Global Tanning: Anatomy of a Media Virus

I love that this has upset a lot of folks. ...hee hee hee

 

Real journalism at work.

Happiness at how your baby grew, and disgust at how much the trad media got wrong (Narco News is an "Alaskan blog"? They can't have an intern check that simple fact?)

Nice work there, Al.

Once again, I will send a little money your way. This is a perfect example of your insightful writing that I have come to love. Give us more like it! I have to say it has been cool watching this tidbit travel from our little corner here to Olbermann and beyond.

Thanks Al, what an incredibly thorough recap.  Naysayers were wrong, apparently, and if this harmless, but humorous story, even took the "shine" off Gov.Palin even a little bit, then all the better.  It most definitely didn't backfire.  

I almost posted a comment asking what you were up to... and now we all get to see.

 

Well done, Al.  Well done!!!

Great piece on how this works. That tongue in cheeck comment in the NYT, "Narco News, a site more usually concerned with the antidrug efforts in Latin America than Alaskan grooming habits", was exactly what I thought when I tried to imagine you and Bill on the phone interviewing owners of Alaskan tanning parlors.

I'd love it if you wrote more on this subject, it's something I've been thinking about a lot lately and I wonder what your thoughts are on timing and the different cultural environments and so on.... or maybe I should ask for an example where it didn't work and what went wrong. The ability to "inject" stories into the mainstream is something many who publish one way or the other would like to - and need to - know more about I suppose.

One thought I had when the story broke was that it is visual, it's so easy to picture the whole thing, and that this would help it to spread widely.

It's got more legs than a centipede!  But one of the strangest ironies is, it is one of the nails in the coffin of the Palin phenomenon, where far more alarming news about cronyism and earmarks would tend not to stick, the tanning bed is, not to stretch a metaphor - sticking.  Great work!

As a journalism student, this kind of thing is fascinating to watch. This is the kind of journalism I want to practice someday. Factual, responsible, and pretty amusing to watch as it spreads.

Kudos to you, Al, and thank you for remaining authentic! I'll hopefully be donating when I get paid this weekend. I can't wait to read your reporting from the ground!

Al,

This is a great write-up on a subject I've never consciously been aware of in the journalism new world of "instant messaging". Having said that, I have to admit that I did not understand your position on the wolf ad and then your thoughts that the tanning bed story would be an important story to publish.  However, suffice it to say that it would concern me more if I agreed with everything you said and considering that I have zero writing and publishing experience, well...there you are.  I'm floundering in this analysis like a Palin in a Bush Doctrine or a McCain on Spain.

Congratulations on your trip plans!  I'm sending my donation this weekend after I get back from canvassing in Michigan on Saturday. 

Mother, Moose hunter, Maverick, Tanning bed owner. No that doesn't fit. Let us try again.

Mother, Maverick, Tanned Maverick. Better. Still not quite right.

 

Prudent user of UV radiation, Maverick, Moosehunter. Shit didn't work in mother. 

 

This tanning bed thing just isn't fitting our image. Can we change it to an outdoor grill? 

 

Hi Al,

This is a great education on how things can work if done well. Thank you for sharing it with all of us!

I know appreciation and thanks don't pay the bills but they are all I can offer right now. Thank you so much! I appreciate this web site and the work you do.

A minor technicality: Cenk Uygur referred to John Edwards having a tanning bed in his house, not the White House.

http://www.thebostonchannel.com/health/17502950/detail.html Pigment Cell and Melanoma Research, a medical journal, published an article in their October issue that says any tan from UV rays is unsafe and the authors called for a ban on the use of tanning beds for anyone under 18. There's more but I don't want to suck up space here on it. I think, however, that the Palin tanning bed story will end up cited in articles following up on this.

Thanks, Al, for posting about this phenomenon written about by my Brooklyn neighbor Doug Rushkoff.  We readers shouldn't forget that the GOP has this stuff figured out, too. Frank Luntz further popularized the technique with his "It's Not What You Say, It's What They Hear".  Thank heavens the Obama folks understand this.

Now the next assignments are:

1. Chasing down whether there is a documentable "Imus-moment" attributable to Palin on the occasion of Barack's final defeat of Hillary Clinton.

2. Finding some way to breach the stone wall the McCain operatives have erected to make us ignot Troopergate.

 

 

 

People don't blink an eye at subscribing to magazines, newspapers, cable/dish, etc.  Imagine if a just tiny fraction of 1% of the public would cancel just one of their subscriptions and apply, say $10/mo to The Field or other favorite New Media outlet, they'd save some money while supporting the growth of the New Media, which is key to restoring the Constitution.  What's a dish subscription cost nowadaze anyway?!?

Just this week alone we have the Tantastic story from Al/Bill, and the Foreclosure story outta Mich from an Authentic Journalist.  If The Field and The Fund had a bump up of monthly subscribers, just think about how many stories they could break and commentary to make.  It's up to us to make it happen.  We can do this.

(can you sign up for a monthly contribution here?)

That's amazing. I'm sorry I doubted you. I've learned so much in this election--what not to worry about, what to take seriously. Thank you! BTW, my donation is in the mail. I'm having Paypal issues.

Al,

You and Bill are simply brilliant. Everytime I saw you referenced in other media stories I just cracked up.  I have met you and know that you are dam clever. Barrack's team could take some pointers from your offense play of the week.

 

Ho-hum, Al. Yes the story has legs, but the most important and shocking part is being intentionally submerged and censored:

The fact that Palin puts her down's syndrome baby, Trig, in the tanning bed and speaks in tounges over the kid for hours on end is super creepy.

For a woman that hunts for the family's meat ration, runs the state as govenor, and pumps out kids faster than you can empty a state of the art shot-gun--I wouldn't be surprised if there were super-natural forces giving her advice.

The lamestream media simply won't expose Palin's brand of idiosyncratic American medevilism, and the cover-up is par for the course.

In Alaska, having a personal tanning bed, and a suped-up snow machine, is a sign of 'having made it." Couple this indulgence and Fargo yuppie accountrement with the savage nature of penticolstal imperiist delusion (God is guiding US in Iraq), with Russia threatening from the near-far, and you have the perfect media storm waiting to happen.

What next? Did Palin import 100 gallons of Hawiian Tropic?  Did she instruct the Alaskan National Guard to attend tanning sessions?

 

Stay tuned.

 

Awesome, baby, awesome. Sarah Cheney-Bush has a tanning bed and McCain thinks Spain is in Latin America. Jesus, what a country!

You are safely ensconced in your tanning bed.......

1. Chasing down whether there is a documentable "Imus-moment" attributable to Palin on the occasion of Barack's final defeat of Hillary Clinton.

There is one. Google: Sambo beat the bitch

Said in an Alaskan diner June 5th or 6th, and reported on a blog by an ex-pat ex-journalist living in Toronto.

Kudos, Al; I'd vote for this as Meme of the Week (next week: the socialization of the financial sector).  I was skeptical about this as a catchy story, but I'm delighted to have been wrong.

And I love that you not only crafted the little baby virus beautifully, but have so lovingly documented its progress through the digestive system of the Innertubz and MSM.

 

Incredibly useful information, thanks for sharing.

jon

PS: Although I do share Catherine's question why you see this as a different kind of impact than the wolf ad ... not disagreeing, just curious

Steven - That's exactly the kind of undocumented claim - "puts her down's syndrome baby, Trig, in the tanning bed" - that would have discredited the story from the get-go and contaminated the factually proven part so fatally that even the truths attached to it would have lost all strength and credibility.

You especially can't mention people's children in an accusation you can't prove.

I'm deadly serious when I say that if a story has a single false or unproven claim in it, that destroys the entire story, and increases public sympathy for the subject, keeping that which is true from coming to light. That's exactly the kind of behavior by bloggers (or commenters) I'm warning against: shoot yourself in the foot why don't ya?

And if you don't understand how that claim - involving an infant child in it (and a special needs one, at that) - invokes moral outrage against the one making it, you haven't read what I've posted here very carefully at all.

and there's still one more day!  Thanks so much for this contribution, Al.  It's amazing how fast this one took off.  Sometimes stories percolate for many days before they make it in to the MSM.

