Radical Georgia Moderate

I don’t know if I ever plugged Grayson’s Georgia Political Digest column or not, so I’m going to knock out two birds with one stone here. First, read the aforementioned column from Grayson about the telecos that picks up where my Bellsouth column left off. She did some actual journal-ma-lism and got quotes.

Second, there’s a new columnist whose first opinion piece came out today. He calls himself the Georgia Oracle, and (according to his bio and an e-mail I exchanged with management) is an executive for a large Georgia corporation who occasionally must appear in the public eye, and therefore writes anonymously.

I’ve got what I consider to be an educated guess as to who he might be, but even if I knew who he is (management was mum), I wouldn’t be allowed to share.

There’s a new “conservative Internet broadcast network” called Hot Air run by Michelle Malkin and some friends of hers.

In the about page, Malkin mentions Al Gore’s Current TV — a bigger, better-funded project with a neat web site — and others as “liberal” competition. Sites like Current, Hot Air and even our humble little Georgia Podcast Network are interesting peeks into the future that I think raise a few interesting questions:

• Can — and should — sites like these supplant traditional broadcast media outlets? Or can — and should — they co-exist with traditional media as rich supplements that delve deeper into subjects than traditional media can?
• Is the future of news coverage going to be strictly partisan, as it already is in the UK and on Fox News? If so, will it eventually follow the Daily Show/Hunter S. Thompson-by-way-of-Faulkner model (”…that the best fiction is far more true than any kind of journalism”). Is even striving for fairness and objectivity (which is rarely, if ever, achieved) worthwhile?
• If traditional media was supplanted, how will revenue models work for the distributed model of citizen media that emerges? Can there even be full-time professional journalists? Is there even a need for them if the networks cast a wide and diverse enough net?
• Will distributors of technology to view/listen to new broadcast media become the new gatekeepers, as Michelle seems to imply in the about page when she talks about iTunes and the Daily Show?

I guess this post is a little portentous and possibly bordering on banal, as these are not new questions for people who have been following what’s been happening the past couple of years. But I wanted to accumulate some of the thoughts I’ve been having the past year or so.

h/t Buzz Brockway

Cross-posted on my Georgia Podcast Network blog

That pigfucker Ralph Reed just sent me another e-mail. Well, his campaign did, even after I exposed flaws in its webmail software that left people’s personal information exposed to predators and requested removal from its mailing list, which I was added to without my permission. It wouldn’t surprise me to learn they do that just to get people to bitch about it, with any name recognition (even negative) being better than none and all.

God, I hope people learned after the last round of buyoffs (tax refunds) that doling out checks just makes things worse in the long run (typo: ruin). Where do they plan to get the money for this, when they already can’t pay for the last round of cuts and their failed Iraq war experiment? Use that money for alternative fuel research or mass transit, for Christ’s sake.

I‘ve been trying to wrap my brain around Morton Brilliant’s resignation since I heard about it. Brilliant, who formerly managed gubernatorial candidate Cathy Cox’s campaign, is alleged to have edited Lt. Governor and Cox’s primary opponent Mark Taylor’s Wikipedia profile to mention Taylor’s son’s DUI arrest.

Why is this a scandal? Why should I be outraged that Taylor’s profile was updated with accurate information? Why is this even a discussion topic right now?

I don’t have a horse in the governor’s race right now. I probably lean a little toward Cox, but am not happy with her initial opposition to paper ballot receipts, and am therefore open-minded about Taylor. With several legislators jumping ship to the GOP and $400K cash-on-hand versus $4 million for Republicans, Democrats flat aren’t going to take the Legislature back this election, so there’s no chance I’ll vote for Perdue. If full disclosure of background information about a candidate qualifies as a scandal to the Taylor campaign, I view that as not being much different than the secrecy practiced by the current Legislature’s leadership.

Am I off base? Is there something insidious about this that I’m missing or leaving out?

I don’t know if this is my best Georgia Political Digest column, but it’s definitely my favorite. Many thanks to the lovely and talented Amber for pointing me to the historical information used in it.

I don’t have time for a full blog post, so here’s a discussion topic:

How accurate or inaccurate would you say this statement is, and why?

The Christian lobby in the United State bears a strong resemblance to the Sunni Muslims during Saddam Hussein’s regime, in that a vocal minority uses intimidation tactics to silence a majority that doesn’t share its goals.

What a cold-hearted scumbag that guy is. Here’s your quote of the day, from AP:

“I’m sure there’s absolutely nothing in my life, including the loss of life of many of my loved ones, that even comes close to the same level of pain, and the same enduring pain, [the decline of Enron] has caused.”

Plus the dickweed reporter wrote a segment about the dickweed on the witness stand blubbering about his fucking religious faith like that has any fucking bearing on the trial.

Ken Lay: All we did was sell a few hundred billion dollars worth of fake energy to Californians. Most of the proceeds went up our noses…

Juror: (thinking to him/herself) Horrible! What could he possibly say to redeem himself?

KL: I’m a strong Christian with bedrock conservative values.

J: (thinking to him/herself) Oh, wow, nevermind. Let he who has not sinned cast the first stone, right?

…of the body hitting the floor. (body = big media) To my knowledge, this is the first instance of an AJC blog directly crediting a blog as a news source, though I’ve been wrong before. That begs the question: if they’re getting their news from blogs, then what do we need them for?

I have an idea for a graphic to represent how the media consumption network is going to realign itself over the next few years, but no time to make it right now. Hopefully I’ll get time later and will update this post with it.

Sorry about the ugly error messages that are appearing on the page and the lack of comments functionality. I’ve read in a Wordpress support thread that this is a hosting issue, and have already submitted a ticket to hopefully get it resolved.

UPDATE: Total Choice was very responsive and fixed the problem within an hour or so of when I sent the ticket. Kudos to their support.