By Otto Spijkers
Mr. Maxime Verhagen, the Dutch Minister of Foreign Affairs, is blogging about his experiences in New York during the 63rd Session of the General Assembly. As is the case with most weblogs, people can comment on his posts, anonymously if they want. I guess that if you allow people to freely express their opinion, you’ll always get comments that lack ‘nuance’. Let me give some examples.
Before I go to the comments, I will briefly summarize the posts posted so far. The Minister’s first post was about his preparations for the Assembly. As the title suggests, the file he had to read in order to prepare was as thick as a fist. His second post, entitled ‘the world on one square kilometer’, was about his flight to New York, and also includes some general reflections. And his third is called ‘global rules under pressure’, where he writes about his jetlag, and then compares the Assembly with a circus – according to the Minister this comparison falls short in many ways, of course – and emphasizes that, although there is much hypocrisy and political games going on, the UN is still the only forum we have where all States come together. The Minister’s posts are very interesting, and I look forward to reading more (all his posts are in Dutch).
Now to the comments. Some people simply offer practical suggestions to the Minister, such as ‘try not to make your posts too long, and try to get down to the very root of the matter.’ Others want to know various details about what’s going on in New York:
Mr. Verhagen, I am so curious how it goes. You walk through those ‘corridors of power’, probably accompanied by a number of public servants. And then what? Do you suddenly bump into a Minister from another country and have a chat in the corridor? Do you shake hands to something? […] And when you are in the General Assembly, are you constantly paying attention, or do you sometimes fall asleep? […]
Other comments have a different tone. For example, one commenter asks the Minister: ‘are you going to claim the oil proceeds mixed with the blood of 1.000.000 deaths in Iraq, in exchange for our political support for this criminal war?’ Later, after having mustered up the necessary courage, the same person asks what is apparently the fundamental question in the eyes of this person: ‘do you really think you can call yourself a Christian???’. It must be pointed out that the Minister is a member of the Christen-Democratisch Appèl (CDA), the Dutch Christian-Democrats.
Another person, who seems to be from Serbia, writes about the role of Dutchbat in Srebrenica, which he believes was the ‘greatest cowardliness in 15 thousand years.’ He also complains about the present Dutch attitude towards Serbia. ‘Man […] you make me sick!’ says the commenter, referring to Minister Verhagen. And then he suggests: ‘Please delete your blog, release me of your "story of humane New York mission" and disappear in dark World history.’
Those were some examples of comments to Verhagen’s first post. I wonder if these were the kinds of comments the Minister expected. Anyways, in his second and third post, he did not respond to these comments. The ‘sour’ nature of many comments made another commenter sigh:
pff. What a bunch of frustrated reactions. All coaches in the sands who think they know better. Highly embarrassing.
I hope that the Minister will not be demoralized by all these comments. His posts are very interesting, and I am sure many people read them with pleasure, but do not leave any comments. It does raise the interesting question of editing, moderating or possibly censoring these comments. Perhaps only ‘constructive’ comments should be published? I wonder how this is done elsewhere. Or is this a unique experiment? I mean: is ours the only Minister of Foreign Affairs in the world with his own weblog?
In his last post, entitled ‘Ministers are bad bloggers’, the Minister finally responded directly to the comments. He commended the commenters for their directness, and admitted that he sometimes had the urge to delete a few of the most ‘outspoken’ comments (but he did not). Somewhat surprisingly, even the most critical commenters were impressed – shocked even – that the Minister took the time to read and respond directly, resulting in a hymn of praise to the Minister. As usual, it was the final battle that ended the war.
Hello Dave,
Thanks very much for that comment. I did not know about Ahmadinejad’s blog. That’s quite progressive, I’d say. So how does he deal with comments that lack any nuance? Does he reply to them? Do they appear at all? I ask you because you may be checking his blog regularly, at least more often than I do (I just checked it for the first time).
I don’t know about other foreign ministers, but Iran has got you beat. Their Head of State and Government, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has a blog: http://www.ahmadinejad.ir/
And yes, you can leave comments. I have blogged a little bit about Ahmadinejad’s blog here:
http://traditionalnotions.blogspot.com/2007/11/my-new-blog-buddy.html