It always comes down to teamwork – or lack of it.
The Atlantic has published an eye opening piece that is a must read.
Category Archives: Public Service, Civics, Government, Activism
Our Response to Paris Hilton’s Response to McCain Shows Our Biases
Paris Hilton responded, via a video of her own, to John McCain’s Celebrity advertisement.
How you see her video is completely based upon your pre-existing bias.
Want proof?
If you are liberal you see it as an endorsement of Obama’s plan and as a smack down on McCain:
Open Left: Why Obama’s Drilling Compromise Makes Some Sense
Talk Left: Paris Hilton Strikes Back
reddit: Paris Hilton Responds to the McCain Ad = McCain gets served.
If you are conservative, you see it as an endorsement of McCain’s plan and as a smack down on Obama:
Althouse: Paris Hilton does a pro-McCain ad!
Either Paris Hilton is a genius, or we are so wrapped up in our own points of view that we look for ANYTHING to reinforce it.
Maybe both is true. But that’s a stretch right? Right?!?!?!
Beyond that, there is literally two takes on reality playing out over the video. And there are no links to opposing points of view – it is as if the opposing view point doesn’t even exist.
It’s important to speak out
louisgray.com: Seeing The Web’s Racist Underbelly Is Saddening and Shocking
Why does everything suck?: Does Anonymity Lead To Social Anarchy?
Sexism Runs Rampant on Reddit (and maybe the rest of the social web)
Wha, that last link threw you a bit? Why is that? Is it that we are more comfortable confronting racism then sexism? And has the Presidential campaign reflected that? Why?
How we go about fighting racism and sexism, while protecting free speech is confusing territory.
I figure the best way is by speaking out loudly, and clearly.
PS – Make a donation to the Thomas Jefferson Center for free speech in George Carlin’s name.
Applicable to Hillary Clinton
While I haven’t figured out who is my favorite historical figure, Antonella’s tagging of me seems especially relevant in the wake of Hillary Clinton’s run for the Presidency.
Make sure to read it if you haven’t: “Well-behaved women seldom make history”.
The more I think about it, the more I believe that while she did some self-inflicted damage to her own campaign, and her knocks to Obama made her seem hypocritical, much of the news media, in retrospect, was biased, and its behavior towards her couldn’t be considered anything else then sexist.
I hope history recognizes her as someone who broke down barriers for those that will follow.
What have we become is the wrong question
A great fellow Philly blogger, upon seeing that recent CNN video of a person ran over with no one helping posted a passionate piece questioning where our society is headed when a group of people can act so unconcerned about someone else’s welfare.
In his comments, I felt the need to remind him of Kitty Genovese.
Phil Ochs’s wrote a song about her in 1967, that, with its refrain, is all too painful.
The lyrics make me feel uncomfortable, and if they make you feel the same, then that says something about their ongoing relevancy.
“Outside Of A Small Circle Of Friends”:
Look outside the window, there’s a woman being grabbed
They’ve dragged her to the bushes and now she’s being stabbed
Maybe we should call the cops and try to stop the pain
But monopoly is so much fun, I’d hate to blow the game
And I’m sure it wouldn’t interest anybody
Outside of a small circle of friends.Riding down the highway, yes, my back is getting stiff
Thirteen cars are piled up, they’re hanging on a cliff.
Maybe we should pull them back with our towing chain
But we gotta move and we might get sued and it looks like it’s gonna rain
And I’m sure it wouldn’t interest anybody
Outside of a small circle of friends.Sweating in the ghetto with the (colored/panthers) and the poor
The rats have joined the babies who are sleeping on the floor
Now wouldn’t it be a riot if they really blew their tops?
But they got too much already and besides, we got the cops
And I’m sure it wouldn’t interest anybody
Outside of a small circle of friends.Oh, there’s a dirty paper using sex to make a sale
The Supreme Court was so upset, they sent him off to jail.
Maybe we should help the fiend and take away his fine.
But we’re busy reading playboy and the Sunday New York Times
And I’m sure it wouldn’t interest anybody
Outside of a small circle of friendsSmoking marijuana is more fun than drinking beer,
But a friend of ours was captured and they gave him thirty years
Maybe we should raise our voices, ask somebody why
But demonstrations are a drag, besides, we’re much too high
And I’m sure it wouldn’t interest anybody
Outside of a small circle of friendsOh, look outside the window, there’s a woman being grabbed
They’ve dragged her to the bushes and now she’s being stabbed
Maybe we should call the cops and try to stop the pain
But monopoly is so much fun, I’d hate to blow the game
And I’m sure it wouldn’t interest anybody
Outside of a small circle of friendsDown in Santiago where they took away our mines
We cut off all their money, so they robbed the storehouse blind
Now maybe we should ask some questions, maybe shed a tear
But I bet you a copper penny, it cannot happen here
And I’m sure it wouldn’t interest anybody
Outside of a small circle of friends
I tend to think that the human condition is made of sterner stuff than our culture can throw at it. For good or ill.
