Good points.
Though the cult-of-personality stuff is weirding me out a bit.
Also, it might have been a bit more ahead-of-the-curve had JZ launched this campaign a month ago, after Lantos announced his retirement (and before Lantos endorsed Jackie Speier as his successor days later).
I suppose that DraftLessig is a way to whip up a little friendly publicity for the Change-Congress effort.
I checked Lessig's latest blog post-- well, well, well, not only is he *against* earmarks (the death knell for a Representative -- even Ron Paul brings home the pork), but there is a bit of fact-choking here.
So I go to the WaPo article, re-read Lessig's post, read through the comments, and then I saw:
"the Z-listers correcting the A-listers doesn't seem to have much effect."
Of course. All you Infothought readers know who said that!
And yes, there are some Infothought readers who sound like they're tired of that line, but you have to admit, when Lessig Himself flubs this, something is rotten in this medium.
The last comment, from some poster named "Form":
"Another odd jab, complete with an important factual error in the first sentence. It's a silly mistake, one that indicates an over-eagerness to indict Clinton as much as the general lessening of intellectual rigor that characterises Lessig's posts of late."
Posted by Jon Garfunkel at February 17, 2008 10:00 PMUgh. Spam alert. (Actually, I *was* thinking of a replica lamborghini... how did that poster know?)
Can I recommend Recaptcha?
Posted by Jon Garfunkel at February 18, 2008 02:31 PMA commenter at the linked post says "At his Free Culture farewell lecture a few weeks ago, Lessig floated ‘Change Congress’ as the name of his new anti-corruption initiative. Which is not to say that it couldn’t be put to some other use…"
Posted by Philipp Lenssen at February 18, 2008 03:14 PMJon: It's obvious that Lessig is becoming more and more interesting in electoral politics. Note this "draft" is a trial balloon, JZ and Palfrey are very sophisticated men. But floating a trial balloon is OK, especially if Lessig is personally uncertain at this point.
Spam post cleaned out.
Philipp: "Repurposed" :-)
Posted by Seth Finkelstein at February 18, 2008 03:50 PM