culture

Republican candidates don't get the internet at all, it seems:

Conservative bloggers associated with the “Save the Debate” petition seem to be unconvinced that Republican candidates have really grasped the significance of the YouTube debate. George Ajjan, writing in New Jersey’s Herald News, takes Republicans to task for their failure to understand basic aspects of the political internet:

The comments of those skeptical about the YouTube debates sadly exemplify many of the traditional and stereotypical shortcomings of Republicans. The GOP has got to shatter the image of country-club elitism that plagues the party. Giuliani’s campaign prioritizing fundraising over a one-day commitment to appear before millions of viewers and answer tough questions directly from the electorate is deplorable and plays right into that regrettable typecast….

As far as YouTube itself goes, the issue is not that national Republicans don’t want to use new technologies. Both Giuliani and Romney have invested heavily in their online efforts and have specifically touted their embrace of YouTube as a campaigning medium. But their behavior seems to indicate the belief that the internet is a switch they can turn on and off, depending upon whether they’re in the mood to communicate. But the internet is always “on,” although it’s not always “on your terms.”

Until our party truly grasps that, we will continue to alienate voters and activists, especially young people for whom the internet is not “new,” but an integral part of their political upbringing.

The Republicans don’t have a technology problem, per se. They have an arrogance problem, and it’s spilling over into their online outreach efforts. Coming at a time when polls show young voters abandoning the GOP en masse, this bodes ill for the elephants.

The Right Field.

This is more than just arrogance, though. The internet is a medium that lends itself to free speech, egalitarian values (at least as far as right to ones own opinion goes), empowering the people.

The internet might have made sense in the old Republican party of Barry Goldwater, but it is really nothing but a threat to (or at best only a tool to be exploited by) modern day neo-Republicans who have ditched libertarian values in favor of big government as big brother.

In other words, it is not modern Republican arrogance that puts them at odds with the internet, but rather modern Republican culture that is diametrically opposed to a medium that gives us peasants a way of talking back at them ... and talking amongst ourselves.

Can the neo-Republicans and their vision of authoritarian government keeping the people in line succeed in the internet age? I doubt it. The party is already fraying and showing serious signs of breaking. They are going to have to reinvent themselves or destroy the internet to preserve their privilege.

I stumble across The Secret website and think, "Well, I've heard of this pop concept, so I'll go take a look," and click past the splash screen (hello!) and see that they list "Featured Teachers."

Well....

It seems that women don't have much to offer in the Featured Teachers department. Well, four out of twenty-four people happen to be women.

Funny how this happens. Women don't innovate, and now, it seems, women have nothing to teach, at least about "The Secret." [cue dramatic music stinger]

So what is The Secret? Apparently a penis helps answer that question.

Is this the commercial manifestation of Chinese fears of powerful women?

Chinese tourism authorities are seeking investment to build a novel concept attraction -- the world's first "women's town," where men get punished for disobedience, an official said Thursday.

The 2.3-square-km Longshuihu village in the Shuangqiao district of Chongqing municipality, also known as "women's town," was based on the local traditional concept of "women rule and men obey," a tourism official told Reuters.

"Traditional women dominate and men have to be obedient in the areas of Sichuan province and Chongqing, and now we are using it as an idea to attract tourists and boost tourism," the official, surname Li, said by telephone.

Maybe the government officials responsible have been enjoying a bit too much their pirated copy of Seven Beauties.

I mean, imagine! Men? Obeying? Women? What an exotic notion! Oh the horror! The fear! The eroticism!

33 dead. It's a tragedy. It's shocking. Why? Perhaps only because what we consider so routine we ignore it on a daily basis happened all in one place, on one morning.

Some 16 thousand murders happen each year in the United States. That's about 45 people murdered each day.

45 people.

In our country. In these United States of America.

Where's the outrage about that? We hear about the troubled student and oh, what are we going to do about that? -- that kind of stuff. But what about all the troubled men -- and they are mostly men doing the killing -- what are we going to do about them?

Since that tragedy at Virginia Tech, how many more have been killed? When is that going to be a story within the United States?

