Lest you think the summer is a time for bogus trend stories — though it is! — there’s one burgeoning trend item that actually has footing: John McCain is old!
That this line item could actually be a new story might come as a surprise, since the story is so far along that McCain already parodied himself on Saturday Night Live. But all of a sudden, all of McCain’s old fogey mistakes are catching up to him. And there are enough to write a … trend story about ‘em! CONTINUED »
Now that he’s on his way to the White House, terrorist-by-satire Barack Obama stands accused of leaning farther toward the center than his left-wing Democratic primary self did. Some might argue that comes with the territory as any candidate progresses into the general election. Fine.
But there’s another marked change going on in the Obama camp, and it has to do with his relationship with the press. We noticed three distinct policies that are becoming status quo inside the Land of Change, and they’re all rules the press corps now has the grapple with. CONTINUED »
“In the first five-and-a-half months of 2004, the last presidential election year, Fox’s prime-time audience among viewers aged 25 to 54 was more than double that of CNN’s — 530,000 to 248,000, according to estimates from Nielsen Media Research. This year, through mid-June, CNN erased the gap and drew nearly as many viewers in that demographic category as Fox — about 420,000 for CNN to 440,000 for Fox. Meanwhile, CNN has added 170,000 viewers a night, on average, when compared with the last presidential year, while Fox has shed about 90,000, according to Nielsen. (MSNBC, which added 181,000 viewers in that audience, much of it courtesy of gains by “Countdown With Keith Olbermann,” still lagged in third place, with 303,000.)” [NYT]
As major news outlets continue shelling out for a very expensive election season (Debates: $500k-$1m a pop; Convention coverage: ~$2m), some might be looking to cut corners. Networks like CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News already have some version of a user-generated news product, where viewers are solicited to send in tips and photos, that’s less about getting all Web 2.0 than it is about getting everyday citizens to act as unpaid reporters (or so the inner cynic in us believe). But that doesn’t mean the media are cooling down — quite the opposite. With the feisty Democratic primary done with, it’s time to explore every possible angle leading up to November. Like what the temperature is on college campuses. Which explains why CBSNews.com, WashingtonPost.com, and university press syndicate UWIRE.com are teaming to find “15 to 20 top reporters” to keep their readers plugged in to who’s waving what campaign banner on the Quad. They need everybody from investigative journalists to photographers to satirists to play a part. Interested? Fantastic. Just tell them how you like to be paid: Cash, cheque, wire transfer, or … exposure. CONTINUED »
Since 1981, MTV has refused to allow political advertisements on its airwaves. Rather than accept cash from our nation’s most diseased industry, the network embarked on its own “Choose or Lose” campaign, a glorified get out the vote effort encouraging viewers to register and cast their ballots like a good American should. But all that is changing, effective immediately.
The Viacom network will begin cashing politically-tainted cheques, but only those written by candidates themselves or their parties, not the 527 groups that produce the slickest, and most offensive, attack ads YouTube has ever seen. (Previously, the more interesting MTV properties VH1, Comedy Channel, and Spike TV all took political dollars.)
So what does the about face mean for Election ‘08? CONTINUED »
This fun, long-time-to-load map called Presidential Watch ‘08 plots out political blogs across the Internet after lumping them into specified categories and measuring their influence, all based on some algorithm we won’t pretend to understand.
Blogger Ethan Zuckerman explains: “The graphs are influence graphs, showing who links to one another within “like-minded” communities. The idea here is to look at linking between political blogs in only a political context, discarding other links that are outside of context. The result is a tight, pretty map that shows a decided red/blue (conservative/liberal) split in the US political blogosphere, plus a small set of common sources used by both sides. The graph is remarkably easy to explore, allowing users to mouse over it and see the media sources referenced.”
Or, think about it this way: All that Web 2.0 noise just threw up on your browser. And now you can click on it!
During the 1970 Alabama governor’s race between famed segregationist and former governor George Wallace and Albert Brewer, the incumbent, Wallace’s camp circulated ads feature a white girl surrounded by seven black boys with the slogan “Wake up Alabama! Blacks vow to take over Alabama.” They also spread rumors that Brewer was a “sissy,” that his two daughters had been impregnated by black men, and flamed fears of a “negro bloc” vote. The election, which Wallace eventually won, has been called one of the most negative campaigns in history and the “last openly racist” American political campaign.
As openly racist and nasty that race seemed, it’s not like we have reached some higher level of positive campaigning and colorblind voting. We’ve traded in openly-uttered slurs and clearly racist language with “coded” appeals to the sorts of people who vote based on that sort of thing. Since Wallace went no-hold-barred back in 1970, a more subtle racially-charged theme has run through governor, senatorial, congressional, and presidential races.
