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The increasingly inaccurately-named blog of journalist and futurist Chris Taylor. Either the most sporadically brilliant amateur blog, the most brilliantly amateur sporadic blog, or the most amateur sporadic brilliance on the Web since 2001.
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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.
Do you write any other blogs, by chance? Could that have something to do with the fact that Daily Blah isn't always Daily?
Yes -- the Future Boy blog for Business 2.0. And yes. If you want true, editorially-mandated daily coverage from me, that's probably the best place to look.
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.
Praise for Daily Blah:
"It is fun to watch the author's navel-gazing joy." - Sunday Times (UK)
"It's really funny and informative." - Dave Eggers, author
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"I like it, and I don't." - Fiona Hogg, Teacher
"Better than Xanax." - Lessley Andersen, journalist
"Dude, lay off the crack pipe." - Souris Hong-Porretta, gamesmith
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Daily Blah for... Tuesday, February 14, 2006
The Dems' Unhappy Valentine
Never mind Dick Cheney shooting his 78-year-old hunting buddy in the face. The Democrats just did a far, far worse thing, politically. At this stage, the party's foot is so replete with self-inflicted wounds you've got to wonder why they don't just hack the gangrenous thing off; nevertheless, they just went and sprayed it with buckshot again.
Remember that hugely popular Gulf War II vet running for the Dems in Ohio -- Paul Hackett, the most appealing candidate the left has found since Barack Obama? Well, he's just dropped out of the Senate race, citing pressure from party grandees in Washington. They want him to step out of the way of Sherrod Brown, a guy with lots of appeal in Ohio but zero national name recognition.
Hackett's not taking it well. Nor should he. He called the pressure a "betrayal", and the group of 56 other Gulf veterans the Dems have running across the country said they "got a chill." This makes me want to take Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer, the grandees in question, and beat them over the head repeatedly with a very large Gallup opinion poll.
Gentlemen: You have veterans clamoring to join your ranks, offering their unimpeachable muscle to help get the incompetent donor-shooting bastards out of power, to beef up the one part of your portfolio where you look like 90-lb. weaklings to most of America. You should not only be inviting them into the tent, you should be unzipping their sleeping bags and hugging them so closely it hurts. Who cares if it gets a little Brokeback Mountain in there? That's nobody's business but yours.
But no, you think you can run politics by numbers, don't you? You think it's all strategy and money and algorithms. You think America is the Internet, and you're Google. Well, that strategy has served you brilliantly so far.
No. Politics is about emotion. If you can get the emotional tone right, if you can feel it in the guy, the strategy and the money and the algorithms will follow. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: This is a business for alpha males. We regular humans forgive alpha males a lot if they make us feel safe. Just ask Uncle Dick, who probably won't even be prosecuted for doing the modern equivalent of flinging his alpha male feces in the face of another tribe member.
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