In July 2008, I also touched on Iran in this post:

The whole idea of the undertaking in Iraq was that the country would eventually serve as a positive role model for what can happen for the Muslim Arabs (and Persians) of the Middle East if they sign on to liberating themselves. It will be a good long while before Iraq is considered any kind of success, but as the successes start to overshadow the images of blood and bombs and fires and panic and rage and unimaginable sorrow, there will be a lot of food for thought among the Muslim Arabs and Persians of the Middle East. Eventually, they’ll see free Iraqis electing representatives to manage the affairs of their state, and they’ll wonder why they allow religious and political tyrants or monarchs rule over every aspect of their lives.

Some don’t.

How to express outrage at the violence without taking obvious sides and playing into the hands of a repressive regime?

“Using Obama’s moral authority—which he established very well with the Cairo speech—in a targeted, surgical way makes a lot of sense,” my well-placed source continues. “We have to be very smart as to how the president addresses this issue in the press and public statements.” Thus, in public, Obama has been careful—if not surgical—in talking about the elections, frustrating liberal friends and conservative critics alike.

In this view, if Obama frustrates both “liberal friends” and “conservative critics,” he must be doing a great job. I wonder what the freedom fighters in Iran think about that.

(via Andrew Sullivan, stakhanovist blogger of the Iranian revolution of 2009)

The years that sucked more than 2008

# 1979 – Iranian revolution; oil price shock with gas lines; Mr. Ed dies; Jimmy Carter attacked by a rabbit; Susan B. Anthony dollar introduced; Chrysler asks for and receives a federal bailout the first time; Iranian hostage crisis begins; Pakistanis attack the American embassy in Islamabad, are repulsed; the U.S. dollar falls to record lows against the Deutschemark; the Soviet Union invades Afghanistan; dollar inflation hit 10%, and “core” inflation was over 9%.

# 1975 – Real GDP falls more than 9% in the first quarter, inflation exceeds 14%, and the unemployment rate tops 9%; Bill Ayers’ organization, the Weather Underground, bombs the State Department headquarters in Washington; South Vietnam collapses, and America withdraws in humiliation; Cambodia falls to the Khmer Rouge, and the slaughter begins; the Mayaguez incident, in which American hostages are rescued and some small quantum of American honor is restored at the cost of 38 servicemen; Jimmy Hoffa disappears; crazy women try to assassinate President Gerald R. Ford, twice; the United Nations declares Zionism a form of racism; New York City asks for and gets a financial bailout; a bomb goes off at LaGuardia; and Carlos the Jackal and others kidnap OPEC delegates.

# 1974 – The Watergate crisis dominates the news, with Nixon resigning under threat of impeachment in August; Patty Hearst kidnapped; the Arab oil embargo, in force since late 1973, continues until March — the price of oil rises from around $3.29 to $11.58 per barrel; dollar price inflation exceeds 10%; a “super outbreak” of tornados hits the United States on April 3, with 149 tornados killing 315 people and injuring 5000, and George W. Bush had nothing to do with it; the Symbionese Liberation Army, reinforced by Patty Hearst, terrorizes California; the Cleveland Indians sponsor a “ten cent beer” night that turns out to be “ill-advised”; the IRA bombs Parliament and the Tower of London; Ted Bundy is killing women right and left; Japanese “Red Army” terrorists attack France’s embassy in the Netherlands, just one of numerous radical left terrorism attacks over the next several years; the United Nations grants the Palestinian Liberation Organization “observer status” at the General Assembly, just two years after Munich.

# 1968 – the “Prague Spring” begins, only to be crushed by the subsequent Soviet invasion; the Tet offensive begins, including an attack on the American embassy in Saigon — the United States achieves a decisive military victory but the American press declares it a defeat and Walter Cronkite throws in the towel; the Norks seize the USS Pueblo, which they hold to this day; My Lai; RFK assassinated; MLK assassinated; students riot across America, and take over Columbia; France narrowly avoids revolution after weeks of general strikes and protests; radical feminist Valerie Solanas shoots Andy Warhol; Saddam Hussein becomes Vice-Chairman of the Revolutionary Council in Iraq, after a coup; the Cincinnati Bengals are founded; the candidates for president are Richard Nixon, Hubert Humphrey, and George Wallace (in case you did not like your choices in 2000, 2004, or 2008); and the Democratic National Convention is even harsher outside the convention hall.

Those are the ones I remember. The rest are here.

Happy new year, and don’t forget to laugh!

