A Federal court decided today the FCC has no constitutional authority to abrogate the First Amendment in its pursuit of damages for “indecent” language aired during live broadcasts.
Frankly, this doesn’t mean a thing to the FCC. Why should they spend their time policing the language uttered on TV when so quickly the issues of the 20th century are being obviated by the internet?
But it does deal a large blow to the Parents Television Council, whose cause celebre has been to champion the role of FCC gadfly – being the main source of complaints for the FCC.
A little while back the talk of the town was a little thing called the liability cap, a legally enshrined maximum amount an (oil) company could forced to pay to the government in the event of a catastrophic oil spill or other environmental disaster. Every news outlet buzzed about what Congress should do; Congress boiled with debate. All over the issue of whether or not it was conscionable to augment the arbitrary decision to limit liability for environmental catastrophes to 75 million dollars.
Today however, the news is that the White House is officially collecting the 4th of many payments from BP, sending a bill for $99.7 million to BP, Transocean, Anadarko and MOEX.
Remember, wary traveler, BP voluntarily acquiesced in deciding to pay any and all costs of the spill. Our government had no legal framework upon which they could compel BP to do so. BP chose to own up.
Powers of coercion have quite the heavy burden when they are trusted to an entity larger than ourselves, but then again, the weight of the crude pressing upon the surface of our shores and floating in stasis in our waters bears its own unique burden. Why does that burden become coupled with political theater the second it reaches the Congress?
Among all the controversy, conversation and contention that Rolling Stone’s profile of Gen. Stanley McChrystal stirred up, I thought it would be a good idea to skip the punditocracy and check out the White House’s response. McChrystal was summoned, guesses and postulations were thrown into the air, talk of resignation festered, and all I wanted to do was browse the White House’s clean and saavy website.
But alas, I was thwarted. Although, I was reminded of a simpler time, before flash was standard and before blogging was passe. Most importantly though, the veil was lifted from the White House’s PR machine and only content remained. Here is what I saw:
Now it doesn’t look like much, and I must confess, I was instantly bored and disappointed when I arrived at this. But I’ll be damned if there isn’t something to be said about the surface treatment that press releases receive these days. Mainly, there is something to be said about the assumed prettiness of media.
If a media outlet were to exist in purely the form above, I doubt it would ever become “mass media”. Its just too hard to keep the attention of a reader with such a non-existent graphic design. There is almost an unspoken requirement for media to be dressed up these days.
Good or bad, I don’t really care to dwell on because like it or not, numerous graphic designers and other professionals have food on their table because of this underlying media fact. Plus, we as the unaware media consuming public get to reap the benefits that such visual stimulation incurs. I mean, can anyone say in earnest that they wouldn’t want to receive their straight-from-the-White-House web news from something that looks this good?
The slightly weird thing about this is that nothing appears to have changed on the surface of the site. Usually, such lapses in web-mystique are the product of re-formatting or re-designing, but not this time (at least it isn’t apparent to me).
Nevertheless, I should conclude from this episode that the lapse in website prettiness is Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s fault. Also, McChrystal is irreplaceable. And COIN is infallible. And the POTUS is weak on defense. And Biden was right.
(most important take-away from all of this rambling = BIDEN WAS RIGHT)
Located in Camden, the project is part of a complex urban patchwork of medieval streets, modern buildings and traditional urban blocks. This environment had a dramatic impact on the design of the project.
The scheme is composed of complex volumes, which are characteristically chiselled, fragmented, and reduced in scale to match the surrounding buildings. These chiselled volumes make St-Giles an impressive architectural sculpture characterized by a combination of shimmering facets.
Each facet is unique, differing in height, orientation, colour, and relationship to natural light. Glass, steel and ceramic are the primary elements of the skin. In each facet the ceramic is used in different shades and colours that respond to the surrounding building, thus helping to integrate the scheme in the immediate urban environment.
A critique of Renzo Piano on context and function:
Renzo Piano’s Central St Giles project has put commercial architecture on the media map for the first time in many years – not since Sir James Stirling’s No 1 Poultry in the City have we encountered such a wilfully vivid mixed-use building. Yet there is a risk that Central St Giles will convey a false sense of worth by suggesting that the design of so-called rent slabs is all about dramatic, “because you’re worth it” architectural implants.
