Jordan Analysis

Lades and Gentlemen, for your reading pleasure: ScrubOne’s analysis of the year-to-last-Friday on Jordan Carter’s blog.

I spent most of the afternoon and evening of last Friday (26/10/2006) trawling through Jordan’s blog “Just Left”.

(This term is incidentally quite apt, as Jordan is often leaving for some destination outside of Wellington where he lives. He seems to like reminding us of the fact that he often travels overseas. He also likes leaving out quotes of things so they appear to support Labour.)

My method was simple. Read each entry and assign to one of several categories. These were added to and massaged through the process to produce as clear a categorisation of where Jordan is blogging.

Entries were as a general rule assigned to one category, but in rare cases were assigned to two where the post appeared to serve two functions.

As a personal note, I have found this self-appointed task tedious. This is mainly owing to the care I have taken in compiling the data and the time it took. While reading Labour press releases earlier in the week left me wanting a shower, reading Jordan was more like a carnival – some interesting (almost), much irrelevant, and most just simply really weird people hawking stupid stuff.

This is a quote from Jordan’s first post.

Just because I’m in the Labour party does not mean I am a clone. I do have my own views, and this site is mine, it’s not a party one. Don’t expect me to follow anyone’s line but my own.

The question I will try to answer is, is this true?

Firstly, the nice stuff. Jordan is surprisingly balanced on some issues. Economic data is usually reported without too much comment, and polls are usually reported without too much said. (He does however, freely admit to picking the polls he likes, don’t we all.)

Ok, now for the rest.
Unlike DPF’s policy of freely criticising National, criticism of the Labour party in Just Left is non-existent. Completely and utterly, zilch, zero nada. It would be fair to say, not a word passes his keyboard that would not have the approval of the deal leader or the collective. I believe it has been said on another blog that the only issue Jordan ever took an opposing position to the Labour leadership on was when he published a sensible opinion before Labour published the one that suited them. This blog is very much “the world viewed through rose colored, pro-Labour lenses”.

That is not to say that he does not disagree with them, he just frames any such criticisms in such a way that Labour is not even mentioned.

Jordan spends most of his time on what I termed “Labour Propaganda”. This is where he trumpets Labour policy, uses Labour talking points, etc. There’s often a barb thrown in at National too with these.

He spends about 1/3 of his time attacking National. I setup a category from the start for “hard” attacks where the knife is really stuck in, but this was used far less often than I thought. For the most part, Jordan simply sticks to dismissing Brash. He does not seem as threatened as the Labour party in general.

A side note on categories: for the most part I let the posts suggest their own categories, i.e. as I started, I formulated categories to fit things into. Upon analysing the data, it might be helpful to break down the larger ones more. See below comments on missing commentary.

He does seem to often seize anything National does and blow it out of all proportion. Gerry Brownlee making a hand gesture to Brash was to Jordan “almost pushing Don Brash over”.

The hardest thing to see is what is not there. It was only after reflection that I realised that Jordan spent no time at all on any other parties. There was perhaps 1 each talking about the Maori party and Act. Progressives were barely mentioned, if at all, as were Winston, Greens, and United. It is not surprising on reflection that Jordan chooses not to reflect on the embarrassment that is Winston, but one would expect a lot more from other coalition partners. It is possible I missed some of these comments, but they certainly were not common enough for categories to be suggested.

Another thing I noticed is the total oblivion to anything actually going wrong. This was unexpected, there’s no focus onto attacking National as per the Labour Press Releases. Jordan only really got going in defending Labour when it was really in the middle of the fight. Outside the thick of things, it’s wall-to-wall “isn’t Labour great” propaganda and “isn’t National and/or Brash stupid/useless/evil” attacks.

Jordan does not live in the real world. Not even close. His claim to be “not a clone” is just absurd, he is the very definition of one.

Categories:

• General

This is blogging announcements, “what I’m up to” posts, some economic (non political) stuff.

• International

Did not pay much attention to these.

• General Political

Non-Labour/National politics. Student Politics, local body etc. Also Polls were usually filed here, unless they made a case for another category, e.g. criticism of National.

• Defending Labour

Posts related to Labour’s indiscretions and crises. See next category for defence of policy.

• Labour Propaganda

Jordan spends much of his time saying “oh, we are just soooo good, isn’t National awful.”

• Attacking National
• Attacking Brash
• Hard Attacks on National and Brash

These are where Jordan goes over the top – sticks the knife in and really twists and/or where Jordan accuses someone of a serious offence.

• Other Criticisms

These are a loose bunch of posts that criticise or appear to criticise Labour or something other than the right.

Notes:

I merged Act with National, as there were only 3 posts in this category.

Results:

General 43
International 20
Political General 34
Defending Labour 25
Labour Propaganda 55
Attacking National – Soft 26
Attacking National – Hard 10
Attacking Brash – Hard 7
Attacking Brash – Soft 18

• Soft vs. Hard attacks came in the same proportions for Brash and National
• Jordan only defended Labour from scandals during the midst of those scandals, but when he did, he went all-out.