I saw representative James Clyburn on Countdown talking about a "corpocracy". The substance of his point - a disappointment with the Supreme Court's Ruling on corporate money - was admirable but the use of the word "corpocracy" struck me as indicative of a huge problem in our self-government: deafness on the part of representatives.
When I watch a football game and there is a play that needs to be challenged but the team doesn't throw the flag in time, I am always perplexed by the announcers implication that they didn't have time to see the replay. With their high-tech operation in the booth, they don't have a guy who just watches the same broadcast I see, with timely and thorough replays?
It's the same with congress. With all their self-important pomp, it seems assumed that it is beneath them to have an ear to "the blogosphere." granted, it's easy to criticize bloggers as armchair quarterbacks, but within the cacophony is an answer to every situation. If congress had been even tenuously attentive to the blogosphere then Democrats would not be in the peril they're in now.
It annoys me when I read some blogger criticize a blogger for blogging. "What have you done? Get out there and do something!" Get out where? Yes, there is some political legwork that needs to be done, but politics is a market of ideas, and except for the presumed guilt that comes with sitting in pajamas eating cheetos there is nothing wrong with clarifying this gambit of ideas via the web. If it were clear to a congressperson what his constituency thought, what difference does it make if they missed a day of work to march in the snow or if they comfortably said "yes" or "no" to this or that idea in an e-mail? I think this implied shame that goes with using the internet is inhibiting the power that lies beneath this instrument to make democracy the ideal it should be. The perpetuation that ideas from the internet are somehow not real ideas is how that lumbering beast called congress could get so far away from its constituency's ambition.
Why do Teabaggers get so much credence? It is quite apparent that they are politically illiterate and the political action committee of crazy uncles who live in the attic, yet somehow they ruled the summer and beyond. I know there are reasons of theater and controversy that they conquer the media. bloggers are boring. But that is not the job of our representatives, to be tripping and fumbling from shiny object to shiny object. It is there job to represent us, no matter how boring we are.
Regarding Clyburn and his pride at coining the word "corpocacy", I find it funny that I have seen the word corporatocracy (or spelling variations thereof), because those lazy bloggers learned long ago that "corpocracy" sounds like it means "rule by the dead". I don't know, maybe that's what he meant. It seems like he could have one of his staff giving him updates on the blogosphere but I guess that would be unprofessional.
Also, I see Obama went to Ohio. Trying to "campaign" in a "swing state" I guess. I think he'd be better off sitting at home and reading some Kos.