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The Navigator: Politics, Politics . . .
By Linton Weeks Washington Post Staff Writer Thursday, November 5, 1998 
Ron Gunzberger, creator of Politics1, another site chock full of political links, estimates that there were some 5,000 sites – representing parties, issues and candidates – in America. For Tuesday's elections, Politics1 provided links to a couple of thousand. Gunzberger, 35, a Fort Lauderdale trial lawyer and former assistant attorney general in Florida, says that the Internet "is becoming a replacement for old campaign headquarters" as places to learn about candidates and their positions and pick up campaign literature. He is skeptical, however, about the ultimate persuasive power of the Internet. "This is the first cycle," he says, "in which the Internet is being used so widely." Political sites, he predicts, "will remain an element in campaigns, as part of a communications package, but they will never replace campaigns." For instance, Nels Anderson, a challenger to incumbent Alaska governor Tony Knowles, ran his primary campaign completely on the Internet. He got two percent of the vote. Top prize for the Worst Use of the Web in a Political Campaign for 1998, says Gunzberger, went to the official site of Roger Weidner, the Reform Party candidate in the Oregon gubernatorial race. Weidner's home page sported a link to a 1995 newspaper article showing the candidate in handcuffs. The story explained that Weidner, a former state prosecutor, had been declared sane and was being released from the Oregon State Hospital's program for the criminally insane. The best site, Gunzberger says, belonged to Jeb Bush, candidate for governor in Florida. "He did everything right," says Gunzberger, using earth tones and hot buttons to ever-refreshing information. He also used crawling text to sling mud at his opponent. In the coming months new sites will spring up, geared toward the year 2000. But if you want to get a load of the colorful political palette on the Web, you might try sites like these that have no season.
Linton Weeks can be reached at weeksl@washpost.com
You and You Alone ...
Join by e-mail ($19.98) and you'll get a copy of the Club Recluse Handbook, a membership certificate and discounts on merchandise – a hat and a T-shirt. In case you don't know if you're a loner, take the handy quiz. This club isn't for people who are afraid of being alone; it's for those who celebrate solitude. Composed in stylish white font set on a black background illustrated with black and white photographs, the site is an entertaining graphic interlude in the pulsing bad taste and garish color that emanates from most of the Web. With faintly European diction and grammatical slips, the text almost convinces that the Belgian Baron Otto Von Tu in his elaborate Manhattan penthouse far from "noisesom mob" is a real person. Alone, of course.— L. Peat O'Neil
Beleaf You Me
Start with the National Park Service site for basic information about Shenandoah National Park. Find scheduled hikes at the Northern Shenandoah Valley Chapter of the Potomac Appalachian Trail Club or the Capital Hiking Club pages. If you plan to stay a few days, nearby bed and breakfasts are featured on the Bed and Breakfast Guild of Rappahannock County, Virginia, site. While no Web site gives you information about peak fall color times, the Washington Post's own site gives you a list of phone numbers you can call for this information. One of the recordings reports that the lower elevations are still vibrant with color, and the mid-elevations are "still pretty.'— Sarah Stapleton-Gray Found something intriguing, improbable, insane or especially useful on the Net? Write it up and send it to Joel Garreau or Robert Thomason. |
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