U.S. Presidents have had an uneven relationship with technology. The Clinton Presidential Library has more than 40 million White House emails on record (but only two are from the man himself). The Bush Administration, on the other hand, junked the Clinton archival process and replaced it with a comically inept alternative that has lost more than five million messages, many concerning official government business. (President Bush, for his part, gave up his longtime address -- G94b@aol.com -- just before his inauguration). Even the Reagan White House had its share of problems with the digital age. Now, as tech-savvy Barack Obama prepares to implement his technology plans, does he have a shot at dragging the Oval Office into the 21st century? Or will he have to surrender his laptop, his email account, and his beloved Blackberry?
posted by Rhaomi on Nov 15, 2008 - 38 comments

My Right Wing Dad is a new-ish and rather informal blog that aims to provide "a chance for folks to examine the unrestrained rhetoric that is quietly passed from in-box to in-box in America," by hosting a collection of the emails that form an often untraceable and unacknowledged part of public discourse in the U.S., especially on the Right. Tagged by category (for example: God, college, flag, liberal, and World War II), the amateur archive presents a range of colorful opinion, not all of it strikingly accurate, and some of it offensive. In efforts to understand liberal and conservative habits of communication, it may be worth considering the role of forwarded email in the electoral process, and the reasons that the forwarding of email is popular among some people, and whether this behavior tends to correlate with particular political opinions. The emails hosted on MyRightWingDad may in any case be enlightening, unless you're already on the forward list of someone in the know.
posted by washburn on Aug 15, 2007 - 105 comments

God help us if the Democrats find out. After Cheney's .com/.org mixup, Republican domain name confusion continues as Bush campaign staffers accidentally send email--including lists of voters that may be used to challenge voters--to addresses at georgewbush.org instead of georgewbush.com
posted by kirkaracha on Oct 26, 2004 - 26 comments

For any society, in any age, the study of politics ultimately comes down to one elemental question: how are people persuaded to acquiesce in a polity where the distribution of power is manifestly unequal and unjust, as it invariably is. -- The quote from David Cannadine that opened a recent Newsnight newsletter from Jeremy Paxman. Email may not be the sexiest 'net medium, but I wait daily for two witty, well informed summaries of UK current affairs; the second is Channel 4's Snow Mail. And weekly, there's the Guardian's Backbencher.
posted by andrew cooke on Dec 6, 2003 - 2 comments

The GOP just spammed me. I received an email sent supposedly on behalf of "Jim Nicholson, Chairman, Republican National Committee" inviting me to become an "eChampion":

Once you've registered as an eChampion, you will receive fact-filled e-mails twice a week on the upcoming election, the candidates' stands on issues, etc. Your role as an eChampion is to send these e-mails on to AS MANY friends, neighbors and family members as possible, and invite them to register as eChampions themselves at http://www.echampions2000.com.

No, I didn't opt-in to some Republican mailing list. For a start, I'm Canadian, in Canada, and if I was going to vote for a right-wing wing-nut, it would be Stockwell Day. Talk about "idea viri"...
posted by tranquileye on Oct 10, 2000 - 6 comments