Pearls Before Swine

Wikileaks' Lessons for Media Theory and Politics

2011-01-15T16:48:00.002+01:00

Regardless of whether one agrees with allegations that Wikileaks is an international security threat, a new media-facilitated champion of democratic accountability, or that Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is a rapist, it is an unmistakably rich object of media and political analysis. Arguably, l’Affaire Wikileaks(hereafter WA) holds lessons about changing relations between new and old media forms and production; attention, circulation, media capital and celebrity; political economy and journalism; and even democracy and international relations.

The WA above all begs attention to attention.¹ The affair, not just the material released, became a huge agenda-setter in 2010. Several news organizations dubbed it a “top” story of 2010.² In Canada, Wikileaksfounder Assange was voted top newsmaker of the year by senior editors at Postmedia Network newspapers and canada.com.³ Even more impressively, Assange was nominated for Time Magazine’s Person of the Year.⁴ Other global news organizations, such as France’s Le Monde, named him person of the year.

More Spin About Voters' Motives?

2010-11-09T18:09:00.002+01:00

More discussion of the voters' polling data from the election last week. Big article over at the New Republic. It supports my earlier analysis that people voted a bit out of confusion and anger (perhaps lack of knowledge) about the economy and what Obama's government has done to help improve it. However, a majority of voters said their financial situation was the same OR better than two years ago. A majority of the MINORITY (41%) who said their situation was worse voted Republican. The authors of the article spin it the other way. What to say about those 60% who feel better or at least don't feel worse off? That statistic causes problems for the quick inference that voters voted against Obama.

Calculate:

60% disapprove of Obama's job performance

60% say same or better off financially than two years ago

80% say very concerned about the economy

25% blame Obama for economy

Blame Obama and Democrats and vote Republican??

(Oh, and 20% think he's muslim, and and another 30% who just aren't sure. Figure that in)

The authors do overall suggest the voters are misinformed and voting out of frustration about their perception of the economy. As they say, and contrary to the spin about "the people" having had enough of "Big Govt" and the healthcare bill, blah blah blah, the data shows the contrary.

The authors write:

"The election did not appear to be a repudiation of the new health care reform law. About as many said they wanted to see it remain as is or be expanded (47 percent) as said they wanted it repealed (48 percent). Nor did it appear that voters were embracing the GOP position on tax cuts. A 52-percent majority of voters wanted to either keep only the Bush tax cuts for those under $250,000 or let them all expire compared to 39 percent who wanted to keep all the tax cuts.

Political commentators are notoriously prone to over-interpreting election results. Strategic and policy decisions certainly made some difference in the magnitude of losses, but in a horrible economy it's difficult to escape the reality that Democrats were poised to lose a significant number of seats no matter what they did."

This is more or less what I wrote a couple of days ago, albeit with a longer critique of public opinion polling and analysis that claims to speak for "the people." If you missed that, try it here.

Also published at OP-ed News

Nov. 2 "The People" Didn't Speak; They Grunted

2010-11-07T23:58:00.001+01:00

Americans awoke November 3 to more headlines and soundbites about "the people's voice." I'd call it more of a grunt.

We The People by self
"The American people's voice was heard at the ballot box," declared Speaker-of-the-House-to-be John Boehner. Soon variations of "the people's voice" echoed around traditional news and Internet. Obama has to say, "I hear you, and then, I heard the people speak last night," parroted columnist Mark Shields on PBS's News Hour . "The people have spoken" framecontinues to dominate analyses of what happened and thus what must follow. Seems clear, actually misleading.

Read on and please comment (tell me it sucks, it's great, ramble about something off topic--anything)

The New Elite (The Tea Party is Right About Something?)

2010-11-07T00:01:00.002+01:00

I happened upon this Wash Post article plugged on the great Arts & Letters site. At first I thought it's reference to "new elites" was a more journalistic argument supporting my claims about a new kind of authoritative source in the convergence of new media/old media news-making. Actually, it's about a sociologically observable new class of social and political elites in the U.S. and how the Tea Party at least have that right. That old chestnut? "Ordinary" Americans have for quite a long time been complaining about the bankers and fat cats, usually in a couple of metropoles and areas on the East Coast, usually whipped up by some populist orator and with common doses of bigotry in addition. One of my friends who grew up in rural Utah (yes, coastals, go ahead and prove the point of the article: "that's like saying "rural Kansas or Nebraska"--redundant!) tells of a sign on the main highway. In one direction, Los Angeles and the number of miles to it; in the other, New York and "not far enough!"

The thing is, as author and political scientist Charles Murray points out in the article, that this "provinci

alism" is as common in suburban Massachussets and Connecticut (insert joke about redundancy) as it is in rural Utah and Kansas.

So, here's what Murray has to say (I'm not saying it justifies the Tea Party, but...):

That a New Elite has emerged over the past 30 years is not really controversial. That its members differ from former elites is not controversial. What sets the tea party apart from other observers of the New Elite is its hostility, rooted in the charge that elites are isolated from mainstream America and ignorant about the lives of ordinary Americans.

[...]

On the surface, it looks as if things have changed. Compared with 50 years ago, the proportion of students coming from old-money families and exclusive prep schools has dropped. The representation of African Americans, Latinos and Asian Americans has increased. Yet the student bodies of the elite colleges are still drawn overwhelmingly from the upper middle class. According to sociologist Joseph Soares's book "The Power of Privilege: Yale and America's Elite Colleges," about four out of five students in the top tier of colleges have parents whose income, education and occupations put them in the top quarter of American families, according to Soares's measure of socioeconomic status. Only about one out of 20 such students come from the bottom half of families.

[...]

Far from spending their college years in a meritocratic melting pot, the New Elite spend school with people who are mostly just like them -- which might not be so bad, except that so many of them have been ensconced in affluent suburbs from birth and have never been outside the bubble of privilege. Few of them grew up in the small cities, towns or rural areas where more than a third of all Americans still live.

Let me propose that those allegations have merit. Read on

Olbermann Suspended!?? Spin Circus!

2010-11-06T18:12:00.002+01:00

FTW?

So it's at the top of the tickers: Keith Olbermann, MSNBC's counter to Bill O'Reilly, is suspended on ethics charges. Hmm. Don't know where to begin. I'm a professor, if people don't like where I put my money outside of work, tough tartare. It shouldn't prevent me from doing my job. One could say this about hundreds of other jobs, too. But the analogy doesn't even hold. Olbermann is not a journalist, any more than Bill O'Reilly or Rush Limbaugh is. He's a daggum commentator, dagnabit. What is this spin circus? Stop the world and let me off.

Matt Taibi of Rolling Stone, says it pretty well.

ust quickly: I just found out about the suspension of Keith Olbermann for making political contributions. NBC apparently has some policy prohibiting journalists from donating to candidates, so they suspended him indefinitely without pay.

I went online and read the news and found the inevitable commentary by ostensible experts on journalistic ethics, who are all lining up to whale on Olbermann. One quote I found in this Bloomberg piece:

"Journalists who work for a news organization have an ethical responsibility to honor their guidelines and standards," said Bob Steele who teaches journalism ethics at Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Florida. "If NBC and MSNBC spelled out those guidelines clearly and Olbermann violated those guidelines, then he should pay the price."

He should pay the price? Is Bob Steele kidding? What the hell is wrong with people?

We had a whole generation of journalists who sat by and did nothing while, for instance, George Bush led us into an idiotic war on a lie, plus thousands more who spent day after day collecting checks by covering Britney's hair and Tiger's text messages and other stupidities while the economy blew up and two bloody wars went on mostly unexamined ... and it's Keith Olbermann who should "pay the price" for being unethical? Because, and let me get this straight, he donated money, privately, to politician." Read on

That's Democratainment: Obama, Rumor Bombs, and Primary Definers

2010-10-24T22:46:00.002+02:00

Published in Flow

A recent survey shows nearly 20% of Americans now believe Barack Obama is a Muslim. That’s about 56 million Americans, a number that has climbed considerably since 2008 (to say nothing of the 43% or 120 million Americans who are “unsure”).1 The bigotry of the phenomenon aside, its durability points to the use of rumor bombs (RBs) to elect and govern, and to the role of a new kind of authoritative source therein.

In 2008, FlowTV published my article on the RB, in which I analyzed issue-agendas that convergence culture produced in the 2008 presidential election, including the RB that Obama is a Muslim (RBOIAM). I argued there was an agenda-setting interplay between old and new media technologies, enabled by YouTube, Adobe Photoshop, and Facebook, among others associated with the revolution in cultural production, distribution, and reception—all of which have been associated by some with a new democratizing agency but which I insisted has economic, political rhetorical, and social constraints. 2 Since then, other RBs have exploded in American media culture with greater and lesser damage (e.g. “death panels” RB regarding Obama’s healthcare bill, and the “racist” Shirley Sherrod RB).

Now I argue not only that accounts of democratizing cultural production must confront the contingencies of distribution in a context of information warfare (exemplified by RBs); but, further, that Hall’s concept of “primary definers,” significantly criticized in media- and cultural studies of the late 80s and early 90s, returns with a new applicability in convergence culture (CC), with the caveat that primary definers/opinion leaders have changed.3 “Primary definers” refers to elite sources who define hegemonic issues and frames for journalists who repeat and alter them. The media capital they wield complicates theories of democratizing media production and distribution in the forging of widely attended issues in public spheres.

Continue

The Rumor Bomb Barack Obama is a Muslim: Another Episode in Political Vertigo and Negative Politics

2010-08-03T00:23:00.002+02:00

Here's the link to my work in progress recently presented at the International Political Science Association's conference on e-democracy in Dubrovnik.

Abstract followed by link:

The rumor bomb Barack Obama is a Muslim: Another episode in political vertigo and negative politics

By Professor Jayson Harsin, Dept. of Global Communications, The American University of Paris

Presented at the IPSA E-Democracy Workshop, Dubrovnik, Croatia

May 2010

Abstract: This study uses the concept of rumor bombs in convergence culture to contribute to analyses of vertiginous public discourses in e-democracy. Furthermore, it has two primary goals: 1) to provide an empirical analysis of rumor bombs on TV news, and 2) to analyze the relationship between internet agenda-setting and "old" news agenda setting. First, it provides a case study of the Rumor Bomb Barack Obama is a Muslim from the 2008 American presidential campaign, a rumor bomb which continues to appear in viral circulation on internet and email over 1.5 years after the election of Obama, with increasing numbers of Americans who say they belive Obama's religion is Muslim. It provides a content and frame analysis of the "Muslim" rumor bomb on American TV news in 2008 in order to see how exactly it appeared and thus how audiences were invited to view the rumor bomb. Secondly, the empirical data is then interpreted within the context of psychological studies and theories of rumor, and of trends in political communication such as negative campaigning, and in news values, such as tabloidization and infotainment. The study finally shows that the links between traditional elite news media and the Internet, contrary to some arguments, demonstrate not the disappearance of elite "primary definers" but a new kind of elite primary definer as a key node in a network of often ideologically homogenous "news" and opinion.

Download working paper

Lost Histories of Economic Rights article-download

2010-06-18T18:33:00.003+02:00

Hello. Here's the MS Word version of my article
published in Cultural Studies, Volume 24, Issue 3 May 2010 , pages 333 - 355
Download
Abstract: This article examines the concept and the discontinuous historical usage of the term “economic rights” in American political discourse from the perspective of democratic political freedom. It views the idea and ideology of “economic rights” as a discursive marker pointing to historically contingent relations between government, national economy and individual freedom. It focuses on the only two American presidential articulations of an Economic Bill of Rights and their conjunctures: one by Franklin Roosevelt and another by Ronald Reagan. These two articulations represent two opposing political traditions of economic rights in the United States: the neo-liberal laissez-faire free market tradition and the liberal welfare-state tradition. Both of these liberal traditions are haunted by an older democratic-republican discourse of economic rights, from which they continue to draw normative and affective energy without ever confronting its guiding premises. Contemporary popular discourses about the economic crisis demonstrate the continuation of deeply entrenched though historically outdated understandings of the promise and possibilities of individual freedom and autonomy within the folds of a society completely transformed by capitalist modernity. Present considerations of this history reveal possible resources for political struggles.

Rumor Bomb article download

2010-05-09T12:42:00.001+02:00

Here's a new link to my original article on the Rumor Bomb. You should be able to click the title to download the Pdf. "The Rumour Bomb: Theorising the Convergence of New and Old Trends in Mediated US Politics"

Harsin, Jayson. The Rumour Bomb: Theorising the Convergence of New and Old Trends in Mediated US Politics. Southern Review: Communication, Politics & Culture; Volume 39, Issue 1; 2006; 84-110;
^ (reprinted in Michael Ryan (ed.). 2008. Cultural Studies: An Anthology. London: Blackwell.

Hurricane Katrina, Four Years Later

2009-08-31T15:01:00.003+02:00

In 2005, Hurricane Katrina devastated the property and lives of thousands of New Orleansiens. Indeed, 1,836 people died in the hurricane and subsequent flooding. Over 700,000 applications were made to FEMA for housing following the hurricane. Four years later, over 100,000 still live in the nearly 38,000 trailers provided by the government. There has been a lot of talk about security over the last eight years. Sadly the term has been largely applied to military preparations. Katrina was a poignant example of how government social security is absolutely necessary in any humane democracy where we have obligations to each other, not just to ourselves. That kind of humaneness and moral duty requires some financial sacrifice in the form of taxes. A private corporation can't provide this security. Who would pay for it but citizens, and their motive would be profit (sorry to even have to point this out, but extreme anti-government sentiments have recently reared their heads in the healthcare non-debate). IN addition, lack of resources or re-located resources in downsizing government, cutting taxes, cynically in the name of "security" was reportedly part of the reason the levees were not repaired and strong enought to protect thousands of citizens in New Orleans.

Let us have a moment of cyber silence for those who died, and those who are still suffering, their livelihoods, families, and possessions completely devastated by an act of nature and an act of government negligence (which many of us are complicit in, as we supported its ideologies).

Here's what I had to say about it three years ago:

"[Also appears atBlogcritics: http://blogcritics.org/archives/2006/08/30/042440.php]

One year after Hurricane Katrina, the mediated remembrance of that American political (as much as natural) disaster remains sadly selective and, well, typical. On Katrina's first anniversary, American media cheerfully circulate a renewed barrage of stories about glorious private generosity in a time of need; and hackneyed political slogans about security, freedom, duty, compassion, and an ownership society. Those who deliberately use such words are obviously cynical since they imply that democracy does not require careful discussion of complex and emotionally powerful words/ideas such as freedom and security, so they use them with clear consciences to gain consent for their own agendas.

The material insecurity of thousands of American citizens in New Orleans (representative of millions of others in that country and the world) so terribly evident in the images of floating bodies, on the one hand, and an exodus of SUVs, on the other, was the bitterest of ironies since it came at a time when political speech and news media inundated the American public with platitudes about national security and freedom. Recent attempts to exploit the occasion of the uncovered London bombing plan have generated a similar mediated political climate on Katrina's anniversary. Yet such powerful but contested words, as Abraham Lincoln noted, must in the name of ethics be defined and their competing interpretations discussed:

Here are two, not only different, but incompatible things, called by the same name—liberty. And it follows that each of the things is, by the respective parties, called by two different and incompatable names—liberty and tyranny.

The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep’s throat, for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as a liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as the destroyer of liberty, especially as the sheep was a black one. Plainly the sheep and the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of the word liberty. (Address at a Sanitary Fair, 1864)

A year ago, it was obvious to many Americans (certainly to those waterlogged and praying on their rooftops for rescue of their bodies, since the material markers of their American dream were gone forever) that it was time for a re-thinking or rediscovery of security and government and citizen responsibility for the minimal wellbeing of all American citizens. This latter issue should not have to be argued here, but for those doubters, consider the caution of some of the world's greatest thinkers on the health of democratic republics. Katrina has everything to do with the health and future of American democracy as an example for the world.

Aristotle, for example, argued that it was in the interest of all that a democracy did not have great extremes in wealth (Politics 6.5, and discussed in relation to the founding of the U.S. by David Hopp): "Poverty is the cause of the defects of democracy. That is the reason why measures should be taken to ensure a permanent level of prosperity. "

He does not say that everyone should have the same amount of wealth, but just that great extremes are dangerous to the health of democracy, since they produce envy, faction, hate, and possibly even revolution. Ironically, George W. Bush has even unwittingly acknowledged this truth, applying it to Iraq and not to his own country:

I believe that God has planted in every human heart the desire to live in freedom. And even when that desire is crushed by tyranny for decades, it will rise again. As long as the Middle East remains a place of tyranny and despair and anger, it will continue to produce men and movements that threaten the safety of America and our friends. (State of the Union Address 2004)

America is a great force for freedom and prosperity. Yet our greatness is not measured in power or luxuries, but by who we are and how we treat one another. So we strive to be a compassionate, decent, hopeful society. (State of the Union Address, 2006; See Also Second Inaugural)

One of the greatest leaders in the history of democracy, the Athenian Pericles, went so far as to argue that this kind of equality and commitment to one another in a democracy even made its armies more formidable, as they had so much more to lose, unlike those forced to fight for regimes with huge discrepancies in power. One might recall this, too, as over 2,600 young Americans have now died and nearly 20,000 have been wounded in Iraq in the name of the duty to spread freedom and to insure American security by pre-empting terrorism.

One year later, the cutting irony than Katrina occurred in a media and political culture saturated with security and freedom talk has not abated. This is not wholly the fault of opportunistic politicians, Republicans as well as Democrats, who deliberately stultify such lofty terms as freedom, democracy, and security to suit their agendas. It is also the fault of the news media.

Political Communication scholars note the short-life of new stories or cycles. Newsgathering business values privilege certain orientations over others in the coverage of events--what scholars call news "frames." A frame refers to "persistent patterns of selection, emphasis, and exclusion which furnish an interpretation of events." An episodic frame is one the most popular news frame in U.S. news culture. Episodic frames fit into action entertainment genres. Something erupts out of a state of equilibrium, which then passes, resolved by the triumph of good and the punishments it metes or the healing process of grief. These events give way to another major newsworthy event designed to sustain interest for a short while. Thematic frames, on the other hand, give publics a deeper historical and causal explanation for events, and they would, ideally, provide voice to many different sources in the production of such explanations.

Sadly, though Katrina received some more complex explanations and discussions, they were not terribly widespread, and this partly due to the short time constraints of mainstream news presentations, which due to the structure of their productions, favor limited sources and soundbite explanations, if any at all (often viewers are left to infer what might be the cause of a huge event, such as the LA riots of 1992 or the Seattle Protests against the WTO). So it was with Katrina, and after quick rhetorical fixes and false promises to address the puzzling issue of unequal opportunities and conditions (even to exodus a disaster zone) with "bold action." Katrina, like the news frame that largely accompanied it, swept in like--a hurricane. Then it rolled out almost as quickly, as if such threats to security of citizens and the health of democracy itself were just another episodic news story. Such media and political treatments of the most serious threats to American security have resulted in an ignorance of the magnitude and roots of the problem.

In this context, in memory of those who died and lost their homes and other possessions, it is worth thinking carefully about how our political leaders, media, and society have remembered the tragedy.

Security after New Orleans: What Time Tells Us

Poignant images of poor New Orleans residents retreating from the deluge touched a nation and a world, raising troublesome questions about security and the cyclical issue of poverty in the United States. For some older Americans, these images evoked an earlier security panic—the Great Depression. We heard talk about New Deals: both the rediscovery of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s and the promise of George W. Bush’s. Beneath the surface of apparent similarity, however, the two deals and the insecurity they promised to relieve were fundamentally different. Bush’s affinity for the New Deal does not run deep, and this is not the first time that he and his predecessors have used its keywords to support policies that undermine its spirit of securing freedom for all Americans.

Roosevelt’s deal was new by comparison to the security and freedom doctrine that came before him. His predecessor Herbert Hoover responded to a condition of national insecurity with ineffective solutions of rugged individualism and minimalist government. Roosevelt argued for a more activist federal government, not to expand government-for-government’s-sake, but because the Depression had shown that individuals could no longer be held completely responsible for their own security. In a time when small shopkeepers, entrepreneurs and farmers were fast disappearing, Roosevelt identified the primary threat to security as the market free of public interest. He promoted a vision of Abraham Lincoln’s government of, by, and for the people as a citizen’s vehicle for dealing with the inevitable and sometimes catastrophic whims of nature, markets and businesses. He maintained this mature vision of security even in the throes of World War II, emphasizing the equal importance of military and social security. For Roosevelt, the social and economic aspects of security were so critical to American freedom that he went so far as to call for an Economic Bill of Rights to supplement the already existing political Bill of Rights.

At the heart of Roosevelt’s New Deal was his argument that freedom could not be viewed as a natural state individually embraced through work or willingly denied through sloth when 1/3 of the American nation was ill-fed, ill-clothed, and ill-housed. In fact, Roosevelt viewed such poverty as a threat to the nation’s political, social and military security.

The poverty laid bare by Hurricane Katrina demonstrates that obtrusive conditions confronted during the Depression do in fact persist today, in terms of housing, education, healthcare, leisure, political access. Bush’s response to this has been far from “new.” Like Hoover, Reagan, and his own father before him, Bush continues to promote self-discipline and private cures, includig voluntarism, as solutions to large-scale security problems. In this decades-old argument, the federal government should cut all but verbal support for those living in insecure economic conditions, leaving the relief work to good Samaritans who represent the best of the American spirit. But the private sphere of charities could not deal with the magnitude of the security fallout in New Orleans.

The media unwittingly promoted this voluntarist line, telling the New Orleans story almost exclusively through the melodramatic frames of individual heroism and natural disaster. Largely absent from this coverage was an analysis of how Bush and his predecessors’ attempts to repeal the (old) New Deal directly contributed to the un-natural disaster that was Katrina. Katrina was a necessary cause for New Orleans, but it was not sufficient. By relentlessly trimming the “fat” of FDR’s legacy from the federal budget—including income supports, transportation, and public works such as levee repair—the Bush administration has left behind a skeleton security state unable to withstand any significant threat.

In the wake of the hurricane, Bush promised support for minority-owned small businesses but failed to specify how education, public health, and other key resources would be permanently secured for vulnerable citizens. On the contrary, he and some Republicans argued that reconstruction could be financed by trimming more "fat" (part of the plan to promote freedom and prosperity for all). Additional cuts only aggravate the insecurity of poor Americans. Besides, why reconstruct if only to abandon citizens to insecurity again?

George W. Bush staked his reputation on security and has said repeatedly that his number one duty is to protect U.S. citizens. But security has many meanings and demands. The deep floodwaters of New Orleans revealed just how shallow Bush's understanding of security really was. A year later, the president and the media have made little effort to face the deep responsibilities of national security.

"Bye Bye Public Option?" Dangerously Misleading Headlines.

2009-08-17T21:20:00.007+02:00

"Frames are principles of selection, emphasis and presentation composed of little tacit theories about what exists, what happens, and what matters."
(Gitlin 1980: 6)

So I awoke to Facebook link-posts this morning to news that "The White House Appears to Drop 'Public Option,'" or even "'Public Option' Proposal Dead". Sure enough my mailing of political headlines from Slate Magazine reconfirmed the supposedly irrevocable: Obama had given in to the astroturf mobs and Rightwing Rumor Bombers. "Bye-Bye Public Option," Daniel Politi wrote in Slate. Looking further into those articles, I realized that this was a dangerously misleading frame/interpretation/emphasis of some comments made by Administration officials.

The most widely circulated article about the alleged Obama dropping of the Obama healthcare hot potato was by the AP. "Bowing to Republican pressure and an uneasy public," the AP wrote, "President Obama's administration signaled Sunday it is ready to abandon the idea of giving Americans the option of government-run insurance as part of a new health care system." Okay, "ready to abandon." That's strong stuff, considering all the Town Hall hoopla of the last week.

Still not getting to the real kernel that allowed this defeatist inference, the article frames the public-option as a "liberal" (real universally positive label) initiative, the dropping of which could allow Obama the option of compromising with "GOP" (not "conservative or right-wing) lawmakers: "Such a concession probably would enrage Obama's liberal supporters but could deliver a much-needed victory on a top domestic priority opposed by GOP lawmakers."

This liberal/GOP frame makes it look like noone but a "liberal" (whatever that is) could be for the program. But the real evidence or statements from which this inference were made came half-way down the page. The dead public option claim is based first on a comment by Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, who is paraphrased to have "said that government alternative to private health insurance is 'not the essential element' of the administration's health care overhaul. The White House would be open to co-ops, she said, a sign that Democrats want a compromise so they can declare a victory." They took "not the essential element" and inferred that the "public-option" was dead for Obama and everyone else?

They finally get to Obama's Press Secretary and Obama himself. Yet they say Press Secretary Robert Gibbs "refused to say a public option was a make-or-break choice." It's a powerful interpretation, one might say biased, to then headline these comments that the public option is "dead" or that Obama "appears ready to drop" it. It's big, big news. But it's a dangerous hyperbole.

Here's what Gibbs said: "What I am saying is the bottom line for this for the president is, what we have to have is choice and competition in the insurance market."

The story also frames Obama as having back pedalled the day before at a townhall meeting in Colorado. "Obama appeared to hedge his bets," they said before the following quote:

"All I'm saying is, though, that the public option, whether we have it or we don't have it, is not the entirety of health care reform....This is just one sliver of it, one aspect of it."

Well, it may be fair to assume Obama has opened the debateable options, but interpret that he has abandoned the public option, or that it's "dead"? That's a very political, biased framing of the statements.

It's also dangerous because many people may have the impression that the fake grassroots disrupters (astroturfers) at town hall meetings were actually representative of the majority of Americans. Some public opinion scholars would suggest there could be a bandwagon and a spiral of silence effect based on those representations. People often don't want to feel like they're a small opposed minority and so they keep quiet, thinking they're outnumbered. Or they want to be part of the majority, so they hop on the wagon. Then there's the problem of all the Death Panel and other Rumor Bombs and the difficult-to-guage effect they've had. (Also note how some of these defeatist frames have a visual frame that symbolizes Obama as weary, wiping the tired sweat from his brow) Framing Obama as having caved into opponents here invites a perception that the Rumor Bombs and the thugs at town hall's were right all along.

But now tonight, I read just the opposite, as if Obama is responding to the media framing snowjob of this morning. "Obama Still Favors Public Health Plan," says CNN tonight. Even the Heritage Foundation Blog notes that the administration is trying to correct this wrong impression about the President's position. They also claim the Administration says Sebelius "misspoke": "An anonymous administration official told that Sebelius “misspoke” and White House health reform communications director Linda Douglass released a statement explaining:

"Nothing has changed. The president has always said that what is essential is that health-insurance reform must lower costs, ensure that there are affordable options for all Americans and it must increase choice and competition in the health-insurance market. He believes the public option is the best way to achieve those goals.”

Obama's comments Saturday (perhaps even Sebelius's yesterday) were probably a trial ballon (testing the waters) or misspoken, or a combination thereof. But even so, there is nothing in them to warrant the leap that Obama was ready to give up on the public option. Framing matters. It can also be viral and function like a rumor bomb. Who knows what damage has been done. Tomorrow's frames will surely tell the story.

Album Review: Steve Earle's Tribute to Townes VanZandt

2009-05-11T14:29:00.003+02:00

Steve Earle

Townes

by Jayson Harsin

A distinctively Earle-stamped tribute to one of the greatest American songwriters of all time. Read on

May Day: To the Folks Who Brought Us the Weekend!

2009-04-29T14:30:00.003+02:00

[I wrote this a few years ago for this blog, and now I re-post it every year. If you like it, please digg it or yahoo buzz, etc.]

I used to think "May Day" was a distress signal uniquely reserved for hapless pilots and captains. In fact, it wasn't until graduate school while taking an American rhetorical history course that I learned about the Haymarket Riots/Massacre and that Labor Day for many people around the world (International Workers Day), except for Americans, is May 1, in memory of those who died in Chicago on May 3 and 4, 1886 and in celebration of the humanist accomplishments of the international labor movement.

On May 1, labor unions had organized a strike there for the eight-hour day, better working conditions ("The Jungle" is hard to beat on this), for an ideal of international proportions: that one's labor and the person from whom it issues must be respected. For some people such respect meant that laborers deserved certain rights of negotiation and safety to avoid a new feudalism in the age of mass production.

On May3, they organized a strike at the McCormick Harvesting Machine Co., where a fight broke out on the picket line; police intervened, killing two workers and wounding several others. Workers across the city were enraged. Anarchists then distributed flyers for a labor rally at Haymarket Square the following day. Reports vary in this highly politicized event, but many note that people listened peacefully to anarchist leader August Spies's address. Then apparently someone threw a bomb over the crowd, which landed on the police line killing a police officer and wounding other policeman who died later. Policeman fired into the crowd killing a number of people (there are no uncontested counts). Eight German immigrants associated with anarchism were rounded up and convicted on no evidence. The motive was that they were anarchists. Seven of them were sentenced to death. One committed suicide. One's sentence was commuted to life in prison. And five were hanged publicly.

