nothin Jane & Her Poodles Get The Story | New Haven Independent

Jane & Her Poodles Get The Story

Hollywood producer Jane Hamsher was sipping iced black tea outside Oolongs Tea Bar in New Haven’s Sherman’s Alley when a call came over the cellphone. Joe Lieberman — the man she’d traveled from the West Coast to watch disintegrate — was about to make a major announcement 40 miles north at the state Capitol.

In no time she was barreling up I‑91 at 90 miles an hour, cellphone crackling with updates, poodles trying to push their way to the front seat. This was real time, not reel time. She wasn’t going to miss this story, whatever it turned out to be.

Not after driving here from the West Coast, she wasn’t.

Hamsher (of Natural Born Killers fame) had just arrived in town. The producer and author has become a blogger of late; her Firedoglake site draws up to 80,000 unique visitors a day. Like other national bloggers incensed over the direction of the country under President Bush, Hamsher has taken a deep interest in the Aug. 8 Connecticut Democratic primary between three-term Sen. Lieberman and liberal challenger Ned Lamont, seeing it as a test battle for the heart and soul of the party.”

Hamsher was leaving Oklahoma, where she spent the last days of her 82 year-old mother’s life with her, when she decided she and her three big black poodles weren’t ready to return home to her homes in Hollywood and the Oregon coast. She had some time before shooting was scheduled to begin on her latest projects. So she drove East to Connecticut with the intention of staying here until the primary and blogging the campaign up close. She also wanted to see the local bloggers whose work she’d been following at sites such as DumpJoe and MyLeftNutmeg ; she has a hunch they might be making history.

There she was outisde Oolongs answering a local reporter’s interview questions, with poodles Kobe and Katie and Lucy tied by their leashes to a grate, when her Razor flip phone rang with the Lieberman news. The blogger universe was buzzing. No one knew what the Lieberman announcement would be. But it felt big; the Lieberman camp had waited until just two hours before the event to let the press know about it. On the slow news day before July 4.

We have to go,” Hamsher declared. She piled all three big black poodles back into her car along with a local reporter (me) who knew how to get to the Capitol, and stayed in phone contact with a Lamont staff blogger who was also in the area and wanted to follow in a separate car.

Hamsher turned the air conditioner up high but left the radio off; the car was already filled with waves of virtual and real motion. Somewhere around Meriden I realized Hamsher was breaking two Connecticut laws at once: the dashboard needle tugged at the 90 mark, and she was dialing and talking on the celly while steering. I also noticed that the car had air bags. So I said nothing, and resolved, if pressed to testify, to follow Judith Miller’s original example in the Valerie Plame case (the case which incidentally originally inspired Jane Hamsher’s blogging before Lieberman-Lamont caught her interest).

Then I remembered: Fourth of July weekend. Extra state police patrols. Oregon plates. This could mean trouble.
But there was no other way to make the press conference on time.

More calls from bloggers and informants stretching from D.C. to the West Coast. One carried word from a senator’s office.

He’s taking out petitions!” Hamsher cried. This was going to be a big story. It was worth the trip East. The poodles have a nose for these things. They said, Mom, get me to Connecticut!’”

As anticipated, Lieberman was indeed going to take out petitions to run as an independent in case he loses the Aug. 8 primary, a remarkable admission of weakness for a three-term incumbent who was once his party’s vice-presidential nominee.

Another call: the AP was going with the story. Hamsher dialed Firedog staffer Christy Hardin Smith in West Virginia and dictated a post. Racing a parallel track along the blogosphere and the Connecticut interstate, she wanted to have the story first.

As she shooed Kobe’s shnoz from the front seat (or was it Katie’s? or Lucy’s?), Hamsher squeezed in some reflections on why she travelled the country to bear witness to the race of the summer.

It’s all about [Supreme Court Justice Samuel] Alito for me,” she said, referring to Lieberman’s vote to prevent a filibuster and allow the right-wing judge’s confirmation to proceed. We’re this close” — she took her hand off the wheel to demonstrate just how close with two fingers — to having another judge who will seal our fate for the next 20 years. We can wind up permanently stacked and unable to swing the pendulum back.

This is a fight for the heart and soul of the Democratic Party,” she said, the state police headquarters passing in a blur outside her window. Are we going to rubber-stamp judges like Alito? Or are we going to say that Republican Lite isn’t good enough?”

