How To Make The Media Your Bitch

Did you hear the uncontrollable sobbing? See the river of tears? Cringe a lot but keep watching and listening? Feel those familiar, empathizing stabs-through-the-heart as a parent? Sure you did. Who could miss the bizarre, loud, soggy and sloppy vehicular homicide perp-’fession yesterday in Atlanta media. It played big.

Now I will confess. I am in shock and awe with defense attorney’s, Lawyer David Wolfe’s, sick and brilliant and kinda wild media tactic. Trust me, ALL local Georgia media are now his personal media bitch, even the usually crime-reserved WABE. Watch him as he trots out the hysterically earnest nice white folk with the cute white folk names… such as Christa. What media could resist? And why would they? Gonna print big. Sell some papers. Tune-in. Click-on.

And the terrible thing is that all this Get To Know Me And My Deep Regrets tactical media ploy by Wolfe could keep this remorseful, hysterical-on-cue, stupid young woman out of the pokey… in what will now become a trial of the year, if it ever gets to trial. (NOTE: One atty. says the D.A.’s office will never plea down here.  Too high-profile for that.)

This one plays close to home as I just spent four months downtown at the Georgia State Capitol during the 2010 legislative  session, where earnest young folk such as the victim in this terrible accident (not crime), Jordan Griner, made the whole silly place hum.

Jordan Griners were everywhere. Young Griner was very much the face of the next generation of Georgia political operatives. Far too young to yet be turned manipulative and hard and unfriendly and cunning by the relentless power drama at the Gold Dome. And far too young to die, at just 24, on a Midtown street two blocks from the safe confines of home after a fun and casual night out with friends.

On an almost daily basis I too drive through the intersection where Jordan Griner was killed by the stupid drunk club-goer, thinking of young Jordan but also thinking of how I too was once a young, stupid, Atlanta night-clubber. In other words, ye olde classic There But By The Grace Of The Goddess scenario.

Now that I’m older, wiser, less energetic, and presumably more analytical, particularly with media matters, I really want to have a nice long chat with Lawyer David Wolfe about his media mechanizations for his stupid, drunk, club-going client; I’m fascinated by Wolfe’s mad legal-media skills and tactics. He waves his client-wand, and wow, all Atlanta media step and fetch to do his get-this-on-cam-for-your-A-block bidding… all without spending one dime or lifting a finger. Just a phone call or email or two or a dozen.

Naturally, I want to hear all about his overall media strategy too, which of course he’s not going to reveal to me or any other media-type or reporter. (Dale Russell may get an interview after all is said and done. Maybe.)

So until I get motivated enough to find a trial lawyer in my social network to interview, please leave me YOUR thoughts on this public, Georgia-specific, legal-media matter here. Especially if you’re a lawyer.

photo courtesy WXIA

Top Three Demands For What Websites Should Do. Easily.

I’m at the Atlanta Business of WordPress Conference.  Twitter hashtag is: #thebizofwp. Francine Hardaway, neat lady, is the keynoter. She says the Top Three Things People Want From Their Business Website are these:

1. Content Management. “I want to get into my site easily and change it!”
2. “I want people/customers to get to my site from Facebook.”
3. “I want mobile access for my site.”

There you have it. And WordPress sites can do all the above. Easily. So you can too.

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Cartoon by Grayanne

Grayanne is a collaboration between Grayson Daughters and Suzanne Scully-Chace.

YouTube As A Law Enforcement Tool

In the terrifying, mind-blowing Dark Materials trilogy, the boy Will Parry comes to possess a unique knife that allows him to cut through the universe, through matter and on into parallel worlds all happening, presumably, at the same point in time as Will’s personal reality. Other simultaneous points of existence. Typically, these parallel universes are not all primitive. But they are often brutal and violent.

In Atlanta, of course, we have no literal knife with which to cut our way into the parallel universe of crime and poverty that exists in nearby zip codes. We let the police department or Sam Massell deal with that nastiness, should it bleed over into the other more civilized ATL universe, such as Midtown or Buckhead.

