Saturday, July 12, 2003

It's a Kool-Aid fest!
That trendy, with-it, Internet guy, Al Gore Howie Dean will be guest blogging over at Lawrence Lessig's place for a week. Lots of Kool-Aid is being consumed in the comments section of the post announcing it, but some people aren't slurping:
Hmm … “On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog” … or a presidential candidate?

How do we know it’s really Howard Dean, and not a Dean campaign staffer?
(after all, letters from many officeholders, are really by their staff)

I’ve gotten very cynical since “Aimee Deep

I’m reminded of a Heinlein book, where a candidate is kidnapped, and his staff temporarily covers it up by replacing the candidate with an actor. It works so well they decide to ask the actor take over as the candidate. The actor objects that he’s not a qualified. The staff argues in reply that it doesn’t really matter, since the candidate is just the public face of the campaign organization anyway.

» posted by Seth Finkelstein on Jul 12 03 at 9:51 AM
Oh yeah, they're also going to be editing comments. As commenter Kelly Miggs writes:
It’s a real shame you’re editing comments. It would be hillarious to see Howard Dean get into a flame war with someone called “yomoma187!”
It would be kewl, but the whole deal will undoubtedly be as well scripted as any campaign event. Of course, Howie's big announcement that he was seeking the Democrat nomination did have some problems:

Greens rain on Howie's parade