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The Web as Political Weapon
cultrhetor writes "John Harris of the Washington Post has noticed that the three largest recent political controversies have stemmed from work done by digital inhabitants. In the article, New Media a Weapon in the New World of Politics, he notes the connections between the recent scandals involving Mark Foley, George Allen, and Bill Clinton were representative of the new, web-driven age of American politics." From the article: "Each originally percolated in the world of new media — Web sites and news outlets that did not exist a generation ago — before charging into the traditional world of newspapers and television networks. In each case, the accusations quickly pivoted into a debate about the motivations and alleged biases of the accusers. Cumulatively, the stories highlight a new brand of politics in which nearly any revelation in the news becomes a weapon or shield in the daily partisan wars, and the aim of candidates and their operatives is not so much to win an argument as to brand opponents as fundamentally unfit."
The 'rather documents' are a good lesson on how the 'blogosphere' can fail miserably. Anybody familiar with Rove's past realizes that the content of the document was almost certainly entirely correct with only the format being fake. Even if CBS had done the due diligence in verifying this document that agreed with all their eye witness accounts and determined it was a fraud, they would have had to question everything else with the same information. That's just human nature to transfer the fraud from document to its contents even though there is no logical basis to do so.
The problem with bloggers is that they each have a narrow perspective and clear biases. Few see the big picture, because they don't want to, so the blogs are easy to manipulate. For instance, if we found out that the printer used to print the document was assigned to Rove's office then clearly either he was trying to sabotage the pres (unlikely) or was trying to create a straw-man to knock down (likely). Instead, without knowing where the document came from, the conservative bloggers claim the document was 'fake' so therefore the eyewitnesses were lying and also it was a left-wing hit. Of course this reasoning is pretty stupid if you stop to think about it.
Anyway maybe you count this as a success for bloggers, but don't color me impressed.
he notes the connections between the recent scandals involving Mark Foley, George Allen, and Bill Clinton were representative of the new, web-driven age of American politics."
What scandal? Oh, you mean this? "Former president Bill Clinton had a televised temper fit when an interviewer challenged his terrorism record."
"Temper fit" is a "scandal"? The interviewer provoked it by repeating the Bush administration rhetoric that he was "weak" on terrorism. Given that Bush brushed aside reports with titles like "Al-Qaeda to attack US targets in the coming months" and Rice was REPEATEDLY warned about the threat Al-Qaeda represented and yet did nothing...yeah, I think Clinton has a right to be pretty pissed at mindless rhetoric.
He raised his voice, came out of his chair a bit, and controlled the conversation long enough to cover the facts: a)yeah, he missed Bin Laden and he regrets it but b)he did more than Bush ever did.
Bush and his staff ignored patently obvious and repetitive evidence of an impending terrorist attack, declared Bin Laden his number one target and then a year later, suddenly told everyone it really wasn't actually all THAT important to get Bin Laden. Who, I might remind everyone, is still alive five years after "that fateful day".
Bush has had a trillion dollars, two military campaigns, a dozen or more grossly unconsitutional laws/acts and five years to fix things, and the only thing he's done is paint a giant target on the US by acting like a treaty-ripping baffoon on the stage of world politics and invading sovereign nations where there is a substantial number of people who belong to a religion which spawns aggressive, violent groups at the drop of a hat. Just you watch- he's about to do it again in a few months when North Korea goes "nuclear", and we'll be lucky if it doesn't destabilize the whole region by dragging China, Japan, and of course South Korea...then Malaysia, New Zealand, Australia...and all their corresponding allies (Britain, France, Australia, etc)- into World War 3.
Please help metamoderate.
However, it was Matt Drudge who frist broke the Monica Lewinsky affair. So Clinton has had a scandal which was majorly affected by the internet. I wonder if the article was really referring to this. But I agree that recent Clinton interview was no "scandal."