I was in the midst of changing the tense; I should have written it in emacs and then copied it into the form once I was happy with it. So it goes.
I'm actually wondering whether a more considered phrasing would have done worse.
As it is the main goal of putting the headline into Barack Obama's eyeballs has been reached, and Ms. Ortiz knows that her boss is making the political calculation of whether she is a liability or an asset.
Unfortunately this will come no where near close to the President's eyeballs. It will be reviewed and responded to by some low level staff group who has been tasked to wade thru all of the petitions (and nonsense like the Death Star) which get 25k votes.
> Unfortunately this will come no where near close to the President's eyeballs.
I'm not so sure. Obama must have been aware of the protests over SOPA last year, because it was a major news item. Swartz' death is almost as big a news item; certainly the UK media have given it significant coverage[1].
I would imagine that Obama is aware at least of roughly who Swartz was and why people are angry, and so are most other US politicians. And we all saw how quickly they caved on SOPA.
So the alternative is to do nothing? Which is better? At least this gets some momentum going, hopefully being picked up by press, maybe even them questioning the president about it at some later interview.
Doing nothing means nothing will get done. This is probably exactly what the government would like you to do.
"The people rose up and caused a sea change in Washington" ~ Aaron Swartz
From all accounts I've heard, he's pretty focused on the details. And the petitions site is one of the few direct feedback channels from the electorate to him. That said he is a busy man who will delegate the research to others. If he does decide that telling her to resign will get him in the good graces of an important constituency; things will probably happen rather quickly.
Given the flood of news stories on Aaron's death over the weekend, it's a pretty sure bet the issue is on the radar of some mid-to-high level staffers. At the edges, to be certain, but there's an awareness of it, I'm sure.
I'm actually wondering whether a more considered phrasing would have done worse.
As it is the main goal of putting the headline into Barack Obama's eyeballs has been reached, and Ms. Ortiz knows that her boss is making the political calculation of whether she is a liability or an asset.