The trial produced some of the most eloquent criticisms of American industrial society and its political butresses. Some, such as George Engel's, even provide an explanation/argument for how one came to be a socialist/anarchist. Here is an excerpt from George Englel's address to the jury, which I recommend reading in its entirety by clicking on this link.

[...]On the occasion of my arrival at Philadelphia, on the 8th of January, 1873, my heart swelled with joy in the hope and in the belief that in the future I would live
AMONG FREE MEN,
and in a free country. I made up my mind to become a good citizen of this country, and congratulated myself on having left Germany, and landed in this glorious republic. And I believe my past history will bear witness that I have ever striven to be a good citizen of this country. This is the first occasion of my standing before an American court, and on this occasion it is murder of which I am accused. And for what reasons do I stand here? For what reasons am I accused of murder? The same that caused me to leave Germany-
THE POVERTY-THE MISERY
of the working classes.
And here, too, in this "free republic," in the richest country of the world, there are numerous proletarians for whom no table is set; who, as outcasts of society, stray joylessly through life. I have seen human beings gather their daily food from the garbage heaps of the streets, to quiet therewith their knawing hunger.
I have read of occurrences in the daily papers which proves to me that here, too, in this great "free land," people are doomed to die of starvation. This brought me to reflection, and to the question: What are the peculiar causes that could bring about such a condition of society? I then began to give our political institutions more attention than formerly. [...]

"I came to the opinion that as long as workingmen are economically enslaved they cannot be politically free. [...]
Of what does my crime consist?
That I have labored to bring about a system of society by which it is impossible for one to hoard millions, through the improvements in machinery, while the great masses sink to degradation and misery. As water and air are free to all, so should the inventions of scientific men be applied for the benefit of all. The statute laws we have are
IN OPPOSITION TO THE LAWS OF NATURE,
in that they rob the great masses of their rights "to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."
I am too much a man of feeling not to battle against the societary conditions of today. Every considerate person must combat a system which makes it possible for the individual to rake and hoard millions in a few years, while, on the other side, thousands become tramps and beggars.
Is it to be wondered at that under such circumstances men arise, who strive and struggle to create other conditions,
WHERE THE HUMANE HUMANITY SHALL TAKE PRECEDENCE
over all other considerations? [...]

As this article demonstrates, the radical democratic history of May Day has been coopted in a few places in the world (in an attempt to rob it of its radical history as a resource for current politics), namely the U.S. Like other rights and practices many people hold to be sacred today, the eight-hour day was the result of social struggle and bloodshed (I'm just testifying about it; don't try this at home) by those considered "extremists."

In that same graduate school class where I learned about the history of May Day, a Polish student who had grown up in the last days of the Soviet Empire told an interesting story. Apparently on May Day, a Polish TV news correspondent was sent to Chicago to report on May Day. He went to the site of the Hay Market, where a monument to the police had been constructed then vandalized. (Only in 2004 was one constructed to acknowledge the workers who died there too. The politics of memorializing this event is quite a story in itself--see "Haymarket Square in the Aftermath"). The Polish reporter went around Chicago asking citizens if they knew that May Day was an international holiday in memory of the Haymarket riots and massacre. No one knew what he was talking about. He responded on their Communist state-run TV broadcast, "This is how capitalism perpetuates itself. Citizens here are robbed of their own history and live in a dreamworld." You don't have to like the Soviet Union to find truth in his observation. (and please, neo-liberals, don't be so cynical as to characterize this memorial as an extreme argument for state ownership of property;it's rather about some redistribution for equal opportunity and the basis for participation in civic life, and limitation of the most powerful who set the terms for the labor market)

The testimony of Engel and others at their fateful trial is also a causal argument about what desperate human beings will do when they suffer political exclusion to work out conflict peacefully. The fact that this event is largely a ghost in American history speaks to how unwilling some people are to look at the ugliness of our history (not that forgetting isn't best in some situations from a certain point of view), the struggles of citizen against citizen because such knowledge is threatening to myths of nation and its tenuous coherence. It's also threatening to those whose interests invested in criminalizing critiques of a consumer society that is killing our planet, not just its people. Part of the reason why it may continue is the suppression of other knowledges of the past and critiques of the present. Just as many wounded laborers were afraid to go to the hospital for fear of being arrested when police opened fire on the crowd on May 4, 1886 (after the bomb exploded) , so today one faces being branded an extremist, a radical, a revolutionary, merely for remembering this past.

Today (yesterday for some people reading this) is May Day. Today, let us remember these people who brought us the weekend.

The Economic Crisis and Religious Dictates Against Usury

2009-04-12T00:32:00.004+02:00

As I'm preparing a talk on the current economic crisis from the perspective of a history of American popular understandings of democracy and its relationship to economic regulation, I ran across the following article. My own research leaves me amazed at how so many Americans claim to be religious, yet their support of recent economic policies stands in conflict with their religious dictates. The Torah, the Koran, and the Bible all ban usury, and have passages that have been interpreted as obliging redistribution of resources. Why don't people know about their own religions? Certain interests and their selective readings have for various reasons won out recently. Is there chance that will change in the near future?

March 28, 2009

On Thursday, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner announced sweeping changes in the nation's finance rules, specifically targeting the derivative financial products that led to the credit crisis, mortgage crisis, banking crisis, and the crisis in the American automobile industry.. Predictably, some conservatives have responded that such policies would lead to "socialism," or a similar compromise of the free-enterprise American dream.

In fact, such regulations are as old as the Ten Commandments, and as American as apple pie: they are nothing more than an update of the ancient prohibitions on usury, or the unfair charging of interest. And while today, "usury" has a whiff of the antiquarian about it (or worse, one of antisemitism), if we look closely at what usury laws were meant to do, I think we'll discover that they are much more relevant, and worthy, than we might suppose.

Western civilization's original usury laws are found in the Bible: the Torah contains several prohibitions against lending money at interest, and the New Testament several condemnations of it. Deuteronomy 23:20-21 is representative: "Thou shalt not lend upon interest to thy brother: interest of money, interest of victuals, interest of any thing that is lent upon interest. Unto a foreigner thou mayest lend upon interest; but unto thy brother thou shalt not lend upon interest; that the LORD thy God may bless thee in all that thou puttest thy hand unto, in the land whither thou goest in to possess it."

I will return to the distinction between Israelite and foreigner below, but first, however, I want to explore rationales for the usury prohibition in the first place. In the Deuteronomy passage above, the reason is somewhat generic: interest is forbidden, like many other ritual and ethical acts, "so that the Lord thy God may bless thee in all that thou puttest thy hand unto."

In Leviticus 25:35-37, however, a more specific reason is given: "And if thy brother be waxen poor, and his means fail with thee; then thou shalt uphold him: as a stranger and a settler shall he live with thee. Take thou no interest of him or increase; but fear thy God; that thy brother may live with thee. Thou shalt not give him thy money upon interest, nor give him thy victuals for increase."

Here, at least two reasons are given: first, the ethical value of caring for the poor, and second, "that thy brother may live with thee." If one were to charge interest, the text suggests, the bonds of society would collapse; rich and poor could not live together. Later commentators developed these dual rationales. St. Thomas Aquinas, for example, said that usury is both morally wrong and an improper form of "double-charging," because money is a means of commerce, not a thing in itself.

"That thy brother may live with me," in other words, is a prudential argument, not a moral/ethical one. The concern here is not only that usury is immoral -- it takes advantage of the weak -- but also that civil society itself would be compromised if usury were allowed. This, not ethnocentrism, is why lending to foreigners was allowed; the concern was with the economic health and civil cohesion of Israelite society, which would are not threatened by lending to outsiders. But if usury multiplied risk and magnified inequity within the community of Israel, chaos would result.

Notice, too, that these twin rationales extend the purview of usury law far beyond the narrow contemporary meaning of charging excessive interest. Today, all states have usury statutes that cap the rate of interest for loans. But the Biblical and exegetical usury statutes are broader: they are aimed at the moral turpitude, societal inequity, and economic instability inherent in making money from money.

Translated into today's economic realities, this has indeed come to pass. Wealthy institutions have lured poor people into unsustainable and unstable credit arrangements, and indeed, the basic cords of our society have begun to fray. As we have seen in the excesses of executive compensation, we have lost the moral compass which once tied pay to some notions of actual work and fairness, rather than to the made-up prices of economic bubbles. Indeed, our current crisis is exactly the economic, societal, and ethical chaos which the usury laws sought to prevent.

Today's derivatives market, for example, is precisely about "making money from money" -- but taken to new and ludicrous extremes. The credit default swaps which were largely responsible for sinking insurance giant A.I.G. were essentially bets about whether certain debts would be paid or defaulted-upon. Now, as it happened, debtors defaulted in such numbers that they brought down the house. But this derivative security should never have been legal in the first place. It is a bet on making money from money; or rather, a bet on making money from lending money at a near-usurious rate of interest, and thus a usurious attempt to make money from making money from making money. As the Bible itself knew, bubbles pop.

The anti-usury value does not and should not depend on the percentage rate of interest. It is a wider prohibition, both ethical and prudential, against making money from money. Of course, it cannot be taken too literally, either; credit is what makes our economy run, as we have now learned the hard way. But in principle, anti-usury values are fundamental to the American experience, and more needed now than ever.

To ban or heavily regulate usurious derivative securities is not socialism. It's the Bible.

Jay Michaelson --from the Huffington Post

NATO Protests and Repressive Tolerance: State Containment of Free Speech

2009-04-09T00:04:00.007+02:00

The tactics of French police directed by the State to thwart the rights of freedom of expression in Strasbourg this week for NATO meetings are a troubling but sobering sign of a recent trend of ever more repressive tolerance in Western liberal democracies, by which I refer to the phenomenon of increasing state caricature of rights to free speech by cordoning it off, thwarting its circulation, which amounts, in effect, to freedom to speak to the wall.

French police literally shut down the entire city and quarantined the protestors. While 40,000 to 50,000 protestors were expected, according to the AP wire, only about half of that estimate were counted on site. There is evidence that the reduced presence is due to police harassment, detainment, containment and arrests of hundreds of protesters. One wonders what tactics were used to reduce the numbers further. The AP Wire writes,

"On thursday night in Strasbourg police detained at least 300 people and forced demonstrators back into a tent camp on the edge of the city."

Was the city effectively closed by police order to deprive the protestors of an audience and to create less of a media spectacle ? In other words, did the state attempt to stifle free political speech?

While there is also a trend of violence among fringe protestors, it is no wonder that violence broke out in Strasbourg given police provocations and the frustration born of this quarantine.

21 March Le Monde: "The mayor of Strasbourg didn't really have a say in the deployment of security forces in the city [for the NATO summit]. It was the French and German governments, in consultation with NATO and the U.S., which decided on the security measures and put them in place." The article continues, "The inhabitants of Strasbourg have the impression of witnessing their city under seige: no parking, transportation by bicycle encouraged, buses rerouted, and public services temporarily closed." Many businesses closed as the result of the policy.

Another independent account states that all bridges were closed and the protestors had no way out. IN other words, they were brutally, strategically quarantined. Why?

A Le Monde journalist Arnaud Leparmentier spoke of how he was allowed, ironically, to be seated two rows behind Obama for the press conference. Police, the journalist said, tightly blocked entrance to the conference, yet no one ever checked his bag, which he noted could have of course contained a bomb, hypothetically. Why the double standard?

Yesterday, Wednesday July 9 I was approaching the Invalides metro, the common site of a great many protests in Paris, to find Tamils, of which there are estimated to be 60,000 refugees in France," protesting the Sri Lankan governments offensive against Tamil rebels. I was shocked to see hundreds of them boxed in like cattle in an approximately 20x10 yards square area. Many were seated on the ground, while others stood and chanted. I witnessed no violence whatsoever. Some police mocked the protesters, while others attempted to block any contact the protesters could have with an audience of passersby. One man leaned over a makeshift fence to offer leaflets to anyone who wished to have them. Several people including myself approached him out of curiosity. Immediately, the police rushed over and took his leaflets, telling him he could not pass them out. Why, I don't know, unless French foreign policy includes silencing protests such as this.

Outside the 2004 Republican nominating convention in New York, protesters were confined to what was euphemistically called a "free speech zone," which protesters referred to as a cage. What is free about free speech in these situations? Is this what founders of Western constitutions had in mind when they spoke of liberty and equality, sacred rights of political assembly and freedom of expression. These are tactics more akin to fascist control of protest, provoking violence, then meeting it with disproportionate force. But most of all they have media effects.

There are few spectacular media images such as the fire hoses being turned on children in the Civil Rights movement. The spectacular images are of the lunatic black block, precisely the undermining of the protest organizers' strategies. None of the stories I read when I googled "Strasbourg," "NATO," and "protests" attempted to discuss why and what is was protesters were protesting. Instead we got tried and true frames that media business values commonly dictate. Conflict and violence. But this frame was lent by the State attempt to control speech. Why these measures? In the same way that states have learned from their mistakes in control (or lack thereof) in war situations, from Vietnam to Algeria. So they've learned ways to defuse the power of protests.

What this means is that the old strategies for effective change via consciousness raising in marches are largely co opted today. They must find other ways of addressing audiences and circulating messages in the way they intend.

more pictures here

2009-03-06T00:18:00.002+01:00

"Why should the overthrow of the existing order be of vital necessity for people who own, or can hope to own, good clothes, a well-stocked larder, a TV set, a car, a house and so on, all within the existing order?" Herbert Marcuse once pointedly asked before the cornucopia of postwar Western affluence that made talk of revolutionary consciousness seem more and more lunatic even to champions of left traditions. His answer was a complex theorization of consumer society's exploitation of individuals' creative capacities coopted by organizational culture, office space, and well-paying-enough industrial work. The consumer society underwritten by the state and widespread ideologies of liberal freedom result in a condition of consuming objects as a substitute for unconstrained human creativity.

Marcuse further objects:"Free choice among a wide variety of goods and services does not signify freedom if these goods and services sustain social controls over a life of toil and fear-that is, if they sustain alienation. And the spontaneous reproduction of superimposed needs by the individual does not establish autonomy; it only testifies to the efficacy of the controls."

How one develops a consciousness of these repressive forces and one's complicity with them is a more difficult question yet. But Marcuse, like others, seemed to think that art and the occasional crises of everyday life, led by the ironic enlightened position of a band of "outcasts and outsiders" held the possibility of revolutionary change and liberation from this sad state of affairs.

In the spirit of Marcuse, as well as other eminent theorists—such as Henri Lefebvre and the Situationists—of everyday life, freedom and exploitation under consumer capitalism, Sam Mendes' Revolutionary Road is a dramatic critique of alienation and cooptation of creative, free activity in liberal democratic consumer societies. While Revolutionary Road has the actors, production qualities, and several narrative tendencies of Hollywood dramas, it is vintage Sam Mendes: a critique of historical gender roles, deadening routines, lost dreams and values, and the uncompromisingly conformist American suburbs, which are themselves captive of a larger cultural psychosis.

Kate Winslett and Leonardo DiCaprio: the great reunion. This was part of the marketing campaign in reference to the epochal Titanic, now over a decade old. which starred this same duo. Both actors have matured since then across art and offbeat Hollywood films, from Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, to Gangs of New York, and Total Eclipse. Now under the direction of Sam Mendes, Winslett and DiCaprio reunite for a markedly Mendesesque tour de force. Like the Oscar-winning American Beauty, Mendes's follow up identifies with the misfits in the suburbs to make a larger critical statement about the iron cage of American culture, the golden bars of its complacency, and the danger of breaking out—indeed, of the very dream of breaking out.

Such a critical stance toward American culture places the film in a venerable artistic tradition that is The American Dream. The film is saturated with the tropes of American Dream literature. The readers of that depressing tradition immediately recall Sinclair Lewis's Babbitt;Eugene O'Neill's Long Days Journey Into Night; Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman; J.D. Salinger's Catcher in the Rye; and John Updike's Rabbit, Run, among others. One thinks of the sociological complements in The Organization Man, The Status Seekers, The Image, The Theory of The Leisure Class, and One-Dimensional Man.There's the dream of actor-stardom and the alcoholic lifestyle depicted by some of them, the obsession with "phoniness" required for mobility, and deviance met by ruthless punishment by the status quo present in all of them.

Winslett and DiCaprio play a slightly offbeat couple, April and Frank Wheeler, from the fundamental opening scene where they meet at a party, apparently part of the theater crowd. Winslett becomes a failed actress-become-housewife; Frank a stifled-creative type-become-sales-department-support staffer. Like the American Dream literature, Revolutionary Road shows the American cultural mercilessness toward those who do not conform, who live at the end of the decidedly un-revolutionary road, and start out into the woods to blaze their own trail. That divergence makes all the difference, but the difference is a tragic one.

However, this film is not just about America, any more than Max Weber's iron cage is only about German modernity, or Foucault's Discipline and Punish is about contemporary France. The condition is somewhat representative of the individual living in all Western liberal democratic consumer societies, despite their comparative nuances. That condition is one that paradoxically celebrates the freedom of the individual to do and say what he/she wants within a social structure that embraces some form of consumer capitalism, where "feeling" the elan vitale is reduced to the commonality of having a spouse, a house in the ‘burbs, a relatively new car, children, a "good" job (white collar), and the dream of having more--of all of this, and with no other goal than the inherent cultural good of having all this. Somehow, it leaves a few stragglers "empty." Where there is power, there is also resistance, said the philosopher Foucault.

Again and again, Frank talks about wanting to really "feel alive." He hasn't been able, for various reasons, to find himself, but within him a creative impulse is banging to be let out. In much of the West, one might refer to it with some repugnance as "artsy," or "irresponsible," unrealistic, and whimsical, as does the realtor-neighbor, a middle-aged 50s predecessor of American Beauty's Annette Benning's character played adeptly by Kathy Bates). But Frank wants out, and partly blames his wife and kids (though she is the repository of outward blame) for "forcing" him into the classic 50s breadwinner role.

Frank's entire office (somtimes like the playful reflections of the film Office Space and TV series The Office--what does it tell us that our culture is producing these "minor" responses) is characterized by people who find their jobs meaningless yet essential to the institutional setting. Frank goes on hating his job, and April starts to hate him and her boring suburban-housewife life. She once had other dreams, and their lack of fulfillment, like his, obtrudes on their relationship. Their marriage on the brink, April wistfully rummages through a box of old photos, as if to magically escape the suffocating outside reality by slipping into the portal of a picture world. Alas, she alights upon a photo of Frank, fresh from the allied battlefront in France, a postcardesque shot with his comrade and the Eiffel Tower as backdrop. "You always talked about how Paris was the one place you've been where you'd like to go back," she cries, like a condemned criminal supplicating her jurors. "We always thought we were better than this," she says in a moment of poignant truth, "but the fact is we aren't; we're just like them." On that provocative note, they resolve that this is their chance to flee the coop. They will sell the house and car, take the kids and their seven grand in savings, and move to Paris where she will find a dreamy high-paid job as a secretary for NATO (clearly pre-DeGaulle) while Frank will discover his creative being within. It's as if April's American suburban alienation will be overcome through a new workplace alienation that will somehow be liberated by the surrounding French culture. There's also no sense that Frank will be taking care of the kids while April's pecking away on the French office typewriter. In this sense, the plan does seem naively escapist.

The neighbors and the officemates unsurprisingly find the plan "whimsical" and "unrealistic," but more for giving up Franks' job and the shamefulness of being supported by his wife, in France of all places. The couple is resolved, however, that they're above these drones.

The brutal recalcitrance of cultural power proves too much for this escape plan when April announces that she's pregnant. This news combined with a tempting offer for promotion to some sort of salesman for the pioneering new office computer business and the haunting memory of his patently mediocre salesman father are enough to spawn Frank's rationalizations that "We can be happy here." April's rational arguments to the contrary are to no avail, which results in her realization that she no longer loves Frank. In Mendes' unhappy hands, this can not end well. The unwanted baby, the unwanted promotion, the unwanted future leaves few escape routes for this 1950s housewife. And there's every indication that Frank's new job, bigger salary and house will eventually result in the same emptiness. As in American Beauty, Mendes (and this time screenwriter Justin Haythe) make their exaggerated point through a culminating death. Unsympathetic viewers will surely find it overly dramatic, but then this is part of the depressing and suicidal American Dream tradition represented by Miller’s Willy Loman. Why depart from a venerable tradition?

Power/resistance are also paired with sanity/insanity. The Shakespearean idiot savant in the film is played by the neighbors the Givings' "insane" son John, a Ph.D. in mathematics being treated for depression with shock treatment. "Hopeless emptiness. Now you've said it. Plenty of people are onto the emptiness," he says with no little foreshadowing, "but it takes real guts to see the hopelessness." That about says it. In Mendes's view, the price of even questioning this system is precarious mentally. The personal is cultural, for that mental health is partly conditioned in relation to how the community and its institutions treat the individual. John the fool appears again to comment on Frank's cold feet, again quite lucidly: "You want to play house you got to have a job. You want to play nice house, very sweet house, you got to have a job you don't like." While Frank recognized John as a sage on John's first visit, he is now pushed to the brink of violence, telling John, like the chorus of his society, he is insane and should go back to the "loony bin."

When April dies, the neighbors speak of how Frank now spends any second away from work with his children. At first glance this could strike the viewer as magnanimous. On the other hand, it can be read as not just rising to the occasion of exemplary caring single parent; but rather as escape from the emptiness of work and the empty culture of consumption, with its alcoholic, rock n' roll, and adulterous props. It's one form of rebellion the culture will permit.

Mendes is superb at sketching the cultural pressure to conform, to act pleased to be part of the group, the organization, and at the costs that await those who resist it all. One could say that he is as merciless in his critique of this culture as the culture can be merciless in its treatment of misfits (which here doesn't even consist in a visual refusal of norms, as, say, Punk style would later). What Mendes (unlike the best sociologists, novelists, playwrights, and filmmakers) still hasn't been able to do, is go beyond describing social reproduction and focus on what produces these misfits. Why are the Wheelers seen to be exceptional? Why do they feel different? Why do they have desires that push them to question and want something else--symbolized by the imagined otherness of Paris? Mendes leaves us with few clues besides a child's inability to identify with parents at what the psychologist Erik Erikson once called the "formal operational" thinking level of teenagers (Frank's near disgust for his "old man's" submission to an empty job and life). April is even more of a mystery, with her pipedream of becoming a star actress. Is it too many movies and too much press about the glamorous life of stars, making her a Madame Bovary of the American 1950s?

Perhaps there is a particular contradiction in the U.S., with its time-honored clichés of freedom, opportunity, rags-to-riches, and self-made men--already mentioned in its literature, film, and sociology. But finally, is this not a fate that faces millions in America and out, if they be so bold to face it? What one can do with a life is the existential question. What one can do here and now, is the more historical, sociological, and cultural one. After all, we can not all be adored actors, film critics and media professors, and actors, film critics and media professors must also sometimes find their systemic obligations and routines--well, somewhat empty. What one can be once one questions the structures within which one is is almost as terrifying a situation as what one is without questioning the structures within which one can be.

Film Review: Waltz with Bashir: Responsible Dreams

2009-02-03T11:48:00.002+01:00

On Ari Folman's Waltz with Bashir

"We were the Nazis."

BY JAYSON HARSIN

[D]ream-images are often rapidly forgotten although they are known to have been vivid, whereas, among those that are retained in the memory, there are many that are very shadowy and unmeaning. Besides, in the waking state one is wont to forget rather easily things that have happened only once, and to remember more readily things which occur repeatedly." — Sigmund Freud
Israeli filmmaker Ari Folman's Cannes-nominated Waltz with Bashir (2008) is a cinematic standout for many reasons. Genre-wise, it is a unique sort of animated, fictional docu-psycho-autobiography. It also features a well-crafted plot of mystery, anticipation, and discovery (which will not be completely spoiled here) with a first-rate soundtrack that is an important character in itself. Most of all, the film is a brave grappling with the responsibility for genocide from the point of view of an individual, an Israeli veteran thinking under the weight of the Holocaust.1

Waltz with Bashir's opening is a remarkable one — twenty-six wild dogs bounding down the street, frothing at the mouth, trampling everything in their path, but also passing some humans by and fixing on a particular target to tree. It is disturbing, moving, and also a kind of symbolic foreshadowing.

That opening flows into the primary scene triggering the entire plot, a conversation between two Israeli military veterans. One, Boaz, is tormented by nightmares about these dogs, which he relates to his service at the time of the Sabra and Chatila massacres of the 1982 Lebanese war and his own responsibility therein. The nightmares have driven him into psychotherapy. Nervously puffing his cigarette, slamming his drink, and tapping his foot, he asks his friend "Ari Folman," the focal character of the film and a successful filmmaker, if he isn't haunted by the war and the massacres. Strangely, Folman doesn't remember anything at all about this gloomy chapter of human history. The problem is he was supposedly there, or at least very near. Why do the dogs pass him by and go after Boaz? Why don't they pursue Folman? The rest of the film involves the filmmaker-veteran's attempt to recover his memory of what happened, where he was, what he saw, what he did. Continue

Rumor Bombs Away: Gaza, France2, etc

2009-01-25T12:43:00.003+01:00

Both sides in this recent disturbing waste of human life, Gaza, used rumor bombs in a public relations war. One of the highlights was a France2 (major public broadcasting network) unwitting use of footage of Gaza carnage. The only probably was it was from 2005. Where did they get it? From the internet, of course. More here.

The Last Model Standing is France

2009-01-15T12:44:00.002+01:00

From Newsweek's International edition: "French-style intervention is gaining the upper hand as other economic models lose credibility..."

Click on title for more.

Rumor Bomb Strikes Again: NY Times Publishes Fake Letter Criticizing Caroline Kennedy

2008-12-23T09:19:00.002+01:00

NY Times publishes fake letter from Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoë criticising Kennedy
The New York Times was forced to apologise on Monday after it published a fake letter, purportedly from the mayor of Paris, criticising Caroline Kennedy's bid for Hillary Clinton's Senate seat as "not very democratic".

Last Updated: 11:33PM GMT 22 Dec 2008

Caroline Kennedy wants to take over Hillary Clinton's old seat in the Senate Photo: AP
"What title has Ms Kennedy to pretend to Hillary Clinton's seat?" the letter in Monday's edition of the newspaper said. "We French can only see a dynastic move of the vanishing Kennedy clan in the very country of the Bill of Rights. It is both surprising and appalling."
In an note from the editor posted Monday on its website, the newspaper said the letter signed by Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoë should not have been published because it violated the paper's standards and procedures.
"We have already expressed our regrets to Mr Delanoë's office and we are now doing the same to you, our readers," the Times said.
News of the hoax was first reported by France-Amerique, which published a story on its website on Monday. Jean-Cosme Delaloye, the Editor-in-chief of the French language monthly, which is based in New York City, said an employee read the letter in the New York Times on Monday morning and was sceptical.
"When we read the letter it just sounded very surprising, the choice of words sounded very surprising," he told The Associated Press. "When we called Paris to verify the information ... they were very surprised."
Virginie Christnacht, head of Mr Delanoë's press office in Paris, said the letter was a fake.
"We have asked the New York Times for a denial and an apology," she said. "Clearly, this was never sent by Bertrand Delanoë."
The Times blamed the mistake on a failure to verify the authenticity of a letter that arrived by email.
"In this case, our staff sent an edited version of the letter to the sender of the email and did not hear back," the paper said. "At that point, we should have contacted Mr Delanoë's office to verify that he had, in fact, written to us. We did not do that. Without that verification, the letter should never have been printed."

Obama Links to Blagojevich: Liberal Tabloid Frenzy

2008-12-14T12:34:00.003+01:00

When I say "tabloid" I'm of course talking about that liberal rag, the New York Times. In their time-honored manner of bashing Republicans with groundless associations while saluting each time a Democrat wipes his/her ass, they now feed the intrigue mill with "association" talk about Republican high priest Rahm Emanuel, Obama Chief of Staff,and Obama himself (really a Republican is socialist trappings, everyone knows).
"Had Contact"? ooh, you mean like how I'm responsible for the phone calls made by the Apple Corporation because I had contact with their customer service dept. yesterday? That sounds right. When will these liberal attack dogs take a break and stick to the "facts"?

Emanuel Had Contact With Governor’s Office on Senate Seat
By HELENE COOPER and JACKIE CALMES
Published: December 13, 2008

CHICAGO — President-elect Barack Obama’s chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, communicated with the office of Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich of Illinois about potential candidates for Mr. Obama’s Senate seat and provided a list of names, according to two Obama associates briefed on the matter.
Read on here.

