embracing apparent contradictions, diversity and change
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DRAFT! Work in progress
Originally written August 2
Most recently revised September 22
Originally written as a response to Chris Bowers OpenLeft post The Myth Of The Non-Diverse Netroots; please see the quantitative debate there. Â There are a lot of additional observations and references in my Gender, race, age, and power in online discussions, chapter n
It’s been a wild few days with the Get FISA Right activism campaign. Our bare-bones media room is the best place to get a quick summary of all the stuff going on; here are a few hightlights: over 22,000 members in the myBO group, and 1700+ on Facebook; we delivered our response and our asks to Obama’s Senate office today (and of course have emailed them as well); and much much more.
We’ve gotten tons of coverage, including an article featuring me by Sarah Lai Stirland on Wired’s Threat Level blog, a call to action and video by Daniel Ellsberg on antiwar.com, and an article by Ari Melber in The Nation that puts this in the context of net movements in general. Will it be enough?
With the vote tomorrow, it’s time for a final push. Announcing: a night of Facebook action
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Mail to the Senator Obama – Please, No Telecom Immunity and Get FISA Right mailing list. See the wiki for more context. 2200 members and growing…
Update, July 1: 8600+ members on myBO — moving into #2 in the top 10 groups. Coverage in The Nation, Wired, Slashdot, The New Right, and zillions of other pages. See the wiki for more! The Facebook group has over 300 people so far …
what’s an activism campaign these days without a Facebook presence?
so I set up the “Senator Obama – Please, No Telecom Immunity and Get FISA Right” Facebook group to make it easier to do outreach there. Many of us have a lot more FB friends than myBO friends, and with 20 invites/day it’s great for viral spread. In fact there are already 17 people there. A lot of people (including me) complain about Facebook groups’ lack of functionality, but they can easily get hundreds of thousands of members fairly quickly.
I’m at a tutorial on Tuesday discussing “elections 2.0” at the Computers, Freedom, and Privacy conference, and one of the things I want to cover is Web 2.0 technologies’ positive role in countering deceptive campaign practices. I’m planning on using some examples from the Obama activism work I’ve been doing on Facebook, as well as some other sites I’ve tracked:
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The intro of the No honorary doctorate for anti-feminist Phyllis Schlafly Facebook group:
Wash. U. will honor anti-feminist Phyllis Schlafly at commencement. WHAT?
This is the woman who lives the hypocrisy of having a career that takes her around the country lecturing “family values” groups on how women should stay home.
This is the woman who said of husband-wife rape, “By getting married, the woman has consented to sex, and I don’t think you can call it rape [sic].”
This is the woman who described sex education classes as “in-home sales parties for abortions.” Do her views fit with the future the men and women of Wash U’s graduating class see for themselves and their peers? Probably not. Then why honor her with them? Wouldn’t having someone like her in the midst of Wash U’s female graduates be incongruous at best, offensive at worst?
Indeed.
When Jessica posted about this on Feministing this morning, she said there were 1100 people in the group; when I joined at 11 a.m., it was up to 1350, and as of 11:15 it’s over 1400. It’s already being discussed broadly (a Google Blog search on phyllis schlafly degree currently has 311 hits); a friend forwarded it to me from the Feminist Daily News Wire, saying “this’ll set the blogosphere on fire,” and I suspect she’s right.
The organizers have clearly thought ahead, labeling this group as a discussion group and setting up another, smaller, action-oriented group. They’ve also got contact information for University officials and the press, and some excellent tips such as (“Wash U Alums: Make it very clear to the administration that not only do you disapprove of their choice of honoree, this choice will lose them your contributions. Money talks.”) They’ve got a very clean website with links to key information, and an email list.
Looks like Wash U’s in for some excitement!
jon
Seems like it’s kind of a “sucks to be you” situation for the roughly 2 million grey squirrels in the UK — and the 150,000 red squirrels in the Scotland can’t be too happy about it either. Steven Morris has the story in the Guardian
Having usurped the red squirrel in most parts, grey squirrels are now getting a taste of their own medicine from stronger, more aggressive black upstarts….
