If there is one thing about blogging I enjoy, it is having the ability to impart knowledge, expertise, and experiences to those who may wish to read about it.
It is especially satisfying when a person's writing is acknowledged as being pertinent, important, and is published.
So, imagine my surprise and joy when a submission of mine to Truthout.org was published.
Joe Stack did more than just go to the window and scream "I'm as mad as hell and I am not going to take it anymore". He chose to make a statement against a tyrannical government long ago pried loose from any semblance of morality. Not that I would personally recommend flying an airplane into a government building full of people to make a statement but it takes a lot to shake the television lobotomized sheeple these days. Of course since Stack wasn't one of those dirty Muslim devils, therefore making his 'terrorist' attack no asset to the Israeli warmonger coddling corporate media to fuel the frenzy for endless wars of imperialism his story was simply flushed down the memory hole in favor of the grand spectacle of Tiger Woods' press conference the very next day.
Every Tuesday morning, I drive my daughter all the way to school, instead of just to the bus stop, for Band Sectionals at the ungodly hour of 6:30a.m. So I have a good sit in the car. On the return trip, I am all alone and get to choose the station! I listen to my local hippie station which has, in that weekly time slot, a Pacifica show called "People of the Earth". Very cool. They talk about various native and indigenous peoples and related issues. Like this one:
With numerous errands to do yesterday and today, I've been driving and listening more than usual. Its their pledge drive now. "CALL! and let us know you're there." I really want to contribute to this station, maybe I make it another birthday present to myself (this could go on all month, if I had $).
So. What stations do you like and listen to? Links welcome!
This will be, in the proper blogotoobz vernacular, a short diary.
Simply put, I DEMAND media coverage of America's wars NOW!
If these wars are NOT worth media coverage, they are not worth fighting. If the threat America faces from it's enemies is so great that it is absolutely necessary that we go to war, than it is absolutely necessary that the "free" press gives it ample coverage.
Since the Presidential Primaries back in the Spring of 2008 coverage of America's wars have almost entirely disappeared from the traditional media. With the exception of a few intrepid journalists the traditional media has given us NOTHING as far as details of what is happening in Iraq, Afghanistan or Pakistan except for the times when Dick Cheney emerges from his crypt, when President Obama sent more troops to Afghanistan, when an Iraqi journalist threw his shoes at George Bush's idiot of a son and when Rudy "9/11,9/11,9/11" shows up to collect his royalty fee.
In short, I want DETAILS, and if you're not in the mood you better GET IN THE MOOD, Mister.
I'll be mercifully brief. I just listened to a program on KPFA which is an interview with Michelle Alexander speaking of her new book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.
Basically, her contention that the 5 fold increase in incarceration in this country is thew way the elites have managed to use prisons as a means of social control as industries have moved away from population centers and left in its wake unsustainable ghettos. Which were invaded, starting under Reagan, by federally subsidized efforts to incarcerate a high proportion of African-American men through the spectacularly disproportionate application of drug laws against the poor and, largely, ignoring the white middle-class. SWAT Teams were sent in and funded to roust people out of their beds, seize and confiscate their property and deprive them of their civil rights.
The contrast in WBZ mainstream tv and my daily news survey cycle is interesting. I think of if a tree falls in the woods yet nobody hears the sound does the tree fall? Or why people fail to see the elephants in the room.
What did I find on the internet while searching the CT circuit and what was playing on the cognitively dissonant TeeVee. Mainstream propaganda delivery system channel WBZ. Yeah I am multi-tasking, kind of like driving while texting.
Anyone feel free to join me here. Im thoroughly disgusted with tv. Ill post a few links from some online sources Ive been perusing.
Video from Miami Herald... Haitians react to Robertson's idiotic remarks. My advice: skip past the replay of Robertson (about the first minute) or just turn down the volume while you get your kleenex.
The announcement to grant "temporary protective status," or TPS, to Haitian nationals allows immigrants already in the U.S. to live and work freely here until conditions in Haiti improve. After 18 months the status could be revoked.
"This is a disaster of historic proportions and this designation will allow eligible Haitian nationals in the United States to continue living and working in our country for the next 18 months," Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano announced late today on a conference call. "Providing a temporary refuge for Haitian nationals who are currently in the United States and whose personal safety would be endangered by returning to Haiti is part of this Administration's continuing efforts to support Haiti's recovery."
Napolitano estimated that there are 100,000 to 200,000 Haitian nationals currently in the country illegally.
