[Mike] Stark, a 39-year-old former computer programmer and third-year law student at the University of Virginia, made a name for himself through his uncanny ability to get past the screeners for Mr. O’Reilly and Mr. Limbaugh and other right-wing radio hosts to ask embarrassing questions. He recorded the conversations — they usually ended abruptly — and posted them on his Web site, and his renown grew.
In 2006, he took an interest in statewide politics and recorded a couple of body slams during George Allen’s snakebitten Senate campaign in Virginia, asking about accusations of Mr. Allen’s use of racial epithets.
Mr. Stark’s latest project has taken him to the Web site of Mr. Obama, who happens to be Mr. Stark’s choice for president. And while he said he did not relish making Mr. Obama a target, Mr. Stark is using the candidate’s own social-networking portal, my.barackobama.com, to confront him.
A little more than a week ago, Mr. Stark suggested to a group of liberal activists who share an e-mail list that they should organize a group on the portal to lobby their candidate to oppose legislation granting legal immunity to telecommunications companies that cooperated with the Bush administration’s program of wiretapping without warrants. The immunity is part of an update of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, that is set to be debated this week.
“Obama is getting mad props for social networking,” Mr. Stark recalled arguing. “Why don’t we use social networking to let him know that he can’t keep elbowing his progressive base — the people who got him the nomination — away from the policy table?”
Well, let's hope, for all our sakes, that Stark is right. (And why the heck would Obama be acting like that, anyhow? I thought everyone got to sit down at the table?)*
A member of my.barackobama .com started the anti-FISA group, and Mr. Stark quickly signed on.
In those 10 days or so, the group, with its ever-so-polite name, “Senator Obama Please Vote NO on Telecom Immunity — Get FISA Right,” has grown to more than 18,000 members and become the largest public group on the campaign site.
Although a demand for a vote seems pretty meek. Why not some oratory?
NOTE * I can't imagine!
- lambert's blog
- Login or register to post comments
Front page
Comments
i will only support and defend Mike Stark
for personal reasons as well as professionals ones. he's cool.
he's cool, and he's holding them accountable--
that's important.
i wonder if he's being character-assassinated on Obamacentric sites now? (just as the PUMA person was, and Larry Johnson--and how it used to be the GOP doing that sort of attack-the-messenger thing)