Brian Barnes
gregladen | March 29, 2012As many of you know, because you've not seen me around as much as usual, I've been devoting a considerable amount of my time to volunteering for a political campaign in my district. I'm trying to help Sharon Sund replace Erik Paulsen in the Third Congressional District of Minnesota. Erik is the Republican who took over the seat held by Jim Ramstad, who was a moderate Republican.
I wrote a blog post during the last congressional race addressing the question: Who is Erik Paulsen, anyway? Go read it if you have a chance, but I can summarize it for you: Have you seen the old Mission…
gregladen | March 18, 2012By "Controlling the Message" I mean setting the agenda, usually by putting something out there that causes other people to shift their own message to be more like yours. I can think of a few spectacular yet small scale examples that are safe to talk about. I'll give you one, although if certain people hear this they may not be happy.
When I first joined the Anthropology Department at the University of Minnesota, there was a meeting where everybody introduced themselves so new people could get a bead on the old, and the old people could test the new waters. Based entirely on where I was…