"TPS gives them sort of an intermediate immigration status," said the secretary. "It allows them -- only for a period of 18 months, while Haiti gets back on its feet -- to remain in the United States and authorizes them to work during that period, among other things."
"This is Pearl Harbor Day. Forty-seven years ago to this very day, we were hit and hit hard at Pearl Harbor."
George H. W. Bush addressing the American Legion in Louisville, Kentucky (7 September 1988), three months prior to the actual anniversary of the bombing of Pearl Harbor (7 December 1941).
"Linc-, Lincoln, but okay"
Mika Brzezinski, naming her favorite 'founding father'.
No, I'm not talking about the Massachusett's election where Martha Coakley is down in the polls, and, if she loses, the Democratically-controlled Senate loses its 60 seat majority. Yes, it's a tight race, and, President Obama can't seem to find the time to go help her campaign. Big deal.
What IS a big deal is the thought that losing that 60th seat is what will put the Democrats agenda in jeopardy.
LOS ANGELES - Jay Leno might get another another chance to reign as late-night king at NBC.
The network, contemplating disppointing ratings for Leno's new prime-time show, is weighing a plan to return him to the 11:35 p.m. EST slot he held for 17 years as "Tonight Show" host, a person familiar with the discussions said on condition of anonymity over a lack of authority to address the issue publicly.
"The Jay Leno Show," a nightly 10 p.m. talk and comedy program that debuted last fall, has drawn lackluster ratings and complaints from NBC affiliate stations that the show has provided a weaker lead-in for local late newscasts than past NBC series.
In the general category of shopping for sources I offer this quote from McClatchy-
"The fact that we're seeing Democrats bailing, in an election year, suggests maybe it's a tide that's turning," said Gary Rose , a professor of politics at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Conn. "People are starting to feel promises were not fulfilled. Expectations were high, but what have we really seen?"
Now I happen to know Sacred Heart, and it's not Harvard or even Fairfield. In fact it isn't even in Fairfield, it's in Bridgeport despite their 90210 address shopping aspirations.
It's a dinky little Division II school that until recently didn't have a dormitory and was entirely commuter with a smaller student body than my High School and a considerably less stringent program of study. One step up from Housatonic Community College (who? you?).
Even today it's not as big as Bridgeport University and the only improvement is it's owned by the Catholic Church rather than Moonies.
Not everyone is the expert they appear in print, some have much more modest resumes.
We have a major cultural difference with the people our military and culture otherwise interacts with in the Middle East. This is not sufficiently acknowledged or looked at. In many cases, the way we "interact" with people overseas, borne out of hubris and arrogance, has no chance whatsoever of solving the problems that are described as needing to be solved.
For one thing, from what I understand, killing people at a distance and with no exposure to one's own danger, as is done with Predator drone strikes, is deemed cowardice, not cleverness. It doesn't matter who it's done to or for what reason. It might kill people "we" want killed, but will probably exacerbate, long term, the very problem our military is ostensibly there to "solve", which is global terrorism. For every terrorist we kill, are we not possibly creating ten more?
So, too, our military is seen as a universal hammer with which to solve all of our problems with foreign countries. We try to use them to solve problems that simply cannot be so solved .. but one argument can be made that we simply have no choice. So much of our national resources have been put into our military that one has to ask what is left to apply a more rational sensible solution to our national security and interest issues.
And, see, this is what bothers me about what I call "do-nothing faux-pragmatists". These are people who propose to keep us away from the very bad as opposed to exploring any greater good. It's all about what we must do to prevent Very Bad Political Outcomes, but almost nothing about how to create truly sensible and truly pragmatic change that directly addresses our most pressing problems.
That the political reality is as apposite and opposite world from real world reality -- where such reality is threatening to our continued existence as a country is something I cannot and will not accept. To the extent there is a collision then we have to make the argument that these "political realities" have to be subordinate.
This is the quintessential argument that the go-along, self described "politically pragmatic" left tries to win through cynicism, extortion and dripping disdain, but ultimately will and can do nothing but lose in the long run.
Reality is reality. And true reality does not respect or dip its head to political artifice, no matter how hallowed, entrenched or deemed inviolable. Nothing is inviolable once the rubber meets the road and starts smashing the country. It might be wise to change course to meet these real realities before the smashing begins.
Without a political pragmatism that nods its head to true reality based pragmatism, the Very Bad Outcome cannot be avoided, only delayed.
(Please forgive me for the self quoting, but I am more interactive than in-a-vacuum a-priori creative, and want to use this as a launching point)
For me, this point weaves together a tapestry that I have been informed with and has been growing in my psyche for a while now. Various threads of it are found lying all over Docudharma in various forms.
