Author: A.C. Kleinheider

“So, what are the bloggers talking about today?” That was invariably the lead-in to almost every conversation I had with co-workers during my first blogging job at television station WKRN, where for two years I was tasked with giving the web audience of Nashville’s ABC affiliate a window into the world of political blogging.

While tempted many times to retort with something like “anarcho-syndicalism and applesauce,” I usually just gave them an answer I thought would be easily digestible and suitable for small talk.  

Blogs had been around for at least seven years or so at that point, but most in the newsroom didn’t know quite what to make of me and my fellow paid blogger Brittney Gilbert. 

We might have drawn a paycheck but reading and writing blog posts all day did not merit entry into “the club” — at least not initially.

In my four years as a pro blogger, both at WKRN and nashvillepost.com, I often encountered journalists who did not view me or what I did as “legitimate.” I never really protested too much. I still don’t. As Eminem so eloquently put it, “I am whatever you say I am.” 

From the time I was first hired as a professional blogger by WKRN to the time I was sacked at nashvillepost.com, I was at one time or another a pure blogger with a strong voice, an aggregator passing along news of interest to readers, and even, with varying frequency, a provider of breaking news previously unpublished by other media outlets. Very rarely during any of that time did I wonder whether what I was doing was “Big J” journalism. I was more concerned about keeping the readers engaged and coming back for more.

In 1998, when I was fresh out of school, I applied for many journalism jobs and was turned away from every one. By the time I eventually became an employee of a media company in 2006, after a string of dead-end jobs, I had more or less given up on the dream of being a journalist, so it never much concerned me whether my colleagues in the two newsrooms in which I worked viewed me as such. I was getting paid by a media company to read and write blog posts. I intended to keep doing that as long as I could.

Of course, I was aware of the treatises being written on the effect of bloggers and “new media” on the craft of journalism, but the debate over whether bloggers were journalists was one I mostly shied away from. I was less interested in waxing philosophical about blogging than I was in trying to actually keep readers abreast of news and generating page views for my employers.

Blogs are merely a delivery system for — well, whatever. It’s a platform, not an art form. Like the printed page, television, radio, or Twitter, a blog is just a medium. Time-stamped posts displayed in reverse chronological order — that’s what a blog is. It can be a diary or a list of recipes. It can be a log of libel or an archive of real-time reporting. 

Aggregation, analysis, commentary, and reporting all have come under my byline on a blog at one time or another. You can call that journalism or you can call it pancakes, it doesn’t really matter. What does matter is serving the reader.

Online gurus who say that blogging, citizen media, or whatever the latest buzzword is will eventually replace the “mainstream media” have always been smoking that proverbial “good stuff.”

The news still has to be gathered. After that, it can then be analyzed, commented on, and, yes, aggregated. So when I am asked about the future of news aggregation, all I can say is that the future is only as bright as the news being aggregated. Technology has made it very easy to receive and send information. It has lowered the barrier to entry to the publishing business significantly. To hold open the possibility that the challenges confronting the news business are ultimately insurmountable is not pessimism, it is realism.

This is not to say that the craft is going away. The news is not going to die. Readers and viewers are going to get information. Whether that information is going to be trustworthy and whether people will continue to make their living distributing it, however, is still an open question. A question, unfortunately, that my four years of professional blogging still leaves me unable to answer.

A.C. Kleinheider is a Nashville-based blogger-aggregator — and, at the moment, unemployed.

The next governor of Tennessee is in all likelihood going to be a Republican. You know this, I know this, and state senator Jim Kyle knows this.

“It is clear to me that while our campaign had the assets to be competitive in the primary, the legislative fund-raising restriction, the economy, and my duties as Senate leader have severely hampered my ability to generate resources which would have been vital to our success in the general election.”

Those were Memphian Kyle’s words two weeks ago when he gracefully bowed out of the contest for Tennessee governor just over six months into the race.

Doubtless a months-long blackout can hurt the campaign coffers, and carrying Governor Phil Bredesen’s legislative portfolio is no small task. But Kyle knew these things going in.

What changed?

Back in July, U.S. representatives John Tanner and Bart Gordon were still running for reelection, and President Obama’s favorability was in the 60 percent range nationally. Now, according to a new Middle Tennessee State University poll, a slight majority (51 percent) of Tennesseans disapprove of the job Obama is doing. That jumps to 61 percent among independents.