Geneticist Helen McRobie, who also took part in the study, said reasons for the success of the black squirrel included its more aggressive behaviour.
I for one welcome our new black squirrel overlords. (Was that obsequious enough?)
The Obama campaign’s response to Geraldine Ferraro’s attack perfectly illustrates several things I talked about last week in The day after. Campaign strategist David Axelrod emphasizes the pattern:
Axelrod said Ferraro’s comments were part of a “pattern” of negative attacks aimed at Obama. He pointed to Clinton’s former New Hampshire co-chairman Bill Shaheen, who questioned whether Obama ever sold drugs; supporter Rober Johnsen, the founder of Black Entertainment Television, who raised the specter of Obama’s past drug use; and Clinton’s own “unwillingness” to “definitively” shoot down rumors that Obama was Muslim in an interview this month.
[All of these, and others, are documented on the Clinton attacks Obama wiki. See, I knew it would be important :-)]
Susan Rice brings up a variant of the “reject and denounce” standard:
original essay March 5, 2008
see the comments for updates
Back on February 7, Catherine Dodge and Alex Tanzi of Bloomberg News broke a story on an Obama campaign spreadsheet, “inadvertently” released by the campaign, with their projections (or maybe predictions) of delegates. Ben Smith on Politico has a nice screenshot, and even better a link to the version of the spreadsheet that Catherine and Alex shared. Barack Obama said he hadn’t seen it; his press secretary Bill Burton had a great quote: “This ‘newsy’ spreadsheet is basically an electronic piece of scratch paper with a dozen scenarios blown a little out of proportion.”
As far as I can tell, the press, media, and pundits covering the election responded with a collective “oh okay” and went back to talking about more important topics like their own prognostications, their importance to the electoral process, their responsibilities, their inadequacies, and the threats to mainstream media from blogs and social networks.
From both a strategy and a narrative perspective, this is fascinating on several levels. So building off my past “narrative as strategy” experience with Ad Astra, I’m going to wrap up my month of being a full-time political activist and blogger with some thoughts on these subjects.
Impressively, the Obama campaign’s projections in early February for delegates from yesterday’s voting likely to be within 1% of the actual results, which I bet is a lot more accurate than any professional polling firm or pundit was at the time. Until yesterday, though, they were off-target in most of the other primaries and caucuses. Interestingly, they were always off in the same direction: consistently underestimating their actual performance.
Saying it another way, the Obama campaign’s results between Super Tuesday (when they first said they thought they would have a pledged delegate lead at the convention) and yesterday consistently exceeded their own projections: +3 (three more delegates than expected) delegates in Louisiana, +4 in Maine, +6 in Hawaii and Wisconsin, and so on — including the jackpots of +14 in Virginia and + 15 in Maryland. If I did the math right, it’s +60 overall, for a swing of 120 pledged delegates from Clinton to Obama. From a strategy perspective, this is substantially exceeding expectations, and making success far more likely.
Yesterday, with the aid of a timely leak from the conservative Canadian government that has already provoked questions in their Parliament; equally-timely help from Limbaugh along with an appearance on right-wing talk radio by Bill Clinton, a proposed lynching by O’Reilly, and a Drudge misinformation campaign that manages to be simultaneously racist, anti-Somali, anti-African, anti-Muslim, anti-Democratic party, and anti-Obama; an attack on Obama’s qualifications by McCain coincidentally enough on the same issue as the Clinton campaign’s Rovian “fear over hope” 3 a.m./red phone campaign video (certain to be recycled by Republicans in November no matter who is nominated); some brilliant political theater “live from New York”; and a press and media justifiably ashamed of its sexism and misogyny playing lapdog for a few days while engaging in narcissistic self-analysis about how horrible they are for not doing a better job of covering newsworthy events …
With aid of what they describe as “the kitchen sink,” the Clinton campaign came out tactically slightly ahead: somewhere between four and ten delegates out of the 370 in play. Kudos to them. Even so, yesterday’s results are almost exactly what the Obama campaign had projected a month ago, a likely +3 or +4 over projections in Texas balanced by a likely -2 or -3 in Ohio. The Obama campaign continues to have a huge cushion: 120 pledged delegates over their early-February projections. With less time for a Clinton turnaround, Obama’s strategic advantage has grown … guess they were prepared for the kitchen sink, or something like it.
