I have a ton of things on the desk at the moment, and I don't have the time to really run out this story before Election Day, but I want to bring to your attention something very strange that I found on the 2008 "Christine O'Donnell for Senate" MySpace page.
What it basically comes down to is that the United States Marine Corps and the United States Army are "Christine O'Donnell for Senate" MySpace friends, or that there are persons who have created United States Army and USMC MySpace pages that purport to be official that have "befriended" her candidacy. There's also a Navy page that appears to emanate from a US Navy recruiting office in California on her '08 campaign's "friends" list.
At a minimum, all of this would seem to be a combination of inappropriate behavior and poor management of social media; at worst, you have activity that is "some kind of unlawful", either on an administrative or civil level.
I'll make this fast...but I'll also make it interesting.
Follow along, and you'll see what I mean.
I recently spoke on the fallacy of the concept of cyberspace. The grasp of time, distance, and causality most humans have simply do not apply to the lower layers of our global data network.
Even so, we're all just a few hundred generations away from hunter/gatherer bands on the savannahs of Africa, and we do what is familiar to us, both at an experiential as well as instinctive level.
The story of 18 year old Rutgers student Tyler Clementi has broken hearts across America, as countless individuals come to terms with the piercing pain and humiliation that could lead such a talented and gifted young man to jump from the George Washington Bridge into the cold, fast moving currents of the Hudson River.
According to most news reports, the New Jersey teenager took his life on September 22nd after he realized his roommate and another dorm mate had pulled what looks to be a cyber-world prank, and broadcast live images of Clementi having a sexual encounter with another man.
But if widely reported details of what happened are correct, the heightened humiliation and shame that drove the distinguished musician to suicide offers further evidence, we still live in a society where vast portions consider homosexuality taboo, immoral or at least, not normal.
Just last May, Gallup, the polling organization, published its annual values and beliefs survey. Results showed that Americans' support for the moral acceptability of gay and lesbian relations had crossed the symbolic 50% threshold in 2010. But, at the same time, the percentage calling these relations "morally wrong" was still at 43%. And, while that's the lowest in Gallup's decade-long trending of the issue, it's still significant.
Gay people are acutely aware of those sentiments, many struggle with internal homophobia and others attempt to project an image of normalcy to the masses in a world where many still consider them abnormal. In fact, a barometer of society's attitudes about homosexuality often shows up in the gay male community itself, for example, when gay men make a point of labeling themselves "straight acting" or "down low," as if the articulation as such, connotes masculinity, once again, normal behavior for men, an attribute society dictates is worth striving for.
More aptly to this latest tragedy, ponder this; While there is no tangible way to measure the pain or embarrassment that drove Tyler Clementi to take his own life, one wonders, would this talented young man have chosen a different path, were he living in a more tolerant and accepting world? Put more simply, assume for just a moment that Clementi's web-cast was heterosexual, not homosexual.
Days after news reports and talking head reactions to the awfulness of this human tragedy saturated the nation, conversations held with reasonably minded people led to similar hypothetical questions. If during similar invasions of privacy, where two individuals had been broadcast having sex, all without their knowledge, and one of those individuals had been either a married woman, or a married man with children, would the level of heightened humiliation be as measurable as what we appear to be assuming Tyler Clementi felt as he took his own life, after the broadcast of a same sex encounter?
There's simply no way to know for sure, but the mere comparisons beg a very important question about American attitudes towards LGBT people, that despite all the remarkable progress we see on the surface, the deeper answers seems pretty clear, and still, are quiet troubling.
Changing hearts and minds is sometimes best left to moments like this horrible tragedy in the Hudson when a young and gifted soul felt he had to leave this earth. The brutal evidence of society's intolerance often shows up in the most hurtful events. This appears to be one of them.
Once the coverage, celebrities and discussion fades, it is imperative that LGBT youth constantly be reminded and understand, that no matter how cruel, painful or embarrassing this big mean cyber world may seem at times, it all gets better with time. We all become better with time.
Some months ago Progressive Congress director Darcy Burner gave me a document outlining a strategic vision for message management in the online discussion space. The steps required to reach this lofty goal of an integrated, partisan Democratic social media operation require a specific set of actions that will happen across multiple platforms.
Today we're ready to open up a small portion of what we've built to early adopters so that it can be seen and further tuned.
As the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq ground on the Army and Marine Corp lost many entry level officers through attrition. There were trained officers available in the Navy and Air Force who only needed to learn the service specific details in order to move to the ground forces and begin leading. This program was known as "Blue To Green".
As we've worked on campaigns this cycle we're really come to respect the discipline of the men and women who seek U.S. House seats after having served our country in our armed forces. They do the right things, in the right order, and they make sensible use of the resources they have available to them. Their chosen district may not be ready for a Progressive representative, but they're all ready for the energy and skill the netroots have.
