Everybody has their breaking point and apparently my breaking point has not yet been reached. I know this because I keep watching other bloggers collapse in a heap of their own former credibility. The rubbernecking is clogging the tubes.
This campaign has, by my count, wiped out or seriously diminished the trustworthiness (or, in some cases, the talent) of most of the established blogs that existed prior to its inception. A few people have apparently lost their sanity.
The latest test is the revelation that Women’s Voices Women’s Vote (WVWV) is now under criminal investigation in North Carolina for making potentially felonious robocalls. This has already set off a firestorm…some out there for all to see, some hidden in the bowels of the secret blogosphere. The problem? This baby has the potential to unravel and make all kinds of people look like paid shills…even some that aren’t paid shills, or were not aware they were paid shills. People are asking who is funded by whom, who knew what, who contributed to this campaign, etc. John Podesta’s money is everywhere.
There is one hysterical faction that stands to get dinged up in this (probably wrongly) that is defending WVWV with everything they’ve got, even though they so far have got very little. And there’s another faction that wants to be respectful of their friends and wait to see what facts might come out. (I’m in this faction). A third faction doesn’t want to hear anything and is full-bore convinced that the Clinton campaign used WVWV as a proxy for voter suppression. When this is all done, no one is going to walk away uninjured.
Non-disclosed funding and relationships are going to come out and people (mostly totally innocent) are going to have a hard time getting people to trust them. People will be shitty to each other, feelings will get hurt. It’s a big mess.
I just want to remind you of a couple of things. Just because someone is only one or two degrees of separation from John Podesta doesn’t mean that there is anything wrong with them. The people that work at WVWV are good, idealistic people. Even board members at WVWV that have associations with the Clintons are good people.
But they are all lawyering up now because their organization committed a felony in North Carolina. And all the strings are going to get unraveled. People will insist that nothing untoward happened. Others will insist that is ludicrous (and it is) and it will do nothing but tear us all apart more and make us crazy.
The Panda wants this campaign over. The Panda is wise.
Here’s the NC Attorney General’s press release (.pdf).
Sorry, Boo, you’ve lost me. Who’s the Panda?
See here.
thanks
It’s like many things are going crazy all at once; the military situation in Iraq, a potential war with Iran, the banking system, the economy, the environment, the primary campaign. If we could just step back from any or all of these issues to get some breathing room, then, perhaps, the better sides of our nature could take over and we could make progress toward a solution of one or more of these problems.
Such a dangerous but fascinating time to live. God, but I love life so.
Special places are really special.
It’s a Rovian Plot!
I’d have a lot more faith in these denials of duplicity if the same thing hadn’t happened before in numerous states each time with the same deceptive information and failure to identify the caller’s organization and when called on it similar apologies were made for the “innocent mistakes” WVWV made:
So why weren’t these accidental omissions changed by the time of the NC primary rolled around nearly 3 months later? Why were similar mistakes made and a very similar apology and statement issued by WVWV after their robo-calls in NC were exposed? Oh and problems had been reported in numerous states, not just Virginia before these NC calls came to light. Facing South has the list.
That all of this is the result merely of massive incompetence defies belief, in my humble opinion. Each time Sarah Johnson is trotted out to make “apologies” or to express confusion that the laws in each state haven’t been observed, and to assert claims about all the good work the organization is doing. I’m sorry, but this doesn’t pass the smell test for me.
the folks at Facing South agree with you…
Since I still have to wear the tshirt from this administration which proclaims innocent dereliction on an hourly basis I’m not so inclined to want to add this kind of behavior to the next adminstration’s. After reading the NYT perhaps they should have targeted the ex-Generals, they sound pretty gullible.
“The people that work at WVWV are good, idealistic people. Even board members at WVWV that have associations with the Clintons are good people.”
