Crowdsourcing Analysis of the Palin Email Trove

itwbennett writes "Surely you've got better things to do this weekend than read 24,000 pages of Sarah Palin's email. But just in case you don't, the NY Times is looking for volunteers to help 'identify interesting and newsworthy e-mails, people and events that we may want to highlight.' And, for your easy reference, MSNBC has posted the complete collection online."

Comments

volunteers?

[waddgodd]

So wait, we're supposed to do analysis for free for the NYT, which will then hide said work behind their paywall? Yeah, suuuure.

Re:volunteers?

[h4rr4r]

My thoughts exactly.
Why would I want to do this, only to lose access to my own work.
If they made the articles generated by this work under some sort of copyleft I might be interested.

Re:volunteers?

[Nidi62]

If information wants to be free, why should they have to pay you for finding it?

Re:volunteers?

[makubesu]

Yeah who would ever do a detailed analysis just to have it put behind a pay wall? Now if you'll excuse me, I have a journal article I'm working on...

Re:volunteers?

[X0563511]

Information wants to be free. Services do not.

Re:WTF?

[NiceGeek]

Someone reads too much World Nut Daily.

Probably not

[Anonymous Coward]

since the National Archives will do it for them.

Press needs to examine its life

[techvet]

His question is legit. Hey, everyone knew Bush's grades but no one cares about Obama's grades? (We only know learned that Gore got a "D" in natural science.) They dug into Jack Ryan's sealed divorce decree when he was running for Senate in Illinois but have no time to bother digging into our current president? The press is complete hypocrisy.

Re:Press needs to examine its life

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to feed the nuts, but there were swaths of Bush's life we knew nothing about. Pretty much everything before he was 40, his alleged drug use, his orgies in the frat house, what he did when he was AWOL, what bribes were made to military personel to insure he would achieve the exact grade he needed to get into the national guard instead of vietnam, all unanswered. My big concern is that we never knew how many people he killed while driving drunk, and how many women he raped. The lame stream media simply did not care.

In point as fact, as Bush was most certainly a felon, he has no more business being in the white house than Obama. Like Obama there was a conspiracy to make sure that none of the felony charges ever went to court or stick. As mentioned he is most certainly guilty of rape, felony drug charges, felony manslaughter due to recklessness. Beyond that the fact that his daddy bribed government official to get him into the national guard, and then bribed government officials agains so he did not have to serve, meant he never went to jail for draft dodges and never received the court martial he deserved for being AWOL.

But the worst error was not impeaching him for 9/11. Do you think Bush and to less extent Cheney were not owned by the Saudis? Do you not think that as soon as Bush was elected the Saudis knew they have carte blanche to murder US civilians without any fear of repercussions? We saw the photos when Bush got the news of the attacks? Did he look surprised? Why was he out of Washington for a very infrequent business trip instead of on vacation? Do you not think that Bush knew exactly where Osama Bin Laden was, but did not choose to kill him because that would be like killing family. So he created these conflict to increase oil prices so the Saudies would get richer. He passed policies guaranteed to raise the public debt so the US would be vunerable to future attacks and other hostile action. He probably had the CIA build the housing for bin laden, and probably talked about the caves knowing that the American people could never know the truth, that his brother Bin Laden was safe in a palace.set up with a new young wife to keep him company, while the average american were having their homes repossessed.

You see how easy it is to manipulate available facts into a narrative. No rational person could possible believe that Bush was not a murderer and Bush/Cheney did not welome the 9/11 attacks. That is no rational person who watches fox news. Everyone else knows the difference a good story and reality.

Re:Press needs to examine its life

[sycodon]

Slashdot was much more reasonable when Elementary school was in session.

So we have an illegal war in Libya

[hsmith]

And people care about some moron congressman tweeting his penis and dumb Sarah Palin. Glad to know the media is focusing on what is important.

Re:So we have an illegal war in Libya

[quantaman]

The problem with Palin is a lot of people take her very seriously despite an absurd number of warning signs to the contrary. And if the media didn't keep jumping on her scandals and missteps in the past she very well could still be considered a contender for the Republican nomination. Sometimes these media scandals are just a distraction from important issues, but other times they're a chance to say "hey, that person you've been praising as the second coming? Well here's yet another piece of evidence that they're complete nutjob, now go back and think about why you were such an idiot before".

Sure, most of her followers won't get the message, but a few will, and the world will be that much wiser for it.

Re:WTF?

[jmorris42]

> Paranoid troll much?

