The Good
Wow. Just Wow at the reaction. I never imagined that Empty Chair Day would sweep the nation, take over Twitter, make its way to the banner headline at Drudge and stories at The Wall Street Journal and elsewhere. (added) Michael Patrick Leahy has details on the press coverage and how even the DNC was infiltrated.
There obviously is a deep grassroots desire to be heard and to be heard against Obama.
The flood of photos sent to me and posted on Facebook and Twitter speaks volumes to what is not being picked up in the polls and mainstream media. Anyone who thought we were not motivated has missed the picture completely.
While we should not be overly confident, I think I can see 2010 from my empty lawn chair.
Another good thing was that the rollout showed how we can harness social media as a motivating format, and the role even itsy bitsy part-time blogs can play in providing the missing link.
As readers know, this whole shebang started with a reader tip to me Saturday Night, my spotting a handful of tweets about it, some very timely efforts linking to me by Prof. Glenn Reynolds and Michael Patrick Leahy at Breitbart.com, and off it went. Others picked up on it either from those links or independently, and before you knew it, within about 24 hours its viral.
And all it took was that missing link connecting a reader to a small blog to bigger blogs who have the megaphones necessary to get the word out.
The role of lighting a fire and then seeing others fan the flames is one I’ve come to cherish here.
The Bad
I was unable to handle the flow of photos submitted. When I conceived the idea, I figured I’d get 20-30 photos.
Instead, beginning last night I received over 100 until I started posting announcements mid-morning telling people not to submit any more, but they kept coming. So fewer than half of the photos I received have been posted. I just don’t have the time to do it, and for that I apologize. I need to think about a better way of doing this next time (not a big fan of Facebook pages).
The server was built to withstand a Cat 2 traffic hurricane. But today was a Cat 4. By the time Drudge linked around 9:45 or so, we already had been linked by Instapundit, Lucianne, dozens of blogs, Facebook pages, and hundreds if not thousands of tweets. Traffic already was flowing at 10,000+ per hour when Drudge hit.
We easily handled a Drudge link in May which for over an hour threw 1000 visits per minute, but today it was just too much on top of everything else, and we crashed and burned for 30 minutes until Ed could make some adjustments. By the time we fixed the problem Drudge had changed the link to Twitter and then Politico, so we probably missed a couple hundred thousand visits. You know I don’t care about losing 200,000+ visits, it means nothing to me, and I hardly give it a thought.
So, adding to the ever increasing cost of preparing for the worst case scenario, we have increased server capacity again. I’m hoping we will need it tomorrow.
The Ugly
A blogger’s got to know his limitations. And today I hit mine.
Tomorrow I’ll need your help in spreading (shhh, it’s still a secret) far and wide.
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Comments
So awesome! Just saw you got mentioned on Fox a few minutes ago by Bret Baier as well, Kudos!! Looking forward to seeing tomorrow’s posts! 🙂
Brilliant day of parody. Thanks for hosting it PJ! This was quite entertaining.
Professor, your site was just mentioned on Brett Bair’s Special Reports.
Legal Insurrection was just referenced on “Special Report” by Bret Baier for promoting National Empty Chair Day.
Just think of the reaction if Rush had not taken the day off! Thanks for the opportunity; it was a LOT of fun!
And a special thanks to Clint Eastwood :~)
Ditto and Double Ditto.
This meme seems to have really gotten under the Collective’s skin.
Talk about your “ugly”…
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2012/09/afscme-chief-screams-at-eastwood-chair-then-kicks-it-off-stage-at-dnc-function/#comment-781199
This Eastwooding thingy is POTENT!
From the same people who showed a Ryan look-a-like pushing granny off a cliff.
^^How cool is that!
Here is waht was great to see: The progression since Eastwoods speech that night. Some of us saw right off he hit a nerve with the chair routine. As we thought bout it and watched again? There it is. The damned chair became the symbol. It said it all with no words needed really.
One thing went to the next in an almost perfect flow.
What amazes me…we all “got it” after abit of thinking on his speech. Add in what he said and viola.
I still think Jenn Rubin captured the moment when she observed…the msm strangle hold was exposed.
The entire deal from then till now makes most msmedia just nuts….they are supposed to sway opinion…how dare we seize some event and drive the narrative that doesnt support The Great American Pharoah. The very idea.
CNN is so caught off guard they wont even mention their own Facebook poll…that shows Eastwood 60%+ positive.
What fun.
I’ve already seen one video spoof where a tech savvy guy remixed the “do you feel lucky, punk?” scene with Dirty Harry pointing his pistol at an empty chair.
This thing could turn into the “Hitler finds out (fill in the blank)” videos with people doing remixes and inserting empty chairs into Eastwood’s famous movie scenes.
Great job Professor! Now, consider promoting one day a week as Weekly National Empty Chair Day up through the election.
I’m going to do just that on each Tuesday, starting with the 2nd Tuesday of September and going through election day, 2012.
🙂
On Google+, you can look for #nationalemptychairday and #eastwooding for quite a number of nice pictures.
