There’s a Big Brother Inside Every Blogger

In her current post, Leslie asks a reasonable, provocative, and long overdue question: Are Bloggers "Citizen Journalists"?  It’s the kind of honest question that demands some honest soul-searching.

Are we citizen journalists in the same sense as an actual journalist?  Are we hired or self-appointed, amateurs or experts, investigators or merely camp followers?  Do we practice the same standards of journalistic integrity as we expect from a professional?  Or have we merely become part of a noisy rabble indistinguishable from those whom we criticize?

The Internet has been an empowering (some will say 'democratizing') force in the world. More than any medium in human history, the World Wide Web is truly the culmination of Marshall McLuhan’s Global Village. It connects us to commentary, ideas, and newfound friends.  It shapes our perceptions and self-conceptions, enables saints and sinners, empowers reformers and terrorists alike. Have we let the Internet go to our heads? As McLuhan foresaw:

“[As] our senses have gone outside us, Big Brother goes inside.”

Does McLuhan refer to the internalization of a dreaded États-Unis Big Brother or the object formation of Big Brother within ourselves?

The Internet has certainly made us more opinionated.  It turns bloggers into instant subject matter experts, justified or not. It has transformed us into pundits, self-appointed guardians of the public trust, snoops and voyeurs, saboteurs and trolls.  It amplifies narcissism and reduces humility to obsolescence. As the Internet connects the Global Village, it has not necessarily homogenized and unified us.  Sometimes it leaves us more fractured than before.

I should talk. Your intrepid Octopus has been as opinionated and predatory as any creature above or below the waves.  Nevertheless, with a hat tip to Leslie, I think we owe ourselves an honest conversation.

Facebookin' III

Hmmm... I don't know if this is a good sign. I mucked with one idiot, and it's like Lays potato chips.


Somebody break it to me gently. Am I in danger of becoming a Facebook troll?

(Click to embiggen.)

GOPers Outraged That The Reverend Barack Hussein Obama Didn't Thank God and Lead The Nation In Thanks To The Christian God During The Rev. Obama's Radio Address

ZOMG! 

The Horror! 

President and Priest/Minister/Mullah-in Chief Barack Obama didn't invoke God's/Allah's/Yaweh's/Xenu's,/Vishnu's name when he gave his radio address for Thanksgiving 2011! 

That unGod president blasphemer needs to be hounded and stoned (hmmmm) out of office for not carrying out his Constitutional duty by thanking the Christianists' god and blessing us all like little Tiny Tim did in "A Christmas Carol" [remember that? Heart-warming, huh?], and making the sign of the Padre, Figlio, Spiritus Sanctus, Flying Spaghetti Monster all over One Nation, Sotto Dio, Indivisible and Invisible and Keeping US Safe from every DFH and godless Commie Atheist. Awmayn.

The Atheists Are Coming!  And it's the unGod Obama's fault.  Floods and pestilence, ice capades all over the land. Tornedos, hurricanes, Black Friday, frogs, locusts, and Teh Gaii! teaching our kids how to make tofurkey in our schools!

I DON'T WANT TO LIVE ON THIS PLANET ANYMORE!

All because unGod Obama didn't thank God and ask her to keep us in the name of the Something, Something, and the Something, and every other Everything that the god- afraiding religionists want Obama to do in the name of the Constitution and where it says--COMMANDS--Mr. unGod Obama to lead us in prayer always, always he...yes and...  thought well...as well him as another and then [we ]asked him with our eyes to ask again yes...and then he asked us would [we]...yes to say yes...yes...and yes [we] said yes [we] will Yes...We...Can...Yes"  Ohmayn.

Here is an exerpt of Mr. Obama's OFFICIAL Thanksgiving Day Proclamation for 2011:


"In times of adversity and times of plenty, we have lifted our hearts by giving humble thanks for the blessings we have received and for those who bring meaning to our lives. Today, let us offer gratitude to our men and women in uniform for their many sacrifices, and keep in our thoughts the families who save an empty seat at the table for a loved one stationed in harm’s way. And as members of our American family make do with less, let us rededicate ourselves to our friends and fellow citizens in need of a helping hand.

