Category: Politics

Way  back in May 2001, I spoke at a forum hosted by American University on the topic of Congress on the Internet. For my remarks, I humbly submitted my suggesgtion for what I believed to have been the  Top Ten Milestones for Congress on the Internet up to that point.

And #4 on my list was “Animations Abound: Waving flags, flying letters, & Rep. Traficant ‘Bangin’ Away’”. The Traficant reference came from this blurb I wrote in a March 1997 online update to my book, The Hill on the Net. Here’s what I wrote;

THE ANIMATED REPRESENTATIVE
I wondered who would do it first. Which member of Congress would go beyond the standard official portrait on their home page and use animation to show themselves in action; smiling widely, giving a thumbs up, or offering a virtual handshake. I guess it should come as no surprise that a member who is well known for his animated floor speeches would not be happy with a gif that sat still. Representative James Traficant of Ohio has the first animated photo that I’ve seen on a member of Congress’ home page, and it’s a hoot.

The animation, shown at right, shows Rep. Traficant wielding a piece of 2×4, like a batter warming up to swing. On the board is his motto, “Bangin’ Away in DC’. He was well known for his outrageous one-minute speeches, which often included his appeal to ‘beam me up’. He was also well known for his uniquely difficult to describe hairstyle. (You can find some of his finest moments here and here).

Traficant was expelled from Congress in 2002, only the second member of Congress to suffer that fate since the Civil War, following his conviction for accepting bribes, making congressional staff work on his farm and boat, witness tampering, destroying evidence, and filing false tax returns. He served seven years in prison for these crimes. He died yesterday following a tractor accident on his Ohio farm.

Rest in Peace Rep. Traficant, and a hat tip to whomever it was on your staff that created that bangin’ animated GIF when they weren’t cleaning your boat.

It was in 2002, when I was working on Janet Reno’s gubernatorial campaign, that I produced my most memorable political animated GIF (and for the record, count me in the ‘Hard G Pronunciation’ camp). The campaign had smartly embraced the SNL spoof of Reno, a bit titled ‘Janet Reno’s Dance Party’. The Reno campaign hosted fundraisers under the same name, and agreed to my suggestion that we animate a dancing Janet for our website’s promotion of the events. Somehow, it seems to me anyway, that my jerky attempt at animation mimicked well how most might imagine Janet Reno awkwardly dancing. (Coincidentally, Traficant was no Reno fan, having once belittled her as “a good prospect to run for governor of Beijing“)

And another hat tip the humble animated GIF, which fell out of use, but is now enjoying a wonderful resurgence. If you’re interested in learning more, this history from PBS titled Animated GIFs: The Birth of a Medium is well worth the seven minutes. Enjoy!

At it’s current rate of growth it is expected at at some point this month, June of 2014, the number of websites on the Internet will surpass the one billion mark. The first website was launched on August 6, 1991 by the inventor of the World Wide Web, Tim Berners Lee.  By mid-1994 there were 2,738 websites on the Web. And by the end of that year there were more than 10,000.

On June 2, 1994, the office of Senator Kennedy released a press release announcing the launch of their official website, the first for any member of Congress. It was developed and hosted by the Artificial Intelligence Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The same release shared a public email address for the Senator, joining just a handful of Senators accepting email from the public by that point. And it also detailed the Senator’s previous means of online outreach to his constituents, including a network of dial up bulletin boards, ftp and gopher servers, and postings in Usenet newsgroups.

Press release announcing the launch of Sen. Kennedy’s website, June 2, 1994.

Being old enough to remember, and being able to remember, are two different things. And it’s truly difficult to recall the World Wide Web in mid-1994. Before Amazon.com, craigslist and eBay. Before Netflix, Google or PayPal. Before Whitehouse.gov, and only shortly after Yahoo. Every baby born since is arriving into a much more webbed world than their parents ever imagined. Every minute of the day approximately 255 babies are born world wide. And in that same minute on the World Wide Web, approximately 571 new websites are created.

When the Senate’s own website was launched almost a year and a half later in October 1995, Senator John Warner of Virginia, then chairman of the Senate Rules Committee, thanked the many staff of the Rules Committee and Sergeant at Arms and Secretary’s offices involved in the effort. And he also included, “Additional thanks to many of those Senators and their high-technology staff members who were early adopters of this emerging technology, and who indeed gave us the impetus to move forward to this day.”

Twenty years ago today I was 28 years old, and working for Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts as his Systems Administrator. I was excited by the possibilities of exploring the intersection of technology and politics, and I was very fortunate to collaborate with others much smarter than myself to push the boundaries of what had yet been done. Jeff Hecker, Jock Gill, John Mallery, Eric Loeb, and Laura Quinn were the firsts among so many others I’ve been able to work with over more than 20 years in online politics, and I’m very grateful to each of them.

The first long distance telegraph message from the U.S. Capitol was sent by its inventor Samuel Morse, asking his recipient the deep question, “What hath God wrought?”. He didn’t get an answer, but a question in reply, “What is the news from Washington?”. Today, much of the news from Washington comes from our modern telegraph, the Internet. How will it arrive in another 20 years, or another 100?

When Senator Kennedy passed away in 2009, I wrote this remembrance about his impact on online politics. If he had not become the first member of Congress on the web 20 years ago, some other member would eventually have been some time later. But Kennedy was, and among the very many much larger accomplishments in his long career in public service, it’s still one worth remembering.