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Add one part satire to two parts sincerity. Sprinkle on a couple of rants. Stir liberally.
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Daily Blah FAQ
Who are you?
I'm the newly-appointed Future editor at Business 2.0 and the former San Francisco correspondent for Time Magazine.
Wow, so does this mean everything you write reflects Time Inc's opinion? Or do you perhaps have some sort of standard disclaimer to the effect that it doesn't?
Naturally, the opinions contained in this blog are not those of my employers. In fact, some opinions may be the polar opposite of my employers. Some may be the same, for all I know. Hey, it's not like I ask my employers their opinions about everything in the news, okay? Let's just say that if this were a Venn diagram with one circle marked "my opinions" and the other one marked "my employers' opinions", there would doubtless be some overlap. But neither I nor my employers are able to pinpoint exactly where that overlap is.
What is this Daily Blah thing?
An experiment for a column I wrote about blogging back in December 2001. All these years later, I haven't been able to kick the habit.
If it's called Daily Blah, how come you don't ... hey, wait, you're writing every day!
See? Told you I'd try harder.
Mister, you talk funny. Are you one of them furrners?
Why yes I am, as it happens. I was born, raised and educated in Great Britain. I've been living in the U.S. since 1996 and identify as British.
I say, old chap, you forgot the "u" in "colour."
No I didn't. I may identify as British, but I am also an American journalist writing for an American audience about mostly American issues. These two different sides of me are a constant source of tension. Nevertheless, Daily Blah will adhere to American English grammar and spelling.
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Daily Blah for... Wednesday, September 17, 2003
The Wes Wing
With the right pair of ears, you can hear Democrats across the country let out a sigh of relief. Wes Clark is in the race! We've got our wartime presidential candidate! Better news still is that it looks like Clark was doing his homework all this time he was a noncandidate. His freshly-minted campaign website doesn't just look pretty and solicit donations. Already, it's got a lengthy description of something called the "100 year vision" -- how best America can make itself a nice place to live a century from now, largely by preserving the environment and funding education -- that is refreshingly free from platitudes. Sighs of relief all round.
Most politicians consider it risky to talk in anything but the vaguest terms about the long-term future. But this is where Clark's military training has led him -- he consistently talks about where we need to be in five years, 30 years and 100 years. He articulates a long-term vision where other Democrats (mentioning no names, but there's this guy with a medical degree) articulate short-term rage. Sure, you can be angry about what Bush has done, and you can make him the whipping boy of your stump speeches. But you'll never get anywhere in the Midwest or South unless you give your audiences a surge, a moment when they feel good about themselves and about where we're all going and about what we can do if we just stop thinking about tax cuts and tomorrow's Medicare payment and college loans and focus on what we're going to leave the next generation and the six generations after that ...
There's no way around it. Every successful Democratic candidate had the proven ability to get audiences up on their feet, all starry-eyed with possibility. There's Clinton with his place called Hope, Carter's post-Watergate optimism, LBJ and his Great Society, and don't even get me started on Kennedy, Truman and Roosevelt or I'll be sitting here typing all day. Have the nine Democratic dwarves done that so far? Have they heck. But Clark has (see this lengthy Esquire piece for a good description). We're dealing with a different animal here. He may well be a member of that most rare species, Winningus Democraticus.
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