Kathy Salvi has a blog now. She is using Blogger (with coincidentally, the exact same template I used on my old blog) rather than hosting a WordPress or other CMS on her site. I wanted to leave her a comment welcoming her to the blogosphere and offering a small piece of advice, as well as cover my hind-end about my last Friday Funnies Post which ripped on one of the mailers an organization affiliated with her campaign (or her campaign itself?) sent out. I know I wrote in my last post as if she personally put it together, but I don’t know if it was a 527 organization or anything that may have sent it out and been legally obligated not to consult and conspire with her official campaign.
Anyway, I saw “0 comments” at the bottom of her first Welcome post and wanted to leave her a note. Then I saw that commenting was restricted to Team Members Only - meaning that it is a team blog and may or may not really provide any real commentary from her. Also, they are hostile to constituents talking to the candidate. That’s a BAD idea. One of the cornerstones of the blogosphere is the two-way communication allowed by reader’s comments and blogger’s responses. It grinds my nerves when politicians try to steal some of the cachet of “being a blogger” and ignore the spirit. “Hey, read my blog, written by my staffers to not alienate anyone at all, and ignore the fact that you can not respond to anything or begin any conversation.” Bloggers are not fooled, and we are not amused. So, in the spirit of fairness, I will publish my comment here and email it to her as well. They are most likely new to blogging and may not be aware of the cultural mores.
“Welcome to the blogosphere Ms. Salvi. I am a registered voter in your district and received a flier from an organization calling itslef “Friends of Kathy Salvi” and I thought I’d try to learn more about you. I look forward to further posts by you on this blog (or on your own site using a separate blogging software like WordPress, which is free).
Should you follow my link back to my blog and see the post regarding your flier, please take the advice in the spirit it was given and know that the offer is a valid one.
I hope that you would open commenting to anonymous and non-blogger users to generate some real conversation in our political process. I have a blogger account, but I do all my blogging today at Catastrophic Success - http://www.misterbixby.com.”
I hope she gets it and embraces her new role as the blogging Congresswoman.
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September 24th, 2007 at 10:00 pm
[…] net in the political process and those who take advantage of it will do well. See my posts on Kathy Salvi (one more link). Incidentally, President Bush apparently has similar intentions […]