Insight from the man at PC magazine:

Nastiness is an earmark of many bloggers, podcasters, and members of
the herd; a few insane people; and those who feel that being an
out-and-out mean and profane presence on the Internet is cool or funny.
The level of nastiness that floats around the Net in various forms,
forums, and Web sites is incredible. When O'Reilly first proposed his
rules of the road for bloggers, I thought it was silly at worst and
wishful thinking at best. Nothing would come of it except a debate and
various columns like this one and the one from Tennant. The thinking is
that once all this is brought to light, maybe people will rethink the
way they act online.—next: It's Hopeless >

It's hopeless. Nothing will come of it. After the Kathy Sierra thing
blows over, the meanness will continue unabated, with all sorts of
dispossessed and borderline psychopaths blowing off steam online in one
way or another—usually by calling people names or being hypercritical.
This seems to be a reflection more of society as a whole than of the
psychological problems of a few individuals. There are too many people
who go online searching for validation of their life choices. Anytime
they run across anything that questions or counters their decisions,
they see it as a personal attack, and they'll often strike back,
attacking the perceived "enemy" in a personal manner. It all seems so
ridiculous, since these people likely don't know each other at all....

...But no matter, the whole thing is hopeless. Let's just go back to work.

What is it that drives men to do this, anyway?

There is something else at work in America than the culture of mean.

Must see: the (not quite) official Bodygroom website. (Warning: Adult material. Not recommended for children under 13 -- or men with sexual orientation anxiety disorder, unless they're safely protected by healthy doses of righteous homophobia, in which case they actually might enjoy some vicarious pseudo-homosexual visioning in a safe and totally virtual and completely heterosexual manner. If you are a man who has felt onset of effeminate symptoms, there are treatments available. Ask your doctor, but only after you've put your clothes back on. Not valid in Canada or the Virgin Islands.)

[via Suzanne Reisman]

Really some things in the news are just ridiculous.

Prince's acclaimed performance included a guitar solo during the
"Purple Rain" segment of his medley in which his shadow was projected
onto a large, flowing beige sheet. As the 48-year-old rock star let
rip, the silhouette cast by his figure and his guitar (shaped like the
singer's symbol) had phallic connotations for some.

A number of bloggers have decried "Malfunction!" — including Sam
Anderson at New York magazine's Daily Intelligencer. Daily News
television critic David Bianculli called it "a rude-looking shadow
show" that "looked embarrassingly rude, crude and unfortunately placed."

You know, I noticed that. In fact, it was pretty obvious, when he changed guitars to use this wacky axe shaped like is Prince symbol, complete with an arrow point at the head--

Oh dear! A phallic symbol!

It's funny how there's all this fuss about this when the Super Bowl broadcast was littered with ads for violent television shows, violent movies -- and ads that were just violent.

The AP story by Jake Coyle tries to make the claim that the phallic imagery was accidental. Ha! He also claims:

Always eccentric, he famously changed his name to The Artist Formerly
Known as Prince, then to simply a symbol and finally back to Prince.

I suppose you wouldn't expect the Associated Press to point out that he did this because his record contract forbade him from using the name "Prince" when recording with a different label.

Can an African American be "articulate" (as a good thing)?:

When whites use the word in reference to blacks, it often carries a subtext of amazement, even bewilderment. It is similar to praising a female executive or politician by calling her “tough” or “a rational decision-maker.”

“When people say it, what they are really saying is that someone is articulate ... for a black person,” Ms. Perez said.

Such a subtext is inherently offensive because it suggests that the recipient of the “compliment” is notably different from other black people.

“Historically, it was meant to signal the exceptional Negro,” Mr. Dyson said. “The implication is that most black people do not have the capacity to engage in articulate speech, when white people are automatically assumed to be articulate.”

This column by Lynette Clemetson in the New York Times is very eye opening for me -- I had not even thought about "articulate" as being patronizing in and of itself. For instance, when Joseph Biden offered his faint praise for Barack Obama (which is perhaps starting to look like a sad pattern of casual prejudice), I immediately focused on his use of "clean."

Clean? (That's the word Biden and Jon Stewart joked about on the Daily Show, too.)

I had not considered that "articulate" would be the most loaded word in Biden's lame utterance -- especially since Obama is the most eloquent of the Democratic presidential candidates in the race so far -- but there it is.

The first thing I did after reading the article was search media girl for the word. There were four hits for "articulate":

Can't see the forest for all the leaves, let alone the trees contains a quote by a gilas girl I still agree with:

Of course in the tactics of particular political struggles, compromises are necessary, but refusing to articulate the progressive position properly is not a compromise, its capitulation to the rightward downslide of our political system. That's the one immediate fallacy, I'd like to see the so-called liberal blogosphere learn to correct immediately and work to reverse long term.

