Howdy, Dan!
I'm not concerned about you digging up dirt on me; I dig up dirt on people all the time, having worked as a journalist in the past. There was an incident in which several people searched my name to see what sort of maniac they were conversing with and then posted links to my work, which I'm obviously fine with; the thing is, a couple of those same people also write all these comments about how no one cares what I think (Rob Crawford, for instance, follows this amusing pattern). This is no skin off my nuts, of course, but it's also silly and hilarious, which was all I intended to convey. As for you, I like you, but of course we're on different wavelengths politically and I take issue with some of the information that gets posted on Protein Wisdom. It's not about Obama, whom I do prefer over McCain but whom I also disagree with on plenty of issues and whom I don't trust on others (he's lying about his stance on NAFTA, I think, and I do not believe he is a Christian or anything else other than a quietist, but maybe that's wishful thinking on my part, being a skeptic and whatnot).
As for the call, we'll think up a way to do this in a way such that our questions to both campaigns are comparable. I'll give it some thought this evening. The key may lie in an old Dear Abby column... you probably think I'm kidding, but I'm not. Dear Abby can be applied to many things.
Incidentally, we may be able to write this up as a feature article and get it sold, then split the difference and share the bylines if you'd like; it's an interesting subject, actually, and I'm pretty curious about this myself. Or, you can just post the results on Protein Wisdom. I'm easy either way.
For the record, I predict that we're going to be given the runaround by both campaigns to some extent, but that we'll get some responses back from each of them. Most likely, we will be told that someone will get back to us regarding some (if not all) questions, and then they never will, so we won't know the full results until a couple of days later, when it becomes clear that we will get no such response.
My number is 512-560-2302. I'll give you a ring sometime later this week. Meanwhile, I may go ahead and query some pubs on this to see if they'll ask for the article on spec.
Have a good one,
Barrett Brown
Brooklyn, NYOn Wed, Aug 6, 2008 at 5:28 PM, Dan COLLINS
<vermontaigne@gmail.com> wrote:
Sounds like an idea. It will have to be a call to people who occupy equivalent spots on the campaign, they can't know what the nature of the deal is in advance, and we'll have to let them know that we have five questions for them to answer, but they can't know them in advance, though they can utilize staff for their answers.
My telephone number is 802-825-0638. I don't understand your concern about my digging up dirt on you.
Dan