One thing that struck me in my conversations with people today is what Edger brought up, which is the quote from Ron Suskind:
The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.
Having passed a long-overdue Health Care Reform Act, expect the media to dust off long-composed narratives it kept in cold storage until this point. The instant President Obama signs the bill into law in a massive ceremony full of important people, flashbulbs, and saturation coverage, there will be many who will seek to make the gravity of the event better understood by means of analysis and interpretation. Contrary to what some may write, I am not entirely convinced that Health Care saved Obama's Presidency, though it would certainly have removed the last of the luster around him had it failed. There will be many contentious fights to come, but the passage of the bill will likely limit GOP gains in next year's Mid-Congressional election. It will provide momentum to force through other reform measures and will be a face saving device to aid vulnerable incumbents. But like much of politics, the ultimate impact of it all is indebted to future understanding and events yet to come, of which none of us is privy.
Also to be found in copious quantity are the requisite gross of stories lamenting the end of good cheer among legislators of different parties. One would think that this health care bill has ushered in a golden age of distressing polarity, but it has not. Most people are terrified of change. Many will sign on to change in the abstract, but once the concrete is poured, their opposition hardens. Trusting in the known is much like betting on the favored horse, but trusting in the unknown possibility comes with it 50-1 odds. Most people are not riverboat gamblers, but if they were, they'd often reap the rewards of taking a chance for the sake of positive gain. This truism has no allegiance to party or ideological affinity. Nor is it an American institution.
While the Senate has always been structured to foster some degree of collegiality by its very makeup and its relatively small size, one mustn't let the myth obscure the facts. The Senate may be a family, but it is a strangely dysfunctional one, and the House equally so. This is, we needn't forget, the same collective body where Representative Preston Brooks savagely bludgeoned Senator Charles Sumner with a cane on the latter chamber's floor. At other crucial points in our nation's history, decorum has been replaced by nastiness and I think perhaps our latest group of elected representatives do not remember or have not studied precisely what happens when measures this large and all encompassing are further hyper-charged by massive displays of public sentiment and outcry. Regarding this subject, Senator Orrin Hatch strikes back at us in the blogosphere for daring to hold his feet to the fire as well as the feet of other legislators. We ought to take this as proof of a job well done and aim to keep it going.
I am also not particularly sympathetic to Representatives and Senators who have complained about the extended hours needed to pass this bill. If they had resolved it in a more timely fashion, then this matter would have been dealt with long ago. Republicans have used stalling tactics and obstructionist procedural measures, but as we all knew, the Democratic party itself was the real enemy at work. Attempting to pacify various factions within itself to hold together a fragile coalition is what took so long to reach resolution. Moreover, if this is what it takes to achieve true fairness and equality, I wish they'd be in session every year and even up until Christmas Eve, if needed. It is, of course, true that Senators need to spend a certain amount of time campaigning, raising funds, and observing for themselves the nuts-and-bolts of the policy issues upon which they will propose and vote. However, too often these are excuses cited for not being in session at all, especially when needed legislation is allowed to die a needless death or is tabled in committee with no re-introduction ever intended.
[f]or more than 30 years, the major parties - Democrats and Republicans - worked every angle to transform politics into a zero-sum numbers game. State legislatures redrew Congressional districts to take advantage of party affiliation in the local population. The two-year campaign cycle became a never-ending one.
Politics, however, has always been a game of knees to the groin and leaps to the jugular. When contentious matters and contentious times existed, collegiality was the first thing to be discarded and shed. In times of plenty with few especially pressing matters, then party lines could sometimes seem obscured or unimportant. The so-called "Culture Wars" are a partial explanation for that which we have been facing. In truth, the Republican party began to take a sharp right turn beginning with the Contract with America in 1994 and then culminating in the election of George W. Bush. When Bush played directly to the Republican base at the expense of the middle, this caused a correspondingly swift and sharp reaction in the left wing of the Democratic party, which the Progressive blogosphere correctly considers a call to arms. Returning to the idea of truth versus saccharine sugarcoating, yet again, it is tempting for all of us to invent our own mythology, particularly when it suits our cause, but this is a compulsion we must never adopt for whatever reason may be. The truth will set us free, but freedom is often pricey, especially when we remove it from circulation.
