than men. The supply and demand of this means that men are able to be either more selective or much more poorly groomed and do quite well for themselves. It means that we can be slack and indulgent in a land of plenty while the other team gets vicious on a barren gaming field.

In both cities the reason might have to do with migration patterns. American women who are better educated these day then their male counterparts, flock to cities for jobs and husbands. They want guys of comparable education and earning potential, say Richard Florida, author of the Creative Class. According to Florida’s singles map there are 210,000 thousand more single girls than guys in the New York-Northern Jersey area.

When their are fewer options those options start looking a lot better. Some people will even eat at Mcdonald’s when that’s the only thing open.

In Bangkok this situation is even more wonderful (from a guy’s perspective). There are 547,000 more women than men in the marriage year between 20 and 44 – that’s a huge number when the group we are talking about has less than 3 million.

This enormous gap (500,000!) is due to a massive in-migration of women into the city and a flight out of BKK by the men according to a report from the Economic Institute at Kobe University. Bangkok is a service economy of finance, hotels, and restaurants – all areas where women are thought to better employees in Thai eyes.

Bangkok’s men (who like American men are less educated than their female peers) often leave the city to work in heavy industry and manufacturing.

This leaves the city incredibly gender lopsided – walking around Bangkok ourists often wonder – where did all the men go? The images of the protests were so female dominated that it felt like you were looking at a women’s liberation movement instead of an anti-goverment rally.

But that’s just Bangkok.

Did I come to the wrong rally?

And its for that reason that you hear the same complaint from women there that you do here in big NYC – all the good ones are taken and the rest aren’t too good.

Here is my latest blog post.

If  Obama loses the election next week Sarah Sliverman would like to be able to blame just this one more thing on the Jews. She theorizes that Florida’s victory for Bush came down to a few “Bubby’s” and “Zedies” wandering out of the nearly monolithic Jewish voting block and going Republican.  She goes on to urge that younger Jews make a trip down to Florida to convince their grandparents to do the right thing this time around.

The Great Schlep from The Great Schlep on Vimeo.

But according to a recent Gallup poll if calamity falls on election day Sarah won’t be able to blame Jewish grandparents. As it turns out younger Jews are more likely to vote Mccain with only 19% of Jews over 55 planning to vote Republican as compared with 29% of Jews 18 to 34 hailing Pailin.

Don't blame the Bubbys! Younger Jews are more likely to be conservative.

And if you’ve spent any time in the Jewish community lately this will ring true. Younger Jews feel less attachment to the left-leaning  and progressive sentiments that were carried in by their refugees grandparents and great-grantparents who came fleeing oppression. As a more fully assimilated demographic, younger Jews do not have as strong an identification with the underdogs and have greater ideological lattitude to pick a political philosophy for reasons beyond their Jewishness.

The Zeides aren't the Jews stealing the vote.

The countdown is on to the Biden/Palin showdown. I expect record breaking viewership come Thursday night.  The McCain campaign regularly preaches transparency and accountability but what has become very transparent in the last two weeks is Sarah Palin’s incompetence.

We can probably all recite her rhetoric verbatim by now, and she has progressively gone from unknown to laughing stock. Even Larry King couldn’t help but snicker as he replayed the SNL parody of Plain and Couric before a commercial break last night. 

CNN asked their viewers to comment and vote on whether or not McCain should ask Plain to step down.  World affairs expert and author Fareed Zakaria told CNN that he thought McCain’s choice of running mate was, “fundamentally irresponsible.”

After Couric and SNL, there’s blood in the water, and the Democrats are going diving.

Theree strikes and you’re out. Palin’s 15 mins of fame are about to expire.

No wonder they didn’t want her facing the media:

COURIC: You’ve said, quote, “John McCain will reform the way Wall Street does business.” Other than supporting stricter regulations of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac two years ago, can you give us any more example of his leading the charge for more oversight?

PALIN: I think that the example that you just cited, with his warnings two years ago about Fannie and Freddie–that, that’s paramount. That’s more than a heck of a lot of other senators and representatives did for us.

COURIC: But he’s been in Congress for 26 years. He’s been chairman of the powerful Commerce Committee. And he has almost always sided with less regulation, not more.

PALIN: He’s also known as the maverick though. Taking shots from his own party, and certainly taking shots from the other party. Trying to get people to understand what he’s been talking about–the need to reform government.

COURIC: I’m just going to ask you one more time, not to belabor the point. Specific examples in his 26 years of pushing for more regulation?

PALIN: I’ll try to find you some and I’ll bring them to you.

I usually don’t like horror movies, but it’s kind of hard to look away.

That a presidential campaign is caught repeatedly lying about the relationship between one of its key operatives and two collapsed federal mortgage lenders (and doesn’t seem to care) or that the same campaign continues to shield its vice-presidential candidate from taking questions from the national press corps?

I’m not sure which is worse, but I do know that this is scary stuff for a variety of reasons:

1. If lying about your own policies (or the policies of your opponent), your ties to certain firms or individuals, etc. carries no political repercussions, then what value (if any) does empirical truth have to voters?
2. If somebody can slide into the White House without having to give an honest accounting of their views, then what tangible value does the press have to the public?
3. How can the press fight back against being demagogued for simply doing their jobs?