Oh this is just delicious. In an interview on Friday, Sen. John McCain insisted that every candidate’s wife “should be treated with respect, and if there’s any disrespectful conduct on the part of anyone, those people should be rejected.” He was talking about Michelle Obama, who he was “the greatest respect for,” who’s been on the receiving end of harsh criticism for her abrasive ways. But his comments are more readily applied to his own marriage. You know, what with his vows to wife Cindy and all, one might think he always treats her with respect, and without any disrespectful conduct. If somebody could tell him where, exactly, on the Venn Diagram Of Respect that calling your wife a cunt falls, it would be much appreciated.
Because Rickrolling is all the rage with the kids, some pranksters had the bright idea to create the website FightTheSmears.org, a, um, companion site to FightTheSmears.com, Barack Obama’s homepage for fending off Internet falsehoods. Except the .org version was a hoax site and, rather than come to Obama’s defense, it perpetuated the rumors. (It’s since been replaced by an explanation message.)
Clever! So clever, in fact, that MSNBC got caught up in the fake version of the site. While all this gets sorts out, we’re going to long for the days of WhiteHouse.com, when it was a porn site. [video via NB]
Now that Sen. Hillary Clinton is squarely out of the running for president, it’s the perfect time for the media, desperate for new angles for Dems v. Repubs election battle that’s barely kicked into gear, to reflect on the very small, minute, seemingly impossible possibility that the press was unfair – some say sexist! – to the New York senator.
Are the charges of sexism merely sour grapes from women who feel disenfranchised now that the leader of all womynkind will not be president? Or are they legitimate charges against a group of good ‘ole boys who were not only unfair to Clinton, but not exactly welcome to the idea that they were unfair?
In quizzing a swath of media types, the Times, like a bisexual couple at a swingers party, found it goes both ways: CONTINUED »
The backlash from Fox News referring to Michelle Obama as “Obama’s Baby Mama” has begun. And, thankfully for our faith in smart rebuttals, the backlash is clever: CONTINUED »
With the Democratic primary no longer the media’s obsession, what else can we line television screens with wall-to-wall? Ah yes, the national conventions! In what can only be described as a move for bragging rights, MSNBC will have 20 hours of live programming, from 6am to 2am, for each of the four days both the Republican and Democratic conventions are taking place. Twenty hours. (PBS, meanwhile, will offer continuous live coverage, while NBC, ABC, and CBS will all offer three hours of live primetime coverage.) This means Keith Olbermann, Chris Matthews, Tim Russert, Chuck Todd, Joe Scarborough, Rachel Maddow and all the rest of ‘em better stock up on their adult diapers, because there will be no leaving the studio chair once this monster rolls into town. And for Phil Alongi, the NBC News exec producer for specials who will head all of this, it’s one more chance to juice this spike in ratings from the new crop of politically interested viewers, who will stop caring about most of this come November.
And so here’s the homepage of Fight the Smears, the amply titled aggressive defense site from Barack Obama’s campaign that aims to be a clearing house for refuting rumors, denying myths, and respinning the spin about the Illinois senator. It’s sort of like hoax-busting site Snopes.com, but, you know, with actual pressing issues. It’s also yet more evidence that Obama’s camp “gets” the Internet, and understands its power to disseminate information. So, as John McCain continues to get slammed by things as simple as YouTube searches, Obama is purposely fighting Internet rumors that claim, for example, “Barack Obama Won’t Say The Pledge of Allegiance/Won’t Put His Hand Over His Heart.” How to prove the critics wrong? YouTube, y’all.
While the press dissects the forced resignation of Barack Obama’s VP selection committee member Jim Johnson, whose receipt of $7 million in Countrywide loans (thanks to his being a friend of the lender’s co-founder Angelo Mozilo) cast him under a bit of a controversial light, Obama’s camp will be doing something else entirely: trying to quiet down the web fallout. That’s thanks to the campaign’s newly installed Internet Smear Defense Unit, or so we’d love to know it’s being called. So whenever right-y bloggers or John McCain Operatives find an opportunity to drum up falsehoods, or spin the facts against Obama, his team will move into action to counter the smear. Which will probably include issuing a press release, posting a statement on his website, and texting Arianna Huffington.
On a presidential campaign’s website, one might expect sections on the candidate’s policies and platforms, a bio and some photos, resources for the news media, and a big ‘ole link to donate. On John McCain’s website, there is also a prominent link for “Golf Gear.” The website Talking Points Memo noted this oddity last week. Even more interesting, of course, because it came after news that President Bush had given up golf as a sign of his respect for the troops. That, and the stinging accusations against Obama, propped up by Hillary Clinton, that he was an elitist. But never mind all that: McCain wanted his voters to show their support by picking up a $50 “golf pack.”
By yesterday, McCain’s homepage changed. The tab for “Decision Center” got moved around, while “General Election,” and “Obama & Iraq” were replaced by “Creating Jobs” and “Strategy.” Still holding down the fort? “Golf Gear.”
Editorial Director
