Stuart Brunson and Mike Pigott: Like Totally BFFs
Stuart Brunson does more by 9 am than most teenage girls do all day. When Tennessee’s baby-faced deputy governor is not helping his boss lavish millions of dollars on VW, he’s all over the internet, networking with half the city, including pr titan Mike Pigott. Just check out Brunson's Facebook page (after the jump).
What we found most interesting -- besides the fact that our deputy governor has the web-surfing habits of a 14-year-old -- is how little sleep Brunson gets. If you look at his page, he's befriending people at 1 a.m., then returning five hours later to add someone else. So if you have a meeting with Brunson today and he seems a little tired, give him a break. And chat him up on Facebook later...
UPDATE: OMFG; I'm like a total idiot. As one of our contributors noted, the time stamps on Brunson's Facebook page don't necessarily indicate when our deputy governor personally befriended someone. It could actually mark when that person accepted his solicitation to be online buddies. So Brunson might have been asleep at 1 a.m., while his buddy, Irwin Raij, accepted his friend request.
This Facebook stuff is all so complicated. I miss Myspace.
Here’s a glimpse at his Facebook page:
Stuart and Lauren Gillespie Agee are now friends.
9:08am
Stuart and Matt Reel are now friends.
9:02am
Stuart and Sujata Tejwani are now friends.
8:39am
Stuart and Dave Hickey are now friends.
8:16am
Stuart and D Keith Miles are now friends.
8:07am
Stuart and John Robinson are now friends.
7:33am
Stuart and Len Hardison are now friends.
7:06am
Stuart and Jeremy Kane are now friends.
6:05am
Stuart and Mike Pigott are now friends.
6:03am
Stuart and Irwin Raij are now friends.
1:02am
Comments
Matt,
Don't you have something else to do that's worthy of your journalist pedigree? Stuart's facebook page? Dude - this isn't investigative journalism. It's 14 year old girl stuff.
Go find serious wrong doing and stop surfing facebook. And by "serious wrong doing" I don't mean finding out that James Weaver had veal for lunch.
Maybe you could talk about the new look for the website???
Posted 07/23/2008 at 01:38:24 PMAt the risk of sounding like a teenage girl with my vast Facebook knowledge, I have to point out that the time stamps on those friend notifications are not necessarily the times that Brunson was "making friends." Facebook puts up notifications when friend requests are accepted, so Brunson could have requested those buddies at a more reasonable hour, while those new friends accepted his request a few hours later when they signed on.
But go ahead, call me a teenage girl. The older I get, the less offended I am when people think I'm a teenager...
Posted 07/23/2008 at 02:56:12 PMDoes it seem appropriate for the Deputy Governor of the State of Tennessee to even have a facebook entry?
Posted 07/23/2008 at 03:03:23 PMMatt, you've demonstrated a lack of understanding of how Facebook logs actions. The time stamp is based on when the "friend" clicks on a given button.
Of course, you can pretend that your ignorance of social networking sites is actually something to be proud of, because "you have a life" or something, but to be honest, if social networking websites increase government responsiveness, they're unquestionably positive. Maybe it seems faddish and undignified to some, but telephones at one point were seen as rude and intrusive, so find some perspective.
Posted 07/23/2008 at 03:46:45 PMActually, I'm a Facebook dork too and my page is a lot lamer than Brunson's.
Posted 07/23/2008 at 03:54:00 PMThen why make a big deal of the time stamps? Either you didn't know how they work, in which case you ignorantly mocked the guy for something he didn't do, or you did know how they work, in which case you disingenuously mocked the guy for something he didn't do.
Posted 07/23/2008 at 04:00:24 PMYou're right. I didn't consider that the time stamps might have indicated when the other respondent accepted a friend request. My bad.
Still, how many deputy governors have a facebook page. I can't imagine Dave Cooley had one.
Posted 07/23/2008 at 04:11:24 PMI won't disagree that it's a little weird. It would be one thing if Facebook were another, publicized way to contact one of the governor's key appointments. But deputy governor is a fairly visible position for a holder of the position to have a private Facebook profile.
I'm all for getting the elected representatives (or their key staffers) in touch with the public, one way or another, including through social networking websites, so I'd be inclined to cut Stuart Brunson some slack. The way Bredesen defines the position is more as a constituent contact, right?
As for Cooley, yeah, I couldn't see him being a member of anything other than smokefilledroom.com.
Posted 07/23/2008 at 06:36:31 PMCooley would eat Facebook for lunch.
Posted 07/23/2008 at 07:17:23 PMNow I know why Stuart doesn't have time to return phone calls about matters concerning his office and its operation during normal business hours.
Matt, you hit this one out of the ballpark!
Stacy Harris
Posted 07/23/2008 at 09:27:30 PMPublisher/Executive Editor
Stacy's Music Row Report
http://www.geocities.com/stacy.harris/
First off, all this "facebook is inappropriate for an 'important' person to have" talk reminds me of how my grandma thought the Internet was just a porn delivery service. (In 1999.) But, deep down, the talk just makes me nervous about the appropriateness of my own page, in which my current status talks about how I hurt my gall bladder playing company softball. (Just like how my grandma's ignorance made me wonder if she had seen my actual surfing habits. Yikes.)
Posted 07/23/2008 at 10:41:11 PMWell, it's certainly not inappropriate for the deputy gov to have a Facebook page. It just seems odd.
Posted 07/24/2008 at 12:16:16 AMHe looks the same as he did 10 yrs ago.
Posted 07/24/2008 at 07:05:34 AMThough MP may have stumble-bummed the functions of facebook, he backed into a truth. Brunson doesn't sleep. He is, in fact, a vampire.
Maybe he's just doing what his boss, The Governor, has done by having a Facebook site.
Posted 07/24/2008 at 07:50:26 AM