Blah Blah Blog
By MAUREEN DOWD
Is the Internet over?
There are troubling signs. AOL Time Warner, a company that started out scorning its Old Media side, is now looking to jettison the letters AOL. Fast Company, a hot magazine that celebrated the successes of dot-com innovators, is now relegated to eulogizing them.
Don't get me started on the Blaster virus sabotaging Microsoft systems, or the cram of spam reminding us that the average American is an impotent, insecure, overweight, tired, depressed loser desperately seeking to refinance.
The most telling sign that the Internet is no longer the cool American frontier? Blogs, which sprang up to sass the establishment, have been overrun by the establishment.
In a lame attempt to be hip, pols are posting soggy, foggy, bloggy musings on the Internet. Inspired by Howard Dean's success in fund-raising and mobilizing on the Web, candidates are crowding into the blogosphere — spewing out canned meanderings in a genre invented by unstructured exhibitionists.
It could be amusing if the pols posted unblushing, unedited diaries of what they were really thinking, as real bloggers do. John Kerry would mutter about that hot-dog Dean stealing his New England base, and Dr. Dean would growl about that wimp Kerry aping all his Internet gimmicks. But no such luck. ....
John Kerry has given more grist to critics who label him aloof and insincere by assigning staff members to write his cheesy blog. (It's like trying to prove you're a sportsman by making an aide go fishing for you.)
His spokesman, David Wade, offered this edgy report from Concord, N.H., on Aug. 8: "I'm sitting in the studio at New Hampshire NPR listening to The Exchange — they're asking John Kerry about his life, his service in Vietnam and his fight for veterans when he came home — it's something I forget about, working for him every day, taking for granted the quality of the person leading this campaign." In bold type, the blog breathlessly described a music store stop in Littleton, N.H., "where John Kerry treated press and customers to a couple of songs on the guitar!"
When the Kerry camp started the blog last week, rambunctious Dean supporters flooded the Kerry message boards with taunts. One Dean fan tallied all of Mr. Kerry's missed Senate votes this year.
Dr. Dean doesn't deign to write his blog, either, but at least it's fun. Mathew Gross, the Dean campaign's "head blogger" or "blogmaster" — who got his job by blogging and who now writes most of the Dean virtual entries — calls blogs the new town hall meetings. "They've revolutionized the way campaigns are run," he says. "It creates an equality among everybody. People are hungry for the old-fashioned discussion and debate.". ...
BLAH, BLAH, BLAH MAUREEN!
Here's what I wrote to Maureen today:
As owner of a Kerry Blog that has been the Unofficial Kerry Blog for sometime now, I think you are missing the point with your story's take on the Dean/Kerry Blogs.
These two candidates are like night and day and so are their supporters. Kerry supporters follow the lead of their candidate and don't run around purposely trashing Dean. Dean supporters, however, take every opportunity to trash Kerry and his supporters. The evidence of that is on every political message board on the internet and in Dean's Blogs, Official and Unofficial.
You glorify Dean's supporters and Dean's brash nature in your article, while you put down John Kerry for being a classy man. The real story is that Dean supporters feel that have the run of the internet and that there is no room for others. Much like corporate raiders, these people don't care who they hurt.
************************************
Finally, my personal note to my readers here:
I don't like to say much on this Blog about the opposing candidates. I believe it is best to keep it clean. However, after the attacks that the Official Kerry Blog and our Blog took over the last few days, this article in the New York Times really stuck in my throat and I needed to speak out to the writer. A few people on our Yahoo Groups were also not too pleased with this story, so I went out on a limb and off my path of higher purpose and posted this here. I've been through too many attacks from Dean supporters on the internet since I stood up and said, "I am a John Kerry Supporter". I am proud to support John Kerry and happy to say, I have influenced others to also support John Kerry.
I will now venture to say, Dean does not have the internet rule, just as Amazon does not. There are many thriving businesses on the internet besides Amazon, I own one of them. There is room for all here on the WWW! It is a sad statement of media today to give so much power to so much pettiness on the internet! This is My Opinion! I stand by it, just as I stand by John Kerry!