I couldn't comment during the day but between the Spain fiasco, Palin advocating for a transparency in gov't law that OBAMA already sponsored and had signed in to law, and Palin's slip on the PALIN and McCain administration, it's been a pretty good day!

I'm not so sure how far the Spain story will ripple but to the degree that it does, it has the potential to really peel off some of the wiser Republicans who will admit to themselves that the man is not ready for prime time.

Looking forward to your trip, Al.

Catherine and Jon - As I said in the post about it, the "wolf" ad runs smack into an existing set of culture wars and on the wrong side of them - pleasing the already converted while alienating many in the middle.

I suppose if tanning bed enthusiasts felt persecuted and looked down upon by "liberals" the tanning bed story wouldn't have had such legs. It would have gotten caught in the crossfire of an already polarized situation.

(That's why I think that, for example, it's become so impossible to discuss almost any aspect of the Israel-Palestine conflict and make any progress at all in public opinion: because both sides are so polarized already. Opponents of cruelty to animals have such strong feelings about it that they can't understand how anybody might feel differently about it, to the point where they become instantly unreasonable and unable to discuss it, mirror images of the folks that if you challenge their gun owners, they'll reach for the gun; if they even think that you challenge their meat eating, the hot dog will taste better as they chomp it to your face; if they think you are messing with what they consider to be basic to their cultural norms, you lose any chance at convincing them of anything.

That dynamic doesn't exist with the tanning bed situation. The only sector defensive about tanning beds are the stupid Indoor Tanning industry lobby and its idiotic spokesman up in Buffalo!

In other words, had the story criticized the governor for going to a tanning salon, all clients of such salons (the industry says 30 million) could have felt attacked, whereas those that have a private salon at home have much smaller numbers, and the existence of the private salon in fact can invoke class resentment by those who can't afford that and instead go to a public salon.

It's apples and oranges. There's no comparison between a story that has already existing emotional polarization in society and another that doesn't.

To know Al is to love Al-

I knew their was something strong about this story when you decided to post it. I spent the primaries with you and you definitely play hardball, Al. I love to sit back and watch your work unfold and this story really was out there at a perfect time. The strength of your journalism and your knack for just knowing, never ceases to amaze me. Great work--keep on, keeping!

That's exactly the kind of undocumented claim ... that would have discredited the story from the get-go and contaminated the factually proven part so fatally that even the truths attached to it would have lost all strength and credibility.

Boy howdy. For just one example, recall how the (intentionally planted IMO) misdirection around an IBM typewriter font destroyed the entire "Bush the Deserter" story, not to mention the long career of a solid journalist.

Well done, Al.

Just saw this: http://devilstower.dailykos.com/ on the front page of Daily Kos & was surprised. Has Zogby really sunk so low, both in reputation and action? I kind of liked having a pollster based out of my neck of the woods in Upstate NY...... btw - great piece about a great piece, Al.

I was very curious to see how this story would play out when you first published it Al. Now that you have generously revealed the outlines it is very clear your prediction comparing it to the $400 haircut was safely conservative. This is an admirable chess game, which I respect for its wit and instinct. A simple contradiction made clear and compelling, creating an opening of awareness in the mind numbing world view that too often passes for public opinion. Journalism that attracts and furthers understanding, humor and truth. The Bronze "hockey-mom" celebrity spokesperson.

Al, I know you wrote pretty disapprovingly of the ad that the DWAF was running on Palin's record of aerial wolf hunting, and I basically agreed with your analysis.  I watched the ad and, while I certainly don't approve of the practice, it just didn't seem like that great of an ad... Just reminded me of crazy animal activists or something...

With that being said, Nate over at 538 pointed out that Mediacurves tested the ad and found it to be the most effective ad out by EITHER campaign in a month.  Based on their poll, it actually moved a net 6% of voters towards Obama/Biden.  Here's the link:

http://mediacurves.com/Politics/J7011-Anit-PalinAd-WildlifeRecord/

Now I'm wondering if I should be funding this thing.  Maybe more people are disgusted with this practice than I would've originally guessed?  What do you think, Al?

Jeff - I've already commented about the Mediacurves report on another thread. Here's the short version: it tested for emotional responses, but not - at least in what the company published - voter preferences. Of course the ad had the highest emotional response! Guns are being shot, there's blood on the snow, etcetera. A lot of folks, here and elsewhere, have said they can't even watch it! But intensity of experience does not mean changing of preferences.

Mediacurves is a company trying to sell a product - it's dial response technology. And so it does these public, online, demonstrations of that product. But if you read it carefully, there's nothing to suggest in its data that it moves votes positively or doesn't move them negatively. It only measures emotions.

Hi Al, I am a fan of yours and try to emulate you as much as I can (including copying your stuff) in my tweets and blogs. As a democrat, I clearly have a bias in all my posts aand readily admit that. Even if I start feeling like "Chicken Little" sometimes, I put on a brave face, and publish only articles favorable to Obama and Democrats. Is the image of an impartial fourth estate false? Did Cronkite and Brinley have favorite Political Parties, and did they slant their stories to favor one party over another. Just a thought. Ben Spector

If you look at Mediacurves own data on how the "wolf ad" affected Obama's favorability to unfavorable rating (and, again, this doesn't even indicate voter preferences):

It moved exactly 2 out of 104 Democrats from the unfavorable to favorable categories.

It moved exactly 0 out of 103 Republicans and 0 of 105 Independents from the unfavorable to favorable categories.

And that's in the heat of the emotional moment after just seeing the sensationalist emotion-tugging ad!

People are reading far too much into minor, statistically insignificant shifts between "very favorable" and "somewhat favorable" and between "very unfavorable" and "somewhat unfavorable." But the net fave-vs.-neg rating shifts, out of 312 voters surveyed, was by a total of two respondents, both of them Democrats, that's a shift of less than one percent of the overall group surveyed, within a margin of error - even if it was more precise polling - of over 6 percent!

Ben - Proclamations of "impartiality" or "objectivity" by journalists only let us know that the one claiming it is either terribly self-deluded or lies willfully. There is no way to be unbiased (even not caring about a matter is itself a bias!)

My belief - and what I tell my students - is that a journalist should always declare his and her biases, but also adhere strictly to facts and a basic sense of fairness. I also think readers trust that person more - even when they disagree with him - than the one that claims to be unbiased.

Al, it's interesting that you were inspired by Douglas Rushkoff.  A friend of mine hipped me to him in high school.  He's a very sharp guy, though he's always struck me as being on the lookout for a movement or subculture to put himself at the head of.

He wrote a fine post about Palin's convention speech on his blog.  I thought this part especially cut right to the core, and is apropos here:

What is it they hate? Guiliani and Palin both made it pretty clear: community organizing. Community organizing is energized from below. From the periphery. It is the direction and facilitation of mass energy towards productive and cooperative ends. It is about replacing conflict with collaboration. It is the opposite of war; it is peace.

Last night, the Republican Convention made it clear they prefer war. [...] It is better to be an international aggressor - a bulldog with lipstick - than led by the misguided notion that attacking people itself makes the world a more dangerous place.

In their attack on community organizing - a word combination they pretended they didn’t know what it meant - Giuliani and Palin revealed their refusal to acknowledge the kinds of bottom-up processes through which our society was built, and through which local communities can begin to assert some authority over their schools, environments, and economies. Without organized communities, you don’t get the reduction in centralized government the Republicans pretend to be arguing for. In their view, community organizing as, at best, equivalent to disruptive and unpredictable Al Qaeda activity.

It turns out he's got a book coming out next year that will probably touch on these themes, called Life Incorporated.

Just had to post this and now I'm off to bed.

 

http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid1185304443/bctid1803307744

These guys are really just on fire this week.  I love the music.  And you gotta love that they used Carly's $42M golden parachute against them when they have been out on the trail calling for an end to that abuse.  I mean, not even the Democrats have gone there.  How exactly do REPUPLICANS propose to interfere in business practices such as that?