Julia Angwin's column entitled How Facebook is Making Friending Obsolete provides a revealing look into the ways that supposedly free services like Facebook and Twitter are mining the data of unsuspecting users for profit. The tactic is unethical at best, but it highlights just how desperate some companies are to turn a profit. The idea of monthly or yearly subscriptions, which were the bread and butter of old media cannot be relied on in this medium because online users refuse to pay them and then gravitate to the latest platform that can be used for free™. As for my own personal leanings, any technology that subverts the established system and forces it out of its comfort zone is worthy of praise in my book, but I suppose this degree of perfidy and with it monetary gain ought to be expected under the circumstances. The basic idea of capitalism is built on the idea of change and the next big thing, but this, of course, threatens the establishment that doesn't like having to think outside of its cozy comfort zone.
Angwin sets up her column by saying,
Friending wasn't used as a verb until about five years ago, when social networks such as Friendster, MySpace and Facebook burst onto the scene.
Suddenly, our friends were something even better - an audience. If blogging felt like shouting into the void, posting updates on a social network felt more like an intimate conversation among friends at a pub.
That degree of false intimacy, however, proved to have consequences. It lulled many into an imagined sense of security that could be broached by ten mouse clicks or less. Potentially embarrassing personal details could be accessed easily by complete strangers, and when these users complained and very publicly cried foul, the media picked up on it by running stories and op-eds that adopted the tone of a finger-waggling parent. Apparently it deemed that the best way to keep from oversharing personal details online was a good hearty dose of stern lecturing and abject moralizing. To be sure, irresponsible behavior led to the establishment of a thousand or so online-based drama queens and flame wars. That which had been an interesting concept in drawing people together began to show some serious flaws.
Or, as Benjamin Franklin put it,
Three can keep a secret, if two of them are dead.
I never recognized how repressive a culture of which we are all a part until I incorporated the internet into my daily routine. The guise of anonymity that cyberspace provides gives people the opportunity for people to come clean with a million different, but highly related fears, phobias, neuroses, and insecurities as though we were all members of a giant support group. Unlike some, I don't get much pleasure out of observing the scars of other people, no matter how selfishly rendered they may be. I pity those who feel that the only way they can truly be honest with themselves and in so doing brave vulnerability and sincerity is when among those who they cannot see, hear, or speak to face to face. And yet, each of us is like that to some degree.
Regarding keeping ourselves in check a bit, I don't mean it in a kind of Puritanical repressive sense, but rather that the immediate gratification and instant attention the internet provides us caters to a sense of narcissism and me-centered discourse. If intimacy with friends is what we were seeking, the Wild West freedom provided by the technology makes a true circle of trust and discretion nearly impossible. One can only work within the limitations of the medium itself. Whatever ends up being broadcast online usually can be discovered with enough searching.
When I was younger, I volunteered information in cyberspace that hindsight allows me to recognize that I probably should have been a bit more discerning. But again, I was a teenager then, and every adolescent is half child, half adult, and all insecure. I am fortunate I had the internet at that formative time in my life because I met other people my own age going through the same things I was and I had a shared sense of solace there. Had I been born even five years earlier, I would not have had that outlet and would have suffered mightily in its absence.
Returning to the larger point, the true lesson here is that major sectors of our capitalist wilderness are desperately trying to find ways to make money and are doing so by methods that openly violate our trust and our sense of security. I suppose I could jump up and down, screaming about constitutional statutes and right to privacy being broached, shortly after contacting the ACLU, but I doubt it would do much in the way of good. The recession merely exacerbated trends that had been slowly, steadily progressing of their own accord. That certain companies would have the testicular fortitude to so sneakily use our own information and thoughts for their gain is damning enough, but provided we remain complicit and enabling in it, more companies will attempt similar tactics.
Any system based on profit will be adaptive and find a way to use our humanity against us. In an age where we are lonely, desirous of companionship, isolated by distance, and hoping to find a means to be a part of something larger than ourselves, Facebook arrived to fill the void. It captured the Zeitgeist, for better or for worse, and now it is merely the latest manipulator for profit. I am decidedly not a purist in this regard and though I will certainly take care to make sure I don't resort to blarf on the page, neither will I take stock that someday social networking will replace what face-to-face personal contact ought to provide.
It is a testament to the fact that judge not, lest ye be judged is probably the moral teaching we disregard the most in this day. That we judge ourselves more harshly than any troll or disapproving person ever could gets down to the root cause of the matter. These are "guilty before proven innocent" times. These are Nancy Grace days. If we wish to change them, learning to forgive ourselves for being imperfect might be a good place to begin. Embracing this unfair, didactic standard forces us to feel as though jumping through hoops and adhering to an obstacle course of needlessly complex, self-appointed guidelines is the key to living a satisfying life. Micromanaging every aspect of who we are is the quickest road to misery I've ever seen. We have unfortunately adopted a belief in the letter of the law, not the spirit of the law.
