Following the president one tweet at a time

By Scott Beveridge

Pittsburgh’s sometimes-cocky Mayor Luke Ravenstahl threw a hissy fit last month when reporters had the nerve to question why he kept disappearing during a snowstorm that created a disaster in his city.

Their questions followed a ski trip he made to the mountains in advance of the storm that dumped 2 feet of snow, and rumors he later traveled to New Orleans for Mardi Gras as the region was still dealing with nasty weather.

The 30-year-old Democrat lashed out at them in front of television cameras, seeming quite naïve in suggesting the public doesn’t have a right to know the schedule he keeps when taxpayers pay his salary.

Maybe Ravenstahl should take a cue from the big man on his party’s campus, President Barack Obama, whose schedule is regularly posted throughout each day on the Web via tweets on Twitter.

They are "anonymously" posted under the username, WestWingReport, by a someone claiming to be a journalist with incredible access to the president.

The tweets often look like this:

President's Tuesday Schedule: 9:30-intelligence briefing; 10:00-economic briefing; 10:30-senior advisers;

Earlier today, one post took a more serious tone when it announced the FBI was investigating an Obama death threat made on Twitter in response to Sunday’s contentious House vote on health care reform.

An earlier tweet after the House approved that bill carried a link to the first photograph taken of Obama upon his learning the measure had been approved.

Sometimes the feed includes humor like this one referencing a Washington, D.C. bar prior to the big vote:

"If I were running the Hawk & Dove, I would raise the price of beer tonight. Those celebrating or downing their sorrows will pay up."

This dude even tweeted once when Obama disappeared from the public eye only to announce in a tweet upon the president’s return that he had ducked away to watch his daughter Sasha play basketball at her school.

For the record, I began to follow WestWingReport solely because it’s an interesting experiment in new media, and not as a way to lend my support to Obama's policies.

Even the moron who spat on U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, D-Mo., as the black congressman entered the Capitol to vote Sunday would have to admit that Americans have a vested interest in what the president is doing at any given moment of each day. OK, maybe that is wishful thinking on my part that racists have intelligence.

Regardless, we’ve come a long way since people gathered around their radios 30 times between 1933 and 1944 to hear President Franklin D. Roosevelt issue his historic fireside chats. Every president since has done weekly radio addresses, while Obama has chosen to regularly issue some of his on the Web via YouTube.

Meanwhile, back in Pittsburgh, what appears to be Ravenstahl’s official Twitter feed hasn’t been updated since Thanksgiving.

Obama anger on the road

Politics aside, I don't understand why someone would jeopardize safety by impeding the rear view from his van with this many angry anti-Obama "bumper" stickers. But, it appears this white motorist in Washington, Pa., had taken time to chip away at the one expressing his distaste with immigration laws in order to see behind some of his hatred and blind spots. (Scott Beveridge photo)

The Internet president

P090109-0127, originally uploaded by The Official White House Photostream.

It's says a lot about social media and how it's reshaped American life when President Obama's White House family portrait is officially released on flickr. (Photo: Annie Leibovitz)

Obama art stirs conspiracy theories

Presidential hopeful Barack Obama has one of the hottest and most controversial posters on the campaign trail.

The red, black and blue block-print-style posters designed by Los Angeles artist Shepard Fairey have become an overnight collectors' item. Dealers have been selling them for $249 apiece on eBay before voters have even decided if the Illinois senator has captured the Democratic nomination in the race to the White House.

Support him or not, pundits have been hanging on Obama’s every word as he headed this week into the Pennsylvania primary, pitted against New York Sen. Hillary Clinton. And some critics have taken on the Obama posters, saying they resembled a Socialist propaganda tool to promote a cult-like revolutionary. Bloggers also claimed the portrait looked similar to those that were created decades ago of Stalin and Lenin, whose faces were bathed in white light as their eyes looked heavenward. Maybe it's the blood-red ink coating the left side of Obama's face in the posters that has been causing some people to consider hiding under their desks, as if they were part of a bombing scare during the Cold War.

Fairey’s previous works have appealed to the skateboarding graffiti culture, and also been admired by the likes of Hollywood. He created the poster for the film, “Walk the Line,” about the life of Johnny Cash after having gained attention for his André the Giant stickers that had some odd ties to Heidegger’s philosophical study of being.

Fairey apparently was inspired to create the Obama posters because the senator opposed the war in Iraq. His first 350 screenprints sold out, and the offsets were being distributed “by the Obama camp as an awareness campaign,” the artist stated on his Web site. Maybe it’s more about art repeating itself than some freaky conspiracy theory that Obama is a Communist, or an Islamic fundamentalist terrorist, who wanted to turn America into a dictatorship.

It’s no secret that artists have done controversial things to get noticed. The Obama poster resembled the style of Andy Warhol, who angered many Americans by immortalizing Mao in silk-screen. Warhol was drawn to bohemians like Jean-Michel Basquiat, the father of graffiti art. Chalk it up, maybe, to Fairey's fascination with phenomenology.

(CAPTION: Carolyn Sterns of Sistersville, W.Va., works in the Obama campaign office in Washington, Pa., oblivious to the controversy involving the poster over her left shoulder.)