Political Web

Some conservatives are up in arms (hopefully not literally) over a 2-year-old Sesame Street skit (video below) in which a puppet gets in a dig at Fox News.

From PopEater:

In the clip, Oscar the Grouch is a reporter for the Grouch News Network (GNN), but he bored one female viewer, who responds: "From now on, I'm watching Pox News. Now there's a trashy news show!

Those puppets are such...puppets!

Big Hollywood, the celeb blog founded by conservative writer Andrew Breitbart, called out the old skit (re-run this week) as a jab at the mega popular news network. "The message is clear," a blogger named Stage Right noted, "I can't even sit my kids in front of 'Sesame Street' without having to worry about the Left attempting to undermine my authority."

That's so true, Stage Right. Because, you know, any 3-year-old would be all over that subversive reference! No doubt it's been Topic No. 1 at pre-schools and day-care facilities across the land, nudging out heated debates over the details of the House health care bill and poop jokes.

Big Bird, if it comes down to Senate hearings, whatever you do, don't "take the Fifth." Remember the Hollywood Ten.

No doubt conservatives will be up in arms over this potential governmental intrusion into a private-sector business. From the Associated Press:

When people sign up for Twitter, the popular social-networking site presents a list of suggested users to follow, driving significant traffic to sports figures, celebrities, politicians and other prominent posters.

In California, the list has attracted the attention of political watchdogs because it apparently favors Democrats over Republicans in next year's race for governor. ...

Such apparent favoritism does not violate any California campaign regulations, but it has caught the attention of the state's watchdog agency. The California Fair Political Practices Commission has formed a committee to examine how campaigns intersect with social media and to determine whether additional regulations are necessary.

Honestly, what regulations would be appropriate here? Twitter is a private business. It's not a public trust. Can't it do what it wants as long as it does so within the law? Also, who really cares about Twitter's suggested user list? Is that really going to sway a voter with a triple-digit IQ? It's just so silly.

Sadly, all this whining appears to be having an effect:

Speaking at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco last week, Twitter chief executive and co-founder Evan Williams said he wants to get rid of the company-selected favorites.

"The suggested user list has been controversial for a while," Williams said. "It's gone on too long, and I desperately want to kill it or evolve it."

And then it will be on to the next egregious social networking injustice.

On the same day that the FCC approved "net neutrality" rules, the former GOP presidential nominee and father of Twitpic sensation Meghan McCain (yes, we're still milking that, no pun intended) proposed legislation that essentially would allow Internet service providers to slow down and even block Internet content or applications as they see fit, IDG News Service reports.

[Sen. John] McCain on Thursday introduced the Internet Freedom Act, which would keep the FCC from enacting rules prohibiting broadband providers from selectively blocking or slowing Internet content and applications. Net neutrality rules would create "onerous federal regulation," McCain said in a written statement. ...

[The] Arizona Republican called the proposed net neutrality rules a "government takeover" of the Internet that will stifle innovation and depress an "already anemic" job market in the U.S.

The FCC's new rules -- which face a 60-day period of public comment before being enacted or possibly revised -- would prevent ISPs from charging different rates to users based on the type of content or applications they download, essentially creating a multitiered Internet.

Net neutrality is supported by major Internet companies such as Google and Amazon.com as well as most Democrats in Congress.

A number of recording artists are demanding that the government release a list of the songs used by the Bush Administration to torture prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba.

From the Washington Post's Joe Heim:

Dozens of musicians endorsed a Freedom of Information Act request filed by the National Security Archive, a Washington-based independent research institute, seeking the declassification of all records related to the use of music in interrogation practices. The artists also launched a formal protest of the use of music in conjunction with torture.

Among the musicians requesting the information are Roseanne Cash, Pearl Jam, R.E.M., the Roots, Jackson Brown, Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails, Billy Bragg, Michelle Branch, T-Bone Burnett, David Byrne, Marc Cohn, Steve Earle, the Entrance Band, Joe Henry and Bonnie Raitt.