Intentionally following the letter of the law but not the spirit may be accomplished through exploiting technicalities, loopholes, and ambiguous language. Following the letter of the law but not the spirit is also a tactic used by oppressive governments.
This is something, quite predictably, with which we have been struggling for a very long time.
While Jesus was having dinner at Levi's house, many tax collectors and "sinners" were eating with him and his disciples, for there were many who followed him. But when the teachers of religious law who were Pharisees saw him eating with tax collectors and other sinners, they asked his disciples, "Why does he eat with such scum?" When Jesus heard that, he said to them, "Healthy people don't need a doctor; those who are sick do. I've come to call sinners, not people who think they have God's approval."
But neither do we need to appear self-righteous in talking about self-righteous, egocentric behavior. That is deepest irony and part of this same judge-addicted culture.
Twitter's updates were also easily searchable on the Web, forcing users to be somewhat thoughtful about their posts. The intimate conversation became a talent show, a challenge to prove your intellectual prowess in 140 characters or less.
People are competitive in nature. I take it Angwin finds this sort of conduct distasteful. I myself have used my Twitter posts to underscore the larger points I was mulling over at the time, often while in the process of constructing my posts, but the point was never to be adored or to win a fan base. Often I felt a compulsion to put down something substantive to counterbalance the vast amount of trite banter that makes its way onto status updates. Along these same lines, I notice that many people seem to make it a challenge to see how many friends they can achieve on Facebook, no matter whether they actually have ever met in person or not. Life may be a talent show, but no one forces one to sign up for a space, either.
Angwin concludes her column, vowing,
...I will also remove the vestiges of my private life from Facebook and make sure I never post anything that I wouldn't want my parents, employer, next-door neighbor or future employer to see. You'd be smart to do the same.
We'll need to treat this increasingly public version of Facebook with the same hard-headedness that we treat Twitter: as a place to broadcast, but not a place for vulnerability. A place to carefully calibrate, sanitize and bowdlerize our words for every possible audience, now and forever. Not a place for intimacy with friends.
While I agree with the author's conclusion, I also add that being careful about that what we post in a public forum might not be a bad habit to get into, after all. Her frustration with Facebook is quite palpable, but I'm not sure cutting off our nose to spite our face is a good solution. Nor am I completely certain that there was ever some golden age where vulnerability on any online platform could be safely protected and manipulation of intimacy did not exist. Secrets have a way of spilling out, even among friends, and even in real life.
Nothing can be covered up forever and the paradoxical reality about success and increased exposure is that the larger a profile a person has, the more public is his or her life. When I was growing up, my mother frequently invoked the old saying that just because you have dirty laundry doesn't mean you ought to put it out on the front porch for all to see. I've always disagreed with the statement and what it implies, because I think being vulnerable need not be purely irresponsible. It's a matter of degree and it's a matter of balance.
The internet has catered to a fickle side of who we are. MySpace was once the end-all, be-all of social networking sites, and now it has given way to Facebook. Twitter, not to be forgotten, has muscled its way into the public consciousness. Anyone designing a social media network should keep in mind that success is ephemeral in the internet age and that one needs only look back roughly a decade to see all of the companies, platforms, programs and their ilk that have fallen out of public favor. We are no longer beholden to brand loyalty, which is probably what separates Baby Boomers from their children regarding the strongest sense of disconnect.
Today Facebook, tomorrow something else. Whatever comes afterward will probably have to be monitored, too, but my belief in our economic system was that so long as we cling to Adam Smith's invention, we will have to be our own regulators, but neither does this mean that all of our efforts should be devoted to plugging the dam. I have no doubt that if we adopted socialism wholesale we'd need to be mindful of its shortcomings as well, but neither should we be utterly consumed with finding fault. Life is too short.
I thought I'd never be the next person to write about Tiger Woods. That is, until today, when the sensationalist aspects of this incredibly bizarre story gave way to more substantive critiques. In a different time, where concerns about the economy, the passage of health care reform, the uncertainty of a war in Afghanistan, and a variety of matters that collectively form the winter of our discontent, following glorious summer, this would have been endlessly digested and discussed. Woods is at least fortunate that his great fall happened when the rest of the country and the news media was too distracted with other things. If only in future we could give soft news its rightful place in a profoundly subordinate role behind serious matters, but this may be asking too much.
