Michelle and Barack Obama out for dinner on Saturday night.

The McCain camp scored one of its few victories over the course of the campaign when it labeled Barack Obama a celebrity in advertising spots that ran in August. The criticism stuck because in many ways it was true: Obama was drawing thousands of adoring fans to every campaign rally he held.

But now that Obama is President-elect, Americans can obsess about their new, handsome Commander-in-Chief and his beautiful family without fear of being labeled star hounds. On Friday, the Obama camp posted election-night photos of the family waiting for Barack to be declared the winner on Flickr, and the page wouldn’t display for a while as visitors eager to see the new first family overloaded the site.

The Obamas are getting the real celebrity treatment: There are now grainy photographs chronicling their every move. The Huffington Post breathlessly declared Sunday, “Obamas Eat Out For First Time Since Win.”

Barack and Michelle Obama are meeting with George and Laura Bush Monday afternoon for their first official tour of the White House, and Washington insiders are predicting awkwardness as Obama meets with someone he has spent the last months criticizing on the campaign trail. But while Obama meets with the exiting president, continues to assemble his cabinet, and weighs what policy initiatives to take on first, us lowly citizens are tackling the real issue the first family needs to address, asking “what kind of dog should Malia and Sasha get?” [Ed note—presidential celebrities are just like you and me!]

Obama addressed this concern at his first press conference as president-elect on Friday.

With respect to the dog, this is a major issue. I think it’s generated more interest on our Web site than just about anything. We have—we have two criteria that have to be reconciled. One is that Malia is allergic, so it has to be hypo-allergenic. There are a number of breeds that are hypo-allergenic. On the other hand, our preference would be to get a shelter dog. But obviously, a lot of shelter dogs are mutts, like me. So the—so, whether we’re going to be able to balance those two things, I think, is a pressing issue on the Obama household.

Obama has been praised for running a brilliant campaign, but clearly he knows the real way to get into Americans’ hearts: talk about pets. Just Google “Obama family dog” and there will be thousands of stories and hundreds of breed suggestions for the Obamas to consider.

Even Bill Kristol is concerned a dog-friendly Obama will be an unbeatable president. Writing about Obama’s press conference, the conservative New York Times columnist said, “Here, in a few sentences, Obama did the following: He deepened his bond with every dog lover in America. He identified with every household that’s tried to figure out what kind of dog to get. He touched every parent with a kid allergic to pets. He showed compassion by preferring a dog from a shelter. And he demonstrated a dry and slightly politically incorrect wit by commenting that ‘a lot of shelter dogs are mutts like me.’”

A common refrain during the campaign from McCain and others was that Obama was an unknown. Now that he will be the next president, there is a demonstrated hunger from Americans to learn more about Obama and his family. What new styles will Michelle introduce? Where will the girls go to school? Will Barack follow through on his pledge to install a basketball court in the White House?

We’ll all be able to follow along as the Obamas make their new home in Washington. Some celebrities complain about the lack of privacy in their lives. But that doesn’t apply when it’s the president, right?

Does the world really need another news aggregator Web site? Tina Brown poses this question to introduce her new site, the Daily Beast. Brown, formerly the editor at Vanity Fair, The New Yorker and Talk magazines, launched the Daily Beast earlier this week.

Brown says the site will be more than just an aggregator (naturally). She writes, “[The Daily Beast] is a speedy, smart edit of the Web from the merciless point of view of what interests the editors … The Daily Beast doesn’t aggregate. It sifts, sorts, and curates. We’re as much about what’s not there as what is.”

I spent a day with the site, reading most of the content and getting used to the site’s interface. Is Brown’s staff executing her editorial goals so far?

The site has a spiffy design, with a feel that’s more magazine than Web site. Unlike other aggregators, the Daily Beast doesn’t overwhelm you with text. And unlike the Huffington Post, it’s look is more polished.

The strength of the site comes from one of its four main components: “The Big Fat Story.” Here, editors select a “story of the day” to feature, with six articles drawn from a wide variety of sources designed to give readers an overview of the topic. The Daily Beast’s first “fat” story focused on Bill Ayers, “pal” of Barack Obama’s and former domestic terrorist, who has been mentioned frequently by Republicans on the campaign trail during the past few weeks. The stories include a biography of Ayers, a piece questioning the New York Times‘ recent Obama/Ayers story, and links to Obama’s Web site for an official response.

Readers seek out aggregators that have a sensibility close to theirs, whether it be the Drudge Report or Digg. The benefit of the Big Fat Story is it allows readers to make up their own minds about a hot story … to a degree, of course. Readers have to trust Daily Beast editors are providing them with a variety of sources.

One criticism of aggregators is they might whittle the “whole” Internet down some, but there’s still a lot of content to sift through. The Daily Beast has an answer to that complaint with its “Cheat Sheet” page, a list of fewer than 20 stories generated each day and designed to give readers a “best of the best of the best” of stories and other content available online. Examples from Thursday’s list: A story from the Times about the bailout, and clips from Michelle Obama on “The Daily Show.”

Reading through the list of Cheat Sheet stories, it’s clear the Daily Beast doesn’t yet quite know what type of animal it wants to be. Should it be snarky? Funny? Focusing on the weird minutia of the Internet? The problem is there are already aggregators for all those types of news requirements, so it isn’t clear how the Daily Beast is going to stand out in this notoriously crowded marketplace.