It's hard to disagree with the sentiments of these artists -- torture is torture, whether it's water-boarding, sleep deprivation of aural bombardment. I'd be outraged (not to mention insulted) if my writing were used to torture prisoners.

While the timing may seem odd in that it's been six years since the U.S. halted the practice of using loud music to torture prisoners, this isn't the first time musicians have spoken out about this issue. Also, the current efforts are intended to support the ongoing National Campaign to Close Guantanamo.

I have to say, it will be interesting to see what songs were used by interrogators. Whether we'll ever learn why they were chosen is anyone's guess.

And just to be clear, the joke in the headline is about ASCAP, not torture.

Leaders at some of the world's largest Internet companies are banding together to lobby in favor of net neutrality.

The group, which includes Google CEO Eric Schmidt, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and Twitter co-founder Evan Williams (full list of signatories below), sent a letter dated Monday to Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski urging the FCC to "begin a process to adopt rules that preserve an open Internet."

Proponents of net neutrality argue that new regulations are necessary to prevent broadband providers from selectively blocking or slowing the delivery of Web content and applications to users. Opponents of net neutrality claim new government rules and regulations would discourage infrastructure investment, hamper further Internet development and lead us down the road toward socialism.

The FCC is scheduled to vote on net neutrality regulations on Thursday. Following that, both sides will be able to weigh in on proposals before they would become adopted.

Here's the bulk of what the Internet heavyweights, presenting themselves as the Open Internet Coalition, wrote:

For most of the Internet's history, FCC rules have ensured that consumers have been able to choose the content and services they want over their Internet connections. Entrepreneurs, technologists, and venture capitalists have previously been able to develop new online products and services with the guarantee of neutral, nondiscriminatory access by users, which has fueled an unprecedented era of economic growth and creativity. Existing businesses have been able to leverage the power of the Internet to develop innovative product lines, reach new consumers, and create new ways of doing business.

An open Internet fuels a competitive and efficient marketplace, where consumers make the ultimate choices about which products succeed and which fail. This allows businesses of all sizes, from the smallest startup to larger corporations, to compete, yielding maximum economic growth and opportunity.

America's leadership in the technology space has been due, in large part, to the open Internet. We applaud your leadership in initiating a process to develop rules to ensure that the qualities that have made the Internet so successful are protected.

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It used to be that any mocking of President Obama came from the perpetually outraged right ("Barack the Magic Negro," anyone?).

But as Matt Frei of BBC News points out in today's blog post, the comedic assaults on Obama are becoming more mainstream.

Late-night comedians once feared that the man who Oprah anointed "The One" defied their sharp tongues because of an infuriating mixture of talent and race....

But laughter at the expense of the 44th commander-in-chief is alive, kicking and getting as sharp as ripe Cheddar.

Frei argues that while the "vultures had been circling for weeks" around Obama as many of his initiatives have bogged down, the catalyst for satirists was the president's Nobel Peace Prize.

It has delivered the missing punch-line to every Obama joke. It is a gift to late-night comedians. It creates a prism through which all the other humour can be filtered.

Rather than working against Obama, however, Frei says the satire offensive could work in the president's favor by "bringing him down to earth." Hmm. I doubt "down to earth" would be good enough for the conservatives who want Obama run back to whatever country they think he came from, but there's no doubt that deftly handled satire and a modest dose of self-deprecation never hurts.

Here are a couple of videos of comedians (Conan and Craig Ferguson) having fun with Obama's Nobel honor:

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For a guy who just won the Nobel Peace Price, President Obama and his administration sure seem to be fighting with everybody these days.

As Brian Stelter reports in the New York Times, the White House openly considers conservative Fox News Channel to be a political adversary:

"We're going to treat them the way we would treat an opponent," said Anita Dunn, the White House communications director, in a telephone interview on Sunday. "As they are undertaking a war against Barack Obama and the White House, we don't need to pretend that this is the way that legitimate news organizations behave."

