rspicer-the secret circuit

Mitt Romney says changing positions can be a good thing

2011-12-23T12:33:00.000-08:00

I wonder if this photo/headline combination was a purposeful, editorial decision. It's a nice combination.

We have the headline, "changing positions can be a good thing," combined with the image of Romney who appears to be mid sentence, creating the impression that he is actually saying that thing as the photo is being taken, combined with the guy behind him seemingly rubbing his eye in tired frustation as if to say "I can't believe he just said that."

Then there is the story itself. The entire article (perhaps better described as a blurb), is about a voter in New Hampshire asking Romney about the "flip flop" accusations. Essentially the voter is saying he wants Romney to embrace that, to say, in the voter's words, "Do you want a president who’s inflexible? Or someone who adjusts as more information comes in?"

It's too bad Romney isn't running against George W. Bush. It's really amazing how the argument for Kerry over Bush is now the argument for Romney over [insert other GOP candidate here].

I suppose we should look for this to become part of the narrative of the Romney campaign. He's not a flip flopper, he's a smart guy who adjusts to new information.

I would like the Romney campaign to try an experiment. They should have John Kerry show up at a single event in New Hampshire and pretend to be Mitt Romney. He could give Romney's stump speech and answer questions after, just to see if anyone notices that it's Kerry and not Romney.

Louis C.K.'s new media success

2011-12-22T20:13:00.000-08:00

So I've watched the first few episodes of Louis C.K.'s show Louis, and it is quite funny, although at times a little abrasive and melancholy (a weird combination). Oddly enough it's the abrasiveness and melancholy that make the show enjoyable (for me at least). That and Louis C.K. himself. He's a pretty funny guy.

I also find him, or at least his media personality, to be likable. I recently listened to this interview with him on Fresh Air, which is part of the reason I checked out the show. He seems like a genuinely nice guy.

Which is one of the reasons I find this story to be so exciting. C.K. announced that he would be filming a stand up movie and selling it via his website for $5, cutting out any middle-man in the distribution process. No network to deal with. No distributor. No theater. No stores. Just him and the production crew.

This was a gamble that appears to have paid off. C.K. has made over $1 million on the project.

I find this story really exciting for a few reasons.

1) the use of new media for distribution

2) the affordability of the product to make it more accessible to his fans

3) he cut out corporate media and managed to be successful without them

From these first three points, I wonder if we might be seeing a new business model forming for media content. Something that is profitable, affordable and makes it easier to distribute content to a wide audience.

4) he's sharing the profit with the people who worked on the project

5) the fact that the fans spent their hard earned money to support him, he not only circumvented corporate media, he also circumvented file sharing

6) he is putting so much of that money into charity

The significance of the last three points is summed up in something C.K. says in this article, something that needs to be said more often in America these days. It is a sort of radical statement right now, although a simple one that is subversive when you think about it. C.K. says,

I never viewed money as being “my money” I always saw it as “The Money” It’s a resource. if it pools up around me then it needs to be flushed back out into the system.

You don't hear many Americans, especially those who have a lot of money "pooled up around them" talking about "flushing it back out into the system." He is of course making a good pay check from this, as he should. He worked hard and created something people liked and were willing to pay for. He earned his pay day and I say congratulations to him.

But he is also acknowledging it was made possible by the crew who worked on it and that the money it made can do good out in the world, rather than just sitting in his bank account.

Christopher Hitchens on his political philosophy

2011-12-18T09:21:00.001-08:00

This comes from a post on Mediaite. The last interview Christopher Hitchens gave before his passing this week was with Richard Dawkins. Mediaite has a few clips, my favorite being Hitchens talking about the difficulty of pinning down his political philosophy, either left or right.

“I have one consistency, which is [being] against the totalitarian – on the left and on the right. The totalitarian, to me, is the enemy – the one that’s absolute, the one that wants control over the inside of your head, not just your actions and your taxes. And the origins of that are theocratic, obviously. The beginning of that is the idea that there is a supreme leader, or infallible pope, or a chief rabbi, or whatever, who can ventriloquise the divine and tell us what to do.”

I think this is why I like him so much, even if I found him to be abrasive at times. He had the same starting point for his political philosophy I have for my own: oppose all totalitarians.

The one thing I might add to this quote is the political religion. You could add Lenin to that list of leaders.

political deception of the day - Romney French ad

2011-12-15T10:50:00.000-08:00

Here's a fun political TV ad. A liberal super PAC called American LP put together this video featuring Mitt Romney speaking French. They added in the text of quotes from Romney advocating for more liberal political positions in the past (i.e. pro-choice, pro-gay rights, etc.).

Deception is happening on a couple levels here.

First, I wonder how many people will think the text is an actual translation and not get the fact that the group is only doing this to tap into American (and more so conservative) Franco-phobia. I suppose it doesn't really matter. They actually don't need the text to make the ad effective. The only thing viewers are going to take away from it is Mitt Romney is speaking French. And a lot of GOP primary voters will not like that.

Amazingly, liberals are turning Romney into Kerry.

Second, is the fact that TJ Walker, the founder of American LP, referred to Romney as the "only sane, rational candidate" on the GOP side and said, "The mere fact that we can show him speaking French fluently, we believe, is going to irritate [Republican] primary voters."

It seems liberals are starting to launch attacks on Romney in this year's version of Rush Limbaugh's Operation Chaos.

Walker at the very least implies that Romney would be an acceptable president or at least an acceptable candidate and yet attacks him. There is an element of dishonesty in that, to compliment Romney out of one side of your mouth and criticize him out of the other.

Finally, there is the open secrecy of it all. How many voters who see this ad are going to realize that it is coming from the Democratic side and that it was made because liberal groups see Romney as the candidate most likely to be able to defeat Obama next year? It doesn't matter that PACS have to disclose in their ads that they are responsible for the content of the message. "Paid for by American LP" has no meaning unless every voter who sees it takes the time to look up that group and critically examine sender motivation in order to fully understand the intent of the ad.

Obamney

2011-12-14T13:01:00.001-08:00

Man, conservatives really dislike Mitt Romney. I don't get it.

This photo is from a post on Mediaite. I suppose one of the most insulting things a conservative can do (in their minds) is to compare you to Barack Obama. I'll never understand the degree of animosity they feel toward Obama, but I can't even begin to grapple with the conservative hatred for Romney.

This morning as I was grading portfolios I had this great discussion from Fora on as background noise, Paul O'Neill and Jesse LaGreca (moderated by Ron Suskind). One of the points made in the discussion by Paul O'Neill is that the one thing we lack at the moment is a figure with true political courage, so we end up with policy made between the 40 yard lines, so to speak. In other words, we are doomed to a series of bland moderates with no real convictions or desire to push monumental changes to fix our current problems (paging President Romney).

This image is a sort of visual representation of O'Neill's point. Obama is in the 40 yard line on the left-wing of the field and Romney is inside the 40 on the right-wing of the field. The difference is that Romney at this point seems like he will say whatever is necessary to get elected. Obama's not a political chameleon.

Romney = Kerry

2011-12-06T18:36:00.000-08:00

Did someone at the Huffington Post purposely put John Kerry's name beside a picture of Mitt Romney? Or is this just a happy mistake?

Eric Bolling's tinfoil hat

2011-12-06T07:07:00.000-08:00

Fox Business Channel host Eric Bolling thinks the Muppets movie is part of an anti-corporate Hollywood conspiracy because the antagonist in the film is named Tex Richman. I guess he's never heard of the use of hyperbole for comedic purposes. Unless you count the things he says on TV.

The GOP primary is officially a reality show

2011-12-02T12:13:00.000-08:00

So Donald Trump is going to moderate a Republican presidential debate. The race is officially, in no uncertain terms, a reality TV show. It was already a group of crazies waiting to be voted off the island. Why not add Donald Trump? My favorite part of this post on the New York Times blog is that Newsmax readers don't see Trump as being part of the media establishment.

How is it that the guy with a primetime show on NBC isn't part of the media establishment?

guy shoots at White House

2011-11-16T12:00:00.000-08:00

Dear political pundits and commentators (especially those of you on cable TV):

Just in case you did not notice, some guy shot an AK-47 at the White House the other day. He was arrested in Pennsylvania this afternoon. This post is a plea for sanity.

Please do not try to turn this into something is it not. This guy is not an individual representation of the tea party or Occupy Wall Street or the degradation of political discourse in America. He is probably just a crazy guy who shot an AK-47 at the White House.

He is also not a symbol that should be used to make the public afraid of itself. You know, you might be tempted to say, "not only is political discourse degrading, but it is getting totally out of control and violent revolution is just around the corner."

He is just a crazy guy. Nothing more, nothing less.

Thanks.

Your Friend,
Rob

Tony Blair and progressive discontent

2010-09-06T14:06:00.000-07:00

This is an interesting post on some comments made by former British PM Tony Blair. It raises some important questions about how the political process works and the role of individuals and activists in that process. It reminds me of a characterization of political principles that I like. We have sets of ethical/principle callings. For example, we have beliefs and policy positions that we want to advance (i.e. cutting taxes or providing health care for all). We also have an ethical calling in our conduct when attempting to advance those policies (i.e. is it okay to lie in order to win an election – that is, do ends justify means?).

The problem is that sometimes we have to choose between those two ethical callings.

We can spread half-truths or outright lies about our political opponents or run attack ads (ads which may have some truth to them, but are slanted to paint an ugly picture of our political opponent) in order to win an election. Once the election is won, we are free to pursue the policy positions we believe will most benefit the nation. So, we have traded certain principles about clean politicking in exchange for the ability to advance those political principles.

On the other hand we can run a clean campaign, do no mud slinging, and lose. This means we are unable to advance a policy agenda, but we can still say we adhered to those political principles of clean electioneering (but at what cost).

Similarly, Blair wants progressive activists and rank-and-file voters to do a little more marching in line so to speak. We need to stick up for Obama a little more even if he gives us milquetoast SCOTUS nominees instead the progressive equivalents of John Roberts and Samuel Alito. Even if there is no public option we need to fall in line and defend HCR to the death. And even though the Employee Free Choice Act seems to have fallen off the agenda we should get out and pound the pavement to save the Democratic majorities in congress.

Up until recent years, the right has done a much better job keeping their troops in a line. It seems that on the whole conservative voters are more willing to line up behind an R and march. And here is where competing political principles have to be reconciled. Democratic/progressive voters can sit at home in November and watch Democratic congressional majorities disappear. Next year we can look forward to trumped up investigations in house committees that will put a complete stop to a less-than-progressive agenda (that is still better than the right-win agenda we are going to get or had through the Bush years), not to mention the conservative threats to simply shut down the government (exactly what we need in the middle our economic problems).

As a result, we will still have our principles though. We can still proudly say we didn’t go out and vote for some senate, congressional or gubernatorial candidate who wasn’t progressive enough. And we can feel really good about that while Pat Toomey runs amok in the Senate.

This is the political conundrum we face. I don’t think we should reflexively line up behind a pol like Tony Blair. At the same time, I think progressives have been too critical, and not strong enough in defense of President Obama. We haven’t gotten a strong enough fight in favor of progressive policy positions from the White House or congressional Democrats. But sitting at home in November and turning congress over to a paleo-conservative, Club for Growth corporatist like Pat Toomey isn’t going to help things at all.

The question is which set of political/ethical principles are most important to us right now, because I don’t think progressive, or conservatives for that matter, can have political purity.

Libertarians and Ballot Access

2010-08-24T06:46:00.000-07:00

The Libertarian Party of PA is sounding a little progressive today. Not a lot, just a little. I think it’s sad that in PA we had all five third-party candidates for statewide office knocked off the ballot this year; truly a shame. In the report on WITF this morning, this statement caught my ear though:

State Libertarian Party Chairman Mik Robertson said what used to be an unlevel playing field has turned into a "vertical barricade." He says it prevents citizens "who have a modicum of support but do not have large financial resources from gaining access to the ballot," he says. "Today we are asking the General Assembly to tear down that wall."

Now, there are a couple points to make about this. He is absolutely right that state law makes it difficult for third-party candidates to get on the ballot and the law should be changed to increase access. This is a case of the two major parties protecting incumbents and the consolidation of power between Democrats and Republicans. It is wrong and it should change. Third-party candidates from across the political/ideological spectrum should have access to the ballot if they are able to gather the signatures necessary, and that necessary number should be the same for all parties, Democrat, Republican or other.

On the other hand, I can’t help but point out the un-libertarian language employed by Robertson. He is essentially arguing that government needs to act in order to help those with less financial resources to gain access to the ballot, where access is limited to only those with money and an established political infrastructure.

It seems to me a more libertarian attitude to take would be to say, “If the Libertarian Party had the popular support necessary for gaining access to the ballot this wouldn’t be a problem. If the general public truly wanted a strong Libertarian Party they would donate enough money to pay for those legal challenges, or there would be enough volunteers to gather more than the required number of signatures to make a legal challenge a moot point. The public has access to the Internet, giving the Libertarians a voice in the marketplace that is just the same as the voice of the two major parties. So if the public doesn’t really seem to want the Libertarian Party to play a more significant role in Pennsylvania politics, why should government take action to “level the playing field,” wasting our tax dollars and the legislature’s time pursuing something that is only of interest to a small minority of voters who support third parties?”

If I were a Libertarian I might say something like that. But I’m not a Libertarian, so I won’t.

