JABbering Stooge

Nancy, you have some ’splainin to do!

Even if you hadn’t heard the rumors, the fact that there was a schedule change printout laying at every seat denoting the extended Q & A session with Speaker Pelosi practically screamed that something was up. My former representative, Lloyd Doggett, introduced the Speaker of the House, who gave a 10-15 minute speech praising the netroots for our efforts in returning sanity to America. After a little high school theater, that something was revealed: Al Gore had decided to drop in on Netroots Nation. It was definitely something to see.

For a more detailed recap, you might want to check out Paul Hogarth at Calitics and Jill Tubman over at Jack and Jill Politics. Rachel Sklar also has a good overview over at Huffington Post, if you want to start there. My only quibble with Rachel’s recap is her description of a “brief disruption” from the Code Pink protesters, as “several brief disruptions” would be a more accurate depiction.

Here’s how the event looked from my perspective:

Lloyd Doggett warms up the crowd.

Pelosi greets Left Blogistan.

The highlight of the morning

Needless to say, Bill-O the Clown was not happy with Gore’s appearance.

Revolution in Jesusland

This was actually one of the more interesting panels that I went to at Netroots Nation. The panelists were Zack Exley, proprietor of the blog Revolution in Jesusland, and Jamie Moffett, who is the director producer of the upcoming documentary The Ordinary Radicals. The panelists proceeded to discuss the small but growing movement within the Evangelical community to take the radical (for conservative Christians) notion of actually looking at what Jesus taught, and trying to apply it to everyday life. Zack and Jamie also talked about possible ways the progressive blogosphere and this new movement could combine efforts to address the real problems facing ordinary Americans. It’s an interesting perspective on a community I would’ve otherwise written off as inherently committed to theocratic dogma.

Whose Line is it, Anyway?

I must admit something here from the start. One of my extracurricular activities up at Carnegie Mellon was No Parking Players, the university’s improv group (think Whose Line Is It, Anyway?). Actually, I was just a member of their Workshop Group — I never considered myself Performance Group material. I thought my experience would give me an advantage here. It turns out that it wasn’t much of an advantage, since there were a fair number of “naturals” there. And to no one’s surprise, Glen Maxey turned out to have something of a talent for improv. Toward the end, I was starting to sympathise with John McCain…just a little.

In spite of that, and in spite of only being able to cover a narrow range of improv games (we started with Zip-Zap-Zop and worked our way up to Three Line Scenes and Freeze), the “panel” was a good refresher of my improv skills (such as they are).

Strange Bedfellows

But in spite of my newly retrained improv skills, nothing could’ve prepared me for the surprise lurking around the corner from the room where the improv panel was held.

Definitely one for the WTF?! files…

That’s right, no less than Bob Barr, Libertarian candidate for president, had decided to crash our party. I stood around watching him be interviewed by someone with a video camera (probably some news crew, but I couldn’t tell for sure. I wanted to confront him about his role as House manager of the witch hunt for Clinton’s Almighty Penis, I couldn’t work up a suitable way to frame my question — and this is in spite of having just managed to (barely) hold my own in the improv session.

Fortunately, dday asked the questions I wanted answers to, and in a much more articulate manner than I could ever hope to achieve.

Don’t Think of Violence: Framing, Media and Policy

I wish I could give a coherent assessment of this panel, but I was running pretty ragged at this point, and had trouble staying awake. Fortunately, the fine folks over at Group News Blog have a good summary of what went on. (Part 1, Part 2)

Needless to say, in light of my lethargy during an important panel, I decided to call it a day. Though from what I hear, I wish I could’ve stayed for Donna Edwards’ speech.

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