Sunday, January 16, 2011 — A fortnight ago we celebrated the arrival of the New Year with a little experiment. We hung a blank page up “in the cloud,” just to see what would happen to it. Bud in Kingston promptly used it to pass on a friendly word, and, for a while, that was that.
A couple of days ago we began some long-overdue remedial posting, to fill the big gap between the kludgy PDF archives of our 2008 and 2009 papers, and the present. So far we have posted ten Fortnightly Rants, from January 15 through May 21, 2010.
Our plan for today was to post our Rant for January 31st, then work backwards until all the Rants for 2010 were online.
Lo and behold, David pops up, on our page in the cloud, with a reference to that very Rant.
“I just wanted to comment that your alleged Rant in the [December] 31st edition was perhaps one of the most chilling. It really sums up what we’re up against. I read where the President will likely have to spend One Billion Dollars on his reelection campaign in 2012. It’s going to take people really pulling together like we did against the Vietnam War. How bad do you suppose it will have to get to get that kind of unity and voter motivation on the progressive side?”
— Dave, 9:24 a.m., Jan 16th.
Dave, we think it’s bad enough now. The problem is, progressives do not have the sort of infrastructure that the Right Wingers built in response to Lewis Powell’s urging. We like to think that we’re operating something here that could grow to be more useful.
We’ve got a linked image of Jeffrey Pasley’s The Tyranny of Printers at the top of this post because it delineates the central role early American newspapers played in the formation of the country’s political structure.
Technology has changed since the 1790s, but people have not. On the media front, the Right now has an overpowering advantage. It doesn’t have to be that way.
Meanwhile, check out this Comment is Free article in The Guardian .
The title is “New Hampshire’s place in geopolitics.” An excerpt:
‘”All politics is local” is a common phrase in America. It is astonishing just how true that is when surveying the current landscape of the 2012 race for the White House. Forget “blood libels” and healthcare repeal votes and the new head of the RNC. Instead, pay very close attention to an obscure vote taking place in New Hampshire this weekend.
It could decide who is the next president.’
For those unfamiliar with the phrase “Comment is Free” it’s not just the name of a section on The Guardian’s website; it originally appeared in a 1921 Essay by the Manchester Guardian’s editor (and owner) C.P. Scott, published on the M.G.’s centennial — “but facts are sacred” followed it in the sentence to which it belongs.
Later, the M.G. moved to London and became simply “The Guardian.” Being established in 1821 means, of course, that it’s a very young newspaper compared to The New Hampshire Gazette.
Comment is Free (known among inhabitants as “CiF”) allows comments to the comment pieces found in this section of the Guardian’s on-line site but discussions are closed, usually after three days.
There’s nothing to stop an influx of New Hampshire residents from commenting on this item in the next three days although CiF has rules and moderators to enforce them.