The common wisdom on the day after the March 4 voting seems to be along the lines of “the kitchen sink worked!”, portraying the Clinton campaign’s comeback in having (somewhat) blunting the Obama campaign’s momentum — Chris Bowers goes so far as to say “Obama has to win Pennsylvania!“. Looking through a strategy lens, that’s not how I see it at all.
What I see is the Clinton campaign having thrown everything they had into a last-ditch effort, barely managing to get a small tactical victory out of it while their overall situation worsens dramatically. In the process, they repeated their disastrous strategic mistakes from South Carolina of going negative and aligning with racists:
As for the press and media, well, props to Saturday Night Live (Al Franken for Senate!); well done indeed, and this is going to keep the spotlight trained the coverage of all the candidates. Has the press really been harder on Hillary? Or, have they been ignoring what appear to be Clinton’s repeated exaggerations of her “experience” and (as Obama put on the table today) the more general issue of judgment and fitness for commander in chief? Will attention to the sexism in the mainstream media’s coverage continue and be followed by attention to the racism and anti-Muslim biases? Will Hillary’s attempt to distance herself from Bill’s NAFTA policy be followed by scrutiny on this and other issues (Iraq sanctions, welfare “reform”, warrantless searches, HIPPA, etc.) to see what she advocated at the time — and what, if anything, she did to persuade the administration of her views? We shall see; I think at least some of these cards the Clinton campaign will played for short-term tactical advantage that will come back to bit them.
Speaking of which: are they truly blind to the huge costs (to their claims of “electability” and to the Democratic party) of focusing attention on whether or not Bill Clinton is there in bed with her when the phone rings at 3 a.m.? He’s a huge drag on her popularity, and a reminder of the past in a time when she’s trying to embrace the rhetoric of change. And I’m as tired of hearing about Monica as everybody else, but it’s folly to ignore the persistent stories that Bill’s partying on the campaign trail this year: whether or not it’s true, the Coulters, Roves, Drudges, Limbaughs, and other “fair and balanced” right-wingers will make hay with this video (and at some level, who can blame them), and so will a million comedians of all political stripes trying to outdo SNL. Where’s the judgment in handing a loaded weapon to opponents who will enjoy profit from and enjoy using it against you, and are very good at what they do? For that matter, since these names are all familiar ones, where’s the learning from all this “experience”?
From a strategy perspective, the Clinton campaign in desperation threw everything they could into March 4. (You can only align with Drudge, Limbaugh, O’Reilly and McCain so many times before voters and superdelegates start to ask whether this is good for the party — and there aren’t a lot of other friendly foreign governments they can call on these days.) At the cost of substantially damaging their campaign as well as their individual reputations, they managed to claw their way to an inconsequential and Pyrrhic “victory”. Mathematically, they’re now very close to elimination. Not a good result for the Clintons at all.
And in terms of the narrative, go back to the spreadsheet. The projections going forward leave plenty of room for overperforming in some states (such as Mississippi, North Carolina, Oregon, Montana) — and the projections already factor in potential losses in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Kentucky, and Puerto Rico, so (as we strategists like to say) “the downside is capped.†The likely do-over primary in Florida and caucuses in Michigan (not included in the spreadsheet) offer Clinton a chance to pick up a handful more delegates, but nowhere near enough to outweigh the 120-vote cushion so far. When the convention comes around, Obama is going to have a substantial lead with pledged delegates; superdelegates who decide to reflect the will of the voters will follow that. Superdelegates who instead base their vote on electability (see above), party unity, or future party growth (do they really want to alienate the 30-and-under generation to pick the candidate who’s favored by the same 65-and-up crowd as McCain?) will come on board as well.