Me, I’m going to see Australia tomorrow, because I loved Baz Luhrmann’s other movies, and it can’t possibly be as bad as everyone says … can it?

 It has been months since I posted, and I wanted to check in to say that I’m still here … but that I’ve been sidetracked by other, more pressing endeavors, which leave me time for reading but not for thoughtful posting. So I’ve stopped.

 But I’m still a blogosphere reader and follower. And I note that 2009 has started with a bang if this post by Jules Crittenden is any indication. What great writing (and, of course, what great wit):

[M]aybe I’ve been a little too airy-fairy cocktail-party blase, bogus pretentious offhand in mine. It’s like the basic black of “Abouts.” Look at me, I am so minimalist, yet cool.  With that lower case “jules crittenden,” no less. And maybe one or two or three too many areas of reportage listed, like I’m trying to impress someone.

Who am I kidding? I’m a second-string tabloid scribbler who parachuted into a few places back in the day. Big deal. Excuse me while I yawn …

You know, you could read that precious little turtlenecked blurb and not even have a clue that …

Jules Crittenden, a rightwing American tabloid editor based in Boston, is an international adventurer, art thief and rogue who has lived in five countries, worked in 10 or 12, depending on how you count, passed through about 40, and expected to be dead by now, but has failed to achieve that or produce much else of lasting worth, except three wonderful children …

OK, better already.

Crittenden was born in California in the second half of the 20th century to an Australian engineer and his wife, a registered nurse, who had come to America to make more money but quickly figured they could make even more if they went back overseas again. 

Crittenden spent his early years in the jungles of Sumatra, where his first language was a combination of English and Bahasa Indonesia. He learned to squat before he learned how to sit.

After his father’s driver was shot in the head during the period of political unrest depicted in the Mel Gibson film, “The Year of Living Dangerously,” the wife and four kids were packed off to Sydney, New South Wales. Crittenden’s most enduring memories of this period include  eating meat pies with his Auntie Helen at the lunch counter at Grace Brothers in Bondi Junction, and throwing up in Auckland, New Zealand.

Results

We think http://how-infotaining.com is written by a man (79%).

Actually, how-infotaining.com is written by a woman (100%). But you may as well check out your own results …here.

This one was closer to the mark:

The analysis indicates that the author of http://how-infotaining.com is of the type:

INTP – The Thinkers

The logical and analytical type. They are especialy attuned to difficult creative and intellectual challenges and always look for something more complex to dig into. They are great at finding subtle connections between things and imagine far-reaching implications.

They enjoy working with complex things using a lot of concepts and imaginative models of reality. Since they are not very good at seeing and understanding the needs of other people, they might come across as arrogant, impatient and insensitive to people that need some time to understand what they are talking about.

May you succeed in lifting us up and moving us forward!

I have said repeatedly on this blog that I am not a politico and that I approach politics from the point of view of a student of life, a student of human nature, and a former student of sociology, including especially the sociology of knowledge [you could look it up].

Sociologists look at the context within which power relationships and interactions among people (and groups of people) occur. As it pertains to this blog and this election, using a sociological perspective means assessing the landscape of America that is “covered” by the media; more important, it means assessing the landscape that is not “covered” by the media.

It is an assessment of the social/cultural landscape of America in November 2008 that leads me to suspect that Barack Obama (and the entire media and political establishments) will be handed a defeat tonight.

First: the MSM is not looking at the entire picture.

Second: they’re not reporting everything they know—particularly if it doesn’t favor their preferred candidate.

Third: This is my favorite hunch, and unique to me (as far as I know). Based solely on the dismal box office results of  war-themed and other political movies released by Hollywood in the last few years, I am making a very educated (but off-the-wall-sounding) prediction that the American people also do not want to see that movie or any of its pious offshoots (The Obama Show) for the next four (or eight!) years.

Anyhow: that’s my prediction.

Not buying it?

Read this, from another contrarian—except: he [?] seems to know a hell of a lot more about politics and about polls and about how things work inside the Beltway than I do (via Mark Steyn).

Cheers, and see you on the other side!

And Ben Affleck did a most satisfying and devastating takedown of Keith Olbermann. It’s long, but its subject is worth skewering over and over and over again:

Obama Lays Plans to Kill Expectations After Election Victory

Barack Obama’s senior advisers have drawn up plans to lower expectations for his presidency if he wins next week’s election, amid concerns that many of his euphoric supporters are harboring unrealistic hopes of what he can achieve.