The Rumor Bomb in Flow

2008-12-12T15:29:00.001+01:00

“[T]he information bomb’ [is] associated with the new weaponry of information and communications technologies. Thus, in the very near future… it will no longer be war that is the continuation of politics by other means, it will be what I have dubbed ‘the integral accident’ that is the continuation of politics by other means.” —Paul Virilio

While rumors are a timeless phenomenon, popular and academic voices note something changing. Like the Matrix, Baudrillard’s hyperreality, and David Lynch’s owls in Twin Peaks, things are at best not what they seem; at worst, perpetually disorienting. Henry Jenkins’s “convergence culture” has become a keyword for our present conjuncture where new and old media content, production and consumption, collide in fascinating new ways. Though gatekeeping practices in news and cultural production have weakened, creating new production opportunities, rumor rises to new levels of importance in a postmodern political context.

Despite the digital divide, the cases of rumor exploding into public scandal are fairly global. They have prompted suicides, imprisonments, stock plunges, resignations and government investigations . For example, on Friday October 3, on CNN’s “Citizen journalism” site a post appeared stating that Apple CEO Steve Jobs had had a heart attack. Apple stock plunged immediately, though the rumor was debunked an hour later, leaving suspicions it was planted by a short-seller after quick gains. But rumors have assumed a very special role in professionalized politics, where communication experts shrewdly read the new convergence culture and use rumor to try to steer political discourse via inter-media agendas. Click here for the rest of the article.

Bush: "I fucked everything up the best I could"

2008-12-02T03:54:00.002+01:00

I'm Really Gonna Miss Systematically Destroying This Place
BY GEORGE W. BUSH
DECEMBER 1, 2008 | The Onion ISSUE 44•49
http://www.theonion.com/content/opinion/im_really_gonna_miss

Oh, America. Eight years went by so fast, didn't they? I feel like I hardly got to know you and methodically undermine everything you once stood for. But I guess all good things must come to an end, and even though you know I would love to stick around for another year or four—maybe privatize Social Security or get us into Iran—I'm afraid it's time to go. But before I leave, let me say, from the bottom of my heart: I can't think of another country I would've rather led to the brink of collapse.

Boy, oh boy, if these Oval Office walls could talk. Seems like it was only yesterday that I started my first term despite having actually lost to Al Gore by more than a half million votes. Hmm. We were all so young and peaceful then. Gosh, gas was still under $2 a gallon! On my watch it peaked at more than twice that. Never getting it up to $6 or ideally $7.50 will be one of my few regrets when I leave office.

It's just gonna be so hard packing up my things and heading off into the sunset come January. I wish I could go on forever giving massive and disastrous tax cuts to the wealthy, taking the country from a surplus to a deficit—nearly $500 billion this year, likely to pass $1 trillion next year, fingers crossed—and just generally doing irreparable damage to the very underpinnings of our economy, but, well, I'm afraid the Constitution says I can't. And not even I can overrule the Constitution. Though Lord knows I tried! Initiating blanket wiretaps without warrants, suspending habeas corpus for prisoners in Guantanamo, infiltrating an unknown number of nonviolent civilian antiwar groups without permission… such wonderful memories. I'm going to cherish them forever.

My fellow Americans, I only hope that every time you have your civil liberties encroached upon by the Patriot Act, you'll think of me.

Everywhere I look brings back memories. The Blue Room is where Laura and I put up our first White House Christmas tree. Down the hall, in the East Room, is where I concocted my favorite signing statement to circumvent the anti-torture guidelines of the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005, and—ooh!—right across the way is where Cheney and I decided to use the death of 3,000 Americans on 9/11 and the nation's subsequent fear of another attack as an excuse to carry out our long-standing plan to invade Iraq. I should really get a picture before I leave.

Speaking of pictures, whenever I look at the dusty old newspaper photos of those tortured prisoners at Abu Ghraib or the crumpled ruins of that bridge in Minnesota, I can hold my head up high knowing that I truly fucked this nation—physically and symbolically—beyond repair. I only wish I had the time to destroy a couple more major American cities.

And Cheney, I almost forgot about Cheney. What a guy, huh? I can't believe that in a few short weeks he's never going to talk to me again. The stories I could tell you about what went on in some of those back rooms—well, you wouldn't believe me if I declassified the memos. I don't know, maybe in 20 years, when the economy has rebounded and the people displaced by Katrina have rebuilt their lives from scratch with almost no federal assistance, Cheney and I can meet up again in the Rose Garden and reminisce over the good old days, when it seemed like there was no part of this great country we couldn't ruin forever.

What am I going to do once I'm no longer president? I've gotten so used to waking up every day, playing fetch with the dogs on the White House lawn, and then spending a lazy afternoon shredding every last bit of our good will abroad in a mind-boggling display of diplomatic incompetence.

The worst part about leaving is knowing I can never screw up anything this big again. Don't get me wrong, I'm only 62. I could still bankrupt an oil company, or become the next MLB commissioner and ruin baseball. But I'll never get the opportunity to fuck up on this massive of a scale again. Even if you put me back in charge for another term, I could only take the U.S. from a rapidly declining world power to not a world power at all. I don't mean to gloat, but I think it's safe to say that no one can ever unseat the American empire like I unseated the American empire.

Still, I have to admit, sometimes I think I could've dismantled so much more. The very fact that the environment still exists, that a mere 4,000 troops have died in Iraq, that there is still the slightest glimmer of hope for the future left in this nation—it's easy to feel like maybe I didn't do my job. But no, no, there's no use having any regret. I fucked everything up the best I could and that's good enough for me.

You know, I've got a few weeks left. I could still illegally fire some U.S. attorneys for political reasons, or finally get rid of that pesky separation between church and state. Or maybe I could just bomb a place. Like Russia. But this time, I would really savor it.

As long as I live, America, I'll never forget irreparably ruining you. Unless we all die in a nuclear war or calamitous environmental disaster brought on by my neglect. Either way, I'll see you all in heaven!

Stumbleupon: More like Stumble Loop?

2008-11-30T14:32:00.007+01:00

Rigged! Rig-diculous! Bullshit!
So, like the legions of new bloggers, I've turned to the "social bookmarking" and other new technological services in the ATTENTION ECONOMY. Unless you just swoon at the sound of your own voice (or the sight of your own words, er blog), then you're doing this to address people. Good thing there are all these helping tech-hands for you.

I am really disappointed in Stumbleupon. I've read that it is essential for those attention-deficients like us. Yet when I spent about an hour on it this morning, filling out profile stuff, and then stumbling, I noticed that the order of stumble appearance is rigged. I clicked stumble and then ran into the first ridiculous site "When I was little I thought I had the power to change stop lights," and then the next was simply a page advertising all the different social bookmarking services. This was followed by "How to tick people off." I was amazed that none of these sites seemed to clearly correspond to the interests I had checked, which were supposed to streamline my "stumbles" on to particular sites. The only reason for this, I hypothesize, is that some of these sites create hundreds (thousands?) of stumbleupon entries as new identities and/or they build a massive "friends" network to favorably review them, which builds their appearance power. Strange algorithms for stumbling. What is worse is that these same three sites appeared again and again, when I'd hit "stumble." These same sites appeared twice out of 12 clicks, half of the clicks took me back to these same sites.

So I tried my other stumble ID, for my other blog (as far as I can tell, one can have but one blog per stumble identity). Lo and behold the same experience as before! I give stumble a big thumbs down, or perhaps more fitting: an erect middle finger!

This is the age we live in. The blog is a fantastic new technology, potentially democratic, which reverses older media relationships of production and consumption. But the fact that one produce something, regardless of quality of product, hardly guarantees any attention at all. This dynamic, unfortunately, is much more like older media and the "free market" outside. Attention to products and sales have very little if anything to do with quality of the product. It has everything to do with advertising, at which bigger companies with bigger budgets (time included) have a colossal advantage.

True, the internet attention economy is not just about having an advertising budget. But the point is that the product has little to do with the attention it gets. All of the networking, "friends", multiple profiles with the same blog listed on many of these new attention-getting services--what kind of culture is it promoting? Who are we caught up in this, as we tweet from our cell phones, "I am just leaving the office. God did that blow!" ? Reality TV and voyeurism? The fetish of being the object of a voyueur? Tabloidization of the internet?
Oh, I know, you'll just tell me I have sour grapes for having a couple of hundred registered followers on my blog, the majority probably cool hunters and other bloggers trying to leave comments to direct my readers to their blog...
Your thoughts?

Obama 2.0 Continued: Feeling Accessible

2008-11-22T16:33:00.012+01:00

Obama's team has built an excitingly accessible transition site: change.gov.
Access. This site symbolizes democratic access and community.

First it is simple, a two column structure with nine tabs line the header:home, newsroom, blog, learn, agenda, America Moment, America Serves, Jobs, About. On the home/arrival page, you find yourself staring at and being stared at by Obama, who is poised to address you thanks to Youtube. The newsroom, or press releases from Obama, actually appears on the home page, below the video.

The blog encourages you to "Watch Your Weekly Address now," and true to the participatory genre and thus expectations of blogs, it asks the visitor to "then send us your questions or ideas about how to fix the economy." It sounds right, except you can't post comments. And cynics who have tried to write legislators in the past, will be wary of the sincerity of the suggestion. It will probably be considered like focus group and survey information in order to craft more scientifically messages to mass and niche markets--I mean, uh, voters.

By clicking "Learn" you can get a slick biography of Obama and Biden, the information about the transition, information about the administration and the inauguration.

Next is "Agenda," which gives the new administration's statements on issues from civil rights to Veterans affairs. It seems surprisingly extensive.

Agenda is followed by "America Moment." This one has two "drop-down" menu links to "sharing your story" and "sharing your vision." When you click on "sharing your story," you get "We're counting on citizens from every walk of life to get involved. Share your experiences and your ideas -- tell us what you'd like the Obama-Biden administration to do and where you'd like the country to go." You are then prompted to complete an information form, where your email and zip code are obligatory. Access or surveillance and data-mining to make you feel participatory and active while you're being studied to have your opinion managed. The "share your vision" option is similar. The prompt is "Start right now. Share your vision for what America can be, where President-Elect Obama should lead this country. Where should we start together?"

"America Serves" continues the theme of getting citizens involved. Apparently, the new administration plans to start several "service organizations" that will offer tax breaks for service. Is this more Reaganesque "voluntarism" and cousin to "faith-based initiatives," or is this a brand new world. Here are some listed:

a Classroom Corps to help underserved schools
a Health Corps to serve in the nation's clinics and hospitals
a Clean Energy Corps to achieve the goal of energy independence
a Veterans Corps to support the Americans who serve by standing in harm's way

A "Jobs" tag invites applications to work in the new administration. Strangely, you enter a lot of information for being contacted, but there's no option to upload a CV or describe your competences. Instead, they ask you to list your current position and employer, in addition to commonly mandatory personal information.

Under the last top line tag, you find "About" where they give you a form to "contact" them. They also have an "Accesibilty" link that encompasses many of the points I"m making here: "Commitment to Accessibility: The Obama Administration has a comprehensive agenda to empower individuals with disabilities in order to equalize opportunities for all Americans."

A "Privacy Policy" swears that the administration will not share your information with anyone beyond its staff. That's good to hear. At least they won't be selling the information to other people who want to manage our opinions. (Okay, I'm joking about being cynical. Actually I can't wait to see whether this goes in a more accesible form that produces results other than feelings of participation)

There are also three main categories in the center area, and a sidebar with links to events and the agenda. In the center area, three tabs appear as a menu: "Your weekly Adddress," "Inside the Transition," and "How to Help."

The first tab is groundbreaking in itself, the announcement of a tech upgrade of the old weekly radio president's address. The second helps acquaint the public with the transition team and Obama's goals, via youtube videos of the team in action. It's important that Obama's team calls itself a "team." It's more cooperative as a metaphor, and less bureaucratic than "committee" or "group." "Team work" is a widely used phrase for cooperation and the individual working with others for a good that transcends each person. Of course, other connotations of "team" also suggests there could be a fierce competition, and the browser is invited to identify with this winning team.

"How to help" partly signifies what an inauguration tries to enact, a dedication of cooperative effort between elective executive and the people he represents: "Yes we can." It also signifies a political tactic especially in wide use among political campaign strategists of both major parties:you want to make voters feel like they matter, like they can do something that matters. Very important in a society where very few people feel like they have any effect on government--alienation. During the campaign, parties shifted from trying to use sites to convey information about candidates and the option to donate to giving them information that would equip them to mobilize voters. Now it gives options help with problems such as the California fires. At the bottom left, "It’s Your America: Share Your Ideas The story of the campaign and this historic moment has been your story. Share your story and your ideas, and be part of bringing positive lasting change to this country."
Similar messages stressing your agency and your consubstantiation with government appear on pages such as the "Agenda" page of issues (see left).

How accessible Obama and his team really is another question. The key for belief effects is to create the form of access. Practice will be the judge, provided that one has access to the evaluation of the accessibility! These are some new developments mixed with old uses. Compare, for example, this Obama site with the current whitehouse.gov. Like a lot of sites that really don't want to deal with a lot of email from visitors, they place a tiny "contact" link in the page's footer. There are a fair number of photos, but no videos (at least as I'm looking at it now). It will be interesting to see how, if at all, the whitehouse.gov page changes after the inauguration.

Obama 2.0: weekly Prez address to be on YOUTUBE, plus Obama's senate resignation letter

2008-11-16T23:24:00.002+01:00

Holy Shit! This guy is at least revolutionizing the presidency for the "new media" generation. Here is the 21st Century vesion of FDR's fireside chat. Just announced, Obie will be issuing weekly Prez. addresses on Youtube.

Lots of talk also about how the White House will use email with the public, even if Obama's communication must be channeled through surrogates, as Federal law demands!? See story here.

Finally, this just in, Obama's letter to the people of Illinois, announcing his resignation and thanking them:

Text of letter from Obama in Illinois newspapers

By The Associated Press – 16 hours ago

Text of President-elect Barack Obama's letter published in Illinois newspapers Sunday, when he officially resigned from the Senate:

Today, I am ending one journey to begin another. After serving the people of Illinois in the United States Senate — one of the highest honors and privileges of my life — I am stepping down as senator to prepare for the responsibilities I will assume as our nation's next president. But I will never forget, and will forever be grateful, to the men and women of this great state who made my life in public service possible.

More than two decades ago, I arrived in Illinois as a young man eager to do my part in building a better America. On the South Side of Chicago, I worked with families who had lost jobs and lost hope when the local steel plant closed. It wasn't easy, but we slowly rebuilt those neighborhoods one block at a time, and in the process I received the best education I ever had. It's an education that led me to organize a voter registration project in Chicago, stand up for the rights of Illinois families as an attorney and eventually run for the Illinois state Senate.

It was in Springfield, in the heartland of America, where I saw all that is America converge — farmers and teachers, businessmen and laborers, all of them with a story to tell, all of them seeking a seat at the table, all of them clamoring to be heard. It was there that I learned to disagree without being disagreeable; to seek compromise while holding fast to those principles that can never be compromised, and to always assume the best in people instead of the worst. Later, when I made the decision to run for the United States Senate, the core decency and generosity of the American people is exactly what I saw as I traveled across our great state — from Chicago to Cairo; from Decatur to Quincy.

I still remember the young woman in East St. Louis who had the grades, the drive and the will but not the money to go to college. I remember the young men and women I met at VFW halls across the state who serve our nation bravely in Iraq and Afghanistan. And I will never forget the workers in Galesburg who faced the closing of a plant they had given their lives to, who wondered how they would provide health care to their sick children with no job and little savings.

Stories like these are why I came to Illinois all those years ago, and they will stay with me when I go to the White House in January. The challenges we face as a nation are now more numerous and difficult than when I first arrived in Chicago, but I have no doubt that we can meet them. For throughout my years in Illinois, I have heard hope as often as I have heard heartache. Where I have seen struggle, I have seen great strength. And in a state as broad and diverse in background and belief as any in our nation, I have found a spirit of unity and purpose that can steer us through the most troubled waters.

It was long ago that another son of Illinois left for Washington. A greater man who spoke to a nation far more divided, Abraham Lincoln, said of his home, "To this place, and the kindness of these people, I owe everything." Today, I feel the same, and like Lincoln, I ask for your support, your prayers, and for us to "confidently hope that all will yet be well."

With your help, along with the service and sacrifice of Americans across the nation who are hungry for change and ready to bring it about, I have faith that all will in fact be well. And it is with that faith, and the high hopes I have for the enduring power of the American idea, that I offer the people of my beloved home a very affectionate thanks.

Bailout Spin:On Government, Economy and Freedom

2008-11-14T20:52:00.016+01:00

My Yahoo headlines are infected. Every time I look at them, there's the term "bailout" somehow working its viral way into yet another banner. The latest: "Senate to take up auto bailout on Monday"

Turns out Bush is asking Congress for $25 billion more. I get the feeling that I'm watching an Austin Powers film (if only this were as funny).
Austin Powers - 100 Billion Dollars

This came a little over a month after Bush and Treasury Secretary Paulson asked Congress for $700 billion to bailout the banks.

Even so, the day before an international summit on the financial crisis, Bush delivered his party's time-honored harangue about the evils of "big government" and the wonderful virtues of the free market and "growth"in a speech at the Manhattan Institute. It sounds slightly contradictory and hypocritical. Or maybe the man and his party likenesses live in parallel universes, from minute to minute, hour to hour, day to day. No big government to bailout the poor, the sick, or to guarantee equal educational opportunity; or to protect the environment and insure the existence of a planet for our children. Just big government for giant corporations and banks. What we need, Bush said, is not more government, but "smarter government." Mr. President, the people have spoken: pack your bags.

But these are the marketing-cognitive traps his communications wizards have set for us, and they may trap us well after Bush has retired to his ranch. More government (i.e. laws and oversight)=stupid government. Of course the rhetorically savvy respond, "But sometimes we may need more AND smarter government," at which time the Bush team robot burns a fuse and smoke plumes rise from his ears. The talking points culture has been served the notice: giving billions of government (i.e. taxpayers') dollars to banks and corporations is simply smart government, while giving billions to to social problems puts the social in "socialist."

Compare these bailout numbers to what goes to citizens with their own troubles. In 2007, the budget for welfare and unemployment was $294 billion; for education $89.9 billion; $243 billion went to interest on the federal debt; Medicaid $246 billion; while the Iraq war 2003-present has cost over $3 trillion! Here we see the odd priorities of the outgoing administration, quite happy to spend lots of money, run up lots of debt on some matters and people deemed worthier than others.

What the outgoing administration and their supporters are most afraid of now is that these contradictions will result in a considerable shift in mainstream political discourse, spending priorities, and political economic structure--imposing more regulations on business than the country has seen in a long time. They should be scared, since while the current crises (plural) do not prove the complete bankruptcy of market economies, they show the bankruptcy of simplistic anti-government, pro-free market rhetoric. They want to scare vulnerable Americans into accepting a manichean dichotomy about government and economy a bit like Bush's simplisitic post-9/11 foreign policy: with us or against us. You can have "Big Government," a clever rhetorical evocation of "Big Brother," and totalitarianism, where the government steps in and controls every last detail of your life; or you can have the "free market," supposedly free of dangerous government meddling with and control of your work, buying, and exchanging of goods (though there's an implication that the meddling will be on multiple or all levels of life).

There is no such thing as the "free market," and never has been, if by which one means all production, distribution, and consumption is outside the government purview and all economic acts are by rational self-interested individuals. Big businesses depend on government (federal, state and local in the U.S.) to give them tax breaks, protect contracts, set work hours and safety standards, and not force them to give benefits to their employees,etc. Thus, they spend billions of dollars each year with professional lobbyists maneuvering to keep laws that favor them and prevent new ones from disfavoring them.

The problem is the age-old glitteringly ambiguous but emotionally powerful term"free." If market exchange were really free of third party mediation in the name of common laws applied to all (that is to civilized life), we would have the economic life of Locke's mythical state of nature, a war of all against all, where the strongest prevails, with no other restraint in the name of community. Government through law and enforcement can shape what kind of economy we practice, so that small businesses, for example, are privileged and rewarded while big ones are penalized and taxxed more, or vice-versa. Either way, government allows some behavior and discourages other kinds. 'Twas ever thus. And 'twill ever be.

The question is what kind of freedom do people want, what are the potential threats to it, and who benefits from persuading people that another form of freedom/security favors one party less or more than another? Since political debate in the U.S. rarely gets that deep, we get slogans repeated over and over, which are associated with parties, politicians, and people. Big Government! Socialist!

Franklin Roosevelt, dealing with a nasty bunch of money lenders and speculators of his own day, negotiated the situation by talking of different kinds of freedom (freedom from want, from fear, of speech, and of religion), and to the socialist slurs of his day, he responded that the only thing Americans had to fear was fear itself. Freedom of speech and religion are easily and traditionally understood as having the greatest potential threat in overbearing government. But freedom from want and fear, can be more easily understood in the caprices of modern economic cycles and the values of powerful players in the economy. The people as sovereign can save themselves from the dangers of excessive government controls of all individuals. But who would save the people from the economy, completely unelected and by nature full of power imbalances that can ruin a person's life in every other sense. "Necessitous men are not free men," FDR contended. The ousted Bush alliance will suggest any regulation in the name of freedom and security in the form of a false dilemma: either evil all-controlling socialist state or the individual-freedom-loving market.

The Reagan Revolution shrewdly read the FDR complication of freedom and power as a threat to their own pro-big business ideology, so they declared rhetorical war on it and won. They already had the help of The Cold War association of government control with Communism and Socialism (which were the same thing in everyday media culture). Their rhetoric, like Coolidge and Hoover's in the roaring 1920s, was honeysuckle until economic bad times hit. The problem is they have done a disservice to Americans who are trying to understand the complexities of POWER in a globalized world, which will in turn affect their understandings of freedom.

"I hope we shall crush... in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare
already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the
laws of our country," founding father Thomas Jefferson famously wrote to George Logan in 1816. As much as I like Jefferson's staunch rejection of the perilously un-free condition of citizens in a "manufacturing economy" opting instead for a quaint agrarian economy where every (politically free) citizen was also economically free, his vision lost out. But some have revived his language about freedom and minimal government, while taking it out of its historical context of an agrarian economy (unlike the post-industrial mess we live in today).

Jefferson's concerns with government and freedom were/are valid. But the new structures of power (largely unelected) in a very different economy create new obstacles for comprehending threats to freedom. Anti-government but pro-individual freedom visions can not account for the changes in society that have created huge corporate bureaucracies and made millions of people dependent on inscrutable market dynamics invisibly shaped by actors who care very little about their fellow citizen's security in the end. Government should respond in a sociologically informed way to the historically changing threats to freedom in different forms, about which there should be serious and careful public discussion before government takes action (though crises put constraints on deliberation).

Now, with the historic economic woes in the U.S., people are looking for answers, and that means some of them will pay attention to the way causes of the crisis are framed, too. Some individuals and groups stand to lose a lot with economic reforms, and so it is not surprising their well-paid spokespeople are trying to transfer their own fear of Obama onto less powerful citizens with totally different objective economic interests. They have much less "freedom" in the "free" market, and more oversight/less freedom of the banks and major corporations can equal more freedom economically and otherwise for them. But their belief is the object of a fiercely fought PR war. Look for the "Obama is a socialist" rumor bombs to be dropped onto more and more media targets in the near future. Will he build more rumor bomb shelters? Will he be able to counterattack, and by what means in this debate-deprived political culture?

"The selfish spirit of commerce knows no country, and feels no
passion or principle but that of gain." --Thomas Jefferson to
Larkin Smith, 1809.

[If you found this worth reading, please take the time to yahoobuzz, digg, and or reddit it]

Obama and Democracy 2.0

2008-11-13T00:04:00.003+01:00

Obama's shrewd exploitation of "new media" continues. After effectively using test messages, websites, meetups, video games,etc. in the campaign, now he intends to connect with supporters and construct public opinion (or listen to the people, depending on how you see it) using the web for governing. This is a new media version of what political communication scholars have called "going public," where presidents bypass legislatures that propose and make laws and instead go directly to "the people" to influence them, produce public opinion about issues that are in fact first of all the president's agenda (which he wants the people to accept). In turn, the president wants the Congress to accept his issues because supposedly the people (represented by public opinion) want it. But then, perhaps Obie is not so cynical. Maybe he really is trying to break down barriers between citizens and their representatives. This will be very, very interesting to watch.

5 reasons why Obama is Human (Not Zeus, Jesus, or Mohammad)

2008-11-11T14:02:00.012+01:00

This last week has been full of reflections on and theories of why Obama won. The economy (linked to Bush linked to McCain). The Palin factor. Increased voting registration. Organizing. Media bias. Or the great man theory about Obama the demigod. Few are actually nuanced, rounded treatments that can help us understand how campaigns work these days and what to expect in the future.

Shakespeare famously wrote that some men are born into greatness; some achieve greatness; and others have greatness thrust upon them. Political Communication scholars would add that some have communications teams that spend great time and money in constructing greatness.
Barack Obama is a great man, with excellent communication talents, but that is not enough to have won this election alone. Consider these five reasons, and a caveat.

1. The political economy of campaigning
Square one in U.S. presidential (to say nothing of other) campaigns. It pays for the campaign's enormous industry, everything from food for staff and volunteers, to ad production and space/distribution, travel, polling, focus groups, etc. In 2000 and 2004, Republicans and their surrogate attack groups outspent and out-financed the Democrats, especially in the cr ucial final push of the last two months. Obama built on the insights of Howard Dean, whose net-fundraising astounded in the last presidential election and continued in his role as Chairman of the party. Obama outspent McCain 4 to 1 the first half of October and by 3 to 1 on TV ads the final week of the campaign.

Obama's record shattering fundraising in August and September helped him expand the field of competitive states, putting pressure on McCain in places where he had hoped to coast without investing more money. The "Great Man" outspent by his opposition is at much greater risk to lose. But now one should consider the shrewd and novel use of that record fundraising.

2. Communication strategies
Contrary to some claims, Obama hardly skipped through a media lovefest. He was forced to respond to his associations with the controversial Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the attacks of which were considerably weakened after Obama delivered a powerful speech on race, a polarizing subject he struggled to keep off the media agenda (as he more or less did with gay marriage). Rumors that his wife used the derogative "Whitey" stalked him throughout. As late as September, a Yahoo-AP poll revealed some important information about the race issue. When asked "how much discrimination against blacks" exists, 10 percent of whites said "a lot" and 45 percent said "some." In contrast, among blacks, 57 percent said "a lot" and all but a fraction of the rest said "some."

Obama was able to preempt his opposition from baiting him with issues like affirmative action. Instead of completely opposing it, he called for expanding it to poor whites, while denying it to privileged blacks like his own two daughters. Instead of falling into the trap of exclusive language, he went inclusive. This may be part of the reason why he was more popular than Kerry with white male voters, even though they still favored McCain, a point his team carefully considered. Therein lay the paradox that race didn't play much of a role in this election. It didn't play an overtly big role, it played a covertly big role, erupting on the media agenda inconsistently, partly due to Obama's astute maneuvering.

Nonetheless, race haunted him with religion rumor bombs on the Internet. Viral emails and comments on blogs claimed he was a Muslim and an Arab, often with appeals to the supposed evidence of his name, which was ruthlessly exploited in turns such as "Obama Bin Laden," and Barack HUSSEIN Obama. He was said to have been raised in Muslim schools, and was not even born in the U.S. These rumor bombs laid the ground for later ones that claimed he was a terrorist, their circulation aided by Palin's innuendos up to election day. He "pal-ed around" with former Weather Underground "terrorist" Bill Ayers, she said. Videotaped excerpts of McCain-Palin rallies demonstrate a widespread repetition of this tripartite rumor bomb, never mind the obvious contradiction with the earlier attacks on Obama for his association with Christian minister Jeremiah Wright.

Obama dealt with these latter attacks astutely. Careful not to reproduce the rumor bombs himself, he benefited from important character testimonials, the most powerful of which may have been the endorsement by Colin Powell in the last month of the election (even while pundits like Sean Hannity accused him of simple race favoritism). He spoke of his great capitalist friend Warren Buffet, which allowed him to partly defuse rumor bombs that he was a socialist. He spent money on well-crafted ads (and before that, a book/recording) that told how his very life was a version of the American Dream. Unlike some past candidates, he was hardly privileged, even though his achievements took him to the top of his class at Harvard law school, and beyond.

One could also consider the well-wrought, competitive cliches that formed Obama's brand, which were influenced by recent research into the effects of particular words on the brain and its emotional responses. Not more government, but better leadership. Not more taxes, but a break for the middle-class, the middle-class, the middle-class. Change. Hope. McCain was linked with Bush, stasis, depression, dishonesty, as much as McCain tried vainly to emphasize his "maverick" record and life testament to patriotism.

All of these skillful messages and responses should be considered within the context of his fundraising. He and his team not only responded well in message; they also diffused them strategically and widely, which cost money.

