Thursday, December 16, 2010

In Praise of "Senatus"

I actually had the TV tuned to C-SPAN when the Dems pulled the rule on the tax bill today, but wasn't really sure what was going on.  Which in turn made me think about how wonderful "Senatus" is, both website and especially twitter feed.  I guess he's now "Josh" of Senatus...I don't know about others, but I definitely still think of him (I guess it is a him, after all) as someone named Senatus. 

Anyway, that in turn got me to wishing that there was a House of Representatives version of Senatus.  Which then got me, since I still don't really know what's going on in the House (although Greg Sargent is very helpful -- sounds like just a temporary, short hiccup, not a real problem for the tax deal), to wonder what the House version of Senatus should be like.  Hmmm....

Well, first of all, it wouldn't have a fancy Latin name; at best, it would be something informal, something like "House Guy", and it might be even ordinary-folks like, although I can't quite think of the right name.  Second, the web site wouldn't have the classy, restrained look that Senatus adopted; it would be cramped and ugly, perhaps with some exposed pipes or something like that.  What's the web equivalent of having to walk out of the office, down the hall, take the stairs one flight, and then down another hall to get to the other part of the office?

What else?  Senatus, in my memory, never mentions the Other Body; House Guy would, I think, take cheap shots at the Senate two or three times a week.

Any other ideas? 

7 comments:

  1. Off the top of my head, 'The People's House', or 'It's Your House'.

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  2. "Mi Casa es su Casa" to give it a Spanish flavor

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  3. OK, those are good, but I'm less interested in names and more in comical ways in which House/Senate cultural differences would show up in the "It's Your House" feed. As you might imagine, I'm quite fond of House/Senate cultural differences (having worked ages ago in both the 7th floor of Longworth and, then, in the Hart Building).

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  4. It could be called "House Party," and posts would constantly be crowding each other off the screen, vying for more attention.

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  5. "...having to walk out of the office, down the hall, take the stairs one flight, and then down another hall to get to the other part of the office"

    Hahaha. Anybody who reads your blog and also works on the 2nd floor East side of the DNC is laughing hard at this.

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  6. Cat House.

    All puns intended.

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  7. Well, on the Houseblog, very few of the posts would be especially important on their own, you see, but when organized in certain ways, they could have a real impact. And on the Houseblog lots of things would make it through quickly, impulsively, based on what the largest group wanted, but Senatus wouldn't deign to pick up a fair number of them, leading to regular posts on the Houseblog that were just potshots at Senatus. Further, most of the individual posts that made it over to Senatus from the Houseblog would retain their scrappiness only relishing the larger viewership; and what had been there already would sigh, and wrinkle its brows, and wring its hands, and wish for the good old days when everyone over at Senatus just got along as gentlemen. And then all the liberal bloggers would call for ideally the abolition of Senatus, but at the very least the abandonment of anything that made it much different from the Houseblog. And Plain Blog would patiently explain why that was neither feasible nor desirable, and the Monkey Cage would host a symposium on the history of and prospects for Senatus reform. And the conservative blogs would gleefully interject once in a while to point out that everything the liberal bloggers favored had no chance of making it through both Senatus and the Houseblog in anything close to similar form; and Senatus would acquire a cohort of commenters grumbling that if its headlines were only better, it could post as much as the Houseblog did.

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