Author Archive
Joe Temp: Jim McClory
Nearly two million people coursed through the District of Columbia yesterday. Many of them didn't know where to go or how to get from one place to another. So they asked the folks who were manning security checkpoints and other crowd-control stations.
Professional crowd controller Jim McClory got a lot of those questions. Too bad he came in from Philadelphia for the event. “There’s just an unbelievable amount of people," says McClory. "And when they’re all asking for directions, you’re trying to give them the best ones possible, even if you’re not from the area.” Most of McClory's time was consumed by directing---he didn't have to get out the pepper spray.
Joe Temp: Abby Blanchard and Julie Harris
T-shirts are as common a sight as cops. Hats, too.
But two women from Brooklyn are claiming a corner on the Obama commemorative water supply. "I haven’t seen anyone with water like this,” says 23-year-old Julie Harris, one of the Brooklynites. “It’s not really for public use. You supposed to keep it, not drink it. But if you do drink it, it tastes like a Harvard Law degree. Yum. I’ll take that. It makes you smart.”
Harris's partner, Abby Blanchard, also 23, takes credit for scoring what the women refer to in on-street promotions as "H2Obama." “My dad got this Obama water and my friend made some Obama pins, so we thought, yeah, let’s go to D.C,” says Blanchard, a music promoter.
Joe Temp: Josh Sachs
Traffic deadlocks. Detoured buses. Jammed Metro. The city’s roads and railways are completely inundated and it’s gridlock-inducing. But if there’s one traffic channel that hasn’t experienced unendurable congestion (unless you're trying to go from the swearing-in to the parade route), it’s the bike lanes. D.C. Pedicab recognized the inauguration for its unique chance to drum up business. And it needed more drivers.
Josh Sachs, part-time mechanic at Silver Bikes in Silver Spring, heard D.C. Pedicab was looking for people for inaugural week. As a bike enthusiast who is desperate for work, Sachs jumped on the opportunity to get paid for spinning. And he's prepared for the forecast: “I got my leather motorcycle boots and this thick layered jacket that I bought just for this job. Yeah, it gets really cold.”
Joe Temp: Ismail Jones and Jamar Muhammad
A City Desk series chronicling the inaugural working class
Woe betide the D.C. street vendor who sets up shop on the sidewalk without a license. Competitors narc, and cops swarm. Pretty soon, the scofflaw vendor is packing his wares.
But this is the inauguration, and the authorities have real menaces to worry about.
So Ismail Jones and Jamar Muhammad are doing their business unimpeded by officialdom at 14th and V Streets NW, outside of Busboys and Poets. “We didn’t have a permit to set up. We just came down nine in the morning and got our spot. The Washington police haven’t harassed us, either. They actually came up and started talking to us. They support us,” Jones said.
Joe Temp: Chris Lowery
A City Desk series chronicling the inaugural working class
The intersection at 18th Street and Florida Avenue NW is a classic L'Enfantian gaffe, a place that was not designed for a world of fast-moving automobiles. This is a modern infrastructural clusterfuck, and "18th and Florida" doesn't adequately convey the confusion of the crossroads. U Street and Vernon Street also feed into the intersection, making it a tough place to navigate---even when millions of people aren't flooding into town.
Good thing someone thought to call in Chris Lowery, a private contractor who lives in Northern Virginia. He has a pretty stable clientele, but capitalizes on side gigs whenever he can. His job this week is just that, a temp position he landed through a friend. “I did a job for a buddy of mine a few months ago. It was directing traffic for an event at the WWII memorial. When inaugural week rolled around, he asked me if I’d be interested in directing traffic again. I said sure.”
Inaugural Balls Are Not Just for Grown Ups
The Every Child Matters Education Fund is hosting an inaugural ball exclusively for youngsters. The Ball seeks to "raise the visibility of children’s issues and to win new investments in their well-being."
Sorry, Atlantic. But Not Really.
Gawker published an e-mail conversation I had recently with a cordial Atlantic staffer. I forwarded the e-mail and my brusque commentary to vent about the the shittiness of unpaid internships. Sure, there are plenty of publications that staff armies of unpaid coffee-getters and google taskers, but this one struck a particular chord of indignation: The Digital Media Internship. Read More "Sorry, Atlantic. But Not Really." »
Help, Media Saturation
Two hundred and ten billion e-mails are sent each day.
There are more than 70 million blogs and 150 million Web sites today, expanding at a rate of approximately ten thousand an hour.
But are we really more informed? Are we getting a wider range of news?
