Generalized vapidity

An NPR music blog called The Record includes a recent entry about summer songs. The author, a music critic, writes about a certain kind of summer kind of summer song: "Instead of invoking an endless, idealized beach day, such a song resonates within a specific time and place." And then she gets specific:

Not intentionally topical, such songs collide with current events in unexpected ways: a simmering bass line might reflect the oppressiveness of a heat wave, or a confrontational chorus could connect with kids forming a grassroots movement in the street. 

What if the moment's prevailing mood is hard to pin down — sometimes voluble, sometimes glum? I'd call that floating anxiety, the Red Bull-and-vodka delirium of a culture seriously in flux. That's what this summer feels like to me, with the tensions inspired by economic woes, political skirmishes, tragic accidents and true-crime sprees never quite alleviated by the distractions Kardashian weddings and Harry Potter finales provide. It's not a breezy, easy time, even when the weather's nice enough to put the top down.

This does not describe the shared experience of Summer 2011. NPR aired an audio segment on this blog entry today and online I found a short write-up about the segment. This write-up, credited to NPR Staff, negates the original blog entry with this: "Still and all, a summer song is personal. It matters where you spent the past few months, with whom and what kind of memories got made." Exactly.

Review:Race Matters

Cornel West gallops through the American black's condition in essays he assembled under the title, Race Matters. He diagnoses the race as suffering a nihilistic experience brought on by an increasingly unethical capitalistic, market-driven culture. He bemoans the current leadership and issues a few calls to action. But who is West's audience?

Only those already of like mind will draw value from West's essays. Nothing here is discussed in depth, very few quotes are included, statistics are rounded, and no citations are given. This is a surface-level manifesto: In Race Matters, large, sometimes nebulous issues are distilled into a hardline socio-political stance.

True insights are few; the best among them can be found in West's discussion of black Conservatives--particularly, the response to Clarence Thomas. Rather than smear Thomas as just an Uncle Tom, West quickly sketches an ethical critical position and shows Thomas' failure to satisfy its requirements.

A minor but interesting theme in West's discussions is fashion. He gives an interesting visual rhetorical analysis comparing the dress of Civil Rights leaders to that of modern politicians and intellectuals. For example, Martin Luther King's dark, modest suits spoke to the man's humility, allowing the emphasis to fall on his audience. But many modern black leaders dress in expensive, flashy suits that symbolize personal achievement, and emphasize the man as a shining example.

Goodnight, Moammar Qaddafi

Hours into the revolution in Libya, media extracted the sanctifying, legitimizing force of the word "government" from descriptions of Gadhafi's rule, choosing instead to use phrases like "remains in power". He was called colonel or leader, but not President. Accordingly, his army then lost its claim to legitimacy. They became "forces loyal to Gadhafi" or some variation thereof. Examples from various mainstream news sources:

Forces loyal to Moammar Gadhafi
Forces loyal to the unseated ruled Moammar Qaddafi
Forces loyal to Col Muammar Gaddafi
Forces loyal to Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi
Forces loyal to the once powerful leader Col. Moammar Qadhafi
Forces loyal to the embattled leader

Review: The Storm at the Door

The Storm at the Door dotes on the drama suffered by a couple in the months prior to and after their forced separation. First he torments her with his mania and alcoholism as she enables him; then he's tossed in the sanitarium where his patience and will are tested while she suffers humiliation and guilt, forced to raise the kids alone and go to Church Sundays. With a microscopic story arc, the characters were left to do the heavy lifting but they weren't strong enough.

The error of his ways

In GQ's "The Impossible, Inevitable Redemption of Michael Vick", Will Leitch interprets the metanarrative PR firms generated for NFL star Michael Vick:

Michael Vick was undisciplined, young, and too loyal to (and trusting of) the people he grew up with. He made mistakes, including but not limited to dogfighting, and eventually his malfeasances were uncovered. He realized the error of his ways and accepted his punishment. While in prison, he "got his mind right," discovered the perspective that eluded him as a free man, and vowed never to repeat the mistakes of his past. He took advantage of his second chance, becoming the quarterback he was always meant to be. His story is an inspiration to all. Particularly to those desiring the finest in athletic gear.