If the economy came around and the Republican three-way primary tore the party apart, maybe there was a chance, one could rationalize, that a strong progressive, populist candidate for governor could do a little damage. It doesn’t look that way now.

Just writing off the governor’s race would be tempting for the Democrats. With the state’s politics — and the nation’s, to some extent — going in the same conservative direction, the urge to hunker down and try to save what is salvageable has to be strong.

Some may even counsel Democrats to surrender to the reality and vote for the GOP’s Bill Haslam in the primary to reinforce the comparatively conciliatory Baker faction and prevent a more radical nominee like Lieutenant Governor Ron Ramsey or Congressman Zach Wamp from winning.

The beauty of the Tennessee system is that citizens can vote in primaries irrespective of their own party affiliation. Defeatism, on the other hand, bothers me.

There are many things to be won and lost in a campaign besides the election. The Tennessee Democratic Party has been through a lot lately. The party has lost control of the legislature and experienced a bitter election for party chairman. A vibrant primary and general-election gubernatorial campaign would show the state that the party isn’t dead yet.

While 2010 isn’t likely to be a Democratic year, it could be a year to show people what Tennessee Democrats are about. People are hurting out there. There are people who are experiencing real economic pain and uneasiness. Republicans have learned to harness that anger, but they don’t own it. They are only renting.

The cultural battles can be saved for another day. What this state needs is a plan to bring jobs back and keep government services working. The weak-sauce solutions Republicans have offered are vague at best, irresponsible at worst. Wamp thinks we can grow ourselves out of our problems, and Haslam wants the government to buy stuff cheaper. That’s all good, but it seems like it would be a strong populist and progressive message to focus on keeping the ship of state steady and the middle class afloat. That might just resonate with a few folks these days.

Can such a message win the day? No, and Jim Kyle was right on that. He couldn’t win the general election, and there may not be a Democrat in Tennessee who could. But again, just because you are outmatched doesn’t mean you shouldn’t step on the battlefield.

Tennessee, longer than most Southern states, has been a two-party state. We like our opposition actual, not nominal. The Republican candidate for governor may win handily, but how he wins and what kind of resistance he meets can affect the policies that are shaped later. If a Republican meets little or token resistance in a campaign, he’s less likely to respect the resistance that arrives down the road.

Democrats don’t have to stand tall in 2010, but they need to stand up — or Tennessee may become a one-party state before its time. A.C. Kleinheider is a blogger/aggregator for the Nashville Post and the City Paper, where a version of this essay first appeared.

“I want to personally thank the many across our state and country who urged me to run for governor. There will be another race and time to ask for your support.”

Those were the words of Harold Ford Jr. bowing out of the race for Tennessee governor just 10 months ago — nearly two years after he now claims he moved to New York to live with his new wife.

Yes, despite holding a Tennessee drivers license and being on the voter rolls in Shelby County until two weeks ago, Harold is a New Yorker now and boasts an issues portfolio entirely consistent with the progressive electorate of that state.

Of course — as countless pundits, prognosticators, and politicos have noted — his portfolio didn’t always look so cosmopolitan. In fact, when his interest in the New York Senate seat first became public, I immediately thought Ford, while a lifelong Democrat, might have to think about eschewing the closed primary and make an independent run for the seat. After all, a dramatic switch from good ole boy Tennessee Southern Democrat to New York liberal in three short years just wasn’t plausible.

But Ford is far more brazen than anyone imagined. Junior has not merely adapted to New York; he has done a clear, abrupt, and unabashed about-face. He has turned his back on just about everything he stood for in 2006, when he ran for Senate against Bob Corker.

Amazingly, he’s not even asking New Yorkers to accept and understand a dramatic transformation storyline. Instead, he’s denying any significant alteration of his politics. Ford asserts that he has not suddenly become pro-gun-control, gay-friendly, pro-choice, and pro-immigrant. He maintains that he always has been. Ford and his new New York spokesman bristle at the insinuation that Ford’s record is not completely consistent with his new progressive electorate.

Ford is by no means the first politician to try and sneak one by the voters, but he may very well be the first to attempt a transformation of this magnitude in the age of YouTube. There aren’t just dry records of his anti-gay-marriage votes in the Congressional Record and bland newspaper accounts of his right-wing 2006 campaign in Lexis/Nexis — there’s video. A lot of it.

On gay marriage, one of the few areas Ford concedes even the slightest evolution, his conversion story is that despite being against “gay marriage” (rhetorically speaking), he has supported civil unions from the moment he entered Congress in 1997. When asked for evidence of this assertion, spokesman Davidson Goldin said it was “undisputed.”

