Seminal Online Community, The Well, Lives On

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In 2001 when I was an editorial executive with Carroll & Graf Publishers I edited and published an excellent book by journalist Katie Hafner, The Well: A Story of Love, Death & Real Life in the Seminal Online Community, a narrative and oral history, which included verbatim posts and original group discussions on the early online platform and other exchanges written by founding members of the first online community. It is  an exciting reading experience because it combines all those different kinds of material, making it a very modern sort of epistolary work, one of my favorite narrative forms. That holds true for me, whether in fiction, where it’s seen in exceptional novels such as Russell Hoban’s Turtle Diary, or in nonfiction, which often means diary books, like the epic A Diary of the Century, which I edited and published with Edward Robb Ellis (Kodansha America, 1995), the most prolific diarist in the history of American letters.

Subject-wise, reading Katie’s book is like observing the birth of the Internet, an ur-moment, one which even involves the beginnings of social media, before the latter was a glimmer in anyone’s eye. The manuscript grew out of a cover story on The Well that Katie had done for the Wired magazine issue of May 1997. I’d bought the print magazine off a newsstand when I saw the intriguing tag line—what was this “seminal online community”? I still have my copy of the magazine. I hung on to it, and three years later, when I was leaving Kodansha America and starting a new job with Times Books at Random House, I looked Katie up, invited her to tea, and asked if she’d like to do The Well story as a book. I recall that Katie expanded the 40,000 word article a bit, I then edited that updated manuscript and we published the book a year later. It was one of the books I really relished being involved with.

I’ve read tonight in a NY Times story that Salon.com, which had acquired The Well in the late 90s, has now sold The Well to an investment group made up some of its current members.

Among The Well’s founding members were such countercultural stalwarts as Stewart Brand, Howard Rheingold, John Perry Barlow, Larry Brilliant, Gail Williams, and a host of comparatively unsung but pivotal Internet pioneers. These people are all characters in Katie Hafner’s sleek and moving book.  I admire The Well’s legacy and hope its new owner-members will make something special of it once again.

2013 update: Katie Hafner has a newer book, as well, a family memoir titled Mother Daughter Me. I really liked it and wrote about it on this blog.

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Whoa, Don’t Get So Testy!

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From a media outlet friendly to the Romneys called Radio Iowa, here is Ann Romney’s response to fellow Republicans who’ve been criticizing her husband’s candidacy over the past few weeks.

“’Stop it. This is hard. You want to try it? Get in the ring. . . . This is hard and, you know, it’s an important thing that we’re doing right now and it’s an important election and it is time for all Americans to realize how significant this election is and how lucky we are to have someone with Mitt’s qualifications and experience and know-how to be able to have the opportunity to run this country.’”

I’m sure it’s hard to listen to your spouse be criticized so much, but really, the sting in her words, and tone in her voice are very unappealing. When she barks, “Stop it. This is hard. You want to try it. Get in the ring,” I practically shrunk back into my seat. You can hear her words for yourself via this audio link.

Elsewhere, in a Washington Post profile of D.C. Repub socialite sisters Georgette and Lyn Mosbacher, there are these gems:

Both sisters wear gold Eagle pins on their lapels, identifying them as Romney mega-donors, and a stack of VIP credentials around their necks. At the convention, they could be seen bickering outside exclusive donor powwows (“Don’t be upset,” Georgette pleaded with Lyn outside a brunch organized by billionaire Paul Singer. “It was an honest mistake.”) or giddily relaying how Ann Romney, for whom Georgette has served on the host committee for several fundraisers in New York, privately reacted to Democratic attacks on her dressage-competing mare. (“My horse has more style and more class in its hoof than they do in their whole deal,” Lyn recounts.) 

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“Con-text” is Everything

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Via politicalwire.com, a satirical take on the Romney campaign’s continuing penchant, from the beginning of the year, for quoting snippets of remarks by President Obama, and then trying to make a big deal out of the distorted meaning. It was seen again today, once it was proven that the big deal Romney’s been trying to make over remarks that  Illinois State Senator Barack Obama made in 1998 about “redistribution” were really innocuous, and balanced with mentioned of “competition” and “the marketplace.” This bit of campaign skullduggery, quickly exposed by NBC, earned 4 Pinocchios from Glenn Kessler, fact-checker at the Washington Post.

