Well, of COURSE I bought the book as well. Why not? Now, some might say “Hey, you’re funding the enemy!” Yeah, a few shekels will make it into Van Jones’s wallet. But I also read Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals for TWO specific reasons:
- Sun-Tze: know your enemy
- I almost got Alinsky’d before I knew what it was (Hey, Zandra Rice-Hawkins -> #FAIL)
I have no intention of allowing myself to get “Jones’d” in the future; as my high school Principal said over and over and over (again) over the loudspeaker for the morning greeting: forewarned is forearmed (and in politics, that last word has multiple definitions). He’s a major player in this engagement between philosophies – and make NO mistake, we have been in a philosophical war here in the US for quite some time. His is an ideology, shared by much of the White House denizens and President Obam. It is one that is an outlook that is more communism than individualistic, more Marx than Founding Fathers. In fact, I think it could be safe to say, as was discussed a lot at the Future of Journalism Summit dinners, workshops, and informal gatherings, that this struggle we are in IS a Cold Civil War. Just was with the war with Communism (which, being between nation-states, did have a few “hot” proxy wars – more on this later.
In the mean time, here’s video of me getting the book signed:
Now, the back story (with pictures!):
When I stood in line, a nice lady came down the line with a small card and asked “How would you like your book personalized?” and I simply said “Skip Murphy” (and that is why, in the video, he does a double take when he looked at my official (and personally paid for) NetRoots ID. And the smile and chuckle? Yeah, when he really recognized that I had never been at a NetRoots meeting before
Sidenote: Er, not intentionally anyways; remember, last year’s RightOnline was held at the same hotel as NetRoots and they couldn’t stand it – thus they fled to a small city and legally tried, via contracts, to sew up enough hotels to NOT sell to Americans For Prosperity to keep RightOnline from competing. I just have to hand it to Erick Telford though! Currently, he is now the V.P of Outreach for the Franklin Center – he was formerly the Director at AFP who started RightOnline. Hey, NetRoots – Erick STILL beat your butts (we got more press than they did before the two events started).
(I guess I may have a couple of Doppelgangers out there). Thus, I asked “Could you add one more line to that?” and told him what it was:
And then, showing that a wee bit of humor crosses the aisle, he added:
Now, on to read the book.