3. Negotiation of Media Convergence
Obama's communication strategies also must be viewed not just in terms of their content but also their groundbreaking genres and forms, again a product more of his organization than of him as a man of superior abilities. His campaign negotiated convergence culture, the contemporary collision of old and new forms of media, from newspapers, radio, and TV, to satellite, Internet, text messages, and video games. Some of the most groundbreaking included buying "stealth" ads embedded within the sets of X-system video games; and a satellite Obama channel with 24-7 ads. His team was incredibly up-to-date with especially young adults' complex media consumption habits.

If the Internet was full of dangerous potentially persuasive rumor bombs dropped on vulnerable undecideds, his campaign would update the WWII version of the anti-propaganda “rumor clinic." Instead of relying on factcheck.org, snopes.com, etc. the Obama campaign started their own: Fightthesmears.com

Furthermore, the Obama campaign was hip to the fact that studies show Internet users don't just get their political information from the Internet; they blend it with traditional news sources. Thus, TV and radio ads, and an ultimate ½ hour slot on Oct. 30 (last used by Ross Perot) were complemented by SMS, emails, and viral video (the latter with which the McCain campaign had scored, comparing Obama's allegedly hollow celebrity status to Paris Hilton). Again, these strategies were brilliant but could not have been executed as effectively without powerful financial backing and labor. And yet, despite all these factors that exceed the man himself and on which his successful candidature was necessarily dependent, one can not deny that he is a man of extraordinary talent.

4. Obama’s own communication skills
Obama was calm, respectful, affable (not too stiff, not too loose), more gaffe-proof than his opposition. As James Fallows reminded us in a keen preview of the debates, image is everything; it is the argument. "As with trial testimony, job interviews, and blind dates, seeing people interact is the only way to understand what is going on," Fallows wrote. "We don’t watch debates to learn what someone thinks about Social Security. We watch to see how the contenders look next to their opponents, how they react when challenged, how well or poorly they come up with the words we later see in print." Thus, McCain was seen as condescending, not deigning to look directly at Obama. He was parodied as senile, wandering around the stage, looking for his dog Mr. Puddles, as John Stewart joked. Or he was racist, said some pundits when during the last debate McCain referred to Obama as "That one!" Obama, on the other hand, remained cool, showing human warmth from time to time with moderate laughs, and grins. His performances were free of eye-rolling, frustrated sighs, and cheesily memorable phrases of recent predecessors.

One should not forget that Obama also responded eloquently on the spot during key events. When McCain sought to construct himself as the heroic statesman willing to drop his campaign until he could broker a senate package for the financial crisis, calling for the postponement of the second debate, Obama quipped, "Presidents are going to have to deal with more than one thing at a time; it is not necessary for us to think we can do only one thing and suspend everything else." Similarly, when Palin's terrorist-crony accusations were at a high pitch and he was asked about his relationship to Bill Ayers, Obama was able to turn the ethical question back on the McCain-Palin campaign. “This is someone who committed despicable acts 40 years ago when I was only eight,” Obama insisted, leaving his audience to infer that the association was an illogical, dishonest smear. One could go on with the examples, perhaps revisiting his struggle with Hillary Clinton. But the fact stands: despite Obama's considerable oratorical prudence, it is unclear his own qualities and message could’ve carried the day without all the other confluence of factors in his favor, which brings us to media coverage.

5. The media coverage: agenda, distribution of attention, and bias charges
Recent studies have shown that Obama received more coverage/attention overall than did McCain, while Sara Palin received more than Joe Biden. Likewise, Obama received more "positive" coverage than McCain, while Palin received more negative coverage than Biden.
But there are other inferences besides bias that can be drawn from this data. For many Americans Obama was an obscure public figure in national public life when this campaign began. McCain and Biden have had considerably longer careers in national public life, McCain especially after having been Bush's major challenger for the nomination in 2000. Palin was perhaps even less known than Obama. One could interpret this data as evidence that the media was serving an important democratic function, giving the public important information it needed to make a serious electoral decision.

Additionally, consider the abilities of the candidates again and the material they provided to reporters and unofficial newscasters, such as John Stewart, Stephen Colbert, Jay Leno and Saturday Night Live. There were not really the risible pseudo-events that the French John Kerry provided, riding a motorcycle into the Tonight Show, or going hunting, both to reassure voters of his masculinity attacked by Swiftboaters and French-callers. On the other hand, McCain, as has already been mentioned, provided plenty of visual joke fodder. But it was nothing compared to Palin's airheaded interview with Katie Couric, and comments about not really knowing what the vice-president does, as well as spying Russia from Alaska as somehow training her for foreign policy work. It was not necessarily that the media favored one over the other, though I'm sure some reporters were as horrified as other citizens by the base populism Palin peddled to cover up her appalling ignorance.

Besides, the Obama-as-celebrity phenomenon fit nicely with contemporary news values which love celebrity in general. It's difficult to put it any more precisely than conservative CNN Headline News host Glenn Beck, who observed (CNN.com, 7/24/08), ‘The Media’ aren’t around for their health, they’re around to make money, and if Obama drives sales or ratings, then I can’t really blame them for continuing to tap that well until it runs dry.” Besides, the celebrity treatment was hardly all backrubs. The rumor bombs about race, religion, and terrorism belong to the widespread culture of infotainment.

The Caveat
In conclusion, a candidate, even a great one, is the product of a complex economic and symbolic process that certainly transcends his or her own personal abilities. And in addition, there is always the factor of historical specificity. The issue agenda partly responded to events beyond the control of the candidates. Immigration issues faded into the Iraq war, which faded into the economy, which was abruptly overtaken by the more specific financial crisis. Gay marriage, abortion, affirmative action, immigration--past Republican wedge issues--did not play well on the mainstream agenda, even if Obama had the difficult choice of largely ignoring them. Obama was making history, just as history was making him.

Just as Carter was severely weakened by a hostage situation beyond his control and a sluggish economy in 1980, McCain was the party brand associated with a disastrous war in Iraq and the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression. No matter how much he cried "maverick," he was still the bearer of a discredited brand, a man who though a great patriot lacked rhetorical skills to tame history, evidenced by his visual and verbal gaffes. Obama had to take advantage of this situation or lose it. Obama performed outstandingly, and 40 years after the assassination of Martin Luther King, he has made history while all the world looks on at his indisputable greatness.

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5 Reasons Why Obama is Human (not Jesus, or Mohammed)

2008-11-05T04:18:00.012+01:00

Shakespeare famously wrote that some men are born into greatness; some achieve greatness; and others have greatness thrust upon them. Political Communication scholars would add that some have communications teams that spend great time and money in constructing greatness.
Barack Obama is a great man, with excellent communication talents, but that is not enough to have won this election alone. Consider these five reasons, and a caveat....
Stayed tuned for this post in its entirety appearing on a bigger site.

Rumor Bomb Shelter, Election '08: Congratulation, Survivors

2008-11-04T20:15:00.000+01:00

As in the last American presidential election's Swiftboating and name-calling "French!", rumoresque communication was a staple of election 2008. The most widespread of these rumors claims that Barack Obama is a Muslim, an Arab, and a terrorist (by association), though another extreme form appeared the last week of October when a woman told police she was attacked by a black man for being a McCain supporter. This species of political rumor deserves its own name, which I call the Rumor Bomb. The pervasiveness of rumor bombs demonstrates a new kind of disorientation and volatility in American political media, even if political rumors themselves are timeless.

What exactly is a rumor bomb? A rumor bomb (RB) is a public statement whose truth is in question (classic definition of rumor). Did John Kerry lie about his military record? Did George W. Bush lie about his National Guard service? Does Obama have ties to terrorists? Did Saddam Hussein have WMD's and/or ties to Al Qaeda? A public issue is made of the claim's uncertain truth status. And in many cases the status is deliberately ambiguous for innuendo's sake, which leads to its transformation from claim to question.

Second, a RB is a rumor dropped in a context of public anxiety or uncertainty about a political group, figure, or cause, which the rumor bomb overcomes or transfers onto an opponent. The U.S. is in the greatest financial crisis since the 1930s, is fighting two wars that have been marketed as a war on "terror" or terrorism, and its president hasn't had a plus 50% approval rating in years. That's public uncertainty and anxiety about a country's leadership and its future. Enter rumor the tri-partite rumor. Similar to John Kerry is "French" in the context of freedom fries and images of supposedly mass protests against French "treason" by Americans pouring out their $14 bottles of Beaujolais Nouveau.

Third, a RB has a clearly partisan even if an anonymous source (eg. "an unnamed advisor to the president"), which seeks to profit politically from the rumor bomb's diffusion. Witness Jerome R. Corsi, the man who in 2004 joined forces with The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth by publishing the best-selling rumor bomb "Unfit for Command," which of course attacked John Kerry's war decorations, courage, and leadership. In August he publishedObama Nation. It entered the NY Times bestseller list at #1 and has been widely quoted in the rumors' multi-media tours. Or the Clinton campaign volunteer who happily circulated the viral e-rumor. Also like the "unnamed White House official" who during the 2003 declarations of Democratic presidential candidacy told the New York Times John Kerry was "French-looking."

Lastly, RB's appear and circulate in a culture of rapid electronic diffusion. The rapid diffusion is partly technologically motivated: the inter-media influences of the internet, TV, cable, radio, print, cell phones and digital cameras/video. It's partly business motivated: dwindling resources for journalistic fact-checking, incentives to accept PR press releases, in an information culture that supposedly demands constant updates and entertaining stories. It's also partly due to the professionalization of politics, where communications experts study what the news wants in business terms and tries to control it with staged events and highly scripted addresses and interviews. All of these characteristics together form the contemporary uniqueness of RB's, making it different than political rumors of the past. And there are signs that we will only see more of them.

The latest RB was dropped October 26 in Pittsburgh by 20-year-old college student and McCain campaign volunteer Ashley Todd, who faked an assault and robbery report to Pittsburgh police in hopes to benefit some anti-Obama media publicity. In her report to police, she claimed it was a politically motivated attack by a black man who, after seeing she had a McCain sticker, pinned her to the ground and scratched a "B" for "Barack Obama" into her face. It took only one day between the report and the debunking. However, the influential Drudge Report quickly announced it as news, and other media outlets followed suit. Something quite similar happened in France in July 2004, which led then-President Jacques Chirac to address the nation over racial tolerance, after which the hoax was revealed. The ability of both amateur and professional political communicators to set mainstream news agendas speaks volumes to the disorientation, danger, and paradoxical democratic nature of their production.

A testament to the acknowledged seriousness of this form of political speech lay in the reaction of the Obama team, which chose to fight back with more than interviews with journalists. If the Internet was full of dangerous potentially persuasive rumor bombs dropped on vulnerable undecideds, his campaign would update the WWII version of the anti-propaganda “rumor clinic." Instead of relying on factcheck.org, snopes.com, etc. the Obama campaign started their own: Fightthesmears.com

If there have always been unverified claims printed in "professionalized" journalism (before that turn, of course, rumor was a news staple), the degree to which they are sliding in and also swirling about both new and old media forms we consume suggests we are in a very new kind of convergence culture, even if the damage their users' inflict can not guarantee an election triumph. In fact, when they're discredited too quickly they may backfire on the political brand they hoped to benefit. Political Communication has never been so volatile.

So Much for Republican Free Marketeers and the War on Terror

2008-09-20T12:11:00.004+02:00

From the Washington Post
"Historic Market Bailout Set in Motion
Sat, Sep 20, 2008 6:00 AM
The Bush administration yesterday proposed a historic $500 billion bailout of financial firms that would let the government rather than the cold judgment of the marketplace decide the winners and losers from the crisis that has shaken the U.S. economy for the past year."

Another article notes that the bailout would be more than the budget for the Pentagon! Compare that $500 billion to the Federal budget on Education and Training: $89.9 billion last year.

These are the same bunch who have been blathering about how Big Government and "oppressive" taxes kill the economy/market, which just needs to be free of that same Big Government. What kind of social programs, to say nothing of levees and roads repaired, could be paid for with that 500 billion? And the billions on the war to make us save from terrorism?
And do these hypocrites sleep easy? Dark, dark times.

Just below that WP headline was this one: "A Modernized Taliban Thrives in Afghanistan
Sat, Sep 20, 2008 6:00 AM
KABUL, Sept. 19 -- Just one year ago, the Taliban insurgency was a furtive, loosely organized guerrilla force that carried out hit-and-run ambushes, burned empty schools, left warning letters at night and concentrated attacks in the southern rural regions of its ethnic and religious heartland."
The most expensive, supposedly well-equipped and -trained military force in the world can't seem to break this bunch of ragtag guerillas. Modern understandings of warfare must be undergoing a serious revolution. As are global bragging rights...
New world, same old tired rhetoric from this inept bunch.

Rumor Bombs in Presidential Campaign 2008

2008-09-14T14:16:00.009+02:00

Almost four years ago I started a scholarly research project I call The Rumor Bomb. I was struck by what seemed the increasingly large number of unverifiable claims that were being circulated during the Bush first term, some of which turned out to be false, or deliberately misleading (WMD's, Iraq-Al Qaeda links)

Last Saturday a high-level Bush administration official was quoted as saying the American military had an important new weapon technology. The context was a story in the French daily Liberation, which was discussing the issue of Pakistan's sovereignty faced with recent illegal American military raids inside its borders, and also discussing the number of civilians killed as the result of these raids. The war technology claim came as a kind of threat rumor, a kind of time honored war rumor which occassionally turns out to be true. It is very old rumor strategy indeed, for Genghis Khan is said to have made more willing victims of his enemies by sending PR agents ahead of his armies, spinning tales of their ferocity (sometimes true, sometimes invented). With the U.S. government and its military, of course one never knows whether it's true or not; whether it's the next atomic bomb or not. It's not as if they don't have a budget to produce such new technologies--which is precisely the power of rumor in that case.

The rumor bombs have been dropping sans cesse. One of the most damaging at the moment for Obama is the RB that he is a muslim. Is is the case with any rumor bomb, it was launched by a political opponent (read here). This is a strategy similar to those used in the last election to discredit John Kerry. He was accused by the Swift Boaters to have been illegitimately decorated for war heroism. But the RB that most resembles the RB Obama is a Muslim is the RB that John Kerry was French. In both cases, it is not clear exactly what the statement is claiming. That is the power of the RB. Kerry grew up spending summers in Bretagne. He has a cousin there today. He speaks fluent French. Do these characteristics make him French? What does it mean to be French? A French citizen? Someone with stereotypically French cultural traits? The sign "French" was often associated with Kerry's alleged "haughtiness," cowardice, and perhaps worse, "socialistic" policy ambitions. But it would not have had any power had it not been for the context in which it was dropped. That context was the media frenzy over France's opposition to the American invasion of Iraq, which was met with wild images of Americans pouring bottles of fine French wine into sewers, slogans of "freedom fries," and calls by Bill O'Reilly et al. for an American boycott of French products until French president Chirac apologized for his "betrayal."

Similarly, the Obama rumor is based on little more than the fact that Obama's father grew up in a family of muslim faith, even though by college he was an avowed atheist (see here). Obama is a muslim? Like John Kerry is French (which continues even today in the self-described conservative chambers of discourse)

The exploding viral pieces of these bombs are difficult to contain. Giving them any attention assists in their viral expansion. On the one hand, they are often absurd claims that one is disgusted to give any response. And yet, they travel and address audiences, claim believers. As cognitive psychologists have argued, people's perceptions are framed by prior references. If one has heard a host of negative stereotypes (stereotypes can occasionally be beneficial to their referent, no?) about the French prior to the statement that frames John Kerry is French, and probably coming from the media blitz about the French opposition to the U.S. invading Iraq, it is not hard to understand one accepts the claim when it comes from one's trusted news source. And so it is with Obama. Never a practicing muslim, Obama is rumor-bombed as having been (or even secretly still being) such. Illogical associations, such as having attended a public school in Jakarta (where Islam is quite widespread in daily life) with no religious affiliation whatsoever are circulated near and far, as CNN tried to debunk last January.

Does it matter? Well, consider some of these soundbites major news organizations have circulated. Before Obama's May trip to Florida, the NY Times interviewed several Jews there.

Mr. Obama is Arab, Jack Stern’s friends told him in Aventura. (He’s not.)

He is a part of Chicago’s large Palestinian community, suspects Mindy Chotiner of Delray. (Wrong again.)

Mr. Wright is the godfather of Mr. Obama’s children, asserted Violet Darling in Boca Raton. (No, he’s not.)

Al Qaeda is backing him, said Helena Lefkowicz of Fort Lauderdale (Incorrect.)

Michelle Obama has proven so hostile and argumentative that the campaign is keeping her silent, said Joyce Rozen of Pompano Beach. (Mrs. Obama campaigns frequently, drawing crowds in her own right.)

Mr. Obama might fill his administration with followers of Louis Farrakhan, worried Sherry Ziegler. (Extremely unlikely, given his denunciation of Mr. Farrakhan.)"

These rumor bombs may not be enough to sink Obama, but they sure do make for an even more unpredictably dangerous journey.

The Rumor Bomb: A Convergence Theory of New and Old Trends in American Mediated Politics

2008-08-16T09:51:00.009+02:00

Pdf Here
It originally appeared here:
Harsin, Jayson. The Rumour Bomb: Theorising the Convergence of New and Old Trends in Mediated US Politics [online]. Southern Review: Communication, Politics & Culture; Volume 39, Issue 1; 2006; 84-110
Was reprinted, in abbreviated version here: Michael Ryan (ed.). 2008. Cultural Studies: An Anthology. London: Blackwell.
The theory has been significantly changed (forthcoming) and is previewed here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rumor
JH

THE RUMOUR BOMB
THEORISING THE CONVERGENCE OF NEW AND
OLD TRENDS IN MEDIATED US POLITICS)
Jayson Harsin
Abstract
III
.
This paper examines several key transformations in mediated
American politics that both encourage the use of rumour as a
privileged communication strategy and promise its efficacy.
Changing institutional news values, communication technologies,
and political public relations (PR) strategies have
converged to produce a profoundly vexing relationship
between rumour and verification, which is exploited by
politicians with anti-deliberative aims of managing belief.
Further, the paper argues that these developments are usefully
viewed through Paul Virilio's theory of Pure War, in
which rumour can be seen as part of a larger propaganda
strategy to eliminate deliberative politics and manage a population
for the purposes of consumerism and war.
NOTE: The major distinguishing characteristics of the "rumor bomb" have recently been revised as such:
1. A crisis of verification. A crisis of verification is perhaps the most salient and politically dangerous aspect of rumour. Berenson (1952) defines rumour as a kind of persuasive message involving a proposition that lacks 'secure standards of evidence' (Pendleton 1998).\
2. A context of public uncertainty or anxiety about a political group, figure, or cause, which the rumor bomb overcomes or transfers onto an opponent.
3. A clearly partisan even if an anonymous source (eg. "an unnamed advisor to the president"), which seeks to profit politically from the rumor bomb’s diffusion.
4. A rapid diffusion via highly developed electronically mediated societies where news travels fast.

