Politics
Entries related to things political.
Dealing with the difficult questions
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sat, 12/29/2007 - 11:36
My daughter Fiona asks the hard questions every six year old asks. John Edwards is the only candidate addressing these hard questions.
(Hat tip To CarolinaGirl for the clip of Sen. Edwards at the end.)
An Invitation to Innovate, and Collaborate
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Fri, 12/28/2007 - 19:23The following is a comment I added to Tracy Joan’s diary on DailyKos about the Edwards My Vote, My Voice contest.
I’ve been fairly critical of all the Presidential campaigns this time around, including the Edwards campaign, even though I’m supporting Sen. Edwards. I’ve felt that they’ve looked at the tools that contributed to some of the successes of the 2004 election cycle, but have missed what is really important, the invitation to innovate.
I believe this is a step in the right direction. The Edwards campaign is inviting people to, hopefully, come up with some innovative advertisements. However, I would like to push this even further. We are at our best when we work together.
I thought about this as I worked on my submission for the contest. I recorded my daughter asking a bunch of those hard questions that six year olds are likely to ask. No, not where do babies come from. She’s asked questions like “Why can’t some of my classmates afford to go to the doctor?”, “When will Joey’s daddy come home from Iraq?”, or “Do you think I’ll get to go see a glacier when I’m older”? I’ve recorded a bunch of these questions and spliced them together into a video. You can see the video on Blip.TV. You will note that it is tagged with a Creative Commons license, “Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike” This means that someone more creative than I am is free to take it, work with it, and come up with something even better, if they also share it and acknowledge they got it from me. It is part of the reason I like to use Blip.TV. Videos there can be downloaded in their original format and then edited with programs like Movie Maker of iMovies.
I haven’t added the final part of my ad. I’m hoping to get a clip of Sen. Edwards talking about the Moral Test of Our Generation:
America lives because 20 generations have honored the one moral commandment that makes us Americans.
To give our children a better future than we received.
I know that CarolinaGirl has put great videos up on vSocial, so I’ve contacted her to see if I can use extracts from one of her videos. Hopefully, she’ll get a chance to extract a piece I’m looking for and share it with me.
I think that represents the real challenge. Can we work together, to share ideas, scripts, video clips or anything else so that we can come up with an even stronger message reflecting why we believe John Edwards is the person we need in the White House? I’m up for it. I might even be able to get Fiona make a clip for people if you need it.
Exploring Blogger Bias
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Thu, 12/27/2007 - 17:24Yesterday on a mailing list I’m a member of, someone pointed to Kaye D. Sweetser’s article, Blog bias: Reports, inferences, and judgments of credentialed bloggers at the 2004 nominating conventions. Since I was one of those credentialed bloggers, I was particularly interested what the article had to say. I contacted Kaye and got the longer version of her article.
In her research, she had people code each sentence in the blogs written as part of the convention coverage into three basic types; reports, inferences and judgments. Each of these were further broken down into whether the reports were attributed or not, whether the inferences were labeled or not, and whether the judgments were favorable or unfavorable, and whether they were attributed or not. She did further analysis on the role of gender in the coverage as well as the differences between the Democrats and the Republicans.
The results were about as I would have expected. Traditional media has a higher percentage of ‘reports’, approximately twice the percentage that bloggers use. Given that many traditional journalists are called ‘reporters’ and that ‘traditional media coverage holds objective reporting sacrosanct’, this isn’t surprising. Yet even for the bloggers at the conventions, the most common form of sentence was the report.
I went to the convention with no pretense of being a reporter. I wore my bias on my sleeve and in the form of buttons and stickers on my shirt. Since that experience, I have blogged many events. I have not shied away from expressing my biases and try to be as up front as I can be about what underlies these biases.
In light of this, I wonder how I compared with the other bloggers who were credentialed in 2004. Did I use more reporting or judgments than other bloggers at the time? How has my writing changed over the years? How has the writing of other bloggers changed? What will the blogging at the 2008 conventions be like? Beyond the political realm, how does this apply to other bloggers?
The academic would say that this report, and these questions illustrate the need for further research. I agree. It also provides material for those hoping to blog the 2008 conventions should think about as they prepare to cover them.
At The Funeral Home
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Fri, 12/21/2007 - 11:59There is something wrong with the air.
It feels heavy.
It sits awkwardly in my mouth, my throat, my lungs.
I cannot breathe.There is something wrong with the air.
It stings my eyes.
I look around frantically for a glimmer of hope or joy.
I cannot see.There is something wrong with the air
It clogs my ears.
I listen numbly for the sound of laughter,
But hear only crying.It isn’t the fragrance of the flowers.
It isn’t the dim light illuming the coffin.
It is the emptiness
Knowing a friend is gone.
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Have we been thinking about the Dean Legacy incorrectly?
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Wed, 12/19/2007 - 19:24In my previous entry, I asked, “Will any of the campaigns in 2008 or 2012 show the sort of bold courageous leadership necessary to have a campaign that is of, by and for the people?” It reflects the way people seem to be thinking about the question, “what is Dean’s legacy on upcoming campaigns?” Maybe that isn’t the question we need to be asking at all.
Whenever I heard Gov. Dean tell people, “You have the power”, my mind always went to that scene in The Life of Brian, where Brian tells the crowd, “You are all individuals” and everyone responds as if by rote, “We are all individuals”. Too often, I attended Meetups where people talked excitedly about “having the power” and then asking the folks around them what they were supposed to do with that power.