As for Tiger Woods, when a revealing racial dynamic begins to enter the picture after an interested public and tabloid media, desperately churn up wild rumor after wild rumor regarding the scandal, then I have something to work with after all. The New York Daily News, itself at times a scandal sheet, does at least outline something very interesting.
When three white women were said to be romantically involved with Woods in addition to his blonde, Swedish wife, blogs, airwaves and barbershops started humming, and Woods' already tenuous standing among many blacks took a beating.
On the nationally syndicated Tom Joyner radio show, Woods was the butt of jokes all week.
"Thankfully, Tiger, you didn't marry a black woman. Because if a sister caught you running around with a bunch of white hoochie-mamas," one parody suggests in song, she would have castrated him.
In addition to re-emphasizing a stereotypical portrayal of the sassy, no-nonsense Black woman, offensive in and of itself, the unveiled implication behind it as plain as the eye on one's face. Within the Black community, dating or marrying a white woman was seen as a form of social mobility. Or, if you prefer, moving on up to the East Side. Indeed, it still is. Though the comparison may be a bit of a stretch, do also contemplate that both of Michael Jackson's wives were white, as was the mother of his children. The early Twentieth Century boxer Jack Johnson, an undisputed heavyweight titan of his time, broached social mores with abandon, and in so doing surrounded himself with white women. That many of these women were considered of low moral standard, low social class, and often inclined to toil in the service of the world's oldest profession did nothing to decrease the ire of both Whites and Blacks during his career.
Another figure who was very much front and center in the public eye in his day and also had a particular fondness for white women was Richard Pryor, who addressed the matter in his classic 1974 comedy album, That Ni**er's Crazy.
Sisters look at you like you killed your mother when they see you with white women.
A sense of sticking to one's place and staying with one's own kind, though it has decreased with the passage of time, still lives within the minds of many. If it were merely a one-sided assumption, then it could be more easily fixed, but issues this large rarely are.
As one blogger, Robert Paul Reyes, wrote: "If Tiger Woods had cheated on his gorgeous white wife with black women, the golfing great's accident would have been barely a blip in the blogosphere."
The darts reflect blacks' resistance to interracial romance. They also are a reflection of discomfort with a man who has smashed barriers in one of America's whitest sports and assumed the mantle of the world's most famous athlete, once worn by Muhammad Ali and Michael Jordan.
Regarding the highlighted sentence above, I take some liberty with the author of this column. It's just not that simple, though the AP seems to always wish that it were. Blacks aren't so much resistant to interracial romance, but they are frequently disappointed and dismayed when African-Americans who attain some degree of fame make a concerted effort to exclusively date and then marry Caucasian women, particularly those who are the epitome and definition of what this society deems beautiful. Our culture still pushes the blonde-haired, thin-waisted, Barbie doll look in almost every conceivable fashion, which relegates attractiveness and desirability to a very specific and very discriminatory standard, leaving out a good 90% of the rest of womanhood in the process. This is particular true for women of color. For any minority group, assimilation with the majority has been the quickest way to achieve "respectability", though the resentment it creates in those left behind never subsides.
Regarding a desire for African-Americans to date and marry other African-Americans, the column deems it "loyalty", but this is an inexact qualifier at best. It is a sort of racial pride, but comedian Sheryl Underwood advances the notion a bit farther.
"Would we question when a Jewish person wants to marry other Jewish people?" she said in an interview. "It's not racist. It's not bigotry. It's cultural pride."
"The issue comes in when you choose something white because you think it's better," Underwood said. "And then you never date a black woman or a woman of color or you never sample the greatness of the international buffet of human beings. If you never do that, we got a problem."
Years after Loving v. Virginia, the shock of interracial relationships has subsided. The film Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?, deeply controversial in its time, produces smiles when viewed in our age because of how dated its subject matter appears to today's audience. Perceiving matters through a strictly racial prism, particularly one with only two settings can only take us so far towards understanding. The irony is that while everyone seems to find no fault in interracial relationships, many are still reluctant to push past their own discomfort or date outside of their own racial group. And I must admit, in all fairness, that I myself am guilty of that as much as anyone else.
So to conclude, we should not summarily assume that with Tiger Woods being proven to be utterly human and wholly flawed that some part of our trusting innocence needs to perish alongside his indiscretions. One of the deepest hypocrisies we continue to advance is holding our heroes to a moral and ethical standard that we feel incapable of achieving ourselves. In a way, it's a bit of a cop-out when we transpose this crusade for perfection felt deep within ourselves onto those whom we idolize. They end up having to do the heavy lifting for our sins and when they fail, pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall. Even so, shelving this instinctive impulse that assumes any being will reach some Nirvana-like state before our very eyes based on accomplishment alone might be the best thing we, as a body of people, can do for ourselves. This doesn't mean anything goes or that extramarital affairs should be permissible or that mistakes should always be rationalized away, but it does mean that we ought to consider keeping our indignation at a responsible volume and tempered by responsible expectations.