,.....
Saddam Hussein has longstanding, direct and
continuing ties to terrorist networks.. .Iraq has sent
bomb-making and document forgery experts to work
with al Qaeda. Iraq has also provided al Qaeda with
chemical and biological weapons training.
American president George W. Bush made this well-circulated statement
on 8 February 2003. Over a year later, in June 2004, Chief
Weapons Inspector David Kay stated, 'We simply didn't find any evidence
of extensive links with al Qaeda, or for that matter any real links
at all' (Kranish & Bender 2004). Yet the Bush administration continued
to launch and the news media continued to circulate softer variations
on Bush's original strong claim of 'longstanding, direct and continuing
ties'. As recently as March 2005, polls showed that over half of all
Americans still believed Saddam Hussein had Weapons of Mass
Destruction (WMD) before the US invasion of Iraq, while 60 per cent
still believed Hussein played a role in aiding al Qaeda with 9/11
(http://abcnews.go.com/Politics I PollVaultl story?id=582744&page=2).
Regardless of the veracity of claims, belief persists. The relationship
between tenuous claims, their circulation, and the appearance
and persistence of belief points to a common strategy in contemporary
American political practice-the rumour bomb. In this paper I will
84 Southem Review 39.1 (2006)
.. -" ", -
The Rumour Bomb 85
examine several key transformations in mediated American political
discourse that encourage the use of rumour as a privileged communication
strategy and that promise its efficacy. The paper argues that
changing institutional news values, communication technologies, and
political public relations (PR) strategies have converged to produce a
profoundly vexing relationship between rumour and verification,
which is exploited by politicians with anti-deliberative aims of managing
belief.
The strategic use and (sometimes) careless circulation of rumour
characterises the current climate of American media and politics.2
These reasons are often discussed in passing in literature on the beleaguered
American public sphere, new market pressures and changing
news values in news media, and the banality of rumour's success in
war situations. But these phenomena must be viewed together in a
theory of convergence if we are to better explain the turn to rumour
from the position of production, mediation, circulation, and reception,
where it may reinforce already held beliefs, produce new ones, or
simply reinforce a paralysing cynicism about a mediated democratic
spectacle.
While war communication, especially in the form of propaganda,
has traditionally had clear goals of producing belief, consent and
behaviour, it is usually assumed to be categorically different from
peacetime democratic political communication practices. The paper
challenges common assumptions that wartime mediated politics is significantly
different from peacetime mediated politics. For example, in
Don't Believe It! HowLiesBecomeNews, Alexandra Kitty writes,
Wartime is a different reality than peacetime: chaos and the
drive for mere survival taints the way people see the world
around them. Lawlessness isn't just present on the battlefield,
but also in the way people communicate with one another. If it
takes lying to defeat the enemy, then so be it (2005, p. 140).
I argue that this distinction has imploded in significant ways illustrated
throughout this paper. The style and institutional conditions for
war and peace mediated politics are very much the same today,
though they refer to different phenomena in the world. Key here is
deliberative democracy.
At least since Periclean Athens, democracy has been theorised as a
political form characterised by open political debate. Deliberate distortions,
intimidation, exclusion, and discourse reduced to emotional
appeals resulting in paranoia have been regarded as destabilising if
not destructive to the political culture of democracy itself.3 Pure War,
however, creates an overarching culture structured by indefinite
potential exterior threat(s). For 50 years this was the Cold War. Today
the Bush administration's agenda in the War on Terror (from communication
to policy initiatives such as the Patriot Act)4 has been deterritorialised
as an information war directed at US citizens as well as
Iraqis, Arab nations, and global citizens (Bolton 2006; Shehata 2002;
r
---
86 SouthernReview39.1 (2006)
Kurtz 2003;Marshall 2003).In this fight the Bushadministration uses
a rhetorical device common in any war-rumour. Yet they use it as a
form of propaganda for domestic as well as war issues. Such communication
practice is the most exaggerated form of a kind of anti-politics
wInhearecliwmaarteanwdhepreeacveteirmifeicactioomnmiusniicnatciorinsis parnacdticdeissorhiaevnetatiiomnplodisedth.se
structure of feeling due to the 'information superhighway' and virtual
reality, information accidents can happen (Virilio 2000). But some
information bombs are not accidents. Rumour becomes useful and
dangerous.
What is a Rumour?
Rumour is deployed strategically when one or more of the following
characteristics exist: 1) a crisis of verification; 2) the need to eliminate
public uncertainty and restore social stability; 3) a condition of political
anxiety, used to transfer anxiety and uncertainty onto an opponent;
and while it may include interpersonal communication, it is (4)
most characteristic of highly developed electronically mediated societies
where news travels fast. Rumour mongering then requires a definition
of rumour. The concept, however, is wide open. However,
verification is central to an understanding.
Rumour as crisis of verification
A crisis of verification is perhaps the most salient and politically dangerous
aspect of rumour. Berenson (1952) defines rumour as a kind of
persuasive message involving a proposition that lacks 'secure standards
of evidence' (Pendleton 1998). Something mayor may not be the
case. An official source or a leak asserts something is the case. The
reporter must verify the claim, through direct observation or through
other reliable sources, in accordance with professional rules of
reporting and codes of ethics (Mencher 2000, pp. 42~5, 755-57). And
while rumour has been distinguished from gossip by some scholars
who emphasise that rumour is about issues of public importance circulated
through mass media, and gossip is interpersonal and about
trivial matters, changes in news values and personalisation of politics
have made such a distinction problematic. Bordia and Difonzo (2004,
p. 33) claim that rumour is different from news, but their claim is not
empirically sustainable as this paper illustrates.
Global news today is in crisis, for it is increasingly difficult to
define 'news' in an age of new inter-media news agenda setting
marked by the decline of institutional authority to socially construct
'news' (Della Carpini & Williams 2(01), and by changes in editing and
story acceptance due to new news market pressures and the dominance
of speed. In fact, news and rumour are increasingly blurred for
a convergence of reasons outlined in this paper. Moreover, it could be
/,,~~'L
The Rumour Bomb 87
argued that rumour's power to hail subjects is more politically important
and pervasive in a society heavily mediated by PR.
What, then, is the difference between a rumour and a lie? Lies are
untrue statements, whether the speaker knows it or not.
Rumour seeks to reduce/augment anxiety
As I am using the term, rumour 'relates to a situation about which
there is some uncertainty and a felt need to reduce that uncertainty'
(Pendleton 1998, p. 71). However, when rumour is launched, it does
not eliminate anxiety and uncertainty through logical refutations and
consoling presentations of evidence. It simply eliminates the feeling of
anxiety and uncertainty by transferring it to a new object (often a
scapegoat), or by using strategically ambiguous language that may
dupe uncritical audiences with the appearance of certainty and reliability.
In a country like the US, it is politically impossible for a president
to start an open war without providing the public with
arguments to support such a grave decision. Reasons must supposedly
be given for a public to evaluate.6 However, in the present conjuncture
unverifiable claims are reported; they are even used to launch wars, as
was the case with unverified asserted links between al Qaeda and
Saddam Hussein and Hussein's alleged possession of WMD.
Rhetoricians may object that 'the art of rhetoric' has as its subject
matter contingent issues that must be acted upon, such as war, but
which are ideally subjected to careful deliberative scrutiny. Yet there is
evidence that the very claims from which such reasoning currently
takes place are often deliberately false, unverifiable, or purely fallacious
(such as emotional appeals and non sequiturs).
In many cases such as that of WMD or the Iraq-al Qaeda relationship,
it is difficult to argue these claims are outright lies. Moreover, if
conflicting sources are revealed later, versions of such rumours may
enter a new stage of strategic ambiguity where obfuscatory termsspin-
serve as damage control against accusations of lying? This is as
true in Clinton's claim that he did not have 'sexual relations with that
woman' as with Bush's claim that there were longstanding 'ties'
between Hussein and al Qaeda.
sRoucmieotiuers is charaderised by speed and electronically mediated
While rumour is not a novel political strategy, its ability to spread
rapidly has accelerated its reach and use. Rumour in the nineteenth
century existed but lacked widespread accessible technologies to circulate
quickly and broadly. Today the uncertainty caused by a crisis in
gatekeeping, itself stemming from market pressures to entertain and
to report quickly for scoops, gives rumour a unique circulatory power
and thus opportunity to be exploited by political PR.
--
11'
88 Soutl,em Review 39.1 (2006)
Prelude to the ConveRrugmenocuer TBhoemorbys: Some Examples of
!II
.
While it is difficult to measure the degree to which rumour is
exploding in contemporary American mediated politics, what is clear
is thousands of rumours, hoaxes and urban legends circulate on the
Internet, in printed pamphlets, newspapers, TV, and by word of
mouth (often originating in one of these forms and then proliferated
by the others). These rumours come to demand the political and personal
energy and attention of significant numbers of politicians, journalists,
commentators, and citizens ensnared by their unavoidable
public address. New institutions and organisations for dealing with
this phenomenon, and wide-ranging alarm thereabout, have made a
widespread appearance. Websites have sprung up with the avowed
duty of dispelling hoaxes and confirming or debunking rumours. A
few of the most popular are www.snopes.com.truthorfiction.com. and
factcheck.org
Some of the rumours are even constructed in visual or audiovisual
forms. Doctored photos circulated in 2004 attempted to radicalise and
discredit John Kerry by placing him in a photo with 'Hanoi Jane'
Fcoomndea inat taheVifeotrnmamofanwtih-watar threallAy.mVeriiscuaanl ahnidstoaruiadnio-vDisaunaiell rBuomoorustrisn
called pseudo-events. In his 1961 book The Image, Boorstin was already
describing a US politics and news media marked by PR attempts to
plan and execute 'happenings' (pseudo-events) as if they were spontaneously
occurring. Perhaps the greatest news media pseudo-event in
recent memory is the rescue of Private Jessica Lynch during the
American invasion of Iraq. Reports in the Washington Post and elsewhere
told of her mistreatment by Iraqis in a hospital and her heroic
rescue by American soldiers risking their lives for a comrade in arms.
Lynch later publicly condemned the Bush administration for
exploiting her in an overdramatised partly false story (Kampfner
2003). One could also add the dramatisation of Saddam Hussein's
statue being toppled (http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/
0703-02.htm).
In US politics, it is rarely the executive himself who launches the
rumour, though WMD and the alleged Iraq-al Qaeda 'link' are significant
exceptions. Several commentators have observed a political
strategy where front groups, surrogate public officials, or anonymous
sources (leaks) launch the rumour, which allows the executive (or
other political figure) to profit from the rumour while appearing to be
morally above the rumour-mongering himself (Kurtz 2003). It has
been reported that this strategy has been practised ruthlessly by
Bush's primary strategist Karl Rove for many years. Rove's rumour
bombs are well known to his opponents, especially his repeated use of
homosexual rumours, including those that haunted former Texas governor
Anne Richards, an Alabama Federal judge, and, less promi-
The Rumour Bomb 89
nently and directly, John Kerry (Grimm 2005; Kaiser 2005; Moore 2004;
Green 2004; on the Kerry rumour see Harsin forthcoming, and Rich
2004). As will be discussed shortly, rumour from anonymous leaks has
been especially exploited by the Bush administration under a climate
of secrecy, a state of exception.
Three Convergent Factors Explaining Rumour Bombs
Three major phenomena have converged into a highly formative conjuncture
for political communication and the use of rumour: 1)
changing news values and newsgathering practices influenced by new
communication technologies and increasing concentration of news
organisation ownership; 2) increasing influence of PR on political communication,
especially executive branch information and news management;
and 3) the influence of war communication strategies on
so-called democratic political communication, resulting in an antideliberative
politics or a spectacle of democratic politics.
News media market and newsgathering practices
Changes in news media market and institutional codes of newsgathering
can be divided into four subgroups: concentration, values,
speed, and secrecy.
First, corporate mergers have increased the pressures toward
speed and expanding viewer- and readerships, and the demand for
ever increasing profit. The phenomena of horizontal and vertical
media convergences and strategies of synergy have helped blur the
boundaries between news and entertainment. Entertainment and
tabloid reporting have long been characterised by rumours. Thus, the
traditional codes of ethics and standards of newsgathering are more
frequently bowing to the dictates of profit in a market where 'serious'
and 'soft' news categories are less clearly demarcated. Briefly, I will
note some major reasons why contemporary media market pressures
produce conditions of news gathering and presentation practices
favourable to rumour.
The first important explanation of rumour explosion in news today
can be attributed to cuts in staff and financial resources for investigation
and editing. As Lance Bennett has noted, market forces encourage
a growing acceptance of PR material (including that produced by governments)
in the news: 'As news organisations reduce staff, shrink
rbeulraetiaouns, eavnedntsbecaonmd enemwosre rceolenassceisoubsecoofmbuesdgemtso,rethaettsraucptpivlye oafspnuebwlics
material' (2003, p. 175). In fact, 'routine placement of PR messages as
news is likely to accelerate as corporate mergers combine more media
companies under common ownership' (Bennett 2003, p. 175). I will
return to this trend later when I note the importance of political PR in
rumour launching and circulation illustrated by recent stories about the
J .,~,'."_~.'r _ _ _
90 Southern Review 39.1 (2006)
Bush administration's use of 'fake news' video releases, staged press
conference questions, and the use of 'fake reporters'.
Secondly, this cost-cutting is combined with the market drive for
speed in a news world operating in real time. The explosion of digital
cable, satellite, and the Internet in the late 1980s and early 1990s produced
a more fiercely competitive news market, in which events could
be covered as they happened. Pressures of speed and real-time
reporting sometimes end up in unattributed sources, speculations, and
rumour circulation (Thussu 2003, p. 121). Philip Seib adds, 'news
organisations are more susceptible to such manipulation when desire
for speed outweighs concern about verification' (2004, p. 14). The
Internet's production of information renewed each second has created
strong competition for traditional news organisations, which respond
by trying to continually update stories and headlines on their sites or
emailing headlines to interested netizens. Thus the Internet's acceleration
of information renewal has pressured traditional news media to
follow suit or be left behind. According to David Bohrman, CNN
White House Bureau Chief, 'The media is doing the fact-checking it
can.. .[but] more sources seem to be stepping up to speak who haven't
spoken in the past, and the (news) cycle on cable news is so fast, it's
immediate' (quoted in Deggans 2004). Bohrman calls this under-factchecked
new journalism the 'journalism of assertion', in which 'some
media outlets simply report charges and let the audiences sort it all
out' (quoted in Deggans 2004.). Yet the effect of the Internet is not just
a faster traditional news media with laxer editing standards and gatemkeeedpiian'sg.
neTwhes. Internet is also increasingly the source of traditional
If the Internet is a factor contributing to dwindling audiences for
traditional news media (press and network TV) (see The Pew Research
Centre, 2004, pt. 2), it is also increasingly playing an agenda-setting
role for traditional news media. Some political communication
scholars trace the trend to the influence of Matt Drudge's blog-like
DrudgeReport,which broke the Clinton-Lewinsky affairbefore traditional
elite news media followed suit (Paletz 2002, p. 78; Bennett 2003,
p. 8). Biogs and email have played an increasingly powerful agendasetting
role (sometimes as an alternative agenda to that of the mainstream
news organisations and sometimes as an inter-media agenda
setting) vis-a-vis traditional news organisations. Their influence is
attributed to their speed and low cost, both of which the traditional
news organisations imitate. As a recent article on the phenomenon put
it, 'The comparative advantage of blogs in political discourse, as compared
to traditional media, is their low cost of real-time publication'
(Drezner & Farrell 2004). The same is true of email and electronic discussion
boards. Examples of this new network of influence abound.
But this inter-media agenda setting has also favoured the circulation
of rumour. As Todd Gitlin (2004) has recently pointed out, this
phenomenon has resulted in an increase in rumour circulation in the
-- - -
The Rumour Bomb 91
elite traditional news media because the Internet is, among other
things, a bottomless archive of rumours and lies. Gitlin demonstrates
this phenomenon with the example of a rumour circulated in early
February 2004 that alleged John Kerry, while married, had an affair
with an intern in her twenties. Further alleged was that Kerry
sequestered her in Africa to suppress the circulation of the story, and
that her parents found Kerry 'sleazy' (Gitlin 2004). It happened that
the Drudge Report, then Rupert Murdoch's London-based Sun and The
Times, had posted on their websites a claim that Kerry had had an
affair with an intern. Soon the Wall Street Journal website had followed
suit. While other major newspapers had avoided the story, on
February 13 CNN featured a discussion on what the media should do
about the accusations. In that discussion, commentator Jeff Greenfield
claimed that it didn't matter whether the mainstream traditional
media tried to play gatekeeper, because the internet age had dissolved
such gates: 'in this brave new world of instant communications, literally
tens of millions of people will know about the story no matter
what the networks and top tier newspapers do', Greenfield declared
(quoted in Gitlin 2004). The problem, Gitlin notes, is that there was no
evidence that anything in the story was true. 'Three days later, the
woman in question issued this statement: "I have never had a relationship
with Senator Kerry, and the rumors in the press are completely
false'" (Gitlin 2004). But the problem with this, as well as the
rumours about al Qaeda and Sad dam Hussein, WMD, and WMD
moved to Syria and so forth, is that they demonstrate the greatest
truism of rumour in the contemporary global media network environment:
it is much easier to launch a rumour than to retrieve or
defuse it. One by no means finds shelter from the rumour bomb by
heading to the Internet. On the contrary, it appears to be a major force
minediniaf.luencing the circulation of rumour in more traditional news
In addition, numerous incidents of plagiarism and the conflation
of fact and fiction in American journalism serve as further evidence of
a crisis of verification and a news culture that is an easy target for
rumour bombs. In 2003 New York Timesreporter Jayson Blair was
found to have plagiarised significant parts of several stories and faked
quotes in others. A year later, USA Today reporter Jack Kelly was discovered
to have significantly fabricated parts of many stories over a
ten-year period (Morrison 2004). These examples combined with
rumour infiltrations of the media agenda create a gnawing sense of
uncertainty for consumers of information on websites, in em ails, on
TV, on the radio and in newspapers and magazines. They are a
product of the collapsing authority for agenda-setting and gatekeeping
displaced into the Internet, an information culture characterised
above all by speed and change.8
The Project for Excellence in American Journalism's annual report
for 2005, The Stateof the News Media, emphasises that a major new
~.I
92 Southern Review 39.1 (2006)
trend in 'models of journalism' is 'toward those that are faster, looser,
and cheaper':
[T]he journalism of verification-is one in which journalists
are concerned first with trying to substantiate the facts. It has
ceded ground for years on talk shows and cable to a new journalism
of assertion, where information is offered with little
time and little attempt to independently verify its veracity. The
blogosphere, while adding the richness of citizen voices,
expands this culture of assertion exponentially, and brings to it
an affirmative philosophy: publish anything, especially points
of view, and the reporting and verification will occur afterward
in the response of fellow bloggers. The result is sometimes true
and sometimes false (Project for Excellence in Journalism 2005,
overview).
The American news media is in crisis, as a vast exhibit of resignations,
firings, apologies and scandals attests. To name a few, Jeff
Gannon and Karen Ryan were exposed as fake reporters; Chief News
Executive Eason Jordan resigned from CNN; and The New York Times
and Washington Post apologised for cheerleading the war in Iraq, and
Times reporter Laura Miller's role in particular in that cheerleading.
The issue of the inter-news media agenda-setting here-what
people find interesting or newsworthy on the Internet-also raises the
issue of how entertainment values have become increasingly important
in the news business. As briefly mentioned above, trends of tabloidisation
and infotainment have crept into traditional news media as a way
to retain viewers and deliver them to lucrative advertisers. Tabloid and
entertainment trends have been growing in mainstream American
news throughout the late twentieth century (after an attempt to professionalise
journalism and turn it away from tabloidism in the 1920s), but
most recently with the fragmentation of a mass audience due to the
explosion of cable, the Internet, and less and less interest in traditional
news generally, such organisations' content has been driven closer to
other entertainment genres. As noted ten years ago, MBAs are ruling
the newsrooms with a different set of values and institutional goals
than before (Underwood 1995).9 Some editors and publishers are
openly declaring a market crisis for newspapers and a desire to simply
give customers 1readers whatever they want. In a recent interview with
the Online Journalism Review, former San FranciscoChronicle Vice-president
Bob Cauthorn blamed the financial hardships of newspapers on
the reporters and editors whom, he believes, 'insulate themselves from
the public', are not 'aligned' with their readers, and instead believe
their readers aren't smart enough to determine what sort of news
product they want. Speaking of trends toward celebrity news and
'trash', Cauthorn proclaims, 'If that's what readers want, great. Serve
the reader' (quoted in La Fontaine 2005). Such views are also represented
in journalism's most prestigious professional training grounds.
In a recent lecture, Assistant Dean and Director of Northwestern
~ .<'"!; ~»~~h~ ,~';- The Rumour Bomb 93 University's Medill School of Journalism Janice Castro spoke on the sea change in journalism practices due to the Internet. Castro began by registering the familiar market crisis for print journalism, and then uncritically announced her profit-only considerations of successful journalism. 'We're trying to figure out what people want: she said. 'We want to give them what they want' (Castro 2005). Not only does the uni-dimensional reduction of journalism to marketing raise serious questions for journalism's relationship to democracy, it also suggests how news values of entertainment and profit are a breeding ground for rumour. As BillKovachand TomRosenstielnote in WarpSpeed: It is a newly diversified mass media in which the cultures of entertainment, infotainment, argument, analysis, tabloid, and mainstream press not only work side by side but intermingle and merge...[T]he classic function of journalism to sort out a true and reliable account of the day's events is being undermined. It is being displaced by the continuous news cycle, the growing power of sources over reporters, varying standards of journalism, and a fascination with inexpensive, polarizing argument. The press is also increasingly fixated on finding the 'big story' that will temporarily reassemble the now-fragmented mass audience (1999/2005). To embrace tabloid news values is already to embrace and encourage rumour and scandal in general. Tabloid news doesn't aspire to fact-based journalism and values of objectivity. It seeks to be entertaining. It is no surprise then that with tabloid market trends one should find an accompanying pervasiveness of rumour (Bennett 2003, p. 33; Kovach & RosenstieI1999/2oo5). But in addition to new market and inter-media pressures is it possible to see the problem of rumour as rooted more deeply in the very foundations of journalistic professional culture-in its dependence on official sources. An overdependence on official, possibly manipulative sources is certainly a problem that critics of American professional journalism have long noted (Bennett 2003, p. 125) and plays a role in the convergence of forces that have produced the rumour bomb. The dependence on official sources goes hand in hand with news management and growing PR strategies in political communication over the long twentieth century, which will be addressed shortly, while recently the unquestioning use of 'fake news' video releases, which are actually PR fakes originating in the Executive branch, by mainstream news is telling (see www.prwatch.org/tazonomy/term/120/9). These concerns with belief and news market trends have brought us inevitably to the domain of politics and PR. Thus, while a consideration of new market pressures and journalistic norms helps explain the proliferation of rumour, especially in American news media today, it needs to be viewed in relation to at least two other major factors with iwshPicRh. it importantly converges. The second factor in this convergence 94 Soutllern Review 39.1 (2006) Increasing influence of PR on political communication ~I ~ ~ The technocratisation of American mediated politics is encouraged by long-term media market trends discussed above, which converged with a new kind of managerial rhetoric or the PR-ification of political discourse in the late twentieth century US. A managerial political communication style has been developing since the early twentieth century, and more specific PR-managed politics have emerged since the Eisenhower years (Maarek 1995,p. 11). With the rise of mass electronic media in the twentieth century, and an elite need to direct a national political agenda, came an increasing executive dependence on ever larger White House staffs for communication management purposes (Perloff 1998, pp. 28-30).10The need for strategic communication on the model of PR corresponds to the twentieth century growth of executive power, a phenomenon described as 'the rhetorical presidency' and 'going public' (Kernell 1997; Tulis 1987). Beginning with Theodore Roosevelt, presidents increasingly played a more powerful role in setting a policy agenda by going around Congress, directly to the American people through planned public events and careful management of the news media. They hoped to influence public opinion which in turn would pressure the legislative branch to respond to public opinion accordingly. Ironically, the persuasive power of the executive branch increased as democracy was being expanded to African-Americans, women, and the poor. The response to the anxiety of democracy was, in political communication, PRoThe urge to control and manage the belief of a mass citizenry really started to develop as a serious project in the years directly after World War I, based on the success of the government propaganda apparatus the Committee on Public Information. Returning from war propagandising, founding father of PR Edward Bernays wrote that propaganda was a new power and form of government: The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate the unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power. We are governed, our minds moulded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested largely by men we have never heard of...It is they who pull the wires that control the public mind (1928, p. 47). In 1927, looking back at the period since World War I, the young scholar of propaganda Harold Lasswell wrote that attempts to manage popular belief through the manipulation of "'significant symbols, or...by stories, rumours, reports, pictures and other forms of social communication" had become routine' (quoted in Ewen 1996, p. 174). The 'social and political implications of this development were profound'. Lasswell further observed that 'widespread "discussion about the ways and means of controlling public opinion...testifies to the collapse of the traditional species of democratic romanticism and to the --- The Rumour Bomb 95 rise of the dictatorial habit of mind'" (Ewen 1996, p. 174). From this moment we note the increasing colonisation of American politics by war-conceived PR/propaganda practices in league with the executive branch, and we also note the ongoing lamentations about the decline of public debate and rise of public apathy toward public affairs. While the White House increasingly tried to produce a kind of PR staff to help manage the media and set the public agenda, it was only in the 19505that presidents and their opponents regularly began to use PR firms to sell their agendas (Maarek 1995, p. 11).This trend increased through the 19605.By the time Carter took the presidency in 1976, his strategist Pat Caddell wrote a memo that argued, 'In devising a strategy for the Administration, it is important to recognize we cannot successfully separate politics and government...It is my thesis that governing with public approval requires a continuing political campaign' (Grann 2004). However this trend of news management and PR choroeography has reached its apex with the Bush II administration. 'By 2000', David Grann wrote in The New Yorker, 'the strategists who had once advised a candidate solely during a campaign had moved into the White House' (2004). As George Stephanopolous commented with regard to the changes between Clinton and Bush II, 'Everyone said that our campaign war room in 1991 was the fastest. Now it would be considered Paleolithic' (Grann 2004). Not only are campaign tactics normalised for governing but the communication tactics are themselves institutionally influenced by the twenty-four hour cable and internet news cycle. The welcoming news environment for fakes and propaganda was recently emphasised in the flap over the Bush administration's use of PR firms whose fake news in video news releases were sent to television stations who aired them as if they were stories by independent journalists (http://www.prwatch.org/node/3790). There is ever greater pressure to set news and public agendas and respond to and spin actually existing agendas. Furthermore, the Bush II administration's ability to launch rumours has especially been strengthened by an astute reading of the post-9/11 conjuncture that enables a cultural project of secrecy and unaccountability / mystery. Two major methods of news management in combination with other PR tactics (slogans, pseudo events, obfuscation, spin, polling) are leaks and secrecy. As mentioned earlier, leaks can be strategic on the part of the government's disciplined communication apparatus, which may farm out rumour launching to front groups, or they may leak out of the communication apparatus due to dissent within the ranks. Tabloidesque 'leaks' such as the 2003 claim that John Kerry was 'French-looking' and the more recent Valerie Plame leak were engineered by high ranking members of the administration as kinds of Information Bombs, designed to channel public attention, attack opponents, and control the media and public agenda. Secrecy, sometimes discussed as control of source access, has long been a method of managing the press and perceptions of politics. 1I I 96 Southern Review 39.1 (2006) The Rumour Bomb 97 Indeed, as mentioned earlier, it is at the core of ongoing critiques of twentieth-century fact-based, objective journalism, suggesting that journalists, especially in corporate profit-driven news, can not attain independence from sources. The control of access has been perfected by each succeeding executive administration and other areas of the government and business (Robertson 2005). In an article on the Bush administration's news control in American Journalism Review online, Lori Robertson wrote: A rigid approach to staying on message and a clampdown on accessforreporters and the public have been increasinglyused by the executive branch, a trend that began to take shape during the Reagan administration, if not earlier. The current Bush administration has shown that the method can be perfected, with little to no downside for the White House (2005). Such a disciplined propaganda apparatus has major implications for mediated democratic politics. The latter becomes a carefully choreographed spectacle, all the more successful under the aegis of security. Secrecy, as journalist Bill Moyers recently insisted, threatens a 'selfimmolation' of democracy (2005).Intelligenceexperts view the Bush administration's level of secrecy to be unprecedented (Powers 2004, 2006). [George W. Bush has] held few press conferences and rarely submitted to open questioning, so that even the White House press corps was rife with complaints about being shut out. Secretive and disciplined to begin with, the administration was also adept at using the threat of denied access as another means of bringing to heel reporters who evinced too much challenging independence. And for reporters, especially those covering the White House, no access means no one-on one interviews, no special tips or leaks, exclusion from select events and important trips, and being passed over during question-and-answer periods at those few press conferences that do get held' (Schell 2004, pp. vi-vii). Such a controlled relationship between news mediation and elected government encourages rumour circulation and reception based on trust or faith, thereby jeopardising deliberative democracy. As Thomas Powers notes, applying this state of affairs to the non-deliberation about war with Iraq, 'There was nobody in the public who had the capacity to seriously question the CIA's evidence and arguments. We just had to take it on trust' (2004). In the 'new political universe of faith-based truth...true salvation lies in becoming true believers' (Schell 2004, p. x). One need not be nostalgic for a time when an unbridled watchdog press and a full participatory democracy existed (of course they have not) to note clear differences in the way US political discourse has been practised and covered by news media from the nineteenth century to the present. Indeed, the great irony may be that with the increasing enfranchisement of more parts of the population (the poor, African- Americans, women), the more exclusive, irrational, trivial, emotional aanndd cviirscuualal timone.diated public discourse has become in its production What have been the results of increasing political PR in mediated American political discourse combined with changing news market pressures and values? I will briefly rehearse some of these well known qualities of a structurally dilapidated American mediated political discourse. According to Kathleen Jamieson's widely read account (1988), contemporary public address is perhaps most characterised by its mediated time compression. Today news media select and present soundbites, cropping larger discourses and arguments. Likewise, politicians have adapted their mode of address to the technology that mediates, transforms, and circulates it. In the past people were allowed to consider speeches and arguments in their entirety. Speeches were also reprinted in newspapers and aired on early radio in their entirety. Today politicians produce slogans in hopes of getting them picked up as soundbites for news. From 1968-1988, the average TV news soundbite afforded presidential candidates dropped from 42 seconds to 10 seconds. Even lower in 2000 (Paletz 2002, p. 223; Jamieson 1988, p. 8 ). A similar story of time-compression applies to the recent history of political ads. In 1948 one-half hour radio blocks were the norm; in 1956, five minutes on TV; by the 1970s, one minute on TV. Today, the norm is 15-30 seconds on TV (Jamieson 1988, pp. 9-10; Paletz 2002, p. 229). There have been corresponding changes in the overall style of political communication. Politicians used to go through the history of an issue, addressing proposed alternatives. Such attention to history aanndd aedngvaogcaetmesentusewdithtooupspeodsirnagmavtiiseawtisonis raanred. eFmurotthioernmomreo,re ptooliaticccioamnspany rational argumentation; today audiences of political speech often get little else but dramatisation, assertions, and strategic, branded visual associations. In the past, key terms used to be defined (such as 'weapons of mass destruction' or freedom). Today, glittering generalities dominate. Playing into the new media values for drama and scandal, name-calling (ad hominem) is more common than addressing an opponent's arguments. Thus, says Jamieson, audiences are often left with the likelihood of simply embracing positions that are already theirs, or they may embrace a politician and his/her claims out of blind partisan loyalty (1988, pp. 10-12; Swanson 2004, pp. 50--1). Many of these developments that Jamieson outlines are the result of advocates and politicians adapting to new media business values, structures, and news gathering practices on which the circulation of public address depends. To better ensure news will publicise well crafted messages, political actors have increasingly depended on PR professionals to design speech strategy. ~ I 98 Southern Review 39.1 (2006) These trends help explain both the news coverage of the rum ours discussed above and why the Bush administration would use them, which also explains how many Bush voters and viewers of Fox News were left to blindly follow their party's suggestions or to choose what awreeretresnimdspleinrAeimteeraritcioanns noefwtshemiredoiwanabsealiebfuss,injuesstsifieadndoirnnaout.diBenuct etshesien American culture that have been complicit if not wholly active in the process and in the way American politics has responded to them. Scholars like Ewen (1996) have identified the rise of a 'dictatorial habit of mind' in the PR-politics nexus of the 1920s and J. Michael Sproule has referred to the same phenomenon as characterising a turn from individual political rhetoric aimed at influencing reflective publics to the new 'managerial rhetoric' that continues today, where speakers are symbols for larger institutions whose goal is to shape and control public opinion and behaviour (1983, 1997). But this was not simply a business phenomenon and we would be missing some of the factors producing the convergence of rumour and belief if we didn't turn to the influence of military communication agendas. Militarisation of political communication practices The style of political communication that has become dominant in the last ten years in the US is most closely modelled on traditional war propaganda style and information management, which as Lasswell observed, developed out of World War I (Sproule 1997, p. 33; Cook 1998, p. 52; Cutlip et al. 2000, pp. 123--4). The present-day control of source access, the use of press and video releases, surrogate speakers, dramatisation and message coordination, as well as coercion, all form a sophisticated media management apparatus that mirrors war communications apparatuses such as the US World War I Committee on Public Information (CPI).l1 The CPI bombarded local media markets with official press releases that 'stayed on message' (Ewen 1996, p. 111).They launched releases by mail and telegraph 24 hours a day. Trying to cater to news values, they also syndicated their own human interest stories to appeal to a range of news and entertainment readers. Just as the CPI tried to manage the unpredictable immigrant populations by making contacts with over 600 foreign langHuoaugsee nOewffiscpeapoefrsCoamnmd upnuicbaltiisohninsg siennd1s9 slaantegluliategesin, tetrovdieawy stheto Wnihcihtee media markets. While the CPI used newsreels and Hollywood talent to boost support for the war, contemporary White House and Defense Department PR uses video releases and issue ads (to say nothing of the Defense Department's ongoing relationship with Hollywood and the video game industry). In the CPI, Director George Creel noted that 'people do not live by bread alone; they live mostly by catch phrases' (Ewen 1996, p. 112);today Communications staff labour to provide the news with catchy slogans that will be repeated ad nauseam. Ewen notes - ---- The Rumour Bomb 99 the CPI abandoned 'fact-oriented journalism' for a type of political persuasion more akin to advertising, relying on emotional appeals and a 'language of images' (Ewen 1998, p. 113); Jamieson (1988) notes that political discourse today is characterised by hyper-dramatisation, hyper-visualisation, 'hit and run' name-calling and assertions without support. Would we be remiss to begin thinking about mediated US public discourse from the perspective of war and government techniques of population control as much as from the perspectives of market logics and consumer tastes? These trends appear to have started after World War I and, with the convergence of factors described above, have reached their closest state of similarity in the present. It is here that we see recent uses of rumour for what they are-information control strategies, aimed at producing consent, belief in or cynical paralysis towards larger policies positioned in a state of Pure War. By viewing these characteristics of war communication in convergence with US cultural and political developments in governmentality, we can start to see a general anti-democratic tendency of US government communication practices in the service of technocratic population control. This means that it is in error to consider contemporary American politics as mainly about debating issues that will set an agenda for public policy. Equally, it is in error to conduct analyses of American news media and their treatment of politics as if they were somehow detached observers and/ or watchdogs critical to the debate and vigilance necessary for robust democracy. Rather, the militarisation of communication practices, in league with technological and market change, has resulted in the erosion of these journalistic aspirations that were once considered necessary for robust democracy. In their absence, rumour bombs are effectively planted in news networks, exploding into ever wider rings of circulation. Rumour, Branding and Postmodem Belief What is the relationship of these converging factors in news, political PR, and military communication style to belief and consent? While all of these forces explain how contemporary politics are ripe for rumour proodnuectioshnoualndd haodwd ntheawts rmumedoiuar arine emspaeicnisatlrleyamripetrfaodritriuomnaolurnecwircsulmateiodnia, tends to go through a process of launching, circulation, and then correction (Sterne 2003). Correction may not at all interrupt durable attachments to belief; nor does it necessarily issue from the rumour's original source. Often this process can take many years. In the 1991 Gulf War the irnucmuobuartorsthatanIdraqliefstoltdhieemrs hstardewrnippaebdouKt uwthaeitifloboabr ielsikeouftiroefwhooosdp,itaals President Bush Sr. said several times, was only revealed to be a PR stunt after the war (Jowett 1993,p. 286).The same is true ofWMD and Iraq/al Qaeda links. The problem, again, in terms of public belief is that once the rumour is launched many people appear to become quite attached to it ~ I 100 Southern Review 39.1 (2006) and resistant to corrections, or it may reinforce already existing desires, beliefs, and fantasies. Evidence for this comes from a recent study (the PIPA study) that was conducted one month prior to the 2004 American presidential election (University of Maryland 2004).12 According to the study, 75 per cent of Bush supporters had the impression Iraq had direct involvement in or gave substantial support to al Qaeda's 9/11 attacks. In contrast, only 8 per cent of Kerry supporters had the impression there was direct involvement by Iraq, and only 22 per cent had the impression that there was 'substantial ssiumppiloarrt' ongtihveenisstuoe aolf QWaMedDa.. The differences in misperception are Even after the final report of Charles Duelfer to Congress saying that Iraq did not have a significant WMD program, 72 per cent of Bush supporters continue to believe that Iraq had actual WMD (47 per cent) or a major programme for developing them (25 per cent). Fifty-six per cent assume that most experts believe Iraq had actual WMD and 57 per cent also assume, incorrectly, that Duelfer concluded Iraq had at least a major WMD programme. Kerry supporters hold opposite beliefs on all these points. While there was a difference between Bush and Kerry supporters on what they believed, the two groups had a very similar understanding of what they were meant to believe. That is, the data seem to suggest not polysemy as an explanation for the differences in belief but polyvalence (see Condit 1989). Value, not meaning, is the difference: Eighty-two percent of Bush supporters perceive the Bush administration as saying that Iraq had WMD (63 percent) or that Iraq had a major WMD program (19 percent). Likewise, 75 percent say that the Bush administration is saying Iraq was providing substantial support to al Qaeda. Equally large majorities of Kerry supporters hear the Bush administration expressing these views-73 percent say the Bush administration is saying Iraq had WMD (11 per cent a major program) and 74 percent that Iraq was substantially supporting al Qaeda (University of Maryland 2004) How do we explain or theorise this phenomenon involving rumour, belief, and news media consumption? The fairly new phenomenon of branding theory may have explanatory value, but it should be connected to new cultural sensibilities produced by new technological conditions, market trends and news values already discussed above, and the colonisation of mediated politics by PR and war-inspired news management. The impact of speed and new media technologies on practices of democratic public deliberation has not gone unnoticed. Several scholars note that speed in news media, whether televisual or constantly changing internet forms, collapses a space for citizen reflexivity in the climate of time-space compression (Barber et al. 1997; Gaonkar 2005; Virilio 1999, p. 87). The much discussed CNN Effect (Gilboa :1 " The Rumour Bomb 101 2005) whereby real-time news has accelerated governments' time for deliberation before responding to international events may be applied to individual citizens as well. Following insights by Harvey (1989) and others, Gaonkar (2005) suggests that old paradigms of media analysis based on concepts of representation, encoding and decoding assume a time-space component for reflexivity. His claim is that for many audiences the structure of TV (cable or traditional) creates a context of time-space compression. Information is offered and quickly followed by other information and images, leaving a sense of depthlessness in time and argument.!3 Ironically in this era of reporting, politics and pseudo-deliberation marked by its speed, the decoding experience of news audiences may mirror the encoding experience of news organisations (i.e. the lack of time for reflexivity, characterised by editing and fact-checking in the greatly accelerated market climate of 24/7 news). Indeed, the time decoding implies may make it conceptually obsolete. Gaonkar then suggests that these conditions encourage a relationship of viewer to text (slogan, soundbite, fragment) which is essentially fiduciary, based on trust, not critical understanding (1995). Belief based on trust is more akin to Plato's designation of opinion (without his metaphysics) as opposed to knowledge seen as informed opinion (see, for example, Plato's Meno, 97e-98b). Gaonkar's emphasis on trust may also be understood through contemporary branding theory, which has come to engulf the market and politics (see Corner 2000 and Twitchell 2(04). Branding theory, which rose to the forefront of management theory in the 1980s, stresses that image of products is more important than the product's functional quality. Branding is a 'short cut' to a purchase I decision (Vincente 2(04). In some cases in actuality, the brand image may precede the appearance of a product, giving it a Baudrillardean postmodern aura where the 'map precedes the territory' (Baudrillard 1988, p. 166). "'[T]he current object of our political campaigns," writes Berkeley's Dean of the Graduate School of Journalism Orville Schell, "is not to inform or illuminate the public, but to sell a political position much the same way a corporation seeks to market a product'" (Vincente 2004, p. xv). Branding functions on speed and impulse, not time-consuming deliberation. TIme-space for reflexivity is central to democratic deliberation, and its absence is traditional in fascistic propaganda: "'Propaganda must be made directly by words and images, not by writing," states Goebbels, who was himself a great promoter of audiovisuals in Germany. Reading implies time for reflection...' (Virilio 1986, p. 5). So does deliberation. Again, Virilio, thinking across political theory of democracy, deterministic aspects of technology, and political economy of entertainment has made these connections better than anyone else: The tyranny of real time is not very different from classical tyranny, because it tends to destroy the reflection of the citizen in favor of a reflex action...Now, real time and the world ~ I rI 102 Southern Review 39.1 (2006) present demand a kind of manipulation. The tyranny of real time is tantamount to a subjugation of the television viewer. The temporality of democracy is threatened, because the expectation of a judgment tends to be eliminated. Democracy is the expectation of a decision made collectively. Live democracy, or automatic democracy, eliminates this reflection and replaces it with a reflex. Ratings replace elections, and the microchip card replaces deliberation (1999, p. 87). Political communication today is heir to the technocratic opinion management of Bernays and Lippman in the 19205 and Goebbels in the 1930s and 40s (themselves heirs to Plato's philosopher king and his noble lie). Today the idea of political PR and anti-deliberative news management in a media culture of warp speed is to produce a virtual dromomaniacal citizen subject; the mind can not stop to evaluate evidence because the parade of images and emotional appeals will not give it time or space. Its aim is to move. This style of communication contains its own anti-deliberative motive. In this context where news implodes with entertainment and propaganda and deliberative citizenship fades as a distant memory, a new consumerist citizenship unfolds as a spectacle of deliberative democracy. While the PIPA study of beliefs does not prove that rumours directly produced belief, it can be seen as partial evidence for the rumours' effectivity. Since both Bush and Kerry voters had no doubts about the meaning of Bush's claims-they just disagreed over their veracity and value, an issue of polyvalence, not polysemy (Condit 1989)-it appears that the rumours of Iraq/al Qaeda links and WMD were struggled over on the level of belief, trust, and brand loyalty instead of rational argumentation and evidence. The brand and its connotations are the evidence. Such branding functions on ethos and desire. Whether one is consuming Fox News or blogs, news and politics for many Americans are best understood as branding practices. A headline in a recent Time magazine article sums up the rumourfriendly convergence of infotainment, speed, and branding: 'Why are more and more people getting their news from amateur websites called blogs? Because they're fast, fwmy and totally biased' (Grossman 2(04) (emphasis added). Fundamental changes in political communication practice as branding find a public-relations-driven politics poised to use rumour as the contemporary weapon of choice for tapping emotions and constructing short-lived attachments. Paul Virilio's (1997) theory of Pure War further contextualises these convergences. Conclusion: Pure War, Anti-Deliberation, and the Politicisation of Speed Virilio's typology of three types of war in Western history helps us see that US mediated political discourse has existed within a condition of ~i'" The Rumour Bomb 103 Pure War since World War II. Furthermore, it helps us understand that institutional norms of political communication generally (orchestrated by PR), and especially executive branch communication strategies, aim to annihilate debate and public deliberation by discursive and extra-discursive means, through control of access to sources, leaking of false or unverifiable information, produced in a climate of secrecy and authorised by appeals to public security. These conditions produce a spectacle of deliberative democracy.14 According to Virilio's typology of war (1997), war was once a tactical activity that took place outside the city walls or moats, where armies fought it out, but in which civilian life went about its business without becoming completely subordinate to belligerent activities. This period gave way to a period of Total War, characterised by a new subordination of all social life during wartime. Economic and industrial activities were subordinated to war efforts and civilians were enlisted to supply its logistical demands. However, the advent of the arms race and nuclear weapons from World War II onwards initiates a new period of constant preparation for war and actual war-making, sometimes distant and covert. Here the major differences between peacetime culture and wartime culture implode. And perhaps most importantly, Pure War is marked by information war and population control once exclusively directed at a foreign enemy and now also redirected back onto the domestic population. It is the domestic populoaftiPounrenoWwarthwaht imchusdtemfirasntdbse cthoanttrhoullmedanisn odredveortetothpeeirrpelitvueastetotthhee setactoenomic and moral initiatives of the war at the expense of investment in social welfare and public goods. Unsurprisingly, the turn to Pure War does not bode well for democratic public life and its requisite communication practices. Virilio begins to speak pessimistically of a 'transpolitics', the end of politics. Indeed, the dominance of speed in market-driven news coverage, political communication and its effects in anti-deliberation aims to make politics, like war, automated. Thus, Virilio writes, Behind the libertarian propaganda for a direct (live) democracy, capable of renovating party-based representative democracy, the ideology of an automatic democracy is being put in place, in which the absence of deliberation would be compensated by a social automatism similar to that found in opinion polls or the measurement of TV audience ratings (2000, p. 109). Virilio's practical response is that those who witness this tyranny of speed must politicise it. Though Virilio's Pure War has a conspiratorial ring to it (the very existence of the Project for a New American Century (PNAC) would seem to free Virilio from X-files comparisons), the communication aspects of Pure War have indeed become institutionalised in American politics and government. In many ways, from the Committee on Public Information to the vision of technocratic democracy, we may 104 Southern Review 39.1 (2006) The Rumour Bomb 105 see resonances of Virilio's thinking. With the Cold War's culture of Pure War, its propaganda apparatus, and its disastrous effects for a more open public discourse (see Whitfield 1990), one can see evidence of the kind of endocolonisation of which Virilio speaks. Now with the War on Terror, democratic public life appears more jeopardised than ever. Pure War and information bombs (of which the rumour bomb is a type) create a confused, anxious citizenry. Rumour, one of the distinguishing features of contemporary American mediated politics, is a theoretical portal into new thinking about new political and social relations. The recent pervasiveness of rumour in mediated American public discourse is at the vexing convergence of new news market logics and resultant news gathering values and practices; and a century old process of technocratising American public life, which itself is closely tied up with techniques and initiatives of total and Pure War. In Pure War, enemies are deterritorialised, including Iraqis and Americans. In a culture of Pure War that produces local rumours and global tremors, it isn't only the 28,000-31,000 Iraqi civilians that have died since the US-led coalition invaded Iraq in the name of freedom; many Americans are captivated, over 16,600 are wounded, and over 2,300 of them are now dead...Or so it is rumoured.'s The author wishes to thank Meagan Zimbeck, Jonathon Sterne, Adrienne Russell, and Waddick Doyle for helpful comments on earlier drafts of this essay. While the political use of rumour has not been well studied in the present (most attention going to its close relative, spin), the singular catalysts that have been identified as productive of rumour-speed, entertainment news values, and political PR-have been identified as international news and politics trends the most advanced forms of which are American (Swanson 2004, pp. 50-3; Thussu 2003; Seib 2004; BIumler and Gurevich 1995). However, none so far has proposed or demonstrated how rumour use and circulation is facilitated by this convergence of factors. I am referring especially to the speech of Diodotus in Thucydides section 'the Mytilenean Debate' (1954). Discussion of the type of discourse that is necessary for functional democracy is broad. See Kellner (no date); Benhabib (1996); Gans (2003). Uniting and Strellgthenillg America by Providillg Appropriate Toots Required to Inte4rcept alld Obstruct Terrorism Act of 20Ot. As Virilio says, information bombs have become the supreme accident of the present. Real-time interaction is to information today what radioactivity was to energy in the epoch marked by the atomic bomb and its deterrence. Orson Welles'Warofthe Worldsis an exemplary information bomb. See Campbell & Jamieson (1990, p. 105) for the traditional generic requirements of presidential declarations of war. Spin is a generic term for strategic political communication that attempts to frame or re-frame an event or a statement in a way that is politically profitable for one side and detrimental to another, though at its core it may simply be a red herring (Bennett 2003, p. 130). The gatekeeping anxiety is pervasive. Columbia Joumalism Review's managing editor Steve Lovelady reiterates, 'We've said it before and we'll say it again: The great thing about the Internet is that anyone can start a blogand the terrible thing about the Internet is that anyone can start a blog' (Welch 2003). For a critique of this commercialisation of news and some of its institutional values from the position of democratic theory, see Gans (2003). 10 Tebbel and Watts (1985) suggest that Theodore Roosevelt (TR) was the first to use the news media to manage public opinion in aggressive new ways. TR expanded the White House press room, gave reporters phones, and talked openly with them. But perhaps more importantly, he controlled access by dividing the White House press into two groups, those who gave him favourable press and those who didn't. The first were lavished with attention and the second never got access to the president. He also gave the first group information with the proviso that they never revealed where they got it, thus starting the modern presidency off in a shroud of official source mystery (pp. 330-5). II This comparison is not meant to be exhaustive. There are a potentially huge number of comparisons and influences one could make by looking at case studies of war and news (Knightley 2004), but for economy's sake, I am focusing here on the CPI in World War I. 12 All further references to this study correspond to the following website: hhtttmp:I//www.pipa.org/OnlineReports/Pres_Election_04/html/ new _10_21_04. 13 On the time-space component in news coverage, see Seib (2004, pp. 11-12); on time-space compression's negative effect on deliberative democracy, see Barber et al. (1997); on lack of context in stories about wars such as Iraq, see Ahmad (2003) and Philo & Gilmour (2004). 14 Virilio speaks about the intentions of such 'politics' and its strategies of communication/control. But I would stress how much more easily this is accomplished with the cultural sensibilities encouraged by speedy new media technologies and the difficulty of finding/forging space-time for deliberation. Thus, politicians who are rhetorically savvy, in classical rhetorical fashion, assess the situation and often respond to it successfully with the arme de choix,rumour. IS Figures from October 2005 (http://icasualties.org/oif!, http://www.iraqbodycount.net/). Notes References Ahmad, Aijaz (2003), 'Contextualizing conflict-the US War on Terrorism', in Daya K. Thussu and Des Freedman (eds) War alld the Media, London, Sage, pp. 15-27. Barber, Benjamin, Mattson, Kevin & Peterson, John (1997), The State of Electrollically Enhallced Democracy: A Reportof the Waif WllitmanCenter, November, http://wwc.rutgers.edu/markle.htm. viewed 4 October 2004. Baudrillard, Jean, (1988), 'Simulacra and Simulations', in Jean Baudrillard, SelectedWritillgs,edited by M. Poster,Stanford, Stanford University Press. I 1 106 Southern Review 39.1 (2006) I I Benhabib,Seyla (ed.)(1996),Democracyalld Differellce,Princeton, NJ,Princeton University Press. Bennett, Lance(2003),News:Tilefuture ofalll1lusiou, New York,Longman. Berenson, Bernard (1952), Rumour alld Reflectioll, New York, Simon & Schuster. Bernays, Edward, (1928), Propagallda,New York, Horace Liveright, Inc. -1955O,klahomaT. ile Ellgilleerillg of COllsellt, Norman, Oklahoma, University of Blumler, Jay & Gurevitch, Michael (1995), Tile Crisis ill Public COllllmmicatioll, London, Routledge. Bolton, Alexander (2006), 'Senate GOP plans Iraq PR blitz', 9 January, http://thehill.com/ thehill I export/TheHiII INewsl Frontpage 1010406 I iraq.html, viewed 5 January 2006. Bordia, Prashant & Difonzo, Nicholas (2004), 'Problem solving in social interactions on the Internet: rumour as cognition', SocialPsychologyQuarterly, vol. 67, no. 1, pp. 33-49. Campbell, Karlyn & Jamieson, Kathleen Hall (1990),Deeds DOlle ill Words, Chicago, University of Chicago Press. Castro, Janice (2005), International Perspectives and the One-Minute News Cycle. Public lecture at the American University of Paris, 19 September. Condit, Celeste, (1989),'The rhetorical limits of polysemy', Critical Studies ill Mass Commlmicatioll, vol. 6, no. 2, pp. 103-22. Cook, Timothy (1998), Govemillg With the News, Chicago, University of Chicago Press. Corner, John (2000),'Medieval Persona and political culture', EuropeallJoumal of Cultural Studies,vol. 3, no. 2, pp. 386-402. Cutlip, Scott, Carter, Allen & Broom, Glen (2000), EffectivePublic Relatiolls,8th edn, Upper Saddle River, NJ, Prentice-Hall. Deggans, Eric (2004),The truth is out there, St PetersburgTimes,19September, http://www.sptimes.com. viewed 1 October 2005. De Vincente, Jorge (2004 unpublished), State branding in the 21st Century, Master's thesis, Tufts University, http://fletcher.tufts.edu/research/ 2004/DeVincente-Jorge.pdf, viewed 14 December 2005. Della Carpini, Michael & Williams, Bruce (2001), 'Let us infotain you', in L. Bennett & R. Entman (eds) Mediated Politics, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Drezner, Daniel W.& Farrell, Henry (2004), ForeigllPolicy,November-December, http://webl.inform.galegroup.com. viewed 27 November 2005. Ewen, Stuart (1996), PR:A SocialHistory of Spill, New York, Basic Books. Foucault, Michel (1991), 'Governmentality', in Graham Burchell (ed.) 17le Foucault Effect,Chicago, University of Chicago Press, pp. 87-104. Gans, Herbert J.(2003),Democracy alld the News, New York & London, Oxford University Press. Gaonkar, Dilip, (2005), Circulation, representation, and the networks of belief, paper presented at the Conference on Media and Belief, American University of Paris, 4 March. L _,.f':"'",-- The Rumour Bomb 107 Gilboa, Eytan (2005), 'The CNN effect: the search for an international relations theory of communication', Political Commllllicatioll, vol. 1, no. 22, pp. 24-7. Gitlin, Todd (2004), 'Lying about Kerry', FreeDemocracy, www.freedemocracy.com. viewed 21 February 2005. 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(2002), TheMedia in AmericanPolitics,New York,Longman. Pendleton, S.c. (1998), 'Rumour research revisited and expanded', Language& Communication, vol. 1. no. 18, pp. 69--86. Perloff, Richard (1998), Political Communication, Mahweh, NJ, Lawrence Erlbaum. The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press (2004), Cable and Internet Loom Large in Fragmented Political News Universe, A Survey Conducted in Association with Pew Internet and American Life Project, News Release, http://www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP ]oliticallnfo- Jan04.pdfPart 2, viewed 16 January 2005. Philo, Greg & Gilmour, Maureen (2004), 'Black holes of history', in David Miller (ed.) Tellmelies, London, Pluto Press, pp. 232-40. Plato (1961), Collected Dialogues, edited by Edith Hamilton & Huntington Cairns, Princeton, Princeton University Press, pp. 353--84. Powers, Thomas (2004), A temporary coup. 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Happy May Day

