Carol Porter Is So Kim Kardashian

No, Carol Porter has no signature fragrance. I doubt she’s worn much bling out on the relentless, red-clay Georgia campaign trail for Lt. Governor, either. However, she is doing something just the way Kim Kardashian does it – Carol Porter is synching her real-time social media seamlessly into her online campaign presence.

Go to CarolPorter4GA and you are immediately connected to Porter herself – not to a static, processed appeal for donations as most campaign websites tend to present. Porter’s Facebook updates are presented as fresh, updated content on the homepage.

Porter works her Facebook updates very seriously, posting info and news of her day ahead by 6am that morning. You’ve got to be a seriously early riser to keep-up with Carol Porter, whether in social media or out on the grueling campaign trail. There are busy women; then there’s Carol Porter.

Mad Men, Mad Money, North Georgia

Oh victimhood. It sure doesn’t look pretty on our menfolk, eh? Worn like a hairshirt on our men of bigtime capitalist action plans? On our Georgia Republican leadership? Stuff just ain’t purty, any way you examine it. If you must.

Bernie Marcus popped-up on CNBC recently. In a bizarre, aging-capitalist ramble of a rant against the Obama Administration. The whole weirdness led… absolutely nowhere. And had nothing to do with the hardly-suffering Marcus himself, but was rather on behalf of a few whining, broke cronies. See here.

Yes, Bernie Marcus made a lot of people money. (I am one who stashed away a little of Bernie’s money myself… to see me through a divorce and single parenthood times. I am grateful to have had it, too.)

But the Home Depot folk who made the most money, the serious big bucks made by a handful of working class Joes who busted their butts right on up to a C suite at Depot, I Sarah Palin-betcha plenty of those people live in North Georgia right now. However, these far tougher times reveal that only a precious few could hold on to or manage their wealth… up there in North Georgia.

Been to North Georgia lately, folks? Someone called it PVC Nation. The entire landscape is moreorless bankrupt. Looks just like in the photo above. Nathan Deal is the human equivalent; now the North Georgia Wasteland poster child of greed and speculation, in boom times, gone wild.

This has absolutely nothing to do with the Obama Administration or Tim Geithner or Nancy Pelosi or stimulus money or keeping hope alive. But it has everything to do with bad business practices much of North Georgia over-indulged in during the housing bubble of the mid-2000’s, like some crazed Big Mac bender.

Delighting and drooling in the boom housing times they willingly, gleefully lavished on themselves in a doomed river of (no doubt perceived as highly deserving) easy money. A mad, bank-driven, get-even-richer scheme of land speculation blessings – as if boom times and wacky lenders like the Community Bank (see link at bottom for more on Community Bank) were a prayed-for gift from Jesus Himself.

And dig me when I tell you kiddies, any money people made while working for Home Depot did not come easy;  it came from long years of hard work. But I diverge.

No one owes any of these whining types who are now whining to the heavens over their cash flow issues, such as Proxy Man Marcus, a guarantee of boom times and rivers of cash from any bank on any corner. (Again, Marcus is hardly suffering, but rather whining like a nutter on behalf of a few buddies he flew around in his Gulfstream last week. Go figure.)

See Bernie whine on their behalf.

What I want to know is where in the world did they ever get off thinking a wild profit and forever-good times were a right they were granted for the sheer good luck of having been born a white businessman in America? Huh? That one just makes me scratch my head in bewilderment.

Stick with ’em long enough though, and eventually they all get around to blaming their white men-woes not just on the Obama Administration but also on that tried and true evil – The Media. Nathan Deal’s already launched that worn-out whine.

More on the matter of North Georgia repercussions here. It is the stuff novels are born from.

Thank You For Choosing Political Service

To my many friends and social media aquaintances who were running for public office yesterday to serve the state of Georgia…

I am honored and impressed to know so many of you. Good character and good values cross all partisan lines. And I saw plenty of those from the people I know who chose to set themselves up for the scrutiny of our political process… as I also saw their names on my ballot.

Instead of going out to the victory parties or viewing the results at Manuel’s, as I like to do, I ended-up staying home and watching the documentary about the death of Neda in Iran… a story I’ve followed since seeing and hearing it all play out in front of my eyes and ears on Twitter and YouTube and Facebook and MSM… just over a year ago.

The documentary, Death in Tehran, was a perfect affirmation of our unique political process. There was not a moment that was lost to me, in a documentary about the tragedy and horror of political repression, of how blazingly fortunate and free we are in America – when we choose to be so.

And while there is gross apathy, ignorance and contempt for our gift of political freedoms in America I am fortunate and grateful that, for the most part, the people I know and associate with are fortunate and grateful and respectful of a political process we should never take for granted.

You set an example for others in every action, small or large, you do every day. With the greatest example being your belief and participation in a political system you chose to embrace with a great appreciation affirmation of the process we are astonishingly gifted with.

