Crossposted on Mediafuturenow.com.
My colleague Brad Fitch writes in the K Street Café about the bailout plan, “What’s Driving Citizen Outrage?”. Fitch takes a smart look at the factors underlying the passion, and recognizes a true “grassroots” advocacy campaign when he sees one. In fact, the bailout may be one of those seminal – and rare – political events where the citizenry is truly engaged in an uncoordinated explosion, and Fitch cites the 2006 immigration debate, the 1998 Starr Report and the 1989 Congressional pay raise as the only seriously comparable recent examples.
Wired magazine makes an analogous point in its coverage of the case, in “Online Bailout Outrage Jumps to Streets, and Into Lawmakers’ Inboxes”. It seems that the major advocacy groups organizing massive email, letter-writing and telephone campaigns are being eclipsed – at least this time around – by the virality of individual journalists and bloggers and websites launching often comical but all-too-effective pitched battles. As just one example, Wired mentions BuyMyShitPile.com, a parody site organizing collections of junk for submission to the government to also be redeemed in the junk mortgage bailout. (As of this writing, BuyMyShitePile claims stated value of its “junk” assets at $801,501,210,139.11.)
Wired reports on Arun Gupta, a 43-year-old freelance journalist in Manhattan, whose email screed on the plan (“Think about it: They said providing health care for 9 million children, perhaps costing $6 billion a year, was too expensive, but there’s evidently no sum of money large enough that will sate the Wall Street pigs.”) became an instant internet megastory. “The e-mail ricocheted through the electronic ecosystem faster than the implosion of Wall Street itself, tapping into and riding the frisson of resentment among Americans at this monumental financial foul-up.”
And yet the bailout seems inevitable despite the claims of 40 to 1 against in the phone calls and the emails. This too is an interesting lesson in democratic action under the First Amendment’s right to “petition the government for a redress of grievances”. The comparisons to the 1989 pay raise and the 2006 immigration bill are interesting, but those campaigns actually did result in serious legislative stops. This ultimately will not. You almost wonder why anyone is asking the people for their opinion at all. It might be that the parody sites have the best idea and the last laugh. Oh, you could mention anything, but is there really any better example than the Daily Mash’s “Bank Bail-Out Thwarted by Powerful Soup Kitchen Lobby”:
“A cartel, led by Campbell’s, is urging Congress to reject the plan and give Americans the chance to queue for a steaming bowlful of hearty broth. … Pressure from ‘Big Soup’ has even led to bribery accusations, with one senator being offered a $2 million campaign contribution and as much cock-a-leekie as he could stuff in the back of his car.”
