Founding Gawker editor Elizabeth Spiers suffered Flight 1549 flashbacks.

Self-crowned empress of tech media Sarah Lacy believed she was being willfully deprived of gadgets.

Guardian writer Bobbie Johnson, exiled to San Francisco, feared he'd been left alone with bunny-boiling lunatics.

Silicon Alley Insider blogger Nicholas Carlson spied on his colleagues' indiscretions. (He was so much worse at Valleywag.)

Rocketboom videoblogger Andrew Baron was mistaken for someone actually famous.

Anyone else's tweets we should keep an eye on? Send us more Twitter usernames, please.

Might it help to make it even clearer how little time is left by adding a timestamp to your original post, and/or make some sort of a timer. It would be terrible if part of the crowd decides not to forward this because there's unclarity regarding the remaining amount of time.

What is Huesken asking for? Boil it down: He wants Andrew to code up an "Is my dad dead yet" widget. So unseemly, and yet so typical: Even when dealing with something as horrific as the imminent death of a parent, Internet users just want us to think about them and their needs.

Its manufacturer won't let it be used for that specific purpose, so his son is is appealing is appealing to the company to get its use approved. He's somehow gotten Bill Clinton, John Kerry, Lance Armstong and others involved:

Though the drug has never been used before in this way, and because time is running out, the head of the FDA, Dr. Andrew von Eschenbach has granted special approval for use of the drug for this purpose but you have personally decided “no”.

Lance Armstrong, who you spoke with on Friday, has also pleaded with you to say “yes” to my father, but you personally said “no”.

President Bill Clinton, Senator John Kerry, Senator John Harkin, Senator Ted Kennedy, Dr. Andrew von Eschenbach and others who you spoke with on Friday and again yesterday on Monday have all pleaded with you to say “yes”, assuring you that there would be no legal risk and no negative consequences to your company if something went wrong, but you continue to say “no”.

If this drug was rare, scarce, or if people were waiting in line to obtain it, we would not be expecting any privileges. But the drug is readily available, cheap and even sitting in our clinic’s pharmacy just 6 floors below us right now… . All we need is for you to just say “yes” to save his life.

I’m the CEO of my company so I can appreciate the pressure of doing what’s best for your company. Is denying my father access the best thing for your company? How could it be? What’s the risk?

[View the full letter here.]

Andrew Baron has denied he knew anything. But troublingly, he also says his dad didn't know about the affair, which strains belief — considering that it was Fred Baron's ongoing financial assistance to Hunter which blew Edwards's cover. I'm inclined to believe that the younger Baron was not, in fact, wise to the arrangement, and it's only natural to stick up for family. Unless you purport to be a news organization, in which case recusal is your best bet.

Because it all makes Rocketboom's original coverage of the Edwards campaign look all the more fawning and uninformed in retrospect. By continuing to toe the family line in public adds fuel to a story that, like Edwards's political career, no longer really matters. While one might be willing to forgive the original faux pas of letting the campaign lead you around by the news nose, it doesn't help perceptions of questionable "new media" journalist ethics to continue to deny, deny, deny.

As long as the younger Baron continues to trumpet his father's innocence in public, the more Rocketboom looks like it traded access for complicity, even if unintentionally. Andrew should probably take his own advice and "take a few days off."

Our own Dads would ream our ass if we ever pulled a stunt like that, which makes us wonder: is Baron's Dad OK with this? Is he in fact condoning it, using his son as a mouthpiece to spread his message of ignorant innocence about the whole affair?

Blogs Andrew: "Update: I just spoke with my dad. He said that he had no knowledge whatsoever of John Edwards [sic] affair and just learned about it for the first time about 2 weeks ago."

Perfect. So, Edwards has already established that he had no idea that Rielle Hunter was being given hush money. And Fred Baron only vaguely recalls giving money to people, sort of. So everyone's safe! This is either a huge lie, or clueless, lawyerly "don't want to know." Probably the latter.

Related:

Hah.

"Who's your daddy and what does he do?"