So it won't matter that Woods won't be getting that Congressional gold medal and we won't care that the future of his business empire remains steady.
Columnist Christine Brennan writes about it being a long road back but it is a road back.
Still, Woods was an athlete we trusted. We feel a bit foolish with all those claims that he was the one athlete whose only interest was winning. That while others were pursuing outside interests, Woods was beating golf balls and figuring out ways to win.
Former president Ronald Reagan used to say "trust but verify."
Sometimes we are more angry and the bitterness lingers when we didn't see it coming.
So, has Woods spoiled it for other guys?
Does the fact that we got fooled by this guy now make us less trusting of all athletes?
Ronald Reagan quote aside, I don't think trust is the matter at hand here. Or if it is, trust ought to be applied to ourselves first before we place it in the hands of some arbitrarily appointed industry, entity, or agency who has based its entire focus and revenue around a single person who happens to be notable based on a high degree of achievement. This is true in sports, it is true in politics, and it is true in life. Be the change. Above all, be the change. Don't lay the change on someone else's shoulders, no matter how broad you think them to be. That road leads to ruin.
Time Magazine, or at least its online edition, seeks to understand why Google seems to love highlighting a particular "news source" in its search results. The very subtle, but nonetheless evident message implanted within the article is that search engine algorithms might have the same biases and favoritism embedded into them as any other corporation who owns or has partnership with other media companies. I know that by monitoring IP addresses that visit my site by use of a tracker I frequently notice when Google bot sweeps periodically come through to make a note of and reference recently posted columns I have written. It isn't very long after that before I notice that traffic has been directed to my site as a result. However, let me say that I do make a concerted effort to write something unique and meaningful, qualities which are in short supply when effort is not rewarded by much in the way of money.
If you type the name of a celebrity - say, Angelina Jolie - into Google News, chances are somewhere in the top five results you'll get a story from Examiner.com. This is particularly true if the celebrity is in the news that day. For early December that means searches for Tiger Woods, Sandra Bullock and Weezer on Google News consistently brought up Examiner.com stories in the topmost results. And in those stories, by the way, there was very little actual news.
Absolutely. The only currently existing model available to those who blog for pay is centered around advertising revenue as the most important variable of all. Instead of providing a unique perspective on the news, instead one gets a bare minimum of original content and a whole e-farm's worth of hyper-linking and search engine keyword baiting. It needs to be noted, of course, that Examiner.com is not the only site out there using a similar strategy to press a similar agenda. But in that regard, it is not much different to any kind of freelance work which promises sporadic assignments, minimal pay, few benefits, and no real job security. The signer of the paychecks or distributor of funds to the PayPal account still holds most of the cards at the table. In a field where so many are fighting to be heard and where competition is fierce and often cutthroat, employers get utterly inundated with prospective writers and many of them have the ego and the swagger but none of the talent to back it up. Proceeding directly for the easy sell and the low hanging fruit has padded profits but has rarely advanced a civic discourse or issue evolution.
They also have very little news value. Generally, an Examiner.com news story is a compendium of tidbits culled from other websites, neither advancing the story nor bringing any insight (a description, it should be noted, that can be just as fairly applied to many offerings of more mainstream media). Most Examiners are not journalists, and their prose is not edited. CEO Rick Blair, who helped launch AOL's Digital Cities, an earlier attempt at a local-news network, calls them "pro-am" - more professional than bloggers, but more amateur than most reporters. You might also call them traffic hounds: because their remuneration is set by, among other things, the number of people who click on their stories, Examiners will often piggyback on hot news, or oft-searched people. The Angelina Jolie story, from a celebrity-fitness and -health Examiner, discussed Jolie and husband Brad Pitt's recent night out at a movie premiere and assessed their health by their appearance.
Put this way, here is a decent enough description of most collaborative blogs. However, before one buys into this description hook, line, and sinker without taking into account the underlying intent it must be added that Daily Kos was described by Time as one of its "Most Overrated Blogs of 2009" in very searing language.