Architects, developers and planners will serve our towns and cities better if they face up to the fact that commercial architecture need not be predicated on glib non-ideas about the hearts and souls of forgotten places. They must instead address what Eric Parry describes so elegantly as “the finesse of the relationship between the mercantile world and very brave architecture”. That is the real challenge. And gift-wrapping buildings isn’t the answer. (The Independent 6/3/10)
“Our party is going to be led by younger and more diverse elected officials,” crowed former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who lent his support to a number of the candidates, in an e-mail. “They are united in embracing a rollback of government’s power, American entrepreneurial capitalism and a zeal for reform.”
In the short-term, a diverse group of GOP office holders next year would translate into a new set of potential surrogates for the party’s presidential candidate in 2012. Particularly in battleground states, having a woman or minority statewide official could help in those communities where Republican White House hopefuls have lagged. (Politico 6/11/10)
I’m just in awe of the raw pandering, the utterly non-subtle employment of false advertising in the Republican’s attempted re-branding of themselves.
I know folks who tend to the right also tend to decry identity politics, primarily because Democrats took advantage of it during the last 3 decades to widen their voter base and create a more sustainable platform with changing demographics. But let me be clear, this surface-deep diversification of the Republican party’s electoral repertoire is not identity politics, it is marketing.
That remains particularly so and is exposed by Jeb Bush’s admission that indeed nothing about the Republican platform is changing, nor is the substance of the GOP even up for consideration – “…a rollback of government’s power…capitalism and a zeal for reform,” says nothing as to why women, Indian Americans, African Americans or Hispanics should lend their support to the Republican candidates; rather, the shamelessness of this political strategy is such that the only upside seen by republican strategists is that new demographics may be tricked into voting Republican because there are politicians who look like them on the Republican ticket.
Despite the rampant contradictions in the mindset that allows republican strategists to believe that by merely showcasing some minority-background candidates they will enfranchise historically under-represented groups, these folks are doing so while championing a platform that falls in line with much despised Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer’s outwardly xenophobic immigration policy, a platform that continues to blame poor people for being poor and one that continues to uphold the mentality that the only proper role for government is protecting white, Christian males’ interests. Furthermore, extending past race a bit but plunging into gender, what in the world does a Republican platform offer to support women’s interests? They explicitly condone the restriction of reproductive choice (so a woman’s very fundamental choice whether to bear children or not, according to republicans, is to be decided by our federal government), republicans continue to wage war against Planned Parenthood (recently singling them out in the health care reform debate by attempting to remove all federal funding for the group that provides regular women health services to already under-served populations), and these are still the same folks whose war on poor, single mothers that had forced the hand of the federal government to inject moral qualifications for government support (a la welfare) continues to this day by shifting more and more resources away from social services (most of which are used by women).
None of that however, could stop Politico’s Jonathon Martin from inserting this massive load of bullshit into the above quoted article:
The congressional and gubernatorial primaries held so far this year have put the GOP on the verge of electing an array of diverse new faces to high office, which stands to upend the party’s country club image and perhaps even diminish one of the most enduring punch lines in American politics.
Does it seem like Martin gives one iota of a shit about policy? Or about how politics effects real people’s lives? Does it seem like Martin thinks that what politicians and political parties say needs to be backed up by real actions? Or does it seem like Martin thinks republicans just needed some candidates that look a little different?
Same platform, same policies. Republicans continue to represent the “country club” image because their policies directly benefit the same group that they have for the last 40 years.
If a handful of minority ethnic / female candidates in one election cycle can change that historical fact, then I’m Martha Washington.
As everyone in the country probably knows by now, there were some extremely important elections last night – voters were angry, the establishment was in danger, the tides were rising…
…and then we all woke up to realize nothing had changed.
Blanche Lincoln is the democratic candidate in Arkansas, Harry Reid is going to the general election against an oath keeper (aka Tea Party mascot), and South Carolina is as far from a rational existence as ever – what with an adulterer, I mean non-adulterer, I mean serial adulterer, leading the way to the Republican governorship and an employed, unknown, soon-to-be-felon becoming the Democratic Senate candidate.