As we gather in our communities and in our homes, around the table or near the hearth, we give thanks to each other and to God for the many kindnesses and comforts that grace our lives. Let us pause to recount the simple gifts that sustain us, and resolve to pay them forward in the year to come.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim Thursday, November 24, 2011, as a National Day of Thanksgiving. I encourage the people of the United States to come together — whether in our homes, places of worship, community centers, or any place of fellowship for friends and neighbors — to give thanks for all we have received in the past year, to express appreciation to those whose lives enrich our own, and to share our bounty with others.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this sixteenth day of November, in the year of our Lord two thousand eleven, and of the independence of the United States of America the two hundred and thirty-sixth.

War and Efficiency: Unintended Consequences?

A Facebook friend posted a link to a news story about the use of drones (unmanned aircraft) in warfare, War By Remote Control: Drones Make It Easy.

Warfare used to be a bloody, up close affair. Men killed other men. Death was instantaneous for many and serious wounds eventually resulted in death for most others. 

Now, war is too much like a video game. We have improved our methods of killing; invented weapons that can do maximum damage to other human beings from a great physical distance and left us able to distance ourselves emotionally from an enemy that is a blip on a screen. We can kill people whose faces we never see; we no longer have to wait until we see the whites of their eyes to fire on them. There is no sense of connection that the enemy breathes, loves, and lives just as we do, nothing to make us question war itself.  We've made it so much easier to kill and so much easier to wash our hands of that killing. Ironic that in a nation that prides itself on being Christian, we've collectively become Pontius Pilate.

For today's Americans, who haven't had a modern war on American soil, war is a distant entity, brought home only when the wounded men and women, now saved due to advances in modern medicine, return to their families. The rest of us feel momentary sympathy for the wounded vets who return missing body parts and who are emotionally battered and damaged, but we forget them pretty soon. When we lie down in our beds, there are no drones flying  in the dark over our heads.

Vietnam was the last war (technically a police action) that we had to fully feel and experience. The media was filled with Vietnam. We knew that the average age of the soldiers in Vietnam was 19. We knew how many died each day. We saw their flag draped coffins on the evening news. A lot of us didn't like war and we protested against it. We flashed peace symbols, sang protest songs, and marched in solidarity against  not just the Vietnam War, but any war.

We have lost the urgency to prevent war or to put an end to existing wars. Our collective conscience has become as removed from the horrors of war as the remote mechanisms that we use to fight wars. War should be messy and painful. It should make us lose sleep at night. War must be atrocious enough to repulse us, to make us be willing to go to any means necessary to put an end to warfare. The automation of efficient killing makes it far easier to engage in warfare and that's the problem.

The Idiots of England

George Bernard Shaw is famously quoted as saying "England and America are two countries separated by a common language." (Similar quotes were made by Oscar Wilde, Bertrand Russell and Dylan Thomas, but probably not Winston Churchill.)

Fortunately for international relations, though, the two countries do share a common bond: stupidity.

Yes, there is abject idiocy in the country of Shaw, Russell, Wilde, Thomas, Churchill, and even William Shakespeare (who wrote his own plays, no matter what they tell in the movies) and Francis Bacon (who did not write Shakepeare's plays, regardless).

I suppose it should have been obvious: after all, Rupert Murdoch is from Australia, and David Duke was born in Oklahoma. And both countries were settled by the British, so we have to get it from somewhere, right?

(Understand that, in Australia's case, I'm using a loose definition of "settled" which includes "being sent in chains." You know, the same way that Africans "settled" America...)

The latest bit of idiocy that I've come across was, in fact, on Facebook. As I've mentioned elsewhere, my purpose for Facebook isn't so much as social network, as it is refrigerator magnet - I stick random pictures and videos up there, just because it gives me some place to store them that costs me nothing.

(I understand that there are people who use specialized sites like Pinterest for these purposes, but not me. I'm a maverick like that.)

Which means that if it isn't at the top of my home page, it isn't likely that I'll see most people's posts. So this has probably been around for a while, and I just haven't seen it. But now I have.

(Don't squint - transcription below.)



(Technically, I didn't need to block out her picture, because it wasn't a picture of her. But it was a copyrighted Disney image, so it's probably safest.)

