Category Archives: culture

paper dolls

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Earworm: The Mills Brothers singing “Paper Doll.” Of course it was a totally sexist song. But it was the forties. I was five years old. What did I know. It sure sounded pretty.
And I loved to play with paper dolls. The ones of famous movie stars.
I guess I was surprised that there are still paper dolls for sale out there
Even more surprising is the new
obamadoll.jpg
Actually, there’s a McCain one as well.
I suppose that’s one way to get little kids aware of the election coming up. Although I imagine it would be more appealing to girls than boys, who tend to like more physical activities where they don’t have to sit still for so long. At least that’s the case with my 6 year old grandson.

Rachel Rachel

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Nope, not Rachel Ray. She’s sort of the antithesis of the Rachel who has really impressed me recently.
Rachel Maddow, who has her own program on Air America, and has been on MSNBC’s Countdown as a political analyst, recently has stood in for usual host, Keith Olbermann (who, by the way is the one man with whom I’d like to be stranded on a deserted island.)
Maddow has the presence and the personality of a true news media star. She’s brilliant, articulate, appealing, confident, and down-to-earth. She’s also openly gay, and the way she presents herself visually reflects that fact in a very professional way. She has developed her own female — but not particularly feminine — style, and it works.
I suppose, if I had to be stranded on a deserted island with a lesbian, I’d just as soon it be Rachel Maddow.

communitainment

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That’s what Bill Moyers, in his speech to the National Conference of Media Reform, indicated that the media is becoming.

Already, newspapers and magazines (and soon TV programming) are encouraged to sell key words to advertisers – so-called “in-text advertising” – in the online versions of stories. Can you imagine advertisers going for stories with key words such as “health care reform,” “environmental degradation,” “Iraqi casualties,” “contracting fraud,” or “K Street lobbyists.” I don’t think so. So what will happen to news in the future as the already tattered boundaries between journalism and advertising is dispensed with entirely, as content, programming, commerce and online communities are rolled into one profitably attractive package? Last year the investment firm of Piper Jaffrey predicted that much of the business model for new media would be just that kind of hybrid. They called it “communitainment.”

Moyers also said great stuff like:

…this Administration – with the complicity of the dominant media – conducted a political propaganda campaign, using erroneous and misleading intelligence to deceive Americans into supporting an unprovoked attack on another country, leading to a war that instead of being “quick and bloodless” as predicted, continues to this day. (At least we now know that a neo-conservative is an arsonist who sets the house on fire and six years later boasts that no one can put it out.)

and

Democracy without honest information creates the illusion of popular consent while enhancing the power of the state and the privileged interests protected by it.

Democracy without accountability creates the illusion of popular control while offering ordinary Americans cheap tickets to the balcony, too far away to see that the public stage is just a reality TV set.

Nothing more characterizes corporate media today – mainstream and partisan – than disdain towards the fragile nature of modern life and indifference toward the complex social debate required of a free and self-governing people.

This leaves you with a heavy burden – it’s up to you to fight for the freedom that makes all other freedoms possible.

Be vigilant; the fate of the cyber commons is at stake here, the future of “the mobile web” and the benefits of the Internet as open architecture. We’ll lose without you: the only antidote to the power of organized money in Washington is the power of organized people at the netroots.

You can go to the FreePress site and read, listen to, or watch the whole amazing speech.
A couple of years ago, I agreed with Molly Ivins that Bill Moyers should be president. Maybe what he should be is Barack Obama’s Carl Rove.
It’s too bad that there isn’t a Corporation for Public Blogging (like the Corporation for Public Broadcasting). Maybe if there were, b!X would have been able to continue his city-based and well respected journalistic (but not economic) success, the Portland Communique.
Surely there must be some foundation or trillionaire somewhere who might want to give out grants to independent citizen blogger/journalists? I nominate b!X to be first on the list.

I had the last word

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Who doesn’t like having the last word, and this time it was mine at the end of Ronni Bennett’s great essay on elderboggers, Put It In Writing, published today in the Wall Street Journal. You can’t get to the essay online, so Ronnie had to send it in an email to those of us she mentioned in case we don’t subscribe to the newspaper, which I don’t.
Interestingly enough, the Journal began the printed version of Ronni’s essay with a quote from my quote. So, here I am, the alpha and the omega.
On Ronni’s blog, Time Goes By, she mentions the essay and shows the great graphic that the newspaper included.
Ronni will be having occasional articles on aging and retirement for the Wall Street Journal from now on. Congratulations, Ronni.
And thanks for giving me the last word.

I blog to connect with the world outside myself
that I’m trying to make sense of.
I blog to keep up my spirit;
to stir the spirit of others;
to stir my blood, my brain and my beliefs.

ADDENDUM: I discovered that you can read the whole great article by going here and then clicking on the story title, “Put it in Writing.”

