BuzzMachine... by Jeff Jarvis

January 29, 2004

The terrorists have won if...
: Howard Dean just said in tonight's debate that "the terrorists have already won" because we have the Patriot Act.
What a horrid attitude from someone who would be President.
The terrorists have won?
Those words should never pass your pursed lips!

LINK | Comments (108)

Dear Joe letter
: David Weinberger, an adviser to the Dean campaign, bids farewell to Joe Trippi. Dave is characteristically candid:

I am not inside the Dean organization enough to know what Trippi did wrong. I hear the TV ads sucked, and I'm more than a little disturbed that the campaign managed to spend all of the money it raised, but I also saw some things that Trippi did right. Real right.

LINK | Comments (3)

Slow
: Apologies for the site being slow today. I check Insty, who comes out of the same factory of froth, and he's slow, too. So I'm guessing it's just the worm terrorists causing traffic hell.

LINK | Comments (6)

Seeding
: James Lileks writes about the lessons and prophecy of Dean and blogging and The Scream in his Newhouse column and he confesses to taking part in the Scream Meme with his remix:

I assembled one of the more popular songs. Within 36 hours it had been mentioned by The Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal; it was played on NPR, Hugh Hewitt's nationally syndicated radio shows in a hundred markets -- and even made MTV.com. I didn't mail the song to newspapers, or call up radio stations and offer payola. I simply seeded the URL in the comments section of a well-read liberal weblog and a well-read conservative one. And it was off. This is how information works today: You can go from the bottom to the top with no friction whatsoever.

Hmmm. I'm honored that he seeded the address on this blog. I wonder whether this was one of them and if so, was it the liberal or the conservative one, I never can tell.
Anyway, that ego break aside, James goes on to judge the significance of this:

Meaning? Well, weblogs make it tough for candidates to sell falsehoods, because there will always be a hundred dozen foes ready to feast on the lie.... Forevermore now, there'll be someone watching who can tease an offhand remark however he pleases, post it to the Web and join the roiling conversation....
It's not the e-mail. It's not the blog. It's not the Web sites. It's the computers, and the people behind them, connected like never before. They won't control the buzz this year. But in 2008? Count on it.

LINK | Comments (4)

Two down...
: BBC honcho Greg Dyke resigns. This is the same sanctimonious prig who lectured U.S. media: "For any news organisation to act as a cheerleader for government is to undermine your credibility. They should be... balancing their coverage, not banging the drum for one side or the other." Mr. Dykes, for any news organization to act as a cheerleader against government is to undermind your credibility, wouldn't you say?
Next: Bring us the head of Andrew Gilligan.

: UPDATE: The BBC apologizes to Blair.

LINK | Comments (48)

Iraq to Howard Dean: Explain yourself
: Iraqi blogger Ali writes an amazing open letter to Howard Dean following the candidate's assertion that Iraqis' "living standard is a whole lot worse now than it was before."
Ali calls that "too irritating and insulting" and says, "I’d like to (debate with) Mr. Dean and his supporters on few points."

I’m not going to comment about the rightness of the statement with more than saying that only a (blind) man would believe it and only a man blinded by his ambitions would dare to say it, but when you say such words, don’t you mean in other words that the sacrifices made by the American soldiers are all in vain?...
You are saying that, either they are stupid enough to sacrifice their lives for the sake of GWB political future, or they are evil people who love fighting and killing and they are doing this only for money, in other words they’re no more than mercenaries. Saying that you only disagree with the way this issue is handled will also not change the fact that you are only harming your men and women on the battlefield.
By statements like these you deny any honourable motives for the great job your people are doing here. How in your opinion will this affect the morality of your soldiers? Feeling that their people back at home don’t support them and that they’re abandoned to fight alone in the battlefield.
And all of this for what? For staying in the white house for 4 or 8 years? Is it worth it?
And this is not directed only to Mr. Dean, it’s for all the Americans who support such allegations without being aware of their consequences. What’s it that you fight so hard for, showing your soldiers as s occupiers and murderers, the soldiers who I had the honour of meeting many, and when talking to some of them, I didn’t see anything other than gentleness, honesty and good will and faith in what they’re doing...
Please consider this for a moment, does winning the elections and getting rid of GWB and the republicans worth the damage you’re inflicting on your men and women’s morality?
My heart goes with those brave people and the widows, orphans and mothers of the American soldiers who died while doing this great service for their country, ours and humanity.

No true American could have said it better.

