As a person who has had to spend a fair amount of time writing technical reports in my life, the effort of viewpoint blogging has been a new stretch. I’m used to having to present facts, or evaluations as part of my writing, and not offer my personal thoughts. In the world of blogging, just like everywhere in the media these days, facts and even evaluations are not readily available or must be researched, themselves. A web search of keywords, as we all know, can reveal hundreds of thousands of hits. However, if we spend the time winnowing through them, we often discover the hits spring from a few recycled sources. We spend so much time looking, it’s disturbing to find expectations don’t match the message.
We can’t know everything; we may be right, or mostly right, or completely wrong, when we use our chosen sources. So we pick names. We find names with which we are familiar or that sound right.
NARAL was a familiar name. I confess, it had been many years since I thought of it. Still, I thought I knew something about it’s mission, and savvy as a political player. When NARAL endorsed Obama over Clinton, I was outraged, sent them a nasty letter and am unlikely to now ever support them. Sure, I would have preferred they endorsed Clinton, I think they were wrong not to do so. However the real issue is why they felt they had to endorse either Democratic candidate, before the primary was over. Since both candidates were pro-choice, it made no sense. The political ineptitude of their endorsement and reasoning astonished me.
NARAL Pro-Choice America backs Obama
May 14, 2008 – 5:01pm
By BETH FOUHY
Associated Press Writer
[NARAL officials said the decision wasn’t intended to be a snub of Clinton, who is running to be the first female president.
They said the board decided to back Obama over Clinton because he is overwhelmingly favored to win the nomination and to heal what the organization viewed as a growing rift between black voters and white female activists that the protracted Clinton-Obama contest may have caused.]
Basically NARAL succumbed to the internal tension between Clinton and Obama supporters, and failed to see the big picture. In endorsement before the proper hour, they gave up their primary mission, and placed a candidate’s success above it. They imagined that somehow if they imposed themselves into a rift that had nothing to do with them, it would fix the problem. It was a classic case of self-important rescuing for fear of the family fight. And, look what side they picked – Daddy issues for sure! The daddy they picked is even now nibbling around the edges of their primary mission, because he is trying to woo the Christian right.
“18 Million Voices/Rise Hillary Rise” sounds right. Their mission appears evident from their name. You know, all those men and women who voted for Hillary, and want to see her name placed in nomination. Their name, found on many blogrolls has disturbed me for a while.
“18 Million Voices/Rise Hillary Rise”
[The creators of this website are two loyal Clinton supporters, we are not a non-profit organization, or a PAC, but just two private citizens who have a background in grassroots political organizing. The efforts taking place here to make this action a reality (State Meetings, etc) are the result of the hard work and commitment of hundreds of Senator Clinton’s supporters around the Nation. They are coming together, organizing locally in every state, and coordinating action through this website, in larger numbers each and every day, as 18 Million Voices shouting Rise Hillary Rise.]
Self enlightenment struck recently however, when this group decided that they were a women’s right’s, and primarily a Hillary “Cheerleading” group. Due to concern that their message was being co-opted by the media they chose to discontinue further participation in the “Just Say No Deal” Coalition. 18 Million Voices was an ill chosen name. It mis-communicated or deliberately mis-conveyed their intent. The difficulty of having chosen a name ill suited to their actual mission is now being reflected in bloggers assignation of them as more “Shillaries” and diminishes the idea of the number of actual Clinton supporters, by allowing others to think there are only a few wailing women out there who need to “grow up”.
In reality, their anticipated parade march will be a women’s rights showing within the confines of the Convention schedule, celebration of the 88th anniversary of the 19th amendment, and the 100th anniversary of the last Denver Convention, in 1908, when women couldn’t vote. Having now identified themselves by message, if not name, as “Hillary’s Brass Band”, their mission is clear and they are scripted in.
PUMAs, Just Say No Deal, and The Denver Group, have a different mission. PUMAs and the others acknowledge that human rights/women’s rights are vitally important. Were these elements important parts of the upcoming Democratic platform, we would all be happy. Support of Hillary Clinton is important. However, the mission of a PUMA is: to call attention to, and promote correction of election delegate inequities; assure that Clinton’s name is placed into nomination, since neither candidate as achieved the necessary number of delegates to clinch nomination; assure Clinton’s platform is all or part of the next DNC platform; return the DNC to the ethical path; fix voting malfeasance and give voice against the divisive Primary environment in which the DNC participated.
These goals represent human rights issues of all men and women who voted for Hillary Clinton, no matter their gender, race or ethnicity. These are the 18 million people that voted for Hillary Clinton. In having misnamed themselves, “18 Million Voices” permanently linked themselves to PUMAs. Maybe we should just eat them, or else tell them to change their name. Or, maybe we emotionally detach and use them as a tool.
The “familiar” NARAL, and the “sounds right” 18 Million Voices, are two good examples of how it is ever more important to critically analyze our sources of information. The abundance of the web makes it much more difficult to find our truths. Even the information in Wikipedia is changed often, and not always neutral. Links should be checked often to see if they still have the same meaning you remember. Sometimes, only having made a pdf copy of the page you read will keep you from feeling “gaslighted”.
Grab and Keel 
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