Dick Armey is a man of the people

2010-08-18T12:14:00.000-07:00

This editorial by Dick Armey is hilarious in its inauthenticity. It trumpets the beauty of a non-hierarchical grassroots movement in language clearly written by a PR firm. It is the velvet glove of populism. I feel like I’m still hearing the echoes of Spiro Agnew saying “nattering nabobs of negativity.”

The editorial describes the tea party as “decentralized,” as not a “top-down hierarchy.” I just wonder if the writers would apply the logic of the analysis to corporate governance. Would they apply their same populist message to the people at the bottom of corporate hierarchies having tea parties to improve their working conditions or increase their wages or to decry the growing gap between the pay of the people at the top and the people at the bottom?

Would Dick Armey celebrate a labor movement that, instead of looking to government for regulation of working conditions, self-organized in a decentralized leaderless movement that forced an oil company to improve the safety conditions on a drilling rig? Would he celebrate in the same glowing terms a decentralized labor union that applied the same logic to corporate governance as the tea party does to national governance, bottom-up rather than top-down; a labor movement that would work for higher wages, shorter hours, increased job security, and a raised standard of living for themselves and their families?

It seems to me that such a movement would decrease the need for government regulation because the labor movement would be able to advocate on its own behalf, making regulation unnecessary or less necessary. It would be labor taking a more assertive position in the free market that the libertarians love so much. So I would hope that people like Dick Armey would support such a movement wholeheartedly. I would like to think he would apply the same logic to such a movement in organized labor. But somehow I doubt it.

I remember reading Invisible Hands, describing the foundation of the movement we are seeing now, in the Goldwater years. There is a lot of talk from those people about the labor movement and the questioning of authority (i.e. capital) as somehow a moral shortcoming on the part of the general populace. This is why I’m skeptical of the tea party organizers (i.e. Freedom Works, not the people attending the rallies).

There are two moments in here that make me see this top-down attitude hiding behind what I think is faux-populism on Armey’s part. First is the fact that he says the tea party “rebellion's name derives from the glorious rant of CNBC commentator Rick Santelli, who in February 2009 called for a new "tea party" from the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.” I can’t imagine a greater symbol of being “of the people” than standing on the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.

There is also a sort of linguistic slip in his call for letting “the leaders be the activists.” I know in this sentence he means that the activists should lead, but it’s funny that this can easily be read as meaning the opposite; let the leaders become like activists, as Patricia Clough (2004) says, “there is something more than intimacy between power and resistance in the ever-growing dependency of power on the usurpation of resistance” (p. 18).

This final point draws me into the problem of the analysis of a movement like the tea party, especially for someone who is outside of the movement. Who am I to say that, even if I disagree with their conclusions, the people attending tea party rallies are inauthentic in their feelings about government? How does one manage an analysis with the politics of it lurking in the background? How do we locate what constitutes a political “movement” like the tea party. Is it possible to separate the people or the movement from the PR company Freedom Works or do we have to call the people at the rallies a “front for” or “dupes to” a corporate organization that is using a bottom-up populist message to push what is really a top-down corporate agenda?

“It takes something like courage to admit that we will never do better than a politician…”

2010-05-18T19:37:00.000-07:00

At this hour it looks like Arlen Specter is going to be on his way out of the U.S. Senate. I voted for Sestak … strike that, as I write this the AP has just called the race for Sestak.

I have mixed feelings here. Even though I voted for Sestak I feel a little sad that Specter is done. I can’t remember a time when he was not the senator for Pennsylvania. I love politics on many levels. I love it as a policy debate, governing process, but most of all as a fight, a struggle between candidates, or parties or coalitions.

And Specter represented, up until tonight, a guy who knew how to win those fights.

Specter is cagey. He’s a political animal. There is something that transcends ideology for me: political talent. I can respect a politician who knows how to fight, even when I disagree with him or her. I love politics and Arlen Specter is a consummate politician.

He just came up against his last fight tonight. He’s giving his concession speech at the moment and it is a little sad.

Specter makes me think of Bruno Latour’s (1988) defense of the politician:

“…no one does any better than the politician. Those others simply have somewhere to hide when they make their mistakes. They can go back and try again. Only the politician is limited to a single shot and has to shoot in public. I challenge anyone to do any better than this, to think any more accurately, or to see any further than the most myopic congressman.” (The Pasteurization of France, p. 210)

On that note I leave this post with a double illustration of Specter at his most politically adept; a double feature that shows how truly good this guy was. How many other politicians have anything equivalent to back-to-back TV ads from Barack Obama in one reelection campaign and George W. Bush in the preceding reelection campaign? No one even comes close.

So ideology aside, my thanks to Arlen Specter for thirty years of service to Pennsylvania and now on to a Sestak victory in November! The last thing we need is a Santorum clone representing us in the U.S. Senate!

2010-05-06T21:41:00.000-07:00

I’ve been working here at my desk with the BBC humming in the background. It floats in and out of my consciousness, periodically grabbing and losing my attention. One moment that particularly pulled me in was when the hosts began discussing the merits of a two party system over having multiple minor parties.

The two party system is more stable they said; it is less susceptible to “horse-trading,” making it difficult to form a truly representative government.

Most of all, above all other concerns, is that of stability of government. They lamented the fact that they could potentially have a governing body that did not receive a majority or plurality of votes. They claimed that Gordon Brown had already started the “horse-trading” before the votes were fully counted.

What is most fascinating to me about all of this is that process of horse-trading. How do people form a governing coalition? It amazes me that the Tories might win the most votes, but instead of ending up with Prime Minister David Cameron the UK may end up keeping Gordon Brown who would be forced to build a coalition with the Lib Dems. Even more interesting is that fact that the Lib Dems ended up with a disappointingly small amount of the vote, less than the media hype of the last few weeks, and they would be the kingmakers.

What if the Lib Dems decide to build a coalition with the Tories?! How fascinating that politics would make such strange bedfellows!

Could it be that Gordon Brown becomes the Bush 2000 of England; he loses in the vote count and still, because of the quirks of the system, becomes the head of state? The UK political process is going to be fun to watch over the next few days.

health care vote and the coming election

2010-03-22T08:38:00.000-07:00

Over the last few weeks I have had an ongoing debate with a friend of mine about the political implications for the health care vote that happened last night. My friend thinks it will end up costing the Democrats electorally and potentially make Barack Obama a one-term president. I suspect, as in most midterm elections, the Democrats will lose seats because that is the nature of those elections, but that they will retain smaller majorities and Obama will be reelected (mostly because there doesn’t seem to be a single Republican challenger that needs to be taken seriously, but that’s another post).

What has been most stunning about this past year in politics is the conduct of many on the right. I found it distasteful when liberals compared George W. Bush to Hitler. I think if you compare your opponent to Hitler and your opponent is not literally committing a holocaust you automatically lose the debate. But I don’t think liberals and Democrats in the Bush years are comparable to what’s been happening from the right over the last year. Just in the last few days we’ve had reports of hate speech about the race and sexual orientation of Democratic members of congress. Much of the tea party movement is based upon simply being at best rowdy and at worst threatening.

Yet, there was this from Boehner; a call for house Republicans to be civil after the vote. It just reminded me of this moment from the Clinton years recounted by former PA representative Marjorie Margolies.

Eighteen years ago, I was elected on the coattails of a popular young Democratic president who promised a post-partisan Washington. A year later, with partisan gridlock capturing the Capitol, there was a razor-thin vote on the House floor over legislation that Democrats said would remake the country and Republicans promised would bankrupt it. I was pressed on all sides: by constituents opposed, my president needing a victory and Republicans promising my demise. I was in the country's most Republican district represented by a Democrat. I had repeatedly said "I will not be a 'read my lips' candidate." I voted my conscience and it cost me. I still remember how, after I voted, Bob Walker jumped up and down on the House floor, yelling "Bye-bye, Marjorie!" I thought, first, that he was probably right. Then, that I would expect better behavior from my kids, much less a member of Congress. And then, that he was a remarkable jumper.

Bob Walker was once my congressman, before Joe Pitts (ugh). I imagine that he is a remarkable jumper.

No more U.S. currency in South Carolina?

2010-02-17T14:54:00.000-08:00

The conservative voyage into absurdity continues full steam today. This has to be my favorite news item of the week. It appears a state legislator in South Carolina is proposing that U.S. currency no longer be recognized by the state.

This is a broader problem of a particular reading of the constitution that is endorsed by the so-called tea party movement, this reading that sees almost any act of the federal government as being unconstitutional to the point where it is almost a knee-jerk reaction, something that does not need to be preceded by thought.

More than that is the apocalyptic undertones of movement conservatives. Everything these days seems to be about the total collapse of the economy, the end of all freedom; every statement is colored with hyperbole. This particular SC state rep. is no exception. His rationale for switching from U.S. currency to gold and silver?

“I’m not one to cry ‘chicken little,’ but if our federal government keeps spending at the rate we’re spending I don’t see any other outcome than the collapse of the economic system,” Pitts said.

The chicken little reference is especially amusing. If I can be a chicken little myself, Rick Santorum appears to be getting ready to run for president.

Death of polling?

2009-08-13T12:03:00.000-07:00

An interesting post on politicalwire caught my attention earlier this week, getting me thinking about crowds and audiences again, but in a slightly different stratum. This isn’t about the activity of the crowd or controlling it, but rather coming to know it. I present the quote here in its entirety because it’s just that interesting to me.

Phone polling depends on a set of assumptions: "You're at home; you have a phone; your phone has a hard-coded area code and exchange which means I know where you are; ... you're waiting for your phone to ring; when it rings you'll answer it; it's OK for me to interrupt you; you're happy to talk to me; whatever you're doing is less important than talking to me; and I won't take no for an answer -- I'm going to keep calling back until you talk to me."

However, the reality is much different: "In fact, you don't have a home phone; your number can ring anywhere in the world; you're not waiting for your phone to ring; nobody calls you on the phone anyway they text you or IM you; when your phone rings you don't answer it -- your time is precious, you have competing interests, you resent calls from strangers, you're on one or more do-not-call lists, and 20 minutes [the length of many pollsters' interviews] is an eternity."

In the article linked from PW the speaker, pollster Jay Leve, also defends the use of automated phone polls, which I could devote a lot of time to discussing another time. What I’m more concerned with is what Leve implies about the impact of cell phones on social geography. My mind immediately went to a piece from my audience studies class in the spring, Relocating the site of the audience by Martin Allor. Allor (1988) talks about the audience member as “an autonomous unit separable from systems of singification” and at the same time “a faceless member of a class of people” (218).

Allor isn’t talking about the “site” of the audience in a geographical sense but the wordplay here is fun. Like Allor, Leve is constructing the audience as a commodity to his client; they represent informational power in a political campaign. He is thinking of them as unpaid labor; taking up twenty minutes of their time for them to do the work of organizing that information; except the audience doesn’t even get the illusory pleasure of seeing their labor as leisure, as when they’re watching television. Finally, Leve points out the flaw of modern polling in one big assumption, thinking that the audience is at home.

Here again is the wordplay of “site.” As Allor says, the audience “exists nowehere; it inhabits no real space” (228). How true. Allor says the “place of the audience is multiple” in the sense of being defined by gender or labor or decoding; but the place of the audience is also multiple in the sense of geography. Leve also said that during the 2008 election his firm was getting about 24% of the 18 to 24 year old respondents they should have been. The cell phone has given this audience a locational fluidity that makes it impossible for the pollsters to follow; the poll respondent is no longer confined to domestic spaces.

Where Roger Silverstone (1991), for example, talked about domestic media allowing for the dispersal of the family throughout the household, complicating the ratings process for programmers, cell phones allow for a geographic dispersal that even further complicates the process of solidifying a picture of what they’re thinking. Leve concludes that for polling in 2009 "it's over...this is the end. Something else has got to come along." The double articulation of audiences, audiences consuming and being consumed is a little harder to accomplish. They’re still everywhere consuming, but pinning them down, at least in the realm of political polling, is a trickier process. Yet, polls are still being consumed in the political realm; the audience is still looking at and potentially being swayed by polls (“I want to vote for a winner”), but the pollsters can’t quite get to the audience, to formulate an accurate polled image (if such a thing was possible to begin with). Is it going too far to say the political pollster is living in a reverse Panopticon at the moment? Or shall we just default to Raymond Williams (1961) and say “There are no masses; there are only ways of seeing people as masses” (20).

refs
Allor, Martin. “Relocating the site of the audience.” Critical Studies in mass communication, 5(1988): 217-233.

Silverstone, Roger. From audiences to consumers: The household and the consumption of communication and information technologies.” European Journal of Communication, Vol. 6, No. 2 (1991): 135-154.

Williams, Raymond. Culture and society. London: Random House, 1961.

Health care crowds

2009-08-11T11:56:00.000-07:00

Talk of the crowd is all the rage these days. The word rage here is convenient for me, given that the word describes much of the imagery of the crowd currently being discussed. There are crowds at tea parties, with their subtle and sometimes overt racism; there are crowds at congressional town hall meetings, with their vague and seemingly, amazingly, misinformed anger over health care reform; the crowds that talk to pollsters that are harder to define and thus slowly eroding the credibility of those pollsters (more on that in a later post); shouting; throwing punches; and in all of the talk about these crowds we find a movement toward making the act of gathering problematic in itself.