What that said was (block pasted, to preserve the fascinating capitalization, spelling and punctuation):

racist to sing ba ba black sheep so now its ba ba rainbow sheep, racist to wear a poppy so even the england football team didnt wear them, racist to say christmas so now its happy holidays yet its not racist to celebrate eid, not racist to burn the st georges cross and not racist to take over our country. this is ENGLAND, dont like it? manchester airport, terminal 2... toodle fucking pip! Putt this as your status if you believe in true english rights

I, of course, had to reply - I can be an ass sometimes. But since it isn't my country, I had to actually research some of the issues.

A lot of it is just basic rhetoric: "true english rights," "take over our country," the Happy Holidays vs Merry Christmas crap (that's not "racist," it's just being polite to the 31% non-Christian Brits).

I thought the "yet its not racist to celebrate eid" was cute. Not only is it fundamentally wrong (it isn't racist to celebrate Xmas, either major Eid festival, or Chanukah - it's just rude to jam your religion in other people's face), but it also has overtones of "Scary Brown People!" So it's stupid twice.

Quick note: for those of you who don't know, "Eid" is the Arabic word for "festival," and is most commonly used in the West to refer to Eid ul-Fitr ("Festival of Breaking the Fast"), held at the end of Ramadan, or Eid al-Adha ("Festival of the Sacrifice," or Greater Eid), celebrating Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son to God (essentially the same story from the Old Testament, in Genesis 22).

But really, there are three major points.

1. racist to sing ba ba black sheep so now its ba ba rainbow sheep

This is an urban legend that crops up every so often, which is traditionally overblown by the right-wing press (even today). It's also inevitably shown to be complete bollocks (the publication of which is, after all, a Murdoch tradition).

2. racist to wear a poppy so even the england football team didnt wear them

On November 11, (Remembrance Day, once called Armistice Day), it's traditional in Britain to memorialize the fallen of WWI by wearing a poppy (it dates back to the John McCrae poem "In Flanders Fields - "In Flanders fields the poppies blow/Between the crosses, row on row"); a lot of veteran's groups use it as a fund-raising theme.

This year, the British teams were going to wear embroidered poppies on their uniforms for a Remembrance Day match against Spain, and the Federation of International Football Associations (FIFA) intervened. As they have approval over uniform design, they felt it "would open the door to similar initiatives from all over the world, jeopardizing the neutrality of football."

It had nothing to do with racism. Quite the opposite - it was all about keeping everybody as one big happy international family.

Of course, the really funny thing is that the whole "england football team didnt wear them" complaint didn't happen. FIFA agreed to allow black armbands, with poppies.

3. not racist to burn the st georges cross

Well, no, it isn't. Just rude and an overreaction.

You can find a lot of stories about Muslims burning the St George's cross (many of them badly sourced, oddly enough) in response to British actions they object to. And some of the stories might even be true. Doesn't make it racist.

See, the St George's cross (which, some of you might be aware, isn't the flag of England) is viewed in the Muslim world as a symbol of the Crusades. And, gee, who can fault them for that? That period seems much closer to the people of the modern Middle East than it used to, thanks to the actions of George II (or as many of us called him, Dubya).

So, it's good to know that it isn't just America which stands in danger of spiraling down the drain of ignorance and hatred. The Brits have these issues, too. I guess I'm relieved.

Or maybe not.

Intelligent life discovered on Earth

Proof.

This week's santorum stain

Apparently, Rick Santorum has lost all sense of irony. (Some of us already knew that, but Frothy likes to go and prove it again every so often.)

Remember, Google fans - always use that first link there, whenever you talk about the former senator. It's only the right thing to do...

Right Wing Watch notes that Frothy made the following distinction between sharia law and the way he would run the country.

Now, unlike Islam where the higher law and civil law are the same, in our case, we have civil laws but our civil laws have to comport with the higher law.

Our civil laws have to ... and that's why, with the issue of abortion, as long as abortion is "legal" - at least according to the Supreme Court, "legal" in this country - we will never have rest because that law does not comport with God's law which says that all life has value, all life is created by [God,] I knew you in the womb.

