November 12, 2006

More election night nostalgia.

Downloading my Veterans Day pictures yesterday, I saw I had some photos from the election night party that I'd never checked out. Here are two:

Blogging the election

Blogging the election

IN THE COMMENTS: "Surely you have another picture of Mary Katherine Ham you could post. Please?" Okay, how about this one?

The election night blog party

That's MKH in the background. In front: Captain Ed and Nick Gillespie!

14 comments:

Anonymous said...

FYI, 'just deserts' is spelt with one s. It comes from the word deserve.

Ann Althouse said...

CB: Check it out. (Probably not what you're hoping for...)

Maxine Weiss said...

Oh, lookie....a raised dessert buffet.

Puttin on the Ritz!

Petits fours, creme brulee and profiteroles.

Pretty swanky.

No Twinkies and Ding Dongs for this crowd.

No sir. Only the best.

Peace, Maxine

Simon said...

Not so good for MKH fans - but for anyone who gets excited by the ravishing Cap'n Ed, it's a great deal... ;)

Maxine Weiss said...

It's funny how Ann keeps bringing back up the debacle of that night, as a reminder of the disaster.

All I can see is a group of people who squandered their opportunity to be on a national stage and showcase their talents.

"To Whom Much Is Given, Much Is Expected"

But the public didn't get "much" from this trendy and overprivileged crowd, now did it?

The Blogosphere has been rocked. And the public's initial assumptions about the talents of these people has been proven correct.

Love, Maxine

Anonymous said...

Well at least we don't see any laptops on fire. I fear for Captain Ed if he had to make a run for it.

Simon said...

Maxine,
It isn't especially clear to me how much one can really blame the bloggers. The format was decided and controlled by CNN, and when someone offers you free booze and the chance to meet some interesting people doing something new that might or might not play out, what're you going to do, say no?

Maxine Weiss said...

I think CNN was just giving them a venue, and expecting they'd run with it.

The expectation was breaking stories, scoops, the agony of defeat, the thrill of victory, people jumping off bridges, gossip, rumors, innuendo, etc..

...you know, all the usual we've come to expect....and you might especially relish on Election night.

Instead, we get this kind of subdued, nothingness...people watching eachother.

I want filth. I want dirt. I want sleaze. Rumor and innuendo.

That's what makes it fun, plus sooner or later, you'd come up with some kind of a scoop or two.

Let's face it: the Bloggers squandered their big opportunity to show their stuff.

And, there won't be a second chance.

Peace, Maxine

Ruth Anne Adams said...

Were you segregated by party affiliation, or was that self selection?

Maxine Weiss said...

Every Blogger's worst fear: to be irrelevant.

Especially when they had so much "invested" in this.

Ann must be crestfallen.

She's absolutely shattered.

Love, Maxine

Ann Althouse said...

Ruth Anne: People were mixed. I came late and just took the last place available. In retrospect, I wish I hadn't taken a place but just carried my laptop around and taken up temporary spots and talked to people more. I did that to some extent, but I put too much effort into trying to watch the returns, and I simply couldn't do it! How hard it it to watch television? It was impossible for me.

Simon said...

Maxine,
But election day is when bloggers and blogs cease to be relevant. There was a wonderful article after the Dean campaign folded in spring '04 called "Exiting Deanspace," which extremely persuasively argued that blogs represent the triumph of affinity over geography, but that elections represent the triumph of geography over affinity. It ultimately didn't matter on election day that Kos had a whole bunch of readers fired up for Ned Lamont, because at the end of the day, when it mattered, the only ones who had a vote lived in Connecticut, and no matter how passionately those who lived in connecticut might have believed, they still only got one vote. Elections are the singularity of reason, at which everything basically comes down to one thing: numbers. There was nothing that bloggers could do to influence the result after polls opened, and short of having a fight, there wasn't much more that they could add in terms of analysis that was distinct from what the professionals had to say.

If the party was a failure, it was CNN's failure. that being the case, I think that Ann's approach probably made as much sense as anyone else's - show up, enjoy the ride, and see what interesting information about the bloggers would appear. It's a little bit meta, but it makes as much sense as anything else in that kind of environment.

Maxine Weiss said...

See, I told you Ann was shattered. So distraught she couldn't even watch Televsion.

Even worse than I thought.

Let's face it: the golden age of blogging ended with the Swift Boat Vets and Rathergate.

It's been all down-hill from there. And it's not coming back.

Love, Maxine

Simon said...

Maxine,
I suppose it depends on what one considers to be the core function of blogs and the irreducible characteristics of a blog. How (and why) blogs are written, and what they can achieve, is always going to be a moving target. You can see that in Prof. Bainbridge's recent change in tone, and I'd argue from personal experience that you're going to see consolidation of several individual blogs into group blogs, simply because of the economies of scale that can be invoked.