One image keeps recurring in my mind, that of Kathleen Sebelius attempting to address an audience with Arlen Specter in Philadelphia recently. The key moment comes at about one minute into this video:

She doesn’t seem to understand the nature of the crowd she’s dealing with. As she throws her hands up in frustration, as if to say, “why won’t you listen to reason” she misses the point that the crowd is not there to have a reasonable discussion. It is there to yell. And herein lies the problem for me; the ideological challenge with which I am faced. Can I continue to hold on to the assumption that crowds/audiences, not to mention individuals, can be reasoned with?

I use the term crowd rather than audience because it is a better description. The people who are shouting at members of congress about health care appear to be “barking mad” for lack of a better phrase. I say this not because they have an opinion counter to my own, but because they literally, at points, look like they’re barking rather than speaking; and look mad, crazy-mad not angry-mad.

And here I reach the depressing point. Is the act of gathering in and of itself now damaged? Will pro-health care reform gatherings now be presented in a similar light by media? These “barking-mad crowds” are coming under scrutiny for the organizations behind them, calling into question the act of organization vis-à-vis astroturfing. Will all organization now be tarred as astroturfing?

All of this misses an important point; if the crowd is “inauthentic,” they are not necessarily there to debate the issue of health care, but rather to act as a communication jam; to stop the flow of communication between representatives and constituents who want to interact. Thus, what is presented by actants (the crowd) as authentic outrage and anger as a political act of participation is instead a political act of interruption, at least as it is described here: “If the event were a shouting match, the mob won. [Rep.] Kagen tried talking about the health-care bill, but the roaring chants deafened his attempts.” This textual description is reinforced by video shown on Rachel Maddow.

The word “mob” is becoming more common these days. I’m afraid it might be an accurate description. I don’t recall protests of the left ever substance-less anger. Maybe that’s because I am of the left and I am blinded by my own beliefs here; I think I’m more fair-minded than that, but who knows. We’ll see how today’s forum with Arlen Specter goes.

McLuhan on TV

2009-02-16T12:04:00.000-08:00

“Do you really want to know what I think of that thing? If you want to save one shred of Hebrao-Greco-Roman-Medieval-Renaissance-Enlightenment-Modern-Western civilization you’d better get an ax and smash all the sets.”

Bringing back the era of big government

2009-02-09T18:47:00.000-08:00

One thing that I have been happy to see from Obama over the last month, especially since the inauguration, has been his willingness to define a governing philosophy that actually allows for governing. A new day is dawning for political philosophy. It has actually become acceptable to say that the free market is not only solution to every problem. In fact, you can even say that government might be a useful tool for solving a problem or two. Meanwhile, the party of warrantless wiretapping is suddenly concerned about big government again.

What I love the most about all of this is that the Age of Reagan is officially over. It’s not that I have a particular disdain for Reagan. Removing ideology from the equation, I actually have a strange fascination with Reagan as a political figure; his abilities rhetorically; Reagan as a symbol. What I don’t like is the right’s hero worship of Reagan and the whole “government is the problem” philosophy.

It’s enjoyable to be around to see Obama bringing back the era of big government.

Throwing Shoes in Free Societies

2008-12-15T10:03:00.000-08:00

Sin and Suds

2008-12-08T10:47:00.000-08:00

Pirates, Terrorists and Zizek

2008-12-02T19:17:00.000-08:00

The attacks in Mumbai have me thinking about Zizek again. I have Welcome to the Desert of the Real back out on my desk and I’ve been flipping through; returning to passages outlined; thinking about the nature of terror and stateless actors generally. I am wondering how truly novel these concepts are in the long view of history. We are seeing increased media accounts of these kinds of things; terrorists; pirates; they are not new. Why do the media present them as novelties, or at the very least, why do the media portrayals make them feel novel to me?

Zizek (2002) asks if international terrorists are “the obscene double of the big multinational corporations – the ultimate rhizomatic machine, omnipresent, albeit with no clear territorial base” (p.38). The same framework could be placed on recent pirate attacks. They attack, without sponsorship, whether of a state or a corporate body, not that those two entities are segregated anymore.

The coinciding spectacles of terror and piracy stand in stark contrast to the west’s increasingly blurred lines between state and corporation. Abstruse forces are bringing international capitalism to the brink; poor Allen Greenspan’s ideology failed him, not to mention the rest of us. The invisible hand of the market is slapping us around. We struggle to stabilize our markets, while still trampling retail employees to death. Meanwhile, “pirates are living between life and death…who can stop them? Americans and British all put together cannot do anything."

Contrasting forces are at work; simultaneously pulling the world toward opposite polarities. Terrorists and pirates are the “rhizomatic machines” Zizek describes, the multinational corporations their counterpoint. We have contrasting images of corporate titans begging before congress and terrorists rampaging through Mumbai. The state gradually takes over the economy; we are in the last throes of neoliberalism. Meanwhile, a small cadre of men in speedboats, who are also now shooting at cruise ships, bring international oil concerns to their knees.

The contrast between the two is stark. The free market dies as corporation and state become increasingly intertwined; state power and centralized control increase. Pirates and terror cells decentralize control and challenge the power of states and corporations. Zizek says, “the notion of the ‘clash of civilizations’, however, must be rejected out of hand: what we are witnessing today are, rather, clashes within each civilization” (p. 41). Perhaps we’re witnessing both.

The Countdown Begins

2008-11-05T06:57:00.000-08:00

This didn't take very long. We haven't even had the inauguration yet and they're already starting to countdown to the end of Obama's first term. This drives home part of the reason that McCain lost. He, and his supporters, did not give the public a reason to vote in support of McCain; only reasons to vote against Obama. You can't win an election that way.

In 96 the Republicans ran Dole against Clinton and they thought that their hate for Clinton was persuasive enough to convince the general public to vote for Dole. In 04 Democrats did the same thing in the Kerry campaign against Bush. The problem was that the general public did not share the Republicans' visceral hate for Clinton or the Democrats' visceral hate for Bush. There were things the public disliked about Clinton and Bush; but they did not amount to the same level of disdain. McCain's campaign was predicated upon the same disdain for Obama; and that became the only message of his campaign. Attack, attack, attack!

I think negative campaign ads are an important part of the process. I disagree when I hear someone saying how they hate the negative ads and wish the campaigns would not use them. The problem is when the negative ads become the central part of a campaign strategy, as they did with McCain. You have to present yourself in the best light and your opponent in the worst light. If all you're doing is the latter, that negative light starts to reflect onto you. Apparently the group running the above ad on Drudge didn't learn a damn thing last night.

The Obama Turn

2008-11-04T20:23:00.000-08:00

It's a good night. And it happened on my son's birthday. He's our little good luck charm. In my paper from the Obama Effect conference I used the phrase the "Obama Turn." Obama himself and his victory symbolize a transition to a new era; for liberalism, the Democratic Party and most importantly, the nation as a whole.

As one last point, Drudge continues the religiofication of Obama. Something I have addressed in my paper and in this space in the past. I'm interested to see how this rhetoric is employed in the conservative critique over the next few years.

The Palin/McCain Ticket

2008-10-17T07:04:00.000-07:00

I picked up this screen shot from Gil Smart's blog. It's funny to me that a McCain campaign ad is just a big picture of Sarah Palin.
Who is the Republican presidential nominee again? I guess it's a good idea to give your nominee as little media exposure as possible. Especially in your paid media.

It's even more telling that Palin has already been asked about her career plans for after this election. The implication there being that once McCain is defeated Palin is the natural choice for the GOP four years from now. A prospect I find puzzling considering the disaster she has been in this election. She has fired up the base a little more, but lost the conservative intelligentsia. From David Brooks to Kathleen Parker to Peggy Noonan, the elite of the conservative coalition are not going to be happy with her four years from now. I don't understand how she has not been officially dubbed "damaged goods."

I have occassionally found myself wondering how different this campaign would be if McCain had chosen Tim Pawlenty or Charlie Crist or even Joe Lieberman for VP. I don't think it's going too far to say that with Lieberman McCain would have lost the base but maybe won the election. A McCain/Lieberman ticket may have even created a braoder shift in the electorate, puching some out of the Republican tent, bringing others in and creating an entire new right wing movement outside of the GOP. It's fun to speculate.

Gil Smart - McCain's collapse

2008-10-16T21:19:00.000-07:00

Gil Smart - Sarah Palin fans the flames

2008-10-13T09:05:00.000-07:00

Lil' O'Reilly

2008-10-09T20:21:00.000-07:00

I love this.

American Carol

2008-10-04T07:25:00.000-07:00

The New York Times reviewed the new right-wing comedy "An American Carol." Setting aside the fact that, based on the previews, the movie appears to be aimed at the simple minded wing of the conservative movement, my favorite line of the review comes at the end:

“An American Carol” is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). It includes swearing and satirical bigotry.

What is satirical bigotry? Does that mean the movie itself has a message of bigotry, but the bigotry is kind of funny? Are they satirizing bigotry?

Ugh

2008-10-03T07:43:00.001-07:00

I don't think I will ever understand why the right finds Palin appealing. Didn't they get enough folksy charm from Bush for the last eight years?

Quote of the Week

2008-09-11T15:15:00.000-07:00

Oh, the sadomasochistic tedium of McCain's imprisonment in Hanoi being told over and over and over again at the Republican convention. Do McCain's credentials for the White House really consist only of that horrific ordeal? Americans owe every heroic, wounded veteran an incalculable debt of gratitude, but how do McCain's sufferings in a tiny, squalid cell 40 years ago logically translate into presidential aptitude in the 21st century? Cast him a statue or slap his name on a ship, and let's turn the damned page.
-Camille Paglia

As much as I disagree with her some times, when she hits the nail on the head, she really hits it.

Thought Bodies in Social Media

2008-09-08T12:38:00.000-07:00

My Ph.D. work has just begun and I find myself reading some work that I had not expected to enjoy as much as I am. The work is in the field of Library and Information Science (LIS). While this field is largely new to me, it has not been difficult to find ways that it relates to the area of media studies. The first week of readings is filled with discussions on the arrangement of information, its classification, the defining of terms, the nature and purpose of historical narratives and, most interesting to me, what this all says about the dominant modes of thought of a given time; how power is attained and maintained.

In one of the readings Radford and Radford (2004) relate philosophical questions of post-structuralism to LIS. In their discussion of Foucault they state that he “notes that his statements have the potential to ‘land in unexpected places and form shapes that I had never thought of.’”

They are able to do this because statements are real; they have a material existence and, as such, have the potential to physically circulate among readers. The readers, in turn, have the capacity to ‘manipulate, use, transform, exchange, combine decompose and recompose, and possibly destroy’ those statements. (p. 71-72)

I can’t help but place this view in the context of the newer forms of media. Does it apply to the blogosphere; to Youtube; to Facebook? Does it apply to the realm of social media?

Yes, all social media contain statements, mostly fitting the definition put forth by Foucault and Radford and Radford; statements that are oftentimes disparate parts, combining to make a “concrete” whole; there is most definitely a sense of arbitrary classification in social media, classification that comes from “the crowd” linking one thing to another based on little more commonality than their personal interest in the subject; statements that, however disparate, are subject to a system of rules that govern how discourse happens in a social network, how one conducts him/herself in respectful ways; statements that fit the post-structuralist character of being “fragile and open to subversion” (Radford and Radford, 2004, p. 61), the subversion that comes from a negative comment on a blog or the fragility resulting simply from the existence of the delete button on the keyboard.

At first pass, however, that fragility leads me to conclude that Foucault’s argument about the materiality is not wholly applicable to social media. I am forced to ask if materiality and disposability are absolutely contrary terms. Do these, to borrow Weinberger’s phrase, “small pieces, loosely joined” really have a material presence in any way? Is the monitor of my laptop the material presence of my Facebook profile? If I print out the text of this note does it lose its essence? Is the paper a dead, corporeal representation of the note (or any other artifact of social media)?

Part of the essence of the note (or the Youtube video, blog post, Digg link) is the comment function. Its fragility and openness to subversion (both to subverting and being subverted) is the fact that the page is ever changing or having the potential to change. The blog may have zero comments, but there is always the potential that the passerby may “StumbleUpon” it. When it takes on the materiality of the paper is ceases to exist as it was; it can no longer be linked to, commented upon, updated. More importantly, the links contained within the content are now deceased. Those elements of the page, which connect it to other bits of information, are no longer “live.” The content that is printed has shuffled off of its mortal (html) coil.

These connections, these links, are the essence of social media, of web 2.0. This discursive formation’s perceived materiality within the confines of a computer network stands in contrast to its true immateriality when it is given the same material form of the book on the library shelf: paper. Yet, the statements of the social network do have material effects. A negative comment on the blog has the same material affect as a negative comment in person; the anonymity of the comment may increase the affect on the psyche; the absence of comment, the silence, is equally affecting at times. The comment is affect “as stimulus…a state of relation…intensities between” (Seigworth, p. 1). As Greg Seigworth states, “thought is itself a body” (p. 2). But does that “body of thought” continue to exist as itself when it moves from mind to blog? Does Facebook contain the “intensities between” when I logout?

The answer is yes and no. Those “intensities between” are of our own creation. As Radford and Radford (2004) state “the world a person sees and experiences is one that is created by the relation of stimuli to other stimuli and not some ‘pure’ perception of the world as it really is” (p. 63). There is no “pure” existence of a Facebook page or a blog. I “author” the layout of my pages. I move, remove and re-move the elements, the stimuli, in relation to other stimuli. My virtual bookshelf is moved from bottom to top to show visitors what I am reading; my wall is shifted downward; I “poke” a friend; the Obama widget on my blog is featured at the top, beside the first post, the blogroll is deemphasized in favor of a tag cloud. But when all the work is done and the laptop is closed, does that content exist in the same way a book does?