But this all shows an intense anti-incumbent mood, right? RIGHT?
And it shows that the Tea Party is a political force, right? RIGHT?
Most obviously, it shows that 2010/2012 are going to be landslides for Republicans, right? RIGHT?
Actually, I have no fucking idea what any of last night’s primary elections mean. I don’t think anyone in the media, speaking on TV, writing on the internet or print, has any legitimate claim to know what the meaning of the elections were. But they sure do have the reason to project such legitimacy, don’t they? They have to be seen as oracles, political magi, sages of old; they can’t be seen as mere journalists.
So they make shit up. Or their producers make shit up. But the point is, somewhere down the line, a narrative is fabricated.
Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not one of these folks who tries to blame our “mainstream media” for all of the nation’s ills. I’m the type of folk to blame the type of folks who naively believe that the entirety of news-worthy activity in our country can be condensed to fit inside narratives for our nation’s ills. That means you who utters the phrase “liberal media” in a flushed rebuttal of facts that don’t fit your preconceptions; and you who immediately writes off every layer of nuance, subtlety, and complexity in a news story, to partisanship. Rest assured though, plenty more powerful folks than the typical cable news watcher or lunch-break political scientist are to blame for our country’s issues, albeit much more directly to blame.
Like those schmucks in the MMS who sat on their hands while creating the circumstances under which millions of barrels of crude oil now inhabit the Gulf of Mexico.
Or those damn BP managers who took advantage of a lax regulatory environment in order to skirt costly safety measures.
Or those heinous neo-cons that were instilled in power by Supreme Court decree and led our nation into 2 fruitless, bloody, and protracted wars, both of which are to blame for enormous budget deficits and national debt and both of which continue to this day (9 and 7 years later).
So today, fresh on the heels of another election projection of conflicting narratives and political grandstanding, there is no article more appropriate than this bit of satire from Slate.
Hopping aboard the ever widening platform of principled arguments espoused by the GOP comes this new whopper – persons without judicial experience (circuit, appeals, Federal, etc.) have no place on the Supreme Court.
Rather clearly, this principled argument is being levied against the likes of Elena Kagan, the Obama Administration’s Solicitor General and nominee to replace Justice John Paul Stevens on the Supreme Court.
But I shall not waste any time getting to the meat of this, and for such an effort I will yield the floor to Rachel Maddow, who will offer some Helpful Hints for Hypocrites:
For the record, I think principled arguments are very important in politics. Principles are a direct reflection of the value systems that they claim to represent, and thus do wonders in communicating political thoughts to a society. But does it not immediately negate the premise of principled arguments for them to be so easily disproved as un-principled? To put it another way, does the fact that these principled arguments by GOPers are so easily proven to be political calculations contradict these politician’s prerogative to espouse their principles in Congress?
This is just me, but if I can prove someone to be lying, their integrity is thrown out the door – a fairly open-shut instance of a dishonest politician for that matter.
Do you think that Congressional Republicans will feel the same way after November though, in that, will they continue to support their un-principled hypocritical minority leader Mitch McConnell when they realize how much YouTube fodder his shenanigans create?
Social networking isn’t some new idea that MySpace or Facebook came up with, these sites have merely exploited the most superficial aspects of it. As such, it is incredibly unfortunate that the likes of Facebook has come to be synonymous with networking of late.
I’m inundated with advice over the importance of networking, aka schmoooozing, in my professional life and it makes damn good sense – meet people, establish good report and keep up contacts because you never know what opportunities may be presented by mere virtue of knowing someone. Simple right?
So then Facebook and these other sites come along and pretend to offer an easier way to network (without all the mucking around and uncertainty of actual human interaction). Seemed good at first, you can catch up with friends from school, keep up contacts with and remember the names of new people, and you get to enjoy all the wonderful splendors of voyeurism without all the risk!