Meanwhile, comments attributed to an anonymous White House staffer by CNBC's John Harwood have liberal bloggers and activists up in (figurative) arms. As Politico's Michael Calderone reports:

Harwood, recalling a conversation with a White House adviser about the "Internet left fringe," said the adviser told him that "those bloggers need to take off the pajamas, get dressed, and realize that governing a closely divided country is complicated and difficult."

The anonymously attributed slight kicked off a firestorm of blogger indignation, as this Huffington Post article documents. The White House has tried to stamp out the furor, issuing a statement saying, "That sentiment does not reflect White House thinking at all."

A couple of things: First, I really hate that "bloggers in their pajamas" cliche. It's almost as bad as the "what you had for lunch" nonsense that makes it into 90 percent of mainstream media articles about Twitter.

Second, part of being a blogger is the freedom to remain in your pajamas, 24/7, if you so desire. Take that right away from bloggers and all they'll have left are second jobs lavish incomes. And that's not change I can believe in.

Until recently there was a lovely poll on Facebook asking: "Should Obama Be Killed?"

The answers offered as options were 1) Yes 2) No 3) Maybe 4) If he cuts my health care. More than 725 people voted before Facebook removed the poll, according to The Plum Line. The Secret Service has launched an investigation.

I can't find any information about how long the poll was up, but it appears the person who first wrote about it and then alerted the Secret Service was a blogger named GottaLaff, who co-runs a blog called The Political Carnival.

Here's GottaLaff's screen-grab of the poll, which she posted Sunday night:

In her blog she writes:

Just now, I got a phone call from the Secret Service. Yes, that Secret Service. It was from a very sweet woman with a very sweet voice. She called to thank me for my screen grab of the poll, and said without it, they wouldn't have been able to address the matter.

Good work, Agent GottaLaff.

This is a great example of how the Internet and social media enable acts of citizen journalism. Plus the story has everything: a vigilant blogger, a social networking site being used for indefensible and potentially criminal reasons, a network of aggregators to ping the drama around cyberspace, and a "very sweet woman with a very sweet voice."

Pro-immigration reform group America's Voice is going after CNN host Lou Dobbs in a big way, and it's using Facebook's targeted advertising to do so, ClickZ reported.

America's Voice targeted Capitol Hill staffers, CNN employees and employees of other media companies with anti-Dobbs ads, including one with Dobbs' picture that reads, "Hey, Anderson Cooper, what's it like to work with a racist at CNN?" according to ClickZ, which added that the group considers Dobbs to be an anti-immigrant hatemonger.

The group is also running display advertising on liberal and Latino blogs such as Firedoglake and Latina Lista, and Blue State Digital is handling the paid-search component of the campaign, ClickZ reported.

America's Voice director of online communications Jackie Mahendra told ClickZ:

All of the advertising so far has been digital, and whatever we raise will go to traditional media. In this case, we were looking to really deliver a message to media professionals, specifically at CNN and other networks. We very inexpensively saturated the space for Hill staffers so they were able to see the ad an average of about 50 times.

Finally, Hollywood celebrities are stepping up to defend the real downtrodden -- insurance companies and their unfairly vilified executives.

In a hilarious mock public service announcement produced by MoveOn.org, Will Ferrell, John Hamm (Mad Men), Thomas Lennon (Reno 911), Linda Cardellini (ER), Masi Oka (Heroes) and other actors make a plea to Americans to support the insurance industry's right to continue making obscene profits.

The video, billed as an exclusive on the website Funny or Die, has been viewed nearly 50,000 times since being posted there early this morning.

Some snippets:

Will Ferrell: "So why is Obama trying to reform health care when insurance companies are doing just fine making billions of dollars in profit?"

John Hamm: "They need to make big profits so they can afford to give their employees health insurance."

Donald Faison: "If my kid falls off his bike and breaks his leg, he should have to pay that money out of pocket -- out of his allowance."

Who can argue with that reasoning?

The PSA ends with MoveOn.org's plea for viewers to urge lawmakers to support a public option as part of health care reform.

(Hat tip to The Huffington Post's Alex Leo.)