Well, Booman, you may know this, but I don’t. So, in the spirit of waiting until we have a more complete picture and fuller information, I’m a skeptic. I currently serve on two boards right now. I cannot imagine either of my organizations doing something like this without board approval. And as mentioned above and in other blogs, this isn’t a first time, either.
Those were my thoughts on it. How could Podesta, et al, not have known? And if this organization is out to register single women, why are the robocalls being placed to black voters, seemingly regardless of gender?
I’ll withhold judgment, but it doesn’t seem to add up, honestly.
There you go, playing the race card again. Are you against registering women to vote? (I am channeling TL commenters)
They’re much meaner than that Bob.
see my post early evening. ex board member is none other than, MW
In this cycle, on anything remotely tied to Clinton and friends, I’ll adopt the French system of justice: Guilty ’til proven innocence.
Interesting that WHENEVER the ClintonS or their surrogates are involved there is ALWAYS Drama and SHITSTORMS…and that is a FACT!
Ironically, I am in the middle of all of this and without even trying. People are using a post I wrote back in 2007 to prove that there is indeed a felony involved in these call.
Here’s the post in question :
http://culturekitchen.com/liza/blog/barack_obama_youre_on_notice
All I have to say is .. WTF!?!?!
I don’t get it.
Sorry …c ame back from errands. People at DailyKos have been hitting that particular post as proof the group has been doing racial profiling for a while. I can’t honestly say if it proves something, but whatevs …
You know, it’s really hard to care or defend those hypocritical shrilljobs when they are defending WVWV hard, yet, out of that same mouth, they’re telling that Obama is bad because of his associations, or even worse that all Obama supporters are hateful and racist because we voted for the guy. The guilt by association thing goes both ways.
What also goes both ways is the tie to a felonious action. Those people spend an inordinate amount of time trying to tie Obama to Rezko, based on nothing more than their unwillingness to face facts, yet this WVWV action has nothing to do with Clinton even though current Clinton campaign workers are very active and in high position at WVWV. Apparently people are being banned at certain blogs for mentioning it.
You have a major point there.
I was so busy with R/L yesterday that I didn’t even focus on this issue (I don’t want to say I missed it – I saw people referring to it but I didn’t have time to figure out what was going on).
This is a good post. I agree with you that people need to step back and wait for some facts to come out. I don’t believe in guilty until proven innocent in R/L or in Blogtopia (yes skippy).
But I will say that one of the issues here seems to be a lack of transparency – which is one thing that blogs have been pushing for over the years. Rightly so. On the other hand, the big name bloggers have been talking out of both sides of their mouths on this issue for a very long time and haven’t had a lot of credibility with many of us on this transparency issue for a long time.
Why?
Once the blog owners set up a two level blogosphere with a (semi)secret level that only select people are allowed into (no matter how stupid and mundane the conversation at that level is most of the time)- the bloggers ruined themselves as advocates for transparency.
The best thing that could happen to the blogosphere would be to blow up that secret level. My opinion.
I was wondering about this last night when I saw the first comments from Matt Stoller and Mike Lux’s diary.
Up until about 3 months ago I considered Matt Stoller to be one of the best analysts out there and Open Left to be one of the best blogs for people doing left institution building. For well over a year I was telling everyone I knew who were “serious” activists and wonks to read Stoller and Open Left.
But its getting strange over there. The SEIU stuff, the visceral distaste towards Obama, now this. I don’t know.
Open Left still does some good work on long-term progressive strategy and frameworks – witness Matt’s short diary on the Ending Suburbia” the other day.
But its getting strange. I agree with panda.
And I tell people Boo Trib is the best blog for near mainstream out of the box thinking.
I consider Booman to be one of the most insightful (and most often times correct) blogger out there.
There’s some props for ya. 🙂
I agree with you on this point. It is about the only blog left that I can handle reading.
Booman rocks….and he is def. on to something…Stoller is freaking out and banning people at Open left……..calling people questioning these actions an “ANGRY MOB”…methinks someone doth protest too much!