New from Sebastian Peiter: 60 minutes on graffiti, artists, economy and form.
Posts published during June, 2010
while muttering along the way
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)
Speaking for themselves, on the St. Giles Mixed Use Development, Renzo Piano Building Workshop:
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.
NBC’s Tom Costello interviews BP Coo Doug Sutles:
TOM: “I think a lot of Americans are surprised that here we are dealing with the biggest oil disaster in US history, yet we’re relying on technology to clean it up that is 30, 40, 50 years old. Has the technology to clean up a spill just simply not advanced, and if not, why not?”
DOUG: “Tom, I’m not the expert on technology, but I think events like this typically advance the technology by leaps and bounds.”
TOM: “We’re still relying on booms, still rely on skippers and on shovels. 40 years after the [IXTOC] spill in the Gulf of Mexico, why don’t you have giant vacuum sucking tubes? Why don’t you have the most high tech, 21st century response to this?”
DOUG: “Tom, I think that part of the reason is there have been so few and big spills. The events haven’t driven the technology change that’s out there. I think this event probably will.”
For all of the outrage that this spill has generated, outrage towards big oil, towards incompetent regulators, towards government in general, it shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone that Americans blindly believed that a disaster of this magnitude couldn’t happen.
What’s more is the strength of inertia is on full display during this disaster.
Obama responds in the same way all other elected officials have – declaring a moratorium on new offshore drilling. Congress kicks into shit-storm response mode, with politicians taking every opportunity to show exactly how mad they are (only words, mind you). Oil interests (BP primarily, but not solely) have immediately kicked into damage control mode – not the kind of real importance but rather a PR based sort of damage control, and meanwhile continue to flaunt the reckless expansion of drilling into deeper waters. Americans and their media bastions have gotten red-faced and have literally had a field day picking and choosing who to be fuming mad at over this spill. Some have chosen the private industry and profiteers who have gained the most from the flagrant drilling of oil to be the target of their ire, while others declared Obama’s cool composure to be the culprit and still others pointed towards the scandal-ridden, publicly-shamed and broken regulatory agency charged with overseeing the entirety of off-shore drilling.
But no one seems willing to picket outside of their local gas station and display the same anger toward our fellow citizens who are so choosing to live a petrol-based lifestyle, despite the demand it creates for perpetual oil production. No one is picketing Monsanto or Archer Daniels Midland for their short-sighted commandeering of an agricultural system that uses 10 calories of petrol-based energy to create 1 calorie of food energy. No one is organizing marches on the suburbs to protest the role they play in supporting an un-sustainable, petrol dependent America.
But then again, it is clear (to me at least) that Americans don’t actually want to change.
We just want an easy scapegoat. We just want someone to blame, so we can feel better and move on. Our media drives this narrative, but they didn’t create it. Our fellow citizens soak up this sort of cut and dry version of reality, lest they have to admit their role in the problems of our time. It really is an easy choice to be able to tune out the world around you, to succumb to the delusions of privilege and adhere to the standard mode of American politicking, indignation, and repose.
This is one of the biggest national issues in the last decade, having dominated the news for almost 2 months, but we as a nation continue to deal with it using the same foibles that have defined American life and American politics for 30, 40, 50 years.
So when this well (hopefully) stops bleeding out, when all the emails and press releases from political organizations have found some new hot topic, when BP fades from daily life and adopts a new moniker, when Obama’s personality or politics is front and center in another media narrative explaining away the problems of our country – the question remains:
Has our collective capacity to solve problems just simply not advanced? And if not, why not?
For all the serious people who are involved in this oil spill, there sure is a lot of inane behavior amongst them. BP tops that list, but really, what’s new?
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| The Spilling Fields – BP Ad Campaign | ||||
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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.
News To (Me)dia
…and everything in between
Stay on point :