2008-04-29T21:25:00.002+02:00

Happy May Day! Here's my apparently timeless article on the holiday. Click away!

Outgrown "Growth"?

2007-10-09T20:05:00.000+02:00

"Growth" has been one of the biggest American political cliches of the last fifty years. It political discourse it has gone unquestioned as a positive term, as a glittering generality you utter to score points from an uncritical audience, in fine company with such complex philosophical terms as "freedom" and "democracy." For awhile now, only the whacko far left dared question those who asserted the eternal goodness of economic growth. Now, the scientists (could they possibly have been brainwashed by the last commies thought to have died in the rubble of the Berlin wall?) are questioning this mantra of global socio-economic policy. While "growth" is good within the logic of the market economy and global consumer society, if it continues on the same model, say goodbye to planet earth and its hubristic hominids.
Now the challenge is "sustainable" economics and social life. We're on the verge of a seachange in the everyday life of the planet. But in what direction...?
Here's the news today.

Scientist: Emissions levels accelerating

By MERAIAH FOLEY, Associated Press Writer 45 minutes ago

Worldwide economic growth has accelerated the level of greenhouse gas emissions to a dangerous threshold scientists had not expected for another decade, according to a leading Australian climate change expert.

Tim Flannery told Australian Broadcasting Corp. that an upcoming report by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will contain new data showing that the level of climate-changing gases in the atmosphere has already reached critical levels.

Flannery is not a member of the IPCC, but said he based his comments on a thorough review of the technical data included in the panel's three working group reports published earlier this year.

Carola Traverso Saibante, spokeswoman for IPCC headquarters is in Geneva, said she was unable to disclose what would be in the final report synthesizing the data before it is released in November.

"What the report establishes is that the amount of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere is already above the threshold that can potentially cause dangerous climate change," Flannery told the broadcaster late Monday. "We are already at great risk of dangerous climate change, that's what these figures say. It's not next year or next decade, it's now."

Flannery, whose recent book "The Weather Makers: How Man Is Changing the Climate and What It Means for Life on Earth," made best-seller lists worldwide, said the data showed that the amount of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions had reached about 455 parts per million by mid-2005, well ahead of scientists' previous calculations.

"We thought we'd be at that threshold within about a decade, that we had that much time," Flannery said. "I mean, that's beyond the limits of projection, beyond the worst-case scenario as we thought of it in 2001," when the last major IPCC report was issued.

The new data could add urgency to the next round of U.N. climate change talks on the Indonesian island of Bali in December, which will aim to start negotiations on a replacement for the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.

In Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel called Tuesday for an international system of global emissions trading to be adopted as part of an agreement to flight climate change from 2012 onward.

Speaking at a symposium of Nobel laureates and other leading scientists, Merkel insisted that only by establishing limits on carbon dioxide output per individual around the world — suggesting about 2 tons per head — could the fight to stop global warming be effective.

"Our long-term goal can only be the assimilation of worldwide per capita emissions," Merkel told the conference.

Her suggestion would mean drastic cuts: Germany currently has a carbon dioxide output of some 11 tons per person per year, while the U.S. is at around 20 tons per person.

Flannery said that the recent economic boom in China and India has helped to accelerate the levels of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, but strong growth in the developed world has also exacerbated the problem.

"It's a worldwide issue. We've had growing economies everywhere, we're still basing that economic activity on fossil fuels," he said. "The metabolism of that economy is now on a collision course clearly with the metabolism of our planet."

A spokesman for Australia's IPCC delegate, Ian Carruthers, said he was not available to comment on the report because it was still in draft form.

[See the video here. Interesting comment by Pres. Bush:

Climate Report: World at risk now
http://cosmos.bcst.yahoo.com/ver/246/popup/index.php?cl=4432194
]

Hello! I'm killing your planet (and your children)...and with great insouciance!

2007-08-14T12:22:00.000+02:00

Ever wonder how those poor slobs of the old days managed to survive, what without airconditioning in the home, not to mention the car, not to mention having a friggin car! How soft we've become. And at what cost to our children, the planet, and the future of the human race?

Impressive that the propagandists have managed to sway some people into a knee-jerk response to topics and writing like this: just that hippie bullshit! Shame on you, clergy. You should be leading the charge! Things will not change fast enough without the leaders in every community publicizing the importance of this issue.

I honestly think people have no idea where energy comes from and what the consequences are of its production and expenditure. Of all the crap we see and, to a lesser degree, read about Paris Hilton or Brittney Spears, how often are we forced to confront these realties about energy? I'd say not very often if you're not already a singer in the global warming church choir. This is a structural flaw of our market-driven media system. People consume tabloids. Give them what they want if you want your media business to make money. Ah, oh yes, but media is not toasters. This kind of media culture has effects. It sets agendas, it gives us certain things to think about or be distracted by, while others disappear from our radars.

No need for me to repeat the hard work of others here. Please go to the Environmental Defense Fund and learn about the often unseen costs of our electricity use and its production. The EDF are an environmental public interest group founded in 1967, who work for you and your health. Their founding issue was the banning of the DDT pesticide. Right, lunatics, they're some left-wing nutjobs who just want to derail our excellent economy and standard of living! And they want to do it for fun! Plleeaaaaase. If you can't trust groups like this, it's over. I'll become a nihilist.

I also highly recommend some other books and sites.

Heat, by George Monbiot. I'm reading this book right now. It rocks. Not just another book reciting statistic after statisitic, study after study, to show that global warming is a problem. No, this guy is one of the premiere environmental journalists in the world, and has spent loads of time researching how WE CAN CHANGE without completely destroying our standard of living ("our" meaning the post-industrial WEST). Get this book now. Live it.
A couple of serious, critical reviews of this book: here, and here
I will try and review this book when I'm finished with it.

Going Green: A Step-by-step program for lazy asses like you and me who are sticking their heads in the ground to the detriment of their own children and the future of the human race.

Oh, but forget it. Let's skip merrily down the primrose path. I hate gray weather. This sounds cool!

"The American People Stand Mute..."

2007-08-07T12:04:00.000+02:00

It's been awhile mes amis. I've actually had to take a break from political commentary on my blog here. I've been frankly too frustrated. I used to get sick of academic hacks in their ivory tower talking to each other about how well controlled the American people are. These days I don't know what to say to them. After the last election, with so much evidence under our noses that this "regime" is dirty (yes, they all are, but not THIS dirty!), is criminal, is a cum stain on the flag of the U.S.A. And what do people do? Well, the polls show some dissatisfaction. But hey, let's get back to shopping, drinking, reality TV and what Paris Hilton is up (or down) to.Excuse me while I grit my teeth down to the nub...

The Future is Unwritten: Joe STrummer

2007-05-18T19:52:00.000+02:00

Opened last week in the UK. Coming soon elsewhere.
"I'd like to say that people... people can change anything they want to;
and that means everything in the world. Show me any country and
there'll be people in it. And it's the people that make the country.
People have got to stop pretending they're not in the world.
People are running about following their own tracks. I am one of them.
But we've all gotta stop... just stop following our own little mouse trails.
People can do anything; this is something that I'm beginning to learn.
People are out there doing bad things to each other; it's because
they've been dehumanized. It's time to take humanity back into
the center of the ring and follow that for a time.
Greed... it ain't going anywhere; the richest person
in the world is the most unhappy one. They should have that
on a big billboard in Times Square. Think on that. Without people you're nothing."
-Joe Strummer
Okay, so he sounds a little bit cheesy-utopian at times in this quote. Yet, his explanation of oppression and violence coming from dehumanized people strikes home with me. So does his call to pull our heads out and get involved in change. Often, politics and music suck together. Joe Strummer and the Clash proved that it can be done with class (no pun).
jh
p.s. If you click on the poster and go to the official site for the movie/or myspace, you'll hear his eerie voice uttering the quote above. If you ever liked the Clash, it will give you goose bumps.

Sarkozy Triumphant! Violent Reactions Across France

2007-05-07T13:18:00.000+02:00

It is official: Nicolas Sarkozy is the heir apparent to France's Elysee Palace. Sarkozy's victory came after the second highest voter turnout in the history of the V Republic (since 1958) at nearly 86%, slightly short of the 87% record in 1974. It was the highest voter turnout in four decades. Nicolas Sarkozy of the UMP party, son of a Hungarian immigrant, received the majority vote at 53% to Socialist challenger Segolene Royal's 47% .

Who voted Sarkozy, Royal?
IPSOS' telephone poll showed that 58% of the youngest voters (18-24) supported Royal,while Sarkozy took the next age bracket (25-34) with 57%. Sarkozy's strongest voting bloc was the over 60. Small business owners and rural voters leaned toward Sarkozy, while urbanites were divided.

Senior citizens don't have much to gain themselves from Sarkozy's plan to change the 35-hour work week and offer more deregulation of the economy. He isn't promising them any great social security increases. However, he has proposed to exempt 95 % of his countrymen from the inheritance tax.

The highly coveted votes from centrist Francois Bayrou in the first round were split, slightly favoring Sarkozy by 40% to Royal's 38% with a significant 15% of Bayrou supporters abstaining.

Despite far-right Front National candidate Jean Marie Le Pen's plea to his supporters to abstain, most of them voted for Sarkozy (63%), with 15% going to Royal and just over 20% abstaining.

Sarkozy rode to victory on these votes he picked up from the center and the far right.

Paris voting patterns
The breakdown of votes in Paris seems to suggest a class and generational bias:

Paris: Nicolas Sarkozy 50.19%, Ségolène Royal 49.81%
(See appendix below for complete breakdown of votes by arrondissement)
The poshest arrondissement (district or borough) in Paris, also not particularly young, is the 16th where Sarkozy received a whopping 80% of the vote. Almost as impressively, he scored in the mid-70th percentile in the 7th and 8th arrondissements, which are also known to be quite expensive, middle-aged to seniors, and conservative. Sarkozy took other major French cities, such as Lyon, Marseille, Nice, and Strasbourg. Royal's only major geographical strength was the West and Southwest, where she received the support of cities such as Montpellier and Toulouse.

Violent Clashes in Response
Over 3,000 police were deployed in Paris and the "potentially difficult" suburban areas that were marked by riots in 2005. Major anti-Sarkozy demonstrations occurred across the country, some turning violent. In Paris around the Bastille in the 11th arrondissement, around 2,000 especially young adults had gathered to hear the results as the polls closed. When they received the results, the crowd became animated and confrontations with police followed. Some shouted, "Police everywhere, Justice Nowhere!" and burned an effigy of Sarkozy. Several hundred people clashed with the police and smashed windows. By midnight, the police were firing tear gas as members of the crowd hurled stones at them. The police then turned a water cannon on the crowd. On the base of the Bastille centerpiece column was graffitied: “Sarko 2007 = Hitler 1933.”

Clashes with police also occurred in France's second largest city, Lyon, where police again fired tear gas into the crowd to disperse it. Protests and clashes also occurred in Grenoble, Rennes, Nantes, Bordeaux, Toulouse, Metz and Marseille.

Some French citizens commented that they could not recall an election outcome in their lifetimes that had been met with similar outrage and violence.

According to the National Police, 730 cars were burned in metropolitan France Sunday night and early Monday morning following the election. Some 592 people were arrested for questioning. So far the French media have not referred to this violence as "riots."

Mr. Law and Order
Part of the high turnout and subsequent violence is due to Sarkozy's extremely polarizing rhetoric over the past three years. He has made security and immigration, work and authority his slogans ever since taking over the position of Ministry of the Interior in May 2005. He received constant public attention for his provocative comments about crime and the immigrant populations, most notably when he called suburban delinquents "scum" that he would remove from their streets with a power hose. Since those suburbs are populated by large numbers of Arabs and black Africans, many interpreted his comment as racist, though he has several times tried to repudiate the label.

During the November 2005 riots he blamed the violence on unemployment (due to socialist economic policies he alleged), different cultural values (such as polygamy) and lack of respect for the Republic on the part of the immigrant population. For him, the suburbs were divided between hard-working French citizens and lazy, violent criminals making illegal money through an underground drug economy. He spoke of the latter as mafias and gangs that had occupied territory belonging to the Republic , which he vowed to reclaim with more national police on site and stronger sentences for "hooligans."

