I thought the Clinton Attacks Obama wiki was a great idea the first time I heard about it, and it’s steadily grown since then. Here’s the welcome message:
This is an experiment in community information gathering. My name is Baratunde Thurston. I’m a comedian, writer and social media junkie. As a contributor for Jack & Jill Politics, I’ve seen the strong black community reaction to what looks like a pattern of race-themed attacks against Obama by Bill, Hillary and other members of her campaign. As folks have questioned the number and validity of these incidents, I thought I’d put together a place to keep track of them.
Blog posts are not good places to keep a running list, and I’m too busy to do it all by myself, so like a multinational corporation, I’m outsourcing this bad boy.
Not only does opening it up to the community means that sources any one person would miss keep flowing in, it’s an excellent use of the automatic list generation features available on most wikis, too. Seeing the list of race-themed attacks that are being flung around really highlights how extensive the pattern is. Baratunde’s also the Jack of Jack and Jill Politics (blogging as Jack Turner), and his The Clintons, Black folks, and America — a Reckoning gives some great perspectives that don’t usually make it into mainstream coverage.
The wiki’s starting to get some press attention and this’ll probably steadily increase, no matter whether or not the attacks stop.  And deservedly so: the general technique is something that supporters of candidates from any party can use to surface repeated uses of code words or images as part of smear campaigns.  Swiftboating will be a lot harder this year …
jon | 28-Jan-08 at 8:35 am | Permalink
It’s not on a wiki, but Matt Bai’s Has Bill Gone Bull Moose? in the New York Times political blog “The Caucus”, is a thoughtful writeup of an a view of on Bill Clinton’s behavior I’ve heard from a lot of people — as well as an intriguing analogy to Teddy Roosevelt.
Drifting even farther afield, Bai’s The Argument is an excellent book about the interactions between the “progressive bloggers” and different power vectors in the Democratic party.]
jon | 29-Jan-08 at 12:42 pm | Permalink
E.J. Dionne Jr. weighs in on Bull Moose Bill in the Washington Post’s patronizingly-titled but well worth reading Hobbled by Hubby.
Tales from the Net » “Black Blogosphere Proves Potent Force in Story of Race in the New South” | 31-Jan-08 at 12:36 pm | Permalink
[…] Wikipedia’s Afrosphere page, Electronic Village’s Top ten black blogs (January 2008) are good places to find out more, as is There are 116 Black Blogs in the Afrospear/Afrosphere, a link list on Jack and Jill Politics — the same site that recently started up an experiment in community information gathering. […]
jon | 02-Feb-08 at 12:25 pm | Permalink
Elise’s Straw Polls for Obama is another interesting experiment in community information gathering/influencing. Her got five minutes? tag is intriguing: if people act in a small way a couple of times and it’s a good experience, they’re more likely to do more. And if enough people do start to act this way, then it starts to become valuable for getting early signs of trends.
jon | 03-Feb-08 at 6:37 pm | Permalink
In Ari Melber’s Nation/Huffington Post article on the Yes We Can video, he comments
Liminal states » Blog Archive » The day after: narrative through the lens of strategy (draft in progress) | 05-Mar-08 at 3:48 pm | Permalink
[…] Muslim” email from Clinton staffers, the series of racially charged attacks documented on the Clinton attacks Obama wiki and elsewhere, and the Clinton campaign’s earlier collaboration with Drudge — at the […]
Liminal states » Blog Archive » When I’m right, I’m right: Geraldine Ferraro and “The day after” | 11-Mar-08 at 2:36 pm | Permalink
[…] of these, and others, are documented on the Clinton attacks Obama wiki. See, I knew it would be important […]