That’s why we need to shout from the rooftops the good wherever we may find it. It is out here. There are great stories to tell. Heroes who break the mold everyday.
I know I don’t talk about them enough myself.
But the question is – does anyone care outside our circle of friends?
Congratulations America
I haven’t been commenting on this year’s political race. For the most part, because I have been happy with the thought of either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama becoming our president.
The reason why I supported Mr. Obama (I voted for him in the primary) is that I feel he represents an urge on the part of Gen-Xers and Millennials to move past politics of division. That we’ve had enough of 60s “long haired hippies are bad/conservatives are bad/religious types are bad/whites are bad/blacks are bad/women are bad/men are bad” winning through division arguments.
The irony is that there is evidence that won’t be enough.
It is time for everyone to realize that whichever the candidate was going to be – Clinton or Obama – that overcoming fear and ignorance would be the biggest obstacles to be overcome.
Fact: People are hugely misinformed even with the vast amounts of media available to us all on the Web, on Radio, on Cable, and elsewhere.
Prediction: This race will be closer than people expect.
A John McCain win is very possible and instead of pointing to his worthiness as a candidate, most likely, it would be blamed on ignorance or racism, and while there might be some credence, I believe it is simpler than that….
We believe in untruths and have media choices that reinforce our predispositions and prejudices. Across every income, education and political group.
There are those among us, who think the act of getting informed is something that each needs to take up as a self-discipline – “if they don’t get it – they don’t get it”, instead of a social practice where each of us has a responsibility to the rest of us.
As Doc Searls once said:
Information, we observed, is derived from the verb inform, which is related to the verb form. To inform is not to “deliver information”, but rather to form the other party. If you tell me something I didn’t know before, I am changed by that. If I believe you, and value what you say, I have granted you authority. Meaning, I have given you the right to author what I know. Therefore, we are all authors of each other. This is a profoundly human condition in any case, but it is an especially important aspect of the open source value system. By forming each other, as we also form useful software, we are making the world. Not merely changing it.
That’s a powerful idea and ideal. It is one that we are not living up to. And one that will have reverberations in this campaign.
But for now, congratulations America. We’ve come a long way. The blood of so many led us to today. So onward with tomorrow.
Update: Upon further consideration – If you consider how the press has covered Hillary Clinton’s run – and our response to it – it’s pretty clear we still have a long, long way to go.
Reference:
Deborah Leavy: Obama’s next challenge: The Misinformed
Will Bunch: People died so tonight could happen
Metafilter: A moment in history; Obama Wins Presidential Nomination.
Associated Press: Analysis: McCain, Obama polar opposites:
…At this point, Obama appears to have a tougher barrier to break through on race than McCain does on age.
An AP-Yahoo News study comparing November figures to April figures found that McCain has won over many people initially worried about age, while Obama has made little headway so far among people who are most uncomfortable about race.
Roughly 13 percent of those who said in November they would be very uncomfortable voting for a black candidate now say they would vote for Obama, while 51 percent of them would vote for McCain. And 31 percent of those who said they were very uncomfortable with the idea of voting for someone over age 70 would now vote for McCain, while 40 percent would vote for Obama.
And, for now at least, it’s unclear whether experience or change matters more to voters.
The same study found that people who favor a Washington outsider who will change the way things are done split about evenly between McCain and Obama, while those who favor someone with Washington experience slightly favor McCain.
However, those who are optimistic that things actually can be changed in Washington favor Obama over McCain by a large margin, 43 percent to 31 percent. Those who are pessimistic about whether Washington can change favor McCain over Obama by an even wider margin, 43 percent to 23 percent.
Each candidate has five months to make his case.
Women speakers at conferences, expanding the conversation, some personal experience
Livia Labate, Principal of Information Architecture for Comcast Interactive Media, my team at Comcast, is asking some hard questions around why there are not more women speakers at conferences. She raises the issue here and follows up here.
Livia, meet Jeneane Sessum, writer, consultant, marketing pro, all round social media expert. In her latest post she runs the Industry Standard over the rails for doing what so many other media publications seem apt to do – publish a list of (top or must read) bloggers and not include women.
Livia, meet Shelley Powers, author, Javascript/AJAX extraordinaire who has written a number of posts on the subject, here are two: Progress, Invisible.