Sarkozy has also favored liberal economic policies, calling for an end to the 35 hour work week in the name of citizens' freedom to work as much as they like. Other major policy proposals include making more use of nuclear energy, lowering the income tax by 4%, and abolishing the estate tax for all but 5% of the population. But to many citizens, he is known as the man who will re-establish law and order.

A recent controversy came in an interview Sarkozy did with philosopher Michel Onfray where he was accused of supporting a racist eugenics to explain an individual's behavior. In that interview he was of the view that "one is born a pedophile." The same for those who commit suicide or get cancer. "Circumstances don't do everything. The role of the innate is immense--genetically."

Critics have then taken such quotations as a context for his opposition to Turkey entering the European Union. In a recent debate, he claimed, "It's not about democracy, it's not about muslims. It's that if Turkey becomes Europe Europe's borders will be Iraq and Syria." It's simply about geography, he concluded.

However, Sarkozy has been on record making more than an argument about geography. Last fall he permitted an interview to a new neo-conservative magazine Le Meilleur des Mondes, which has a very small circulation. "We have a problem of integration of Muslims that raises the issue of Islam in Europe." he said. "To say it is not a problem is to hide from reality. If you let 100 million Turkish Muslims come in, what will come of it?" He went on to make the same comment about Iraq and Syria as the outrageous borders of Europe in such a scenario.

His critics have accused him of deviously exploiting the fears of racists, islamophobes, and generally uninformed citizens. But Sarkozy was able to accuse his opponent of similar fearmongering last week when Madame Royal publicly warned of possible riots if Sarkozy won.

In a victory speech Sarkozy addressed the nation last night, reminding it of his campaign slogans, his brand: "[Voters] have chosen to break with the habits and the ideals of the past so I will rehabilitate work, authority, morality, respect, merit!"

When he finished speaking, giddy supporters feted their hero to a rendition of the French national anthem. Some 30,000 supporters gathered Sunday night at the Place de la Concorde to celebrate Sarkozy's victory. Police closed down the metro stop there and several others nearby, anticipating possible clashes near the seat of government.

Sarkozy's defeated opponent Segolene Royal vowed to keep on fighting. She claimed something powerful had been "set in motion which will not be stopped [by this election outcome]," and that "You can count on me to continue building a renewed left."

Mr. Sarkozy will assume the presidency May 17 to the tune of the Marseillaise and a 21-gun salute. Bang, bang.

Appendix: Paris vote by Arrondissement

Paris 10ème arrondissement

Ségolène Royal 62.99%, Nicolas Sarkozy 37.01%

Paris 11ème arrondissement

Ségolène Royal 61.68%, Nicolas Sarkozy 38.32%

Paris 12ème arrondissement

Ségolène Royal 51.86%, Nicolas Sarkozy 48.14%

Paris 13ème arrondissement

Ségolène Royal 58.8%, Nicolas Sarkozy 41.2%

Paris 14ème arrondissement

Ségolène Royal 53.86%, Nicolas Sarkozy 46.14%

Paris 15ème arrondissement

Nicolas Sarkozy 59.82%, Ségolène Royal 40.18%

Paris 16ème arrondissement

Nicolas Sarkozy 80.81%, Ségolène Royal 19.19%

Paris 17ème arrondissement

Nicolas Sarkozy 62.8%, Ségolène Royal 37.2%

Paris 18ème arrondissement

Ségolène Royal 63.62%, Nicolas Sarkozy 36.38%

Paris 19ème arrondissement

Ségolène Royal 60.15%, Nicolas Sarkozy 39.85%

Paris 1er arrondissement

Nicolas Sarkozy 56.34%, Ségolène Royal 43.66%

Paris 20ème arrondissement

Ségolène Royal 64.63%, Nicolas Sarkozy 35.37%

Paris 2ème arrondissement

Ségolène Royal 54.08%, Nicolas Sarkozy 45.92%

Paris 3ème arrondissement

Ségolène Royal 57.06%, Nicolas Sarkozy 42.94%

Paris 4ème arrondissement

Nicolas Sarkozy 50.24%, Ségolène Royal 49.76%

Paris 5ème arrondissement

Ségolène Royal 50.89%, Nicolas Sarkozy 49.11%

Paris 6ème arrondissement

Nicolas Sarkozy 61.27%, Ségolène Royal 38.73%

Paris 7ème arrondissement

Nicolas Sarkozy 74.75%, Ségolène Royal 25.25%

Paris 8ème arrondissement

Nicolas Sarkozy 76.27%, Ségolène Royal 23.73%

Paris 9ème arrondissement

Nicolas Sarkozy 50.65%, Ségolène Royal 49.35%
(source: Liberation)

Technorati Tags:
sarkozy, france, french, election, royal, turkey

May Day: To the Folks Who Brought Us The Weekend

2007-05-01T16:28:00.000+02:00

I used to think "May Day" was a distress signal uniquely reserved for hapless pilots and captains. In fact, it wasn't until graduate school while taking an American rhetorical history course that I learned about the Haymarket Riots/Massacre and that Labor Day for many people around the world (International Workers Day), except for Americans, is May 1, in memory of those who died in Chicago on May 3 and 4, 1886 and in celebration of the humanist accomplishments of the international labor movement.

On May 1, labor unions had organized a strike there for the eight-hour day, better working conditions ("The Jungle" is hard to beat on this), for an ideal of international proportions: that one's labor and the person from whom it issues must be respected. For some people such respect meant that laborers deserved certain rights of negotiation and safety to avoid a new feudalism in the age of mass production.

On May3, they organized a strike at the McCormick Harvesting Machine Co., where a fight broke out on the picket line; police intervened, killing two workers and wounding several others. Workers across the city were enraged. Anarchists then distributed flyers for a labor rally at Haymarket Square the following day. Reports vary in this highly politicized event, but many note that people listened peacefully to anarchist leader August Spies's address. Then apparently someone threw a bomb over the crowd, which landed on the police line killing a police officer and wounding other policeman who died later. Policeman fired into the crowd killing a number of people (there are no uncontested counts). Eight German immigrants associated with anarchism were rounded up and convicted on no evidence. The motive was that they were anarchists. Seven of them were sentenced to death. One committed suicide. One's sentence was commuted to life in prison. And five were hanged publicly.

The trial produced some of the most eloquent criticisms of American industrial society and its political butresses. Some, such as George Engel's, even provide an explanation/argument for how one came to be a socialist/anarchist. Here is an excerpt from George Englel's address to the jury, which I recommend reading in its entirety by clicking on this link.

[...]On the occasion of my arrival at Philadelphia, on the 8th of January, 1873, my heart swelled with joy in the hope and in the belief that in the future I would live
AMONG FREE MEN,
and in a free country. I made up my mind to become a good citizen of this country, and congratulated myself on having left Germany, and landed in this glorious republic. And I believe my past history will bear witness that I have ever striven to be a good citizen of this country. This is the first occasion of my standing before an American court, and on this occasion it is murder of which I am accused. And for what reasons do I stand here? For what reasons am I accused of murder? The same that caused me to leave Germany-
THE POVERTY-THE MISERY
of the working classes.
And here, too, in this "free republic," in the richest country of the world, there are numerous proletarians for whom no table is set; who, as outcasts of society, stray joylessly through life. I have seen human beings gather their daily food from the garbage heaps of the streets, to quiet therewith their knawing hunger.
I have read of occurrences in the daily papers which proves to me that here, too, in this great "free land," people are doomed to die of starvation. This brought me to reflection, and to the question: What are the peculiar causes that could bring about such a condition of society? I then began to give our political institutions more attention than formerly. [...]

"I came to the opinion that as long as workingmen are economically enslaved they cannot be politically free. [...]
Of what does my crime consist?
That I have labored to bring about a system of society by which it is impossible for one to hoard millions, through the improvements in machinery, while the great masses sink to degradation and misery. As water and air are free to all, so should the inventions of scientific men be applied for the benefit of all. The statute laws we have are
IN OPPOSITION TO THE LAWS OF NATURE,
in that they rob the great masses of their rights "to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."
I am too much a man of feeling not to battle against the societary conditions of today. Every considerate person must combat a system which makes it possible for the individual to rake and hoard millions in a few years, while, on the other side, thousands become tramps and beggars.
Is it to be wondered at that under such circumstances men arise, who strive and struggle to create other conditions,
WHERE THE HUMANE HUMANITY SHALL TAKE PRECEDENCE
over all other considerations? [...]

This speech is an interesting argument (well there are at least a couple of big arguments in it) about freedom in a materialist positive, not negative, economic sense (or positive rights). My dissertation analyzed the story of this rhetorical struggle (positive/negative economic rights with regard to understandings of democracy) in U.S. history, which is more or less erased from popular memory (for more on that, scroll down to the bottom of the blog's page to the last entry).

As this article demonstrates, the radical democratic history of May Day has been coopted in a few places in the world (in an attempt to rob it of its radical history as a resource for current politics), namely the U.S. Like other rights and practices many people hold to be sacred today, the eight-hour day was the result of social struggle and bloodshed (I'm just testifying about it; don't try this at home). Thomas Jefferson and George Washington were radicals, revolutionaries. Moreover, when a gang of patriots doing Native American minstrelsy snuck aboard a tea-heavy ship in Boston harbor and started throwing bags of Earl Grey overboard, they were breaking the law. Other patriots tarred and feathered Tories. Less delicate fates met others loyal to King and country. Radicals, revolutionaries. So was Jesus, as his fellow radical Martin Luther King observed:

"But as I continued to think about the matter I gradually gained a bit of satisfaction from being considered an extremist. Was not Jesus an extremist for love -- "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, pray for them that despitefully use you." Was not Amos an extremist for justice -- "Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream." Was not Paul an extremist for the gospel of Jesus Christ -- "I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus." Was not Martin Luther an extremist -- "Here I stand; I can do none other so help me God." Was not John Bunyan an extremist -- "I will stay in jail to the end of my days before I make a butchery of my conscience." Was not Abraham Lincoln an extremist -- "This nation cannot survive half slave and half free." Was not Thomas Jefferson an extremist -- "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal." So the question is not whether we will be extremist but what kind of extremist will we be. Will we be extremists for hate or will we be extremists for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice--or will we be extremists for the cause of justice? In that dramatic scene on Calvary's hill, three men were crucified. We must not forget that all three were crucified for the same crime--the crime of extremism. Two were extremists for immorality, and thusly fell below their environment. The other, Jesus Christ, was an extremist for love, truth and goodness, and thereby rose above his environment. So, after all, maybe the South, the nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists."

Why would one resist these analogies about radicals and the progress of justice? If one finds the elision of King, Jesus, Jefferson, Washington, Lincoln, Debs, Parsons, Spies, Engel (Haymarket convicts et al.), it must be due to an ideological resistance, a resistance toward their understandings of justice. Jesus resisted in the name of love and to make earth as heaven. King claimed to be following Jesus, Socrates, Jefferson and just about every other positive Western icon that ever lived. Jefferson, Madison, Hamilton justified their rebellion on natural rights that the Creator intended for everyone. The labor movement justified their protest of the 8-hour day in "real" democracy, natural rights, the bible ("Am I not my brother's Keeper?"), and a variety of critiques of capitalism as selfish human exploitation. People will resist that there's an equivocation of "justice" in this set of equations. Really?

I don't have the time-space to defend the thread of justice that runs through these "extremists," and I'm aware of how perilous such discussions are in a post-9/11 and -Oklahoma City era. I'll stick with the Christian tensions for a moment, if for no reason than that many of the extremists who use violence in the U.S. do so in the name of God, but none for economic justice today. Here are some lines that speak to the idea of justice for which the Haymarket protestors died.

Leviticus 25:23: "But the land must not be sold beyond reclaim, for the land is Mine; you are but strangers resident with Me."

Deuteronomy 24:6 "A handmill or an upper millstone shall not be taken in pawn, for that will be taking someone's life in pawn."

Acts 4: 34-5: "Neither was there any among them that lacked: for as many as were possessors of land and houses, sold them and brought the prices of these things that were sold. And laid them down at the apostle's feet: and distribution was made unto every man according as he had need."

Leviticus 25:36 "Do not exact from him advance or accrued interest, but fear your God."

Jeremiah 5:27-29 "As a cage full of birds, so are their houses full of deceit: therefore they are become great, and waxen rich. They are waxen fat, they shine: yea, they overpass the deeds of the wicked; they judge not the cause, the cause of the fatherless, yet they prosper; and the right of the needy they do not judge. Shall I not visit for these things? saith the Lord: Shall not my soul be avenged on such a nation as this?"

There are many more like this in that Book. But just as the contents of May Day are systematically emptied out into a day merely to splurge at the florist (and Labor Day's date is shifted), so the Bible's fuller contents and tensions have been emptied by those in charge of preaching it. No wonder people become cynical about such religions when they actually read the holy texts on which they are based.

Today (yesterday for some people reading this) is May Day. Today, let us remember these people who brought us the weekend.

The Struggle for France

2007-04-24T02:10:00.000+02:00

"I am France," the Sun King Louis XIV famously said. Several candidates in an unprecedented Sun King-Reaganesque style struggled to claim consubstantiation with the nation on Sunday in a first round electoral showdown that winner Nikolas Sarkozy and others called a victory for democracy.

What lies beneath the "victory for democracy" evidenced in the record voter turnouts for the French presidential election on Sunday? Some say a new kind of crypto-fascism and a resurgent populism based on glossy, strategically ambiguous political branding. But American readers will recall: this comes most effectively from candidate Nikolas Sarkozy, a man whose smooth politicking has been described as "American," of which he claims to be quite proud.

The poll projections for the first round of the French presidential election are crunched and unlike the last election (in 2002) when Jean-Marie Le Pen freaked out the world by showing that a neo-fascist could win 17% of the votePublish, this time there were few surprises. Uh-huh, this time the savvy right-of-center Nikolas Sarkozy (of the Union Mouvement Populaire party) headed the pack with over 30 % of the vote, showing how a right of center candidate can poach the slogans of the extreme wing of his ideological sphere (as the Republicans in the U.S. have done so well at least since Nixon began the Southern strategy), speak in code about race, and try to scare or seduce undecided centrists into voting for him on hot button issues--especially islamophia coded as immigration, law and order, and the candidacy of Turkey to enter the EU. The Socialist Party candidate Ségolène Royal received just over 25% of the vote, placing her in the second and final run-off for the French presidency in early May. Francois Bayrou, the self-appointed bridge of right and left, ended up with a strong but still inadequate showing of almost 19%, while the right-wing surprise of 2002 Jean-Marie Le Pen garnered just over 10% this time (largely because Sarkozy stole his fire).

The ministry of the interior at noon Sunday reported a record turnout thus far with over 30% already recorded. By eight Sunday evening news organizations reported it was a record turnout in French election history with 85.5% of eligible voters heading to the polls.

Here's what it looked like when you slice the French block of voting cheese into 12 qualifying pieces.

SARKOZY Nicolas : 31.09%

ROYAL Ségolène : 25.78%

BAYROU François : 18.53%

LE PEN Jean-Marie : 10.55%

BESANCENOT Olivier : 4.12%

DE VILLIERS Philippe : 2.25%

BUFFET Marie-George : 1.94%

VOYNET Dominique : 1.57%

LAGUILLER Arlette : 1.34%

BOVÉ José : 1.32%

NIHOUS Frédéric : 1.17%

Source: France2 TV

The major issues were said to be government corruption, the economy, and crime/security/immigration. Aside from government corruption, these issues are heavily racially coded. And yet none of the forms of communication these candidates used made any honest attempt to deal with the open wound of race in a France plagued with a post-colonial identity crisis. Au contraire, they appealed to nationalism in a way hitherto only reserved for the extreme right, residual supporters of Tyrannosaurus De Gaulle, and 30s fascists whose necks were spared after World War II (such as Le Pen).

It’s not clear how many people base their vote on posters, TV blurbs, books, internet sites, and influence from local opinion leaders and/or friends. But scholars tell us we’re living in a time of short attention spans and political campaign games that are more about catchy slogans and image than about policy debate.

It’s interesting to note then the form of consciousness-raising the majority of people in France encounter most—the political poster. These things are all over Paris: on official city-designated campaign displays, in the metro, on mailboxes and utility stands, and especially on construction barriers near road or sidewalk work. Remember that the Paris region, the city and its suburbs, is over nine million people. Let’s take a look at the slogans and images they have been bombarded with.

While leading candidate Sarkozy has chanted “law and order” and “respect for the Republic” incessantly since he became Minister of the Interior in 2002, his 2007 campaign poster and slogan doesn’t seem to draw attention to the fear and division on which he has built his identity. With a nearly obscene irony for his opponents, his poster reads, “Together everything becomes possible.” (Ensemble tout devient possible). Of course, his critics say, that is precisely the problem To them, the seduction of a majority of citizens is a softer fascism, harder to detect without the violent gesticulations, and oral paroxysms of the 1930s political style.

In some areas of Paris Sarkozy’s posters have been de-faced, literally, with the notorious Hitler mustache. On the other hand, the far left candidate Olivier Besancenot’s brand is “Our lives are worth more than their profits,” while the Green candidate calls for an “Ecological Revolution,” whatever that would mean. But none of them mentions any clear policy initiatives, except for the old-school “Worker’s Fight” Party and its candidate Arlette Laguiller (in yellow above). Her poster’s outline of detailed positions seems to be completely ignorant of or outright rejects the common wisdom of the Power Point Generation. The anti-Sarkozy skull and crossbones poster has a fair amount of text with it, though it’s not much about policy as about the doomsday civil war that will follow should Sarko be elected. In other words, it’s all branding where the function of the product has nothing to do with the ad and its appeals to patriotism mainly, and human value/class inequality and exploitation on the far left. That is the genre of the poster. The problem is it is also the genre of the campaign ad on TV, and in some newspapers, which many people will not read any way.

The "American" Sarkozy's coded appeals

Last night, Sarkozy spoke to a roaring crowd of admirers, claiming that the high rate of participation was a victory for democracy and that he and Madame Royal have a responsibility to conduct a debate with sincerity and dignity, a true debate of ideas. Cleverly, Sarkozy framed the election results around a great showdown (reverberating with other dramatic claims of other great clashes between civilizations) between two competing ideas of nation, politics, and values.

Sarko has made Law and Order, Authority, economy, and the family the keystones of his campaign and political image. In a speech in the southwestern city of Perpignan in late February he fashioned himself in opposition to the socialist legacy of 1968, reduced to its alleged disrespect for authority. “Down with authority! That was the platform of 1968!” he cried. According to him, lack of respect for authority is responsible for children’s disobedience to their parents and teachers; to the law; to the police; to the flag; to the nation.

At times, he harangues against what he alleges are residual doctrines of the post-68 left, and at others he ascribes causality for social instability, criminality, and violence to socialist economic policies—that is, no work is producing delinquents, an argument that allows him to argue for cutting taxes by 4%, exempting more people from an inheritance tax, cutting civil service costs, cracking down on illegal immigration, and cracking down on crime with minimum sentences for repeat offenders and more severe punishments for juveniles. At still other times, he suggests that Islam and its values of polygamy are responsible for single-parent households with no father figure to discipline children, the latter who become active in underground drug economies and theft.

Sarko’s law and order, family values, and security rhetoric is in some ways a bit of bad American political breath blown into contemporary post-colonial French culture and politics. Like conservative American presidential contenders George Wallace and then Nixon in 1968 who reacted to consecutive summers of African-American riots during Lyndon Johnson’s presidency by dividing white voters with code words for race alarm such as “busing” and “law and order,” Sarkozy’s codes of “law and order,” “respect,” “youth,” and “authority” and “crime” play to fears of many white French citizens who gave racist Jean-Marie Le Pen the second place vote in the first round of the Presidential election of 2002 with nearly 17% of the vote.

There has been talk that Sarkozy has also tried to soften his image in the last two or three months. But on his last day of official campaigning, he spoke to an audience in Marseille, claiming he would be France’s “protector” and calling for renewed faith in a France that has been victim of self-doubt recently. "I hate this fashion for repentance that says France hates itself and its history," he said. Almost perversely to an American observer, he appropriated the form and words of Martin Luther King, repeating “I have a dream,” but the dream is about demanding respect for authority all the while shirking any hard discussion of race. He went on to claim that while colonialism was perhaps “an unfair system,” there is a debt owed to those “decent and hardworking French families” who were driven out of Africa (in the movements for independence, such as the Algerian War). He refused to apologize for that “system.”

In fact, in the campaign Sarko has dealt with the racial problems issuing from colonialism and the French national identity crisis in the same way he did in the midst of the 2005 riots. He completely de-historicized them and treated their causes as cultural (bad parenting, not respecting true French culture, i.e. non-Muslim), economic (being lazy or, alternately, active in an illicit drug economy), and pathological (bad eggs are bad eggs; put them away for good), suggesting cultural solutions (respect) to the problems he defined so facilely. Thus he avoided the well-documented problems of race in everyday French life—in housing, schooling, job hiring, political and media representation, and general social life. Many white French people don’t want to live, work , go to school, or hang out with African-French, which in practice becomes a race problem. But that is precisely what can not be talked about in Sarkozy’s "republican" discourse. For what it’s worth, Royal is happy to tiptoe around it too, with her own codes like “A juster France is a stronger France.”

Sarkozy has cleverly if not diabolically claimed solidarity and the nation for himself by identifying as non-patriotic those who talk of particular identities instead of France as a whole, those who criticize France’s past, its values, and traditions. In fact, he claims they threaten “our capacity to live together!” His attacks on multiculturalism and his calls for a unified and proud France belie the fact that millions of Arab and black French citizens are systematically excluded from the “big tent” France that Sarkozy carries on about in complete mauvaise foi. He tries to set up a farcical debate where his opponents are on the defensive. They can’t talk about racism, difference, and inequalities based therein and their historical origins because that is un-patriotic from the get-go. The French Republic does not recognize race or religion, only laws. So the republican discourse effaces the actual racial practices that are everywhere in French everyday life.

I am France. No I am!

Segolene Royal has tried to combat Sarko’s rhetorical strategies to claim justice and patriotism by herself claiming them. Her slogan is “La France Presidente” ("France (for) President" and “Plus juste la France sera plus forte" ("A Juster France will be a Stronger France."). Her posters are usually blue and white with some red lettering. She encouraged audiences to join her in singing the French national anthem and to buy themselves a French flag to proudly wave. Francois Bayrou, the candidate who claimed he would unite right and left branded himself “La France de toutes nos forces” (“With All Our Strength for France”). All of these suggest that France is some how divided and weak. And it has mostly been poached from the far Right, about which Jean Marie Le Pen, its 79-year old outspoken and enduring figure has at times vigorously complained. His slogans have long been "Défendre les Français avec les Français" and "La France et les Français d'abord" ( "Defend France for the French" and "France and the French First"). Phillipe De Villiers, candidate of the far right “Mouvement Pour la France” (Movement for France) has similarly claimed the slogan “La Fierte’ d’etre Francais” (“The Pride of Being French”). Le Pen and Phillipe De Villier’s anti-immigrant and pro-nationalist rhetoric has now become mainstream.

Behind the brand: some real policy proposals?

When one gets past their strategically ambiguous but patriotic slogans, is the policy program obvious? You have to go to his website for starters. There you find that Sarkozy claims 15 points.

Put an end to Public Weakness/Impotence (strong government, willing to act and take responsibility)
An irreproachable Democracy (speaking to the theme of corruption that has haunted Chirac and the Clearstream affair).
Conquer unemployment.
Rehabilitate Work (Sarko claims the 35 hour work week, installed by the socialists has resulted in a culture where people don’t have “a taste for risk” and work has become devalued.).
Increase Buying Power (which means there shouldn’t be laws limiting the amount of time one wants to work).
Europe must protect itself from globalization (fine print:preserve the “values of civilization” and thus oppose Turkey’s entry into the EU).
Respond to the urgency of Sustainable Development
Allow All the French to be homeowners.
Spread the principles of authority, respect and merit. (Know your place! Don’t talk back! No rioting.).
Schools that guarantee the success of all students (Of course, the problem with schools currently is an authority problem).
Make higher education and research at a globally competitive level.
Rid “difficult neighborhoods” of violence.
Take control of Immigration.
Major political efforts
Proud to be French (apologies to the Far Right).

Segolene Royal offers a short program for the majority of Attention Deficients and for the professional citizens a 100 point program.

The seven-pointer she calls “7 Pillars.”

Re-launch growth so everyone can work. (Sounds good--how? Her predecessors argued that limiting the hours of the work week would help it, and besides, what kind of growth seems to be increasingly important under the threat of global warming and the twilight of the throwaway society)
Improve buying power. (Noble aim)
Promote education. (That's seriously a "pillar?")
Guarantee the social protection of families. (Fine, and what exactly does that mean?)
Realize Environmental Excellence. (Again: great! But how is the question)
Struggle Against All Forms of Violence (at least here she clearly acknowledges that teenagers burning cars in the suburbs is not the only form of violence in France).
Act for a Stronger France. (Um, whatever that means. I suppose this is to counter any accusation that she is "weak" on anything at all).

Both of these plans have hyperlinks to deeper explanations. But most people are probably not likely to have time or patience to go that far (the important qualification to utopian cheerleading about the internet as the revival of alt.news and robust democracy). On the surface these can each be deceptively ambiguous and even look similar on a few points.

Again, this is hardly different from glittering generalities shoveled to the American public for some time now during campaigns and in between them. And patently American are many of the strategies: playing to extreme wings of a party and undecideds with code and ambiguous claims whose conclusions anyone can supply; also having something to reel in every other single-issue citizen or group in an era where political parties are increasingly weaker in many Western countries with large groups of undecideds.

So, the people have spoken in round one, as Sarkozy gleefully pointed out this evening. But exactly what they said and why is work for an interpreter.

Kirk Rundstrom, 1968-2007: Thank you.

2007-03-18T17:08:00.000+01:00

Also published by Blogcritics Magazine
Like a lot of people in this world, I have a million things I’m supposed to be doing today. But it’s gray again in Paris, my beautiful old dog is an old dog, I’m sitting in a room full of furniture that’s been sold on-line as a major symbolic step in a harrowing divorce process, and it’s Sunday. That there are other puppies that will be born, that people can fall in love again—it all just makes me sadder; seems more just if they could not. But most of all, I can’t justify going one more goddamned day without talking about Kirk Rundstrom. New puppies and loves? Maybe. Another Kirk Rundstrom? No fucking way.

Kirk Rundstrom of the ever-beloved insurgent country groups Split Lip Rayfield and Scroat Belly was taken by cancer on February 22. I’m disgusted with myself for having deferred my memorial ‘til now. His passing has had a considerable impact on me, and it's not only because we were the same age.

I first saw Kirk playing with Scroat Belly in Lawrence, Ks some time in 1995. Though I’m not precise on the date, I’ll never forget the impression that Kirk left on me. One word comes to mind: energy. The man was Shazzam on guitar. He beamed (smiled right back at the Grim fucking Reaper, I’d bet), he rocked, and yet tattooed, work-booted and capped by farm feed suppliers, the man never played the cocky rocker. When you watched him shred that acoustic (or electrified acoustic) guitar you witnessed an electrical storm on guitar strings. He and his comrades would play until they either couldn’t physically play any more or the club owner pulled the plug, as Kirk looked out disappointedly from a small pond of sweat he had generated over the last two hours of giving everything he had to an audience. He loved to share his energy. He forgave us our faults and welcomed us asking nothing in return save for our attention. Were Jesus to return as an alt.country rocker, Kirk Rundstrom would be an obvious form for him to take—what? You didn’t read that sermon: “Will preach for beer?”

After that first kiss, I henceforth slept with only one eye shut, the other ever looking for a new Scroat Belly or Split Lip Rayfield—in a word: Rundstrom—show to be announced, which I could not possibly miss, I said to myself and not overstating the matter all that much. I moved to Chicago in 1997 but had the good fortune of seeing Rundstrom perform often there, Chicago being the headquarters of Bloodshot Records, which boasted Rundstrom's bands on their impressive roster.

Like others, I was never ever disappointed by a Kirk Rundstrom performance. I never felt ripped off as if by one of these bands who appear to prefer playing to a wall and who are more than happy to be off stage in 30 minutes and no encore, no matter how much you paid for a ticket. On the contrary, Kirk would encore until the cows came home, and then some more.

In the late 90s I had the opportunity to meet the man personally when he came to Chicago, generously appearing with his band mates to record live for the alt. and classic country show on Chicago’s WNUR radio station, “Southbound Train,” which I hosted with Keith Cook. Not only was Kirk a fine musician and performer; he was also a fine human being by all standards. Talented, friendly, generous, an un-pretentious bon vivant who loved his beer, American gothic, and barbeque. His big tattooed forearms gave him the air of a scrappy farmer, even a man who had had his share of winning bar fights—until you saw that smile of his. There was nothing macho about it. He seemed to bridge waters, peoples, styles, classes, regions.