And as long as there is a discordance between the two, there will be agitation.

Aside from him making the same tired anti-choice arguments yet again, let's contemplate what he just said about sacred and secular laws.

(And yes, I'm going to ignore the fact that he just called Islam a "higher law." I'm too classy a guy to go for the cheap joke like that, bitches...)

com·port /kəmˈpôrt/ v
1. Conduct oneself; behave.
2. Accord with; agree with.

See, in Islamic countries, the church and the state are the same. But in Frothyland, the state just has to do what the church wants...

...no, wait. That can't be it...

...in Frothyland, the state just has to agree with the church in every... no, wait a minute...

Ok, OK, I got it.

In Islamic countries, the church and the state are the same. In Frothy's fevered imaginings, the state merely has to look like the church! See? It's simple!

All that lube, and Frothy still can't pull his head out of his ass.

Nothing Informs Better Than Fox News (With an Update by Octopus)

Please take the title of this post at face value with no derision or mockery intended. According to a recent PublicMind Poll from Fairleigh Dickenson University (FDU), Some News Leaves People Knowing Less than those who consume no news at all.

The poll tested consumers’ knowledge of recent popular uprisings in Egypt and Syria and found a disturbing pattern of wrong answers by news source. Here is what the poll tested:  Did the people of Egypt successfully topple the regime of Hosni Mubarak? The highest percentage of correct answers came from listeners of NPR at 68%.  Lowest on the scale were viewers of Fox News at 49%.

According to Dan Cassino, a political science professor at FDU and an analyst for the poll: “The [poll] results show us that there is something about watching Fox News that leads people to do worse on these questions than those who don’t watch any news at all.”

These results come as no surprise. On July 25, 2010, I posted this commentary, A Contest of Madmen for the Primacy of the Sewer, which covered similar findings from The Center for Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland.  In all studies thus far, Fox News ranks at the bottom of the heap. Of course, few of us need a poll to confirm what we know intuitively: Fox News is not a news source but merely a ratings engine with only one purpose: To deliver maximum audience share for the Murdoch propaganda machine.

For a more detailed account on the sorry state of contemporary journalism, please have a look at the original post (which includes an important historical observation by Bloggingdino).


Wednesday Update:
(Pls. see comments below): "Not if one maintains an active mind."

If any visitors to this forum are implying – even in jest – that any writers or readers of this community have “inactive” minds, think again!  Our minds are NOT inactive!  Nor uninformed!  Nor unwashed!  If this is your implication, then consider me a very pissed off cephalopod. PAY ATTENTION because I will not repeat this again:

Fox News is the #1 purveyor of PARTISAN HATE SPEECH in America today. Fevered hysteria and conspiratorial fear mongering on national television are not harmless. For years, Fox News gave Glenn Beck a national audience, and this is what partisan hate speech has wrought (all have active links to original sources):

Man Shoots Two California Highway Patrol Officers:

Accused Gunman Acknowledges Influence of Glenn Beck

Three Pittsburgh Police Officers Ambushed and Killed:

Gunman Posted Glenn Beck Video on White Supremacist Website

Federal Prison for Man Who Threatened Senator Murray:

Glenn Beck Cast Spell on Accused Man, Says Family

Federal Prison for Man Who Threatened House Speaker Pelosi:

Mother of Accused Man Blames Fox News

Glenn Beck Fans Target Legendary Scholar with Death Threats

Death Threats Against League of Women Voters Linked to Glenn Beck

Murders, shooting sprees, domestic terrorism, private citizens hiding in fear, infamous intimidations and provocations broadcast on national television - all linked to Fox News!

After the shooting rampage in Tucson that left six people dead and thirteen injured, including Congresswoman Giffords, Fox News President Roger Ailes offered this appeal for civility: “I told all of our guys, shut up, tone it down, make your argument intellectually. You don’t have to do it with bombast.”

More bullshit!  Nothing has changed. Week after week, Fox News churns out a constant sludge of partisan hate speech from verbal abusers such as Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, Steve Doocy, and his son, Peter Doocy, as examples.