The sudden financial crisis and the prospect of a deep and painful recession have increased the urgency inside the Obama team to bring people down to earth, after a campaign in which his soaring rhetoric and promises of “hope” and “change” are now confronted with the reality of a stricken economy.

One senior adviser told The Times that the first few weeks of the transition, immediately after the election, were critical, “so there’s not a vast mood swing from exhilaration and euphoria to despair.”

Dear readers: I promise I will try to avoid falling into despair if Barack Obama is elected president and fails to deliver on his 1,001 promises.

But I dunno. My gut tells me that Obama is not going to win. (Believe my gut at your own peril.)

Despite his huge money advantage and his many admirers in the MSM and despite his having scurried into the cold embrace of Bill Clinton, Obama has still not persuaded the electorate that he’s The One. He’s not convincing.

That’s because he’s not a real leader. He only plays one on TV (sometimes with the aid of $700,000 in staging and lighting).

I’ve repeatedly told you all that I’m not a politico, that I got swept up in this campaign during my years’-long casual study of the relationship between the media and the culture (for lack of a better term). Proof that I’m no expert is easy to come by in my archives. I predicted that this race would be between Hillary and Rudy! I also became convinced at some point that the election would be about competence (because Bush has been so extraordinarily incompetent; that’s the biggest rap against him with “ordinary folks,” not his alleged malevolence, which those misguided souls and Dem partisans afflicted with Bush Derangement Syndrome accuse him of).

Anyhow, here’s how things look to me now. (Please note that I don’t analyze polls or electoral maps, though I do look at some of poll results.)

The MSM long ago called it for Obama-Biden. I beg to differ. The race is tightening.

The nine-point edge Obama currently holds as the candidate more trusted to handle the economy is half what it was in the middle of last week when he was up 56 to 38 percent and lags behind his post-convention average of 13 points. The decline has been most pronounced among whites with household incomes below $50,000.

A week ago, Obama held a 17-point lead on handling the economy among this group (54 to 37 percent), now, 49 percent prefer McCain, 46 percent Obama.

We’re a week out, and there has already been a stunning shift toward McCain in the attitude of Dame Hillary Rodham Clinton’s primary voters (the bitter gun- and religion-clingers aka poor rural whites).

I expect they will vote for McCain, and I also expect that there are a lot more like them out there, who haven’t come forward to express themselves to pollsters or to their colleagues or to reporters—especially reporters who claim to seek the truth but look for it in the funniest places (see, for example, Errol Morris’s admirable effort to show that “registered Republicans, Independents or switch-voters [are] planning to vote for Obama. People in the middle.”), namely: among self-selected Obama supporters who offer themselves up as case studies.

What about the people in the middle who support McCain? Where are the reports about them? More specifically, where are the reports about them that don’t suggest that they are racists and rednecks and bitter gun- and religion-clingers?

Well, we don’t read reports about McCain supporters who have honorable and noble and legitimate reasons for preferring their candidate. But that doesn’t mean that those people aren’t out there.

My point, and I do have one, is this. If Obama loses, it will be because he made a fundamental mistake by telling Joe the Plumber that he wanted to “spread the wealth.” And then he compounded it by repeating his opponents’ new charge against him:

FAYETTEVILLE, North Carolina (CNN) – Barack Obama fired back against charges his tax policy amounts to “socialism,” arguing John McCain simply wants to redistribute wealth to the already wealthy.

“It’s kind of hard to figure how Warren Buffet endorsed me, Colin Powell endorses me, and John McCain thinks I’m embracing socialism,” Obama said. “This is his argument because I want to give a tax cut to the middle class, because I want to give a tax cut to 95 percent of American workers.”

The Democratic nominee also said that while McCain may call giving regular Americans a tax break “socialism,” he calls it an “opportunity.”

The great Barack Obama—and he has run an extraordinary campaign—made a fatal, fundamental, elementary PR mistake: you never, ever repeat your opponents’ charge against you.

You never, ever use a one-word-fits-all negative description of yourself that has come out of your opponents’ mouth.

Is Barack Obama a socialist?
No, but he is driven by the need to deliver social justice to those who he believes have been unfairly left out of achieving the American dream.
And in these last two weeks, McCain has succeeded in making it sound like Obama wants to help the underprivileged at the expense of the privileged—which sounds okay until you start asking yourself: Is someone who makes $250K rich?

I don’t think so. And undecided voters have a week to think about that question … while the economic meltdown that propelled Obama to double-digit leads in the previous weeks proves to be much less than the disaster that was advertised.