As others have also remarked, it is unsurprising that he would with his bandmates bridge what had seemed naturally gulfed audiences and styles of music: bluegrass, speed metal, punk, and hippy jam bands. There were elements of each in his music, his style, his way of being. Perhaps others had tried: they had failed where he succeeded, even if not enough people have been able to appreciate his talent for this bridging and hybridity.

"You put electricity and drums behind us and we're a rock band," he said in a well-circulated quote. "We play bluegrass instruments, but we don't do covers. We don't wear rouge or bolo ties. I don't know any traditionals. I couldn't play a flat-pickin' song to save my life. I'm a hack of a guitar player. Eric may be one of the best guitar players I've heard, but we forced him to play banjo. I don't know what Wayne is doing. He's just shredding his mandolin. I wouldn't even want to be associated with the state of bluegrass today. It's lounge music."

This approach to music made Scroat Belly’s one and only album on Bloodshot Records, Daddy’s Farm a cult classic. Each song seemed to be a tempest of twang, loud, hard and fast, preceded by a more traditional lull and followed by the same. There was always something rough and not really ironic about Kirk’s and Wayne’s vocals in the slower parts of the songs which kept them from sounding like straight duplicates or caricatures of a Louvin Brothers or Bill Monroe number; and always something twangy in voice, style and arrangement that kept them from ever being confused with Metallica or Agent Orange imitators.

An acoustic version of Scroat Belly (on some songs at least) lived on in Split Lip Rayfield also on Bloodshot, which produced a number of impressive albums in this unique genre, my favorite of which is perhaps the first and eponymous album in 1998. With Kirk, Eric Mardis joined on banjo, while Jeff Eaton strapped a lone cat-gut string to a truck fuel tank and bloodied his duct-taped hands on bass; Scroat Belly’s Wayne Gottstine returned later to “shred,” as Kirk said, a mandolin in the mix. Can you start to imagine what this looked like live, had you never tasted the sweet nectar of a Split Lip show? The syncopated beats and minor chords of “Outlaw” and barnburner; the auctioneer-ish vocals and sped up, even if often rudimentary, picking of “Long Haul Weekend”; a kind of truck-stop poetry to numbers like “Pinball Machine”; a necessary simplicity and celebrated naiveté of “Sunshine”; a vaguely Balkans-like pace and punchiness to some of them—they stuck with you all day and commanded your return to them, a command that has me often returning to this album almost ten years later.

Unlike with Heehaw and some of its alt.country descendants, it was never completely clear to what degree Split Lip/Scroat Belly embraced and lived the country motifs and clichés they rearranged, added to, and played with, which was probably a good thing. This complex relationship with the rural, the land, and its culture (like Faulkner’s with the South!) also emerged in their DIY streak, such as t-shirts they made with the montage of a well-nourished hog in silhouette, the name Split Rip Rayfield and the text “100% pure fat.” Funny, ironic, knowingly embracing what the mainstream South Beach Dieters feared in food, culture, music? Who knows? But it was good.

My ex- and I shared a lot of wonderful things together, perhaps the most powerful and satisfying being music, especially live music. For us, going to their shows was like the revivifying trip to the spa that our bourgeois counterparts swear is indispensable for getting out of bed in the morning and continuing this often perplexing daily cycle. From SxSW 1998 to various gigs in Chicago and Lawrence through 2004, we would leave Kirk’s shows re-charged, beaming, Kirk’s smile as contagious as the music he played. If I could change one of the many things I don’t like about myself, it might very well be to take Kirk’s smile and use it like an Evil Eye. It seemed to offer asylum and to ward off bad luck, even if its limit was death.

Kirk’s (his bands’) recordings of course must lack that visual zest. Yet, more than a little strangely, you can hear without much effort and concentration that missing sense. The sound evokes the image. Kirk was and will continue to be a spirit. You listen and you can see him behind those lifeless speakers and that grim faux-metallic stereo, his playful bulging eyes and unquenchable smile refusing to fade—ever. So thank God for recorded music, and despite Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, thank God for memory: Kirk’s spirit, his smile, lives on, and God knows I, like others, need it. Thank you, Kirk. You will not soon be forgotten.Tribute to Kirk Rundstrom

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Healthcare, Polls, and Bad News

2007-03-02T19:36:00.000+01:00

In “top Yahoo news stories” this past week, a Reuters' wire article announced a poll just found that health care is the "top domestic concern" of a majority of Americans (Iraq being the top overall concern). This article is an example of serious problems with public opinion produced through polls, and its representation in the news.

First of all, the trouble with this Yahoo/Reuters article is the same a lot of news suffers from: lack of context. We need to know the history of this issue to understand whether this is a new concern, which many readers will likely infer. If the issue's been around for a long time, then how would that be news? ‘Course it wouldn't be; it’d be "olds." And if we dig a little in the mainstream press and public opinion research, we find in fact that health care and Americans' interest in universal health care has been a big concern for a long time. A Harris poll in 2005 surveyed Americans on a range of health issues. It found that 75% of Americans "strongly favored" universal health care in the U.S. Interesting finding. However, the poll doesn't tell readers how Americans think it should be funded. Would Americans be willing to pay a bit higher income tax for this coverage? Questionable, given the popularity of tax breaks. Americans are notorious for having their cake and eating it too. A poll last year, for example, found that nearly 60% of Americans think the U.S.
tax system is unfair.

Going back further, what do you know? In October 2003, an ABC News/Washington Post poll “found that Americans prefer universal health care to the current health system by a margin of two to one. Even more revealing is the fact that Americans favor guaranteeing health insurance for all, ‘even if it means raising taxes.’” Indeed, some sources claim that Kaiser Foundation polls from 1992 to the present have shown majorities of Americans favoring universal health care for Americans or “health care guaranteed for all Americans,” but it’s not always clear what respondents understand by these terms.

Questions that ask what is a "top concern" among a variety of issues handpicked by pollsters can also be misleading. No one asks, "Do you want your government to address your top concern only or several of your concerns?" So, first of all, the questions in public opinion studies can be skewed and misrepresent public opinion in its deeper sense, a public agenda, which would, in turn, supposedly influence a legislative agenda--how representatives are supposed to serve their constituents or be thrown out.

Yet the way questions are asked and the way issues are presented in the news without giving a history of an issue and opinion about it, legislators are free to press on with pet issues that they may have put on the polling agenda in the first place (such as immigration, for instance). Nor do such questions about "opinion" often measure how well citizens understand opposing arguments on such issues. This is the problem with democracy by opinion polls. As the late Christopher Lasch pointed out, American democracy does not just need information; it also direly needs public debate and citizens capable of critically evaluating it.

Indeed, opinions that have not passed through the filter of public debate and information-gathering was not the vision of the father of modern public opinion polling, George Gallup. In his Public Opinion in Democracy(1939), Gallup argued “the people, having heard the debate on both sides of every issue, can express their will” in public opinion polls. The result would be the nation as “one great room.”

What we have today is more like a million different rooms, which hardly arrive at opinion through debate. Indeed, as I've shown, it's not always clear how opinion is formed and how strong it is on a personal political agenda. Is there another way? Stay tuned for Part II of the problems with public opinion.
(also published by Blogcritics Magazine)
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As the world burns...

2007-02-23T23:29:00.000+01:00

While the climate crisis worsens (and Americans among others skip merrily down the primrose path--yeah, keep telling yourself it's a hippie conspiracy theory), a report has ranked American cities for their overall ecological quality. Enjoy.

OVERALL

Overall Rank (1 is best, 72 is worst)	City, State	Overall Score (1 is best, 10 is worst)
1	Fargo*, ND	2.73
2	Burlington*, VT	2.79
3	Portland, OR	2.81
3	Colorado Springs, CO	2.81
5	Sioux Falls*, SD	2.83
6	Boise*, ID	2.85
7	Seattle, WA	2.86
8	Portland*, ME	2.87
9	Minneapolis, MN	2.98
10	Anchorage, AK	3.03
11	Honolulu, HI	3.09
12	Cheyenne*, WY	3.17
13	Denver, CO	3.19
14	Billings*, MT	3.21
15	Des Moines*, IA	3.22
16	Mesa, AZ	3.24
17	Manchester*, NH	3.28
18	Albuquerque, NM	3.29
18	Lexington, KY	3.29
20	Virginia Beach, VA	3.31
21	Tucson, AZ	3.35
22	Omaha, NE	3.37
23	Columbia*, SC	3.42
23	Boston, MA	3.42
25	Charlotte, NC	3.46
26	Las Vegas, NV	3.49
27	Kansas City, MO	3.51
28	San Francisco, CA	3.54
28	Jacksonville, FL	3.54
30	Phoenix, AZ	3.56
31	San Diego, CA	3.57
32	Milwaukee, WI	3.65
33	Salt Lake City*, UT	3.66
34	San Jose, CA	3.67
35	Oklahoma City, OK	3.74
36	Sacramento, CA	3.76
37	Wilmington*, DE	3.77
37	Little Rock*, AR	3.77
39	Austin, TX	3.80
40	Arlington, TX	3.81
41	Tulsa, OK	3.83
42	Wichita, KS	3.84
43	Nashville-Davidson, TN	3.85
43	Charleston*, WV	3.85
45	Oakland, CA	3.98
45	Washington, DC	3.98
47	Long Beach, CA	4.03
48	Columbus, OH	4.04
49	Providence*, RI	4.11
50	Memphis, TN	4.16
51	Fort Worth, TX	4.20
52	Philadelphia, PA	4.21
53	Indianapolis, IN	4.22
54	New York City, NY	4.23
54	Fresno, CA	4.23
54	Bridgeport*, CT	4.23
57	Baltimore City, MD	4.29
58	Louisville-Jefferson County*, KY	4.30
59	Chicago, IL	4.31
60	San Antonio, TX	4.33
61	Birmingham*, AL	4.47
62	Los Angeles, CA	4.58
63	Dallas, TX	4.62
64	Atlanta, GA	4.67
65	Jackson*, MS	4.73
66	Newark, NJ	4.76
67	New Orleans, LA	4.95
68	Houston, TX	5.06
69	El Paso, TX	5.13
70	Cleveland, OH	5.20
71	Miami, FL	5.29
72	Detroit, MI	5.49

Note:

• All rank information is out of 72 cities, though not all cities may have scores/data in every category.
1 is the 'best' (least polluting, most educated, etc) and 72 is the 'worst'.

• Use of the asterisk (*) after the city name indicates year 2000 data was used in instances where
2005 or 2004 Census data was not available.

Question to readers

2007-01-26T13:57:00.000+01:00

My dear friends/loyal readers:
I am considering permanently changing the name of my blog from "Pearls Before Swine" to "The Mad Professor/Le Professeur Fou." I would like your feedback. Any other suggestions? I'm not sure I like the infantilization of my public implied in the Pearls title, though I do occasionally like to be provocative.
cheers,
JH

Colbert on O'Reilley, vice-versa

2007-01-21T16:30:00.000+01:00

So, I've been away from the political-media stuff recently, but luckily I just ran in to this Colbert-O'Reilly material. Of course the Comedy Central Kings Colbert and Stewart are much hated by O'Reilly and vice-versa. How the Comedy Central voices are received by a broader demographic will be interesting to note. No doubt the sparring has raised the curiosity of many who knew very little about Colbert or Stewart, moving them to sample the shows, though the O'Reilly framing of them is vitriolic. It will be interesting to gauge the reception long-term. Perhaps the O'Reilly-Limbaugh productions are entering a new phase, finally held accountable for the effects of the acid they spew. Or will it just deepen the trend toward politics and news consumption as brands, with media and political literacy going down the crapper? Stay tuned, but to Fox, Comedy C, both, other?

O'Reilly on Colbert:

O'Reilly and Colbert contd.

(Stronger and Sexier Revision) MP3 Peep Show: What I'm listening to...(revised...slightly)

2007-01-15T02:34:00.000+01:00

[from parisnormale]

by Jayson
This is a new column/series on Parisnormale, which will feature rotating contributors. We will also allow some of you to post from time to time. Just email me (jaysonharsin@yahoo.com).

What is it?

It's an MP3 peep show (curtsies and bows to Siouxsie Sioux): I give you the voyeuristic pleasure of peeping into my MP3 player or old school cassette-walkman and -woman, and also hearing why I find the lineup worthy of a short-lived rotation--all in the context of my morning metro ride to work (in Paris).

Here's what I'm currently listening to, some new, some old school (sorry, I'm too lazy to provide the links to myspace or allmusic, so you'll just have to eat your Cheerios and find the getupandgo to do your own search if need be):

Joy Division--Failures. Punky, garagey, influencing, like the VU, a legion of followers, and it still holds up. It's a good way to get started in the morning, running to the metro. Who's on time in Paris (that's right--I conveniently use it to conceal yet another of my flaws)? Missed it again: failure. But man, am I charged now to sprint up the escalator five minutes later at the Gare du Nord correspondence. I think I'll have to repeat that one for an extra burst of energy.

Sufjan Stevens--Chicago (acoustic version from Blizzard). My adoration of this song has taken voice elsewhere...It's going to stay in the rotation until I just can't take it any longer. Let's see, shall we, how long that will be. I'm betting a month--you? Now I've lost all that momentum I was reserving for my correspondence.

Buffalo Tom--Torch Singer. As I've also said elsewhere, this guy wrote great pop songs with heady lyrics, especially about relationships. Perfect for certain moods. Those of you who know it understand; those who don't will soon understand after you listen. Uh, is it possible to bop your head and weep profusely, simultaneously?

Peter Bjorn and John--Let's Call It Off. Calypso meets mod and new wave; also spaghetti Western guitars, with echoing vocals. Very 80s and yet experimental and fresh--which is to say, it's postmodernism at its best. These guys are fun, smart, creative--in a word, Swedish. The lead singer (Peter) has a voice that recalls GBV's Robert Pollard, but with a healthy dose of estrogen. In that sense this group moves interestingly beyond a hybrid of influences that surely conjure the Kinks, GBV, Belle and Sebastian and Sonic Youth. It's sweet, it rocks, it's weird. It's not "a sound"; it's musical creativity at it's best. (And yes, their honey-drippin' "Old Folks" smash is on there too).

Kim Wilde--Kids in America (1981). A major underground classic for a generation of post-punk, new wave American 80s rebels, which I've returned to with immense pleasure. It goes down like caffeine and sugar. But it also makes the passengers on the metro laugh at you--no there's no booger on your cheek; your fly is safely zipped; your body is just taking orders from Kim Wilde.

Dwight Yoakam-- It only hurts when I cry (acoustic version from the Acousticnet album). Nice playful ironic lyrics to treat heartache and rejection: "The only time I feel the pain/is in the sunshine and the rain/I don't feel no hurt at all unless you count when teardrops fall/I tell the truth 'cept when I lie/And it only hurts me when I cry." A great alt-country songwriter with a distinctive voice. True to the genre, D's songs are beautiful explorations in heartache, in cowboy boots and bolo ties, definitely free of Nashville's right-wing corporate yokes. So now I'm cryin, and the septuagenarian across the way is looking confused, worried, scared. What is 911 in French?

Ramones--I don't want to grow up. I dig this rockin' cover of Tom Waits' excellent commentary on modern hardly-advanced everyday life. When I hear my parents fighting, when I look in the medicine cabinet, when I turn on the TV set...I don't want to grow up. It makes the singer long for a dog's life. Indeed, the adults of several generations continue the errors of the past. Even we romantics/idealists need a dose of escapism and cynicism. Old blue hair is soothed by drying tears.

Mojave 3--Breaking the Ice. Such sweet indie pop, a la Posies, with well-wrought lyrics. I find my head swaying from lateral side to side on the metro...until I notice the septuagenarian seated across from me cracking up (only 8 minutes after she was busting a gut at me during the Kim Wilde selection and very afraid at the abrupt turn I took at Yoakam).

Wolf Parade--Modern World. Methinks me likes this syncopated acoustic-guitar and keyboard-driven angsty condemnation of the ant-hill everyday life of most "modern" cities. Go to Gare du Nord, the busiest subway stop in the world, between 5 and 8pm, stand in the segue between line 5, line 4, and RER B, watch and listen (and see how many times your shoulder gets slammed--just like high school football practice all over again). Can you tell I have a nasty tragi-comic streak? Standing there, taking the hits in the station: it's my form of non-violent protest. Thank you, Wolf Parade.

Wreckless Eric--Whole Wide World. This great little ditty (covered by at least eighteen major bands) does a nice job quoting the Cars in an ode to the love out there somewhere. Or so it seems. Actually the Cars "Just What I Needed" new wave hit came out in '78 and WE's "Whole Wide" came out in '77. But no matter. The Cars is better known. I'm sure a lot of other bands begin that way, too. But you're talking to a guy raised on late 70's and 80's radio, then punk. It's all relative, or cultural. But customarily, I digress. In the first few bars, I'm ready for Ric O'Casek to belt out "I don't mind you coming here," even if it is acoustic. Instead, you get: "I'd go the whole wide world just to find her...to find out where they hide her...Is she lying on a tropical beach somewhere...I should be lying on that sun-soaked beach with her..." and so on. Maybe he married her and lost her? But yes, you're right: I just saw the heartwarming Stranger than Fiction featuring this song performed by the lovable Will Ferrell. Enough already: of course I'm a sentimental sucker. I'm finished taking the hits, I'm descending back into the bowels of the metro, steeled to absorb its unforgiving flourescent lights and wreaking rat dung. Gotta chill a second and nurse that Charlie Horse I picked up on the way up the escalator a few minutes ago.

Uncle Tupelo--No Depression. Both senses of the word. This punky bluegrass is to me what Metallica is for some others. It appeals to my inner Bojangles. And I like its politics. I'm going where they're going. Now what stop was "No Depression?" Must've missed it...again.

Tapes'nTapes--Cowbell. Violent Femmes but better, revved up and ready to go. A couple of bridges that remind me of the B52's classic Rock Lobster. I'd add to this TnT's Insistor, also in the peepshow and I dare you to try resisting the notorious accelerated "rock head nod" (or indie head bang) with that one. I'm abetted by a bad coffee I picked up on the RER track in wait, while the Dilbert ants scurry about me. I'm worried they'll whisk me away to their data entry desk jobs and make me turn off my MP3 player: "my preeecccccious, my precious."

I'm also listening to a slew of Sunset Rubdown and Wolf Parade songs. One of my friends says he dislikes Connor Oberst because the dude constantly sounds on the verge of tears. But actually that's why I like him. Ditto for Spencer Krug of SR and WP. Very heady lyrics and unique vocals within expressionistic musical arrangements. Highly recommended. Also getting my Art Brut on, more about which next time. Now, I'm being belched out of the bowels of the metro beast. No more in the belly of the whale. I'm re-charged to spread the good word: is "peep show" one word or two? Doesn't matter: the French don't listen to anyone to whom they're not introduced anyhow.

I shall end there for today, mes peeps. That's your peep show, or "Riding the Metro with Jayson, boppin' and cryin'" (that septuagenarian is really confused at my emotional swings, but then again, she ain't gettin' the peep show)
Ciao Ciao for now.
Jayson

Labels: entertainment, france, indie, indie rock, music, paris, review

In praise of the Pagan, Feminist, Vaudevillean Holiday Classic: The Year Without a Santa Claus

2006-12-29T02:04:00.000+01:00

Od-ed on fruitcake? Reached your patience limit with your family, no matter how much you love them? The lazy hometowns bringing you down during the holidays? Fear not, deliverance from ennui is nigh. Check out Rankin and Bass's classic The Year Without a Santa Claus (TYWSC) available on DVD , sample clips of it available on You Tube (see them below).

Out of all the holiday specials, The Night Before Christmas, Santa Claus Is Coming to Town, Frosty the Snowman, A Christmas Carol, Rudolph's Shiny New Year, and many others, it is TYWSC (1974) that I remember best and most fondly.

TYWSC is an animation masterpiece by the remarkable Arthur Rankin Jr. and Jules Bass. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Rankin/Bass had a prolific stretch of productions using stop-motion puppet animation (“Animagic"), beginning with the ever-popular Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer in 1962.

Many of these Rankin/Bass “Animagic” productions are interesting on several levels, since they often pulled the holiday away from religious moorings (with a couple of exceptions) and contributed to the huge holiday commercial machine (music, decorations, TV, now video and DVD) but at the same time celebrated the secular-humanist qualities of Christmas, such as cheer and pleausure of giving or sharing for their own sake. TYWSC, like some of these others, is in fact a pagan, feminist and still moralizing tour de force.

The plot follows basic script-writing rules by introducing problems that must be resolved by a cast of heroes, foes, and helpers. The magic is in the details.

Santa is under the weather and is uninspired, thanks to the ingrates around the world. Christmas has lost its spirit and become reduced to a hollow, ugly "gimme gimme me" entitlement to things detached from any deeper human principles. So Santa decides to leave his red suit in moth balls this year (yes, there are moths in his North Pole chateau). Mrs. Claus is the heroine of the story. Behind the male lesser hero is a strong woman, and Rankin and Bass foreground her. In this sense, the production is a kind of unveiling of the hardly self-made cheer-giver by showing how dependent he is on his generous yet assertive wife. "Mrs. C" sees Santa is depressed by what he generalizes as a loss of Christmas spirit and cheer in the humanity he has served so generously over the years. So she sends two elves and a reindeer down to Southtown in search of evidence that will dispel Santa's suspicions and re-inspire him. But Jingle and Jangle, the charming and hapless elves, get into trouble and their tiny reindeer Vixen falls prey to a villainous dogcatcher.

The plot’s first basic problem to be resolved (Santa on strike) encounters a second plot requiring resolution: The mayor will spring Vixen from dog-jail if the elves can make it snow in Southtown, which has a kind of Southern California climate.

This new problem, getting snow to Southtown, brings viewers to what is unmistakably the most memorable parts of the show: the Broadwayesque scenes of brawling brothers Heatmiser and Snowmiser, given dominion over the northerly and southerly climes by their Mother Nature. Their song and dance routines are etched in the minds of millions of adults and even received an indirect homage in the film Batman and Robin (1997), where the villainous Mr. Freeze (Arnold Schwarzenegger) encourages his minions to fête him with Snowmiser’s song.

Indeed, the entire show seems to owe much to Greek and other mythologies where gods are powerful, flawed, and sparring like humans and thus in need of a stronger and wiser deity to keep them in check. In the end, it is only the strong woman Mother Nature who can arrange the snowstorm in Southtown, which, importantly, is accomplished by teaching the boisterous boys the art of compromise: Heatmiser lets it snow in Southtown while his icicle-nosed sibling permits some global warming in the North. Unsurprisingly the resolution of these two subplots makes way for the central message: one should believe in Santa Claus who is a symbol of good cheer and benevolence toward humankind, which of course should be a year-long spirit annually re-charged. The latter is the real meaning of Christmas, and Santa finally finds convincing evidence of its existence. So he resumes his global sleigh ride with renewed vigor.

TYWSC is a heartwarming morality tale executed with superb animation and songs. If you’re experiencing a lull in the holiday stretch (or even if you’re not) I recommend you re-live your childhood and enrich your own children’s by watching this DVD. If you don’t remember it or believe me, take a peak at these clips of these supernatural siblings, and try to resist.
Happy holidays.

Sigh: No more third-rate poetry

2006-12-24T13:22:00.000+01:00

Thanks to those of you who have politely stuck around through this period of third-rate poetry saturation. Though this blog publishes on many topics, I dare say it can't be all genres. A few of you come here for anything but third-rate poetry or translation of first-rate poetry, so I have moved the poetry to a new site: thirdratepoet.blogspot.com

If you're interested in following my third-rate poetry, exchanging with me, seeing perhaps commenting on my translations, then you can easily go to that site and register for email alerts. I hereby free the rest of you of my third-rate poetry (though I may occasionally announce some special third-rate poetry event). Here is the explanation and Welcome to that new site:

Why am I here? Why are you here? Of course we don't really know.
But my profile to the right gives you a decidedly un-cosmological shot at explanation about why I think I'm here (you're free to try the same).

My harshest critics, though somewhat insightful, have pointed out the oddity that I've actually registered four blogs, though I'm only heavily active on two. It is telling of a person though. Let me just say, though, that "everything but the kitchen sink" blogs/sites may not be very pleasant to read. This is an age of narrowcasting. People want to customize and nichefy. So it is with blogs. One of my sites is broader, covering vast terrains of media, culture, and politics, and yet, it didn't really comfortably house my third-rate poetry. It was time to find a home for it somewhere else. There's the rationale, which no doubt works in tandem with the mysteries of the unconscious.

The volatile mix of life's demands and expectations and my own ill-considered actions brought me here, a third-rate poet by default. I was always impressed by the story of how the precociously Leviathan intellect John Stuart Mill, having learned Latin, Greek, and algebra by age eight, all the classics of history, much philosophy, and political economy by age 13, suffered a mental breakdown at age 21. In his Autobiography, he claims that nothing could comfort but the poems of William Wordsworth, his Lyrical Ballads. Like Mill, I have always turned to poetry in times of crisis, at least in moments when I could bring myself to read at all. I have also written some poetry in times of non-crisis over the years. I used to think that poetry was for me, as it was for Keats and Shelley, a time of youthful productivity that would blaze magnificently, then take its exit like the locust that sings short-lived in summer. But now I understand why some feel compelled to write across their lives, however so short or long.

Honestly, millions of people consider themselves "writers" and "poets," and good for them if writing makes them feel better. On the other hand, I don't believe all things are equal (though it's true that standards are culturally constructed--Rimbaud is not good poetry from the point of view of the courtly poets two hundred years before him). I don't pretend to be a first-rate poet, though writing does take practice. Much of this material will be constantly revised.

In addition, every Western monopolizer of world resources and his dog has a blog these days (indeed, I'm thinking of giving our dog M her own blog) . Most aren't seen or heard, sad trees falling into deafening inexistence, while others are out-of-control egos, substituting for unresolved inadequate parental love and childhood recognition traumas, resulting in obsessions with statcounters, hits, being seen, comments, and strategies to increase traffic on their sites: "Look at me! Please, will you pay attention! I exist! I'm smart! I'm beautiful! I'm loveable! Please say something nice about me (or go away)!" Sometimes the sites are little more than clubs of backscratchers, cyber-group therapy, criticism necessarily being expelled from a discourse of eternal positive regard. Networks are built and can be good or bad for mental health, since many people are afraid to explore their demons and so spend life bouncing around from one unconscious fix to another. Sometimes sites are little more than boring, poorly written, intellectually and stylistically arid diaries and effusions of "I": "I went to the park. I took a runny dump. I saw Cameron Diaz naked on a beach in San Torini. It was cool." Sometimes they are shallow but cleverly executed prose, period. And people like Harlequin romances and E entertainment as much as Virginia Wolf.

I'm sure this blog runs all those risks and will fall into some of those boxes, for some readers. Feel free to let me know if you think I'm doing exactly what I want to avoid. I'm surely not going to be the one to point it out to myself. I don't believe in self-made man bullshit. People change, with great effort and will, in dialog with others. I have a friend who told me she hates blogs. She finds them pathetic cries for attention and confessions about matters that should be private--it's the Clinton-Lewinsky phenomenon that people gobble up like pizza samples in the supermarket. She also thinks people are doing the same thing when they dress in ways that call attention to themselves. But if someone has something to say, they must do something to get attention. It's true writing on the internet at all requires some ego, some desire to share and be recognized, even if we don't really know why or what we want in the act of recognition itself. Perhaps that desire is worth the writer's scrutiny?

The poetry here is often that genre whose authors are said to "take themselves too seriously." Not everything written here is bleak, dark, morose, and tumultuous. It is a mix, but you'll see my view has a hearty dose of Baudelaire's spleen. I do have acid reflux. Perhaps, in the end, I bear more darkness than light. And yet I laugh, here and elsewhere. I love. Above all else, I make mistakes, try to learn from them on a life journey toward the man I've meant and mean to be. Some see it as romantic folly. So be it.

There will also be an ongoing series of poems about Paris, where I currently dwell.
I'm mainly speaking to other third-rate poets, those who take comfort and interest in third-rate poetry, and first-rate poets who feel better about themselves by comparing their work to that of third-rate poets.

Perhaps you're a third-rate poet, too? Or you gain comfort from third-rate poetry,too? I will be sharing my works in progress, which will also include translations of French first-rate poetry (eg. Francois Villon, Paul Verlaine, Arthur Rimbaud, Charles Baudelaire,etc.). Perhaps you'd like to exchange comments and your poetry with me? This is not a gated community. It is hopelessly quaint: the front door is always unlocked, and I am usually on the porch, playing guitar or accordian, singing, weeping, thinking, laughing with a friend. Don't be shy.
j (p.s. My most recent entries are "Contemporary free men and women," "December, 1943," and "Trustworthy maps")