How quickly we forget these lessons of history. How the language of eradication and elimination (i.e. characterizing people as diseased, as vermin, as traitors, as a scourge) has led to genocide, pogroms, murder, and violence. The poisoned atmosphere unleashed by Fox News means any citizen - Democrat, Centrist, or Republican - can be slandered in public and targeted for persecution. Furthermore, these messages reach unhinged misfits who are most likely to act on impulse, and events have shown that violent rhetoric leads to violent acts. There is no plausible deniability that can exonerate Fox News.

Furthermore, when toxic television threatens public safety, it concerns everyone. Even prominent Republicans are alarmed:

Former Bush speechwriter David Frum:

“[Glenn Beck] such people do terrible damage”

Former Bush speechwriter Peter Wehner: 

“the role Glenn Beck is playing is harmful in its totality”

National correspondent for The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg:

“a classic case of anti-Semitic dog-whistling”

Partisan hate speech is not free speech. Nor entertainment. Nor funny.  For all reasons cited above, gratuitous liberal bashing - even implied - is unacceptable here.   If anything, perhaps the partisan biases of certain readers have blinded them to these outrageous abuses of the public airwaves.  As the saying goes:  No news is good news - and far better news than Fox News.

The Republican War on Thanksgiving

In 1621, after the difficult, unrelenting labor of starting a colony, the Pilgrims, using planting techniques taught to them by the native Wampanoag tribe, celebrated their first successful harvest with a feast, which they shared with their native American neighbors (who we later almost wiped out, there being only about 400 survivors sixty years later, following King Philip's War).

This is the most important, most truly American holiday (the Canadians have a similar observance, but they're just our little northern clones anyway, right?). It's a day of forgiveness, a day when families travel from across the country to get together, eat our traditional meal, celebrate our mutual heritage, and nestle securely in the bosom of warmth and family.

Except, perhaps, for this year.

Because of the Republican insistence on "Free Market" capitalism and a winner-take-all mentality, now, with record unemployment around the country, the cost of the Thanksgiving meal is rising faster than inflation.

With the current annual inflation rate of 3.5%, the cost of a Thanksgiving dinner has risen 13%, and the cost of getting together with family and friends has increased even more than that.

The average airfare for travel to the top 10 most popular destinations in the U.S. for Nov. 23 to Nov. 27 has jumped 11% over last year, according to an analysis by Orbitz, one of the nation’s busiest travel websites. That means the average round-trip ticket for Thanksgiving rose to $373 from about $340.

Flights to New York for the holiday will rise the most, jumping 20% over last year, with an average round-trip price of $342, according to Orbitz. Round-trip flights to Los Angeles will increase 12% to $429, according to the travel website...

You won’t escape the higher prices by driving: Gas prices reached the highest levels ever in the week prior to Thanksgiving, according to the Automobile Club of Southern California. The average price of self-serve regular gasoline in the Los Angeles-Long Beach area was $3.82 a gallon last week, 66 cents higher than the same time last year.

With one in three Americans living at or below the poverty line, the GOP is trying to ensure that they cannot celebrate their own heritage. The Republican Party is trying to ensure that an Ayn Rand dystopia, with the richest living in luxury off the sweat of the working poor, is the model for American society.

The Republicans are trying to destroy Thanksgiving! And they're doing it in subtle ways, as well! The Christmas decorations, celebrating their dreams of commerce and overindulgence, come out earlier every year; the Christmas carols are already playing in all the stores; and the conservative-controlled media beats the drum, insisting that shopkeepers must say "Merry Christmas" instead of the more open, accepting "Happy Holidays," as if Thanksgiving didn't matter in the slightest!

This Republican War on Thanksgiving must be stopped! We must stride into the stores and demand that the carols be cancelled! "Turn off that crap! It's not even Thanksgiving!"

Websites are springing up devoted to bringing back our national holiday from the brink of extinction. We must support them; we must also support retailers like Nordstrom, who insist on celebrating each holiday in turn, and not skipping over the ones that can't be exploited by the greedy, and venal, and unamerican!

We must ask where the Thanksgiving displays are, and why they are overshadowed by some obese Germanic troll in a red suit! We must write letters to store owners, corporations, and our Congressfolk, demanding the return of our national holiday!