There will be other twists and turns in this race, but if Obama goes down, it will be because of this massive self-inflicted wound, in which he accepted his opponent’s best argument about him—that he’s a tax-and-spend “liberal” regardless of the country’s economic condition—and scoffed at it, and tried to defend against it, instead of deflecting the charge via his usual jujitsu.

He thinks he’s right, and he sees only support around him, and he thinks he can do no wrong. It all reinforces his certainty.

The downfall? As always: hubris. You could look it up.

Among undecided voters in the region is Evelyn Worthington, a 58-year-old unemployed waitress.

“I usually don’t vote, but this time it seems like a good idea” because the economy is so bad and the stakes are so high, the Vicksburg resident said. “But I keep going back and forth between the two. I can’t figure out which one is telling the truth.

Hmmmm.

Whether I decide to keep it going or to let the blog go, I feel like I’ve done my bit. Not that Infotainment Rules and I have had a whole lot to do with it, but I don’t think there’s a sentient being in America today who doesn’t know that what we used to call the “news” is nothing of the sort. Who doesn’t know by now, for example, that Fox is a “conservative”-flavored operation and that MSNBC is the new “liberal” alternative?

On TV, the “news” isn’t something that aims to add to the sum of public knowledge. Rather, it is a steaming pile of showbiz-flavored manure excreted from the juiciest morsels of red meat (i.e., conflict-filled stories) of the day. ** Moreover, to add spice to the menu, it’s a steaming pile of partisan showbiz manure excreted from the juiciest morsels of red meat of the day.

The sociologist Neal Postman warned a long time ago that we are Amusing Ourselves to Death when we suck off the mass-medium teat known as television. Well, almost three decades later we Americans are demonstrably not dead, but it’s pretty obvious that when we watch TV, we do prefer to be brain-dead.

We don’t turn on the tube (or YouTube) in order to be educated. We turn it on to be entertained. This is true even when it comes to “the news.” And people get that—even “low-information” people get that, as Tim Cavanaugh writes [e.a.]:

Are the great American habits of directness, foursquare honesty, and a hearty handshake being undermined by fancy-pants French critical theory? You betcha! From the Obama-McCain struggle to find the proper meta-analysis of the word celebrity to the deconstruction of the mainstream media’s treatment of John Edwards, from the “framing” and “repackaging” of political constructs to the rise of identity politics for white people, the trend is clear: We are all postmodernists now.

The mainstreaming of pomo thinking has been largely a stealth project, something Americans do without committing overt acts of academia. We thought we were trying to clear away the cobwebs of shoddy analysis and elite hypocrisy, but all along we were bringing the tools of critical thinking to the masses. Go into any bar in the country, and you’ll find somebody unpacking the assumptions in someone else’s text.

Indeed! We are all media critics in the era of News 2.0. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, because it means that even if the news media are not adding much to the sum of public knowledge, it does mean that when we in the audience ingest their paltry offerings, we aren’t exactly brain-dead after all; it means that we do question what we see, hear, and read, and that we are somewhat skeptical of what is fed to us via the many channels of the pop culture (and the “news” is under this umbrella: pop culture is what’s happening?, and news is what’s happening now?).

And despite the clear and total showbizification of the “news” and of public life (known as pipolisation in France and as Dianafication in England) and despite the fragmenting of “news” shows into partisan camps, there is an encouraging sign even in this new reality.

As the Pew center reported this week, news audiences still manage to pick up a fair number of facts:

Of course, the “political knowledge” of audiences revealed in this Pew survey doesn’t amount to much—particularly when it comes to foreign affairs. And nothing in this survey discusses the quality and depth of the knowledge that are being communicated to people by the media outlets listed. But the scores do indicate that basic facts about our public life are being communicated, even to people whose news diet consists of tabloids, People magazine, and daytime TV talk shows, and who are demonstrably not tuning in to the news (but to entertainment) when they plug in to these media channels.

The media reduces an avalanche of information  to a few simple fables each day that everyone can understand and relate to. If you want to know more than that, you’re on your on.

Good night and good luck!

———–

** In March 2006, the Project for Excellence in Journalism, reporting on the state of the news media in 2005, noted:

The new paradox of journalism is more outlets covering fewer stories. As the number of places delivering news proliferates, the audience for each tends to shrink and the number of journalists in each organization is reduced. At the national level, those organizations still have to cover the big events. Thus we tend to see more accounts of the same handful of stories each day. And when big stories break, they are often covered in a similar fashion by general-assignment reporters working with a limited list of sources and a tight time-frame.