So, while it’s not over and anything can happen, once all the hard work is done and the votes are counted, I predict that March 4 will be seen as the day that the voters in Texas, Ohio, Rhode Island, and Vermont — and the grassroots volunteers for Obama all around the country and the world — virtually assured Barack Obama’s nomination as Democratic party’s candidate for President of the United States of America.
Note: this thread summarizes what others are thinking, and my reactions. My opinion on the potential acquisition is here — and along with many others’, on MiniMSFT.
Andy Borowitz has the biggest news: Obama to buy Yahoo! Other than that …
Microsoft has been fined a record €899 million ($1.4 billion) for defying the EU’s sanctions, which brings the total over the last few years to €1.68 billion ($2.5 billion). This is for past actions; Neelie Kroes, the Competition Commissioner, after noting that Microsoft was the first company that had ever defied the sanctions, then goes on to add that she hopes “that today’s decision closes a dark chapter in Microsoft’s record of non-compliance with the Commission’s March 2004 decision,” she added. Microsoft’s response is basically “we hope so too”, and affirming that as of October 2007 they believe they were in compliance.
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The discussion board on the Barack Obama discussion page is now *gone* — not just unlinked, vanished. If you follow a link to it, it takes you to your home page instead. Sigh. Looks like they’re choosing fear over hope. Any bookmarks or links won’t work. I’m sure it’s around on backup somewhere, so hopefully things aren’t permanently lost and we can get Facebook to restore it.
It’s not clear whether this was done by Chris Hughes, who’s believed to be the admin of the Barack Obama page (as well as a Facebook founder who according to Wikipedia now “primarily acts as coordinator of online organizing within the Barack Obama presidential campaign on My.BarackObama.com“), or by Facebook. Other Barack Obama discussion boards remain up, although some are undergoing troll attacks.
Facebook: censoring political speech has the backstory.
Sometimes I described the Ad Astra (Analysis and Development of Awesome STRAtegies) work at Microsoft as a sitcom on network TV — most explicitly when we had a “wrap party” at the May Mashup. In this worldview, the Ad Astra narrative is something along the lines of …
Building on the small audience success of Pogo, and the cult fave Project Fabulous, Ad Astra “starring Jon Pincus” started as a late-season* miniseries produced by McKinsey on the butterfly network, and got picked up by the post-merger entity OSMG for the summer and next year. Unfortunately the showrunner who had put the deal together left; and the cancelling of the ensemble-cast Google Compete Executive Workgroup supporting series meant that the solid lead-in we had expected didn’t materialize. So despite steadily-increasing ratings (helped by my role as a recurring guest character on the popular but stuck-in-a-rut Litebulb), unique and valuable demographics, fabulous guest stars like John Sweeney and Kathy Cramer, and great reviews, the network announced in January that it would not be renewing Ad Astra for the next season.
Hmm, well, potentially a reality TV show, or a soap opera, would be a slightly better analogy than a sitcom. You get the idea though. Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter/Tune in Tomorrow meets a collaborative version of The Apprentice.
The off-the-charts January Mashup and “Gary Flake, Live at Sammamish” introduced the second half of the season — as well as some new characters — and on-site Mashup specials at the MVP Summit and MiX built a lot of energy. The attempted spinoff Project Venice didn’t get off the ground; on a more positive note, Mashups are big in in overseas market and several Ad Astrans got roles in IdeAgency (expected to be this year’s blockbuster) and other shows.
There was a serious opportunity underlying this analogy. The work Microsoft does and the scale it operates at is a lot more interesting than the scenarios for The Apprentice or most imaginable clones — and the stakes are a lot higher. The people involved are more interesting, generally far more appealing, and much much much more diverse. The artifacts they produce and many of thee challenges they face are a lot more relevant to real people’s lives. So once Ad Astra was at scale it could become possible to produce a network-quality TV series essentially by telling our stories, arranging the non-confidential narrative aspects of our work in interesting narrative arcs. Sure, some post-production would be needed; still, it certainly seems likely to be hugely less expensive the typical cost to produce a network series.