Friends are another set of stimuli within the social network. There is randomization to who is at the front of my page when I login. When I receive a friend invitation I am always told who connects me to my “new” friend. We are all statements and the network of social media is contextualizing us for us. We are stimuli and Facebook "sees and experiences us" and tells us how we relate to other stimuli. But how material are our effects/affects? When my fingers are no longer tapping the keys and the bits of information are floating through the network they no longer have the material effects/existence that continue when I leave a book on a shelf. Do they really “continue to physically circulate among readers?” Or are they thoughts without bodies?

“Over my cold, dead, political carcass”

2008-08-21T20:53:00.000-07:00

The words stand out for some reason. It's not that the rhetoric of the cold and dead is anything unusual in politics. We had Charlton Heston's "cold, dead hands" a long time ago, which certainly wasn't the first time. This post at Think Progress is littered with tough talking politicians going after McCain on his stance on the 1922 Colorado River Compact. But the above quote stands out from the rest for me.

“Over my cold, dead, political carcass” -Bob Schaffer (R-CO)

The issue in question is not important to me. What I find interesting is the use of the word political. The connection between the abstract, elitist, withdrawn realm of the political and the corporeal. Strauss, among other philosophers, talks about the political realm as being separate; a concern for the elite. Schaffer has made it a physical divide; a sort of dualism. Maybe he could have said "over my cold, dead political soul." Turning the political into the secular religion; not too big of a leap for a Republican.

In this metaphor Schaffer has two bodies; his physical body and his political body. His legislative accomplishments, his career, are given a physicality. If he were to lose his bid for the U.S. Senate to Udall it would be, in a sense, an actual death. He will cease to exist in the political sense, and his "cold, dead, political carcass" will be powerless in its attempts to stop anything. If he runs for another office in the future it will be the attempted reincarnation of his political corporeality. Like Nixon's pheonix, rising from the ashes of his failed California gubernatorial bid to run again for the presidency.

The Daughter of the Sheriff, The Daughter of the Judge

2008-08-19T07:39:00.001-07:00

I just watched We Jam Econo, a documentary on the Minutemen. That's the awesome band, not the wacko vigilantes trying to keep Mexicans out of the country. It's a great film. I even got a little choked up when they talked about D. Boone's death. The Minutemen are great, but also love Mike Watt's solo stuff, especially Big Train. This video even had my little girl singing along.

Bob Casey

2008-08-18T14:26:00.000-07:00

“We’ve got a mountain of problems, the likes of which we haven’t seen since 32.”
-Bob Casey Jr., on Pennsylvania News Makers this week

I forget who it was that called Bob Casey Sr. the "last of the new dealers." I've been reading the Drury book on Strauss, Pierson's book on the Kennedy assassination, Zizek, Foucault's biopolitics lectures and there is one thing that I've been thinking, especially in the context of current events, what we really need right now is a good old fashioned New Dealer.

Quote of the Week

2008-08-17T12:20:00.000-07:00

"Libertarianism is a politics born to be subsidized."
-Thomas Frank, in The Wrecking Crew, explaining why the number of libertarian think tanks in the U.S. is higher than the number of libertarians (h/t Political Wire)

Faux News at its best

2008-08-16T08:28:00.000-07:00

From the beginning of the conflict between Russia and Georgia I've gotten the feeling from most of the coverage that Russia has been portrayed as an unprovoked aggressor. If there has been more balanced coverage I haven't seen it. Of course I would not argue that Russia is justified in invading Georgia...like Sheppard Smith says, there are a lot of gray areas in war.

I love when a conservative expresses moral ambiguity.

Liberalism and Not Liberalism

2008-08-14T20:10:00.000-07:00

Recently my reading list has included an interesting book on neoconservatism’s roots in the political thought of Leo Strauss. In this book Shadia Drury contends, among other things, that modern neoconservatism consists of the “three pillars of…religion, nationalism and economic growth” (149). It is the nationalism that most concerns me because, as Drury points out, that nationalism “invites an aggressive foreign policy, it also destabilizes domestic politics” (p. 153).

It is in that context that we are forced to confront two recent news items; the crisis between Russia and Georgia and the murder (potential political assassination) of Bill Gwatney, the Chairman of the Arkansas Democratic Party. Within these two events we see the potential impact of neoconservatism’s nationalism.

It is, admittedly, only conjecture, but it does not require too great a leap in logic to see the potential political implications of Gwatney’s murder. One need only turn to Ann Coulter to find a member of the mainstream of conservative thought advocating violence against liberals. Is it possible that a maniac who owned fourteen guns walked into Democratic headquarters and just randomly chose Gwatney to kill? Certainly. It is also possible that this is the rhetoric of the likes of Coulter being taken to its logical conclusion.

There is a violence and nationalism present in neoconservatism that is not present in liberalism. Neocons attempt to define “out” liberalism from the American identity. A similar tactic is not present in liberalism. The transformation of these words into violence against "others" has already happened; it is entirely probable that it has happened again; it is also probable that it will continue to happen. This is the destabilizing impact that neoconservatism has on our domestic politics.

Our foreign policy is not much better after two terms of Neocon rule. It should be said more often by Democrats, one Democrat in particular, that neoconservative policy has weakened America both diplomatically and militarily. Is there anyone who honestly believes that Russia would be doing what they’re doing if we weren’t still working on our time horizons? Meanwhile the neoconservatives are reverting to their cold war posturing. In the twilight of the Bush presidency they get what they really wanted: another fight with the Russians. We can all look forward to an overabundance of “Reagan single handedly won the cold war” film clips at the RNC convention.

And in our current state it’s not too far fetched for the Russian public, and much of the rest of the world, to accept the conspiracy theory claim that Dick Cheney is personally involved in creating the Russia/Georgia conflict in order to boost the candidacy of John McCain. This quote exemplifies the current divide between the U.S. and Russia:

In the old days under Soviet rule we didn't believe a word of our own propaganda but we thought that information was free in the West and we longed for it,” said Katya, a middle-aged Muscovite. “But we have learnt since that the West has its own propaganda and in some ways it is more powerful because people believe it.

This brings me to an internal debate I’ve been having. Political philosophy has become a debate between liberalism (that is free market, libertarian liberalism) and everything that isn’t liberalism. As Drury points out, neoconservatives themselves, a very illiberal bunch, have made allies with anyone and everyone who opposes true liberalism.

This may be a false choice, but it’s the choice that liberalism has created through its use of political debate. It’s a debate that we see in the quote above; it’s similar to how Siebert, Peterson and Schramm explained the contrasting views of liberalism and Soviet Communism. It’s a debate that is happening once again between the Russians and the U.S. More importantly, it’s a debate that we’re currently having internally, with the neocons on one side and liberals on the other.

The Postmodern Right

2008-08-13T21:04:00.000-07:00

"Not every wrong, or even every violation of the law, is a crime."
-Attorney General Michael Mukasey

I'm not a lawyer, but I'm pretty sure that, by definition, every violation of the law is a crime. Mukasey, in this comment, exemplifies neoconservatism. It is the belief that those who govern are above the law. The ghost of Nixon coming through Mukasey, saying that if the president does it it's not illegal. Even if it violates the law, it's still not a crime.

Bushbama

2008-08-06T20:35:00.000-07:00

Over the last couple weeks two anti-Obama books have hit the shelves at your local Barnes and Noble. They both appear to be run-of-the-mill, unspectacular polemics, written in the mold of the “if candidate X gets elected the world is going to end and the suffering of all Americans will be limitless” kind of mold. The people who already hate Obama will read them and have their feelings reinforced, the people who support Obama will see them on the shelf and call them propaganda; nothing new to see here. However unspectacular they may seem, I could not resist writing a few notes about them because the quotes from the dust jackets are mind-boggling.

The first comes from Jerome Corsi, oh so cleverly titled Obama Nation. Corsi is no stranger to polemics being one of the authors of the Swift Boat Veterans book that help to sink the Kerry campaign in 2004. Here’s the quote that really got me. Just try to read it without feeling disbelief:

After an Obama presidency we would be a militarily weakened and economically diminished nation. Instead of being more united, our internal conflicts could well become more sharpened and more abrasive from four years of Obama leadership.

One has to wonder if Corsi has spent the Bush presidency in a cave, with his eyes closed and his fingers in his ears. Let’s start with the lack of unity from Obama leadership. Has Corsi even heard of Karl Rove? Does he not see the way the conservative echo chamber has turned “liberal” into a derogatory term? It’s also puzzling that Corsi would choose to write something that instantly brings the Bush presidency to mind. It’s as if he took something that someone had written about the last seven years and just changed the name Bush to Obama.

Our second entry comes from David Freddoso’s The Case Against Barack Obama. Like Corsi, Freddoso applies to Obama a criticism that is actually more fitting of George W. Bush:

As the least experienced politician in at least the last one hundred years to obtain a major party nomination for President of the United States, Obama appears to be escaping the appropriate examination that any man (or woman) who covets the Oval Office deserves.

Let’s compare just the political experience of Barack Obama and George W. Bush. Bush had a term and a half as Texas governor. Obama has seven years in the Illinois State Senate and four years in the U.S. Senate. That’s not to mention that Bush’s political career was preceded by a less than stellar business career and Obama was a law professor and community organizer.

Of course, any Democrat or liberal who pointed out Bush’s lack of experience was branded as an elitist. With a quote like the above one has to wonder if Freddoso has even heard of George W. Bush. I especially love that Freddoso implies that Obama “covets” the White House. Is it actually a sin for him to run for president?

While these two books will probably go largely unnoticed by the general public it is still a little troubling that there are two such books on the market and no high profile equivalent attacking John McCain. What does that say about the two candidates or their attackers? Maybe someone could take a few quotes criticizing Bill Clinton’s extramarital affairs and just swap out Clinton’s name for McCain’s.

Quote

2008-07-28T22:17:00.000-07:00

“While fear is dangerous, fear can also concentrate the mind and lead citizens to reengage.”
-Samantha Power, from the introduction to Hanna Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism

McCain's Youth and Obama as Mussolini

2008-07-26T21:14:00.000-07:00

A good clip from Dan Abrams show, which I don't normally watch.

The Fox News footage of McCain is an amusing point. The second part is what really interests me. The meme of Obama as cult leader or fascist or his supporters as irrational is something I've written on (I currently have a paper in the works on the subject). In this we see the point repeated, laying out the double-edged sword of, to use Hoffer's term, the "religiofication" of the political. Support for Obama is very enthusiastic, polls show his supporters are significantly more excited than McCain's (see here and here). At times passion for a political figure can turn to zeal; emotion clouds judgment (see Reagan lovers).

As Walter Lippmann points out, there is a thin line between idolatry and demonizing. Lippmann argues in Public Opinion that the processes of demonizing and lionizing are in fact one and the same. And this is my final premise; media re-presentations of Barack Obama have been used to simultaneously deify him and make him appear dangerous. When the public sees Obama speak before a stadium full of enthusiastic supporters the RNC wants the public to see rabid/fascist/irrational Democrats. Whether you're creating a hero or a villain, it's the same process.

Attacking a First Lady

2008-06-11T22:22:00.000-07:00

This is just a thought in passing, but there are numerous examples of how the right is far worse than the left in its lack of restraint when it comes to dirty and negative attacks. Now, this is not to say that the left/Democrats are squeaky clean. We can start with the Daisy Girl ad when putting together a list of Democratic attacks through history. But there is one area where the GOP has definitely outdone the Democrats: attacking potential first ladies.

Michelle Obama has already been the target of various unfair criticisms and rumors. In 2004 they went after Theresa Kerry for, among other things, having the nerve to be wealthy! And let's not forget the possibly most attacked first lady in history, Hillary Clinton. Then again, Andrew Jackson's wife Rachel was accused of bigamy. Hillary Clinton was only accused of murder.

I can't think of one example where a sitting or potential Republican first lady has been attacked in the ways in which the aforementioned have been. I wonder if Cindy McCain will come under the same scrutiny that Michelle Obama has experienced and can probably expect.

re: Ben's request for a Top Ten list

2008-05-19T20:47:00.000-07:00

This was a lot more difficult than I thought. I’m sure someone will think of something I forgot or take me to task for the ranking, both of which I look forward to. And I know, I know, Batman took up four of the spots. But how do you include one of those and not the others? Which do you drop from the list? This was a post that I planned to spend ten minutes on that has now eaten up too much time that should have been spent reading.

10. The Dark Knight trailer: So it’s only a trailer. It’s still awesome. It’s going to be the highlight of my summer. That and spending quality time with my wife and children. The Batman movie is obviously second on that list. It goes, wife and kids, Batman, Fourth of July picnic. That’s the hierarchy.

9. Greatest American Hero: Believe it or not, I just love the theme song.

8. Spiderman I and II (NOT III): Good, not great, but good enough to make the 5-8 range. It’s probably because they’re so recent and Spiderman is a childhood favorite.

7. X-Men I and II (NOT III): see explanation for #8

6. Unbreakable: M. Knight’s best and most underappreciated film. It is an homage to comic books. The nerd in me can’t resist that.

5. The Incredibles: I know it’s a kid’s movie. But it secretly contains liberal arguments for individual rights over the state (a la Harrison Bergeron), the ability of the individual to protect the state and, like in Iron Man, the villain is a defense contractor/weapons manufacturer.