It wrote,
Markos Moulitsas - alias "Kos" - created Daily Kos in 2002, a time he describes as "dark days when an oppressive and war-crazed administration suppressed all dissent as unpatriotic and treasonous." Be careful what you wish for. With the Bush years now just a memory, Kos's blog has lost its mission, and its increasingly rudderless posts read like talking points from the Democratic National Committee.
Easy for you to say, Time. Dear pot, kindly meet kettle.
Returning to my original point, at the beginning of this post, I referenced an article written to encourage a spirit of full disclosure, no matter how stealthy proposed. I would be similarly remiss if I did not state that I, too, am a reporter for Examiner.com. Yet, I note, however, that in nearly a month of writing for it I have made under $20 for my efforts, even though my pieces usually attract a respectable audience that frequently exceeds the average number of hits which typify the typical DC Politics Examiner. I don't run away from controversy in that which I write, but neither do I seek to provoke without backing up my points, buttressing my argument, and taking into account the inevitable counter-arguments of my opponents. Still, one simply can't keep up with those who dispense romance advice, bicycle repair, child rearing tricks, and pet psychic services. Nor can I keep up with the barrage of ultimately meaningless drivel that might be the opiate of the masses but tends to put me into an opium-based sleep. I do not expect to make much out of any of what I do but I will say that I seek to strategically position and my postings to get maximum exposure. I am no different from many of you reading this, I daresay.
So why does Examiner.com's fairly superficial posts on the big stories of the day end up so often near the front of Google's news queue? "It's not a trick," says Blair. "We have almost 25,000 writers posting 3,000 original articles per day." Examiners take seminars on writing headlines, writing in the third person and making full use of social media, all of which are Google manna. But Blair thinks it's mostly the scale of the operation that makes Examiner.com articles so attractive to search engines, from which more than half of the site's traffic comes. That is, by stocking the lake with so many fish every day Examiner.com increases the chances the Google trawlers will haul one of theirs up.
And here we have a perfect example of why an unholy combination of made up celebrities, made up drama, and manufactured crises for the sake of readership threaten to choke out everything wholly decent. Weeds are on the verge of taking over the garden. Or, as Howard Beale would say, "And woe is us! We're in a lot of trouble!" Speak softly, though, because to some extent we've already been handcuffed by the almighty dollar and may always be. Some realities go well beyond our poor power to add or detract.
In a coy final note, the Time article concludes,
The goal of all these companies, eventually, is to snare local advertising, a $141 billion market that, according to Blair, has been left largely untapped by the Internet. Examiner.com will start rolling out ad packages in the next few months, and will hit up its network for leads.
In the meantime, these pro-am armies are giving the big media companies plenty to worry about. The mainstream media's news-harvesting machines are no match for a swarm of local locusts buzzing over the same crop. And Big Media is starting to take notice. CNN, which already uses a lot of crowdsourced material with its ireport arm, just invested in another local outfit, outside.in. Perhaps the news giant figures that if everybody's going to be a reporter, they might as well work for CNN.
The note is winking and coy because Time is, after all, owned by CNN. I, too, have been an iReporter for CNN, for the same reasons I write at Examiner.com. I don't make a dime out of it, but I do get my name out in the hope that someone, somewhere, is listening, reading, and contemplating. My hope, of course, is that at least with my post there will be an alternative, thought-provoking voice in the middle of all the fluff and unsubstantial content. Perhaps that is what we all wish for when we put our fingers to our keyboards and begin typing or begin synching up our digital cameras. We want to be better than that which we just finished reading or want to be provide a better analysis than a pundit who makes thousands upon thousands of dollars a year to sound supremely ignorant. Yet, we might also need to contemplate our current realities before we get caught up on our own narratives. Recall Network once more.
You get up on your little twenty-one inch screen and howl about America and democracy. There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and ITT and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today.
We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies, Mr. Beale. The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable bylaws of business. The world is a business, Mr. Beale. It has been since man crawled out of the slime. And our children will live, Mr. Beale, to see that perfect world in which there's no war or famine, oppression or brutality -- one vast and ecumenical holding company, for whom all men will work to serve a common profit, in which all men will hold a share of stock, all necessities provided, all anxieties tranquilized, all boredom amused.
I have a story today that comes from my predilection to "self-syndicate", meaning that I post my stories far and wide, in the same way a newspaper columnist is syndicated nationally-or beyond.
After I post, I know others will also post my stories to their sites, a topic that was itself the subject of a recent conversation.
To keep track of it all, I use the Google...but I recently wondered if that's actually the most effective tool for the job-or not-so as an experiment I recently challenged several search engines to go out and seek the same search term.
We find out today...and the results are, indeed, interesting.
March on Washington
