Kivus

David All pointed out an interesting article in Advertising Age today. The article did not really state anything new, but reiterated a point that’s been made before: The left has more traction in the Web 2.0 World than the Right does. There is some discussion in the article about possible reasons why the left has gained such a foothold on the web, but it does not delve in depth into any particular reason.

A discussion about the main content in the _Advertising Age_ article will come in a later post, but in this post I wanted to give some further explanation as to why the left seems to have such a presence on the web. I think what most people fail to acknowledge is that the people found on a number of the most popular “democrat” websites are the far, far left; the radical left; the “kooks” of the left. There have been whole books that have examples of the hatred and bile that is found on sites such as DailyKos or MyDD, so I won’t delve into that here, however, it’s worth noting that at least a percentage of the people who frequent these sides lack a sense of civility that would be required for participation in other media. Though they have attempted to use this particular style of venom and personal attacks in other places, such as Air America radio, those attempts have all been spectacular failures.  This leaves only the web as a way to distribute their view point.

Pointing again to the primary consumer of the democrat websites, one begins to wonder why this particular subsection of the Left makes up such a high concentration of the Left’s website traffic. Looking at how different “market” segments of the left can receive information, it’s quite a simple break down. Moderate or “centristic” democrats can turn to CNN, ABC News, CBS, etc… for their nightly news and views points. Moving further to left, you have NBC and the NY Times. A little further to the left will give you MSNBC (who is doing their best to court the kook fringe of the left) but has still not reduced itself to the type of content found on the popular democrat sites. This leaves the far, far left with a need to express their radical views and the web provides them a forum to do just that.

As previously mentioned, a deeper discussion of how the Left and the Right are utilizing the Web, and especially Web 2.0, will come later, but to end this particular post I will mention, that despite all their hatred, the most the fringe left has been able to produce are a landslide loser in CT and a race among Democrat presidential candidates to surrender America’s future to terrorists in Iraq.

The quick take on this week’s 1/2 Hour News Hour is that it wasn’t as good as last weeks. Though there weren’t the clear low points that last week had (namely, the pregnant lawyer sketch), there were not nearly as many laugh out loud, rolling on the floor laughing moments either.

The news segments were a good summation of the show overall, pretty even keel with no real ups and no real downs. Some jokes included: A Hotel replacing the bible with AlGore’s _An Inconvient Truth_ (a book that no one would ever want to steal), The Fort Dix Six meeting on the CBS Evening News (as a way to make sure no one would watch them), and John Edwards unable to find his financial records in his new 28,000 sq ft. mansion.

The “commercial” segments once again contained an ACLU commercial (this dealing with the ACLU’s efforts to prevent people from celebrating Christmas in the public square) and a commercial for the new _Commemorative Surrender Plates_. This commercial was pretty solid, highlighting the various actions by members of the Democrat Party that are road marks on their way to trying to force the United States to surrender to the terrorists in Iraq. These include: Murtha having the troops “re-deploy” to Okinawa, Nancy Pelosi traveling to Syria to meet with their dictator, and Harry Reid declaring the war is lost.

The longer segments were okay. A segment with a fake press consultant who appeared to have a man-crush on John Edwards was fairly lame, but a segment where Lorenzo Lamas explained his “9-11 conspiracy theory” (i.e. that terrorists flew airplanes into builds on 9-11) was a good way to highlight the kooks that believe the various theories about how “9-11 was an inside job” or any of that other garbage. In the final segment, Dennis Miller’s “The Buck Starts Here” was much stronger than last week, especially his explanation of how setting a date certain for withdrawal in Iraq is completely illogical.

The this episode of the Half Hour News hour didn’t have the highlights that the first episode did, it also didn’t have the low lights that brought last weeks show down. On a scale of 1-6, I’d have to say this episode was about 4.

“We’ve got to get the money out of politics!” If you’ve watched the news, listened to the radio, read a newspaper, etc… over the last 2-3 years, you’ve no doubt heard someone say just that: “We’ve got to get the money out of politics.” In fact, recent legislation (namely, McCain – Feingold) have been written to accomplish just that. While readying Tom DeLay’s _No Retreat, No Surrender_, however, I began to ask myself a question: Why? What are the problems with money in politics?

Now, obviously I am not saying that I support congressman being bribed for their vote (a.l.a. William Jefferson, Democrat Louisiana, allegedly), but I am saying I’d rather have an oil company paying to fly a congressman to A.N.W.A.R. to view potential drilling locations then have Congressman jet around the country on my tax dollars.

Speaking of my tax dollars, a tangential aspect of “getting the money out of politics” is the concept of “publicly funded election.” Though a full discussion of publicly funded elections is probably deserves its own full post, I will add now that my logic from the previous paragraph carries over. “Why should my hard earned tax dollars go to some general pot where any yahoo can use it for his political campaign? Why can’t I decide what I want to do with my money? What can’t I decide who I want my money to support?”