4. Batman (the 60’s movie): “Must…reach…shark repellant…Batspray!”

3. Batman Begins: Christian Bale and Co. rebooted the franchise with a first installment that would make Loeb/Sale and Miller proud.

2. Batman: The Time Burton version that is. Jack Nicholson alone puts this one on the list.

1. Superman I: Christopher Reeve is the only true Superman. The rest are just pretenders to the throne. Again, I’m sentimental. “bum bum bum bum bum…BUM BUM BUM…bum bum bum bum bum…BUM BUM BUM!” I know you can hear it in your head.

More Obama crowd

2008-05-18T20:10:00.000-07:00

Drudge features this photo from an Obama rally in Oregon. As I have said here and here, this is going to be a meme for the summer and probably into the fall - Obama as cult leader. This complaint will be accompanied by the people who brought you "compassionate conservatism" and the Bush administration complaining about Obama's supposed lack of substance. They will fail to see how ironic they appear to be.

The word choice, alongside the image, is especially interesting. Beneath a crowd stretching for what feels like miles is the "Obama Mass," dual meaning of mass, implying both greatness in size and religious ceremony. It leads to a conjuring of images of the Pope, or a cult leader holding himself out to be a savior. Most of all, what the right will attempt to do is place in the minds of the voters the idea of the dangerous crowd, a great mass of people, naive, following the commands of totalitarian, unthinking. That is the worst part of it. The attack is on Obama supporters more than Obama. It says his supporters are somehow overly emotional, irrational, they can't be trusted; and so the voting choice can also not be trusted. It's an attack on the candidate through his supporters.

The Subversive Superhero

2008-05-15T21:30:00.000-07:00

I should begin this post with a confession. I am a comic book nerd. It’s pathetic but true. I love comic books. That being said, I finally have an opportunity to write down some thoughts about the Iron Man movie after having seen it a week ago. One of the things I find most interesting about film is the way contemporary issues of American foreign policy make their way into cinema. Iron Man is no exception to this rule.

The Nazis have been perfect all-purpose villains for decades. There was no shortage of war movies throughout WWII, not to mention the Office of War Information and its influence on popular culture and public opinion. There is also no shortage of Vietnam and post-Vietnam movies, Rambo of course topping off that category. The cold war worked its way into the American psyche in subtle ways through UFO films; hostile aliens being stand-ins for the Communists. It also presented itself more overtly in one of my personal favorites, Red Dawn. WOLVERINES!

It has been especially interesting to see the “war on terror” play out on the big screen. That’s where we find ourselves with Iron Man. Our hero is a defense contractor. What makes him the protagonist of the story is the fact that, after being held captive by terrorists in Afghanistan, the main character is reformed. He announces to the American news media that indiscriminate bombing is not doing the trick and that we need to find more humane and effective ways to battle the terrorists.

The antagonist of the film compounds this critique of the American military industrial complex. The character played by Jeff Bridges (warning: spoiler) is also a high level executive in the same corporation as our hero, the soon to be Iron Man. As it turns out, Bridges is a war profiteer. And not just that, he is a war profiteer who has been selling American technology to the terrorists. The leftist in me instantly goes to Prescott Bush, collaborating with the Nazis (or so the rumors go).

There is an explicitly anti-corporate tone to the movie as a whole. At various points Robert Downey Jr. is portrayed as being aloof and withdrawn from his wealth and power. He is shallow, surrounded by unearned financial largess that he apparently does not appreciate. That is, until he goes through the requisite transformational experience that is necessary to all superhero narratives.

The exclamation point on all of this is what may have been a line of dialogue that most viewers may not find to be too significant but I thought summed up these anti-corporate themes. As the antagonist has our hero on the ropes and is about to leave him for dead, as all villains do in superhero stories, he says to Iron Man, “you think just because you have an idea it belongs to you?” And there it is. Throughout the film we see Iron Man labor over technology, his mechanical art, only to have the one character most symbolic of the corporation swoop in and appropriate it for his own means in one twist of the wrist. That line, worded and delivered perfectly, says so much about individual creativity and corporate appropriation of the work of the individual. It seems even more significant that Bridges delivers the line considering that he played Preston Tucker. Iron Man even featured a still from the film Tucker at one point; a movie whose themes are echoed in Iron Man.

Meanwhile, there are also underlying themes of the ability of an individual to outwit a corrupt bureaucracy and accomplish something for the greater good, the role of America as savior to the rest of the world, and the utility of advanced military technology (when it is under the control of that individual rather than the corrupt bureaucracy). In one scene four terrorists are holding innocent Afghani women and children at gunpoint. With a single push of a button Iron Man locks on target and simultaneously kills all four of them. He’s Uncle Sam in a shiny, metal, orange and crimson suit saving the Middle East.

While Iron Man was a surprisingly subversive critique of the military industrial complex and America’s exercising of its power abroad, at the end of the day there is no criticism for underlying assumptions of American military power. The solution is more exercising of that military might, just in more efficient ways and with a benevolent hand that helps people.

"I am weak and materialistic"

2008-05-08T07:51:00.000-07:00

Peggy Noonan's Clintonian linguistics

2008-04-25T14:13:00.000-07:00

So Peggy Noonan wants to have a discussion about Barack Obama's patriotism.

"Snooty lefties get angry when you ask them to talk about these things. They get resentful. Who are you to question my patriotism? But no one is questioning his patriotism, they're questioning its content, its fullness."

One can't help but get the sense that Noonan wants to debate the meaning of the word "is" here. The right wing's "patriotism dialogue" has become trite and sometimes dangerous. It oftentimes bores me. It's coarse and accusatory from Rush Limbaugh. It's lowbrow and free of thought from Bill O'Reilly.

But no one fills it with pretense quite like Peggy Noonan. Then again Peggy Noonan could probably find a way to make Pabst Blue Ribbon, a hoagie and NASCAR sound pretentious. And I just got done reading an essay critiquing deconstructionist architecture. So you would think that my tolerance for pretense would be on high right now. Nevertheless…

When this talk of Obama’s supposed elitism started I had an interesting discussion with my speech class about it. One of the things that came up was the contradiction of one politician accusing another of being elitist. “Aren’t they all kind of elitist? If you’re a Senator you’re not exactly an ‘Average Joe.’” Coincidentally we had been discussing red herrings and rhetoric the week before. “Aren’t there more important things to debate than what Barack Obama wears on his lapel?”

What Noonan’s column and this on going discussion about lapel pins and hands on hearts really got me thinking about was how differently the two political polls express patriotism. Noonan seems to imply that liberals find patriotism to be distasteful somehow. Of course it’s politically convenient for her to imply such a thing even if she doesn’t believe it. And that’s the big difference in how patriotism is expressed by liberals and conservatives. You won’t see many liberals impugn the patriotism of conservatives for the sake of scoring political points.

I’m reminded of a visit to Abilene, Texas a couple years ago. I drove around the town with my friend who lived down there and everywhere I looked I saw the American flag. The problem is that it wasn’t just on flagpoles. It was on everything. Painted on walls, minivan decals, it was a tool of commerce. And this is what I find to be offensive about the cultural conservative patriotism. It’s not an emotion, or a loyalty to nation or an ideal.

Patriotism is a tool: a tool of politics, a tool of propaganda, and a tool of commerce.

Patriotism elects presidents; incompetent presidents. Patriotism sells cars. Patriotism publicizes cable news networks. Patriotism propagates wars.

I think the commerce is what is most offensive. My friend and I drove past car dealerships and mini marts all with the word “freedom” or “liberty” in the name and an American flag in the logo. Do you really need to tell me that you love America in order to sell me a car? Can you just tell me about the gas mileage?

Then again, this could be a cultural difference in how one addresses others and expresses his or her feelings to them. When I’m at a ballgame and I see two guys chatting the through the entire national anthem my desire is to walk over and at least give them a piece of my mind if not smack them upside the head. When I see someone flying an old and worn American flag my desire is to pull into their driveway and give them the rundown on proper care and disposal of the flag. However, doing so wouldn’t make me more patriotic, it would just make me a jerk. Questioning a candidate on why they don’t wear the flag on their lapel is the same. It makes you a jerk, not more patriotic.

The again, maybe I’m just a “snooty leftie.”

What has Joe Pitts accomplished in his political career?

2008-04-24T20:56:00.000-07:00

The answer to the title of this post? Joe Pitts proved that that human body can continue to live without a functioning heart.

My friend Jerry sent an e-mail to me, I present here verbatim:

The House of Representatives voted yesterday to block the Bush Administration from cutting federal spending on Medicaid benefits for the poor by $13 billion over the next 5 years. Two-thirds of House Republicans joined the Democrats in voting for the bill which had 220 co-sponsors from both sides of the aisle.. The proposed Bush White House cuts were opposed by all 50 State Governors. The final vote was 369 to 62. Joe Pitts ever the champion of less government spending unless it goes into the pockets of wealthy corporations, joined the 62 members of Congress who voted to preserve the cuts.

Thanks Joe.

I was embarrassed by my representation in the Senate. Bob Casey solved that problem in 2006. Now we just have to do something about the embarrassing representation that Lancaster has in the House.

Obama in Lancaster

2008-04-21T20:11:00.000-07:00

Oh Danny Boy

2008-04-01T20:12:00.001-07:00

The Obama Crowd

2008-02-18T19:04:00.002-08:00

Once again Drudge carries a photo of Obama blending into an audience. This time it's accompanied by a headline about supporters fainting. There is the potential here for a new meme from Obama critics. Andrew Sullivan has discussed this critique of Obama's supporters. It is, to use Hoffer's term, "the art of 'religiofication'-the art of turning practical purposes into holy causes" (p. 6). This is an apparent goal of Obama's opponents in both the Clinton and McCain camps.
First, the claim is made that Obama just gives nice speeches without substance. It's similar to the "all hat, no cattle" criticism of Bush. Second, the "Obama supporter as fanatic" line is going to make its way through the media, especially, I suspect, talk radio and the blogosphere. Drudge makes this statement in a more subtle way through his choice of words and images. The fainting implies the supposedly emotional and irrational nature of Obama supporters.

Image and Drudge

2008-02-13T19:49:00.001-08:00

One of the more interesting things about the Drudge Report is his use of imagery. Drudge has never really contributed anything to the journalistic art of word craft. His masterful choice of images makes up for it, even if he didn’t take the photos himself. A few images in particular have stood out and require some commentary. So I have been saving screen shots at different points since the days leading up to Super Tuesday.

The first set of images that started it all for me is this combination of photos of Hillary and Obama. Not to heap too much praise on Drudge, but he chose two images that sum up the nature of the two campaigns. These images have a very different impact when examined side by side as opposed to individually.

First there is Hillary, standing alone. The emptiness of this photo is a strong contrast to the overcrowded Obama photo. Where Hillary stands alone, the leader of a machine working behind the curtain, Obama blends into a crowd. You almost have to search the photo to find him, a commentary on the nature of mass movements and how their leaders often cease to be individuals but symbolic faces lost in the sea of the movement they lead, almost ceasing to exist. Equally important is the difference in size of the two subjects. Obama is small, in front of a large, mainly anonymous crowd. Hillary, again, is the bigger than life figurehead of a political machine. She doesn’t need individuals to support her.

Hot and Cool

McLuhan classified media as being either “hot” or “cool.” Hot media were those that were “high definition” or gave us all of the information leaving little room for participation on the part of the receiver. Cool media were “low definition” making it necessary for the receiver to fill in the holes, so to speak. In these stark, contrasting photos we find Obama and Hillary personifying McLuhan’s classifications.

There is a repeated pattern of the news media using photographs of Hillary Clinton that are very unflattering. In this particular shot Hillary’s most distinct feature is the redness of her cheeks. The viewer’s eyes are drawn to them. More importantly Hillary is the hot medium of the race. The information is all there for us to consume. We know everything about her. There is little room for participation.

This is contrasted by the angular coolness of the Obamas. Much criticism has been leveled at Obama for the vague platitudes of his performances (as if the other candidates use their stump speeches to present position papers). The vagueness is part of the appeal and why he has been successful. He is “cool” in the McLuhanian sense of the word. The outline is there, the receiver gets to fill in the holes. Obama reflects what the viewer wants him to reflect.

These two photos have so much more to say beyond “cool” and “hot” media. There is also a subtle statement about marriage, that I’m sure was unintentional on Drudge’s part. The Obamas have a young, fresh and happy marriage. Hillary stands alone, in the glare of the media. A glare that was, at least in part, caused by a downward spiral resulting from her husband’s outbursts against Obama. The Hillary photo is also very reminiscent of the "big brother" ad that made its way through the media.

Recurring Themes

Hillary and Obama have recurring themes for the photos that Drudge uses. For Hillary it is the machinations of power coupled with femininity. Here she is being prepped by makeup artists on a TV set, an image that recalls the opening to Fahrenheit 9/11 with Wolfowitz licking his comb or John Edwards coifing his hair before a talk show appearance.

In another Drudge draws a connection to the Iron Lady.

Finally, we have the little girl sleeping under the Hillary signs. Suddenly, in defeat, Hillary is transformed into that little girl. Power eludes her.

Obama’s recurring imagery is the mass audience, usually contrasted with an opponent who stands alone. Above I discussed this with Hillary. Here we find the same contrast with McCain. On top of the implications about level of support from the public are issues of age. McCain seems to be struggling to walk, Obama is moving with ease, smooth and cool. McCain’s photo is slow, Obama’s is fast.