But then something happened. Barriers were taken down and suddenly anyone could join. Then networks became meaningless and unverifiable. Next thing you know, multiple daily requests are popping up for some quiz or virtual garden and then great-aunt Gertrude sends you a friend request. Whats worse is that all the while, one assumes a certain level of security about their private information, a certain amount of control over what happens to that info, only to find out that in fact Facebook has no such agenda to protect your personal information. In fact, just the opposite is true. Facebook uses your (supposedly private, controlled) activity as a way to mine, collect and categorize data about you which it then sells to advertisers.
Never mind those egregiously unsettling circumstances for a second. In my short 4 year relationship with Facebook, which I should more accurately define as one of acquaintances, I’ve never found my life easier, more enjoyable or, for that matter, better off because of Facebook. There is no need being fulfilled by Facebook and I think its creators realized that very quickly. They have then, very successfully, manufactured the need which drives Facebook’s popularity. A society left wanting of something more tangible, a more meaningful or lasting sort of human interaction is exactly what Facebook exploits.
Proponents of its genius likely take solace in their ability to readily quantify the number of friends they have; relish in the ability to sort through pages and pages of crass bullshitting and small talk; uphold the value in removing nerves from the act of meeting someone new or getting to know someone.
But I don’t. I can no longer justify my needlessly participating in this sham of a community that we call Facebook. My friends don’t need it to be my friend. My colleagues don’t need it to work with me. Have a photo that you really want me to see? Having a barbeque, benefit or blow-out? Then you can either tell me in person, or you’ll already know how to reach me.
Not at the heart of this matter, rather resting more auspiciously along the sidelines, is the shameless politicking that occurs through Facebook. Am I the only one who scoffs at the notion that some bullshit screed written on Facebook can become national news? Am I the only one who thinks the existence of a Facebook page or group representing a cause, concern, issue or politician symbolizes absolutely nothing in the real world? Have we forgotten that virtual means solely the image of reality, that virtual by definition cannot replace reality? If the walls of Facebook is where the future of activism lies, it will be a bleak future.
So in recognizing all my unshakable qualms with Facebook, I cannot further my involvement with it. I never again want to receive an email about or from Facebook and I never again out of my own volition wish to type www.facebook.com into my browser (except to delete my account after I finish writing this).
Of great importance though, is the incredibly difficulty one faces in attempting to delete a facebook account. The most obvious route, that Facebook itself presents (through the account settings page) does not actually delete your account, but merely deactivates it. What in the world is a deactivated account? It was not until I came across this helpful link that I was able to proceed with deleting my account (click here when logged into your facebook account if you want to delete it). Big caveat though, apparently the act of deleting a facebook account takes 2 WEEKS to process, so be careful not to fall into old habits and log into your account after attempting to delete it for Facebook will just log you in and act like nothing ever happened.
But all in all, I don’t take Facebook seriously. If I did, I wouldn’t be jumping off that wagon. Seriousness should be reserved for real things, not contrived or isolated virtual worlds. Absurdity is best reserved for such things, and often can best describe what normalization means in the internet age.
With the announcement of a new cable network called “Right Network”, I think it is fair to say that cable TV is about to get tea-bagged. This network’s audience?
“…people who work for a living, people who break their backs paying more than their fair share of taxes,” a network representative said at a tea party rally in Searchlight, Nevada recently. “For people who believe in this country and believe that we do not have to apologize to anyone. Right Network is for people who live in what they call flyover country and what we call America. Right Network, because what you’ve been seeing on TV isn’t all of America…”
And the programming content’s purpose?
“…to entertain, engage, and enlighten Americans who are looking for content that reflects and reinforces their perspective and worldview,”
Excuse me for a second if I find it fallacious that the reflecting and reinforcing of one’s already adopted worldview counts as enlightenment. But nevertheless, this is what these folks thinks is necessary – another echo chamber espousing Republican/conservative/what-the-fuck-ever anti-liberal views are in fashion.
So now, finally, conservatives like Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachmann, Glenn Beck, Tom Tancredo, Rick Perry, Steve King and Kelsey Grammar (?) have an outlet for their voices to be heard! (*cue the patriotic music and montage of tax day protesters)
Back to sanity though, why in the world is this Right Network necessary? For one, it is on cable, and FOX already has 24 hours worth of conservative worldview enforcing programming lined up everyday for cable enthusiasts. Secondly, unless Kelsey Grammar is going to be playing Frasier, I don’t think anyone is going to watch. Well, he does have a mildly pleasant voice, so maybe he’ll be doing Sigourney Weaver-esque voice overs for Tea Party documentaries about how the Federal Reserve is trying to take your guns away.