Then Leitch lays it out:

I'm not sure if it will strike you as a relief or an outrage that Michael Vick doesn't really believe all of this, but you should know: He doesn't.

Leitch argues that Vick does not think his fighting and killing dogs was wrong. Yet, Vick confesses no such thing. So how does Leitch support his argument? Through a rhetorical move: A tale of two Vicks.

Leitch first shows us a meek Vick. This version of the man goes on television and in subdued tones says his actions were wrong, he knows they're wrong, and he's learned his lesson. This man goes on 60 Minutes and makes public appearances with reps from the SPCA. He's a boring guy, probably a dumb jock who can't talk things not-football.

Then we see the other side, the star athlete eager to mug and pose for photographers who can put his face in glossy magazine profiles. This guy is an exposure and praise-loving gamer set for showtime.

One man is a fake, slyly blunting our interest in him and discouraging prolonged meditation. The other is the real thing.

We all have multiple personas. We act one way around the boss and another way when out clowning with friends. Having multiple fictions does not make us liars.

Although Michael Vick probably is a liar.

Two bits

The Associated Press article "3 attacks target Israelis near Egypt, 6 dead" partially covers the recent attack in southern Israel. An Israeli official is quoted:

"The incident underscores the weak Egyptian hold on Sinai and the broadening of the activities of terrorists," Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said in a statement. "The real source of the terror is in Gaza and we will act against them with full force and determination."

Then the AP writer shares this nugget:

Bedouins in Sinai cooperate with anti-Israel militants in Gaza, just across the border.

That's it. No context, no mention of occupation, no mention of violated UN resolutions. The highlight of the article is this curve ball conclusion:

The bus driver interviewed by Channel 2 did not provide details of the attack but appeared calm, smoking a cigarette in the driver's seat.

 One cool customer.

In the second of the two bits, the writer should have been more explicit in calling out the BS here and his title is a misdirect, but the LA Times article "New presidential bus attracts attention, criticism" deserves some credit for at least passively implying that this story was stupid and the criticisms trivial, uninformed, and hypocritical. The article states:

Republicans can't stop bringing up its cost, making the bus sound like a boondoggle. In the new age of austerity, a million-dollar bus is an irresistible target — especially because it was built in Canada rather than the U.S..."This is an outrage ..." Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus said ... Other conservatives were snarkier ...

There's pettiness. Now the hypocrisy:

"The vehicle had to support the weight of security and communication equipment that we had," (Secret Service spokesman) Donovan said ... the Secret Service ordering a custom-built bus gave the agency "a level of security that we couldn't achieve by doing it the other way" ... President George W. Bush rode on a bus from the same Canadian manufacturer ... The Secret Service actually ordered two buses like the one Obama used this week. The other is for the eventual Republican presidential nominee.

Review: The Influencing Machine

In her short graphic booklet The Influencing Machine, Brooke Gladstone concludes that we get the media we deserve. But Gladstone doesn't explicitly argue towards this point. Rather, she argues that reporters are mostly well meaning professionals subject to their own weaknesses and common institutional biases. In The Influencing Machine, Gladstone reveals these biases, and she catalogs ugly moments in media history, cites different views on media responsibility, and discusses consumer habits.

But in acknowledging that PR firms work the media on behalf of political-private interests, and that mainstream media is under a larger corporate thumb, and that journalists and editors, driven by competition between media outlets for markets, reshape and spin news, Gladstone concludes in error. Journalism can involve acts of heroism, but usually it unfolds somewhere between irresponsible stenography and political-private interest promotion--neither of which are for, by, or of the people.

My thinking on media criticism means that I have expectations for what I should see when I consume news and media. In other words, the product is already written in my mind before I seek out mainstream media's interpretation. I realize that. But Gladstone's careless "media is a reflection of society" summation whitewashes the matter. The Influencing Machine is PR for journalism in an age when people don't trust journalism because the line between journalism and PR has faded.

