Thursday, May 3, 2007

Websites and electronic friends

In this lull between visits, Hillary Clinton's New Hampshire campaign has been beavering away in Manchester - getting the office humming along, the campaign outreach liaised and, most importantly of all, the NH campaign website up and running.
It is full of juicy details about the groundswell of support following Hillary's five NH visits and the plans afoot for a Hillary Day of Action on May 12.

Meanwhile, one can see a very different support base growing on My Space. This community is so vast that no one can afford not to be a member. Even I have a page. Hillary and the other candidates most emphatically are on board. It is interesting to see the growth of "friends" in that arena. Hillary had 52199 this morning. John Edwards had 30276. Meanwhile, John McCain had 25367 and Rudi Giuliani, with several aggressive My Space sites, seemed to have only 192. Giuliani's unofficial site had some pretty ugly anti-Democrat material. Hillary's has this:





The Republican Debate is happening tonight and the Repub candidates, all 10 of them, are out and about claiming their moment in the sun. Mitt Romney, the movie star-handsome Mormon with only 14186 friends on My Space, scored an airing on Jay Leno last night showing what a smooth operator he is with his well-scripted jokes and constant family references. He's a "family values" man and recommended that America "look at my wife and me to see American values". Jay did corner him on a question about the Mormon history of racial discrimination to which Romney replied: "One of my best friends is in Ghana bringing people into the church right now". Shudder.

Only in America, eh. Like this whole fascinating process.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

It is characteristic of Australians to believe that they understand the US far better than they actually do.

A good start in dealing with this would be to drop the tired (and usually inaccurate) phrase "Only in America".