With absolutely nothing to do with a win or a loss, your example of expectant participation and service is a unique and valued treasure in itself.

Thank you.

What Would You Pay To Go Full Multimedia?

I recently completed a 4-month long project during the course of the Georgia General Assembly’s 2010 session; from opening day to Sine Die (last day)… give or take a week or two off here and there when the legislators had to excuse themselves to, like, go figure stuff out.

This online video project was taken on with veteran southern politics newsman, Tom Baxter, at the behest of CBS-Atlanta, WGCL. You can review some of the 30 videos created and promoted here.

CBS-Atlanta had no designated political reporter at the onset of the project, that began in January of 2010. They needed to supplement their broadcast product with targeted, specialized online media. Not more “Tough Questions” ambush-style product (Saltzman is perfectly capable of THAT gig all by her scowling self), but with more feature-type of media offerings from a seasoned reporter who understands Georgia politics.

Baxter delivered the goods. At times it seemed as if there wasn’t a single person, of the daily hordes walking up the gorgeous marble staircases of the State Capitol, that he didn’t have a full bio on… stored in his usually-in-need-of-combing head. In four months of activity, I saw only one politician refuse an interview request with Baxter, and that was a pol who had just been demoted by the House Majority (or Senate, I forget) leadership, so the pol had to go off and lick his wounds, thus brushing-off Mr. B. in his haste to process all that new-bad karma.

So well regarded was Mr. B in the long history of work he’s done in southern political (print) journalism that powerful people seek him out to have a moment with him. Hell, the dude could just stand in the hall with a mic turned on (as I rolled media card) and every single person in the Capitol would come by to say their piece – and be delighted to be doing so. It makes ’em feel special.

Baxter doesn’t deal in rumor and innuendo. Nor commando-style microphone shoving into faces whilst yelling ridiculous questions. All you’re ever going to get from a bizarre method like that is decades of resentment. You’re certainly not going to forge relationships. More like you’re just banishing yourself into the political wilderness, for no apparent reason, where you’ll be left alone with no one to go on the record for you when you might need them, say ten years down the road of your mutual careers in politics and/or journalism.

That or either you’re in it for your personal careerism, perhaps thinking you are getting yourself off to that mythical place that no longer exists called “the networks.” Like anyone wants to go THERE nowadays. It’d would be the journalistic equivalent of being shipped to Siberia if you ask me, which of course no one did.

Politics is local. Anything you do at the national level is just pack mentality pointlessness of rote meme recitation to mass media consuming drones. For a bigger paycheck and a whopping mortgage in Arlington, VA, with Ivy League to pay out the ass for bratty kids who should be sent to community college anyway.

For the most part, other than a wild flame-out or two here and there, politics is a long haul endeavor. And if you don’t cover it with that in mind you’ll get nothing. Nada. (Just ask Dale Russell.) If you don’t ask nicely, you’ve just made yourself a career-long enemy… if you are young, unwise, and think that is how news must be churned – with impolite, disrespectful behaviors as a motivator. And you can go back to your newsroom and call it news if you wish. Or a report. But trust me, it will not be journalism.

Baxter is a genuine journalist. The news he writes and the stories he tells come from the people in power and elsewhere who are willing to go on the record and talk openly and with transparency about the political process. And there are never just two sides of a story. Rather, especially in politics, it’s more like there are 10-15 sides of a story. Baxter lets ’em all whisper their various POVs in his ear, weighs all the chatter with his years of experience in the game, and then he writes. Or in our multimedia case, talks out perfectly crafted sentences off the top of his head – no script, no rehearsal. Dude was a born TV broadcaster and never knew it!

Anyway… getting to the point of this blog post, which was supposed to be about money and budgets, but if you’re going to entertain a thought towards southern politics Baxter will get your attentions. So, on to the point… here’s the gear list and pricing (retail) for what amounted to a series, an archive really, of about 30 videos. 30 videos,  most in the 3-minute range, that incorporate what will be Georgia’s 2010 political history. And yes, I wish news orgs would see themselves more as archivists and librarians who also exist to serve the greater historical good, but that’s a whole other discussion, eh?

• Camera, Kodak Zi8: $170. on sale at Target
• Tripod, some cheap crap off of eBay – $30. (will not last longer than a few weeks without breaking, but if you’re going cheap you work with what you got, right?)
• 8-gig memory card – about $40.
• Adobe Premier editing software package – about $100.
• Audio-Technica Pro 24 external mic – $100.

So there. For under $500. you too can get yourself a multimedia broadcast production facility. Moreorless. Of course that’s just the gear. You must then determine just how much time and cost you are going to invest in your multimedia online endeavor. What is worth the multimedia online treatment in your shop? And what is it worth to you in this social media, online world we’re all creating and growing day by day?

You tell me. Or better yet… let WaySouth Media tell you.