Plunderbund

Get home from some appointments and what am I greeted by? More ODP State Dinner flap. Ann Fisher reports, both Russell and Tim blog about it.

Russell is absolutely correct in his point about Brian likening us to newspaper reporters. In my conversation with him, he appeared to be using any means necessary to not have to work with bloggers. His first method was defining us as newspaper reporters and saying the press pass issue had not been worked out yet. When I replied that I wasn’t press, but defined myself as a “citizen-activist-journalist” he seemed happy to say, “Well, if you aren’t press then that answers that…no press passes for you guys”. His answer about activists was parrotted in this article again and is a straw man really. What does it matter that there are any number of people who do work for the party or on the progressive agenda and they won’t get a ticket. Hell, make some available (which they did via some contest). Why not be creative and have a blogging contest. Best post on why Dems will be successful in ‘06 gets a ticket?

Creativity and out-of-the-box thinking is not exactly the strong suit of the ODP apparently. So we do what we do. Circumvent, adapt, improvise, overcome. Obama does what he does: come up with simple solutions to apparently complex problems. Real leaders do such things. Faux leaders say things like:

In the end, Obama paid for a blogger table. Still, Rothenberg is troubled, likening bloggers to the pamphleteers of the Revolutionary War period, without form or rules. “In time, they are going to start selfpolicing or they are going to be policed.”

Yes, we are pamphleteers…and the revolution will not be televised! I love Russell’s zen-like definition of bloggers. Brian would be good to sit with it until he gets it:

I don’t think you can say bloggers are press or they are activists - it’s one bucket or the other.

It’s both and it’s neither.

I also think it would have made sense for Ann to contact some bloggers. Unless, of course, this was an ODP designed piece to get in a dig at us 3 days before the event. Hell, like they can control the message anyway. See you on Saturday Brian. Let’s talk about the revolution then, k?

Ann does hit the nail squarely on the head when she says:

Campaigns can get with it, establish some ad-hoc rules, or get out of the way.

We’re not going away. We’re only going to grow…that is if I have anything to say about it.