Asked again for evidence the media could use to confirm the claim, Goldin provided none. No vote in the Congress. No clips from old news reports.

I covered Junior’s campaign for U.S. Senate against Bob Corker. In 2006, Ford wanted desperately to leave voters with the impression he abhorred gay marriage and thought it offensive to his faith. He wanted voters to believe that his few votes to restrict abortion amounted to a pro-life record. He wanted voters to believe he had no intention of making any moves against the NRA on firearms legislation. And, more than anything, he tried to get to the political right of his opponent with a fierce advocacy of clamping down on “illegals.”

We like to believe — underneath all the strategy, posturing, and maneuvering — politics really is about something. It may look dirty, but we want to believe everyone has some sort of policy goal, some set of core beliefs for which they fight. But for more politicians than not, politics isn’t about anything but politics. Public service is not a calling, and there is no moral center; it’s just a job. It’s what they do. And Ford is pretty damn good at what he does.

In 2006, Ford lost in a Republican state where his race and family name were a severe handicap. He convinced more than a few Reagan Democrats — and probably a few Reagan Republicans — that he, a Memphis Ford, was on their side.

He didn’t do it because he believed any of what he was saying. That much is clear now. And he didn’t do it for the greater purpose of serving progressive ideals. He did it to win a race. He needed poor and middle-class redneck whites to vote for him, so he donned a camouflage hat and stood in front of a Confederate flag. In New York, he needs to rally the black vote, hold onto Wall Street, and mollify white progressives. And one way or another he’ll do that, too.

Ford’s nihilistic attitude toward politics may be an extreme example of the typical officeholder, but he is not unique. Ford just happens to gamble bigger and play the game at a higher level than most.

(A.C. Kleinheider is blogger/aggregator for the Nashville Post and the City Paper up thataway, where this essay first appeared.)

Conventional wisdom says former senator Bill Frist is not a
political player anymore. After a stillborn run for president and a
decision to forego the governor’s race, Frist has rejoined Nashville’s
Belle Meade Country Club and all but sworn off elective politics.

As a senator, he was competent but not outstanding. As a majority
leader, he was underwhelming. As a potential presidential candidate, he
was a disaster. But now, as a former politician, his advocacy on the
big issues of the day — health care, education, AIDS, even
extremism in the Republican Party — has been, dare we say it,
statesmanlike.

Where has this Frist been? Would the old Frist have said that the
so-called birther movement wasn’t a “reflection of the Republican
Party” and that people “trying to connect the two are exaggerating and
trying to make a point”?

Would the same man who carried water for the Bush administration and
diagnosed Terry Schiavo via videotape have been willing to buck his
party and declare a Democratic health-care plan, denounced by
conservatives as socialist, to be a viable option he would vote for
were he still in office?

Would an earlier incarnation of Frist have chastised his own party
for raising the specter of “death panels”? Would an elected Frist call
arguments against the public option “overblown”?

Retired politicians always seem more attractive when they’re out of
office than when they’re in. They exhibit a freedom outside the
confines of political calculation that they never do when they’re in
the game.

Al Gore was the same way. In 2000, he was a wooden, timid
presidential candidate. Apart from his choice of Joe Lieberman as a
running mate, he was afraid to make bold moves or show any authentic
personality. If the Gore of 2003 and beyond had run against George W.
Bush, some say, our country would look very different from how it does
today.

It seems the version of politicians we say we want to run and serve
are rarely the ones who actually do.

We blame the game of politics, the media, and even the politicians
themselves. We blame anyone and everyone for this eternal condition
— except ourselves.

We talk about politics like it’s something far removed, as though
we’re pawns on a chessboard manipulated by something out of our
control. But the sad fact is that these pandering, paint-by-number
politicians who measure their words and actions haven’t been foisted on
us — but rather chosen by us.

We may say we want politicians to act like post-political Gores and
Frists, but if that was what the public really thirsted for, surely
there’d be an entirely different kind of political consulting.

Consider President Barack Obama. As much as he may have looked (and
to some still does) like a leader above politics, it’s clear he’s just
as cautious and calculating as any other Democratic leader. He hasn’t
taken bold action on foreign policy, and, domestically, he opted not to
push a bold, concrete plan for health reform — opting instead for
a vague outline.

He did that for the same reason any politician does anything: to
preserve a political future.