In all, this is the entirety of my concern which will be levied against this Tea Bagging, Market Loving, Gun Toting, City Hating, Tax Dodging, Repub-fest. For when it comes down to it, cable tv doesn’t mean shit. Just add Right Network to the long list of sub-par television programming that inundates the airwaves, right alongside Spike TV and E!. (I’m cringing already though, thinking about the advertisements these folks are going to come up with).
A final aside: I view this new network as trivially contentious. There is no “Left Network” nor is it likely that one will be created. But one thing is for sure, Discovery Channel is at the bottom of the barrel right now. Why would a network who risked millions and millions of dollars to get exclusive footage of the earth’s most rare and sensitive ecosystems/inhabitants be simultaneously supporting the propagandist efforts of one half-term former governor that enjoys shooting wolfs from an aircraft? (Hint, it has nothing to do with integrity…and everything to do with money)
A poll coming out of the NYTimes today shows some interesting characteristics and caricatures of the Tea Party movement. One such caricature, widely perceived as true and explored in this poll, is the intimate connection between Glenn Beck’s opinionated musings and said Tea Party movement. Similarly, the demographic info emerging about this movement shows that its proponents are largely wealthier and more educated than the average American, which as Nate Silver relates, “The tea-partiers skew older and college-educated: that’s basically the cable news demographic.”
I don’t think this poll implies any sort of causation – Tea Party to Beck or vice versa, but rather a relationship based upon mutual interests: Glenn Beck is scared shitless of the Federal Government when it is run by Democrats, and so is the Tea Party movement. The most apparent effect of this relationship is that both entities appear frequently willing to disregard the factual basis for a policy argument in favor of an emotionally driven argument (of the sort that frequently result in Beck sobbing like a spoiled child who doesn’t get their way).
Offered up as support for this relationship between the Tea Party and Beck, Nate Silver points to the conspicuous timing of Beck’s cable opinion show debut: the day before President Obama was inaugurated.
This begins to point to a certain opportunist impulse in one, Glenn Beck. Especially when one considers that Beck released 7 books, 3 dvds, 26 cds, and multiple subscriber-only media venues since 2007, his role as a media siphon and capitalist extraordinaire is all the more clear.
So what though? Who cares if someone on cable (news) happens to be continually expanding the franchise that is their name? It surely is within all of their legal rights and freedoms to do so.
And that is the point here. I guess that within the ever-expanding web of Beck’s media empire, he was able to instill a sense of seriousness within his pursuits. He capitalized not only on resources that were just waiting to be thrown at the next conservative darling, but also upon the lingering political self-consciousness of the conservative movement. His conspiracies, images of communist takeovers, out-of-control government, and the framing of the government versus the people do much to exploit the foibles of the modern conservative base.
So in context, does Beck matter to politics at large?
I would say no, unless people outside of the base to whom he directly speaks start to take him seriously. He obviously has no policy savvy. He has no credentials upon which to espouse one paradigm or policy over another, but he surely has the credentials to be the voice inside the base’s head.
I am comfortable discussing Beck within a context of media alone. The second that reputable or otherwise credible people begin to discuss him within a context of policy they should be rightly viewed as failing their audience. With or without Beck, I doubt the GOP base would ever have supported Health Care Reform under Obama. With or without Beck, I doubt that base would tacitly acknowledge Obama’s role in lowering their taxes. And I sincerely hope that no public officials are taking cues on policy from Beck or Beck’s audiences’ rantings, but no more than I hope that extreme right wing policies stop being perceived as so ethereally appropriate in this day and age.
Indeed, maybe Beck’s role in our politics today is just an indicator of to whom right wing politicians will have to pander when their poll numbers are down. But it isn’t like those politicians would have done anything differently with or without the presence of Beck.
Again, Beck just capitalizes upon those foibles of modern conservatism: government bad, taxes bad, guns good, and so on.
