Our post about Mike O’Connor being ‘cranky’ (which was also republished yesterday here at our partner MinnPost) was really about the fact that Governor Tim Pawlenty did an end-run-around the Minnesota Ultra High Speed Broadband Task Force and I sent an email to the Governor and staff to give them a heads-up on the post and, like I always do, ask for a comment.
At 4:09pm today I received a call from a young woman named “Jennifer” letting me know that “we received your email but the Governor doesn’t respond to blogs.” I asked to quote her by name but she wouldn’t do so “as it’s our policy not to give out last names for security reasons.”
Besides expecting there would be no comment or engagement and finding the “security” comment sort of cute, I realized that once he’s a former governor running for the presidency, it’s likely he’ll suddenly get religion about social media and his campaign staff will fall all over themselves engaging “bloggers”.
September 2nd, 2009 at 7:29 pm
We don’t respond to blogs??! It’s good to have dinosaurs in St. Paul.
September 3rd, 2009 at 11:10 am
Just for my own curiosity on this issue:
1) Why should he have to respond to blogs? Does Obama? Do any other governors you know of? Should they?
2) Keith, what do you mean when you say MSP is the social capital of the US?
September 3rd, 2009 at 11:26 am
Tyler,
Keith’s comment came in via Twitter (we use BackType).
The point with response is that even a boilerplate one is usually expected (Senators and Congressman do).
This has nothing to do with President Obama so what is THAT reference all about?
–
Steve
September 8th, 2009 at 9:27 pm
Steve,
Yeah I know where his comment came from, and along those lines it would be nice if one could subscribe to comments. Would be nice to know when there are replies
That way Keith could be back in on this convo too! I just so happened to have remembered to check back here by random happenstance.
Hope I didn’t offend by bringing up Obama, your reaction makes me feel a little hesitant about coming back here to comment. Apologies if I came across inappropriately. I’ve actually never gotten even a boilerplate response from anyone in office when I’ve made comments on blogs that talk about them or whatever blogs they might be affiliated with. I’ve gotten boilerplate responses from emails I’ve sent, but never blogs.
I really just asked those questions to try to stir more conversation, but it doesn’t seem like anyone wants to converse on this issue.