During the June 3, 2010, Thursday night, popular Screen on The Green event, sponsored by Turner, a parallel universe of violence and poverty, chiefly young blacks from, presumably, the universe south and west of the Five Points MARTA station, came to Atlanta’s Midtown area in a melee of violence and wild, maurauding behaviors that some say were targeted at Atlanta’s considerable gay, er, universe. (Careful what you choose to mess with, eh? Some worlds are far, yet more subtly so, stronger than yours. And a hell of a lot richer and well-organized, but that’s not the point of this post.)

Moving towards the point of this post… we DO posses a tool of sorts, primitive as it might be, into the unique parallel world of violence and thuggery simmering so close by us all in metro Atlanta. And we can monitor this universe… should we need to do so. Thus, so can the Atlanta Police Department (APD). The monitoring device is, of course, YouTube.

YouTube is a braggart’s garden of not only virtual, but reality-based delight. If you are surrounded by poverty and disorganization yet happen to have some Internet, a rare and precious thing in some communities no doubt, you can become Master of the Universe with a few uploads of the crappiest video imaginable.

Let’s take the single case of the self-styled “ooowa.” Uploading as ooowa, to something he calls “Bo Tube 1.” His own personal POV of his life, of course. Let’s dissect the factual we can determine solely from YouTube about our boy, ooowa:

1.) For some reason, although there were thousands of people fully equipped no doubt with all the latest video-enabled communication devices at the June 3, 2010 Screen On The Green event at Atlanta’s Piedmont Park, not much video has YET to appear on YouTube. I’m not exactly sure why that is, but perhaps other reality-based video accounts will pop-up there. I expect they will.

2.) However, ooowa was indeed at Piedmont Park that night. He was part of a crowd of people moving, once it was dark, towards a street. We know this because his crappy cell cam video captures those movements. It also captures some grainy vague imagery of people crouching along a sidewalk. As if they are trying to hide from something. There was chatter, and chatter only, surrounding the event  about gunfire during this melee. ooowa may indeed be able to corroborate, or otherwise, that chatter.

3.) ooowa may be able to corroborate a good deal of what went on that night at Piedmont Park… for better or for worse. ooowa is quite the documentarian… if you choose to examine his YouTube channel. Turns out ooowa has uploaded a heft 46 video clips to YouTube. Clips of his life. Where he lives and how he lives his life.  (ooowa loves to BBQ and tape his cronies puking-drunk, for example. ooowa likes to roam around at night where there’s thuggery to be had, taping all the time.) So there’s your own personal subtle knife into a parallel Atlanta universe – in all its, er, glory.

4.) Although unlikely to gain much hard data from ooowa’s two videos of the Screen on the Green fights, APD and subsequent judicial portions and persons, DA’s office, etc., of this post-melee, should there be such and I imagine there will be, will benefit enormously from taking a look at ooowa’s channel. And having a nice long chat with the dude as a follow-up in any judicial proceedings associated with this particular incident. Much to be studied and learned.

5.) Police departments around the country are having a prosecutorial field day within social media environs. Personally, and from a sociological standpoint, I find YouTube to be the juiciest and the most easily-accessed. Vast amounts of social data can be gleaned from even the crappiest, grainiest videos. And like the Gulf oil spill, the content just keeps on coming! Some of it criminal in nature, too.

6.) Of course it requires a great resource of time and effort to cruise through YouTube looking for interesting materials. I haven’t heard that APD has such resources at their disposal. While they may have a cyber division within APD, I’ve not heard much about their efforts one way or the other. Indeed, last time I called APD to report something cyber-related the person I was directed to in the “cyber” division asked me, “What’s a blog?” Then again, that was a couple of years ago.

I hope monitoring of YouTube content at APD has improved since. Because there’s a treasure trove of juicy and dark materials out there with which to do so. Have at it, APD.