This diary was originally going to be called "Confessions of a Former Dittohead--The Recap Episode." But during the course of writing it I realized something. It was one year ago today that I dragged my 17 pound laptop into the friendly confines of The Flying Saucer in Memphis, TN, connected to their free wifi hotspot, and wrote and posted my very first blog entitled...Confessions of a Former Dittohead. It is with a profound sense of symmetry that I now sit on the exact same (albeit kind of disgusting) sofa one year later with my now svelte 2 pound tablet to deliver what amounts to my Former Dittohead State of the Union. Actually my first title was the most accurate. This is the crappy recap episode.
Update [2006-2-1 14:28:43 by advisorjim]: Here are the confirmed tour dates for those who are asking...(More to come)
May 2 - Memphis, TN (Davis Kidd)
May 5 - Nashville, TN (Davis Kidd)
May 10 - Louisville, KY (Carmichales)
May 11 - Cleveland, OH (Mac's Backs)
May 22 - Washington, DC (Busboys & Poets)
May 23 - NYC (Barnes & Noble Greenwich Village)
May 24 - Boston, MA (Back Pages)
June 8-11 - YearlyKos
June 15 - Atlanta, GA (B&N - Buckhead)In the lifecycle of any TV show the recap episode is always the worst, despite the best efforts of our finest writing minds to create plausible scenarios. Whether it's the precocious new kid querying it's new dad about the family's history, or the elite federal agent testifying before a congressional subcommittee, the convenient pretexts ring hollow, and at the end of the day you're forced to realize that, yes, this is in fact `the crappy clip show.' On the DVD, it's the episode I skip. On Tivo, it's the one I delete sight unseen. And if for some gawdawful reason I'm watching live TV, it means I can change the channel. I abhor the `recap episode.' Today, I'm writing one.
In my last diary I listed the known dates and locations for my book tour in May (before launching in a Alzheimer's-esque commentary repeat of my dad's `objective reality' statement that I'd already covered in my "Jesus would lose the war on terror" diary. Sorry for the repeat. Papaw went off his meds). Afterwards I got a few comments, and several emails asking "What book?" It is in the interest of any `new' readers I may have that I embark on this backward-looking retrospective.
On February 25, 2004, at the age of 31 I officially became a Democrat, having spent the previous 13 years of my political existence as a Dittohead. (Why that particular date you may ask? Ah...for that you'll have to read the book. Gotta do something to drive up those sales!) Roughly 26 months later (April 2006), my book "Confessions of a Former Dittohead" will come out detailing why and how it happened. What follows here is everything of note that happened in between.
I voted for Bush in 2000. By 2004 I realized I needed to do more than just become a Democrat. I needed to make amends. This Bush fella wasn't just making mistakes, he was screwing up my country. It had to stop! I started looking at the Democratic candidates to decide which one I was going to, not just vote, but to campaign for.
In April I attended a Kerry party and listened to a conference call where in 10 short minutes John Kerry absolutely blew me away. He wasn't just the best candidate, he was the perfect candidate at the perfect time. As a Certified Financial Planner, I found his health care plan to be sensible, affordable, and friendly to the private sector (more on that in my next diary). His Vietnam experience meant he knew how to deal with a no-win situation like the one we're facing in Iraq. Mostly Kerry represented a fresh start--a signal to the rest of the world that we understood that we needed their cooperation to win a global war on terror.
With the election of President Kerry I would consider my debt to my country paid in full, and American would return to the greatness of the mid to late 90s. Thanks to either the honest disagreement of 120,000 Ohio-ans or crooked Diebold voting machines, I awoke on November 3rd to the cold realization that my debt hadn't been paid. Worse, like a credit card where you've only made the minimum payment, my balance was higher now than when I started. A larger Republican majority in both houses of Congress meant my work hadn't even begun.
The days immediately following the election were filled with non-productive self-loathing, bitterness, and resentment. It's probably how Dr. Frankenstein felt after his monster kills that first kid. "Oh crap! What did I just do?" Then came December--the month of denial.
Deep down I had kind of hoped that Bush really didn't believe any of the crap that he was spewing on the campaign trail. I really thought he was just saying whatever he had to say to get reelected, and that he actually knew how badly everything he had done sucked. It was my hope that, after winning, Bush would...not so much `come clean' as `tone it down.' Acknowledge his mistakes (he wasn't running for office again, after all), and announce his new plans to start rolling the ball in a new direction. As depressing as it was to lose the election, it was more depressing to see that Bush really did live in a bubble. He wasn't bluffing on the campaign trail. He really did believe his own bullshit. We were doomed.
That was December. Then came January. January was a bad month for me personally because I realized I had to move to another company. I'd been working for American Express Financial Advisors for 4 years, and they'd really made the working environment intolerable. I won't go into it. I don't want to get sued. The bottom line is in January I started looking for someplace else to work. By the end of January my job search hadn't really turned up any good prospects, and I wasn't sure what to do next. In the financial advising world about 50% of your time is spent doing your actual job, and the other 50% is spent looking for new clients. I didn't want to add any new clients for a company that I knew I was leaving, so exactly one year ago today I was moved to write my first blog.