Just today the Obama crowd photo resurfaced on Drudge. In this case the mass nature and disappearance of Obama was emphasized by the absence of his face. Obama stands with his back to the viewer, faceless and merging into the crowd. Again, he is the cool medium waiting to be filled in by the viewer.

Image is always a driving force in politics. Obama has largely missed the critical eye of the camera. This is even more noticeable when considering the negative photographic representations of Hillary, not to mention George W. Bush, both of whom are not friends of the photojournalist. But photos say things through more than just the candidates’ facial expressions and postures. Sometimes their surroundings are just as, if not more important. Obama is the “cool” with mass support. Hillary stands alone, larger than life and struggling to balance femininity and power. McCain is just plain angry.

Quote of the week

2008-02-13T06:48:00.001-08:00

Sometimes she gets it right, a lot of times she gets it wrong, but Paglia is never boring. In this case she hits the nail on the head.

John McCain's courage under torture during the Vietnam War deserves everyone's gratitude and respect. But as a national candidate, the stumpy, uptight McCain is a lemon. Oy, that weaselly voice and those dated locutions and stilted intonations. Who needs a weird old coot with a short fuse in the White House? This isn't a smart game plan for the war on terror.

-Camille Paglia

The Romney campaign ends on a note of nonsense

2008-02-07T13:34:00.000-08:00

Mitt Romney proves once again that, after the Bush years, the only thing the Republicans have left is the fear appeal.

“If I fight on in my campaign, all the way to the convention, I would forestall the launch of a national campaign and make it more likely that Senator Clinton or Obama would win,” he said.

“And in this time of war, I simply cannot let my campaign be a part of aiding a surrender to terror.”

-Mitt Romney

I would like to know what kind of person takes a comment like that seriously.

My little brother is a sumo wrestler

2008-02-04T12:14:00.000-08:00

He's the one in red.

Montel Williams gets it right

2008-01-27T21:03:00.000-08:00

I'm not a big fan of Montel Williams but he makes an excellent point here. This is something that students in my media and press classes bring up. Why is it that the media spent so much time on celebrity news and not enough time on more serious issues? That is not to diminish the tragedy of Heath Ledger's death. It's very sad. It's probably a safe bet that the reason the folks on Fox News don't want to discuss the tragedy of a soldier's death is because it reminds the public of why it is they've been questioning the Iraq war and the administration's handling of it.

It's funny to me how these right wing people accuses anyone who questions the war of not supporting the troops but when someone tries to recognize the tragedy of an American soldier being killed those same right wingers don't want to hear it. The Fox people in the above video go down a list of excuses for why there is a paucity of media coverage on casualties. And we can't forget Sinclair broadcasting refusing to broadcast the Nightline episode eulogizing members of the military killed in Iraq. You would think that episode would be something they would support. Then again, "support the troops" is just a political slogan to some people.

(h/t reddit user zewar)

Declaring preemptive war on John McCain

2008-01-26T09:04:00.000-08:00

A pretty strong argument could be made that John McCain is the GOP’s strongest general election candidate. For some reason, which I can’t fathom, the conservative base really seems to dislike him. Maybe the fact that I (and others like me) don’t have a gut reaction against him in the way I do at the mention of…say…Dick Cheney, is one explanation.

Whatever the reason for the base hating him, he’s their best chance at keeping the White House. The Clintons have to know that there aren’t any red states that go blue for Hillary, against McCain. With that in mind, it seems to me that Team Hillary is launching a preemptive attack to nip the McCain candidacy in the bud.

First, the New York Times did Hillary the double favor of endorsing her while giving McCain the kiss of death. Now we have what amounts to an attack from Bill Clinton. The former president says, "[Hillary] and John McCain are very close…they like and respect each other." If the conservative base needed one more reason to distrust McCain, there it is. Of course, McCain didn’t “like and respect” Hillary enough to say anything when a woman at one of his events referred to Hillary as “the bitch.”

This is why the Clintons win elections. They’re tough and smart. While they pound away at Barack Obama, they kill McCain with kindness. It’s why the Democratic Party, unfortunately, seems to need them. Without Clinton the Democrats would probably have had twenty-eight years out of the White House. Maybe this year we can find a way to win without them.

Psychology, Fear and Politics

2007-08-21T22:11:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite topics, as you will find here, is the use of fear appeals in political rhetoric. It’s a simple yet effective way for a leader to get the electorate to do what he wants them to do. So I read with great interest this article from the New Republic.

There are two really important points in this article. First is the depth of the connection between fear/mortality and political decisions. Second is the lengths the Bush administration went to exploit that (including exploiting 9/11 imagery).

The basic gist of the Judis article in TNR is that a group of political psychologists, through a variety of experiments, found a connection between being forced to confront one's own mortality and political inclinations and behavior. For example, in a study published after the 04 election they found a connection between reminders of 9/11 and feelings of mortality (duh). They also found a connection between reminders of 9/11 and increased votes for Bush (again, duh).

The control group that completed a personality survey, but did not do the mortality exercises, predictably favored Kerry by four to one. But the students who did the mortality exercises favored Bush by more than two to one. This strongly suggested that Bush's popularity was sustained by mortality reminders. The psychologists concluded in a paper published after the election that the government terror warnings, the release of Osama bin Laden's video on October 29, and the Bush campaign's reiteration of the terrorist threat (Cheney on election eve: "If we make the wrong choice, then the danger is that we'll get hit again") were integral to Bush's victory over Kerry. "From a terror management perspective," they wrote, "the United States' electorate was exposed to a wide-ranging multidimensional mortality salience induction." (Judis, para. 22)

At the end of the article Judis comes to the same conclusions that I have. First, for the public in general thoughts of 9/11 have been crowded out by Bush's incompetence on things like New Orleans, not to mention Iraq, and the GOP in general is being pulled down with him. This is why Democrats won in 2006. The “public mind” is not thinking about terrorism and for the most part 9/11 is far enough behind us that it doesn’t have the impact it once did. This is why we see the conservative rhetoric turn to nonsensical and offensive comments like calling for another 9/11.

Second, the one GOP candidate who can win in 2008 is Rudy, because he is the only one who can, in the “public mind”, invoke 9/11 in a credible way, using it as a mortality reminder and presenting himself as a protector and the Democrats as weak (the same way Bush did to Kerry). Can you picture Mitt Romney trying to use 9/11 in the way Bush did?

However, Judis is a little overly optimistic in hoping that "the moment of September 11--and the reminder of mortality that it brought--may well have passed. And with it, too, the ascendancy of politicians who exploited the fear of death that lies within us all." It would be nice if it were so, but fear is part of politics. Rudy started it months ago when he echoed Cheney with his “a vote for the Democrats is a vote to get us attacked” comment.

Judis even points out that in one experiment when the subjects are told to take their time and think about the message rationally they are less likely to be influenced by the mortality reminder. The subjects that are not encouraged to take their time and think have the opposite response. The same voters that were moved by Bush’s fear appeals also tend to be Rudy voters. Which just goes to show, after Katrina, the quality of health care (even for the insured), the state of our foreign policy, an increasing gap between the top and bottom of the economic scale and the general moral bankruptcy of the Bush administration, the only thing the GOP has left is fear.

More UK Politics

2007-07-10T14:49:00.000-07:00

I am enjoying my time here in the UK quite a bit. It is especially nice in relation to my interest in comparative politics. There are obviously some big differences in what the media report and the topics of discussion in the politics.

There are a few things at the top of my list of interesting stories today. First, the BBC had a story about a cyber attack on Estonia. You can read about it here. Our modern technology presents new opportunities for foreign threats as you’ll see in the article.

Second, Salman Rushdie is once again under attack from religious fanatics. He was dubbed Sir Salman Rushdie recently, which has made a few people unhappy.

Finally, to the politics of England. Social engineering is on the agenda for the Tories here. For those of you who don’t know, the Tories are the English equivalent of Republicans, except they don’t seem to have a Dobson wing to their party. London is Washington turned upside down. It’s a place where the left and center-left run the show. Even my Tory friend here referred to Tony Blair as “center of the road.”

The social engineering the Tories are proposing is what we in the states would refer to as a marriage tax credit. They want to give a tax break of about £20 a week (what amounts to $40) to married couples. This, of course, is in the hopes that this will encourage couples to get married and stay married rather than living in sin.

They argue that this would save marriages, give children better homes and “prevent social breakdown.” Sounds nice; at least the conservatives here openly call their policies social engineering instead of pretending to be libertarians. I would say there’s nothing wrong with tax credits for married couples, especially those with children. I would also ask, why it is that children whose parents get divorced don’t deserve to have those extra resources and if there is actually a person alive who would say “this marriage isn’t working out, but I really can’t give up that extra $40 a week.”

Where is the liberal bias at the BBC?

2007-07-08T14:19:00.000-07:00

Pictured here: Abi, me, Joanna plus baby #2 and our English friend Heather; above our heads, Durham Cathedral.

The media coverage of the Live Earth events has been a long exercise in Eric Alterman’s question, “what liberal media?” Before leaving for England, where I currently sit typing, I was driving around listening to I don’t know what generic rock radio station. The station was playing a Lenny Kravitz song, after which the DJ mentioned that Kravitz was going to be playing at Live Earth, “Al Gore’s thing” he added, a bit dismissively. The next day, the same station, same DJ, played the same Lenny Kravitz song (surprise, surprise, corporate radio, the same six songs over and over). This time the DJ again mentioned that Kravitz was playing at Live Earth.

Then came the talking point. “Ya know, a listener e-mailed me and made a good point. How much energy are they going to waste just putting on that concert? Just something to think about I guess.”

And so the same right wing fallacy was repeated over and over. I heard it from some radio DJ. It was on Drudge. Worst of all…I heard it on the Beeb; of all the places in the world to hear a right wing talking point, the supposedly “liberal” BBC. I’ve been in England since Thursday. Every time I’ve seen some coverage of Live Earth since I’ve been here the report has made some mention of the energy that would be used for the concert.

Even the coverage during the concert involved some kind of counter message. The BBC interviewer was talking to a global warming skeptic while the concert was in the background. Now, I’m all for multiple viewpoints being heard, even if I believe that one of those viewpoints is ridiculous. My complaint isn’t that someone I disagree with is having his say. What bothers me is that even after the right wing talking points get inserted we still have to hear claims of liberal bias.

Where is that liberal media I keep hearing about?

The other point is that this claim is a fallacy; a diversion. You don’t need to address the claims being made by Al Gore and environmental scientists. You just need to call rock stars hypocrites.

James Taylor on Sesame Street

2007-06-25T09:58:00.001-07:00

Our daughter Abi has a Sesame Street video that she really loves. It's a collection of songs. Her favorite is the James Taylor song.

New PA 16.com article

2007-06-19T21:06:00.001-07:00

I have a piece published at NewPA16.com on Internet radio. Please take the time to check it out, but more importantly go to SaveNetRadio.org.

The Fear Appeal in Republican Politics

2007-06-04T08:38:00.000-07:00

Despite the popular narrative in media and political circles (both liberal and conservative) that the GOP is doomed in 2008 I still have a feeling that at noon on January 20, 2009 we will see the Republican Party standing on a dais in Washington exclaiming, “reports of my death were greatly exaggerated.” This is largely due to the fact that Rudy Giuliani is leading in most state and national polls and is even competitive in the South Carolina primary (Edsall, 2007). I think America could elect saint Rudy of 9/11 even if they get to know the Rudy that existed on September 10th.

The contradiction of Giuliani as the great hope of the GOP is fairly simple to find. You see it in the first few paragraphs of the recent profile in The New Republic. One voter explains himself as being “on all the social issues…to the right of him” (Edsall). Yet this voter is still supporting Giuliani. Which would leave one scratching their head every time they hear a cable news pundit pontificating on the inevitable demise of the Giuliani presidential campaign.

The most important conclusion that one would have to reach here is that the politics of the GOP coalition (and any political coalition from any location or time in human history) is a little more complicated than what the media and political commentators would have the public believe. Then again, what isn’t? Many elements are at work and everyone has an explanation for Giuliani’s success. The most popular being that the only thing that anyone knows about him comes from twenty-four hours of his life in September of 2001.

This would be what one could call the Lippmann explanation of the “world outside and the pictures in our heads.” Lippmann wrote about how the public comes to know a figure through a fictitious persona created by media. These personas can obviously be both positive and negative. Roosevelt is a hero and Trotsky is a villain. Lippmann wrote that “beside hero-worship there is the exorcism of devils. By the same mechanism through which heroes are incarnated, devils are made” (p. 7). As an example here, Giuliani has the added bonus of being on the receiving end of both treatments.

While the media portrayal of Giuliani as an individual political figure is part of the “picture in the public’s head,” it is only part of why he is successful and, more importantly, why the GOP could still rise like a phoenix from the ashes of 2006. What is more important here is the rhetorical use of fear and patriotism. This is a fairly broad subject that needs a more in depth examination that this post will not allow, but it is essential to present a cursory discussion in order to move on to another Republican figure, Peggy Noonan.

Giuliani, I would argue, doesn’t employ a very subtle use of the fear appeal. Recently he told an audience in New Hampshire that if a Democrat is elected to the presidency in 2008 there will be another attack of the same magnitude as 9/11. This is the modus operandi for the Republicans. I suppose that the liberal reaction to this would most likely be to accuse of Giuliani of fear mongering. That may be a valid point, but fear appeals can also be valid and effective rhetorical tools, when used properly.