Late mention: Derrida

Read one section of Derrida's brief Gift of Death. The essay discussing Abraham's move to sacrifice Isaac was very good. In the remainder, Derrida cross-referenced too much for me to appreciate. Also read some of Deconstruction in a Nutshell, a parsing of a roundtable discussion with Derrida held at Villanova in 1994. John D. Caputo, Philosophy Professor there, obfuscates everything, rendering the dense content impenetrable.

Congratulations on buying the Robot Romney Corp 2012

In The New York Times article "‘Corporations Are People,’ Romney Tells Iowa Hecklers Angry Over His Tax Policy", the reporter quotes Romney tossing out a line about raising taxes which draws shouts of "Corporations!" from an audience member. Romney says corporations are people:

“Of course they are,” Mr. Romney said, chuckling slightly. “Everything corporations earn ultimately goes to people. Where do you think it goes?”

The reporter shares analysis:

It was a telling, unscripted moment for Mr. Romney likely to be replayed on YouTube. In an instant, he seemed to humanize himself by pointedly squabbling with the group of hecklers, showing flashes of anger and defying his reputation as a sometimes stilted, unfeeling candidate.

This "stilted, unfeeling" reputation comes from the media. They invented it, the Romney narrative, and they reinforce it. This slight break in that narrative amuses the reporter because he's so much a part of it he can't see that it is only a characterization, and that Romney actually is human.

Here's the article's highlight:

Thursday was Mr. Romney’s most fiery day on the trail this week, even before the hecklers, affiliated with Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement, an organizing group, drew him into several aggressive exchanges. Mr. Romney took the stage with sweat already glistening on his brow and upper lip. The sweat trickled down his cheek as he worked himself into animated rhythm in a 10-minute speech that criticized President Obama.

Worked himself into animated rhythm? Did he oil his machine parts? Maybe get Dorothy and Scarecrow to lock arms for song?

By drawing attention to this supposed anomaly, the article reinforces and emphasizes the prevailing narrative that media generated. The exception seems to prove the rule. This is a much smaller version than the time Hillary Clinton got weepy toward the conclusion of the Democratic Primary in 2008.

The other narratives include Huntsman attempting to stand on his own two legs and Bachmann trying not to act psycho.

A riot

The rioting in Britain that started over the weekend escalated to a problem when it spilled out of the poor neighborhoods and grew into a crisis when Cameron et al. had to cut vacations short to board a plane home. The Media is asking, Why so angry and violent? Their answers include:

• The fatal shooting by police of a 29-year-old local resident
• Unemployment
• Austerity measures
• Insensitive policing
• Opportunism / bad parenting / lack of values

The interesting story here is not the language we use to describe the poor man's depravity; it's the descriptions we are given of the depravity of the elite: When the poor and marginalized capitalize on opportunities to the detriment of society, they are called immoral, vile, despicable criminals bereft of values and they are jailed. When investors and bankers capitalize on opportunities to the detriment of society, they are called irresponsible and then get bailed out.

The rhetorically weak establishment politician

Saturday's The New York Times opinion piece "What Happened to Obama?" argues that during this economic crisis President Obama should have been more like Franklin D. Rooselvelt but isn't for the following reasons:

• His "deep-seated aversion to conflict and his profound failure to understand bully dynamics"

    and, possibly

• Because "he and his advisers have succumbed to a view of electoral success to which many Democrats succumb — that 'centrist' voters like 'centrist' politicians." Adding that, "Unfortunately, reality is more complicated. Centrist voters prefer honest politicians who help them solve their problems."
• Or, "he is simply not up to the task by virtue of his lack of experience and a character defect that might not have been so debilitating at some other time in history."
• Or, "we are a nation that is being held hostage not just by an extremist Republican Party but also by a president who either does not know what he believes or is willing to take whatever position he thinks will lead to his re-election."

A combination of Westen's guesses proposing that Obama is just another establishment politician with no interest in pushing the progressive agenda is probably correct. But his premise in the op-ed piece--that the President has lost the rhetorical battle--is the interesting part.

