media: September 2004 Archives

Well, I was worried in the beginning but I think Kerry did well, overall. Will it backfire on Bush, him repeating "wrong war, wrong time, wrong place" so often? (I'd love to see a clip of him saying that statement over and over again! How many times?)

The difference certainly (!) seems stark. A vote for Bush is for hegemonic go-it-alone, American supremacy. Period. I liked Kerry's insistence on alliances, and the notion of a global test. And that he articulated several ways the world is more dangerous now than it was before.

Who else is gonna chime in? Is my preference clouding my judgment?

The Iconoclast of Crawford, TX, editorializes: Kerry Will Restore American Dignity. They tally some of Bush's "accomplishments" that they describe as a "hidden agenda":

"Empty the Social Security trust fund by $507 billion to help offset fiscal irresponsibility and at the same time slash Social Security benefits.
ï Cut Medicare by 17 percent and reduce veteransí benefits and military pay.
ï Eliminate overtime pay for millions of Americans and raise oil prices by 50 percent.
ï Give tax cuts to businesses that sent American jobs overseas, and, in fact, by policy encourage their departure.
ï Give away billions of tax dollars in government contracts without competitive bids.
ï Involve this country in a deadly and highly questionable war, and
ï Take a budget surplus and turn it into the worst deficit in the history of the United States, creating a debt in just four years that will take generations to repay."

~ from Sheri Schmidt on the social justice listserv.

This story inspired me ~ maybe there IS hope. :-0

"Left-wing politics are thriving on blogs the way Rush Limbaugh has dominated talk radio, and in the last six months, the angrier, nastier partisan blogs have been growing the fastest. Daily Kos has tripled in traffic since June. Josh Marshall's site has quadrupled in the last year." ~ NYTimes, Fear and Laptops on the Campaign Trail

Of course, as far as democracy goes...

when I get around to updating the template for the blog (one of these days), I'm gonna include some quotes:

This one from Becky is terrific: "tact is a gift we offer to those with whom we want to remain friendly."

and the one Camille shared from Raymond Williams is too - I want it where I can read it everyday.

"To be truly radical is to make hope possible rather than despair convincing. "

After seeing Bush Family Fortunes (which details how the Florida vote was compromised..."bought for 4 million dollars"), it's especially discouraging to read in the NYTimes today that electronic voting will go national this year despite numerous already identified problems and weaknesses.

Can you hear my sigh?

Stephen just posted for the DRP class (Democracy, Rhetoric & Performance) that one must "fight propaganda with propaganda" and yet questions whether this attitude in and of itself contributes to the difficulty of reaching genuine democratic decision-making. (We're still debating what might qualify as "genuine.")

This brings up something Kennaria and I have discussed on a few occassions - whether human nature is inherently incapable of rising to (or being taught, as the deliberative democrats advocate, and social constructionism would seem to support) this level of....integrity? It definitely has something to do with a balancing of regard for oneself AND others, whomever those "others" might be.

This documentary film by journalist Greg Palast provides a sobering complement to Moore's F 9-11. Palast covers much of the same territory but in a non-sensationalized format (although he does include a few slo-mo's of GW struggling for something to say).

The town's agog with a special exhibit at our (fairly small!) museum which includes items from a private collection apparently not shown in public before.

The opening gala was covered by the local paper this past Monday: Wild About Warhol. (I often have trouble with the links to the local paper; they seem to take 2-3 tries to get through. If you want the article via email, let me know - I sent a copy to myself.)

I was contacted about interpreting this event but couldn't manage to squeeze it in. Besides, what would I have worn? I'd have looked like I was slumming!

So said Cata about Hero, which I saw the other day with Ingrid and Kirsten. I wonder how my Chinese classmates feel about it ~ does it inspire patriotism or nationalism for them? I found it moving, inspirational. (And of course it triggered that vein of sorrow I have for all things that cause pain, sigh.) Not surprisingly, I've forgotten some of the specific moments of dialogue/interaction that intrigued and/or triggered me; the colors remain.

Craig (of Craigslist) did a better job than me of collecting sites about blogging at the democratic national convention.

I'd like to add his blog to my rss feed, but it seems I can't figure out the sites using xml. :-(

I admire this dude ~ at least as he's represented in this NYTimes story about his online community. ;-)

Here's the link to Boston's Craigslist, the closest, geographically, to Amherst. I'm amazed - Providence, Denver, Kansas City, Indianapolis - most of the cities I've lived in have 'em!

i think this is the way I want to go in the future with...the blog? a real website? the other as-yet-unformed yet intuitively-sensed online directions/calls to cyberspace....? everything!

Ben mentioned it to me before he left for school, and just obiki.org.

Mother Jones has a blog and they were at the protests in NYC during the just ended Republican National convention. The difference they can make is the subject of this post.

Looks like a fascinating expose of "how right-wing groups pressure the media and spread misinformation to the public." The Republican Noise Machine was written by a former right-wing publicist, David Brock, whose original confession was seen skeptically by some.

One conversation that stuck with me last night was about the notion of privacy. We were talking about blogging. I said something about trying to dispel the fiction of a separation between one's personal and professional life; and Olga said she couldn't think of a commonly-used word in Russian that means the same thing as "private" or "privacy". She could describe or explain it, but there's no particular word for it (unless one goes way back into archaic (?) language use). Sreela then said the same thing, of the three (or was it 15?!) Indian languages that she knows, none of them have a specific term for the concept, even though it is explainable. Wild, huh? :-)

Bush by numbers: Four years of double standards

These are creepy - they show how if you simply SAY things, repeatedly, and the media disseminates what you say, "reality" follows. :-(

Here's a few, click through to read them all:

1 Number of Bush administration public statements on National security issued between 20 January 2001 and 10 September 2001 that mentioned al-Qa'ida.

104 Number of Bush administration public statements on National security and defence in the same period that mentioned Iraq or Saddam Hussein.

101 Number of Bush administration public statements on National security and defence in the same period that mentioned missile defence.

65 Number of Bush administration public statements on National security and defence in the same period that mentioned weapons of mass destruction.

0 Number of times Bush mentioned Osama bin Laden in his three State of the Union addresses.

73 Number of times that Bush mentioned terrorism or terrorists in his three State of the Union addresses.

83 Number of times Bush mentioned Saddam, Iraq, or regime (as in change) in his three State of the Union addresses.

This is an edited extract from "What We've Lost", by Graydon Carter, published by Little Brown on 9 September. ~ sent to me via email from Becky Townsend

Institutional coordination attempts to thwart free speech. That's my take on this story in the NY Times Tactics by Police Mute the Protesters, and Their Messages.

an honours student at RMIT is doing research into the psychology of blogging:
http://weblearn.rmit.edu.au/surveys/blog/.

cheers
Adrian Miles ~ Air-l-aoir.org@listserv.aoir.org