Sometimes cool has its upside, because though I harshed on Obama’s music video too much in my last post, at least it has a modicum of class and taste. Now this. It’s hard to believe this Hillary video is nothing other than an Up With People out take. No wonder she’s loosing badly down the stretch. You’ve got to wonder when she will escape the ’90s Clinton time machine (or is it the ’80s, ’70s. 60s???? They don’t know what era they live in). The lesson with this, which is highly symbolic of Clinton herself, is that when you try to be all things to all people, you become aesthetic mush, not unlike public art.
Talk about a bad virus that catches on for the wrong reason.
PS I realize that both videos in question are “unofficial,” but this may be a case of learning to judge by the friends one keeps.
PPS In case you are wondering if there is a political ad I do like, check this one out.
So I believe we can say it’s official: the “Yes, We Can!” Will.i.am-produced celebrity Obama love fest is viral, and since the video link landed in my inbox five different times in one day I figure it requires a response.
With so many good vibes and celebrity endorsements in one impressive eyeful should we let the images and words bubble through us like the temporary elation of a pill or cocktail? Makes one wonder if feeling good is all that is left of the Democratic platform.
The video itself is a quintessential artifact of the postmodern political system in which images are the map, and there is little left of the policy territory to explore. Politics have been reduced to toothpaste slogans, and this is certainly a clever one. The “Yes, We Can!” incantation rifts the Latin American protest chant, “Si, Se Puede!,” and is not unlike Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power” jingle– yes it sounds great and meaningful, yet when you scratch the surface there is no there there (I don’t mean to harp on my fave act PE, but as a media literacy dude I have to call it like it is). After watching the video, I’m still starved for meaning. Yes, we can… but what? What is it that we can do? Propel another media creature into the White House? Have hope, change… I’m sorry but these are the most hollow and meaningless words to pervade politics since the invention of television. They are no more substantial than a product claiming it is “30% more free.”
Obama strikes me as the perfect PoMo politician. As a chameleon he can be many things to many people. In “Yes, We Can!” he is clearly invoking the rhetorical style of MLK. Yet this is populism without the populous, i.e. a “movement.” Yes, Obama is a big phenom among certain enthusiastic throngs, but every time I examine his views, it’s like poking the Pillsbury Doughboy– my finger just moves the fat around while he giggles in response. Obama is still an organ of corporate lobbyists and fails to challenge in any fundamental way the entrenched militarism of our system. So yes, he is very good at cribbing style, and with Will.i.am at the helm, style is in abundance. Obama has found a perfect partner for the manufacture of slick imagery and corporate pseudo culture (for more on Black Eyed Peas and selling out hip hop to Snickers, read this post).
Believe me, it pains me to write these words. I don’t enjoy slamming a popular icon, but when it comes to the Democrats, please don’t check your well-cultivated critical faculties at the door. They sold us out after the last election by failing to stop the war (among many things), as was their mandate. With this monstrous political machine, you’ve got to keep your BS radar on full power.
In Latin American protest there is generally a clear aim, but with this dude I have no idea what it is, beyond getting elected President. I would hope that a true opposition does emerge, and it has clear aims to do something substantial about climate change and to end militarism. Until I hear stronger challenges on these fronts, yet again I will be forced to hold my nose when I pull that voting lever in the Fall.
PS Please correct me if I’m wrong about Obama. I really have no desire to be “right.”
If you are feeling inundated by political ads, you may better enjoy the experience if you make a game of identifying the various persuasion techniques used to make their arguments. This brilliant little video is a great primer on how to do it.
