This week Chris Christie was in Washington D.C., speaking at a National Republican Congressional Committee fundraiser. If nothing else, a couple of small details surrounding the speech help confirm that many (if not most) of the governor's biggest fans are people from other states, who don't have any grasp of just how unpopular, disingenuous and ineffective he actually is. Much of what they do know comes from YouTube, Twitter, and the GOP marketing machine; a mythology reinforced as Christie struts across America, trumpeting half-truth "accomplishments" and tossing red meat to partisan loyalists. Do his conservative fan-persons go home to fact-check his speeches after they're done swooning? Of course not - that might shatter the illusion.
One reason for the non-Jersey adulation: Chris Christie says he is awesome, and people who don't live here don't know any better! Of course, to most Garden Staters (and probably at least a few of his allies), the governor's self-aggrandizing has long jumped the shark. But for our neighbors across America who only see him in bits and pieces... well, they're taking whatever Christie hands them, not reading the label, and gobbling it up. He's street meat, or mystery pills from a mystery person, acquired in a nightclub bathroom. Truth is irrelevant - you're under the influence of Chris Christie, and things will be getting weird.
For example, take this whopper, courtesy of @dcseth, who live-tweeted the governor's speech to the NRCC:
Hat tip to politickernj, which just alerted us to the Twitter feed from @SenSweeney, the pretty damn clever fake account that went up just today. It's trending nicely over the last few minutes, climbing from 3 followers to 16, including @bluejersey.
In the first few tweets, starting 7:53am this morning, @SenSweeney professes his love for @50cent ("don't tell the guys at the hall"), says he flashes his eyes at @LtGovGuadagno and makes her breathe heavily, makes fun of Star-Ledger and the former Sweeney moustache, Alan Rosenthal ("that guy's like 250 years old"), and wants a map that fucks Codey. Here's my favorite of the morning:
I also want to keeps the conservative,, reactionary white Democrrats in control. I don't even know what 1/2 those words mean. #njpolitics
This is an account of a confusing and dramatic few moments in the State House yesterday. The aftermath was captured in an extraordinary audio clip of Sen. Loretta Weinberg - listen all the way through. - Rosi
In a moment much smaller yet reminiscent of Madison, Wisconsin circa February 28, 2011, Chris Christie ordered the state house closed to union members and their representatives. Ironically, this wasn't a mass protest but rather a scheduled set of appointments with State Senators and representatives.
Citing an unnamed, undated and unsigned policy, the Governor ordered citizens and union members turned away from entering the state house for a series of legitimately scheduled appointments to discuss the Governors recent attacks and acts against the members rights to bargain and negotiate healthcare benefits for their next contract.
It's a kick to read in the Washington Post today that Blue Jersey's made their list of best state-based political tweeters in the country, via Chris Cillizza's political column The Fix. We have our readers and Cillizza's readers at The Fix to thank for that, because he compiled the list after asking for nominations from his own Fixistas and sifted through them all for every state in the country.
Cillizza apparently was thinking (here's his call for tweeter nominations) most of people he chose would be reporters. In his NJ list, only 2 are; Ginger Gibson of the statehouse bureau shared by Star-Ledger & Bergen Record and New Jersey reporter for the Wall Street Journal Lisa Fleisher both made Cillizza's list.
The rest of us are all progressive or Democratic partisans. more below
After seeing Rosi's great twitter friendly header regarding the #solidarity #njunion rallies in Trenton today I started thinking, why don't I encourage every writer, contributor, and diarist on @bluejersey to compose headlines that are @twitter friendly.
It will sure make sharing on twitter easier, and garner more attention for the values we hold dear. Plus @bluejersey might get noticed a little more by the MSM.
CWA activists have been meeting at the Rutgers Labor Center for the past two days. The goal is too learn how too use media to get out a unified message. Attendees were addressed by Les Leopold yesterday concerning getting out the truth about wall street gambling & the financial elitism that caused the demise of middle class America. A thinktank followed with Berlin Rosen to formulate ideas that need to be shared via social networking. Training classes are underway today for Facebook, You Tube and Blogging. Rosi Efthim has shared her knowledge of blogging and enhanced the activists awareness of online opportunities for information sharing. Be on the look out for increased presence and voice of union brothers and sisters as we stand firm for equality!
Certain bloggers and governors could benefit from the kind of public commitment to lose weight, eat healthier and get fit that Mayor Cory Booker is conducting since he hit his all-time high weight of 295 lbs. on Christmas Day, a month after Michelle Obama came to Newark to talk farmer's markets, dance classes and low-fat school lunches at the city's Maple Avenue School.