Your exposition alone is probably Neiman(sic) Fellow material. And I'm noticing another ominous aspect. The GOP is essentially corporate oligarchs manipulating the emotions of the benighted. While the benighted were inclined to see Palin as one 'a' them, the real controlling forces of the oligarchy are beginning to mutter in their beards about the wild stupidity of selecting Palin in the first place.

David Brooks, their usual courtier and interpreter is getting nervous about this witless Hail Mary and Chuck Hegel is vociferously disgusted. The true GOP base is in Wall Street, not Main street, and they do this pretend thing every four years to fleece the rubes.

We now seem to have this 'perfect storm' where Wall Street is in crisis, blowing chunks and hanging by the thread of an ugly tax payer bail out as Main street is puzzled by the absurdist cheese of a tanning bed. And yes, it IS ending up as a health advisory story on my idiot Yahoo page where the whole concept of tanning is being called out.

Abbie must look from wherever and chuckle at this perspicasity.

And I noticed another news item where people turned out well for some McCain/Palin event but left as soon as the woman shut up leaving McCain in the lurch. I think Nate's people mentioned it on 528.

They came for the freak show and bailed as soon as gramps hit the podium.

By the way, Al, since you mentioned the tabloids, can you tell us anything about their political slants? I've noticed that the Examiner and the Globe have been headlining the wildest Obama smears, but seem to be leaving the Republican candidates alone. Strangely, though, both those papers have also been alleging that Bush is back on the sauce for a couple years now. Do you know if there are actual politial agendas that get played out in these papers, or is it all just entertainment?

The best blog with the best education mixed in. I love it! Al & Bill rock!

NV will go blue this year, I can see it happening before my eyes.

Al- What do you think of the spanish language ads airing from both camps? I just read this diary on Kos and if you have a moment would love your take.

Hey, Field Hands! I just wanted to make a late night post about the huge, huge story that came out today. The October Surprise isn't going to involve bin Laden or Iran, but it will involve the US economy. The Bush administration is desperately trying to pull the levers of government to manipulate the stock market so John McCain can win the election. How are they going to do this? Through ridiculous new measures that will prop up the stock market in the short term, but lead to a possible Depression in the long run. Basically, here's the gist: The SEC just decided to ban short selling. For those of you who aren't aware of the practice, it basically means that you borrow shares of stock from a broker and sell them immediately, expecting the price to go down. If the price does drop, you buy the shares back and return them to the broker, keeping the profit. Naturally, if you short a stock and the price goes up, you lose money. Theoretically, your losses could be infinite if the price continues to go up, but in practice, there's a time limit, after which you must return the shares regardless.

 

The reason short selling affects the markets is the fact that the selling can trigger declines in a company's stock price. Shorting stock is a perfectly legal and common practice among investors who are pessimistic about a company's prospects. For instance, I think that US automakers are aging dinosaurs, and I don't hold a good view of their future, so I have continually shorted Ford, GM, et al. With the new rules going into effect, investors will only be able to buy stock and hold it, hoping the price goes up. In the short term, this will create huge market rallies, as people buy up shares and cover (buy back) their last remaining shorts. But in the long term, it will be terrible for the market. Short sellers prevent a stock's price from reaching exorbitant levels, and the converse is also true. When a stock starts to tank, many short sellers will cover their position, buying back shares of the company and establishing a support. In a market without short sellers, the volatility will be ridiculous, and the lows will be lower. There's nothing stopping a full on crash now. And for those of you who think you can just buy puts: who the hell is going to sell you a put when they can't short the stock to hedge themselves? That's right - nobody with a modicum of sanity.

 

Basically, the market will rally for a couple of months, buying John McCain critical time and taking the edge off Obama's assault. JM can then turn back to his old strategy of inane attacks and petty distractions, and although lots of people will continue to be hurt by the economy, Obama's criticisms won't have as much of an eye opening effect. Will this win John McCain the election? No, not on its own.  There are dozens of variables involved. But it can't hurt him - and the real issue behind this story is that our government continues to try and manipulate the democratic process for the sake of the corrupt, thuggish few.

 

If you thought the 2004 terror alerts were despicable, then, in the words of Bachman Turner Overdrive, "you ain't seen nothin' yet."

I think your approach to journalism mirrors Obama's approach to politics.  I think that is how he is able to work across ideological lines without compromising his principles.

It reminds me of how he was elected as President of the Harvard Law review, if I remember correctly he was actually elected by the conservative members of the law review.  They elected him not because they agreed with him but because they respected him.

Taking a tone that acknowledes disagreement but fosters an environment of honesty and fairness allows one to find common ground much more easily.

On the one hand, it is interesting to see this story "grow". On the other, it is so depressing. The US election affects millions of people, real people, not just here but all over the world. Our economic, environmental, and foreign policies are ravaging the globe. And for elections to become such a bizarro world where "media" simply "feeds" off each other in one big round of mutual masturbation is pathetic and disgusting. I am not a US citizen and I cannot vote but I am doing what I can to participate in this election by canvassing, donating, and encouraging my students to participate regardless of their politics, etc. Due to my immigration history I have never voted in my life. To watch people not vote and take this so lightly is heartbreaking. 

And, Al, you loudly proclaimed the need for nuance, yet it is ironic to read your continued repetition of a cliched and outdated reduction of the reader responses spurred by the wolf ad to "culture wars" symbolized by "cruelty" (which you conflate with death and/or meat-eating; it's not the death that's the issue, or the use, Al, it's the cruelty) and "meat-eating" and hunting (when not one person, not one, said anything against them) as opposed to the central point being made (even by hunters): the cruelty is gratuitous. The issue is a mode of production, the same system of production that we have seen toppling around us all week on Wall Street AND which we are witnessing in the natural world, which is premised on a relationship to nature and thus to ourselves that is catastrophic and delusional. Just like the bizarro media world you have mapped out is an alternative universe, so does global finance and systems of production create this alternative eco-system that does not even take into account nature's economy, the subsistence economy, and women in the poorest parts of the world producing labor (a site of production even Marx didn't recognize) as well as maintaining the home, the "biological" side of the male (which applies even here). Why is cruelty to animals cruelty to ourselves? Because cruelty is not extractive, it is not use, it is gratuitous. It is a HUMAN relationship to nature and other species, not an animal one. We are lucky to live in a place that is alive. Perhaps we should start treating it like it is and maybe we will start treating ourselves like we are living beings and not cogs in a machine, simply put here for use by others for profit/labor with no value in ourselves, just like the animals we cannot bear to see ourselves in precisely because we know how closely we resemble them even as we, the paragons of reason, treat them as objects, and confine, torture, and mutilate them into being so. You know who else is confined, tortured, bombed, mutilated, and encouraged to be an over-consuming automaton to continue being cogs in a machine? We have a choice: Either we continue down the outdated, simplistic mode of emotional reaction that you have repeated (it's working really well for us, isn't it?) or we actually use the reason that supposedly renders us exceptional and recognize that what is cruelty on the individual scale is unsustainability on the macro scale.  

So, please give your readers some credit (some of us have studied this issue for years, are published in it, and are activists in poor countries ravaged by US/EU agricultural policies and unsustainable, cruel "development") as they do you on your expertise by not reducing their positions to stereotypes based on a US-centric "culture wars" analysis (as if there are not men and women all over the world fighting for this planet and for all species who have different paradigms that SURVIVED imperialism, genocide, the IMF, World Bank looting and debt-bondage known as development, all done in the name of progress/civilization based precisely on the disastrous relationship to nature and other species that has led to global warming and which poor countries suffer and will suffer the most) just to disingenuously fashion yourself and others as hapless "middle of the road" persons alienated by those who can't bear disagreement. Please. That's as fake as the "biology," "growth," and "reproduction" of "news" you just described. See how easily we render real life and the real world invisible by over laying it with a false and self-propping web of nonsense while the earth, i.e. real biology, growth, reproduction, is dying? Prevention of cruelty/unsustainability is not radical. It is called our humanity. It is called being reasonable. A preference for humans over animals premised on a false dichotomy/hierarchy that regards all other species anthropomorphically is prejudice, not a self-evident truth of reason, or a fact of nature. Obviously, one is "free" to espouse whatever prejudices and "lifestyle" one likes. My point is different: either we pursue "the change we need" in our fundamental self-definition/thinking or we are stuck with the Palintology that is the so-called "culture wars"--as if THEY are a fact of nature. Our hubris, as a species on the macro level, and as a nation on the individual level, which feels entitled to a THIRD of the world's resources and will wage wars, undermine democracies, support dictators and genocide, etc. and destroy our capacity for reason for the rest, THAT is the fierce urgency of now. 

