From a birdie named Cathrine…

Greetings! I’m a producer for “BackStory With the American History Guys,” a public radio show about American history that is based here in Charlottesville at the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities and hosted by the historians Ed Ayers, Peter Onuf, and Brian Balogh. The show tries to provide the historical background of contemporary news headlines. So for example, we’ve done recent shows on the history of voting, presidential transitions, and energy consumption.

We’re a call-in show and we’re currently looking for callers for our “Just the Facts?: Partisanship and the Press” show, which will examine how the American media has negotiated the line between partisanship and “objectivity” over time. More specifically, we’re out to call into question listeners’ assumptions about how bias has operated in American journalism in the past (for most of our history, partisanship was the major driving force rather and something to be avoided). »Read More

Virgil Goode Did Not Respond

Tom Perriello Did Respond

Thanks for submitting questions for Perriello and Goode. Originally, we had told both campaigns that we wouldn’t publish their responses unless the other candidate also submitted responses in order to maintain our neutral political position.

After a phone call with a very unreceptive and unhelpful representative from the Goode office who explained to me that “maybe, we would look at the questions, but we get a lot of requests and Virgil is very busy” I realized that there was no way Virgil would answer the questions. Do you remember the TV debate cancellation?  The point is Virgil Goode’s lack of response indicates he  doesn’t care about speaking to the 5th district, and certainly, given our demographic, doesn’t care about speaking to the younger members of the 5th district.  I changed my mind about requiring responses from both candidates.

In case you didn’t know, Perriello is challenging six-term Republican congressman Virgil Goode. According to wikipedia, Perriello is calling for a restoration of America’s commitment to the “common good.” He has twice broken fundraising records for the district and out-raised Virgil Goode in 2007 and the first quarter of 2008.

The Perriello campaign was very willing to answer these questions and I’m happy to publish them. The questions were reader-submitted for the most part.  Thank you for submitting questions if you did.  I think we got all of them.  We asked the questions via email, gave each candidate 5 days to respond and told them to keep their answers short and to the point.

We’ve asked Tom and Virgil about national security, the economic crisis and most least importantly, tartare and aioli.  We made minor edits to the original questions and added a few of our own.  Tom’s responses are all his own and are unedited.  You can find them after the break.

»Read More

So I was just interviewed by Scott Weaver from the CVILLE Weekly, and one of his questions was if things on our site got so crazy in terms of heated posts/commentary.  I didn’t know what he meant and then he sent me this link:

http://slog.thestranger.com/2008/06/fuck_this_im_out

Holy smokes!   Are we this mean?  Ever?  Or does the commentary on that site cross the supposed cVillain line?  Do we have a line to cross?

On that note, have a great 4th of July!  And that interview should be out in 2 wks…lets see what they say.

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