Palin’s Watching | 9:28 p.m. Our colleague Julie Bosman, who is traveling with Gov. Sarah Palin, Mr. McCain’s running mate, reports in that Ms. Palin just took her motorcade, reporters and all, to a pizzeria in Greenville, N.C., to mingle with locals and tune into the debate. She signed autographs and posed for pictures with people who were very surprised to see her walk in — having changed out of her three-inch heels and white suit jacket, she’s blending in with the crowd in a purple Nike track jacket and jeans.

As the debate began, Ms. Palin sat down at a table with Senator Elizabeth Dole, Senator Richard Burr and his wife, Brooke, and Patrick McGrory, the mayor of Charlotte, N.C. (For the record, Ms. Dole eats pizza with a knife and fork.)

Ms. Palin is intermittently watching a television screen overhead, working her BlackBerry with her left hand and taking notes with the right hand.

So that’s how she does it all!

McCain’s response to that scandal should certainly be compared with Obama’s Ayers explanations. McCain has spoken and written about every detail of the Keating mess, has expressed open contrition for allowing himself to be drawn into it even tangentially, and devoted years of his career to combating corruption as a result. He even badly overreacted and pushed for vastly excessive regulation of campaign financing. He has said (in a book in which he details his and others’ actions in the matter) that merely the appearance of impropriety involved makes his involvement with Keating “the worst mistake of my life.”

Had Obama done and said something similar regarding the sort of radicalism Ayers represents, he would now have an answer to offer. Instead, he has worked with Ayers, supported his causes, and denied any significance to the links between them. That, too, makes this a legitimate question about a man who would be president.

I’m not afraid of Bill Ayers and Obama’s association with him—indeed, I’ve got worse associations and other things in my background that would disqualify me from running for president. The difference between me and Barack Obama (apart from my not wanting to be president) is that I have the decency to understand that no matter how brilliant I may be and how great my political gift, my associations and out-of-the-mainstreamness disqualify me from the presidency and place me forever in the camp of the loyal opposition.

Obama’s associates don’t even put him in the camp of the loyal opposition. And that is the problem with electing Barack Obama to the presidency: he is almost unbearably naive. He considers no radical too dangerous.

The next four years could get pretty interesting. I hope all my readers are battening down the hatches.

Four weeks and one day to go before we can stop hearing about what a liar everyone is.

Analysis: Stable Iraq could influence Mideast

BAGHDAD (AP) — As violence in Iraq recedes, neighboring states are pondering how to deal with an unwieldy country that could re-emerge as a key player along with Saudi Arabia and Iran in one of the world’s most strategic regions.

The role of regional power broker may seem far-fetched for Iraq — a devastated land best known for car bombs, death squads and suicide attackers.

Still, countries of the Middle East cannot ignore the potential role of a resurgent Iraq, a nation of 28 million people, bordering Iran to the east, Syria and Jordan to the west and sitting on one of the world’s major pools of oil.

Well, whaddaya know! A new day may dawn after all …

In the last week, more voters have come to believe that McCain would pursue different policies than Bush:

After three weeks of relentless Palin-bashing, her favorables have come down. What a surprise!:

Ahmadinejad’s evil words aren’t just talk

[We Americans] don’t expect public men or women to speak the truth from public platforms. When it comes to our own parochial affairs, there’s probably a bit of weary realism in that. However, this casual expectation of rhetorical hypocrisy has inhibited from the start our ability to recognize and deal with the threat posed by Islamist radicalism.

Time and again, the spokesmen for these movements have told the world precisely what they intend. Time and again, the scant handful of Americans who bothered to take notice have dismissed what was said as the product of political alienation, as the consequence of economic marginalization, as a hangover of post-colonial insecurity or as tactical bluster.

No. These people mean exactly what they say, and they mean it for precisely the reasons they say they do. They genuinely believe in the extreme and often heretical variants of Islam to which they cleave, that faith guides their actions, and their public statements are expressions of that faith.

Time and again, though, we willfully have blinded ourselves to this fact, partly because modern minds balk at accepting what is essentially medieval reasoning at face value, and partly because it’s the conveniently amicable thing do to.

