I thought the Cliff Kincaid article was rather interesting. I think it is interesting that Fox news withheld comments Jesse Jackson made that would put Obama in a good light when they have not been hesitatent about reporting rumors that clearly damage Obama’s image. On the flip side I think it is interesting that Kincaid makes a comment about the inability of Fox news or Matt Drudge to say anything about Obama’s connection to Frank Marshall Davis. Kincaid clearly believes having a communist “mentor” early on in his life would potential effect his current ideology. I think it is a stretch of him to think that just because the media has not brought up Davis they are all pro-Obama trying to conceal some dark past. What I don’t understand is the significance of this Davis connection. Even if Davis was an avid communist supporter that doesn’t mean that Obama’s affiliation with him makes him a communist. I bet if any of us looked into our past we would find associations maybe even friendships with people who had extremely different political and religious beliefs than us. So what is the big deal?

 

It is interesting that 15,000 angry letters appeared the day after main stream media took shots to question Obama’s patriotism. It really does show that there is a new era of online political activism. The most fascinating part of the article however, is the fact that Blue State Digital has created an online letter format so an upset reader just has to enter their zip code and name to send a pre written letter of complaint about what the newspaper had published. They don’t have to even write out what they are complaining about. I think this is interesting because it gives a majority of people who may have been angry about something that was written in the past but who were too lazy to actually write a letter of complaint a way to send a complaint in three simple clicks. So in that sense it makes it even easier for lazy people to complain. On the other hand it is an easy way to mobilize a large portion of the blogosphere to create a positive change. I did find it interesting that half the letters sent did not use this pre-text they wrote the body of the letter themselves. It is difficult to say whether or not this new online letter format inspired those people to take action though.