So who benefits most by not allowing money from the private sector into politics? Well, certainly not the tax payer, and certainly not those politicians who scrapped by in a life of public service. No, instead it’s those politicians who can afford to augment their vast personal wealth with tax payer funded perks, politicians like Speaker Pelosi or Senator Kennedy. In other words, the same people who are decrying private sector money in politics are those who have the most to gain by keeping it out.

Last Night was the first “non-pilot” episode of the ½ Hour News Hour. Overall, the show had some solid moments, a weak segment or two, but ultimately was a fairly solid ½ hour of laughs.

The show started off with an ad that was making fun of your traditional motor sport / monster truck rally (“Sunday! Sunday! Sunday!”) that was pitting the Rutgers Women’s Basketball team v. the Duke Men’s Lacrosse team. Let’s just say, the show started off slow.

The next segment was the first of 2 “quick hit” news segments. The closet comparison for these would be Saturday Night Live’s “Weekend Update” segments. Just some quick highlights from the two segments:

• “Part of the reason Al Gore’s house electric bill seems so high, is that people don’t understand how much power it takes to recharge him.
• “Upon hearing about the potential attacks on our soldiers at Fort Dix, Harry Reid demanded an immediate withdrawal of all troops from Fort Dix”
• “George Tenet stated that no one regretted his decision to state Iraq had nuclear weapons more than he did….well, maybe one person did [cut to picture of Sadam]”
• “People say Fred Thompson’s portrayal of a racist in a movie 20 years ago might hurt him in a presidential race…especially in “unable to tell TV from reality” demographic”

There were 2 other commercial segments: (1) A commercial making fun of the ACLU and the ACLU’s support for child molesters living near schools, (2) a commercial for Oxy-Clinton, a drug that counter acts the various negative attributes of Mrs. Bill Clinton’s presence. Commercial (2) was highlighted by an appearance by Laura Ingraham as the doctor presenting the drug. Laura, looking absolutely gorgeous in her lab coat, proceeded to list some of the side effects of taking Oxy-Clinton:

• High Taxes
• Massive Unemployment
• Riots
• Chaos
• Total Breakdown of the American Healthcare System

Overall, commercial (2) was in the running for the best segment of the show.

The news / special report segments went 1 for 3, an acceptable batting average in baseball, but leaving room for improvement as far as the show goes. Starting first with the low point, a segment dealing with a pregnant lawyer who ultimately “gave birth” to twins during the segment. There’s not much to say beyond this segment being a train wreck. A segment asking the question “How can we blame the Kansas Tornado on President Bush?” was fairly solid, with responses such as “His lack of attention to global warming” and “having all our national guard equipment in Iraq.” The best special report segment, which aired the earliest of the three, dealt with sexual harassment in the work place, and featured a sexy “reporter-ette” demonstrating female on male harassment to the male co-host. The skit reached its pinnacle when the male host rolled his chair back and asked “What about Female on Female Harassment? How would that work?” I strongly suggest hitting up youtube to view this segment.

The final segment was some Dennis Miller stand up. I paused to write down some of his jokes, but a number of them I had heard in his specials before. Basically, if you’ve ever seen Dennis Miller on anything, you know what to expect.

The ½ Hour News Hour got off to a good start with its first “non-pilot” issue. Though it had some rough spots, it gave a number of solid laughs over its 30 minutes. After years of being the butt of jokes from the liberal media, it’s good to see that conservatives can dish it out too. In fact, like on most things, The !/2 Hour News Hour shows how conservatives can do more than just hold their own with liberals, conservatives can out perform them.

A couple of years ago I received a copy of _Golf My Way_ by Tiger Woods for Christmas. Those next couple of weeks, waiting to fly back from Maine to Clemson, seemed to drag on as I eagerly anticipated trying out his techniques on the course.

A lot of time as passed since then and Tiger no longer uses the same swing he used when he wrote the book. In fact, I spent a lot of time following Adam Scott this past weekend, since Butch Harmon has crafted his swing in the same fashion as the “old Tiger” swing and therefore is my de facto “swing role model.” Still, as the time passed on Sunday, I found a part of me rooting for Tiger to win. There’s something about his drive and dedication that, despite his dominance, makes me want to cheer him on.

Still, despite being a monster on the course, Tiger has another side; a side that doesn’t seem to show it self very often. I got a glimpse of that side a few years ago at the US Open:

My father and I were standing between a couple of holes, I think it was #10 and #11, but I’m not quite sure…what was different about these holes is that after finishing one, the players had to get in a cart and ride the cart over to the other hole. When Tiger was coming up 10, my father and I went over to the cart location, figuring we might get some quote or something from Tiger as he sat in the cart.

While Tiger sat in the cart, hat pulled down over his eyes, a fan, who probably had a sampled the $5 beers being sold around the course, yelled at him: “Tiger, you and me, match play…right now.” Tiger sat there for a moment, then, slowly looked up and said “How much you want to lose?”