Responding to Westen, Jonathan Chant at The New Republic issued "Drew Westen's Nonsense", which claims Westen espouses a common Liberal fantasy "fixated on the power of words". Chant writes,

Westen's op-ed rests upon a model of American politics in which the president in the not only the most important figure, but his most powerful weapon is rhetoric. The argument appears calculated to infuriate anybody with a passing familiarity with the basics of political science. In Westen's telling, every known impediment to legislative progress -- special interest lobbying, the filibuster, macroeconomic conditions, not to mention certain settled beliefs of public opinion--are but tiny stick huts trembling in the face of the atomic bomb of the presidential speech. The impediment to an era of total an uncompromising liberal success is Obama's failure to properly deploy this awesome weapon.

In addition to overvaluing rhetoric, Chant also accuses Westen of (1) misunderstanding FDR's tenure and Obama's accomplishments and (2) being misguided in seeing a political connection between the two.

Chant errs in his rebuttal. For example, he refutes Westen's take on Obama's support for "entitlement" cuts by stating that the current agreement has none. But what Obama supported and what we got are different. In any case, had Obama told us a more compelling story to shape our perceptions, we'd have fewer conflicting versions of what happened.

Better yet, had Obama stirred the public by voicing a conviction that jobs mattered more than budgets, he could have gained even more support, in turn pressuring his opponents to get in line or risk losing the next election. Seems to me Chant's rebuttal makes Westen's point beautifully.

The situation could have been different; it could have been: We need to get Americans back to work! Instead it was: We need to start cutting the benefits Americans get for the work they used to do!

The two writers (and there are many others in this debate) engage in a rhetorical reconstruction of Obama, making true fiction. Westen argues that Obama has deprived us of the defining speeches and responses from which we can conjure a thematic abstraction of the man and his vision. The President hasn't created the rhetorical situation to which all writers must respond. In this absence, each writer creates his own rhetorical situation to which his peers must respond, stirring the mixed bag of Obama quotes to marshal a few for and a few against the increasingly popular opinion that Barack Obama is a very weak President.

Some idea of himself

Imagine Jack Dawson and Rose Dewitt Bukater working for a living in New York's slums. Or Romeo and Juliet going it alone, deprived of their family fortunes. Similarly, had Jay Gatsby married Daisy Buchanan, we would have lost them. And they would likely lose each other.

But unlike the doomed pairs from the film Titanic and Shakespeare's tragedy, Gatsby was willing to volunteer for his fate. The sacrifice he was to make for Daisy is not unlike the one Abraham was to make for God: Both men stood ready to answer the call of a higher duty--a duty only answerable by renouncing all others. Abraham's duty was to God; Gatsby's to an ideal, the past, the promise.

As I went over to say goodbye I saw that the expression of bewilderment had come back into Gatsby's face, as though a faint doubt had occurred to him as to the quality of his present happiness. Almost five years! There must have moments even that afternoon when Daisy tumbled short of his dreams--not through her own fault but because of the colossal vitality if his illusion. It had gone beyond her, beyond everything. He had thrown himself into it with a creative passion, adding to it all the time, decking it out with every bright feather that drifted his way. No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man will store up in his ghostly heart.

For years Gatsby believed he could resurrect the past, a few moments of youth preserved under the glass of his memory, observable, close, but too fragile to touch.

"Can't repeat the past?" he cried incredulously. "Why of course you can!"
He looked around him wildly, as if the past were lurking here in the shadow of his house, just out of reach of his hand.
"I'm going to fix everything just the way it was before," he said, nodding determinedly. "She'll see."
He talked a lot about the past and I gathered that he wanted to recover something, some idea of himself perhaps, that had gone into loving Daisy. His life had been confused and disordered since then, but if he could once return to a certain starting place and go over it all slowly, he could find out what that thing was ...

Gatsby, in his suspension, his nonexistence, is replaced in the public mind with a collection of myths borne from the incurious imaginations of passersby. In Fitzgerald's story, these are all people living a life other than their own: Tom Buchanan has his wife, Daisy, but his attentions lie with his lover in the city; Daisy pretends they don't; Gatsby suspends himself in service of his dream for Daisy; and Gatsby's guests obliterate the night with drink and forgetting, believing themselves to be in the company of a man who isn't, who isn't and who isn't.