By MAUREEN DOWD
Is the Internet over?
There are troubling signs. AOL Time Warner, a company that started out scorning its Old Media side, is now looking to jettison the letters AOL. Fast Company, a hot magazine that celebrated the successes of dot-com innovators, is now relegated to eulogizing them.
Don't get me started on the Blaster virus sabotaging Microsoft systems, or the cram of spam reminding us that the average American is an impotent, insecure, overweight, tired, depressed loser desperately seeking to refinance.
The most telling sign that the Internet is no longer the cool American frontier? Blogs, which sprang up to sass the establishment, have been overrun by the establishment.
In a lame attempt to be hip, pols are posting soggy, foggy, bloggy musings on the Internet. Inspired by Howard Dean's success in fund-raising and mobilizing on the Web, candidates are crowding into the blogosphere — spewing out canned meanderings in a genre invented by unstructured exhibitionists.
It could be amusing if the pols posted unblushing, unedited diaries of what they were really thinking, as real bloggers do. John Kerry would mutter about that hot-dog Dean stealing his New England base, and Dr. Dean would growl about that wimp Kerry aping all his Internet gimmicks. But no such luck. ....
John Kerry has given more grist to critics who label him aloof and insincere by assigning staff members to write his cheesy blog. (It's like trying to prove you're a sportsman by making an aide go fishing for you.)
His spokesman, David Wade, offered this edgy report from Concord, N.H., on Aug. 8: "I'm sitting in the studio at New Hampshire NPR listening to The Exchange — they're asking John Kerry about his life, his service in Vietnam and his fight for veterans when he came home — it's something I forget about, working for him every day, taking for granted the quality of the person leading this campaign." In bold type, the blog breathlessly described a music store stop in Littleton, N.H., "where John Kerry treated press and customers to a couple of songs on the guitar!"
When the Kerry camp started the blog last week, rambunctious Dean supporters flooded the Kerry message boards with taunts. One Dean fan tallied all of Mr. Kerry's missed Senate votes this year.
Dr. Dean doesn't deign to write his blog, either, but at least it's fun. Mathew Gross, the Dean campaign's "head blogger" or "blogmaster" — who got his job by blogging and who now writes most of the Dean virtual entries — calls blogs the new town hall meetings. "They've revolutionized the way campaigns are run," he says. "It creates an equality among everybody. People are hungry for the old-fashioned discussion and debate.". ...
BLAH, BLAH, BLAH MAUREEN!
Here's what I wrote to Maureen today:
As owner of a Kerry Blog that has been the Unofficial Kerry Blog for sometime now, I think you are missing the point with your story's take on the Dean/Kerry Blogs.
These two candidates are like night and day and so are their supporters. Kerry supporters follow the lead of their candidate and don't run around purposely trashing Dean. Dean supporters, however, take every opportunity to trash Kerry and his supporters. The evidence of that is on every political message board on the internet and in Dean's Blogs, Official and Unofficial.
You glorify Dean's supporters and Dean's brash nature in your article, while you put down John Kerry for being a classy man. The real story is that Dean supporters feel that have the run of the internet and that there is no room for others. Much like corporate raiders, these people don't care who they hurt.
************************************
Finally, my personal note to my readers here:
I don't like to say much on this Blog about the opposing candidates. I believe it is best to keep it clean. However, after the attacks that the Official Kerry Blog and our Blog took over the last few days, this article in the New York Times really stuck in my throat and I needed to speak out to the writer. A few people on our Yahoo Groups were also not too pleased with this story, so I went out on a limb and off my path of higher purpose and posted this here. I've been through too many attacks from Dean supporters on the internet since I stood up and said, "I am a John Kerry Supporter". I am proud to support John Kerry and happy to say, I have influenced others to also support John Kerry.
I will now venture to say, Dean does not have the internet rule, just as Amazon does not. There are many thriving businesses on the internet besides Amazon, I own one of them. There is room for all here on the WWW! It is a sad statement of media today to give so much power to so much pettiness on the internet! This is My Opinion! I stand by it, just as I stand by John Kerry!
posted by Pamela J. Leavey at 6:09 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home