The Pakistani Spectator

Would you please tell us something about you and your site?

I’m 24 years old and live in Texas currently but have grew up all over the U.S. I graduated from Sarah Lawrence College in the spring of 2006, after which I moved to Austin to serve in AmeriCorps (a domestic version of something like the Peace Corps) as a mentor to at-risk youth for a year. After that I took a job at the Texas Civil Rights Project, where I helped undocumented (“illegal” to use the less accurate but more popular term) immigrant survivors of domestic violence get various immigration benefits including protection from deportation and authorization to work in the U.S. Currently I am on a long vacation in preparation for law school.

My site The Creatue Politic started in December 2007 largely at the prompting of my fiancé, who thought it would be an excellent way to keep up writing about the whole panoply of social and political issues that I’m passionate about. She designed the lobster banner than I use as well.

Do you feel that you continue to grow in your writing the longer you write? Why is that important to you?

I do feel that writing The Creature Politic has kept me growing as writer; it’s important to me to have this particular avenue for writing since I find it difficult to complete writing projects without at least a modest venue or sense of my parameters. More broadly, I find it valuable to continue writing because I tend to organize my thoughts through the process of writing.

I’m wondering what some of your memorable experiences are with blogging?

I haven’t had any majorly memorable experiences as a blogger yet, other than this interview.  I greatly enjoy the writing process, as well as reading other blogs, but my blog remains young enough that I have not yet gotten involved in any larger-scale projects or drama.

What do you do in order to keep up your communication with other bloggers?

I’m not very good at this. I read quite a few blogs regularly, but am not in correspondence with very many bloggers. I’m also no more than an occasional commenter even on my favorite blogs. Given what I hope to accomplish with my blog, I should make much more effort in this area.

What do you think is the most exciting or most innovative use of technology in politics right now?

The use of social networking sites to plan real world events. The Obama campaign has been especially focused on this, although numerous other examples exist. This type of translation from the virtual interactions to real interactions has existed as long as the internet, but I believe that only relatively recently has it matured into a major phenomenon (potentially) capable of causing significant political change.

Do you think that these new technologies are effective in making people more responsive?

Yes, I think that new technologies allow people to gain a great deal more information about politics than in the past. I also think that we are beginning to see people translate their new communication methods into planning real world events. The anonymous protests against the Church of the Scientology this past year are an excellent example, drawn from outside the Democratic net roots end of the blogging world, of people becoming highly motivated, engaged, and organized in ways previously impossible.

I also hope that thanks to internet video, efforts to combat police brutality in the U.S – especially the flagrant and abusive use of teasers – will gain strength. With video, abuse claims gain a level of visceral impact they would never have had before.

What do you think sets Your site apart from others?

I write about a range of related topics that rarely get in-depth coverage on the same site. The Democratic electoral strategy/analysis that I do on the one hand and the broader socially progressive (and particularly feminist-inspired) writing that I do on the other relate to one another in that both look to point out ways of improving this country’s understanding of and legal protections for what I consider to be very basic human rights. However, most blogs that cover one or the other of these broad areas tend to do so in something of a vacuum, with the number-crunching election junkies in one corner and the anti-imperialist, pro-feminist cultural critics in the other. I believe that neither of these groups can achieve anything close to their self-avowed long-term goals without a great deal more inter-communication. Hopefully my writing can go at least a short way to facilitating that.

If you could choose one characteristic you have that brought you success in life, what would it be?

My love for reading and my refusal to be completely satisfied with myself. Whatever success I’ve had as a blogger, a student, an academic, or for that matter as an artist (for several years I tried my hand at art photography and was modestly successful) have come because of one or both of these traits.

What was the happiest and gloomiest moment of your life?

The night I secretly proposed to my fiancé was one the most emotionally intense night of my life. Calling it the happiest seems reductive of the combination of excitement, happiness, and a sort of simultaneous disbelief and relief that this was for real, but it’s certainly among the best. Other top moments would be the opening of my first photography exhibit in New York in the fall of 2006 and my college graduation.

I have a hard time with gloomiest.  When my grandmother suffered a stroke that left her semi-comatose for about six months that was among the saddest moments of my life. In terms of a pervasive sense of gloom, admitting to myself, while studying abroad in Prague, that I would not be able to successfully learn Czech started into a couple of months of feeling like an abject failure.

Do you think [the use of Twitter and other social networking tools by politicians] is bandwagon jumping or what?

Yes, I think it clearly is. I do not see anything wrong with this though. The spread of most technologies involves a great deal of bandwagon-jumping and those politicians who most quickly adapt to the new technological environment will have enormous advantages. Consider Barack Obama’s use of social-networking sites. His campaign’s site (my.barackobama.com) clear takes its cues from Facebook. In this sense we might call in bandwagon jumping, but it also enable to his volunteers to coordinate real-world event in ways that were previously extremely difficult. That ability for his volunteers to self-organize efficiently became one of his chief strengths during the primary campaign.

If you could pick a travel destination, anywhere in the world, with no worries about how it’s paid for - what would your top 3 choices be?

1.     Antarctica

2.     Mongolia/Tuva

3.     Egypt

I’ve been lucky enough to visit five continents already in my life and would like to see all seven eventually. I’m also fascinated by isolated places, like Mongolia, the Tuva region of Siberia, western China, and so on.

What is your favorite book and why?