: Meanwhile, at Healing Iraq, fellow Iraqi blogger Zeyad writes a truly remarkable essay about his country and his weblog. Go read it all.
On his land:

If you were here now you would almost feel Iraq bleeding from its wounds. You would almost see the palm trees weeping and shedding tears. You would almost hear the two rivers murmuring and moaning in pain. You would almost hear Baghdad wailing and crying for help. You would smell the tension in the air which even rain is unable to wash away. You would sense the years of deprivation and negligence in its soil. Who is trying to steal the smile from its weary face? Who is going to heal Iraq? Who is going to help it stand on its feet? And is this going to be the end to all its sorrows or is there more?

On why he writes his weblog:

I chose this title for the weblog three months back because I had realized that Iraq and Iraqis needed to heal more than anything else. I was naive and conceited enough to believe that posting entries into this page would actually achieve something. When I started I had huge determination to correct all the misconceptions, sterotypes, and preconceived notions the world held of us as a people. I wanted to bring out the good news from a torn and beaten country that the rest of the world had unanimously regarded as a source of only trouble and bad news. I wanted to convey the daily life, dreams, fears, hopes, and aspirations of Iraqis. I wanted the rest of the world to see us as more than mere news items. I wanted to put a face to my country, a country that millions of people couldn't point out on a world map. I had great hopes that someone high up in the CPA hierarchy would listen and take notes. I had hopes that coalition soldiers patrolling our streets would read and realize that there was no need to be scared of us. I had hopes that other Iraqis (both inside and outside) would look and take heart in my words. I had hopes that I would encourage other Iraqis to write and share whatever they had to share. I had hopes that the whole world would stop crying over spilt milk and move on. I had hopes that we would just all understand and accept each other and stop pointing fingers. Maybe I was too optimistic or maybe I was just trying to justify my own views of the situation.

No, Zeyad, you weren't too optimistic. You are doing just what you set out to do.

: And over at Hammorabi, Sam the blogger is doing an amazing job giving us details on the reports of Iraq using oil to bribe and cajole the anti-war, anti-American forces.
This story is so amazing, I wonder how it could be true. But it could.

: Ays tells us about "a bomb in our neighborhood.... the people were sad, others were cursing the coward vandals and terrorists."

: See what one simple tool and the courage and effort of just a few men can do.

LINK | Comments (53)

Blogger du jour
: Nick Denton and I agreed tonight that Mickey Kaus is on a hot streak.

LINK | Comments (1)

Farewell, Trippi
: Here's another theory about what happened to Dean: Maybe the campaign became the star instead of the candidate. (And when people finally did see the candidate, they didn't like what they saw.)
It's fascinating reading the comments on Joe Trippi's farewell post on the Howard Dean blog as he is kicked off the bus and replaced by a Gore Beltway boy.
Most of the comments are grateful tributes to Trippi from the community he brought together online. A few are snarky. A few try, gamely, to rally the troops for under the campaign's new leadership. But all in all, it feels as if the campaign is sitting shiva for Trippi -- or for the campaign itself. If I listen real hard, I think I can hear in the background:

Those were the days, my friend
We thought they'd never end
We'd sing and dance forever and a day
We'd live the life we choose
We'd fight and never lose
For we were young and sure to have our way
La la la la la la

Now when can you remember a campaign manager drawing this kind of cult of personality? The only personality that matters in a campaign, the only star, must be the candidate. But here Trippi became a star.
Or more accurately, the campaign and the campaigners became the star. It's about them, not about the candidate. A few weeks ago, we would have said that as wondrous praise of the Dean online miracle: It's about the people, not the politician.
But that turns out to be a big political mistake, for the voters don't want to elect a bunch of bloggers with backpacks. They want to elect a leader.

LINK | Comments (10)

No Jayson Blair
: Emily Bell writes in the Guardian that Andrew Gilligan is no Jayson Blair.
Right. He's worse.
Blair was merely a psychotic liar who didn't bother trying to act like a journalist in the end and who only wanted to cheat to keep his job.
Gilligan is worse because he does try to act like a real journalist, even as he single-handedly devalues the credibility of the craft.
Gilligan is worse because he operates on an agenda -- anti-war, anti-American, anti-Blair.
Gilligan is worse because he has defenders who share his agenda -- BBC executives, numbnutty journalist unions -- and who will fall with Gilligan and risk bringing down the BBC and, again, the credibility of jouranlism with them.
Gilligan is worse because he does not have even the same decency as a psychotic liar; he does not have the decency to save his network and his profession; he does not have the decency to quit now.
Gilligan is a bad reporter. He is poison to journalism. The last act of his bosses should be to sack him before they then quit.

LINK | Comments (5)