Andrew Baron's involvement in the Edwards campaign has drawn notice before. The younger Baron failed to disclose that he was getting paid to do campaign videos which he packaged as interviews:

...Edwards tells Rocketboom's Joanne Colan — a former British MTV VJ — that places like Rocketboom.com are "one of the best ways to reach people" as part of his campaign to change America "from the ground up." But in the "interview," neither Edwards nor Colan disclose that there was a financial relationship between the Edwards campaign and Rocketboom.com, as [Washington Post's Howard] Kurtz reports.

But in their outrage over the undisclosed payments, no one stopped to ask how Baron, a relative unknown videoblog producer, got the gig in the first place. The notion that Edwards was buying blogger buzz satisfied even hardcore media reporters like Kurtz. It never occurred to them that the quid pro quo might be working in reverse.

By crowning Andrew Baron a rising star among videobloggers, worthy of a ride in the Edwards campaign jet, Edwards was boosting a business in which one of his backers, Fred Baron, had a financial interest. What a win-win-win! Andrew Baron got a job and a hot interview; Edwards got promotion as the Internet's candidate of the moment; and Fred Baron got two of his causes advanced. The Edwards campaign may have foundered, but the interview gave Rocketboom the kind of credibility that eventually paid off in an exclusive, seven-figure distribution deal with Sony. (To cap it all off, we've heard rumors that the jet actually belonged to Fred Baron, who reportedly loaned his plane out to Edwards from time to time.)

But Andrew Baron's credibility as a journalist is very much on the line now. Robert Scoble suggested that Baron had expressed relief that the affair was "out in the open." Did that mean the younger Baron knew about it at the time? The elder Baron certainly did. It was the money trail that Fred Baron laid which eventually led to Rielle Hunter's outing.

We asked Chuck Olsen, Baron's Rocketboom shooter, who was aboard the blogger plane back in 2006 at the time of the Edwards' campaign announcement, what he thought of this theory. Here's what he said:

"It's certainly possible that Andrew knew about the possibility of the affair. But, I don't think Andrew has been involved with the Edwards campaign since it launched. I'd guess Andrew's face time with his dad concerned Rocketboom business, not Rielle Hunter."

If so, that's too bad. Andrew could have helped out dad by giving Rielle Hunter a gig on Rocketboom. Two birds, one stone.

(Photo by Robert Scoble)

He's a leading Dallas attorney who even sued the firm he cofounded, Baron & Budd, and is a regular on blog Overlawyered. More interesting is that Amanda Congdon intervened in order to protect her claim on part of the company. Meanwhile, the younger Baron complains all this legal wrangling tied his dealmaking hands, and that the company nearly went broke twice this year.

The Rocketboom episode neatly explains why the world of online video so resembles film school, a parent-funded enterprise of self-indulgent auteurs with macroambitions viewed by microaudiences (including yours truly). Sony's deal doesn't affirm the potential of online video as a means of creative expression; it simply tells us that the rich, despite themselves, can't help getting richer. (Photos by Eric Skiff and Alex de Carvalho)

(Photos by NewYorkInsider and NYFoundersClub)

Baron also told us that despite rumors to the contrary, host Joanne Colan will not be leaving the show. "That was just a rumor," said Baron. "Gawker writers these days get paid by pageviews so I think they sometimes just make stuff up." Trust us, if we made up posts for pageviews, they would involve drug warehouse orgies with prostitutes and private jets turned into hot boxes, not a host leaving a low-budget Web show.

No news yet on whether Baron will try to hire a third host for his show, which would mean the show had as many hosts as it's had paying advertisers.

Joe "Marmaduke Explained Guy" Mathlete observed that maybe it's because girls grow up with "dolls," and boys get "G.I. Joes." Which are totally not dolls.

Deconstructing Web "memes" — the fancy term for online in-jokes — is serious business, but having a panel of dudes famous for making gags on the internet play Women's Studies 201? Enter sensitive girl-lover and online video svengali Andrew Baron of Rocketboom, explaining that unlike the rest of the internet, in Web TV, women — or at least the appearance of them in front of a whole lot cameras — do rule. Internet meme boys: they might not be the worst people to challenge stereotypes, but they sure are the most awkward.

(Photo: Kevin Chiu)

It would be silly to just delete this account I have here, especially if there is someone out there that had like interests and had something to say or wanted to get involved in some relevant conversations.

