Stirling Newberry speaks here about a telltale struggle with the Wesley Clark campaign which he helped create. He is the blogger who wrote earlier this month: “By the time you read these words the bell will be tolling for Wesley Clark’s candidacy.” 
And thus he crystallized a contest between people who drafted Clark and those who manage him; between analog and digital politics; between the Pyramid and the Sphere, as Newberry likes to illustrate it. It’s a contest that isn’t over between Internetizens and the Clinton alumni, between blog spirit and Democratic memory. Because Newberry remains a fierce Clark loyalist (to the candidacy if not the campaign) and because he is still blogging regularly to the Clarksphere, the fight defines a nice puzzle about politics in the Internet era: can dissension actually promote a campaign when it’s an exercise of independent initiative on the wide-open Web? My guess is: yes.
Stirling Newberry, I discover, is a musician as well as a programmer, a history buff as well as a politico. As persuasively as anybody I’ve met, he grasps and elaborates what feels so extraordinary about this moment, including: the Linux vs. Microsoft modeling of the new ”open source” politics; the transition from campaign organization to electronic networking; the arrival of Internet time in politics; the convergence of “influentials” in the blogosphere; the link between rock ‘n’ roll and blogging; the Iraq War trigger on the blog surge, and the Ralph Waldo Emerson connection. This first half of a longer conversation addresses Wesley Clark’s missed opportunity to develop his Net roots. Stirling Newberry would have urged Clark, for example, not to concede or abandon the Iowa caucuses but to turn them over to his bloggers, “make Iowa the test cast of the new politics,” an independent sort of seminar in self-organization on the Web. In the second half of the conversation, which I will post tomorrow, Newberry takes a crack at the new “master narrative” of American politics. Listen here.
{ 42 } Comments
Chris,
Contrast this with a comment at the Wesley Clark Weblog
http://wesleyclarkweblog.com/archives/000529.html#008115
“Not many posters here nowadays, for I know folks want to support and become centralized at the main blog (although I imagine there are still a lot of readers here), but what is here is almost alway “cherce.”
There’s been a migration away from this early grassroots blog to the official campaign blog because readers believe comments at the official blog go right to the top. It seems as if readers have been “voting with their browsers” for centralization.
First of all, although I have had personal differences with Stirling, I listened to this interview and everything he said is dead on and I could add a lot to it. Maybe that will be covered in the second part of this interview. I guess I will see.
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I have to agree with the above poster, everything that Stirling said is spot on, I look forward to reading more.
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great piece much can be read into it but for the most part I agree.
Great post about Stirling, though I wouldn’t say I agree with everything said.
It is a shame that the Wesley Clark campaign didn’t get any further than it did .
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Good post, I think open collaboration will be the new model.
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I love Newberry’s work. He is certainly a skilled musician.
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great piece much can be read into it but for the most partce much can be read into it
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Interesting, never hear this before but don’t assume that just because you agree with.
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I enjoyed Stirling’s commentary.
Thank you.
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