Worried traders

Every time stock market indices drop X amount of points and make headlines, media gives us "worried trader" pictures--guys covering their mouths or rubbing their temples with faces turned up in disbelieving horror or down in dejection. In a sense, this is a non-story because the market is a bet and it goes on everyday. This practice of recycling the "worried trader" is akin to putting front page a candid photo of the defeated gambler sweatily clutching his tickets after Thursday's horse races.

If the market stayed down, the story is serious as it addresses 401Ks and whatnot. In this case an appropriate image might depict those who are very wealthy and doing well during the recession so that they can be the spectacle instead of the struggling waitress or homeless former federal worker.

Honesty!

Just the other day I had been thinking of this passage from On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense by Frederich Nietzsche:

Every word immediately becomes a concept, inasmuch as it is not intended to serve as a reminder of the unique and wholly individualized original experience to which it owes its birth, but must at the same time fit innumerable, more or less similar cases—which means, strictly speaking, never equal—in other words, a lot of unequal cases. Every concept originates through our equating what is unequal. No leaf ever wholly equals another, and the concept "leaf" is formed through an arbitrary abstraction from these individual differences, through forgetting the distinctions; and now it gives rise to the idea that in nature there might be something besides the leaves which would be "leaf"—some kind of original form after which all leaves have been woven, marked, copied, colored, curled, and painted, but by unskilled hands, so that no copy turned out to be a correct, reliable, and faithful image of the original form. We call a person "honest." Why did he act so honestly today? we ask. Our answer usually sounds like this: because of his honesty. Honesty! That is to say again: The leaf is the cause of the leaves. After all, we know nothing of an essence-like quality named "honesty"; we know only numerous individualized, and thus unequal actions, which we equate by omitting the unequal and by then calling them honest actions. In the end, we distill from them a qualitas occulta (hidden quality) with the name of "honesty." We obtain the concept, as we do the form, by overlooking what is individual and actual; whereas nature is acquainted with no forms and no concepts, and likewise with no species, but only with an X which remains inaccessible and undefinable for us. For even our contrast between individual and species is something anthropomorphic and does not originate in the essence of things; although we should not presume to claim that this contrast does not correspond o the essence of things: that would of course be a dogmatic assertion and, as such, would be just as indemonstrable as its opposite.

And then truth becomes a function of power.

Too cynical? No, not cynical enough.

During the weeks leading up to today's budget resolution, President Obama consistently argued for a "balanced" proposal--one that included new revenues in the form of loophole closings and/or tax increases. Despite not getting that, the President commented on the resolution as if he still could:

It's an important first step to ensuring that as a nation we live within our means, yet it also allows us to keep making key investments in things like education and research that lead to new jobs and assures that we're not cutting too abruptly while the economy's still fragile.

These words convey and promote a positive perception of the resolution. The perception matters more than the final scorecard, it seems. That "we're not cutting too abruptly" is a matter of controlling perceptions. Obama himself seems to say as much:

The uncertainty surrounding the raising of the debt ceiling for both businesses and consumers has been unsettling, and just one more impediment to the full recovery that we need, and it was something we could have avoided entirely.

The tireless debate in Washington aided and abetted in media coverage generated uncertainty and pessimism among portions of the population; credit rating agencies, in a bid for relevance, threatened further economic consequences should debate continue; their assigning a less desired letter would lead to interest rates rising and so forth by those who agreed that credit ratings matter. Economics is discourse: signs are adjusted based on agreement among power holders. How much is too much? Whatever they say is too much.

Back in the White House Rose Garden, the President attempts to retain his supporters by claiming that, despite the immediate line-in-the-sand address he made on prime time television last week, the real fight is still ahead:

I've said it before, I'll say it again, we can't balance the budget on the backs of the very people who have borne the brunt of this recession. Everyone has to chip in. It's only fair. That's the principle I'll be fighting for in the next phase.

This phrasing, balancing on the backs of so-and-so, is a metaphor conjuring an image that jives with the image everybody has of themselves: That they bear a burden, a cross, and are hard working. And being recognized for burden-bearing is sometimes better than being relieved of that burden. Obama signals his sympathy through this recognition. The urge to return that sympathy can be powerful: "He's doing the best he can!"