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 Greetings! You are reading an article from The Mudville Gazette. To reach the front page, with all the latest news and views, click the logo above or "main" below. Thanks for stopping by! November 4, 2003 All Eyes on Dixie?By GreyhawkI may be in error here but from a distance it seems that outside of there's not much reporting on this month's governors' races, and with three statehouses up for grabs I'm surprised at the lack of coverage. I suppose the networks exhausted their gubernatorial election coverage funds last month? Do they anticipate the results may be not-to-their-liking, or not Nielson-worthy, and thus worthy of ignoring? Or is it just that flyover country, especially south of the Mason Dixon, just doesn't matter? Just kidding. Lacking big star power, the state campaigns just aren't all that sexy, are they? So until The Rock (eminently qualified as both a wrestler and a movie star) runs for Governor of your state we'll just have to settle for the mundane. Take ho-hum Louisiana, for instance, where on the heels of Georgia Senator Zel Miller's endorsement of President Bush comes another endorsement of a Republican candidate by a prominent Democrat. As a former resident of the Pelican State I find this an interesting story: Jumping party lines, Nagin backs Jindal In a bold and potentially risky move, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin crossed party lines Monday to endorse Republican Bobby Jindal, who is locked in a tight governor's race with Lt. Gov. Kathleen Blanco, the Democratic standard bearer in the Nov. 15 runoff. Read it all, as we say. (You'll need to provide a fake name and birthday, but who cares?) A couple things to note regarding Louisiana Politics. One: There's New Orleans and then there's the rest of the state. Although I'm sure all will deny the validity of the comparison a similar situation exists in New York and Chicago. A predictable love-hate synergy results. And two: no political discussion can be held without race being a major part of said discussion. You'll see a matter-of-fact sort of treatment of the issue in any Louisiana paper, while reporting from national news outlets usually tend to ignore, encode, or downplay it. I was surprised watching Shreveport television coverage from each party's local campaign headquarters in 2000; not a single white face in the Democratic headquarters and not a single black face in the crowd at Republican HQ. I'm sure there are such people, but none were evident in the very large crowds shown then. I am not exaggerating for emphasis, there were no, none, zip, zero, "crossovers". Jindal, you may know, is the son of Indian (from India) immigrants. His rather "swarthy complexion" defies recent southern Republican stereotypes, and must be giving some Democratic strategists fits. I'd expect these same folks must be apoplectic at the endorsement by Nagin. Still, one could argue that the mayor is merely politikin', (as in covering all his bases) since he can be fairly well assured his town will be well treated by a Democratic Governor once they've "mended fences" (though "ice out" may take some time to get over) should his candidate not win. The mayor's endorsement is not a "jumping on the bandwagon" maneuver either. If polls are to be believed, the race is neck and neck. (Perhaps in the same sense as the California governor's race?) Which means interesting days to come on the bayou. OBTW, Kentucky and Mississippi are electing Governors too. Meanwhile, in Florida: TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Florida Sen. Bob Graham said Monday he will not seek re-election to a fourth term in the U.S. Senate. Did you catch it? Lincoln High School. A subtle endorsement of the Republicans if ever I heard one. But seriously folks... I've lived in the southern US more then anywhere else over the past 20 years, and I will guarantee you the old stereotypes are fading fast, including the stereotype of the south being a Democratic stronghold. Plenty of folks wouldn't be caught dead registering as Republicans, but what they do in the voting booth is their business. Howard Dean may not know that though, if he thinks he can garner votes from all them rebel flag wavin', pickup drivin', beer drinkin' Lynyrd Skynyrd lovin', World Wrestlin' watchin' NASCAR fans. Yeeeehaw! I was considering providing some more serious commentary about all this but then found this guy and his commenters who pretty much said it all anyway. Enjoy. Posted by Greyhawk / November 4, 2003 10:13 AM | Permalink |
November 26, 2010America@war [Greyhawk]
I think anyone who's ever pondered the "comment" option - once only available on blogs and bulletin boards, now ubiquitous on almost any web site - will appreciate this:
The so-called faculty of writing is not so much a faculty of writing as it is a faculty of thinking. When a man says, "I have an idea but I can't express it"; that man hasn't an idea but merely a vague feeling. If a man has a feeling of that kind, and will sit down for a half an hour and persistently try to put into writing what he feels, the probabilities are at least 90 percent that he will either be able to record it, or else realize that he has no idea at all. In either case, he will do himself a benefit. That's wisdom from the past, captured for posterity at the US Naval Institute, shared via the web on the institute's 137th anniversary. From their about page:
