I had been trying to decide whether I should respond to all the comments regarding my post the other day about Hillary Clinton’s website and its appeal for support of the Rutgers women’s basketball team, which had stirred up some dust from the folks at Media Matters. I was leaning against engaging on this one, until a friend from graduate school sent me an e-mail last night alerting me to the fact that Keith Olbermann had declared me the “Worst Person in the World.” (In my house, we missed it. We were probably watching “The Office.”, where Michael was threatening to jump off a building. Very funny episode.)
Now, I suppose I should say something. So here goes:
Of course I know that “CONTRIBUTE” button is a permanent fixture on Clinton’s website. Every campaign (and, for that matter, every charitable organization) that maintains a website seems to have one. And that was sort of my point. More and more, we all go to campaign websites to get information about the candidates. But two of the reasons they maintain these websites are:
1. To bring in money.
and
2. To collect e-mail addresses, so that they can hound people for money.
I spend a lot of time on these websites, and have registered with most of them (the better to know what they are up to), so I get fundraising appeals on what seems to be an hourly basis. While I am certain that Hillary Clinton was genuinely outraged over what happened on Imus, the decision by her campaign operatives to post this online petition had some tangible benefits to her campaign as well. (The fact that the campaign sent out an e-mail alerting reporters and bloggers to this petition, so that they would talk about it and drive traffic to it, seems to confirm that.) Does that make her unprincipled? Of course not. It just shows that she and her team have a lot of experience at doing politics–and this is, after all, a political blog. Also, please note that as soon as her spokesman Phil Singer clarified that they were not collecting e-mail addresses from this petition, I also posted that. (However, the petition does have a place to click if you want to receive e-mail from the campaign. You know, just in case.)
For those of you who see some kind of massive bias on my part regarding Senator Clinton: I would suggest you read a few of the many stories I have written about her in the past in dead-tree TIME, including this cover last summer.
For Keith Olbermann: If you are looking for candidates for the Worst Person in the World, I would suggest a novel that I am currently reading called “What is the What?” by Dave Eggers. It is a fictionalized memoir of what happened to one of the Lost Boys of Sudan. In fact, if you give me your address, I will happily send you one. It might help put a few things into perspective.
UPDATE: To frequent (and favorite) commenter Terrapin–I have absolutely no preference as to what she should have done. As someone once put it: I report, you decide. (Note: That last line was meant to be *ironic.* Fear the Turtle.)
UPDATE2: James, we love you, too. Hoplite, not so much. And careful readers of this blog (and this blogger) know that we have taken–um–note of what Republican candidates are doing as well. (Exhibit A: McCain, John) and (Exhibit B: McCain, John, ) both from the same day as the Clinton post.