Shelley and Jeneane, meet Livia.
Before I mention anything from my point of view and experiences, two more links – one a shocker, and one a think piece:
NYTimes: Sorry, Boys, This Is Our Domain: Research shows that among the youngest Internet users, the primary creators of Web content (blogs, graphics, photographs, Web sites) are not misfits resembling the Lone Gunmen of “The X Files.” On the contrary, the cyberpioneers of the moment are digitally effusive teenage girls. The section this article appeared in? Fashion. Not Business. Not Technology.
Salon: The question isn’t why a blogger like Emily Gould has the spotlight — it’s why other women don’t.
Onward…
I’ve written in the past about why I feel diversity is crucial to a successful gathering where information discussion is the goal.
I’ve never shared the difficulty I had in helping manage the Norg Unconference to meet that ideal.
The Norg Unconference was to build bridges between media technologists, independent bloggers, and traditional newspaper media, to help newspapers, indeed all of us, find a path to build the new news organization, or norg, as Will Bunch called it.
Many in attendance thought it was groundbreaking how it brought together such radically different world views in media such as members of IndyMedia and the Philadelphia Inquirer.
But part of me walked away feeling it wasn’t such a big success – the participants in attendance weren’t a true representation of the real diversity in Philly – and in assisting Wendy Warren of the Philadelphia Daily News and Susie Madrak, in organizing the meeting, which was taking place in the lead up to Emma being born, and me burning the candle at both ends, I burnt some bridges myself, as I fought, prior to the conference, to get folks to work together across views of each other. I partially failed, and lost some friends I believe. For an ideal. I won’t go into details, as I hope bridges can one day be restored, I have no bad feelings.
I leave it at this – it is very, very hard to get people to open up to what others can bring to the table – and do so pro-actively – while looking outside the usual suspects to make it happen. For all my love of the Web’s capability to widen the scope of conversation, it also empowers us to be discriminating in who we give attention to. It’s human nature at play – the Web is an attention economy. You think it’s bad at conferences? Check out who is considered the ‘thought leaders’ in any niche blogging conversation, who is considered the A-list in any blogging topic space.
More background:
kottke.org: Gender diversity at web conferences
O’Reilly: Women in Technology
Dori Smith (Javascript Guru/Author): BackupBrain: Gender diversity at web conferences.
Kimberly Blessing: Where are all the women? (Revisited)
Anil Dash: The Old Boys Club is for Losers
One last question still bubbles…
This is from my earlier post (which has a lot more reference links):
Aren’t we collectively building an architecture of participation? Our face to face gatherings should mirror that. And if they don’t – then they reveal who we truly care about – don’t they?
“When we’re poor… our economic worldview is shaped by deprivation”
Boston.com: The sting of poverty: The more of a painful or undesirable thing one has (i.e. the poorer one is) the less likely one is to do anything about any one problem. Poverty is less a matter of having few goods than having lots of problems.
NYTimes: Paul Krugman: Poverty is Poison:To be poor in America today, even more than in the past, is to be an outcast in your own country. And that, the neuroscientists tell us, is what poisons a child’s brain.
Philly.com: The new mandate: First, find them a home: Deborah Harmon, 43 and mentally ill, was released from jail for panhandling, and again faced living on the streets or in a shelter. Runell McKnight, 25, had no place to go with her two young children after she broke up with the man she was living with. Today, both women have apartments of their own, with each a beneficiary of programs that aggressively promote the notion that, above all, the homeless need homes.
The Gospel of Consumption: “Nothing,” he claimed, “breeds radicalism more than unhappiness unless it is leisure.”
Elizabeth Warren interview at UC Berkley: It is partly about politics. If you don’t email your congresswoman or your congressman and your senator, then you are part of the problem today. You’ve got to tell them that this is an issue that matters to you, that this really, truly matters.
Easy target: knocking the press for the housing crisis
Dan Gillmor is right to knock the press in its coverage of the housing bubble. It didn’t do its job. But I thought we were in the age of the crowd having more information than the experts? In the age of news that bubbles up from the conversation where knowledge of something as disastrous as a oncoming financial collapse of the country would umm… be somewhat noticeable.
Beat up on the press all you want Dan. They are an easy punching bag in an age where over 60% of the public have lost confidence in them.
While I am sure we can find voices in the blogosphere that were warning us to impending troubles, as we probably can in the press, it didn’t get surfaced to wide enough audience.
The media failed certainly. And so did We the Media fail.
And it is something that must be confronted.