This sort of phony sincerity, derived from a long ago established understanding in the conservative’s mind of how everything, everywhere works, has come to be the standard for those on the right-wing, especially those in the media. If only this was an earned outrage, derived from the pressing realities of the harsh world around us, but it isn’t.
Getting mad that the bottom 47 % doesn’t end up paying taxes to the Federal Government doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t make sense when unemployment is at 10% nationally and it doesn’t make sense when 200,000 homes go into foreclosure every month.
I love how the mere presence of that 47% qualifies as empirical evidence on Fox, thereby justifying whatever conclusions happen to follow the number. Honesty seems to be evaporating in conservative politics and media, with priority given to the opportunism and expediency that defines the GOP in 2010.
Tom Schaller at 538 provides a thorough analysis of America’s tax policy, its efficiency and its effectiveness in comparison with other OECD nations. This analysis comes in response to not only the rampant reliance by conservatives upon the theory that a tax code which “redistributes wealth” is inherently bad for our economy, our government and our society, but also in response to a column in USA Today which panders to the fears and pre-conceived notions of the Tea Partiers by Jonah Goldberg. Just a taste of that column follows, the full version can be found here:
We are heading toward being a country where instead of the people deciding how much money the government should have, the government decides how much money the people should have.
Only after they passed “ObamaCare” did Democrats clarify that this was one of their motives. ObamaCare’s appeal has less to do with saving money — which it won’t do — and more to do with spreading the wealth around.
Never mind the reality of heading towards an economy whose claim for social mobility was replaced by the will and desires of the insurance industry, because the Health Care Reform was just about furthering some devious, socialist, bolshevik, big government plot…
Moving away from the ludicrous premise upon which Goldberg’s concerns are based, the larger issue regarding our national discourse on taxation needs to be addressed. As such, it appears as if a large swath of this country operates under a different version of reality when it comes to taxes, how tax policy effects our economy, and how our tax policies compare to other OECD nations. Schaller’s conclusions after sifting through relative tax/transfer data from the 26 OECh nations are as follows:
1. Dollar for dollar, America offers the most effective and efficient government on the planet, doing so for about 20 cents on the dollar nationally, 28 cents if you include state and local taxes. If you ask a conservative to name a country that provides as many quality services for less, or more and better services for the same price, they can’t name one. If they do, encourage them to start packing their bags. Sure, they could save a lot of money living in Mexico–if they don’t count all the bribes they’ll have to pay to educate their kids and protect themselves from possible violence. Bottom line is we’re simply not as big as conservatives would have us believe. This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t seek efficiencies, govern more effectively within budget constraints, or try to eliminate fraud and abuse. But American government is pretty clean and fairly lean.
2. American government is redistributive, but not to the degree to which boogeyman conservatives would have us believe... We’re clean and lean, but if you believe in sharing the wealth, comparatively we’re also pretty mean.
3. When it comes to deficits and fiscal responsibility, conservatives tend to focus on the spending and not the taxation side. If you’re raising less than you’re spending, you can either raise more, spend less, or some combination of both. But conservatives invariably turn the conversation to how big government is as a spender, rather than how small it is as a taxer. And frankly, too many Americans of all ideological stripes simply want a free lunch. We know this because when you give them access to policies at the ballot, they vote for guaranteed spending and restrictions on taxes. (See California, the state with the single WORST debt burden in the country.)
4. It’s just a myth that all this American “socialism” will only constrain our growth, turning us into one of those laggard western European nanny states. There is way too much to cover here, so I’ll just point to Jon Chait’s recent takedown in the New Republic of conservative Jim Manzi’s supposed case-closed case for why America’s smaller government produces higher growth rates.
If the conclusions reached by Schaller are viewed in their context, it becomes clear that his task in analyzing this data was a result of an ideological perspective within the American conservative consciousness that refuses to consider in earnest the effects of tax policies and a political culture that blindly assumes lower taxes are good for everyone and everything. An ideology that refuses to acknowledge the other half of the equation which creates debts and deficits needs to be shown empirical data to dispel their theories, but somehow I don’t think empirical data means anything to an ideologue.
