Media Habits, or, Tom Daschle's Ghost in Space

All right, this might be a little lame, but I'll admit it. I signed up for BloginSpace, which allows you to broadcast your blog into space. Using RSS feeds (I don't know what they are either) they send the data from your site into deep space using a satellite dish. Or something. These guys could be totally making it up. However, it's entertaining. You can also send individual messages out into the Final Frontier, though they give you a solemn warning you not to send anything that could start an intergalactic war.

As you can probably tell, I occasionally get bored at my summer job, and find interesting ways of wasting time. In that vein, somebody recently asked me where I get my ideas for what to write about, and I figured that might make a decent (albeit short) post.

CNN.com. Oh, man, this website is my heroin. Without exaggeration, I can check this website 50 times in an hour. They're pretty fast with breaking news, if you can ignore the fact that the articles are written for fourth-graders. Also, CNN is excellent when it comes to sniffing out amusing, time-wasting "news" stories, such as the diplomatic spat between Denmark and Canada over a tiny island in the Arctic Circle. Other than that, CNN's website doesn't have much analysis, and has no qualms about posting unverified hearsay in the name of breaking the story first.

(I guess I did that, with the Secret Service arriving at Hopkins Hospital thing, last year. Guilty as charged.)

NYTimes.com. Not much needs to be said here. They know what they're doing. And the opinion pages have some of the most insightful analysis that's ever been thoroughly ignored by an administration. Except Maureen Dowd. I think many liberals would agree that Maureen Dowd is the crazy relative we'd rather not talk about. But I resist comparisons between her and Ann Coulter. Maureen Dowd is batty; Ann Coulter is criminally insane.

TheHill.com. I mentioned this newspaper in a previous post. It primarily circulates among people who either work on, or write about, Capitol Hill. Almost every story they publish could make a good report over the AP wire. But they assume you know the ins and outs of Congressional procedures, which involves a fairly steep learning curve every now and then. Like I mentioned earlier, I'd rather read Roll Call, but only The Hill gives you access to their articles for free. Also, they have some pretty awesome restaurant reviews.

WashingtonPost.com. Another fairly obvious one, that falls somewhere between The Hill and the New York Times. They occasionally fall prey to their inner policy wonk, but that doesn't bother me. Plus they do some of the best investigative reporting in the world, and they're good about getting policymakers to write editorials, even better (in some cases) than the New York Times. My yardstick for whether a paper is worth reading, is whether it's worth giving them my e-mail address. The Post and the Times both pass that test.

DailyKos.com These guys are even more left than I am, and occasionally I don't agree with them. (For example, I'm against the idea of a timetable for the Iraq pullout. I think that's a death sentence for the new Iraqi authorities.) However, if you're looking to take the overall pulse of young, progressive America, it wouldn't hurt to start there.

Virtual Pus. Kind of a goofy URL, but more power to them. It's a mix of the everyday blog and standard progressive musings, but the way the two are blended makes it good. Plus, the bloggers are Family Guy fans, so you know they're all right.

HomestarRunner.com This has absolutely nothing to do with politics, democracy, or social change. It has everything to do with being hilarious. If you haven't seen it, you should. If you have seen it, you know why.

As you can tell, my main sources of news come from the Internet. I only watch one TV show regularly, which I assume most of you watch as well. That's The Daily Show, which is amazing. It's the answer to conservative talk radio. Not only can liberals be smart and persuasive, we can also be funny. I challenge you to find a conservative TV show that is consistently hilarious. (And no, Hannity & Colmes does not count. I mean intentionally funny.)

So that's where I get most of my information. And Google. Oh, Google. Not only do you provide me with every piece of useless information I could possibly want, you have also provided me with the data I needed to write many useless term papers.

Why Kenyon?

So, Kenyon College in Gambier, OH marks the beginning of my Facebook PR campaign. It's not much of a campaign, since I don't have a lot of resources available for it cough poor college student cough. But Kenyon is close to my heart for a few reasons. First, I almost went there- spent an overnight there and loved it, but decided to stay on the East Coast for college. Also, a good friend of mine goes there, and she sometimes asks me why I didn't go. (I rarely have a good answer for her.) And a lot of my family's from Ohio.

But another, different reason for starting this off with a Facebook announcement at Kenyon, was because of a Facebook group I saw there. "I Waited 5+ Hours To Vote Against That Redneck Jackass and All I Got Was This Lousy Facebook Group." I'll be honest, that's pretty awesome. A lot of us went through this election voting in solid blue (or, to be fair, solid red) states, and just felt helpless the whole time. The liberal population at Kenyon registered to help swing Ohio blue, and waited up to 11 hours to vote. Even though it was ultimately unsuccessful, they did a hell of a lot more for Kerry on Election Day than I did.

Anyway, that's why I bought an ad on the Kenyon Facebook. If this is your first visit, let me know what you think.