Hillary be damned

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I think that Hillary Clinton would be damned by public opinion no matter how she ran her campaign. If she had Barack’s eloquence, charm, and public persona, she would have been damned for being to theatrical, too smooth, not tough enough etc. etc. Oh yes, she’s made too many mistakes in her campaign, but I don’t think that’s the reason there’s so much animosity toward her.
Many American’s love the idea of good vs. evil, the bad vs. the good, and they’ve been handed a perfect opportunity to set up a METAPHORICAL (not racial) black vs. white battle. No grays here (except creeping in on Hillary’s battered head.)
And, despite all of the backlash against Ferraro, I believe that if a white male with Barack’s change agenda AND LACK OF EXPERIENCE were running, he wouldn’t have made it this far.
Oh, wait a minute. A white male with Barack’s change agenda AND CONSIDERABLE EXPERIENCE was running and didn’t make it.
Perhaps what it all just means is the time is right for someone like Barack — a moving, persuasive orator, a symbol of radical change from the status quo (symbolized by his bi-racial ethnicity), someone from a new generation who appeals to the new generation. If he could be canonized by us liberals, he would be called Saint Barack, patron saint of idealists.
So often, timing is everything. And, as we saw on Ellen, Barack’s got the timing down pat.
And late middle-aged, thick waisted, experienced, tough broad Hillary be damned.
But not by me.

powwow at the end of the world

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I repost this poem from Jim Culleny’s entry here at 3 quarks daily.

Powwow at the End of the World
Sherman Alexie
I am told by many of you that I must forgive and so I shall
after an Indian woman puts her shoulder to the Grand Coulee Dam
and topples it. I am told by many of you that I must forgive
and so I shall after the floodwaters burst each successive dam
downriver from the Grand Coulee. I am told by many of you
that I must forgive and so I shall after the floodwaters find
their way to the mouth of the Columbia River as it enters the Pacific
and causes all of it to rise. I am told by many of you that I must forgive
and so I shall after the first drop of floodwater is swallowed by that salmon
waiting in the Pacific. I am told by many of you that I must forgive and so I shall
after that salmon swims upstream, through the mouth of the Columbia
and then past the flooded cities, broken dams and abandoned reactors
of Hanford. I am told by many of you that I must forgive and so I shall
after that salmon swims through the mouth of the Spokane River
as it meets the Columbia, then upstream, until it arrives
in the shallows of a secret bay on the reservation where I wait alone.
I am told by many of you that I must forgive and so I shall after
that salmon leaps into the night air above the water, throws
a lightning bolt at the brush near my feet, and starts the fire
which will lead all of the lost Indians home. I am told
by many of you that I must forgive and so I shall
after we Indians have gathered around the fire with that salmon
who has three stories it must tell before sunrise: one story will teach us
how to pray; another story will make us laugh for hours;
the third story will give us reason to dance. I am told by many
of you that I must forgive and so I shall when I am dancing
with my tribe during the powwow at the end of the world.
………………………………………………………………………………….

Sherman Alexie, “The Powwow at the End of the World” from The Summer of Black Widows by Sherman Alexie; Hanging Loose Press.


Meanwhile, all around the rest of us, politicians spin us into oblivion.

and is it art?

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With this post is a reminder to often check out 3 quarks daily, a group blog for those who like to have their brains prodded.
I read the post that linked to this soon after I had a look at some photos that my amateur photographer daughter had been playing with, using some trial software. The item is about “computational photography” and is about innovations in digital cameras, but the concept includes innovations in software a well.
This landscape photo of hers, for example, she transformed to look as though it had brush strokes in it. This one turned into a watercolor.
What will these new technological capacities for creating “art” mean for the value (monetary, aesthetic, and historical) of the more traditional artist?
And it’s not just the two-dimensional visual arts techniques that are changing. Creative writing has reached a new frontier as well. 3 quarks daily cites an article in The Guardian that reports:

The book-writing machine works simply, at least in principle. First, one feeds it a recipe for writing a particular genre of book – a tome about crossword puzzles, say, or a market outlook for products. Then hook the computer up to a big database full of info about crossword puzzles or market information. The computer uses the recipe to select data from the database and write and format it into book form.

Phillip M. Parker, the inventor of the system, gives his reason for inventing it:

“there is a need for a method and apparatus for authoring, marketing, and/or distributing title materials automatically by a computer.” He explains that “further, there is a need for an automated system that eliminates or substantially reduces the costs associated with human labour, such as authors, editors, graphic artists, data analysts, translators, distributors, and marketing personnel.

”
I can’t help wondering if the next steps will be to program machines to actually do the painting, take and make the photos, write the books, make the movies……
Will actual human creative processes become obsolete and will we become — as we almost are already — just consumers??
Will the offspring of Roomba leave no place for future Rembrandts?