Not All Lobbyists Are Jerks
One of Obama's campaign pledges was to “wrest the federal government out of the hands of lobbyists.” And granted, most talk of lobbyists conjures images like this and this. But, c'mon, not all lobbyists are greed-driven parasitic rodents -- some actually work to protect citizens.
For instance, organizations like The American Cancer Society, AARP, and The National Federation of Independent Business (to mention a few) all have robust lobbying outfits in Washington.
In a column today at HuffPo, Lanny Davis tried to redirect lobbyist discourse, hitting the issue on its head.
"What is negative about lobbying is the absence of transparency -- when the powerful and the wealthy have secret influence on members of Congress or the executive branch."
Davis continues:
"With total transparency, lobbyists and the officials they try to influence will have to ask themselves the question "would I mind if this lobbying meeting is fully reported in all respects in tomorrow's newspaper?"
The Jack Abramoffs of lobbying will continue to sprinkle their corruption and egregious fraud in big DC firms, but if Obama puts a few former lobbyists in his administration, don't be so fast to make the jump to corporate corruption.
Election Dispatch From American University
Princeton Review ranked American University as the "Most Politically Active School" in the nation in its 2009 survey. The feeling on campus this election day serves as a great measure into how these D.C. students earned such a distinction.
Audio from live CNN election coverage filled a student dining center as students clad in Obama and McCain gear worked behind their laptops and discussed the latest poll numbers.
AU freshman Katie Horvath wondered just how classes would feel during the interregnum.
"Every single class I'm in, literally every class, talks about the election every day. I'm really excited for tomorrow, but I'm not sure what we're gonna talk about in class with the election over."
Adi Stein, who studies theater at AU, said there was a mock polling booth set up in his dorm where students could vote and then compare their results with the nation's. He echoed the election's prominence in all of his classes - even in theater.
"My theater professor started class today by announcing if anyone is registered to vote and hasn't already, then please leave class now and cast your ballot.
Amid the anticipation lingering on campus, there's a minority sentiment eager for the ubiquitous election coverage to finally dissipate.
"I just can't escape it. No matter what I do," said senior Justin Wolfe. "Yeah, it felt great to vote, but I'm ready to start checking some different sites on my phone. I'll be happy to stop getting campaign e-mail updates."
McCain: This Week, Last Year
With election day less than a day away, I thought City Desk should step into the news time machine (i.e. Lexis Nexis) and take a look at what McCain was up to a year ago this week:
Does Your Vote Matter?
No, this isn't a post about electoral college reform, or a diatribe about the inherent inequality of the winner-take-all system--although both complaints are sound.
But Their Profits are Up!
During the Great Depression, the only two things people could seem to afford were bootleg liquor and Busby Berkley musicals, as both industries saw a rise in sales while the economy plummeted. But did the profits have anything to do with the depression?
The media have been making causal jumps between the economic downturn and the rise in luxury commodities, essentially asserting that these industries are "recession-proof": Amazon sales are up. Consignment sales are up. Cosmetic sales are up. English coffee sales are up. McDonald's sales are up.
Seems to make sense: during rough economic periods people seek solace in indulgent spending, a type of economic escapism.
But linking rising sales in luxury goods to economic hardship is complete bullshit.
You’re Not Actually Undecided!
UDecide2008.com, a site dedicated to informing blog-illiterate swing voters, claims "ONE IN 14 AMERICANS IS STILL UNDECIDED." There's a kind of excitement to being "undecided." It makes voters feel valuable; casting a ballot will be the ultimate expression of democratic decision-making, since this cohort of voters ostensibly won't vote blindly down party lines. The media describes this group of unsettled citizens as election deciders. But how many voters are genuinely undecided, and how many are just coy assholes? Ezra Klein's Op-ed in the Los Angeles Times argues that the idea of an undecided voter is largely a farce:
"It's a bit odd that we give the Undecided Voter such a privileged place in American elections. Because from a civic standpoint, few creatures are as contemptible. ... Many of those who claim to be undecided are not. Some don't want to admit their preference."
The media seems to think the opposite is true.
Science did a study a few months ago that examined the psychology of a undecided voter. They found that:
"People who think they are undecided about an issue often have made up their mind at an unconscious level ... " "It's not that people are lying to the pollsters," social psychologist Bertram Gawronskitells said. "It's that they may not consciously recognize the automatic associations that influence their decisions."
I think saying you're "undecided" sounds somehow more sophisticated and thoughtful, but, most of the time, it's not true. So stop pretending like you don't know who you're voting for, "undecided" voters. Because, whether you admit it or not, you know exactly who you're voting for.