Ok since you obviously know these things that nobody else does, perhaps you know Mr. Obama's GPA, his SAT score or have access to his thesis? We know these things about other Presidents. We have even seen Mrs. Obama's senior thesis. For example we know W's GPA was actually comparable to Gore or Kerry's. Yet somehow Gore and Kerry are considered so super smart while W is universally ridiculed as an idiot. So where does Obama fit in? Everyone in DC says he is the smartest guy who ever sat in the comfy chair. Is he? I haven't seen the slightest evidence of it in his (not his speechwriters) words or in his deeds. So put us all some knowledge on dude.

Or maybe there is a reason his records are sealed. Because they would make it plain he is a below average shlub who was admitted and honored more for his biography and 'diversity' than his ability.

All I'm sayin' is if the media still have the energy and resources to root around in Mrs. Palin's old emails, air drop into Alaska back in the campaign to root around in her trash cans, etc. perhaps a little attention to the guy who actually IS president and appears to want to run for reelection might be worthy of the basic scrutiny the media would give a candidate for governor or senate. Or we might want to face the reality that the media already know Obama's story and are intent on the voters never learning it.

It's a pointless exercise

[GodfatherofSoul]

The reason it took them 3 years to release the emails is it took that long to screen out all the damaging material. Palin switched to her private email accounts for all the juicy stuff and she was pretty disciplined about it on top of that. We've got some indications of conversations since emails to those accounts both from and to official aides have been released. I heard on the news last night from the Mother Jones reporter who initiated the email request that stuff like conversations with Cheney and "Same Sex" thread have been completely redacted.

You think they'd wait 3 years, dump the emails ONLY to printed paper, redact the hell out of the content, and charge people if they *really* wanted to give you access?

Re:WTF?

[ColdWetDog]

All I'm sayin' is if the media still have the energy and resources to root around in Mrs. Palin's old emails, air drop into Alaska back in the campaign to root around in her trash cans, etc. perhaps a little attention to the guy who actually IS president and appears to want to run for reelection might be worthy of the basic scrutiny the media would give a candidate for governor or senate. Or we might want to face the reality that the media already know Obama's story and are intent on the voters never learning it.

Well, go for it dude. Certainly there have to be a couple of more folks with your bent to get together and sort this out. Certainly the Fox News folks and persons of similar persuasion have the means and the motive to go look for dirt in his past. Perhaps they have done that and found he was a B+ student who wrote boring things, didn't do drugs and didn't get arrested -- basically a meh story. Who knows? Obama is your typical bog-standard Politician, no more no less. Not nearly as entertaining as an attractive batshit insane ex cheerleader with dubious command of history, geography and language.

What's not to like?

Obama - top 10% of his class, magna cum laude

[Anonymous Coward]

So Obama got into Harvard for the sake of diversity (affirmative action), and then graduated at the top 10% of his class, magna cum luade.

Barack Obama must have somehow used his black powers to graduate at the top of his class.

Luckily your racist idiot powers remind us that he's just another affirmative action nigger.

What do you call a nigger who graduates magna cum laude and is elected president of the United States? A "diversity" admission.

Well... that's what racists call him anyway.

Re:WTF?

[dkleinsc]

For example we know W's GPA was actually comparable to Gore or Kerry's. Yet somehow Gore and Kerry are considered so super smart while W is universally ridiculed as an idiot.

GPA wasn't why Bush was and is considered pretty stupid. The reason he's considered stupid is that he's not really accomplished all that much - his military record was mediocre at best, most of his business ventures (which wouldn't have started without money from his dad's friends) flopped, and his political campaigns were also basically inheriting his dad's political apparatus. That and a speaking style which provoked unfavorable comparisons to Dan Quayle gave him a reputation of being rather stupid, deservedly or no. Basically, there's good reason to think that if he had started out in the same environment as Ronald Reagan did, he would have been a nobody.

They will never focus on Obama

[Shivetya]

Get over it.

This is why this whole Palin frenzy is so damn distressing. She isn't even declared as a candidate for the next election yet it seems as if the line to be part of the character assassination just continues to grow. This is like taking the worst aspects of Reality TV and having the press and politicians play the parts.

If they even tried this with Obama there would be lines of people screaming racism. That alone allows Libya to continue and Yemen to be next. I wonder how many years after Obama leaves office before someone will have the courage/be allowed to investigate him. We can destroy women; Hillary really didn't get good treatment from the press either once they crowned Obama their pick, but guys seem to get a free pass in politics, doubly so if they can hide behind an army of sycophants.