The media pundit's pundit. Written by NYC insider Jeff Jarvis, BuzzMachine covers news, media, journalism, and politics.
Haunted by archives
: Drudge links to a 1970 Harvard Crimson interview with John Kerry.
Frequently at ETech, people were wondering what the impact of blog archives will be decades from now when some 17-year-old Xanga blogger today runs for President tomorrow and has her teenage blatherings brought out.
Should there be a right to kill the archives we create? Or should we all just get used to the idea that times change and so do we?
Not feasible, to “kill” all archives…there are already too many “archives of archives” (Google cache, Wayback machine, etc), and there are sure to be many more in the future.
If you write it, live with it.
We should all get used to the idea that times change and so do we.
I, for one, would hope that eventually we would begin to see that the destination and the journey are in general more important than the starting point. Personally, as a Viet-era vet I could care less about either Bush’s ANG stuff or Kerry’s heroism in Vietnam, compared to what they’ve been doing over the past 30 or so years and where they stand now.
Who among us would want to be judged by either our juvenile idiocies or by our juvenile triumphs? Haven’t we all been through that?
I think the change is for the better, we all KNOW that stuff is around, previously people have been surprised when something from their past that they thought was dead and burried turns up years later because they never that that was a posibility, today we we know it’s a reality and are better informed. I think complaining about these archives is similar to people claiming they didn’t know smoking was bad for them. They knew, it was just easier to pretend they didn’t.
Of course, if you post to Blogspot, your archives will go away eventually…
Jeff-
Sen. Kerry’s comments in the 1970’s are less important than his current thoughts about those past comments. If he has grown and seen the error in advocating UN control of US troops, and now acknowledges that communist inspired genocide immediately followed our withdrawl from SE Asia, then perhaps he has grown and matured.
Otherwise….
-Regards
I agree with Dann. It’s not about what he said in 1970-whatever, but what he thinks now about that. In my view, it’s his Tawana Brawley. Kerry was involved in a hoax since all of the charges made by so called vets (who weren’t and were never in Vietnam) turned out to be lies. Does he say, I made a mistake trusting these men? Does he say that his statements were wrong and based on false information or does he go all wobbly and give some crappy maybe answer when it deserves a yes and no.
Frankly, I am more concerned about his national security voting record since he was on the wrong side of the fence on every one of those votes. I really wish some reporters would start asking some real questions, but maybe it’s still to early for that.
We all have to live with who we “are” — in 4d.
Time is that 4th dimension, Kerry 1970 is himself. We need more acceptance that you can’t always, or usually, or perhaps ever, start with a completely clean slate.
(Leaving the US for Slovakia 12 years ago is close)