Love it, Professor! I can’t get enough of those chairs. I wonder if anyone posted a high chair?
Fitting for a big baby like Obama.
https://twitter.com/SarahPalinUSA/status/242777575661924352/photo/1
I found this article describing Clint Eastwood’s style of presenting his point fascinating:
From the article —-> Eastwood’s “empty chair” routine was done in the style of “crosstalk,” a wildly famous comedic art in China. This was used in a singularly brilliant way by Clint Eastwood to skewer Obama on major policy issues. It is the proper Chinese way to “diss” an opponent.
http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/49227
“When I conceived the idea, I figured I’d get 20-30 photos.”
Ha! Silly you. ;-p
“So, adding to the ever increasing cost of preparing for the worst case scenario, we have increased server capacity again.”
Sounds like we’d better chip in to help. I’ll hit the PayPal link.
Thanks, Prof.
Okay, folks. I just headed over to the tip jar and made a donation to help the professor do what he needs to do for this place. When I think about all of the print magazines to which I no longer subscribe (because frankly they are out-of-date by the time they get to my mailbox…), it is more than worth it to support this endeavor.
“Barry, Why Should We Re-Elect You?
(Dedicated to “The Empty Chair”).
Did you think it enough to be “likeable”?
Did you believe it sufficed to be “cool”?
You once promised command of the land and the seas,
But for four years you’ve played us for fools!
Bernanke’s molesting our printing press.
Tax Cheat Geithner never had any plans.
And we found you’d betrayed us and lied to us.
When you claimed we’d “unite” at your hands!
You still haven’t a clue of ONE GOOD THING to do,
To spend less, create jobs, ease our days.
You just leave your chair EMPTY, launch your Media whores,
And go golfing in a Choom** induced haze.
You made food stamps a “way of life”, you degraded our fisc*,
You bowed lower and lower each day.
To the tyrants and despots whose great goal in life,
Was to kill the American Way.
Hundreds of Billions were raped from our Seniors,
Something not seen since “Peter robbed Paul”,
Your “solutions” cause crises in energy and
Food—our “economy” is now worse than stalled.
You said, “I’ll do it in three or I’m outta here”.
Now it’s, “This country OWES me another four”.
But since you spit on our soldiers and crippled our land,
We’d be crazy to let you “help” more!
* Fisc = the treasury of a nation – see “national debt” rating downgrades.
** Choom = both a noun (marijuana) and a verb (“to smoke marijuana”).
Barry Soetoro aka Barry Obama aka Barrack Hussein Obama aka … CREATED NEW WAYS TO GET HIGH. See, http://www.buzzfeed.com/gavon/…
These included BOTH marijuana and cocaine aka coke aka blow aka “Barry Fuel”….
Professor: If you build it, they will come. Congrats!
bothersome that nginx didn’t handle the onslaught better, was the fail in nginx itself or handing off to apache/litespeed (not sure what setup here is) and failing there?
I occasionally get bursts hiting me so I went varnish as I had issues with nginx as reverse proxy at around 1k online. varnish (which I am NOT an expert on) has taken 7400 online at one time.
Wear your crash as a badge of honor, Professor. Ya’ done good.
Congratulations to you and the Mrs. Professor….you BOTH worked hard at this!
Sleep well tonight!
It has been my privilege to be a registered reader since the very beginning – and my pleasure to start an entire grove of empty chairs in my neighborhood this morning.
Well done!!
Congratulations. You deserve every link and accolade, and I’m sure there will be many more.
Nice work Professor. I just saw LegalInsurrection mentioned on Bret Baier/FOX. I wonder what your fellow Lib Professor Colleagues think of your endeavors now! Just tell them it is the power of the individual.
BTW for the Lawyers who belong to your site are we organizing for election day? Last time I did this was to volunteer for Scott Brown. We had 300 lawyers from out of state in MA guarding the polls.
As a practical matter, there are several free photo-sharing sites out there. There’s Picasa, Photobucket, Flickr, MyPhotoAlbum, and if memory serves Google also offers this service.
These are just “off the top of my head” suggestions; it would be easy to find twice as many more if you enjoy variety.
Congratulations! It’s a big day in the life of a not so little anymore blog!
So thrilling! And most well-deserved.
[…] » The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly Chairs – Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion […]
Wm, WordPress has a a theme design just for photos. So you might want to consider setting up LI/CI pix site and send the flood there but linked to this site so you get the hits.
[…] Empty Chair think is getting under Dems skin. Eastwood crushed it. #emptychairday […]
Wow! The first collection of pictures has over 400 “likes” (and 11 trolls).
(Just think, if R&R could get over 400 “likes” in the electoral college…..)
Nice work, Professor!
[…] Blogger Takes On Big Obama – Win. Posted on September 4, 2012 1:30 pm by Bill Quick » The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly Chairs – Le·gal In·sur·rec·… Wow. Just Wow at the reaction. I never imagined that Empty Chair Day would sweep the […]
Professor,
Look at the KSFO.com morning blog website. One of the listeners took his chair and placed it front of the SOLYNDRA building…..a picture worth millions of bucks!!!!