But a formal Green To Blue effort is going to have to display some snappy discipline to appeal to such candidates.
Once upon a time, before Facebook and Twitter and everything else we consider new media, a film documentary had a limited ability to make an impact (as good as some of the older documentaries were.) An audience would file into a movie theater (distribution always being the first major barrier a thoughtful documentary would have to overcome) but then the audience would file back out into the night at movie's end, touched, moved perhaps, angered but with little means of turning those emotions enter action.
If you are a political news junkie, and you are looking to fill that vast, almost existential void that the passage of health care reform has created, then financial reform will prove to be a pretty weak substitute.
Even though health reform passed Congress more than a week ago, and even though financial reform has been billed as the next big fight in Congress, health reform is still generating more than ten times the interest of financial reform on Twitter. This is a crude, though still an effective, metric of grassroots engagement in the two legislative campaigns.
Here is what I found during some Twitter searches this morning:
The hashtag #hcr had 100 tweets in the 21 minute span from 11:33 am to 11:54 am eastern.
The keywords "Financial reform" had only 100 tweets in the four hours from roughly 8 am to noon, eastern. As far as hashtags go, both #financialreform and #finreg had 20 tweets in the last two days.
So, even though the health reform fight has been over for more than a week, and even though I searched for only a single hashtag on health reform rather than the more general "financial reform" search, there was still more than 10 times as much interest on health care reform on Twitter than there was on financial reform.
What does this mean? Given the relative levels of engagement in the two campaigns, the details of financial reform will receive far less public scrutiny. The details will thus be left more to lobbyists and backroom negotiations than they were even during the health care fight, which could allow for Senators like Blanche Lincoln to give away the store on key areas of the bill, such as derivatives regulation:
For the last several months, the big banks, who make billions of dollars trading derivatives, have tried to arrange it so that these proposals would apply to as few transactions as possible. Their efforts have been somewhat successful-the financial reform bill that passed the House in December featured a reasonably broad exemption to the new regulations (though the industry still has its share of gripes). But the language Dodd moved through his Banking Committee last month is significantly tougher, and the administration has expressed its support.
And, yet, when you talk to industry representatives, they don't appear overly troubled by the recent turn of events. Most continue to regard the derivatives provision in Dodd's bill as a placeholder, which will almost certainly be nudged aside by a compromise negotiated by Democrat Blanche Lincoln and Republican Saxby Chambliss. (The two senators run the Agriculture Committee, which shares jurisdiction over derivatives.) As one lawyer involved in the derivatives industry told me last week, "If they try to push the Dodd bill as currently written on derivatives-it can't fly."
What explains the serene confidence? "Derivatives is the tail on this dog," the lawyer continued. "It's not what's going to drive the bill through Congress. Nor is it the filibuster point. Other stuff makes a lot more noise." The bottom line, this person concluded, is that voters just aren't very invested in the details of derivatives reform, and so it's hard to believe the Democrats will be, too: "Words on the page are not that critical to the public. ... The public just wants to see something done here. ... To some extent, passing a bill [whatever the details] will be marketed as a success."
The bank lobbyists don't seem to be wrong that the public isn't engaged on the details of this fight. This gives them an upper hand in shaping the legislation.
If you want to fight back against this, sign up for a webinar featuring Professor Elizabeth Warren that will take place tomorrow, at 4:00 p.m. eastern. It is a good way to become educated about the details of, and engaged in the politics of, the financial reform fight. Here are the details:
Join us for this special discussion with Professor Elizabeth Warren and AFR Director Heather Booth! Get involved in the emerging movement for financial reform and the fight to rein in the big banks who crashed our economy.
Find out about reform efforts in Congress-including the Senate bill currently being debated, and the House bill which passed in December
Learn why we need a Consumer Financial Protection Agency to protect us from abusive financial products
Ask Professor Warren or Heather Booth your question about financial reform
Hear about ways to join the fight around the country and online
Go and sign up now! And, in the interest of full disclosure, I am helping to organize this event as part of my fellowship with the New Organizing Institute.
CRUSH is a fast and fun weekly round-up of social media news - Join us on Facebook to keep up with all the latest.
What was this week's theme among your favorite social networking sites? Change. Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook are all rolling out a handful of new features. Including Twitter's addition of "most popular tweets" to its search capability, a new interactive layout for YouTube, and the introduction of language alterations and community pages from Facebook.
Facebook was especially busy, as it also acquired "Divvyshot", a program that will allow users to tag photos by event. You can expect to see this application in the upcoming months. Music artist John Forte has already gotten a head start on how this might work, pausing mid-set during his latest tour stop in Boston to snap a photo for his morning Twitter feed.