Siddharta,

the media circus is not fake, it it really happening. If you wish for another world, you have to start in the one, which is existing, otherwise failure is guaranteed. Which means you need to know the rules for playing, even if you do abhor them.

As concerns preference of humans over (other) animals: what do you think, would be the preference of polar bears, if they could articulate it? Polar bears or seals or orcas? That humans care most about humans is perfectly reasonable - and if those humans that consider the interests of an ant and a human equally, would run the show, we would be extinct as a species eventually.

@ Blue_SD: It is my understanding that what the SEC has announced is that they are finally going to act against something that has been illegal all along: "naked short selling". This has nothing to do with tanning beds, but is the practice of short selling as you describe it but without even borrowing the stocks to sell short. By lack of any enforcement, everybody has been looking the other way when this was done by hedge funds and others, and it is blamed as a major cause of the current chaos.

My hypothesis - not more than that, really - about why this is happening now is not that this is some sort of Republican ploy, but the result of "the financial markets" giving up on McCain. All this wheeling and dealing - some of it criminal - would have been safe under another Republican government and probably even under Clinton, and it has just dawned on them that neither of these was gonna happen. So they broke the levees and jump with their golden parachutes while they still can. I'm not sure this explains it all but pretty convinced it's an important part of the story.

Sarah Palin said Barack regrets now not having picked Hillary Clinton as VP.

Well, I guess that given the economic crisis McCain must be now regretting not having picked Romney...

 

Al, please, back up a bit.

What I said was pure humor.

I find the image especially funny--especially in that it highlights the questionable judgement of a religious fanatic that thinks that God is guiding the US hand in bombing and then occupying Iraq.

The Iraq kids don't even get to be 'down's syndrome'--the effen dead.

Again this was only snark.  I think it's funny as hell--and so does everyone else I have told it to.

Palin is a hypocritical, war mongering, fanatic--and it is good to expose these people to derision.  Trig, of course, is smart enough to know that I wasn't putting him down.

 

Amen, Siddartha, you make cogent points.

Al, in my view, you are also subject to chicken-littling.

As though I give a flying 'f' about the sensibilities of the stupid US herd that might be offended or discomfited by my joke.  These are the same people that derided me as 'with the terrorists' as I tried to convince them that attacking Iraq was a bad, immoral move that would lead to an endless cycle of violence.

At least Trig is alive.

The shamlessness of the right wing pathology and hypocrisy needs to be exposed--not coddled because you are afraid that some neanderthal won't vote for Obama.

This tepid and chicken-littlish nature of US liberals means that a progressive adgenda will never get out of the delivery room.  I for one am not afraid to slam a KKK'er or their allies upside the head with a 2x4 and renounce their efforts to terrorize.  And this is why I can't live in Mississippi.   Nor am I afraid to question the patriotism of the folks that would have us be good little wage slaves for the liberal/conservative corporate ruling class here in the US.   The reason that I dropped out of the academic community of deluded adjuncts to US imperialism and barbarism.

For the record, I think Trig is great.  He will never in his life feel compelled to fry in a tanning bed for venal aesthetic reasons--and you will almost certainly never hear coming form his lips a rationalization for violence that lead to the death of hundreds of thousands of human beings.

Again, Sid, your argument against Al's postition is spot-on.   I am tired of coddling the chicken littles on the liberal wing--tired of being told that we should'nt expose the hypocrisy and the lies for what they are.

I saw how this worked during the Clinton era--and I will not sit on my hands as the same half-assed shit is forwarded under an Obama administration.

I never said that you had to include my joke with the culture=war story about the tanning bed that you are patting yourself on the back for.

But I will say that if we don't pull out a 2x4 and go to town on the rightwing for their ignorant, unpatriotic economic policies we will deserve to lose.

 

 

Al,

I chipped in 50 bucks for the journey (and would like to have it earmarked for vice only heh) but I notice that the counter is not moving.

Why?

Sebastian - As I wrote on the previous thread, the counter was manually adjusted by human hands as the donations came in. Once we reached the goal, it stopped being adjusted. If anyone's curious, $177.93 is the amount that has come in over and above the $4,000 goal.

Siddharta - Very nice essay, but let's not kid ourselves that our ideological manifestos - of whatever tendency or ideology they might be - are anything but irrelevant sideshows to the battle at hand. And the same would apply to my own essay about what's important to me (which, surprise, is probably very different than yours or anybody else's). We don't agree on some things. So what? When we can find the common ground where we do agree and are willing to fight for it, that's how change is made.

Steven - You got me. I had no idea that was snark. But I even think joking about an infant child in any context invites all of us to misunderstand it.

All the people who might misunderstand your "joke" did not deride you as a "terrorist." You seem to be making the same sweeping cultural stereotyping as the people you don't like! "Oh, because one (fill in the blank: redneck, Christian, Republican, whatever) called me a 'terrorist' then I hate them all." You know what, Steven: that's just as bigoted as the people you want to hit with a two-by-four. And just as counterproductive.

And cracks like "at least the child is still alive," are exactly what I'm talking about.

You're being self-indulgent and amazingly selfish: in the name of not "coddling" (translation: dealing in public with all people with a basic iota of respect, rather than venting your prejudice against entire demographic groups because of what somebody in that group did to you) all you're doing is satisfying your own desire for vengeance, misdirected against other working class people instead of the ones really in charge.

I oppose you in that. We're not on the same side. Pull out a two-by-four on those people, and you're doing exactly what the rulers want you to do: attack and fight amongst yourselves among the working class and the poor while they make off with the loot.

That's the whole idea of the culture wars: divide and conquer. And you're acting like a nice little soldier in that war, moved around the board by invisible hands you can't even see. "Oh! They - all of them - called me a terrorist! Oh! They - all of them - are inhuman because they don't respect Mother Earth!" Those market niches were invented by capitalists to sell you products. You, of all people, ought to know better and be able to stick your neck up above the trees and see the damn forest.

for going OT, but this goes back to discussions on prior threads re: whether the criticisms coming from some parts of the conservative establishment were a tactic & coordinated or a true fissure within the Repub party.  I was on the "coordinated tactic yet to be revealed" side but maybe not so much after reading this: http://www.dmagazine.com/ME2/dirmod.asp?nm=Core+Pages&type=gen&mod=Core+Pages&tier=3&gid=B33A5C6E2CF04C9596A3EF81822D9F8E

Enjoy with your morning coffee.

Thank you, Siddhartha, for your comments.

That's awesome Al. You're a pro. We're not worthy.

And everybody would do well to notice that the whole power of the story comes from the fact that it is true. Any untruth or ambiguity in the story cripples it and makes it irrelevant at best. Of course it is trivial! The media runs on triviality! Notice that no spokesman of the campaign has come out and vigorously denied the story and acted like a righteous victim. They can't because the story is 100% true. For example, the comments on "short-selling" are specious at best. The commenter has taken one fact and turned it into a whole story which is unlikely, ambiguous, and unverified. For such a "story" to have any actual effect, it has to be backed up by real reporting. In other words, the truth. People with imperial powers can get away with lies and murder (some of the time). People without power must rely on the authority of truth.

Anonymous - I would just add one distinction to your excellent analysis: Something can indeed by "true" even if it isn't documented. One could say that "X killed JFK" or "Y is responsible for the 9/11 attacks" and it might well be "true" except for the sticky wicket that the documentation is not solid enough to "prove" it.

In the construction of a successful media virus, the key words are "documented truth." Unless a truth can be documented beyond a reasonable doubt, being "true" is not enough, by itself, to inoculate the meme from being converted against its original message.

