An Explosion Of Political Commentary

By Greg Lefevre/CNN

CHICAGO (Aug. 26) -- If you cruise the Internet looking for political commentary, you'll find plenty from the left and from the right. Is there any middle? Not much.

Says Republican strategist Mary Matalin, "Those that first employ a device have extreme views. I use the 'e' word, but they are quite articulate about it."

And the places to go for political commentary exploded this year. The Yahoo search engine, for example, lists 140 web sites in that category. Some of them, like the very conservative Jack's Political Page, are themselves links to hundreds more.

Matalin's husband, Democratic strategist James Carville, found the web an effective promotional tool for his book, "We're Right, They're Wrong."

"Wherever I go, people say they saw the book web site," Carville says. "And I think political parties understand just how many people go in and out of these things....I mean, whether this is going to be a significant contributor to the outcome of the 1996 election, we don't know yet, but I think people are pretty comfortable that out in the future, it is going to be."

But are the parties in power listening? Internet writer Graeme Browning, author of "Electronic Democracy" says, "For the most part all the talk about Washington becoming Internet savvy and really wanting to listen to the voters out there is...hogwash."

Browning's guide to politics on the web, "Electronic Democracy," cautions against a takeover of the Internet by the political establishment.

"The problem," says Browning, "is the conversation is not interactive. The traditional Democratic, Republican strategy (is) putting their message on the Internet, on the web particularly, but they're not really that interested in getting the message back, really tracking what the people feel."

CNN's Gen-X political analyst Farai Chideya notes, "I started off with a little commentary on black Republicans and it's called the world's smallest fraternity."

Chideya's web site stays deliberately irreverent. "And it starts out, 'What's the sound of one hand clapping? Approximately the same decibel level as a gathering of black Republicans...'"

Much of the web's commentary is paid for by the commentator, free of sponsorship constraints. Says Chideya: "That's one of the good things abut the web. You can shill yourself. You can give out information. It's all fun and irreverent, but it's also substantive."

A good thing, the surfers say, about the Internet is that there's no pretense of objectivity. There's no having to decipher between the straight and the spin. It's all spin.

An Explosion Of Political Commentary

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