She also wants to correct the impression of the race created by the national press, Hamsher continued. I’m trying to provide some counterbalance to the mistaken narratives that are being perpetuated in Time, Newsweek, the Washington Post… and they’re the best. Everything I was reading was buying into this narrative, It’s all about the war.’” Lieberman has repeatedly cast Lamont’s challenge as a single-issue campaign against his support for the Iraq war. Lamont has repeatedly responded that yes, the war is a major difference between them, but so are universal health care, the Bush-Cheney energy bill, gay marriage, free trade, school vouchers, and the Alito nomination, among other issues.

For now Hamsher has an extended-stay motel room in Meriden. She’s hoping to rent a farmhouse in Guilford through the primary; a bunch of her West Coast buddies want to stay with her and the poodles to witness and blog history themselves.

Watching Hamsher work, I got a taste of what this emergent national political blogging is all about. Tidbits, encouragement, mounting outrage and excitement all flowed like adrenaline over the wireless connections between her and the editors of influential national political sites like Eschaton and Crooks and Liars. They’re uninterested in gaining consulting contracts from candidates or becoming operatives. In fact, they raise money for the campaigns through their sites; Hamsher said Firedoglake has raised over $30,000 from small donors for the Lamont campaign. They also keep each other abreast of the latest TV appearances, video availabilities, and gossip. They’re not competing; they link to each other.

They also tap into the Lamont campaign for info. Lamont’s staffers recognized the value of the blogs early. They realized they can’t control them, but they can feed them information and make use of their energy and independent video reporting and commentary. The campaign’s full-time blog coordinator, Tim Tagaris, the young guy who was speeding behind us in his own car up I‑91, works the bloggers the way traditional press staffers work the pencil and camera reporters.

Nobody,” Hamsher declared, more than once, interfaces with the blogs like the Lamont people.”

The ideas and even the graphics flow up from the netroots to the campaign, not vice-versa as in traditional top-down, consultant-sculpted campaigns. For instance, in anticipation of Lieberman’s independent petition drive, Hamsher had prepared a mock movie poster for Joe Lieberman in Cut and Run 2006.” She immediately posted it Monday to coincide with Lieberman’s announcement. Other web sites (including this one) picked up on the Cut and Run” phrase as well as the graphic for their own breaking news coverage. By the end of the day, the Lamont campaign itself would officially use the phrase in its own press release.

This blogging world is also about caffeine. It’s constant energy. Dressed in jeans and a plain white blouse, decidedly unmade up, Hamsher looks more the itinerant blogger than the Hollywood producer with two West Coast homesteads. When she talks about how she broke into writing covering both politics and punk rock for the alternative San Francisco Bay Guardian in the late 70s, it all makes sense. Blogging, she said, is the new punk.” Anyone can do it. Anyone can plug in, make some noise, make a difference, and just blast away with an unceasing cascade of crescendoes.

12:43: Hamsher made it to Bushnell Park in record time. The troopers didn’t interfere. She parked, took out the dogs, and headed a block up to the Capitol steps.

She hung back from the pack of reporters during Lieberman’s announcement, observing the scene. She faded into the background, casually meeting people on the fringe. The poodles did kind of stand out, though.

Hamsher chatted up the battery of fresh-faced Lieberman kids called in to hold signs behind the senator. Despite what they told her, Hamsher was convinced they were paid, not volunteers.

After the press conference, she drove to Lamont HQ in Meriden for the challenger’s press conference. Along the way she reviewed the money quote” from Lieberman’s event (“I have loyalties that are greater than those to my party”), then phoned in another post to Hardin. They highlighted the quote in a box; it would soon show up on other blogs.

Lamont’s press conference wasn’t starting until 3:30. Hamsher had plenty of time. No need to fear the troopers this time.

Lamont’s appearance proved an anticlimax. He sat with his wife Annie on a shaded picnic table bench and downplayed the significance of the day. All that energy, all that outrage, all that determination to take on Lieberman bouncing like pinballs inside Hamsher’s car seemed like some other movie. Lieberman’s press conference had felt like a celebration. Here in Lamontville, not a single sign-carrying supporter, fresh-faced or not, appeared behind or beside Lamont in view of the camera. No cheers. Felt like just another day.

Jane Hamsher stood off to the side as reporters calmly chatted with Lamont.

Perhaps some time she could give the Lamont campaign some cues from Hollywood about visuals and creating a scene of excitement to accompany their news ops, a need every skilled politician from Bill Clinton and George Bush down to Joe Lieberman and John DeStefano and Dan Malloy has long understood. For now, Hamsher had other duties to attend to. She returned to her car, hit the road, and prepared for hours of passionate posts.

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