When you reported the story to us, I wrote a comment thinking it wasn't such a good idea.  Obviously your expertise in journalism far outweighs mine, and I apologize for dismissing this non-story which is a story now.  There is a reason why people read your postings and appreciate your credibility, and I am certainly one of them.  I appreciate your journalistic insite and I look forward to reading you everyday as I do now.

Take care.

PS...Can I come to your Tanning Bed?  I'm AA, but I could certainly use a break....

 

Al, I think some of your criticisms are valid.  However, as you said, the story you helped birth now is a teen-ager.  So a joke about Palin putting Trig into the tanning bed and speaking over him in tounges isn't going to bog this meme down.

This is a "New Yorker" joke--only intended for people sophisticated enough to 'get it'.

Now, if I had added the element that Todd Palin also put live King Crabs into the tanning bed with Trig--now that would have given the story an air of plausibility.

That said, what is really important is to make sure that we don't get bogged down with extraneous shit.  The tanning bed story works kind of like Edward's hair-cut--and it is sufficient to let the corporate media whores play with this culture war meme (becasue it will damage Palin's halo).

The Obama camp is doing what needs to be done: driving home the fact that the rightwing Republican adgenda is crippling our economy--and pointing up that the McLame recipe for governmance is dogmatic, tired, and delusional.   McCain's adgenda is against the best interests of average Americans.  This needs to be hammered home, day after day--and this is what they intend to do.

Referencing an earlier thread in which Al skewered the Wildlife ad, 538 notes it netted a plus for Obama and here is the address they referenced:

http://mediacurves.com/Politics/J7011-Anit-PalinAd-WildlifeRecord/

Stephen C. Rose - The link you provide doesn't back up your claim - that the ad "netted a plus for Obama."

Yes, it netted a "plus" in emotional response, but nowhere in that link is there any documentation or even claim that it netted him more votes or pushed voter preferences in his direction.

What the philosophers call "depth of experience" is not what swings voter preferences. And once the emotion evolves, it can in fact backfire.

There is absolutely nothing in that link - and nothing on the entire mediacurves website - that at all shows that the ad gains votes for Obama. Nothing. Zilch.

But I guess some people want to believe it so much (because they had a "deep experience" themselves watching the ad) that they'll even claim that the mediacurves website is saying something that not even it is saying. That kind of wishful thinking makes for bad tactics and strategy.

Steven Hunt - Funny you should bring up preaching to the New Yorker magazine audience. The New Yorker's recent cover art - showing the Obamas as 1960s radicals and such - may have appealed to that already-converted readership, but it sure did backfire with many of the rest of the masses out there. I refrained from expressing my full disgust with it at the time so as not to give it even more attention (or stoke that part of the culture war dysfunction which is the liberals among the elites always insisting on rubbing their claimed superiority in everyone else's faces).

That said, I do think jokes about crabs in a tanning bed (minus the infant) might work: they'll get the animal rights crowd all riled up about mistreatment of crustaceans. Still, others of us will just line up with plates and forks and remoulade sauce!

I'm fascinated by your craftmanship and process in this story - excellent points in the comments too. I actually didn't read the original Narco News story before today - just the Field diary mention of it. It's a great story. As a survivor of melinoma (skin cancer), I was delighted that you also thought to include how tanning beds ARE NOT recommended as treatment of seasonal effective disorder. Based on my life experience, I'm horrified that folks like Keith O. and others falsely imply that tanning beds are OK for treating SAD.

BTW, my favorite quip from Keith O. is his refering to Palin's governorship as "Tammany Hall North".

I have to admit that when I first read your diary on the tanning beds my reaction was, "huh?" I'm passionately pro Obama for his anti-lobbyist work and a glimmering hope that his administration may lead our country toward being less militaristic. I'm dying to see real issues discussed in the campaign and if someone could connect the dots between lobbyists, republican committee control from 2000-2006 and the worldwide financial crisis, I would be eager to read it (I've tried researching it myself). But tanning beds?

Well you've convinced me. Elections seldom turn on issues (I think most of us know that). It's about media narratives and character. And a scholarly, well researched account that ties corporate interests to middle east oil with the (dis)function of the military-industrial-congressional complex is not going to convince many people. Images convince. Symbols convince. Emotions convince. So with 6 1/2 weeks left until the election, we need to do what we can. The biggest issues can't be fought in that time but require a multi-decade effort to "capture hearts and minds". So if this means for this election discussing tanning beds, so be it. I believe your judgment is sound on this.

Al, I will admit that I thought the New Yorker cover absolutely hilarious--because it was making fun of the dorks that would believe all the bat-shit about Michelle and Barack.  That said, yes, I understand how this can be misconstrued by some rubes.  But that's just me.  And, more, I understand that 'the baby in the tanning bed' might offend some folks--that are looking to be offended.

But, you are right, during a political campaign one should not shoot themselves in the foot.

I am with Siddartha in her critique of the pathologiical practices that are not life-affirming, and will surely destory the Western society if transformations toward sustainability are not allowed to come to the forefront.

No, I am not a vegetarian--but I do belive that we should develop ethical and sane practices with respect to developing our food.   Thinking, discussing, and debating these issues is not something that big agri-business wants to have happen.

Food collected from our natural environment in a sustainable, ethical fashion is always the best!  And this is why I do idealize the sustainable hunter-gatherer societies that roamed the earth at one time.  Further, I think that Western society can learn a lot from indigenous people if we could muster the required attitude of humlity to listen and observe with respect.

(And, yes, Sid, I did read the Frankfurt scholars, especially Walter Benjamin, Marcuse, and Adorno.   Gregory Bateson and Anthony Widlen's communication theory also heavily impacted my worldview.  However, insofar as political worldview is concerned, I find Noam Chomsky to be a very cogent thinker, and an outstanding human being.   At almost 80 the man still kicks ass and is compelling and stellar in his analysis.  My university professors and peers, however, did not share my enthusiasum for Chomsky--probably because of the man's harsh, clear-eyed criticisms of intellectuals in societies deliniated by class hierarchies and oppression.)

from me as a budding blogger and a "getting more experience" writer, and from hubby who is a true "old school journalist" and social commentary columnist and blogger...

This whole thing has been such an education; even the back-and-forth between Al and various commenters.

An education in real "truth-telling"; an education on how to have a civilized (most of the time) discourse even with those with whom you may totally disagree; an education on how to stick to your vision and and your stance and your credibility and your plan no matter how "the winds" blow (thanks to Barack for that, too!).

Especially for those of us former Chicken Littles who have been here since Jan/Feb/March and went through not only the Primaries, but also the "old Field/new Field" transition and drama...

We have had and continue to receive such a wonderful education...and all this costs is just some $$$ to "The Fund for Authentic Journalism"...see link above...

Not much OT: Speaking of "clicking ducats" (one of my new favorite phrases)...don't forget Jed! www.jedreport.com

He really needs help with bandwidth costs for all of those wonderful original videos!

It's amazing what even $5 and $10 donations do for Barack, Al, and Jed!

Also, shout-outs to all of my "virtual friends" here at the Field!

 

waterprise2 AKA Pam

Liberal with a Capital L!

 

Jeff and Al, did you notice how lame-ass Fineman said, more than once in his exchange with KO, that 'everone' in Alaska goes to tanning salons.

Give me a freak'n break.  This is Fineman trying to mitigate the damage by this false notion!

Niether KO and the lame Fineman point up the health risks of tanomania--and most of the meida personalities engage tanning salons.  But, I will say, that most average US folk don't.

Thank you, Siddhartha, for your comments. Thanks to Steven as well. Congratulations to Al as well for knowing how to play his game better than anyone. You, Al, certainly do it well and you did give your tanning bed story solid legs to walk on.

I returned to the post on the wolves ad to reread it now that a bit of time has passed. There are in the post several comments that remain especially troubling to at least this field hand. The post refers to those who “rightly notice that some people seem to care more about animals than about humans” quickly followed by an attack on those who sought to assist animals caught by Katrina. Later, the comment appears that people who care about animals are “loonies.”