"The Naval Institute has three core activities," among them, History and Preservation: The Naval Institute also has recently introduced Americans at War, a living history of Americans at war in their own words and from their own experiences. These 90-second vignettes convey powerful stories of inspiration, pride, and patriotism. Take a look at the collection, and you'll see it's not limited to accounts from those who served on ships at sea, members of the other branches are well-represented. I'm fortunate to have met USNI's Mary Ripley, she's responsible for the institute's oral history program (and she's the daughter of the late John Ripley, whose story is told here). She also deserves much credit for their blog. ("We're not the Navy nor any government agency. Blog and comment freely.") We met at a milblog conference - Mary knew (and I would come to realize) that milbloggers are the 21st-century version of exactly what the US Naval Institute is all about. Once that light bulb came on in my head, I mentioned a vague idea for a project to her - milblogs as the 21st century oral history that they are. "Put that in writing," she said (of course - see first paragraph above!) - and here's part of the result. Shortly after the first tent was pitched by the American military in Iraq a wire was connected to a computer therein, and the internet was available to a generation of Americans at war - many of whom had grown up online. From that point on, at any given moment, somewhere in Iraq a Soldier, Sailor, Airman or Marine was at a keyboard sharing the events of his or her day with the folks back home. While most would simply fire off an email, others took advantage of the (then) relatively new online blogging platforms to post their thoughts and experiences for the entire world to see. The milblog was born - and from that moment to this stories detailing everything from the most mundane aspects of camp life to intense combat action (often described within hours of the event) have been available on the web... And et cetera - but since you're reading this on a milblog, you probably knew that. And you know that milblogs aren't just blogs written by troops at war, that many friends, family members, and supporters likewise documented their story of America at war online in near-real time, as those stories developed. The diversity in membership of that group is broad, the one thing we all have in common is the impulse to make sense of the seemingly senseless, and communicate the tale - for each of us that impulse was strong enough to overcome whatever barriers prevent the vast majority of people from doing the same. Everyone at some point has some vague idea they believe should be shared - we were the people who, from some combination of internal and external urging, found and spent those many half hours persistently trying to write it down. But where will all that be in another 137 years? Or five or ten, for that matter. That's something I've asked myself since at least 2004 - when I wrote this:
Membership in the ghost battalion has grown in the years since, and an ever growing majority of those abandoned-but-still-standing sites are vanishing. Have you checked out Lt Smash's site lately? How about Sgt Hook's? If you're a long-time milblog reader you know the first widely-read milblog from Operation Iraq Freedom and the first widely-read milblog from Afghanistan are both gone from the web. If you're a relative newcomer to this world you may never even have heard of them - or the dozens upon dozens of others who carried forth the standard they set down. If you have a vague notion that something should be done about that, (a notion I've heard expressed more than once...) then you and I and the good folks at the US Naval Institute are in agreement. Preserving the history documented by the milbloggers is just one of the goals of the milblog project, the once-vague idea that we're now making real. And it's a big idea, if I say so myself - too big to explain in one simple blog post, so stand by for more. Likewise, it's too big a task to be accomplished by just one person. So if you're a milblogger (and exactly what is a milblogger? is a topic for much further discussion on its own) I'm asking for your help. All I'll really need is just a little bit (maybe just one or two of those half hours...) of your time, and your willingness to tell the tale. We've already made history, it's time to save it. (More to follow...) Posted 4:02 PM | Permalink |
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The Mudville Gazette is the on-line voice of an American warrior and his wife who stands by him. They prefer to see peaceful change render force of arms unnecessary. Until that day they stand fast with those who struggle for freedom, strike for reason, and pray for a better tomorrow.
 
 
 Furthermore, I will occasionally use satire or parody herein. The bottom line: it's my house. I like having visitors to my house. I hope you are entertained. I fight for your right to free speech, and am thrilled when you exercise said rights here. Comments and e-mails are welcome, but all such communication is to be assumed to be 1)the original work of any who initiate said communication and 2)the property of the Mudville Gazette, with free use granted thereto for publication in electronic or written form. If you do NOT wish to have your message posted, write "CONFIDENTIAL" in the subject line of your email. Original content copyright © 2003 - 2011 by Greyhawk. Fair, not-for-profit use of said material by others is encouraged, as long as acknowledgement and credit is given, to include the url of the original source post. Other arrangements can be made as needed. Contact: greyhawk at mudvillegazette dot com  Tending Distant Far from hearth and home, watching What tales we'll tell When things grim Some distant sunset, vision fading Saluting fallen friends whose names - Greyhawk, Baghdad, December 2004 |
