Lunatics
The puppy's name is Luna. She is a brown Portuguese Water Dog. This morning she started crying at about 5:30. Finally Lisa went to get her. This will make her cry longer tomorrow. Eventually Lisa will get so tired that she lets the puppy cry, and the puppy will stop. The same thing happened with our children.
Building a Better Campaign Weblog
Now that there are three campaign weblogs underway here in Guilford County, it seems reasonable to ask what a campaign weblog should be doing. Props to Tara Grubb, Jim Capo, and Jennifer Schulz Medlock for blazing the trail. Are they headed in the right direction?
Unlike most other weblogs, a campaign weblog has a specific goal--to improve the chances of the candidate on election day. Weblogs are great for personal expression and may represent a change from politics as usual, but if your ruminations aren't helping you get votes and/or money then you are wasting your time and that of your supporters. Is there a difference between a campaign weblog and the personal weblog of a candidate? In theory, yes. In practice, no.
That doesn't mean a campaign weblog needs to ask for money in every post (although donations should be made easy from the site), or rehash other campaign literature. But I think it does demand some focus on the campaign. That seems to be Medlock's approach, even when she's promoting goofy stuff like the Libertarian babes calendar. Grubb tends toward deeeep thoughts instead of campaign news and views on issues, which may endear her to some voters but causes my attention to wander.
It's exciting to have candidates using weblogs because weblogs are powerful tools. But tools have to be used carefully to be effective. The art of campaign weblogging is only a month or so old, and the genre still has far to go.
Cracked Rear View
Doc Searls makes it sound like Greensboro was Birmingham. It was not. Our history on race is of course that of the South, but more complex than that, too. The Greensboro Sit-ins were a good moment. The Quakers who founded Doc's alma mater ran the Underground Railroad through here. And I'm not sure what any of this has to do with Guilford County being an unlikely place to become the white hot center of the campaign weblog world. It is, though--unlikely, and the white hot center.
5:38:39 PM 
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