I have been working on environmental values and animal issues for decades and have never once found those who care about animals to care any less about humans or any other part of the environment. My experience has been that they are the very ones attending to human, animal, and environmental issues because they are the ones who see the connections between how we treat each. One of the reasons I support Senator Obama as our next president is because he sees the connections. Thanks to Mary in Seattle for this quote from Senator Obama:

“I think how we treat our animals reflects how we treat each other,” he said. “And it’s very important that we have a president who is mindful of the cruelty that is perpetrated on animals.”

Near both the beginning and end of the post are references to seeking funds for a cause: “the whole point of it is to get gullible saps to send the group money . . . ” and “I would have no problem with an ad like this if it didn’t seem like an Obama ad. But the organization seems to intentionally blur that distinction in order to gobble up some of that small donor money into its coffers. That’s selfish . . .” etc.

Being one of those Obama small donors, I see the comments and too much of the post as reflecting an “either/or” mindset that does not allow for “both/and” thinking, much less, giving, and is perhaps, with all due respect and even affection, worth a look in the mirror.  

 

Early voting strted today in VA.  Game on, y'all!

http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1841934,00.html?xid=rss...

These next couple of weeks could decide the election.

Al is right about that wolf spot. You could use it to raise funds and it would work. You could use it to get people to sign a petition to get the plane hunting banned and it would work. But it will not work to swing any voters to the other side because it only appeals to people who are already against hunting like this. To think that any meaningful number of voters on the right will and change their opinion on that subject and then vote for Obama instead of Palin because of just this spot is wishful dreaming, if not criminal optimism.

That's not to say that animal rights don't draw votes. In Holland we have an animal rights party in parliament - one seat out of 150. It's what they call a "single issue political party" and they did a good campaign with several famous people lending their names to it. I think they'll disappear next elections, like most of these single issue parties do.

But that doesn't mean that it works like this in the US, and less so these elections. Your system doesn't offer space for these type of pressure - groups - turned - political - party, so the theme gets a sort of lost between the bigger issues at best or will flame debates to nowhere at worst.

Oh, and @Elizabeth: I live in a third world country. You have no idea how angry I can get when indigenous children die of malnutrition and then I see the white elite and/or American expats busy with animal shelters for stray dogs. But this is exactly the point: I would never change my vote because some ad points out that my candidate shoots horses. I probably knew that already and it doesn't bother me, or I'm even for it.

Here's a professional music video by some of the same people who made the earlier Yes We Can (drummer from Heart) vid.  This is about staying engaged after the election.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvn96OgaBpc

Is it politically incorrect to note that we Obama fans never have to worry about a tanning bed scandal with our guy?

It was fascinating. As your story made it's way around the globe and into the mainstream I was googling to see how many hits, where it ended up, and how it was added onto.

 

I am so glad you use your reporter power for the forces of good and not evil. ;)

 

The surge in national polling is beginining to show up in state polls now that the focus is on the economy.

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/09/poll_obama_edges...

 

Obama up in

MI- 52-43

OH-47-45

PA-49-44

 

Marist Polling

Sophie, Thank you for your comments. 1. The media circus is fake because the only person who actually did the journalism is Al. Yes, they are the "rules of the game" but that does not prevent us from acknowledging the alternative reality, and it is one, that is laughably and fatally called public discourse in this country. 2. We will NEVER know what an ant or a polar bear thinks or feels. We cannot. We do not have that capacity. What you have stated is precisely my point: you are making an anthropomorphic projection. Just because some humans feel that way, other animals must too. 3. As for ants, if they disappear, human life on earth will end. As biologist E.O. Wilson has demonstrated (among others) it is the little things that maintain the fabric of life we depend on. That is a fact. Again, it is about using our reason to create another relationship with the planet and other species.

Al, Thank you for your response and for creating this forum. Please go back and re-read my comments from the original thread where I repeatedly said that given your expertise in politics I will trust your judgement. I also contributed to your ability to do what you do best and report from the ground precisely because it is necessary for democracy. That IS common ground as is this exchange.

But, and I say this again, the catastrophe that is global warming and the system of production that causes it (in addition to the atrocities that we simply call the cost of living) changes what we understand as politics. So you may be right when it comes to politics narrowly-defined, but that is not my point. And that larger about about global warming, how it affects everything, and its urgency is one you have yet to acknowledge.

 

It is one thing to use this notion of "memes" for the current political contest. That is realpolitik. Fair enough. But, when those things are interfering with rational discourse, even on this thread and the one earlier on this issue, because built into those "memes" are pre-formed categories, opinions, positions operating consciously or subconsciously. As every sports person knows, rules evolve with time. This may be where we are now, but isn't this media and public landscape precisely the problem where we cannot talk about these issues without emotionalism and simplistic reactions? THAT is precisely my point: the absence and collapse of all kinds of relationships, most notably to the planet.

 

Also, in one fell swoop you do what the media does as a way to undermine actual discourse: declare "both" sides as equally rational and simultaneously equally illusory as "ideology" in a pre-fabricated "debate" that is simply an entrenchment of the very absence of relation that is the problem. That framing is precisely the absence of rational, public discourse and the blight of our "media." As if we simply live in a culturally relativistic universe where there is no such thing as facts, empirical reality (like one natural catastrophe after the other, like the free fall of the market premised on a virtual reality of numbers and not real suffering by real people in real life, including the planet, like the radical extinction of species, and yes, like animal suffering, which is an empirical fact, not an "emotional projection", etc), or expertise, not to mention basic research. 

The larger discussion of these issues has not happened precisely because of the issues you described. This is due to failure on all sides to actually address the issue without getting entrenched in self-indulgent notions of "identity" and "lifestyle" that apparently are applicable to the entire planet and all cultures, peoples, everywhere. My point is the attempt to get beyond that as opposed to yet again reducing the issue to "meat-eating" or "guns" and all the other canards that are simply a refusal to think critically,or simply a rationalizing of our emotions to maintain the status quo, or a denial of the reality of our basic capacity for compassion, even towards other human beings (millions are spent in preventing us from seeing the sites of production of what we consume), all of which by the way, those in power have a vested interest in maintaining as they laugh all the way to the bank.

 

So, finally, I turn to your own words, that we should not look to Obama to "solve" all these issues or feel the same way we do but to use this historical moment and this historical campaign to organize and challenge ourselves. 

 

Thanks for reading.

In Seattle people were all geared up to protest Sarah Palin's fundraising visit to Seatte and now it's been cancelled.  Then I read that Palin also cancelled her fundraisers in California, too. Is this unusual?  I'm mystified.

Is it too much to hope voteres might make judgements about both candidates readiness for office based on their handling of a fast-moving and complex crisis this morning? I have little doubt that the media today will hone in on the veracity of McCain's attacks on Obama and Jim Johnson. But I hope that voters are more interested in how the respective candidates perform during an actual real life crisis. First McCain. He addressed the Green Bay audience by himself, in front of sufficient number of American flags, and made a political attack on his opponent the headline grabbing element of his speech. Obama, by contrast, stood in front of a line of his advisors,asked McCain to join him in a plan to help the middle class, and talked about his ongoing communications with Sec Paulson and the Fed Chair to avert a crisis. He then took questions and gave answers that showed he wasn't going to be hasty, focus mostly on political attacks, or get ahead of the decisionmaking processes of key players handling the developing situation. The question is, does anyone notice or care who looks more presidential and ready to lead? Or is it simply more important which candidate more effectively parlayed an economic crisis into a political opportunity to attack their opponent?

I apologize to keep asking about this Al, and I'm not sure if you're still reading this thread or if you're on to the new one, but I thought I should follow-up as I originally asked the question. =)

The mediacurves analysis DOES include voter preferences (in the link that you showed earlier).  On the 3rd page, it shows that the group started off 45-39 to McCain and ends up in a 42-42 tie.  It moves Democrats from 73% support to 78% support for Obama, Republicans move from 8 to 10% support for Obama, and independents move from 36-38% support for Obama while also decreasing McCain's support from 41-38%.

The report unfortunately doesn't tell us whether this is statistically significant, though I think with a sample size of 312, the net 6 point shift comes pretty close.

Jeff - Let's break those numbers down. It's easy to do because each subgroup on the Mediacurves sample group adds up to about 100 survey respondents.