We can blame a lot of people and cite many reasons why politicians
are so much different once they get out of office, but the real reason
is staring at us in the mirror.

We may have media — mass, alternative, and new — seeking
to manipulate and trick us. We may have political professionals trying
to bamboozle us. And there may be monied special interests bending
politicians to their will. But we’re in control if we want to be.

If we want politicians who say what they mean and mean what they
say, voters should support them when they emerge. Otherwise,
politicians will behave exactly like Gore and Frist — cautious
and calculating in office, bold and statesmanlike outside of
politics.

Until voters show leaders that they can buck the system and be
rewarded, they’ll simply show up and toe the line. And if they’re
reelected, well then, the bad guy is us.

(A.C. Kleinheider is NashvillePost.com’s political blogger and aggregator. This column appeared first in the City Paper of Nashville.)

It is an oft-heard meme trumpeted by conservatives that black
Americans are natural Republican voters. It’s not that Republicans are
racist or racially insensitive that prevents blacks from crossing the
partisan divide, Republicans contend. It is that Democrats have some
sort of irrational hold on blacks achieved by racial fear-mongering.
Republicans are not ambivalent to the historical experience of blacks
in America. Democrats have just blinded blacks from recognizing their
true and ancestral political home.

The response of a few Republicans in the Tennessee blogosphere to a
post by a black woman blogger illustrates, I think, why black Americans
who hold conservative values are reticent to join up with today’s
conservative movement.

On August 11th, Genma Holmes wrote a post about teaching her teenage
son to respect police officers. Her approach was unorthodox. Being
familiar with the history of interactions between black males and cops,
Holmes warned her son that when detained by police he should not appear
standoffish or act as if the officer had stopped him unjustly. Such
behavior, she warned, can lead to “unfair treatment, embarrassment,
humiliation, or, in many cases, ‘accidental’ death.”

However, Holmes’ son wasn’t listening to her warnings, so she
enlisted the help of a police academy graduate to conduct a phony
traffic stop designed to test the patience of her young son.

“As my son started to lose his composure and show his annoyance, the
officer became more aggressive, my son said later,” Holmes recounted.
“Consequently, he ended up on the hood of his SUV, face down, and was
told to address the officer as ‘Mr. Officer, sir.'”

“I could hear the disbelief in his voice as he tried to repeat the
sequence of events,” Holmes wrote. “I was not interested in the cop’s
behavior but in [my son’s] responses to the cop. I saw the white hot
anger on his face. I reminded him that his exasperation was what others
experienced daily.”

Of course, this is a sad commentary on our society. No mother, black
or white, should be afraid her flesh and blood will meet his death for
mouthing off during a traffic stop. However, the lesson attempted here
is fundamentally conservative: Life is unfair. Authority deserves the
benefit of the doubt. Manners and decorum should be maintained in the
face of disrespect. These were the lessons Holmes was attempting to
impart.

However, after reading Holmes’ tale, a few online conservatives were
up in arms. Jim Boyd, a perennial conservative candidate for office,
wrote, “For your efforts, your son has now earned the victimhood you
paid to have installed.”

Kay Brooks, a home-schooling advocate, offered a similar rebuke:
“Certainly let him know this happened in the past … but why abuse
your own child in this way? Just so he can walk around … expecting
abuse from cops?”

The former communications director for TNGOP, Bill Hobbs, also
commented: “[Holmes] deliberately set up a fake situation designed to
teach her son to not trust police and to encourage her son to view
police through the lens of race and to view himself as a target and a
victim.”

Now, I’m not naive or obtuse. One of the reasons Holmes taught her
son this lesson was because as a black male, police may be on “higher
alert” around him. This is taken as given, a fact of life. Holmes is
not minimizing the injustice of the fact, but she is not crippled by it
either. She moves forward.

This is the essence of conservatism. Certain things are intractable.
Life is nasty, brutish, and short. And, yes, sometimes law-enforcement
officers cut more slack to white men than to black men. The lesson here
is that being right is not a bulletproof vest. Every injustice need not
be fought at the very time and place it is perpetrated.

Republicans argue the reason blacks are not Republican is because
they cannot see past petty racial politics to the conservative
principles they share with the GOP. On this occasion, it seems, it was
the Republicans who failed to recognize a woman with clearly
conservative instincts, because she operated on the assumption, for
good reason, that law enforcement may render harsher judgments on black
suspects.

No party or ideology has the market cornered on petty racial
grievances.