Hi, Claudia, I'm afraid this posting isn't representative of HASTAC in its intellectual content. It would be if there were dolls of other political candidates too, or if the dolls were avatars in a virtual world, and/or if there were also some analysis of media representation and a tie to New Media in the post. Without the content here, this feels irrelevant to HASTAC's mission. It's fine for a regular blog and you are free to post that anywhere else you like. But this doesn't really work under the HASTAC Scholars rubric. I can find this kind of image anywhere I want on the Web, if I want. HASTAC is for the kinds of conversations you are not likely to find elsewhere, specifically about creative design, critical thinking about technology, or new modes of participatory learning (the tripartite HASTAC mantra).

There's an additional issue. Partisan (as in Democrats and Republicans) U.s. politics. Because HASTAC Scholars are funded by home institutions, many of which are state universities, we must be careful to abide by the regulations of those institutions. One of those is that we cannot endorse political candidates on this site. It is illegal at some state institutions to use government money for partisan political purposes. That may not be the case at a Cornell (these rules vary among private universities--at Duke a department, for example, is not allowed to use university funds to support one or another political candidate), but it is for public universities. We must respect those community standards, agreed to by all upon accepting the designation of a HASTAC Scholar.

Thanks for respecting and understanding those restrictions. I am responding publicly to your public posting so everyone understands these rules. If we had simply taken down the post, there would be no learning opportunity here. Funny is fine--but in this case there are potential consequences for others.

Mind you, I have to offer a retrospective disclaimer now, in the "do as I say, not as I did" mode. Back when I was HASTAC's chief blogger, trying to post daily on new media, participatory learning, cognition, digitality, science studies, academe, Facebook, and other subjects, I promised my loyal readers that there would be one "goofball" posting every few weeks. There's only so much reading one can do on neural plasticity and digitality, right? So there were some silly postings on shoes and so forth. But now that I am joined by so many other bloggers, even I no longer have that singular "voice" and am trying to write more in the vein of a community, more representatively. I miss being able to be silly in print sometimes. I like being a humorist. And I reserve the right to one or two more goofy columns but only on HASTAC-y topics. If I want to really go off, I'll have to move Cat-in-the-Stack off site, where it can't pose any potential harm to other community members.

I also wrote two or three political commentaries back in the day when I was the daily blogger and only a few others were blogging on occasion. Those political columns all did have critical analysis, tried to have something to do with media (more or less) and they disavowed any political partisanship--but, now that we have the HASTAC Scholars, I won't be writing those any more, even in their qualified and careful terms. I just don't want to jeopardize the standing of any of our HASTAC Scholars. Plus, HASTAC is now a community of bloggers, not just me.

So Cat in the Stack is cleaning up her act.

One final thought: We might sometime want to do a HASTAC Scholars forum, though, on new media and political activism and organization. That would be great. And totally within the community standards. Think about proposing it!

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