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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."
This is the problem with most folks in Washington DC. I read this article this morning and thought "well, yeah....". For those of us that have been using the Internet since (or in close proximity to) it's DARPA days, the fact that the Internet is being used for political purposes is not surprising or new for that matter.
What is new I believe is that we now have a critical mass or a critical number of participants present on the Internet. I hate to say it, because I loathe the term, but what John Harris (author of the Washington Post article) has discovered is "Internet 2.0", or the evolution and delivery of many of the promises that the Internet originally offered. And, like any tool, those that have been around for a while knew that the Internet can and will be used as both tools for good and as a weapon for selfish, self-aggrandizing acts, subversion and propaganda.
It was only a matter of time...
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Sorry, I fail to see how Clinton's reaction to that Fox question constitutes a scandal. There was a REAL Clinton scandal once, but trying to shoehorn this in as anything more than a brief display of anger is pretty ridiculous.
Limbaugh runs a radio show. A RADIO show. People might want to look up "Tokyo Rose" from 60 years ago.
The "change" isn't to a "new media".
The real change is that the existing media (newspapers, TV and radio) have abandoned most of the investigative reporting.
Now they just sit back and report on the "story" that website X is getting a lot of hits from a posting about a video clip about some politician you've never heard of.
The "old media" is "reporting" on what the current buzz is. That's all.
It's not that the Internet has become a deadly effective political weapon. It's that the Internet lets anyone who has enough time, skill, and motivation to find out the truth.
Note well: By "tbe truth" I don't mean "the truth about someone's character", but rather "the truth about an event" or some such. That is, if someone said or did something, ever, in any context, there's probably someone who can find out about it on the net.
So what's really going on is that the Internet has turned the truth about people's past actions and statements into a deadly effective political weapon.
This is good and bad. It's bad because, as far as I can tell, it can only be used to destroy people. It's good because I think that the fewer politicians with enormous gaps between their public image and reality, the better.
This Harris guy from the Washington Post is a well-known wanker. He and another tool named Halperin have just written a book (it came out this week) with the 5-alarm EXTRA! EXTRA! bit of news that the Internet is now having a big effect in American politics.
Harris and Halperin have been running around the big news shows saying that Drudge is "The New Walter Cronkite". Give me an effin' break. Drudge is the guy who's been saying that the real criminals in this Foley scandal are those demonic teenagers who "baited" Foley into asking them to measure their hogs and send him pictures. Excuse me, but no amount of "baiting" is going to get me to ask somebody to send me a picture of their apparatus. Most people I know aren't going to be "baited" into becoming sexual predators.
So Harris and Halperin are saying that "Gee, the news media really is so liberal that the only answer is to make sure that every single story is as "fair" and "balanced" as possible. To them, this means that if you have Republicans taking millions of dollars from Jack Abramoff in order to change their votes on the floor of Congress, you also have to point out that Democrats took $184.35 from Abramoff's next door neighbor and pretend that their equal.
Really, there comes a time when a government is so out of hand that the last thing you want is a news media that's trying its best not to offend anyone, while at the same time you've got douchebags like Hannity and Limbaugh telling people that "Liberals Must Die".
Fact is, Harris and Halperin, as top representatives of a media structure that has failed to make a peep while an insane Administration is sending young Americans off to die in order to make the President and VP feel like they've got big dicks OUGHT to go down the tubes. They OUGHT to be ashamed of themselves, but not for being liberal, but for being stenographers in a period of American History when we sorely needed some voices of outrage.
Oh, and "Sgt Doom"... if you think you're getting more "factual" news from Fox than you do from the New York times, you've really got to lay off huffing cleaning fluid. It's messing with you, dude.
You are welcome on my lawn.
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.
The web has turned into the biggest gossip spreading rumor mill in history... Oprah would be proud.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
Cases in point: (1) On an Italian site many months ago we first learned that Accenture had been contracted to bring in rigged voting machines for the Italian elections by former - and ousted president - Berlisconi. Their exit polls showed Berlisconi losing by 1 million votes - while the rigged count displayed only 25,000 votes. Either way - he lost - but we now realize Accenture's activity in the matter. (2) Foreign news reports stating that some British SAS (their special ops organization) refused to return to Iraq to fight beside the American forces as they strongly disagreed with the American strategy and behavior over there. No where did these stories appear in the popular, MSM American news....
We see yet again another example of the so-called "non-biased" media equating a pedophile (Foley) and a racist (Allen), both Republicans, with a former president upset about being misrepresented in a movie purporting to be based on real events, when it was based on what the right-wing wanted you to believe were the real events.
In this case, the Clinton scandal was really the Clinton-haters lying (yet again). But that's beside the point.
What this is is the typical example of balance
1. Show a major Republican gaffe
2. Show a minor Democratic gaffe
3. Claim that both parties are guilty, so neither has the moral high ground.
4. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
Hopelessly pedantic since 1963.
Well, you're an anonymous coward, so I can't call you a gullible idiot to your face, but you are.
He did refute the facts. He blew up at the interviewer after the interviewer pestered him for a few minutes. It was almost as if the interviewer *wanted* him to fly off the handle. Hell, the interviewer would hardly let him get a word in edgewise.
And for your information: according to Richard Clarke (Clinton's "Terrorist Czar") and other members of the Clinton cabinet, Clinton had set up a substantial, feasible anti-terrorist plan specifically targeted to al Queda. That was one of the first things that the new President Bush dismantled, not long before he sent $42,000,000 to the Taliban. Clinton did *not* allow the nation to be attacked. If anyone did, it would be Bush, having ignored a fairly specific document titled something along the lines of, "Al Queda determined to attack on US soil," which circulated a few weeks before the attacks.
As far as Foley sending messages that were in poor taste, those messages could be used to prosecute him for sexual misconduct if he weren't in a position of power; the fact they were directed to 15 year-old boys kind of indicates he likes 'em young.
Draw your own conclusions.
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