That means that 5 Democrats out of about 100 moved to Obama, 2 Republicans out of close to 100 moved, and 2 Independents out of about 100, the same.

A margin of error means X points either way. For example, in a real poll, with a margin of error of 4.5 points, a result of 50 could mean 54.5 or could mean 46.5 percent.

When there are only 312 participants, that margin goes way up, and particularly in a focus group (which as any pollster will tell you, a focus group is always "unscientific" - it is polls themselves that rise to the level of scientific).

All this says to me is that some people are so desperate to want to believe that what moves them also moves swing voters that they'll latch onto unconvincing data to insist on it. To me, it is just further evidence that the culture wars over "animal cruelty" have a similar effect of other culture war issues: that rationality goes out the window and people on all sides will use the same exact "fact" to justify their opposite positions. The facts don't seem to matter much.

Al, I really didn't think this pig would fly; perhaps my prejudice against these little cuts overcame my perspective on both the alternative and mainstream media.  But those little cuts are numbering in the hundreds now, and will start climbing exponentially as Palin's true colors come out.

I especially appreciate your long and lovingly assembled history of the development of the story.  I just finished Kos's book, and your reporting and the resulting viral tanning-bed craze are textbook examples of How It Works.

Using what you've taught us, I now let my progressive intellectual buddies express their hysteria over the fact that right now half of eligible voters support McCain/Palin, and give them time to vent about it.  Once they start to wind down I get down to feeding them substantive stats and websites.  I suggest to them that spreading things like McCain's voting record on vets, his plan to force all of us into the arms of private insurers without addressing health care costs in the least, etc., will be more effective with independents and moderate Republicans than personal attacks on the Republican ticket.

Now some of them are considering trips to Colorado, our most tippy border state.  As soon as I'm on my feet (still recovering from mono here) I will do the same; I think some would be more likely to go if motivated to travel as a little cohort.

much appreciated!

Al,

 

I have engaged with your frame (which, apparently, is THE all consuming culture war as if real people can be categorized so easily and transparently) and presented an argument/analysis that does not repeat the false dichotomies (to use your term, "opposite positions") and emotionalism that makes certain people feel "excluded," and not once have I used the phrase "animal rights." Sure, people feel offended when privileged westerners are more worried about stray dogs than children who are dying due to war and disease. I would too if my child were dying and suffering. But does that necessarily mean that we cannot think of another relationship to nature and other species, and consequently another system of production, that does not create these false dichotomies, does not create war and disease to begin with, and does not pit one species against another in some false reality where apparently there are not enough resources for everybody, as if we still live in the Stone Age? How cynical is that? How easy is that? What little faith we seem to have in our own capacities and how easily we refuse to look at other people/cultures/civilizations that have different paradigms that do not create these false choices that are also a form of emotional blackmail. ("you must not care about people").

 

Not once have you actually engaged with my analysis/argument on its terms and on the basis of its logic. Instead, all you have done is simply repeat your "meme", or simply called my analysis "ideology," "religion," a "nice essay," or repeated the banal truism that there are people who "disagree" (you'd have to actually engage, Al, to disagree, and no, I don't expect you to "agree"). That is a foreclosure of discourse. SHOW don't TELL, Al, how my analysis is not rational, or HOW you are using the exact same "fact" (when you haven't even acknowledged the catastrophe of global warming) to justify your assumed, NOT demonstrated, "opposite position," when I have made no such assumption that it is in fact opposite but actually argued against such false opposition. You are not justifying it or arguing it. You are simply repeating it with the excuse that this is the political reality of this campaign or politics in this country: HOW is your "position" rational in the face of overwhelming calamity (the "natural" and the "economic" being fundamentally intertwined)? Haven't the "positions" you have stated precisely what have also contributed to getting us to this disastrous point, as have the classist, narrow lens of those who are purportedly on the "opposite" side? In terms of foreclosure of discourse, that is as mainstream media as it comes. 

 

Once again, thank you for this forum. It is precisely because I don't expect you or anyone else to agree or look for your blessing to fight for changes (in some version of trickle down activism) that I am adamant about actual engagement, and not boxing people into easy categories and pre-formed "memes". In this way, we can use YOU as members of this incredible forum and community to organize, engage with each other, and challenge ourselves.  

Thanks for the link to the new "Yes we Can" song. As I was listening, I was thinking about paticipatory democracy that Obama is setting up to accomplish and how much fun it was to see the tanning bed story take off. In my small way, by my contributions to Al and the Fund, I was part of something much larger than myself.

Siddharta - I don't think the burden of proof is on me to explain why I don't engage a set of arguments that to me don't seem at all relevant to what this blog covers: a presidential election.

I've read and heard a lot of lectures over the years about humans' relationship with nature. Everybody has an opinion. But when I lived in the rainforest jungle, usually without electricity or many other comforts, I developed my own set of lived experiences about what it is to commune with nature and its species, and I conclude that most people who talk about it have never really done it. Nature is cruel and harsh and species feed on each other with intensive cruelty including when humans aren't involved or even near.

When one has watched enough hawks strip the muscles piece by piece off a still alive smaller bird, watched infants die slowly and painfully because parasites consumed them and far from any city or even town they had no access to basic medicines, marveled as the vultures circled overhead and came down to clean up the messes of the kills made by one natural species or another, had to learn to respect the venomous serpents and black widow spiders and charging boars that share a little piece of the planet with one, one develops his own set of impressions distinct from those one hears in the developed world.

The natural world is called "wild" for good reason. By comparison, humans aren't actually that cruel. We're more stupid and careless than cruel. Want to see cruelty: watch a swarm of army ants enter your thatched roof shack and eat every spider, scorpion and insect there alive within 20 minutes, and then march off to the next hunting grounds. It seems very very cruel at the time. Then again, it does a wonderful job of cleaning up the home.

I admit that I'm biased. Most of the talk I hear about "nature" and living in harmony with it comes from people that have never had to do it.

You're a true professional in the best sense of the term. Thank you, Al.

I hear you and I hear the deaf "responses." Sad, very sad. I've been through all the arguments against caring what happens to the natural world, as if it were not us, heard every one of them for years and years and years. They're so easy to come up with. Where anyone has lived is no reason to refuse to acknowledge and address suffering wherever it occurs. Yeah, I know, we can't all be Albert Schweitzer-- “Reverence for life affords me my fundamental principle of morality, namely that good consists in maintaining, assisting, and enhancing life, and that to destroy, to harm, or to hinder life is evil”--or Gandhi or any of our moral philosophers who lived in 3rd world countries, jungles, what have you. Al hasn't engaged my concern about the lack of insight on the connections between violence against animals and violence against other humans, but that's ok. He's young and smart and perhaps he has time. But, Siddhartha, there are many who share your inclusive non-dismissive world view.

Someone pasted a photo over a siren I had inadvertently included in my comment when linking to Nate Silver's good news. Now, I find a length limit to my attempt to respond to a fellow field hand's comments. So, am I posting incorrectly?