This same kind of cost advantage may well transfer to other kinds of video: direct-to-web, direct to DVD (where lots of other goodies can be included — “see the PowerPoint presentation they were working on!” and hints for effective PPTing), and perhaps even reused in the newly-emerging category of corporate role-playing games. And once you start thinking like this, there are other options as well, especially for Microsoft: a web-based series; content for Microsoft.com [for recruiting and highlighting Microsoft’s diversity] Technet, Channel 8/9/23, on10, MSN, internal use for TCN as a companion to “behind the code”; etc. etc.
What makes this so interesting is that if there are ways to monetize this cost advantage, it potentially means an entertaining, participative, appealing, diverse grassroots organization can be largely self-funding.
Oh well; it didn’t happen with Ad Astra … maybe next time.
Nobody bit when I pitched Ad Astra, so it’s now “on hiatus”. Of course in this world everybody knows that “on hiatus” is code for “looking opportunties to bring the brand back”**. So we did a few summer specials that came off great: “hey kids, let’s put on a show” (high concept: “oh no! the interns are here for the summer … and nobody scheduled a Mashup! can Channel 8, Windows Diversity, the MSR Intern program, and Popfly help the wacky Ad Astra crew save the day?”), the collaborative Harry Potter and the Future of ThinkWeeks.
We also did intriguing ultra-low-budget experiments with community-access media and political theater on the wiki, our blog, Litebulb, and Mini, with the expected extremely mixed reviews. On the way out, I made several cameos at the company meeting, was a “with special appearance by” in IdeAgency’s star-studded launch episode, and had a small part in their “girl on top/soul in the machine”, shot live on the floor in 34.
So it’s a golden opportunity for that classic TV holiday special. You know, the one where production costs are virtually zero because it’s mostly reused clips and stuff shot on one big party set, and various people show up and say hi and we get to hear about what they’re doing now — and their favorite moments from the last year. “A chance to say hi to old friends — and maybe make some new ones????” A few serious moments mixed in, and perhaps some manufactured tension (usually hinging on travel schedules or inadvertant misunderstandings), but basically happy and festive. And low production costs, did I mention that? I remember Queer Eye doing a particularly good one of these; it’s a high bar, but why not shoot for the stars?
An advantage of doing it on the web is that we don’t have to come up with ridiculous plot twists for why everybody’s in town. Oh yeah, and also it can be participative.
So for those of you who were part of Ad Astra — or were in its prequel Project Fabulous and sister series Pogo, or are friends and family, or were fans who never got a chance to get involved — if you get a few moments this holiday season …
Welcome to “A very special Ad Astra holiday!” Drop in, say hi, have some chocolate, eggnog and/or champagne, let us know what you’re up to … and maybe share a few of your favorite non-confidential moments from the Ad Astra experience!
No urgency here; I’ll leave this thread open at least through Epiphany***. Hopefully between now and then most people will have at least one moment when they either (a) need escape from doing technical support (b) want to demonstrate to a relative how easy it is to use Firefox/IE/Camino/the browser on somebody’s new phone or (c) are curious what other Ad Astrans are up to these days. Or all of the above, of course. So, if and when you get a chance, please get involved!
(no, i don’t know what these blank boxes are doing here. looks like a bug. sorry ’bout that.)
And sometimes the cliches, perhaps slightly updated, really are the best wording. So, both in the time-honored tradition of holiday specials, and because it’s what I really mean, I’d like to wish everybody reading this a happy holiday season (now or whenever you choose to celebrate it), and to the extent they apply:
spiffy Saturnalia,
merry Christmas,
happy Hanukkah/chappy Chanukah,
kreative Kwanzaa,
psychadelic solstice,
and/or a happy new year
jon
* because many groups are in budget paralysis from May to August, Microsoft’s FY somewhat mirrors network TV seasons
** just like how in the music biz “broken up” is frequently synomyous with “available soon for a reunion tour”
*** not to be confused with the startup e-piphany.
 Originally posted December 20, 2007