Here, the Obama camp turns the tables and with a wink, knowingly–admittedly–takes Mitt out of context to show how nakedly dishonest his campaign really is. I found it quite funny. If the video has a name, it must be titled, “Con-text.” I like the way the DEMs are ridiculing and mocking Mitt. He is a joke, after all.

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A Human Rights Hero Visits D.C./Part II

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A second photo I might’ve thought I’d never see.

As a bookend to the pictures of Aung San Suu Kyi with President Obama and Hillary posted here:

Last winter in NYC editor and Fb friend Shaun Randol of The Mantle: A Journal of Progressive Critique invited me to an opening for an exhibit of Burmese artists. They were all savoring the winds of change, but warily. After all, the Burmese generals might yet lower the boom again. So glad to see the improvement in Burma has not receded. The normalization of conditions for human rights in Burma, after so many years of iron military rule, is amazing. So glad she is freed to be a political player in Burma, and to travel again. What an example of reconciliation she and her country may together provide. I wrote a blog piece about that exhibit, here for you to click on next, w/many images of the art that night.

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A Human Rights Hero Visits D.C.

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A photo I feared the world might never see: Burmese dissident and human rights hero Aung San Suu Kyi with an American Secretary of State. She and Hillary Clinton met the press yesterday in Washington, D.C. Credit for this photo: Mandel Ngan, AFP/Getty Images.

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Mitt Still Using Coal Miners as Campaign Props

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You may recall that a few weeks ago, I posted a blog entry, “Mitt & His Minions Sticking it to Coal Miners,” on the fact that on August 14 coal miners in Beallsville, Ohio had been compelled by their employer, Murray Energy–a company whose executives it was also revealed have contributed more than $900,000 to Republicans in the past two years–to attend a pro-Romney rally, and were docked their pay. Murray’s spox tried to deny that miners had been forced to attend the event, and offered this bizarre Orwellian statement: “Attendance was mandatory, but no one was forced to attend.” The Romney campaign used the rally for photo ops like the picture accompanying this post.

Now, TPM is reporting, as is the Columbus Dispatch, that the Romney campaign has released two new TV ads, again using the rally with the miners as the backdrop for their bogus claims that the Obama administration is “waging a war on coal.” I can’t imagine the ads are going to do their campaign much good, with them inevitably trailed by reports of the tainted rally at the coal mine.

Please note a few more things about Bob Murray, CEO of Murray Energy.

1) He is a vociferous denier of global warming who claims that scientists are trying to make money off climate change.  That’s rich–a guy who’s made his own fortune digging and shipping coal is accusing other folks of trying to cash in on cleaning up his mess. Think Progress’s Stephen Lacey has reported Murray said:

“The fraudulent individuals around the world who have attempted to capitalize on the promotion of their theory that the Earth is warming are now finding out that it’s just not true. . . . They did it for what I call crony capitalism – to make money off global warming. . . . Albert Gore has made hundreds of millions of dollars over his hoax, and now they’re finding it’s simply not true.”

2) In the same item, Stephen Lacey reports,

“Murray Energy is perhaps best known for operating the Crandall Canyon mine in Utah that collapsed in 2007, killing six miners and two rescue personnel. After that tragedy, reporters uncovered thousands of violations resulting in millions of dollars in fines at various mines owned by the company.”

3) According to an item by media reporter Jim Romenesko, last month Bob Murray sued Charleston Gazette (WV) reporter journalist  Ken Ward, Jr. for supposedly defaming him. Ward had written:

“’Renegade coal operator Bob Murray played a major role recently in a campaign fundraiser in Wheeling, W.Va., for Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’” and that ‘the question for Governor Romney, of course, is whether he thinks criminal behavior by coal companies, especially when it kills workers and damages the environment, is acceptable. If not, why is he buddies with Bob Murray?’”

I hope Ken Ward, Jr., and his newspaper don’t have to spend a fortune in defense of his First Amendment rights.
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