/Message

Why (The King Of Love) Is Dead - Nina Simone

Once upon this planet Earth,
Lived a man of humble birth,
Preaching love and freedom
For his fellow man.

He was dreaming of the day
Peace would come to Earth to stay,
And he spread this message
All across the land.

"Turn the other cheek," he'd plead.
"Love thy neighbor," was his creed.
Pain, humiliation, death he did not dread.
With his bible at his side,
From his foes he did not hide.
It's hard to think that this great man is dead.

Will the murders never cease?
Are they men or are they beasts?
What do they ever hope to gain?
Will my country stand or fall?
Is it too late for us all?
And did Martin Luther King just die in vain?

But he had seen the mountaintop,
And he knew he could not stop,
Always living with the threat of death ahead.
Folks you'd better stop and think,
Everybody knows we're on the brink.
What will happen, now that he is dead?

He was for equality,
For all people, you and me,
Full of love and goodwill,
Hate was not his way.

He was not a violent man,
Tell me folks if you can?
Just why, why was he shot down the other day?

But he had seen the mountaintop,
And he knew he could not stop.
Always living with the threat of death ahead.

Folks you'd better stop and think,
Cause we headed for the brink,
What will happen, now that the King of love is dead?

Ellen Miller on Washington And The Web

[via cnewmark]

[from Ellen Miller: Make Washington More Like the Web]

The Web is a haven of messy democracy. (Want to see voter engagement and healthy debate? Read any Digg comment thread.) But the ideal of transparency and participation hasn't yet infiltrated another messy democracy — the US government. That insight led Ellen Miller to cofound the Sunlight Foundation in 2006. The goal was to tap some of the Net's best-known thinkers in order to make Washington as user-friendly as a Google API.

Miller, who previously headed the Center for Responsive Politics, has enlisted the likes of Esther Dyson, Lawrence Lessig, and Craig Newmark to serve as advisers. "Washington politicians like the firewall they have erected," Miller says. "They will have to be dragged into the 21st century." The next president could do the pulling — if he adopts the Internet's values of openness. Miller shares some of her current projects along with grander ideas she hopes the next president will support.

I don't agree that the Web is democratic (it's tribal), but neither is Washington (it's an oligarchy), and it certainly is the case that it could be dramatically improved by web culture.

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I Hope That Craig Newmark Is Right

Craig Newmark make the case that Obama might actually be willing to change the business of politics once elected:

[from cnewmark: Winning -- and running -- the Presidency as a participatory democracy]

[...]

After the inauguration of President Obama, real change will be facilitated by the evolution of the grassroots network into an effort for participatory governance. This is a matter of considerable discussion, but some concrete examples include:

-- transparency: all governmental work should be disclosed in an easily accessible manner. If we all can see how the sausage is made, at least it could be made increasingly better. Naturally, there will be sensitive matters which should not be disclosed. (credit to Jeff Jarvis.)

-- customer service and accountability: the success of city customer service call centers, that is, 311 systems, should be expanded to all government operations.

-- speaking truth to power: the current Presidency illustrates the danger when the executive is isolated from the reality of his actions, that is, when kept in a bubble. The grassroots network could be used to provide an alternative means of letting the President really know what's going on.

The participatory movement and concrete efforts like these are the kind of change people talk about.

I hope so, but I wonder how it could work? We are enmeshed in a political sphere of based on national scale mass organizations -- media, political parties, congress, and so on -- and their inherent reliance on one:many communications makes it difficult to imagine how he can transition to something radically different.

What I would hope is that Obama and his cadre will at least develop networks of personal relationships with a wide variety of people outside of the traditional centralized organizations, to remain personally connected to thinkers and doers in all sectors: musicians, philosophers, reformers, journalists, artists, farmers, and community organizers. To step outside the mass scale, and ground themselves in direct relationships with everyday people. Let's all hope they do.

Nora Ephron: Gore For Vice President

I am with Nora Ephron on this one: Gore for Obama's VP. He has all the necessary characteristics:

[Nora Ephron: What About It, Al? - Politics on The Huffington Post]

You're white.

You're experienced.

You're older than I am and younger than John McCain.

You're qualified to be president, and yet I have no fear of being upstaged by you.

You were right on Iraq.

You're from the South.

You have an Oscar, an Emmy and a Nobel Prize.

And more than any politician, you're an exemplar of change because you changed yourself.

What about it, Al?

Yeah, what about it, people?

Shame On You, John Edwards: The Exploitation Of Web Culture

It must seem like a small thing to the folks at John Edwards now-mothballed campaign for the Democratic nomination, but it pains me that the staff, and John Edwards, simply dropped out of the Twitterverse without even a parting goodbye.

'His' last post from five months ago (I put 'his' in quotes, since he probably was a proxy, sock puppet, phoney-baloney, old marketing identity, anyway):

Twitter / johnedwards, originally uploaded by Stowe Boyd.

So, you opt to try to exploit the edglings by signing up to Twitter, and writing a blog, and all that newfangled web stuff, trying to mine the potential there with ersatz involvement and cheesy, inauthentic participation: cramming old one:many messaging into a conversationally rich environment.

Then, you drop out. And proof that it is totally bogus, you just stop. Bam. No 'thanks for the memories', no 'see you in the funny papers', and certainly no ongoing involvement, since after all, there really was no involvement involved.

Proof of old politics wolf in new politics sheep's clothing: they assume the ways of the new social web revolution as a means to come into contact with us, but when they lose (and maybe when they win, as well?) they drop the pretense of involvement, and go back to whatever they really believe in. Which is clearly not this new emerging whatever-the-hell-it-is on the web.

They will try to exploit web culture for their own purposes, but they aren't really engaged here.

What will Barack and Hilary do if and when their time comes, I wonder?

I haven't tracked Edwards closely since he dropped out. I had endorsed him early on, but really don't have much of a handle on him now, since among other things 'he's' not updating me via Twitter, and he's not on the op-ed pages any more. I know he hasn't endorsed a candidate -- perhaps angling for some deal with Obama and Clinton -- but no word to his former followers on Twitter.

Well, why should he: we are only 4,544 people. He's probably got more major contributors than that, who he called up and personally thanked them, etc., after giving up the race.

And it's not that I would believe that a tweet from John Edwards was authentic, really, if 'he' sent one. Something like 'Thanks for your efforts on my behalf. I am going to do XYZ now, and I hope to keep in touch.' Or something. Or something, 'John'.

So, I am not really surprised I guess, but I feel used, like having someone wipe their greasy hands on my tablecloth after I invited them to dinner in my house. Or a friend who moves away for a new career in a distant city, and then never, ever calls.

Just bad manners, at the best, and at the worst, a profound callousness and insensitivity to the mores of our teensy weensy web culture, here on the edge of everything.

I will post a link to this on Twitter, addressed to @johnedwards, but I don't believe he will read it. They've moved on, packed up the bumper stickers and pins, the banners and the posters; but we are still here, twinventing something based on true voice, and involvement, and a deepening sense of global commitment. Perhaps the pins and posters and banners are all a barrier, a sideshow, a distraction from something more important, anyway. But even if it was all shadowplay -- a closet drama -- I wanted a better ending. We deserved a better close to this chapter than that.