Michael William Pfau (2007) and Douglas Walton (1996) present two characteristics that are essential here. First, the threat in the fear appeal must be credible (or “close at hand”). Second, the solution to the threat must be possible to achieve. For Giuliani the threat is terrorism, the solution is “vote Giuliani.” He creates an effective fear appeal. In fact, the voter from The New Republic article cites Giuliani’s understanding of terrorism as the reason for supporting Giuliani.

As Pfau notes, in Rhetoric Aristotle makes the argument that fear “makes people inclined to deliberation” (p. 221). This brings us to the validity of the fear appeal. While Giuliani’s argument is certainly effective, whether or not it is fallacious is another issue. Even more questionable is whether or not it will make people “inclined to deliberation.” The intention of this argument is demonizing his opposition more than anything else. Which brings us to Peggy Noonan’s recent editorial in the Wall Street journal.

Noonan is lamenting the manner in which the Bush administration is treating the rest of the conservative movement. The source of the fissure is the immigration bill that is being pushed by the president and members of congress from both parties. In a speech in Georgia President Bush stated:

Those determined to find fault with this bill will always be able to look at a narrow slice of it and find something they don't like," the president said. "If you want to kill the bill, if you don't want to do what's right for America, you can pick one little aspect out of it. (Feller, 2007).

This is not quite the same appeal that Giuliani was making but it is from the same strain of authoritarianism that currently runs through Republican politics. Where Giuliani employs fear Bush questions the patriotism of his opponents.

Again, Lippmann is useful here. He argues that within groups “there is infinitely less suppression of individual difference” (p. 8). Here is one point where I would disagree with Lippmann and the current conservative movement is a good illustration. The reason we are currently seeing the cracks in their coalition is because within subgroups of society there is infinitely more suppression of difference. Which is what Noonan is addressing.

Noonan asks why the White House would “speak so insultingly, with such hostility, of opponents who are concerned citizens? And often, though not exclusively, concerned conservatives?” Anyone who has attempted even the most cursory examination of the rhetoric of the right in general and this administration specifically would find the phrase “often, though not exclusively” to be a bit of an understatement. From the war on terror, to the war in Iraq to really any other issue (especially on foreign policy) this administration and the conservative movement have employed tactics of insult and hostility against almost exclusively groups and individuals outside of the conservative movement. There have been occasional conservative individuals who have fallen prey to these attacks. Lawrence Lindsey and Paul O”Neil come to mind, but they were attacked for individual acts of “disloyalty,” not because they were ideological opponents.

Gil Smart makes the argument for conservatism as tribalism. He seems to be looking at the situation from an internal view, examining the internal machinations of the movement and what it is doing to itself. I would add to his analysis what is happening outside of conservatism and how it is causing the internal fissure. What is happening outside is that the public is rejecting it. Unsurprisingly, the movement is going into an internal authoritarian mode of operation. Andrew Perrin, citing Marcus, argues that “the threat of unsettled times may send cultures retreating into an inward-focused authoritarian stance” (p. 169).

This is what we are currently witnessing from Noonan and Bush. We are clearly living in unsettled times for the GOP and the conservative movement. They are expressing this uncertainty through the cannibalization of their own movement. They are attacking their own. I would argue that what is happening is the natural reaction of the people who are in charge of any collective, be it a political movement or a nation.

The people in charge of the movement want to maintain order. Order means their continued power, disarray means change. There are two common elements we can see in the rhetoric. First, they have to convince their followers that there is an external threat (i.e. terrorists, immigrants, etc.). In this case the externals are immigrants. Second, there has to be an internal threat as well. In this case, as in every case with the Bush administration, the internal threat is anyone who disagrees with the administration’s position. In the war on terror those people are anyone who questions the president’s policies. In the case of the immigration bill it’s the president’s conservative opponents in congress.

It’s not possible that good people can have honest disagreements on the best course of action. The explanation for an individual’s disagreement with president Bush is that they “don’t want to do what’s right for America.” With Iraq the answer is that opponents want to let France decide when America can defend itself. The examples of this rhetoric and those who employ it against, almost exclusively, liberals and Democrats are too numerous to mention. Which is part of what makes Peggy Noonan’s editorial so intellectually dishonest.

At this point this is the one tactic that the Republicans have left for electoral victory in 2008; the fear appeal. Give the audience an external threat, tell them it can be defeated and tell them that anyone who opposes their method of victory just doesn’t want to do what’s right for America. The big question is, when the Republican candidate for president, whether it is Giuliani or anyone else, stands in front of an audience and tells them that voting for a Democrat for president is literally a threat to national security, will we be able to count on Peggy Noonan, not to mention every conservative who is currently feeling insulted by the White House, to stand and ask why that candidate would “speak so insultingly, with such hostility, of opponents who are concerned citizens?”

Sources

Edsall, Thomas. (2007). Party Boy. The New Republic, 21 May, p. 26-32.

Feller, Ben. (2007). Bush Attacks Immigration Deal Opponents. Retrieved 1 June 2007 from http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D8PE5LPO0&show_article=1.

Lippmann, Walter. (1922). Public Opinion. New York, NY: Free Press Paperbacks.

Noonan, Peggy. (2007). Too Bad. Retrieved 1 June 2007 from http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/pnoonan/.

Perrin, Andrew. (2005). National Threat and Political Culture: Authoritarianism, Antiauthoritarianism, and the September 11 Attacks. Political Psychology, 26 (2),
p. 167-194.

Pfau, Michael William. (2007). Who’s Afraid of Fear Appeals? Contingency, Courage, and Deliberation in Rhetorical Theory and Practice. Philosophy and Rhetoric, 40 (2),
p. 216-237.

Smart, Gil. (2007). The Movement Kills the Message. Smart Remarks. Retrieved on 2 June 2007 from http://blogs.lancasteronline.com/smartremarks/2007/06/02/the-movement-kills-the-message/.

Walton, Douglas. (2007). Practical Reasoning and the Structure of Fear Appeal
Arguments. Philosophy and Rhetoric, 29 (4), p. 301-313.

Vonnegut

2007-04-16T20:11:00.000-07:00

I don't know why it took me this long to post this. This is one of my favorite quotes from a Vonnegut book. It was in the obituary in the NY Times.

“Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It’s round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you’ve got about a hundred years here. There’s only one rule that I know of, babies — ‘God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.’”
-Eliot Rosewater

Is it necessary to end the culture wars?

2007-04-04T19:52:00.000-07:00

An interesting piece in the latest issue of the Atlantic poses a simple solution for the culture war: let it be fought on the state level rather than the federal. This proposal got me thinking about a few different ideas. The proposal itself is not without its merits, although I would probably come down on the side of not agreeing with Jonathan Rauch, the author. I’ll address my main disagreement later.

I would ask whether or not it is even necessary to end the culture wars. A democratic republic is a system that involves (putting it in my own words, but more than likely borrowing from Habermas or secondary literature on Habermas) some kind of public debate that works toward defining a national identity or shaping a policy. As Schudson (1997) writes, “if democratic talk is talk among people of different values and different backgrounds, it is also profoundly uncomfortable” (p. 299).

Isn’t the rancor and disagreement part of the process and an inherent quality of the system? I suppose I would go right to the heart of Rauch’s column and say that ending the culture wars may not even be a necessary, desirable or even attainable goal.

The real problem with the culture wars is that, from my above definition, they are more focused on “defining a national identity” as opposed to “shaping a policy.” Rauch argues that “even moral absolutists …should grudgingly support pluralism, because it makes the world safe for their moral activism by keeping the cultural peace” (para. 16). There are a few problems with this argument.

First, I would argue that pluralism is inherently not “cultural peace.” Andrew Fiala provides a useful definition here, stating that, “according to pluralism, each of the variety of ways in which we might pursue the good can still be described as good without radically changing the meaning of the term ‘good.’ Or, as Rawls says, each of the ways in which reasonable persons disagree can still be called reasonable” (p. 108).

There is the rub; the word “reasonable.” How do you define it and who gets to make that decision? That is where the culture wars really take place. For example, most liberals (whatever that word means) support the ideal of government neutrality on religion. That is part of their definition of “America” (whatever that word means). Many Evangelical Christians see Christianity as an essential part of the defining of America. To the latter group the very idea of being neutral on religion is not, as Rawls says, reasonable, and is certainly not American. To quote Jerry Falwell: “the idea that religion and politics don’t mix was invented by the devil to keep Christians from running their own country” (Goodman). We can give the devil his due, but I think Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and Thomas Paine contributed at least a little to Falwell’s problems.

That is the second problem with the Rauch quote. Absolutists see pluralism as an attack on their absolutism. For the absolutist there are only two possibilities: their viewpoint (e.g. the correct one) and every other viewpoint (e.g. the wrong one). There is no pluralism possible. There is only a world where their viewpoint is dominant over all others or a world where their viewpoint is oppressed. You can find an example of this thinking in a short blurb Robert Bork wrote for the National Review about a year ago. Bork (2005) actually made the argument that censorship created more freedom because, “people forced to live in an increasingly brutalized culture are, in a very real sense, not wholly free.” Bork may be close to making a point, but in the article he includes the Rolling Stones as part of that “brutalized culture.” Not to mention the cliché that “one man’s pornography is another man’s art.”

For the Borkistas the presence of those who want to live life in a different manner or even simply disagree with conservatism is an affront. This brings me to my final argument for liberalism, or maybe more appropriately, libertarianism. It’s a very simple philosophy of governance on so called culture war issues. A more liberal society is a better society because conservative individuals are still free to lead a conservative life. They don’t even have to like homosexuals, they just aren’t allowed to attempt to impose upon or interfere with a homosexual person’s life. Equally, it would be unacceptable for someone living a more liberal lifestyle to attempt to impose that upon more conservative individuals.

In other words, so long as someone causes you no harm in body or property they are free to live their life as they see fit. This is an idea that is a few centuries old, yet it is actually under attack today. The conservative argument against it amounts to saying “your existence offends me and doesn’t fit my definition of what our national identity should be; therefore I want some government action to make your life harder.”

So with pluralism you end up continuing to have multiple viewpoints struggling to define what it means to be American. If all of these ideologies continue to exist they will continue to fight with one another. The photograph that accompanies the Rauch article speaks volumes to this fact. On one side you have a group of people holding pro-choice signs, on the other a group of people holding signs supporting the confirmation of now Chief Justice John Roberts. Oddly enough the blue v. red color scheme has been reversed in the photo. Two of the sign holders standing closest to the dividing line between the two groups stare across at one another. The pro-choice person looking with a condescending smile that seems to signal pity and disdain for those poor, hateful fools standing across from her; fitting perfectly with the stereotype of the liberal elitist Rush Limbaugh rails against every day. On the other side a man with a haircut and glasses that scream “I believe in a literal interpretation of the Bible,” stares down his political opponents with a glair of hatred that would make the vengeful, “Tim LaHaye” version of Jesus proud. The photograph sums up perfectly the “profoundly uncomfortable” feeling that Schudson describes in the quote above.

The photo is the culture war summed up in one picture. Or, maybe more accurately, it is the over simplified, didactic representation of the culture war that is presented by the media and the most extreme soldiers on both sides of that war. I can’t help but think of the pro-life atheists who don’t fit into that picture (yes, there are a few of them out there).

At the meeting place of the stares of the two unnamed individuals in the photo is not just the culture war but, in some ways, the degradation of the Habermasian ideal of the public sphere. Habermas (1989) envisioned a sphere of debate “made up of private people gathered together as a public and articulating the needs of society with the state” (p. 176). One essential element of articulating of the society’s needs was rational thought. There is more than likely no rational thought in those angry eyes.

This is exactly the point of why the culture war will never be brought to an end. If the debate were over policy questions you could still possibly have rationality. One could present evidence to support a policy, his opponent could counter and they could politely disagree on the best course of action, or one could possibly persuade the other to change positions. In the culture wars we are dealing with something entirely different. We are having a debate about identity.

In this debate it doesn’t matter if you say to someone that it is only fair that two gay men be allowed to enter into a union with one another, that is recognized by the state and that this union should carry with it the same legal rights as a heterosexual marriage. You can cite studies that show these unions will have social benefits. It won’t matter because you’re really having a debate about how we define what it means to be an American, and two men kissing is definitely not part of that definition for some people. Not just that, but for some people actively working to prevent those two men from kissing is an essential part of what it means to be an American.

Arguments over identity do not happen in the rational realm of the Habermasian public sphere. They are filled with emotionally charged verbal and visual imagery. Take for example prayer in school as part of the American identity. To make the emotionally charged argument the conservative will of course cite Abbington v Schempp (1963), and by extension the entire decade of the 1960’s, as an attack on their beliefs.

This is a perfect example of the “identity debate” and how it is more of an emotional discussion than a rational policy discussion. First, the sixties evoke a certain visceral reaction from conservatives. It carries images of debauchery, anti-Americanism and a general rejection of “Christian values,” as they perceive it. Abbington v Schempp is a big part of all of that.

I would argue that the proper location to place the origins of prayer in school as a legal issue (not to mention political liberalism) is not the sixties but the forties. In the two cases Minersville School District v. Gobitis (1940) and West Virginia State Board of Ed. v. Barnette (1943) we find the real rationale for the prohibition of school coercion in praying.

From the perspective conservative Christians it is rhetorically less effective to cite those two cases in your fight against the secular onslaught. The 1940s don’t exactly evoke the same emotional imagery as the 1960s, it’s easier to rail against hippies spitting on the troops as opposed to Supreme Court justice Robert Jackson.