Rutten cites Ahmadinejad’s recent address to the UN as words worth listening to for their strongly and classically pre-World War II anti-Semitism [e.a.]:

“The dignity, integrity and rights of the American and European people are being played with by a small but deceitful number of people called Zionists. Although they are a minuscule minority, they have been dominating an important portion of the financial and monetary centers as well as the political decision-making centers of some European countries and the U.S. in a deceitful, complex and furtive manner. It is deeply disastrous to witness that some presidential or premier nominees in some big countries have to visit these people, take part in their gatherings, swear their allegiance and commitment to their interests in order to attain financial or media support.

“This means that the great people of America and various nations of Europe need to obey the demands and wishes of a small number of acquisitive and invasive people. These nations are spending their dignity and resources on the crimes and occupations and the threats of the Zionist network against their will.”

Rutten concludes:

When the delegates to the U.N. General Assembly applauded Ahmadinejad’s speech last week, and the American media passed over it in silence, this is the sentiment to which they gave their respective explicit and tacit approval.

Shame on them; shame on us.

Indeed.

]]> http://how-infotaining.com/2008/10/01/weve-been-warned/feed/ 0 http://how-infotaining.com/2008/10/01/weve-been-warned/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/how-infotaining/ttWJ/~3/OAJC5nRch_4/ http://how-infotaining.com/2008/09/30/i-guess-it-was-funny-after-all/#comments Tue, 30 Sep 2008 21:43:44 +0000 hepzeeba http://how-infotaining.com/?p=3475

]]> http://how-infotaining.com/2008/09/30/i-guess-it-was-funny-after-all/feed/ 0 http://how-infotaining.com/2008/09/30/i-guess-it-was-funny-after-all/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/how-infotaining/ttWJ/~3/MZxoh58DxWU/ http://how-infotaining.com/2008/09/30/professional-negligence/#comments Tue, 30 Sep 2008 20:15:44 +0000 hepzeeba http://how-infotaining.com/?p=3472 Simon Dumenco isn’t all that excited about the economic meltdown, and he points a finger at—who else?—the media for its hysterical trumpeting of the “crisis” now that it’s upon us and its failure over the years to report on the hazards of high finance and Wall Street.

Really, you could argue that Wall Street, during the subprime boom, was simply doing its job: getting away with what it could get away with. (Hey, if regulators were willing to turn a blind eye to the dubious profiteering and financial smoke-and-mirrors … well, if the government says it’s OK, it’s OK, right?) But you can’t say the same for much of the press, which spent a lot of time over the past few years celebrating the feats of financial “wizards” — and not enough time peeking behind the curtains and questioning the too-good-to-be-true magic.

Granted, there’s been increased sensitivity in the past couple weeks among some media in regard to, at least, semantics. For instance, in The New York Times last week in a piece titled, “Amid Market Turmoil, Some Journalists Try to Tone Down Emotion,” Richard Pérez-Peña noted that some reporters are steering clear of terms such as “meltdown” and “panic” to avoid further inflaming an already-twitchy market.

Don’t get me wrong: Politely tip-toeing through the apocalypse after the fact is a nice gesture! But it hardly makes up for the fact that few financial journalists really questioned the meaning and ramifications of toxic Wall Street voodoo such as “credit-default swaps” and such until it was way, way too late.

No one has been covered in glory since this meltdown began to show its ugly face—least of all our elected representatives, beginning with Bush, who is clearly out of his depth and “out of juice,” according to David Brooks, who is being way too kind.

I certainly agree with Dumenco that the MSM comes in for a lot of the blame, but irrational exuberance is a widely known human weakness.

In early January, as Obama was ascending, I wrote:

… mundus vult decipi. (You could look it up.)

People want to believe in magic, as P.T. Barnum, for one, knew.

Despite its prominence in Barnum lore, historians agree that he probably never said, “There’s a sucker born every minute.” What he said was less cynical and more astute: “The people like to be humbugged.”

The Times piece from which I took the quote above goes on to note:

Barnum humbugged the highbrow as well as the low. In 1850 he brought the opera diva Jenny Lind, “the Swedish Nightingale,” to Manhattan for the start of an American tour. Neither he nor anyone else in America had heard her sing a note.

“Jenny Lind’s story is perhaps Barnum’s single most extraordinary accomplishment,” Ms. Maher said, “because he took something that was absolutely nothing in American society and created a frenzy, a mania, very much equivalent to today’s rock stars.” [e.a.]