Since this is a blog about media (among other things), I would be remiss to completely ignore the US presidential elections. Even here in Italy (where I live) there is nightly coverage of the US primaries on the television news (my Italian friends joke that everyone in the world should be allowed to vote in US elections– I agree completely!). But frankly I am so cynical about the process I have lost total interest in tracking the elections. It comes down to this (as the above video about The center for Public Integrity‘s efforts to document campaign spending confirm): who ever spends the most wins. Presidential slogans are like toothpaste campaigns more about branding and exposure than real issues. Ultimately I do not think the current form of democracy is compatible with the form of mass media as it exists today, especially since they fail to challenge the number one issue at the core of our historical tragedy: militarism. I’m sorry to report that I know of no other alternative at the moment, and even sadder to come across as apathetic, but I simply do not believe in the process any more. If anyone has a better idea, please let me know.
Do you have an hour? Sit back and put your seat-belt on, Naomi Wolf deconstructs the steps towards a fascist state. This has everything to do with media because media are responsible for diseminating the big lie. To quote the master propagandist himself, Joseph Goebels:
If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the state can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie … The truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the state.
Take her very seriously. To read her cliff notes version, click here.
Stephen Marshall, co-founder of Guerrilla News Network (GNN), has written an anti-globalization manifesto, Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing, challenging Thomas L. Friedman’s creepy spin in The World is Flat. I’ve met Stephen and find him an intense, sincere investigator and artist. I have never met Thomas but every interview I have seen with him has gotten under my skin in a bad way. A brief scan of this chapter excerpt is chilling. I hope Stephan is actually wrong. My only caveat concerning the politics of dissident news organizations like GNN is how they define themselves in the mold of a negative “us” vs. “them” paradigm. I think there is a danger in the concept of the information-will-set-you-free strategy of the left, but in this case it may be necessary to be a better informed consumer of the feel-good cheerleaders of liberal global markets.
Marshall cites Samir Amin’s The Liberal Virus: Permanent War and the Americanization of the World as Friedman’s foil. I like the concept of the virus, but for real social change I’d like to propose that the most destructive virus is alphabetic literacy. It is one of the most cannibalizing mind fraks ever invented by human beings. It has the capacity to subsume the holistic perception of the right-brain. No doubt, a person trained in the left-brain print literate universe sees everything as flat. Is the alphabet evil? Not necessarily, after all, I’m using it as a tool for education, yet what is wrong is an imbalanced mind, one that only thinks in the materialistic capacity of the left-brain. The point of this small diatribe is that I hope critics will also avoid the materialistic, flat world approach to critical thinking.
If Thomas Friedman is the prophet of 21st century capitalism, then Samir Amin is his anti-Christ. But to hear Amin tell it, Friedman is the only one leading humankind into the depths of Hell. Writing from Dakar, Senegal, where he runs the Third World Forum, Amin’s thesis is essentially that liberalism, if allowed to continue on its path of creative destruction, will lead to an apocalyptic end. He likens the globalizing force of liberalism to a virus that has destroyed all ideological competitors and that is now making its final assault on its host species. According to Amin, the ethic of liberalism — “Long live competition, may the strong win” — is now ravaging societies of the Third World, causing further “social alienation and pauperization of urban classes.”
It’s nothing new from the far, far left. There are shelves full of books by anti-globalization writers from the developing world. What made me pick up Samir Amin’s essay, though, was the striking specificity of his warning. In Liberal Virus, he argues that liberalism’s most decisive effect will be to divide the world into an apartheid system that sees 3 billion peasant farmers pushed from their land and forced into the cities where they will die. This, he explains, will result from the implementation of a 2001 World Trade Organization (WTO) mandate that all agricultural markets be opened to the expansion of commercial agribusiness producers. Without the ability to make a subsistence living from their own land, half the world’s population will have to migrate to the urban centers where there is no work for them. And thus, he concludes, they will be trapped in an “organized system of apartheid” on a global scale.