No, it's to leverage Twitter's potential as a generator of links which increase websites' ranking in Google's search results. The good news for heavy Twitter users is that this sets the price of followers at around a dollar each. Maybe following every single account that adds you, spammer or otherwise, isn't such a bad idea after all. The only reason top Twitter user Jason Calacanis isn't selling his account? He's already using it for spam that promotes his business. (Photo by Dummycast.com's JA Donnelly)

In his post, Baron gripes about Calacanis's "aggressive marketing tactics" to promote Mahalo Daily, the site's videoblog with former CNET host Veronica Belmont. But in a reply to Baron's attacks, Calacanis guesses the antipathy stems from Calacanis's public attempt to hire Amanda Cogdon after she quit Rocketboom.

Yeah, it could be that. Or it could be that in Mahalo Daily's launch trailer, Calacanis and Belmont parodied "Rocketboom" on Mahalo Daily and Calacanis said, "Hm. Been thinking about it. Rocketboom just isn't that funny."

There's only one way to resolve this, of course. No, not a catfight between Belmont and Rocketboom anchor Joanne Colan, pervs. Instead: Bulldog love!

Probably the biggest surprise last night was that despite Facebook's busy day announcing new features to allow users to spam each other, one of the company's Harvard connections still showed at last night's Founders Club party here in New York. Which one? ConnectU founder and litigious claimant to the Facebook throne, Divya Narendra, of course.

What, you were expecting Adidas? I asked Narendra what he really thinks of Zuckerberg, but he wouldn't. Didn't want to piss off his lawyers. Narendra was happy to dish on fellow wannabe Facebook founder Aaron Greenspan, however.

"I have no idea how he got that New York Times article," Narendra told me. "He has nothing to do with any of this."

Bitches just jealous.

New York angel investor Ron Conway also turned up last night. I'd have snapped a photo of him, but for a big fella, the man pulls a mean pirouette at the sight of a camera. And did you really want to see a photo of his backside? Silicon Alley wantrepreneurs are not allowed to answer that.

One thing I didn't know about Adelson: Apparently he lives in Dutchess County, north of New York, and commutes to San Francisco to run Digg. Does this mean we can claim him for Silicon Alley? (Ed.'s note: No.)

CollegeHumor's Zach Klein and Ricky Van Veen also showed, dragging down the whole affair with their ironic style and funny-looking glasses. They only cost $7 dollars on eBay. Father figures Josh Mohrer of BustedTees and Vimeo's Jonathan Marcus mostly managed to keep the boys in line, though dress code violations (sneakers) barred the entire crew from the Rainbow Room afterparty. Nobody said beauty was easy, fellas.

• Lawrence Lessig: The highest-profile email bankruptcy to date. The copyright attorney (who fought a Supreme Court case against a 20-year extension of all U.S. copyrights) sent a mass e-mail in 2004 asking anyone with important unanswered e-mail to reply, which would flag their mail as important. He carried off the task with aplomb, apologizing for failing to maintain "cyber decency." But rumor has it that Lessig still went through much of his "bankrupt" e-mail.
• Andrew Baron: The producer of the Rocketboom show reportedly declared an e-mail reboot in 2006.
• Michael Arrington: In October 2006, the publisher of the TechCrunch blog came back from vacation and deleted months of e-mails. He also turned off instant messaging.
• The better fix: Sean Bonner: Instead of dropping all his current e-mails, Sean Bonner put a throttle on future mail. The founder of the Metroblogging city-blog network started autoresponding to e-mail this month, saying he only checks e-mail once a day.
• Tim Ferriss: Sean's following what Ferriss recommends in his book The 4-Hour Workweek. Ferriss follows his own plan (and apparently truly works four hours a week).
• Andy Baio: Upcoming's founder says he built a 10,000-e-mail backlog in 2006. He spent six weeks fixing it.

Before you try this at home, remember that the people above can get hundreds of e-mails a day. Try autoresponders before you try bankruptcy; everyone appreciates some sort of response. Consider hiring an assistant, even part-time, for less than you could make by saving your e-mail time. If these measures seem like too much, you're not that bad off. You just need to get quicker at managing your e-mail.

(Photo: Midnight Beep)