Al, Thank you for your response. Again, I have never disagreed with your central point about the fundamental framing of the ad in terms of the presidential election. But, you response is very telling. 1. It doesn't appreciate the very diversity and complexity on this site of the very people who belong to the simplistic categories you invoke ("meat-eaters," "gun owners," "hunters'), many whom have contributed thoughtfully and complexly, unlike the categorization of them would pre-suppose. 2. The categorization of nature as "wild" and "cruel" is not one made by scientists. It is one made by some cultures (and violently imposed on others by casting them as "wild") to justify an irrational nature/culture divide that is the ideological basis for a system of production. That system of production is not a fact of nature. It is a relationship that can be changed. To our human sensibilities, the sights you describe are horrifying, but apparently not enough so as to not re-create them in our factory "farms" where conveniently "illegal" immigrants suffer horribly, including PTSD, and are exploited, or in the wars and genocide we perpetrate. Which other species does that? Which other species has brought the planet single-handedly to this catastrophe? Nature is amoral. It is indifferent. It is proportional. That is the challenge. Creating a sane relationship with that kind of difference and that kind of inability to comprehend on our part. It took a long time for it to get to the point where human life was even possible and for different species to reach evolutionary perfection/adaptation. 3. We know for a fact that our system of producing an overabundance of meat (which even the FDA admits we don't need to consume that much of and that the food pyramid was manipulated from under pressure of the cattle industry, meat producers, etc) is one of the biggest contributors to global warming, prevents people from access to land to grow food so they are starving, prevents access to water for the neediest, destroys bio-diversity in soil necessary for its natural balance to grow food for humans and sustain the species that help us grow that food through their role in the eco-system, destroys local farms and provides billions of tax payer subsidies to agri-business to artificially lower the cost of meat even though we have already paid for it through our taxes before we even arrive at the fast-food window, then why are we not protesting and demanding precisely as meat eaters that we will not accept a system that causes starvation? Is causing starvation not cruelty? Is it necessary? Where is "people first" then? Where is much vaunted technological advancement then? How do you think people in poor countries feel that we are so caught up in our "culture wars" that we cannot see that our "lifestyle" and "identity" is literally fatal for them? How is unsustainability not cruelty? is it not cruel to unnecessarily deprive people of their means to survive? Supporting the genocide in Sudan for oil is cruelty. It is not nature. 4. It is too easy to focus on these narrowly construed examples of the folks you have encountered or the folks I have encountered or those proverbial and cliched "activists" that apparently don't care about people even as we ignore how our system of production and the privileges we enjoy from them fundamentally do not care about people. At issue, I repeat, is the ability to listen (I am implicated in this as well) and engage. For example, I never once talked about vegetarianism, and yet that was immediately invoked and the issue got construed narrowly as the "choice" to eat meat or not. Elizabeth never used the phrase animal rights and yet that is what Okke heard and immediately construed the issue again as animals v. people even going so far as saying that he or she supports shooting horses (whatever that means) as if that somehow automatically demonstrates that he or she (I am unfamiliar with the name so I apologize for not knowing this) cares about people more or even that he or she cares about people at all. And, that is my point. Fighting against the collapse of relationship with each other, and most notably with the planet. It is that planetary and species level vision, which is ultimately about getting beyond the categories that undergird our system of production and thus inevitably determine/influence our thinking, that your statements, even as they claim to be about people, have avoided.

Thanks, once again. I truly appreciate the response. 

 

 

Thanks for all you've added to this blog, including your observation that I never used the words 'animal rights' though Okke went off on a tirade about animal rights. I started to point that out to him/her earlier in the day, but then I decided sadly that he/she would not hear it.

I know this the end of this excellent thread. But, Al, I think the eye-witness position before the "cruelty" of nature, which you just described is as valuable as irrelevant to the larger discussion that is ongoing here and elsewhere, but which you have scrupulously not enjoined--this is a political blog, as you remind folks. Some of us here have very similar experiences--having spent time in rain forests (and I am not talking about a weekend at the Jungle Lodge) or lived in war zones in the developing world and seen first hand the face of genocide or (to use a Clintonian construction) "acts of genocide." But, so what? The eye-witness, the biologist, the historian, the poet, the theologian, the business person, the philosopher, and even the tourist, all have useful perspectives in our apprehending the human relationship to nature and/or the planet. Our experiences shape us--but we are obviously more than the sum of our experiences. 

Where this conversation seems to always reach an impasse is at the word "cruelty." The dominion of the hawk or eagle blinding and consuming alive a rodent, bird, or a small primate looks "cruel." Perhaps there is pain caused for the sake of pain. But how can we know the hawk's intent? All we know is that it doesn't care; it's hungry and works efficiently. Obviously, human beings create pain--gratuitously--and so, by this logic we are biological entities in a violent and painful biosphere. OK. But, for us, cruelty can be a choice AND, most importantly, our penchant for "cruelty" however understood is symptomatic of our larger, species-scale relationship to nature and the biosphere as a whole. If we stop the discussion at the bugbear of "cruelty" or the possession of mutually countervailing "opinions" or even "worldviews," we've lost an opportunity to go beyond the memes that limit our country's or our own ability to apprehend our connection to place and planet. 

This is not a discussion about vegetarianism or "meatetarianism" (per the Hardees ad).  And, while it might be about factory farming's environmental, labor, and dietary sins, it is equally about the sins of the perpetual-war machine that is our economic lifeblood in the US.  In other words, what we are really talking about here (it seems) is how we can have a rational and serious discourse about the human relationship to the planet that is, as all the empirical evidence demonstrates, currently unsustainable--for the biosphere and us. A lot of us here are deeply concerned about the environment writ-large and this is obviously a central part of the Obama campaign, even as it is framed as Energy or Infrastructure or Green Jobs, etc. Thus, it is disconcerting to see what is a very broad-based issue (in the Obama campaign) become reduced to veg or non-veg in this thread. That is a little hyperbolic, but that is the sense I get.  Ironically, to me at least, many on this thread are able to talk about race and gender, within this political context, with great nuance and sophistication, and yet, when it comes to addressing environmental sustainability, people lose nuance.  This is NOT about hunting, veg/non-veg, or even "cruelty"; this is about the human relationship to our world--and, yes, pets in NOLA post-Katrina, wolves in AK, rainforests in your neck of the continent, and starving babies (to echo your image) in desperate corners of the colonized and/or developing world are all part of the mix along with the choices each of us makes in terms how we live and what kind of footprint, environmental and otherwise, we leave behind us.

This is an important issue that ultimately might be just as easily raised by "Amtrak Joe's" promotion of rail development as by Palin's enthusiasm for killing wolves. Cruelty is a part of this--but a small part--and we should not blind ourselves to the larger issue of the consequences of 13 billion human footprints on the globe (600 million of which are demonstrably a lot heavier than most of the others).

I have a simple observation to make: the fact that the Wolf ad has riled up this sort of divide among (mostly) Obama supporters tells me that it's not the sort of ad that serves to further the far more important messages of this election, ones about the economy, health care, and war.  If anything, it serves not only to distract us from pushing these important messages to undecided voters, but also to divide us and our target audience in unanticipated ways.

Maybe the ad is effective.  Maybe it isn't.  But what can be said is that its results are unpredictable.  It's a media bomb blast, and bits and pieces fly everywhere.  Is the end result a good one or bad one with respect to getting Obama elected?  Nobody knows.  But it surely belongs in the toolbag of McCain, who seems to like to gamble on wholly unpredictable and possibly counterproductive strategies, rather than on ones that make solid sense.

Siddhartha, I respect and concur with your sentiments and observations.

Al, I think you don't take into account the nature of your own cultural filters.  You are adroit and fluent in some areas---and in some matters your experience and thinking come up lacking.

No, I won't engage the necessary nuance that any intelligent discussion on these issues require, not here,  not now--we are in a presidential election where memes matter more than cogent and compelling agruments.

I would say, Al, that you would have to avail yourself of contemporary thinking on these matters if you were willing to engage these issues on the intellectual level that Siddhartha has introduced into the discussion.  There is an important discussion happening--and it is not being featured in the New York Times Sunday edition.

Any intelligent discussion of these issues would require basic familitiarity in a multitude of disciplines--from bioilogy, history, poetry, literature, philosophy, statistics, etc.   And any intelligent discussion would be engaged in a spirit of good will--not the 'gotch'a' type of mud-slinging that takes place in the truncated intellectual sphere of mainstream political discussion in the US.

Of course, I fall back to the wisdom of people whose culture involves living close to the Earth, and in a sustainable, artful manner.   That doesn't take any university education--just the curiosity and willingness to seek out counsel from such people.

Not sure if anyone is still reading, but thank you for your kind words, support, and presence here.

 

Barath, no one has said that these issues should be front and center of this campaign, or when we are doing our part to get Obama elected. We are using the opportunity, instead, as members of this community to engage with each other. If we cannot do here, given the collective goodwill, intelligence, and diversity on this site, and Al's generosity in creating this space, then where can we?  

It's not about the discussion - folks should feel free to discuss the Wolf ad.  My point was that the divisiveness of that ad that was apparent even in this community is an indication that it would prove divisive elsewhere, and have unpredictable effects.