What's wrong with the Democrats? uses the word as a verb:

The thing is, most of the people who voted against Bush were indeed voting on values -- values of peace, diversity, equality for all citizens, privacy, protecting the environment, reducing abortion, keeping women's bodies free from government seizure, and not running the country into a fiscal ditch our grandkids are going to have to dig out of. But the Dems couldn't really articulate that. They haven't been able to for quite some time.

And it seems like they still don't get it. Representative Tim Ryan (D-Ohio) said on the News Hour yesterday that Democrats needed to bargain their way back into the ballgame. Huh? This approach didn't quite work for John Kerry, who tried to bargain his way around gay marriage and could not or would not articulate the moral reasons why he supported a woman's right to choose.

Truth or Consequences also uses the verb form of "articulate":

So what unites progressives? Values. Morality. Justice. Many of us cannot really articulate it, we just know. We know it's wrong for the powerful to screw over the powerless. We know it's wrong to treat people struggling to make ends meet as problems to be dispensed with. We know it's wrong to use people's misfortunes in health, work and home against them. But it seems like we cannot find ways to say these things. We don't have the vocabulary. We're out of practice.

And to my post from 2005 about That fragile male ego, we find the word in a comment:

As it is, I still carry the idea that I am supposed to be listened to and that being articulate and connected are more important than hard work.

Clemetson's article points out that "articulate" is applied for only certain African Americans:

“Al Sharpton is incredibly articulate,” said Tricia Rose, professor of Africana Studies at Brown University. “But because he speaks with a cadence and style that is firmly rooted in black rhetorical tradition you will rarely hear white people refer to him as articulate.”

My lack of respect for Al Sharpton dates back 20 years, and is not based on "black rhetorical tradition" but rather on things like the whole Tawana Brawley hoax, which you couldn't miss if you lived in New York at the time.

Nevertheless, I don't doubt that "white" people who are not steeped in "black" culture are not going to connect with someone who speaks in the "black rhetorical tradition." I take this lesson to heart, though. The seemingly benign racism of lowered expectations can be much more pernicious than the simple bungling by a clueless Senator.

By any standard, I do find Barack Obama to be very eloquent, especially compared with the other candidates in the field. I find myself liking him and even rooting for him, but I don't quite know where he stands for. "Hope" is a nice message, but I hope he starts to articulate more concrete positions soon.

Meanwhile, Biden should probably think more before he talks. We're just out of this very early starting gate on the presidential race, and he's already imploding. It could be that his problem is that he is articulate. When most politicians talk, I tend to just tune them out -- blah blah blah blah. Biden speaks all to clearly, and what he says can be all too revealing for his own good.

The New Jersey Supreme Court ruled that gay couples are entitled to civil rights, and stopped short of endorsing gay marriage. But in this election season, we can expect the right wing opportunists to appeal to their constituents' bigotry and homophobia as yet another Scare Out the Vote tactic.

In a ruling that fell short of what either side wanted or feared, the state Supreme Court declared 4-3 that homosexual couples are entitled to the same rights as heterosexual ones.

This radical concept that Constitutional rights and equal protection under the law are not contingent upon having the "correct" sexual orientation is just too much for the radical right, who consider sexual orientation a choice and believe everyone should choose to not be homosexual, as they have done.

One enthusiastic Republican couldn't wait to express his radical over-reaction:

GOP Assemblyman Richard Merkt said he would seek to have all seven justices impeached. "Neither the framers of New Jersey's 1947 constitution, nor the voters who ratified it, ever remotely contemplated the possibility of same-sex marriage," Merkt said.

Homosexuality did not exist before television, I suppose. Back when New Jersey joined the Union, men were men, women were barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen, and children were to be beaten and not heard.

Of course, perhaps we should all have a little sympathy for people like Richard Merkt, who feel so strongly the need for the State to impose laws to prevent them from being homosexual. Maybe we each can pitch in a nickel to get Republican Merkt some therapy for his apparent shame.

Meanwhile, homophobes can take comfort that the 4-3 decision did not go the other way:

"Although we cannot find that a fundamental right to same-sex marriage exists in this state, the unequal dispensation of rights and benefits to committed same-sex partners can no longer be tolerated under our state Constitution," Justice Barry T. Albin wrote for the four-member majority.

The court said the Legislature "must either amend the marriage statutes to include same-sex couples or create a parallel statutory structure" that gives gays all the privileges and obligations married couples have.

The three dissenters argued that the majority did not go far enough. They demanded full marriage for gays.

Civil rights. Only in this day and age of Republican-backed torture and gutting of habeas corpus can the mere mention of civil rights be considered so threatening.