More politicians are beginning to find audiences via social media. Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty is reaching out to his constituents on Facebook. He follows New Hampshire Governor John Lynch, who did a live stream chat courtesy of the Live Free of Die Alliance a few months ago.
But beware, the power of social media is a double-edged sword. Just ask the RNC, as the release of controversial financial records and activities have been blasted to the public by an army of bloggers, as well as a video mashup of RNC Chairman Michael Steele's speeches to Fat Joe's music video "Make It Rain".
On a lighter note, April Fool's Day did not go by unnoticed. Here's a list of Mashable's favorite pranks from this year.
And of course, we couldn't resist pulling a prank of our own, which brings us to our CRUSH of the Week. Haven't heard of a Rick Roll? Let us introduce you...
A quick digest of the week's social media news with a side of fun? You're welcome. Introducing CRUSH, the weekly web-show that takes the news on the social media newsladder and crushes it down to reveal the gems.
In this weeks' edition, we discuss the coincidence of Google releasing Buzz at about the same time they struck a deal with the NSA to share info. No relationship - just like Glenn Beck getting a show on Fox the day before Obama was inaugurated.
Facebook, meanwhile made changes to its privacy settings allowing users more control of what info is shared. That won't help people who choose to share their info though. With the growth of location sharing, there is a new website that points out a nagging issue with letting people know where you are all the time.
On the political side of thigs, this past week marked the one year anniversary of the signing of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Organizing for America released this video to mark the occasion, and the House Committee on Education and Labor realeased a great video as well. This is not the first time the Ed and Labor committee has turned to creative webvideos to spread a message, and we hope it will not be the last.
Sarah Palin was asked what she thought the biggest threat to America is, and when her supporters shouted 'Obama' she felt the need to clarify that they had said it, not she. She didn't correct them though. If Mrs. Palin cared about 'those little facty things' she and her supporters might want to thumb through the Quadrennial Defense Review, which catalougues the various security threats to the nation as determined by, well, the people who spend their careers assessing threats to our nation.
Finally, this is from Ben Whitehair on Facebook, and it is hilarious:
5 steps to an AWESOME day: Step 1: Go to google maps... www.google.com/maps Step 2: Search for 39 Rugdeveien, Bergen, Hordaland, Norge Step 3: Zoom in until you get to street view Step 4: Look to the left of the truck and see two men in scooba gear Step 5: Click to make the truck go down the road and watch the men chase the truck....
Andrew Sullivan recently linked to some bloggers who don't like Twitter. Now, Twitter is a social networking platform, but, unlike Google and Facebook, I have no problem with Twitter, so I am going to defend it here.
Here is what I am seeing this late afternoon / early evening:
There are roughly 225,000 registered Democrats in Delaware who are at least thirty years old (multiply registration figures by age crosstabs on the Delaware exit poll). This gives each of them a 1-225,000 chance of becoming the next Senator from Delaware. Seems like pretty good odds, if you ask me. Delaware Dem and Swing State Project have actual thoughts on Biden's replacement.
Obama won everyone (58% of the electorate) who is not a white Protestant 67%-31%, and everyone (74% of the electorate) who is not a white evangelical / born-again 62%-36% (see exit polls). I intend to bring that up every time a pundit believes it is insightful to say that Democrats would lose every election were it not for African-Americans. Were it not for white Protestants, the Republican Party would functionally cease to exist.
In the CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey released Tuesday, 59 percent of those questioned said Democratic control of both the executive and legislative branches will be good for the country, compared with 38 percent saying such one-party control will be bad.
Of course, the election results already told us that the country has no problem with Democrats running the country without Republicans. We didn't need a poll to tell us that.
I used to do search engine optimization (SEO) marketing for a living, and just recently started up consulting again. Not, as I always point out right up front, the URL misdirection and link spam kind. No. The kind where you create human-readable content geared towards providing the information your audience is looking for.
I got started in 2001, worked at it part-time to pay for my first couple years of undergrad, and quit in 2005 to go back to school full time. I started blogging in 2002, and at some point, I realized that all the hard-won markers of success for my clients' web sites came to me easily on my own blog, even if it wasn't getting blogger A List traffic. No one can ever tell me that there isn't value in what we do, even if few of us get paid for it.
In a way, this post has been six and a bit years in the writing. (Has it really been that long? Oh. Well.) I wasn't sure if there'd be an audience for this topic in the political blogosphere before, but considering the frustration I've been hearing from so many bloggers about what seems to be a plateau in traffic that once grew with regularity, we may have reached the limits of natural audience growth. So maybe it's time for something more.
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