Deadlines Kill

I know I've been lax about updating this thing, but it'll just have to wait a little while longer. I'm under hellish deadline pressure, and adding even some no-pressure content creation right now would probably cause a tear in my brain, if not an outright implosion. For now, though my latest NRO piece, "Jacked In," on the how the Presidental candidates are using social networking websites, is up. Now if only I can get some work done, I might have time to be social myself. Here's a teaser for the piece:

The art of campaign politics is, in many ways, the art of networking. It’s a practice that’s hard coded into Washington’s DNA. Washington, or at least political Washington, lives and breathes by endless, obsessive networking — coffee meet-ups, happy hours, cocktail parties, and business cards power-blasted at anyone with a pulse and a Blackberry. To live and work in D.C. is to be caught in the perpetual rush to know and befriend — or at least make genial contact with — everyone. During election season, the town’s network culture expands as candidates take their campaigns — which are really just massive networking drives — on the road. But even the most relentless parade of stump speeches and town halls can only touch the few souls who are physically present. Consequently, candidates are increasingly using the Internet, with its limitless geographic scope, to connect with voters, substituting human interaction for web-based interactivity. And what better way to press the digital flesh than via the new wave of social-networking sites?