Booker's getting a lot of attention with this hashtag: #letsmove, which has turned into a kind of national daily pep-talk for thousands of people. Let's Move is the name of FLOTUS' campaign for healthy eating & fitness; Booker is her overweight national co-Chair.
Here's Booker getting weighed in - publicly - this week, and how much he's planning to lose (that comes in at about the 1:00 mark):
Earlier today, Governor Christie got into an exchange about education that was simply astonishing. His opponent this time wasn't a teacher at a microphone; it was "stopthefreezeNJ," a Facebook poster who has become the de facto leader of the netroots resistance to Christie's war on teachers.
I have to admit. Up until about a year ago, I've been pretty apolitical. Sure, I got caught up in the Obamamania of 2008 and canvassed door-to-door both here in New Jersey and in Florida. And I vote in every election - usually Democratic - sometimes because I'm for the candidate, but most times because I can't stand the opponent. The only other time I really got involved was in the 1972 presidential campaign for George McGovern, because even then, I knew Nixon was a crook.
Almost a year ago, I started my own blog. After retiring from the military-industrial complex, I needed an outlet for my political rage that had been suppressed in the interest of career advancement. I attended one of Jim Dean's DFA workshops, met Rosi, started writing for Blue Jersey, and was honored when Rosi asked me to be a staff writer. Initially I was reluctant to sign on because I felt that I was not as connected to local politics as my fellow bloggers. But Rosi is persistent, and here I am.
Social media has attracted millions (billions?) of followers. With Twitter you can learn instantly what others are doing and saying and tell many people quickly what is on your mind. With Facebook you can add acquaintances, manage them, and efficiently stay in touch with them.
A group like Garden State Equality, for example, uses social media to increase participation, pass along news, solicit donors, and promote its issues. However, it is a hierarchical organization which operates with considerable precision. People who attended ME events at the State House in December and January were aware that there was a large staff to direct traffic, warn people against inadvertently passing on information to the opponents, provide T-shirts to make the cause visible, select specific individuals to meet with specific legislators, make last-minute phone calls to legislators, occupy as many seats as possible in meeting rooms, etc. GSE did a magnificent job of implementing its strategy through hierarchical planning, organization and control of events.
In another case, in late September Newark students set up a facebook page What's Wrong in Our Schools That $100 Mill Could Fix? This group describes itself as "created to bring awareness to the issues most fail to talk about when it comes to Newark NJ's education system. It is not JUST ABOUT MONEY it is about believing in the students of Newark and providing us with more opportunity." - a worthy mission. The page has 546 members. About 60 comments have been posted, and a lively discussion with divergent points-of-view has emerged. The site provides an important opportunity to air Newark student education concerns. However, it shows no signs of a specific agenda nor of leading a frontal attack on powerful entrenched city leaders. Berkley students did achieve change in their "Free Speech" more hierarchical movement.
Let's not oversell social media. As an unreconstructed activist, I appreciate social media, but I value committed, purposeful, hierarchical organizations even more. What are your thoughts on today's role of social media in politics?
Blue Jersey made history in 2007 as the first Blog in America to send one of its own to cover the State House beat. Those were heady, innovative times for the Liberal Blog-o-sphere and our relevance and access seemed without peer.
And then we lost the Governor's mansion and it was a whole new ballgame. So we're back in Trenton. And judging from Democratic leadership's performance thus far, this move is way over due.
Even if she had gotten it right, it's still kind of nonsensical to draw an equivalence between the two, but well... oh just see for yourself.
Enjoy your holiday weekend and please take a moment to mark the anniversary of when Elvis and John Wayne saved Thomas Jefferson from those Space Invaders four score and seven years ago.
Keith Olberman always has his top three worst persons in the world on Countdown each night. But he's introduced a twitter version for people who just miss the TV cut and our Governor is one of the first winners for his decision with Justice Wallace:
We begin. TWORST PERSONS: Tworse: Chris Christie. 1st NJ Gov ever to fire an incumbent State Supreme Court Justice
The Hill picks up that Congressman Albio Sires is using twitter to answer questions and deal with problems his constituents are having with the census:
Jeff Caldwell tweeted at the lawmaker Monday:
@Rep_Albio_Sires We haven't received any forms at 351 8th Street in Hoboken!
Sires responded:
Call Census at 866-872-6868 or my D.C. office for assistance! RT @jeffreycaldwell: We haven't received any forms!
Kudos to the Congressman. I always like when members of Congress are responsive to their constituents and certainly am a fan of using technology to engage. Just another way to make sure you provide constituent service. Take the survey below the fold and tell us if you would use twitter to follow and contact your member of Congress.