Rauch’s proposal doesn’t really end the culture wars. All it is does is create 51 separate battle fields on which these identity defining wars are being fought. Instead of just having to worry about “activist judges” on the federal bench, suddenly we’re having long, drawn out fights of Borkian proportions in every state and at the federal level. Because, let’s be honest, even if the Court said tomorrow that all of these decisions should be made at the state level, all sides of every issue would still be spending resources trying to influence the federal government to make legal changes agreeable to their political viewpoint.

So, is it necessary to end the culture wars? I would say no. It shouldn’t bother us that our nation is divided over certain issues. What should be scary is the prospect of the discord ending.

References
Bork, Robert. (2005). How to increase liberty in America: Ten suggestions. National Review, 19 December.

Fiala, Andrew. (2002). Toleration and pragmatism. Journal of Speculative Philosophy, 16(2).

Goodman, Ellen. (2007). The atheist: Religion and politics. Intelligencer Journal, 23 March. (also available here).

Habermas, Jurgen. (1989). The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. MIT Press: Cambridge, MA.

Rauch, Jonathan. (2007). A separate peace. Retrieved from Atlantic.com 19 March 2007.

Schudson, Michael. (1997). Why Conversation is Not the Soul of Democracy. Critical Studies in Mass Communication, 14, 297-309.

The Threat is the Message

2007-03-30T10:03:00.000-07:00

Last week there was an incident involving a tech blogger receiving anonymous death threats. The incident itself is not really what I’m concerned with at this point. If you want to read about you can find information here. What really concerns me is something I read in this BBC article commenting on the aftermath of the events. It appears that the things that this anonymous individual or individuals did were pretty over the top.

In what seems to be a rush to preempt the calls for regulation of the medium Tim O’Reilly said the following:

The fact that there's all these really messed-up people on the internet is not a statement about the internet. It is a statement about those people and what they do and we need to basically say that you guys are doing something unacceptable and not generalise it into a comment about this is what's happening to the blogosphere.

The first thing I thought of here was the McLuhan reaction to David Sarnoff saying “The products of modern science are not in themselves good or bad; it is the way that they are used that determines their value.” I would repeat McLuhan’s thoughts when he said “there is simply nothing in the [O’Reilly] statement that will bear scrutiny, for it ignores the nature of the medium, of any and all media, in the true Narcissus style of one hypnotized by the amputation and extension of his own being in a new technical form.”

Isn’t the Sierra incident a consequence of the nature of the medium? The anonymity allowed by blogging makes it a perfect medium for this kind of harassment. It’s better than a threatening phone call or an angry note. There is a difference between mailing someone a picture of their face with some change made in pen as opposed to the things that Photoshop will allow you to do. Digital media, especially blogging, takes bullying to a new level and that is part of the nature of the medium.

Now this doesn’t mean that there aren’t good things about the nature of blogging, or the web in general. It does create greater access to information. The problem is that it also allows for a new kind of bullying that may have an impact on people that is different from other media. Some of the images that Sierra included on her website that were created by individuals who were harassing her are disturbing. It would not have been possible to create those images without digital media (i.e. Photoshop).

The question now is whether or not this should be grounds for government action. In cases of speech I tend to come down on the libertarian side. What I would say is that no special legislation is needed or, even if it was needed, possible. First, there are laws against harassment or fighting words. We don’t really need a special set of laws that explicitly mention blogs.

Additionally, the problem of defining what content should be regulating creates an array of legal questions to complex and numerous to even begin to discuss in one blog post.

All that said, I think it is safe to say that these threatening posts are not
protected by freedom of speech. They are clearly threatening remarks. Freedom of speech is not at issue in this situation. It will be at issue with attempts at regulating speech in the future.

Simply put:

“I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it.”

letters to gil smart vol. 1.0

2006-12-04T22:53:00.000-08:00

This is the first of what I’m sure will be many times that I write about the letters to the editor responding to Gil Smart. I’ll keep this short. Once again out of every letter written about Gil not one contains anything even remotely resembling thought. One asks if it was “necessary to spew out all that vitriol.” Another says Gil’s column is “a good laugh.”

A third goes all out calling Gil’s column “hurtful,” “nasty” and “divisive” and says that Gil is “a liberal first and an American second.” Why is it that you never see any liberals questioning the patriotism of conservatives but that criticism goes the other way so often? Not only that, but the accusation is made immediately after calling the liberal “hurtful,” “nasty” and “divisive!”

While these were fun I think the letter that takes the cake is the one that brings the “War on Christmas” into the picture. A testament to the ability of the masses to truly go off the deep end, the WoC is possibly the best imaginary issue in the history of modern American politics, possibly in the history of politics period. I think of it as the political equivalent to Orson Welles reading the War of the Worlds over the radio sending people into a panic. The New York Times on October 31, 1938 says it all:

Radio Listeners in Panic, Taking War Drama as Fact

I just wish that I would see one letter to the editor criticizing Gil Smart on the basis of an argument that he made.

It's so easy to spend someone else's money

2006-11-28T05:58:00.000-08:00

So, Gib Armstrong is going to save us from government spending. What's next? His son saving us from fanatics going on a crusade to solve an imaginary problem? Gib Armstrong is right, it is easy to spend someone else's money. Especially for projects that private investors don't want to spend their own money on.

maybe next season

2006-11-26T20:40:00.000-08:00

There are only two non-political subjects you will find on this blog. Abigail and the Steelers. The above photo pretty much sums up how I'm feeling about football right now. The offensive line left so many holes open today it wasn't even funny. Nine sacks for seventy-three yards?! In honor of the end of this season I am posting a link to my favorite Steelers blog. Go enter your feelings of disgust in a public forum.

route 23 and the convention center

2006-11-21T06:24:00.000-08:00

Lanko Yokels has a great post on Bob Walker and the local GOP's screening process for county commissioner candidates. It's funny how everything comes back to the convention center. The route 23 project is the same way. Who's going to profit and how can we make our elected leaders march in lock step with what we want them to do?

I would just like one Republican, maybe Bob Walker, to give me a real answer to the following questions? If you're so in favor of the free market why aren't you applying those principles to the convention center? If I suggested that we take the money for the convention center and use it to buy medicine for people who work but have no health insurance would you call me a "commie" or just a tax and spend liberal? How do you justify being opposed to spending tax dollars on social programs like health care but feel perfectly comfortable spending it on a convention center that can't possibly be supported by the marketplace?

A new road here will support greed — not need.”

2006-11-20T20:30:00.000-08:00

I suppose this was to be expected. The Chamber of Commerce has decided to endorse the new route 23 project. This is pretty typical of how things go around here; jettison what the county really needs in favor of making money.

The thing that I really love about this is the affect it will have on the political environment in Lancaster. They'll build this new highway, they'll get more development and finally...they'll get more Democrats. As the population in this county grows the ratio of Democrats to Republicans improves in the Democrats favor.

That's fine for me politically. Unfortunately I actually have principles and would rather save some of the best farmland on the planet than get a few extra votes.

The other upside to this is that Mike Brubaker can finally take a position on the issue.

weekend baby blogging

2006-11-18T10:49:00.000-08:00

Abi is learning to brush her teeth.

quote of the day

2006-11-16T11:46:00.000-08:00

"It's true, [Rush Limbaugh] has carried a lot of water over the years and not just to help him swallow all those pills..."

-Stephen Colbert; on Rush Limbaugh saying that he is relieved that he won't have to "carry water" for Republicans in congress who don't deserve his help

more absurdity

2006-11-16T11:38:00.000-08:00

These kinds of talking points have been around for a few years with the radical, irrational right. Since losing so much last week the Coulter wing of the Republican Party has gone into the posture of a rabid dog raising its hackles. A skunk spraying would also be an adequate simile. Here are two examples.

First we have Glenn Beck. Why do the media continue to give microphones to people like this? There are plenty of intelligent conservatives in this country. I may not agree with them but I respect their intellect and their right to a difference of opinion. Yet CNN decided to give this guy a show so he could say to the first Muslim to serve in the U.S. Congress:

“I have been nervous about this interview with you, because what I feel like saying is, ‘Sir, prove to me that you are not working with our enemies.’ “ Beck added: "I'm not accusing you of being an enemy, but that's the way I feel, and I think a lot of Americans will feel that way.”

Did you notice how he attempts to create a façade of rational thought to give himself cover to ask the question? “I not it’s wrong to think this but I have to ask you anyway. There’s nothing wrong with the question. Millions of Americans are thinking it.”

You can see the video here.

Then we have the Fox Opinion Channel. For more on that see Olbermann below.

I said it in the last post. This isn’t a matter of civility. It’s a matter of intelligence. I don’t think it’s too harsh to say that when a conservative/Republican compares the Democrats/liberals to al-Qaida, or any variation on that statement, it is an indication that the person making that comparison has nothing of value to say.

absurdities in the letters to the editor page vol. 1.0

2006-11-15T21:01:00.000-08:00

This was be the first in what I’m sure will be a long series of reactions to letters to the editor that appear in Lancaster’s newspapers.

In his letter of November 14th Richard Marcks makes a good point. Western civilization is facing an extraordinary threat from radical, fundamentalist Islam and there are some people in the west who either do not take the threat seriously or do not have a reasonable plan for dealing with it. Unfortunately outside of that one point his letter devolves into absurdities mixed with the absence of facts.

First, Marcks’ interpretation of the results of the midterm election leaves out some important information about the exit polling and motivations for many voters. He concludes that the only reason for the nation’s change in direction is the war in Iraq. That was a big issue for voters no doubt, but he seems to have forgotten (or purposefully ignored) the unprecedented level of corruption in the federal government right now. The list is endless: Randy “Duke” Cunningham (R, CA) being on the take, Don Sherwood’s (R, PA) shenanigans, Jack Abramoff, out of control federal spending, the rising deficit that will leave our children and grandchildren with crippling debt.

Not to mention that the Republicans lost three congressional seats because the representatives sitting in them had to resign in disgrace when it was too late to remove their names from the ballot. There was Bob Ney of Ohio (tied to Abramoff), Tom Delay (also an Abramoff crony) of Texas and Mark Foley of Florida. I don’t think I need to go into the reason for Foley’s resignation not to mention the Republican leadership’s subsequent cover up of Foley’s peccadilloes.

So let’s not pretend that the voters didn’t have a whole laundry list of reasons to throw out the GOP leadership in congress.

Everyone can let their partisanship influence their selective use of facts so I will forgive Marcks for his poor interpretation of the election. However, he crosses a line of decency and leaves rational thought behind when he says that the midterm election was “a clear victory for al-Qaida.”

I think we need to set some new rules for how one can automatically lose a political debate. If you reduce yourself to these techniques you forfeit any claim to legitimacy. Comparing your opponent to Hitler would be one instance. Accusing your opponent of hating America is another. Saying that a victory for your opponent is a victory for al-Qaida should definitely qualify you for being laughed out of a room. Any variation on these arguments should be shunned by any person with a measurable IQ no matter what their political philosophy or party.

Any serious person in this country knows that al-Qaida is a grave threat. I would say that fundamentalism (religious or political) of all stripes is a threat to the rational thought and liberties of the west. But we won’t solve any problems, especially the problem of terrorism, if our political discussion is reduced to accusing each other of treason or saying that terrorists are “hoping and praying for” the victory of those who disagree with us. Patriots can disagree on the best approach for solving any problem.

This post is not a plea for civility. Political debate is rough; feelings get hurt. This is a call for intelligence. It is in that spirit that I ask Mr. Marcks (and other people who think that a Democratic victory is a win for al-Qaida) to turn off Rush Limbaugh, stop, take a deep breath and think before you speak or write a letter to the editor.

tom creighton says that voters in lancaster can’t think

2006-11-11T11:12:00.000-08:00

I should begin this post with a little debate technique known as poisoning the well. I’m sure that some would ask if I myself am guilty of the problem I am about to criticize. The fact is that I have only once in my life voted a straight party ticket. I’m sure some of my Democratic friends won’t like that but I have voted for Democrats, Republicans and independents of every stripe. I am a proud ticket splitter who comes from a family full of ticket splitters.

That is why I am so bothered by some (I mean all) of the election results in this county and one person’s comments in particular. Republican State representative Tom Creighton (and his party) seems to take the voters of the county for granted.

“I belong to the right party. It wasn’t a race between me and my opponent. It was a race between a Republican and a Democrat.”

Did he mean “correct” or “right wing?”

How unfortunate that the voters of this county have such an incredible inability to think for themselves. Am I elitist? Is this just sour grapes? Maybe I am and maybe it is.

The problem with Creighton’s statement is that it’s true. I have seen exactly what he’s talking about. This county is full of people who will listen to what you have to say, agree with you and promise you their vote until they find out that you’re a Democrat. There are even more who start at party affiliation and don’t go past it. They have reduced their vote to being little more than a choice between Coke and Pepsi.

In the Intell article on Creighton’s race his opponent Lee Heffner mentioned an incident with a voter who complained about the pay raise. The voter, apparently, ended up not voting for Heffner because Lee is a Democrat. The voter was upset about the pay raise and still either voted for Creighton or just didn’t vote at all in the race simply because of party affiliation.

I just have to ask, how do people expect to get decent representation when the only thing necessary for their vote is having a little “r” next to your name?

On Tuesday Lancaster Republicans voted like we have a parliamentary system. Too bad we don’t, instead of a second term for Governor Rendell we could be on the verge of Prime Minister Sturla.