I am a big trumpeter of social media and how it can empower each of us to connect in ways that were impossible just a short while ago. I’m planning to share some great examples here in later posts. But as you say Dan, there’s plenty of blame to go around in this mess.
As Dave Rogers recently pointed out many tend to look to technological solutions to problems when what they are really dealing with is something different. We prescribe solutions way before we even understand the problem.
And hard enough, sometimes understanding the problem involves a hard look in our own mirrors.
Happy Easter
Emma is waking up at her grandparents right now and Richelle and me are just getting out of bed, making calls, and getting ready for the day. It’s a tradition we started last year, that I’m looking forward to as the years come.
Easter is a weird holiday, in that, as the article from Slate states below, has resisted commercialization and has retained much of its religious meaning. Having grown up in a house without organized worship of any kind, I don’t have many memories of Easter eggs or baskets. In fact, my fondest memory of Easter is one of recent years – that of my mom, calling me the night before from the nursing home, reminding me to bring her a chocolate egg.
That egg was important to her. To her, a Catholic who had doubts about the faith’s practices, Easter had to do with family and new beginnings.
I think the tradition we are setting up with Emma, with Richelle’s parents, is very much in keeping with that.
The events in Christ’s life, death and resurrection, point you in that direction, thinking about renewal, and what it means for your faith – for your life.
Every year I kick myself at not getting back in the habit of going to church. A habit I had only a short while as an adult that ended when Hunter, my nephew, died immediately after my confession on Saturday, September 15th 2001. A few days after 9/11.
For so many, they find solace in religion during times like that. I wish I could be like that. My instinctual reaction was the opposite.
As I get older, I am starting to realize that doubt, reason and faith are not necessarily at odds. That it is we human beings that demand straight lines and simple rules to dictate our universe and paradoxes upset our world so mightily that it can be hard to face the day when any light is shone on them.
tonypierce + happy easter:
today is one of the most holy days for Christians around the world.
today is the day that the Christian messiah, Jesus, came down from Heaven
and walked around and said, see, told ya I’m God.
everyone pretty much freaked out.funny thing about Christians, they basically run the world
yet when it comes to their holiest days they act ashamed.
instead of wearing t-shirts that say Jesus
or putting a nice picture of Jesus on their door
or a nice poster of Jesus in their window
and say, Right On, Jesus,
they buy candy and paint eggs and hide them
and wear hats and have brunch
just like they’ve never even heard of Jesus
and dont marvel at what he did for them.they act like dirty heathens, basically.
…the good book says that it’s not
the things that go in our mouths
that we should worry about
it’s the things that come out
of our mouths
that matter.…get yourself in situations
where you get to say some badass shit
Slate: Happy Crossmas!:
Despite the awesome theological implications (Christians believe that the infant lying in the manger is the son of God), the Christmas story is easily reduced to pablum. How pleasant it is in mid-December to open a Christmas card with a pretty picture of Mary and Joseph gazing beatifically at their son, with the shepherds and the angels beaming in delight. The Christmas story, with its friendly resonances of marriage, family, babies, animals, angels, and—thanks to the wise men—gifts, is eminently marketable to popular culture. It’s a Thomas Kinkade painting come to life.
On the other hand, a card bearing the image of a near-naked man being stripped, beaten, tortured, and nailed through his hands and feet onto a wooden crucifix is a markedly less pleasant piece of mail.
The Easter story is relentlessly disconcerting and, in a way, is the antithesis of the Christmas story. No matter how much you try to water down its particulars, Easter retains some of the shock it had for those who first participated in the events during the first century. The man who spent the final three years of his life preaching a message of love and forgiveness (and, along the way, healing the sick and raising the dead) is betrayed by one of his closest friends, turned over to the representatives of a brutal occupying power, and is tortured, mocked, and executed in the manner that Rome reserved for the worst of its criminals.
We may even sense resonances with some painful political issues still before us. Jesus of Nazareth was not only physically brutalized but also casually humiliated during his torture, echoing the abuses at Abu Ghraib. In 21st-century Iraq, some American soldiers posed prisoners with women’s underwear on their heads as a way of scorning their manhood. In first-century Palestine, some Roman soldiers pressed down a crown of thorns onto Jesus’ head and clothed him in a purple robe to scorn the kingship his followers claimed for him. After this, Jesus suffered the most degrading of all Roman deaths: crucifixion. Jesus remains the world’s most famous victim of capital punishment.
To his followers, therefore, his execution was not only tragic and terrifying but shameful. It is difficult not to wonder what the Apostles would have thought of a crucifix as a fashion accessory. Imagine wearing an image of a hooded Abu Ghraib victim around your neck as holiday bling.
slacktivist: Practice resurrection