One thing I enjoy reading and writing about is how government and candidates for office are using technology. A story in the NY Times says that Republicans in the House are kicking some serious Democrat donkey butt:
It may have been sort of a counterintuitive thought at one time, but it's become pretty well-established that Republicans on Capitol Hill have embraced Twitter more than Democrats.
But just how much congressional Republicans are out-Tweeting the Democrats may be a bit of a surprise. According to a new study from the public relations firm Fleishman-Hillard, House Republicans have pecked away on Twitter more than five times more frequently than their Democratic counterparts - sending out 29,162 tweets all told through Jan. 3, compared to 5,503 for Democrats.
In New Jersey, @Rep_Albio_Sires and @FrankPallone are our lone members on twitter in the House. @SenatorMenendez uses twitter from our Senate delegation, but the GOP clearly has more members utilizing the medium to communicate:
The study also found that about two-thirds of Congress' 132 active Tweeters are Republicans.
But what type of communicating they are doing offers the caveat to these numbers:
Many congressional Twitter users don't follow others or reTweet items, Mr. Senak said in an interview. "It can be more like one-way communication, which is not really what Twitter was designed for," he said. Mr. Senak, who writes a blog about the F.D.A., said curiosity about how lawmakers were discussing health care was a major reason he started the Twitter study.
If they're not utilizing the medium to create a dialogue, they're not getting the complete potential. See Cory Booker for an example of how you can harness the power of social media. But on top of that, it's troubling that our leaders aren't embracing new opportunities to interact with their consituents. I know it's hard to convey public policy in 140 characters, but if you use more words no one listens, are you better off passing up the opportunity at a captive audience? If you are on twitter, even though your member of Congress may not be, you can find and follow us @BlueJersey
I've written a good deal about Newark Mayor Cory Booker's use of social media to communicate. He's once again getting coverage for being responsive using the medium:
When Ravie Rave (@BigSixxRaven) tweeted at Cory Booker (@Corybooker) that her 65-year-old father needed help shoveling his driveway on New Year's Eve, the Newark mayor sprang into action.
Instead of waiting for the city's plows and salters to come by, Booker messaged Rave back, saying, "I will do it myself where does he live?"
Soon other followers of Booker's Twitter feed volunteered to help, and the mayor tweeted:
Please @BigSixxRaven don't worry bout ur dad. Just talked 2 him & I'll get 2 his Driveway by noon. I've got salt, shovels & great volunteers
Twenty minutes after the first tweet, Booker showed up at his door ready to clear the snow. And after they finished, they had another happy resident:
"My daddy is a happy man," she wrote. "He took pictures of his Mayor shoveling his driveway! lol"
Booker realizes he's not going to solve all of the city's problems online and it's not just that he's using twitter, it's that new media makes him more accessible to the residents. He's making sure they perform traditional functions of the city while using the medium to distribute and receive real time information about things that are going well and conversely, changes that need to be made.
As long as I've known him, Frank Pallone has been willing to jump in and try new ways of talking to people. This Twitter Town Hall - which you can read along with here - was pretty cool, no doubt about it. Follow him here. - Rosi
I want to thank everyone who took part in my first Twitter Town Hall - I had a great time doing it and I'm looking forward to coming back again to answer questions on different issues. Congress is truly making history by reforming the health care system. Seven presidents tried - none were successful. We are now on the verge of sending President Obama reforms that will lower premiums, increase competition, and increase access to near universal levels.
But this would not have been possible without you. Citizen participation is important, so when a new technology like Twitter comes along and gives me a new medium to reach constituents and activists - I am happy to embrace it.
We had a lively discussion about the effects of the bill on Medicare, how mandates may affect students and what people can expect when the bill is law. We dispelled myths about the bill and clarified the bill's intentions.
After health care reform is passed and nearly 30 million more Americans are covered there will still be challenges ahead. Climate change, Afghanistan, financial regulation, and a slew of other issues need to be tackled - and we need all of you helping us to combat the special interests. I know some progressives are disheartened by the Senate stripping the public option out of the reform package and so was I. But we must keep our eyes open to the big picture. The public option would only affect approximately 5 million Americans;whereas, the health exchanges we are creating will affect over 30 million. In addition, this bill ends discriminatory practices such as pre-existing conditions and expands Medicaid, among other important reforms. This is real progress on an important American issue.
Thank you again for participating. I hope you'll enjoy some behind the scenes photos and video from the Town Hall and if you have any other questions please visit Pallone for New Jersey . And if you aren't already, please follow me on Twitter so you can participate next time.
Mayor Booker doesn't use twitter to replace anything, he uses it to supplement the work he would be doing anyway and amplify the reach of the message in the process.
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