Sorry to hit a cynical note this morning, but I received an email announcing the Democratic Party’s winner for their bumper sticker slogan competition. First of all, I don’t understand the appeal of pumper stickers, which to me are not meant to change people’s minds, but to inform the world of the driver’s politics or subcultural affiliations. There are only two that have made my day: “Visualize Whirled Peas” and “Visualize Turn Signal Use.” Oh yeah, this one too: “Duality Sucks.” This campaign by the Democrats is phony grassroots participation, and it’s just lip service to the bandwagon of user generated media. If they were serious about representing their voters, why don’t they stop the war? Instead they give Bush, arguably the weakest President in the history or the United States, everything he wants. The Democrats seem to believe if they change the toothpaste slogan, we’ll believe there’s better toothpaste. I hope that is not the case. Though I think Lakoff‘s ideas about framing are brilliant and a necessary aspect of understanding political language and public relations, changing the wording of slogans does not change the intention of the party. This we know from the manner in which the Republicans have used Orwellian language to promote their nefarious policies. Promoting a slogan that is attached to the number one cause for why we are in Iraq, the oil guzzling automobile, shows that once again the Democrats have no real vision. Too bad. They really could do something good for once, but I suspect they will continue to haggle over the management strategy of the Empire rather than dismantle the war machine.
PS The viral video made in advance of this is worthy of some serious deconstruction. Consider the set and setting and the type of image of “America” that is projected: a diner, Cub Scouts, a little juke box, the nuclear family. I also understand this is a parody of the Sopranos last episode, but I haven’t seen it, so I don’t get the joke, if there is one. Why does the Fifties repeatedly regenerate itself in the political imagination of America? It was really an awful time. Truly. With one exception: Naked Lunch, Howl, and On the Road. (OK, that was three.) Anyhow, I give Clinton credit for playing with the Internet and having some fun. I just won’t vote for her. Ever.
Photo by Alex Zhavoronkova
As you have heard, the air around here is intoxicating, hence Romans are pretty easy going (except when driving). I enjoyed this photo from the recent protest against Bush. It reminds me of the Emma Goldman quote, “If I can’t dance I don’t want to be part of your revolution.”
There are two or three societal trends that are driving us in an increasingly deep center-right posture (…) One of them is the power of the computer chip. Do you know how many people’s principal source of income is eBay? Seven hundred thousand (…) So the power of the computer has made it possible for people to gain greater control over their lives. It’s given people a greater chance to run their own business, become a sole proprietor or an entrepreneur. As a result, it has made us more
market-oriented, and that equals making you more center-right in your politics.
A case study in how viral media spread. This is from sci-fi writer Bruce Sterling’s blog at Wired.com. It’s an account of the infamous “Macaca” comment by Senate candidate (and now loser) George Allen:
According to Vanden Berg, they chose to post the video on YouTube because it was free (simple enough). But before they tossed it out for the public to see, they’d already pitched the story to a Washington Post reporter, who wrote about it online on Monday. Only after the Post story appeared and the issue had been properly framed did the Webb folks send an email to their supporter list and to friendly bloggers.
The fact that the video was on YouTube made it particularly easy to distribute, since bloggers could insert it directly into their pages, but it was the campaign’s promotional work that spread the word.
And as the story developed, they constantly worked reporters and bloggers behind the scenes to shape the public discussion.
The video had its REALLY significant effects when the mainstream media picked it up and showed it over and over — 400,000 people many have seen it online, but millions saw it on television. Webb’s people also had help from their opponent: Vanden Berg attributed much of the issue’s long shelf life to the Allen campaign’s very poor response — bad damage control killed them.
Chirag has analyzed “the words that presidents used frequently in their speeches shows which issues they deemed important. The prominence of ‘Terrorist’ in G. W. Bush’s tag cloud is unsurprising while Richard Nixon was all about ‘commitment’ somehow. Move the slider around to see the changes in tag cloud.
I don’t always agree with MoveOn.org’s tactics (I don’t like their fear-mongering political ad techniques), but we should at least go and sign their petition to Congress to prevent Bush from using nukes on Iran. It may not seem like much, but it’s a start. We need critical mass.