I was a big fan of The Daily Kos in the months leading up to the election. It was a great source for `breaking news' or the latest polling data, or even some good facts about the Swift Boat campaign. I cautiously put a toe in the blogosphere ocean with a 6 paragraph mea culpa entitled "Confessions of a Former Dittohead." Expecting a dozen or so comments, I was surprised when my diary topped the recommended list and I got hundreds of comments. "What made you change your mind?" "What can I tell my dittohead coworker?" "Why don't dittoheads listen to reason?" "My dad's a dittohead. Can you help me?"
Suddenly I saw a way to help make a difference in a non-election year. I couldn't stop the right-wing noise machine, but I could publish it's playbook. So that's what I set out to do. I followed up with two different kinds of diaries--one detailing my personal conversion story, and the other breaking down the issues of the day to show where you could find the pressure points of the dittohead psyche.
It was a remarkably productive time. Diaries sprung from my head fully formed, like the proverbial Athena! Before February 2nd came to a close I had posted 5 diaries. Long ones, too! People started telling me that keeping up with my diaries was like drinking from a fire hose, but I couldn't help it! I would either write all that stuff down or my head was going to explode!
Less than 10 days after my first diary hit Daily Kos, people were asking when I would write a book. That was a line I wasn't sure I wanted to cross. Writing a book seemed like a lot of work! Then an emailer pointed out that I'd already written close to 50 pages of single-spaced material, and suddenly the idea didn't seem so far fetched. Another Kossak got me in touch with a some friends of his who were in the publishing business--Robert and Elizabeth with Ig Publishing. Elizabeth said that she and Robert really liked my material, but they wanted to see me do a book proposal first to prove that I could `do the work.'
She wasn't kidding. That whole `book proposal' thing is a real pain in the ass. I started working on it in mid-March and had it turned in by early April. On the morning of April 12th, 2005 I was standing in line in front of a restaurant called Barksdale's waiting to meet Al Franken, who was in town to do his show at the National Civil Rights Museum. While I was waiting in line I checked my voicemail on my cell phone. It was Elizabeth. They really liked my book proposal, and they wanted to publish the book. A few minutes later I met Al and told him about my book. He asked me what he could say to his dittohead friend, Mark Luther. I completely locked up. I had no idea what to say. I'd written 30,000 words on how to talk to a dittohead, but when Al asked I couldn't think of a thing. I thought of something great later using the dittohead's `big picture' analogy and how I ran out of `truth nails' to hang the picture from, but it was WAY too late by then. Stupid treppenwitz.
Contract in hand I set about writing the book. If writing a book proposal is hard, writing a book is like vacationing at Club Gitmo. Blogs can be about anything. Just whatever's on your mind at the time. Books have to actually be about something, and they have to make sense. Plus you can't just link to something in a book. You have to actually explain where you got it from. At first I thought my book would be just sort of a compilation of my blogs. It quickly became apparent that it was going to have to be WAY more than just that. It was going to have to be mostly new material. It would involve completely rewriting what I had already written to make it fit within a logical framework. Every time I thought I was done Robert would ask if I could explain this point a little better, or if I could add some new material in a certain chapter, or if I could make something else a little less topical. I was annoyed that every time I thought I was finished I was wrong. I was even more annoyed that every time Robert was right. The material did need to be refined.
By October of 2005, two things happened. One, I was actually, finally, really done with the book. The other was I finally changed companies, leaving American Express for a private practice with Raymond James. The rest of the year was spent getting acclimated to my new company and bringing over all my old American Express clients. It was also spent attending a lot of events for the Shelby County Democratic Party--fundraisers, socials, discussion groups, etc. At Harold Ford Jr.'s Holiday party I was approached about running against Marsha Blackburn in Tennessee's 7th District. I offered to be a candidate of last resort. I don't particularly want to do it, but if no one else will run against her she's sure as Hell not going to run unopposed! Not much of a battle cry, I'll admit, but it's the best I've got.
In January things started happening on the book front. My cover appeared on Amazon.com, and pre-orders are being taken. Dates were set for the book signing tour. Publisher's Weekly is looking at doing a review. Markos gave me a blurb, and I got to put a galley copy of my book in Howard Dean's hands after he gave a speech here in Memphis. Al Franken's producer is interested in having me on the show to promote the book. More people want me to run for congress.
So here I sit one year later, and to quote one of my top 10 favorite songs of all time, "and you may ask yourself, `well...how did I get here?'" And the answer is simple. I got here because of you. Your questions. Your comments. Your enthusiasm. Your support. Without you I'm just an angry guy in a bar with a laptop. But thanks to you I have the opportunity to do what I set out to do in 2004. I have the opportunity to make a difference. And I have you to thank for it.
So let us raise a glass and toast this first anniversary occasion! Here's to fixing the world in 2006, one former dittohead at a time!