Radical conservatives must be stopped from destoying our heritage!



Please note: this is intended for satirical purposes only, and if you're stupid enough to take it seriously, you probably fall for that "War on Christmas" crap too, don't you?

Pérák, the two Jiří's and the Nazis

No politics today. It isn't always about politics.

I was randomly hopping around the internet this morning, just following links as I ate breakfast, and happened across a blog (Monkey Muck - I'm not even clear what led me to it, but somebody out there linked to him), where he'd dug up a little piece of animation history.

It was May, 1945. The Germans, who hadn't run a particularly peaceful occupation of Czechoslovakia to begin with, had gotten their noses bloody in the Prague Uprising, which ended in a stalemate, and both sides declared a ceasefire that lasted all of a day before the Soviet troops rolled through the country two days after "Victory in Europe Day," expelling the last of the Nazi troops.

(Yes, that's a simplified look at a long, bloody struggle. There was also no way that the people of Czechoslovakia could know about the ensuing weirdness of the next almost-half-a-century. That's just the least you need to know for perspective.)

Very few people in the West have heard of Jiří Brdečka, but he was a writer and illustrator (you might have heard of Limonádový Joe ("Lemonade Joe"), a series of short stories (occasionally gathered into book form and later adapted as a play), which was made into a movie in 1964, a parody of old-time westerns which reputedly numbered Henry Fonda among its fans and was considered something of a cult classic among Czechs for many years.

(Proponents of the run-on sentence regard me as a master of the craft.)

I'm not sure when they first met, but after the war ended, Brdečka got together with Jiří Trnka (an illustrator and puppeteer), and they would later set up Studio Bratři v triku, the leading producer of Czech animation for decades. The studio logo shows three boys, possibly a reference to the two Jiří's and Eduard Hofman, a writer/director they worked with.

(Bratři v triku is commonly translated as "Brothers in T-shirts," possibly because of the logo. But technically, it's "Brothers in Tricks," and "tricks" (or "trick films") was also a term used to refer to animation at the time. God, I love trivia.)

Of the two Jiří's, I think Jiří Trnka is the more interesting. Considered the founding father of Czech animation, he had worked as a illustrator for Melantrich, a Czech-language publishing house in Prague (named after yet a third Jiří, a Czech Renaissance printer named Jiří Melantrich of Aventino).

As a child, Trnka had carved and sculpted puppets out of wood, to stage shows for his friends. Later, around the same time that he was hired by Melantrich, he started a puppet theater, which closed down with the start of WWII. And later in life, when he found himself uncomfortable with traditional animation, Trnka changed his focus to the medium which gained him some measure of world-wide fame, animated puppetry, mostly stop-motion.

He's been called the "Walt Disney Of The East, although where Disney made films for children and families, Trnka aimed his work at an adult audience.

But this work is before all that. The war had ended, the country was trying to rebuild, and the two Jiří's had gotten together to fill a niche that few other people were considering: animation.

Without a studio, without much backing, they produced a handful of short films together as an experiment, and one of them was Pérák a SS (alternately translated as "Perak and the SS," "The Springman and the SS," and occasionally "The Chimney Sweep").



Pérák the Spring Man was an folktale in WWII Prague, a man who could... well, he could jump. Over trains, walls and small buildings. Much like Victorian England's Spring-Heel Jack (only without the varying descriptions making him into a monster, with burning red eyes, fangs, wings, or whatever). Pérák was just a man. Who jumped.

Czech media would later often retcon him into a superhero, but he started out as just an urban legend of a bouncy guy, who sprang out of alleys and startled people. (It was a simpler time.)

The cartoon was easily on a par with other animated shorts of the period (it was 15 years after Steamboat Willie, and it didn't have a lush feel of Max Fleischer's later work, but aside from the black and white nature of Pérák, compare it even to the current output on Cartoon Network, or any of the 700 Disney channels). And it managed to combine the resentment of a conquered people to their oppressors, with the light-hearted, somewhat fantastical world of the animated Everyman.

(Yes, I can do "pedantic" when I want to. I just don't feel like it too often.)

All in all, it's a cute piece of history that definitely deserves a wider audience.