Category Archives: Progressives

On “Twittergate” and any related nonsense I have no interest in.

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Apparently, some conservatives are having a tiff with a twitter user named @wingnutwatch.  They made some convoluted youtube movie about it called "Twittergate".  For reasons I cannot really figure out, two of my tweets are in this video.  As best I can tell,my tweets merely mention words and concepts I'm known for, and try to explicitly or implicitly connect them to whatever bizarre effort—real or imagined—the video addresses.

I don't have a working relationship with @wingnutwatch under that, or any other name, and I wouldn't have such involvement in anything like the alleged schemes if I could. I don't know how much of this "plot" they speak of was real, if any, and I really don't care. I simply don't want to be associated with any kind of willful manipulation, real or imagined.

I have no interest playing any kind of political game with conservatives on Twitter or anywhere else. They, and the billionaire proxy astroturfers like AFP and Freedomworks have made politics so hateful and ugly in this country, the last thing I want to do is engage in the same kinds of gutter-level activities that got us here. When I confront conservatives, it's upfront and in their face, as it should be.

So if someone tries to suggest I am in any way involved with these efforts, please direct them here. Thanks.

Rumors With a View About David Shuster

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UPDATE1 (4/4/2010):  I have it from a pretty reliable source that David Shuster has NOT been fired (as of this writing, anyway).  And his bio has NOT been removed, as some had claimed. His "blog" may have been removed, but that could have been due to some unrelated issue.  His MSNBC bio page is still there.

 

With a few notable exceptions, I've always been a fan of David Shuster.  I like his boyish enthusiasm as he tears into the leg of any guest he knows is full of shit.  After some exchanges with him over the past few months, I can't say I'd be very surprised if he was in fact on the way out at MSNBC, but I've yet to see any hard evidence that this actually happened. 

It's mostly a lot of supposition based on this New York Observer story.

Inside the CNN Stockroom: Network Recently Shot Pilot Staring MSNBC's Shuster and NPR's Martin

Recently, according to CNN sources, the network's in-house team shot a pilot for a news show featuring David Shuster of MSNBC and Michel Martin of NPR as co-anchors.

The NY Times Brian Stelter gets on board, and adds..

“If true, this is unacceptable and David will be punished appropriately,” an MSNBC spokesman, Jeremy Gaines, said Friday afternoon"

Then Mediaite steps up to fan the gossip wires

And in the short term – he’s not anchoring at 3pmET. Shuster has already been trouble with MSNBC for his inappropriate tweeting, and hasn’t used Twitter for months. … An NBC insider tells Mediaite, “Shuster has never been a major player at MSNBC.”

Bringing up the rear, the ever faithful Wingnut Daily, Newsbusters, couldn't pass up a chance to bust General Soros for trying to buy another foot soldier for his Communist News Network (owned by one of the largest media conglomerates on the planet).

Shuster's Twitter account has been silent since January 27, when NewsBusters and other center-right blogs documented his blatant conflict of interest in covering O'Keefe's arrest. Ironically, his last Tweet cites a post from the far-left group Media Matters. Need we say more?

An uncertain period of time after the Observer story dropped, Shuster's website at MSNBC up and vanished.  Hmmm….

So there we have it. On the surface, a lot of hearsay and supposition based on an anonymous "CNN source" that reported a "pilot" that may or may not have happened; that Shuster missed his shows; that there had been prior friction between Shuster and MSNBC; and that a web page disappeared. 

But that's all we know. It's certainly a compelling sequence, but hardly conclusive. It's mostly interesting to me because it illustrates how our new blogger-centric world can play a story in incremental steps, from many bloggers, each with their own world (and industry) view.  

Perhaps David is toast, or perhaps his dog got hit by a car and someone edited his page and broke it. Nobody has made any statements on the record—or supplied any evidence—that says anything to the contrary.

My gut says it's probably true. But mostly because I'd like it to be true. Especially that part about NPR's Michel Martin going to CNN. 

In my view, she's one of the best broadcast journalists working today. If CNN wants me as a viewer again, she'd bring me over in any time slot.

Good luck, Shuster, wherever you are, and wherever you go (or not).

Our Real Enemy: Progressive Passivity

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This is the very essay I was going to try and tackle this week. These fine folks have done a superb job of writing it for me.  You must read it, and then see my note that follows:

How To Do Effective Political Activism: What Always Worked And What Never Did — by Peterson Park Blog

While young liberals and progressives were sitting in coffee shops tweeting, emailing and updating their Facebook status, embracing the tools of the “new activism,” tea baggers were disrupting town hall meetings and staging credible rallies and marches on the halls of power. While the left embraced the delusion that new media technologies have changed the rules of political and social activism, mossback conservatives and libertarians were effectively applying the same techniques of political protest that have worked and worked and worked since the dawn of history.

Now please..

Don't just read the above essay, maybe make a bookmark, and then promptly forget it. Take a few minutes and think about how many you might share it with by employing just the smallest amount of effort.

I don't just mean Retweeting it. Got email lists?  Got phone? Got a neighbor? Got a blog?

The social side of social media makes it so easy to organize voices, but it's getting those voices into the streets where they are really heard by politicians, employers and the media that will really make the difference. And that's the hard part. But social media makes it so much easier than it ever was before.  It provides the multiple megaphones with which we can drive the herd, and the herd can provide the warm bodies in the streets. But that herd must still go there when called upon. And the only way it will, is when it's been educated, enraged, engaged and excited. That's where YOU come in.

You personally may not be able to take to the streets, but you can compensate for that by making so much noise that it helps fire up so many others who might.

Wingnuts get active, and it's why they win. Even when they don't hit the streets, they keep their conversations and narratives alive with constant regurgitation and redistribution, which reinforces all their memes and messages.  It sinks in. The left–and all of us on it–must learn to do this too.

It's not that we don't all want to do it. It's that we simply DON'T do it.  We simply have to find a way to change that.  And very, very quickly. The only way we can start… is to just start.

Look at what @MLsif just do with #demandQuestionTime. That entire effort, as described here,  http://bit.ly/9uTPTU took just a few days. Yes, it's only an online effort at present, but he could very easily issue a call to action which might translate into action offline. It's just one small example of the powerful weapons we have. We just need to start using them. 

SO DON'T JUST NOD YOUR HEAD. 

  • Do your part. (Any part is better than no part at all).
  • Tell someone. Educate, Enrage, Engage and Excite someone
  • Make our narrative happen (and stop echoing theirs so often).
     
  • PROGRESSIVE PASSIVITY is what allowed the right to seize this county.
  • Change that, change our world.