People with their feet on the ground should always know how to protect their interests, even in times of irrational exuberance. Maybe that’s what we have to teach both our children and the nation’s “journalists”—how to reason. Now that we’re enmeshed in a world of 24/7 deceptive and/or ignorant “news” and marketing and advertising, this seems more important than ever

]]> http://how-infotaining.com/2008/09/30/professional-negligence/feed/ 0 http://how-infotaining.com/2008/09/30/professional-negligence/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/how-infotaining/ttWJ/~3/ePg7MpONjx4/ http://how-infotaining.com/2008/09/30/birthday-suit/#comments Tue, 30 Sep 2008 18:44:04 +0000 hepzeeba http://how-infotaining.com/?p=3467 A Chicago artist is obsessed with Sarah Palin—and not necessarily in a good way.

“I’ve been following her religiously,” [Bruce Elliott] said Monday at the bar. “I had never heard of her before, like everyone else. I find her bizarrely fascinating, even though I pretty much despise everything she stands for.”

You will know her name. He will make her even more famous.

]]> http://how-infotaining.com/2008/09/30/birthday-suit/feed/ 0 http://how-infotaining.com/2008/09/30/birthday-suit/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/how-infotaining/ttWJ/~3/_D6MLSoZQro/ http://how-infotaining.com/2008/09/30/so-long-its-been-good-to-know-you/#comments Tue, 30 Sep 2008 13:32:59 +0000 hepzeeba http://how-infotaining.com/?p=3463 No, I haven’t decided to quit blogging (though I’m tempted). I’m saying farewell to a paper that has livened my days considerably over the last few years–most especially in its arts coverage, but also in its editorial voice (which I didn’t often agree with, but I admired those who were willing to stand up and speak their mind even at the cost of social marginalization and ridicule).

Thanks for the memories!

]]> http://how-infotaining.com/2008/09/30/so-long-its-been-good-to-know-you/feed/ 0 http://how-infotaining.com/2008/09/30/so-long-its-been-good-to-know-you/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/how-infotaining/ttWJ/~3/d5wrSuW-95A/ http://how-infotaining.com/2008/09/27/a-fair-assessment/#comments Sun, 28 Sep 2008 01:04:51 +0000 hepzeeba http://how-infotaining.com/?p=3461 With partisanship having infected most pundits and commentators, it’s rare to read a straight, informative news report. This one, however, struck me as refreshing and as worth noting for its pointed observations about substantive differences between the candidates positions and worldviews:

For all the startling news about the state of the financial markets preceding the first presidential debate Friday night, it was the state of the world that actually produced the drama, tension and real differences between the two men who would be president. …

Sen. McCain defended the war in Iraq; Sen. Obama gave no ground in condemning it as a waste of blood and treasure.

Sen. McCain said the U.S. will exit Iraq with honor and dignity. Sen. Obama said the conflict has cost 4,000 lives needlessly and imperiled the broader war against terrorism. Sen. McCain said Obama policies would have produced defeat in Iraq. Sen. Obama said McCain policies produced years of flailing and bloodshed there.

Yep, the election is about real things, and real challenges, and really scary potential scenarios. Everybody got so caught up in the Bill-hates-Obama aspect of the faux mini-drama that played out last week that they missed the point Clinton was trying to make during his media tour last week. It was captured at the very end of a very snarky article in yesterday’s New York Times [e.a.]:

The night after his appearance on Mr. Letterman’s show, Mr. Clinton was on “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart,” where Mr. Stewart defended him against the charge of aloofness and suggested that the only way to satisfy some Obama supporters would be “to get a tattoo or some type of permanent bumper sticker” placed on his person.

Without smiling, Mr. Clinton said: “The purpose of this election is not for people to pass emotional hurdle tests. This is not a Rorschach test. This is about winning an election that can change the future of the country.”

Yes, that’s true. But politicians are forced to compete for the attention of voters where they live, and most people live in CluelessLand. They have much more pressing concerns and engagements in their daily lives than following politics! And when they do tune in, it’s to InfotainmentLand, an all-entertainment-all-the-time media environment, so it’s not surprising that they would react to the “news” stories about politics as if it were all a big joke.

Though, of course, the entire Congress is treating America’s collective economic future as if it were a big joke.