Similar to the Huffington Post, the Daily Beast will have a stable of columnists with their own blogs, plus original reporting (all included under the “Blogs & Stories” header). Already the site has created buzz by running a spiked Jennifer Lopez profile, where the singer and actress appeared disheveled and talked about her recent nervous breakdown. Michael Kinsley, Slate founder and Time magazine columnist, added to the lore about John McCain’s temper when he retold a story for his blog about the senator blowing up at a craps table in Puerto Rico.

Tina Brown isn’t being accused of publishing the Daily Beast for selfish and superficial reasons, unlike Arianna Huffington when she started her eponymous site. But HuffPo is now a well-established Internet entity, and the Daily Beast has a ways to go. In today’s cluttered Internet, even the aggregators need to stand out. The Daily Beast hasn’t distinguished itself yet.

With one presidential and one vice presidential debate behind us, a pattern is emerging: each time, the Democratic candidate has come to the table armed with facts and policy proposals, while the Republican catered to pundits and the public with an amalgam of attitude and atmospherics, colloquialisms and avoidance-by-way-of-personal-anecdote.

And in tomorrow’s town hall meeting in Nashville, John McCain will be on his home turf. McCain’s been described as the “master of the town hall,” and Nashville may present his last, best hope of wresting the momentum from Barack Obama. Rest assured, he’ll be in fighting form.

Obama, who has been criticized by opponents for being “aloof” and “professorial,” may have his work cut out for him. But his laid-back, unflappable demeanor and his down-to-earth lifestyle create an excellent opportunity to connect with the voters in the room and those watching on television. Here’s what he needs to do to capitalize:

• Keep it short. Like Al Gore and John Kerry, Barack Obama is a victim of the Progressive’s love of policy nuance. The Harvard lawyer may love building and presenting a case, but he’ll be speaking to “ordinary Americans”—likely white, working class, and skewing older. He’ll need to keep his responses short, pithy and punchy. This is no secret, and he’s pulled it off plenty of times, so there’s no need to worry; but he’ll have to keep it in mind the whole time. Even one belabored answer risks losing the audience for good.

• Make eye contact. And not just with those in the room. Obama should split his time between speaking to the crowd and directly to the camera. In the Vice Presidential debate on Thursday, we all witnessed the contrast between Sarah Palin’s eyes staring through the screen and Joe Biden’s, cast downward as he addressed moderator Gwen Ifill. Obama will be wise to remember that the people he needs to win over are on the other side of the camera.

• Get a move on. We’ve all seen Obama in town hall meetings, half-sitting, allowing his comfort with the constituents to create a relaxed, personal atmosphere. Even seated, his presence still commands attention. But this doesn’t translate as well on camera. By contrast, John McCain is a mover. He prowls the stage, cracking jokes and addressing his “friends.” In the context of the emerging campaign narrative, this contrast can serve Obama well – Obama the cool hand versus the jumpy and erratic McCain—but he must be careful not to cede control of the room. Obama has an advantage standing next to the shorter, stooped McCain, and as he walks with his languid stride, even stepping into the audience to connect with questioners, he can remain the singular focus for the entire 90 minutes.

• Yes, words matter. Obama often uses clinical language, referring to “the middle class.” In more populist moments, he opts for “folks.” But in informal town halls, he must go a step further, into the second person. I’d like to see him directly address a questioner, or even the television audience, with “you.” I’d like to see him ask a follow-up question of those in the audience, put full names to anecdotal characters, even tell stories that extend beyond the campaign trail, into his personal life. The majority of undecided voters are not bigots or cynics—they’re just waiting for him to invite them in.

Obama has every advantage a candidate could ask for, and Tuesday night may be his opportunity, not just to extend his lead in the polls, but to upset the undisputed champion of the town hall meeting.

This was originally posted on Off the Bus at Huffington Post. ]]> http://www.popandpolitics.com/2008/10/07/off-the-bus-eric-morse-dishes-advice-to-obama-for-tonight/feed/ 0 http://www.popandpolitics.com/2008/07/24/commenting-on-the-commenters/ http://www.popandpolitics.com/2008/07/24/commenting-on-the-commenters/#comments Thu, 24 Jul 2008 22:24:24 +0000 tricia romano http://www.popandpolitics.com/?p=2755

Commenters offer an unfiltered look at what people think about a story or a website, but they are sometimes more of a headache for a site, than a benefit. While insightful discussion does happen in the forums, as this piece in Politico notes, the anonymity of commenters allows for racist and prejudicial inflammatory remarks that wouldn’t ever fly in another setting.

“Nobody would tolerate if, at the end of ‘Meet the Press,’ if a bunch of weirdos stormed the studio and started screaming weird racist stuff,” says Wonkette editor, Ken Layne. “They’d call the police.”

The overwhelming crudeness of some comments has led some sites to take cautionary monitoring measures. One statistic jumped out at me.

At the left-leaning HuffingtonPost.com, which got 600,000 comments last month, the site has a paid staff of 30 full-time and part-time moderators who work in shifts around-the-clock to filter each blog comment. They also “post-moderate” the comments attached to news stories appearing on the site.

So, to sum it up: Journalists are being fired left and right; papers are closing; and Huffington Post, which doesn’t pay its bloggers, is paying 30 people to moderate the junk that people write in the comments for free. Feel free to comment.