Oh, and for the record, it’s been 40 days since McCain or Palin has given a press conference.

Wednesday morning update: McCain did hold a 15 minute press conference yesterday. It’s better than nothing, I suppose.

Wednesday afternoon update: The McCain campaign released a statement blasting the New York Times article from yesterday about Rick Davis but didn’t challenge the validity of the story (link isn’t posting, so here’e the URL):

http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0908/McCain_camp_attacks_Times_doesnt_deny_report.html

We’ve seen a lot of press-bashing so far during this presidential campaign but today kicked things up a notch. During a conference call with reporters, Steve Schmidt, John McCain’s chief strategist, unloaded on the New York Times in response to a front page article in today’s edition that examined the relationship between Rick Davis, McCain’s campaign manager, and failed housing lenders Frannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Of the Times, Schmidt said:

“This is an organization that is completely, totally 150 percent in the tank for the Democratic candidate. It is an organization that has made a decision to cast aside it’s journalistic integrity to advocate for the defeat of John McCain.”

Schmidt went on to say that:

“Whatever the New York Times once was, it is not today by any standard a journalistic organization. It is a pro-Obama organization that every day attacks Senator McCain, attacks Governor Palin, and excuses Senator Obama.” (emphasis mine)

Schmidt and Davis then laid out a host of complaints about the coverage of the campaign, but, as Ben Smith of Politico notes, the complaints lodged by the McCain camp are rife with exagerations and factual errors and neither Schmidt nor Davis actually challenged the merits of the Times article. The antagonistic stance that the McCain camp has adopted towards the press is generally known as “working the refs”. Joe Klein of Time explains:

1. he’s hoping to work the refs: if he complains enough about press bias, we mainstream sorts will cower, cringe and try to seek false equivalences between the two campaigns.

2. the more time we spend covering this nonsense, the less we’ll spend on the real issues in this campaign.

Sorry, Steve. Not buying.

For the sake of everyone, let’s hope the “mainstream sorts” don’t let these strong arm tactics derail their coverage.

[Update: McCain aides accuse Politico's Ben Smith of being "in the tank" for pointing out the inconsistancies in Davis and Schmidt's remarks. That is like a meta working of the refs.]

Barack Obama and John McCain will face off in their first debate this Friday, September 26. Hosted by Jim Lehrer of PBS’s NewsHour, it will focus on foreign policy. The debate schedule also includes a town hall-style discussion hosted by NBC’s Tom Brokaw on October 7 and a domestic policy debate moderated by Bob Schieffer of CBS on October 15. Vice presidential candidates Sarah Palin and Joe Biden will debate on October 2, with NewsHour senior correspondent Gwen Ifill hosting.

Given some of the inane questions asked in the primary debates — e.g., George Stephanopolous asking Senator Obama “Do you think Reverend Wright loves America as much as you do?” — I thought it might be a useful exercise for aspiring journalists to propose some questions we’d ask if we were hosting one of the debates.

I’ll throw down my three questions for McCain and Obama and invite all my classmates to suggest their own for any of the four candidates.

First, for Senator Obama. Last year, you pledged to filibuster any bill that gave immunity from lawsuits to the telecommunications companies that participated in the Bush administration’s secret NSA wiretapping program. Yet when such a bill came to the Senate floor, you voted for it. At the Democratic convention in Denver, AT&T sponsored several events, including a party for the Blue Dog Democrats who joined Republicans in driving support for that legislation. Members of both parties have received thousands of dollars in contributions from telecom companies. How do you reconcile your reversal on telecom immunity with your rhetoric on reducing the influence of special interests?

Next, for Senator McCain. When Russia invaded Georgia, a country your foreign policy adviser Randy Scheunemann represented as a lobbyist, you strongly condemned the action and went as far as saying, “Today we are all Georgians.” You have advocated for NATO membership for Georgia, a position that your running mate Sarah Palin acknowledged might require military retaliation against Russia should a similar situation arise in the future. Given that Russia is a nuclear power, and given that our military leaders say their resources are stretched to the brink in Iraq and Afghanistan, can you explain to the American people why you think it’s advisable to take such a belligerent stance against Russia at this time?

For both candidates: Cabinet appointments will serve as an important indicator of your judgment and priorities, should you become president. As we’ve seen with the current administration, appointments such as Donald Rumsfeld and Alberto Gonzales can have a significant impact on the development and implementation of both domestic and foreign policy. Can you name two or three people you’d like to name to your Cabinet, and why you think they would be the best candidates for their respective positions?

Forgive me as I toss one more post on the heap of Sarah Palin musings.  (I’m excited to read Philip Gourevitch’s piece in the New Yorker about her blazing emergence from the murk of Alaskan politics. Please comment if you’ve read it!)  I’m trying to form a story idea about Alaskan women in politics, since there’s a chance I’ll be in Alaska around election time.

I think this piece on CNN yesterday makes a good attempt to depict the range of Alaskan women.

The main point is clear – there’s not just one type of woman up there. There’s not just one type of anyone up there. Politics in Alaska are just as polarized as in the rest of the nation. There are conservationists vs. contractors. Commercial fisherman vs. charter fishermen. Subsistence hunters vs. aerial wolf shooters. And on and on.

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