That’s a hard question to answer. I’m a huge reader and it tends to change every couple of months. In terms of novels, my all-time favorite would probably be Haruki Murakami’s The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. For poetry, I’m a huge fan of Christopher Logue’s War Music, a translation/re-interpretation of the Iliad into modern verse.

Is there anyone from your past that once told you you couldn’t write?

No, thankfully.

How bloggers can benefit from blogs financially?

I can’t speak from experience here. It seems that advertising increasingly works as a source of blogger income, but I also know that the real infrastructure to make blogging a sustainable professional activity is scarce at best. Chris Bowers, from Open Left and previously from MyDD, has written a number of excellent articles on the need to develop ways for bloggers to make money from the endeavors.

Is it true that who has a successful blog has an awful lot of time on their hands?

Not necessarily, no. Clearly its much easier to maintain an active blog if you have the luxury of either a great deal of free time or of blogging professionally, but I don’t think that it’s impossible to write thoughtfully and compellingly in the marginal spaces around a full-time job. Also, having a successful blog decreases the amount of time you have on your hands just as any other successful writing endeavor does; by eating up that time with work (albeit rewarding work).

What are your thoughts on corporate blogs and what do you think the biggest advantages and disadvantages are?

I don’t read any corporate blogs. I suppose that they offer a useful way of communicating directly with the most loyal/interested customers. As for disadvantages, I can’t think of any offhand other than the possibility that a spectacularly annoying or badly written blog might drive customers away.

Who are your top five favourite bloggers?

1.     Chris Bowers and Matt Stoller, the founders of Open Left. This is kind of cheating, since I’m naming two bloggers, but I really see their work on Open Left as one larger project. Chris does excellent polling analysis and Matt writes very insightfully about the dynamics of political power and what progressive strategies should look like.

2.     Jill Filipovic from Feministe. Among the many feminist bloggers that I read regularly, she’s the most consistently interesting.

3.     John Darnielle, singer from the Mountain Goats. He maintains an amazingly thoughtful and well-written music review blog called Last Plane to Jakarta.

4.     Daniel Larison, who writes a blog called Eunomia for the American Conservative magazine. I disagree with Larison almost completely on every imaginable issue and frequently find some of his positions on U.S. history (he’s a Confederate apologist) appalling. Nonetheless, he’s a thorough, consistent writer who presents compelling arguments. I think there is great value in reading those with whom I disagree, so long as I believe they are writing in good faith. Larison clearly does this and clearly possesses great intelligence. It makes his more extreme positions all the more  fascinating.

5.     Glenn Greenwald. Nobody writes about the U.S. government’s ongoing assault on civil liberties, or our media’s failures to fully investigate government deceptions, as tenaciously as Greenwald does.

Is there one observation or column or post that has gotten the most powerful reaction from people?

My posts about potential Democratic vice presidential candidates have gotten quite a reaction. Despite his popularity among the media pundits, there are quite a few people who feel that Jim Webb would make a terrible vice president. Similarly, I tapped into Brian Schweitzer’s widespread popularity among bloggers when I suggested him as an especially good and somewhat unconventional choice.

What is your perception about Pakistan and its people?

Primarily that here in the U.S. most of the population knows far too little about either. For my part, I must admit that reading the Pakistani Spectator a little in preparation for doing this interview has exposed me to more information about the country and its people than I would ever had seen otherwise.

This speaks to a larger problem with the media here in the U.S. All too often American news media discuss news from other nations solely in terms of how it effects U.S. involvement in the countries or how foreign political situations reflect a given population’s opinion of the U.S. Frequently left out of this kind of coverage is the fact that other countries have their own interests, cultures, political climates, and non-U.S.-related concerns.

Based on reading the Pakistani Spectator’s coverage, I would also say that the Pakistani people, or at least the Pakistani lawyers, seem far more actively concerned about their government’s subversion of the rule of law/independent judiciary that Americans generally do in regards to our own governments ongoing assault on civil liberties.

Have you ever become stunned by the uniqueness of any blogger?

John Darnielle, who I mentioned above.

What is the most striking difference between a developed country and a developing country?

Off-hand would be the degree of easily available material goods. However, having only ever lived a rather comfortable life in a highly developed country, I do not really feel qualified to speak for those living in developing countries.

What is the future of blogging?

I think it will solidify into a major new media market fairly rapidly. We are already seeing this, as A-list political bloggers emerge and begin to appear on TV and sign book deals. This will not mean the end of personal blogs, but will raise the barriers to achieving a large readership while also increasing the rewards available to those bloggers who do manage to break through to a larger audience.

You have also got a blogging life, how has it directly affected both your personal and professional life?

At first it made my professional life more difficult; I had to fit finding time to research, think, and post into an already busy full-time schedule. However, I’ve also found it very personally enriching, as planning and researching posts forces me to apply a certain mental discipline that helps keep me sharp.

What are your future plans?

I’m starting at Cornell Law School this fall. Hopefully student life will not stop me from blogging. In the long run, I would like to work for public interest/civil rights/civil liberties-oriented organizations such at the Center for Constitutional Rights, Texas Civil Rights Project, perhaps the ACLU. I am also potentially interested in providing legal services for the poor or working as a public defender. There’s a real need in the United States for more dedicated young lawyers who are willing to work to open up access to the legal system for the underprivileged and who are willing to fight to protect what remain of Americans’ civil liberties.

Any Message you want to give to the readers of The Pakistani Spectator?

Thanks for taking the time to read my ramblings; I hope you enjoy them.

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