]]> http://how-infotaining.com/2008/09/27/a-fair-assessment/feed/ 0 http://how-infotaining.com/2008/09/27/a-fair-assessment/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/how-infotaining/ttWJ/~3/JUgYCVJJCVg/article2512380.ecehepzeebaSSat, 22 Sep 2007 21:22:00 PDThttp://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article2512380.ecewhoa<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/how-infotaining/ttWJ/~4/JUgYCVJJCVg" height="1" width="1"/>http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article2512380.ecehttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/how-infotaining/ttWJ/~3/DhPuhouLCxA/1,2506,L-3441431,00.htmlhepzeebaSFri, 24 Aug 2007 04:42:18 PDThttp://www.ynetnews.com/Ext/Comp/ArticleLayout/CdaArticlePrintPreview/1,2506,L-3441431,00.htmlthings begin to fall apart in Gaza<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/how-infotaining/ttWJ/~4/DhPuhouLCxA" height="1" width="1"/>http://www.ynetnews.com/Ext/Comp/ArticleLayout/CdaArticlePrintPreview/1,2506,L-3441431,00.htmlhttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/how-infotaining/ttWJ/~3/xGtHrQyR0qs/890400.htmlhepzeebaSMon, 06 Aug 2007 15:01:29 PDThttp://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/890400.htmlthis is big news<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/how-infotaining/ttWJ/~4/xGtHrQyR0qs" height="1" width="1"/>http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/890400.htmlhttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/how-infotaining/ttWJ/~3/o_gIP9Gq11U/hepzeebaSFri, 15 Jun 2007 16:05:44 PDThttp://how-infotaining.com/check back soon!<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/how-infotaining/ttWJ/~4/o_gIP9Gq11U" height="1" width="1"/>http://how-infotaining.com/http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/how-infotaining/ttWJ/~3/3VlGDExHX00/871519.htmlhepzeebaSFri, 15 Jun 2007 12:32:46 PDThttp://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/871519.htmlSure. And will the world love Hamas if they free him?<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/how-infotaining/ttWJ/~4/3VlGDExHX00" height="1" width="1"/>http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/871519.htmlhttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/how-infotaining/ttWJ/~3/uxbZKtLBuj4/4a7fd32c19f417eb23b19e71fd4d7492.htmhepzeebaSWed, 13 Jun 2007 04:59:20 PDThttp://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/HRW/4a7fd32c19f417eb23b19e71fd4d7492.htmno shit!<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/how-infotaining/ttWJ/~4/uxbZKtLBuj4" height="1" width="1"/>http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/HRW/4a7fd32c19f417eb23b19e71fd4d7492.htmhttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/how-infotaining/ttWJ/~3/PKJLtBMHZOc/finkelsteinhepzeebaSMon, 11 Jun 2007 15:17:36 PDThttp://insidehighered.com/news/2007/06/11/finkelsteinexcellent news<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/how-infotaining/ttWJ/~4/PKJLtBMHZOc" height="1" width="1"/>http://insidehighered.com/news/2007/06/11/finkelsteinhttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/how-infotaining/ttWJ/~3/SHTXnHBzo38/hepzeebaSMon, 11 Jun 2007 15:11:47 PDThttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/huff-wires/20070611/lebanon-violence/is anybody watching?<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/how-infotaining/ttWJ/~4/SHTXnHBzo38" height="1" width="1"/>http://www.huffingtonpost.com/huff-wires/20070611/lebanon-violence/http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/how-infotaining/ttWJ/~3/viExgRuWeuw/11mideast.phphepzeebaSMon, 11 Jun 2007 12:22:43 PDThttp://www.iht.com/articles/2007/06/11/africa/11mideast.php?page=2horrible, sad, depressing: stop the madness!<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/how-infotaining/ttWJ/~4/viExgRuWeuw" height="1" width="1"/>http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/06/11/africa/11mideast.php?page=2http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/how-infotaining/ttWJ/~3/Oo_1fs0_ax4/4877400.htmlhepzeebaSSun, 10 Jun 2007 15:33:43 PDThttp://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/world/4877400.htmlhow many ways can you say d-e-t-e-r-i-o-r-a-t-i-o-n<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/how-infotaining/ttWJ/~4/Oo_1fs0_ax4" height="1" width="1"/>http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/world/4877400.htmlhttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/how-infotaining/ttWJ/~3/1C1Z4oU9qCs/867976.htmlhepzeebaSSat, 09 Jun 2007 04:25:05 PDThttp://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/867976.htmlJohnston is still a hostage<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/how-infotaining/ttWJ/~4/1C1Z4oU9qCs" height="1" width="1"/>http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/867976.htmlhttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/how-infotaining/ttWJ/~3/QbRMxM0AYsk/0,7340,L-3410174,00.htmlhepzeebaSFri, 08 Jun 2007 19:43:15 PDThttp://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3410174,00.htmlexplosive if true<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/how-infotaining/ttWJ/~4/QbRMxM0AYsk" height="1" width="1"/>http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3410174,00.html