On Critics

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Some critics insist they aren’t authorities, yet act with authority in their dispensing opinion and analysis. They deny their impact on others.

Our words have weight and impact on others. Even the meekest of us has an impact on those around us.

When I see folks who are obviously so intelligent that I know they know this and yet actively deny it – I am left to conclude that either mental illness is at work or they are being disingenuous. And I hate disingenuous mother fuckers.

You must remember that critics are not interested in serving the public trust; they’re interested in serving themselves. You’re a critic, and you need to pay the rent: there is a sea of other critics out there in the same boat. Some people in that situation will always go against the tide, to try and stand out. Some people will focus on gushing with the popular opinion as cleverly as possible – perhaps their punchy little quote will end up in a big ad in the newspaper, and their notoriety/income will increase.

And there are, of course, intellectuals who align themselves with elitism; they are forced to have disdain for all things popular. Their inability to be objective is indication of how ironically intellectual they are not.

In the end, critics are just people. People with an agenda. You are seldom going to find well thought-out, thorough objectivity in that demographic, no matter what they’re critiquing.

But mostly, there’s the bitter, sad realization that while they can write and scream or praise and jump up and down, they will be utterly forgotten in the annals of history, where Star Wars will not. For all their words and self-important positing, they know they have made no lasting contribution, no great impact. They’ve changed no lives, and shaped no futures. They’re resigned to being wordy because they’ve done so little. Like a fat, lazy sports fan who doesn’t like how Barry Bonds is hitting this season. Beset by jealousy, and ignorance, compensatory self-importance and bluster, they sit at their keyboards, furiously typing, and turn their self-hatred outward, to the very things they long to be part of most.

millenniumfalcon.com – The Official Media Review Links Thread

I love Dennis Miller’s signoff: “It’s just my opinion, I could be wrong”. Far too often I actually hope I am.

“make it clear you will not consent to a lie”

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Whiskey Bar: Truth and Consequences

Sometimes the truth is so damning you have to speak it for its own sake — not to convince or condemn or even because you think it might right the wrong, but to make it clear you will not consent to a lie by remaining silent.

However, this is not the kind of behavior you normally expect from a politician. Even the good ones — or rather, the less bad ones — tend to treat the truth like a scarce commodity, one that has to be strictly rationed in order to avoid running out all together. Evasion, on the other hand, is plentiful, and used as freely as a Hummer burns gasoline.

Which is why I did a double take when I saw what Sen. Durban of Illinois said on the Senate floor yesterday…

Go and read the rest.

Dave Rogers Becomes an Authority Figure

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Oh, he will deny it of course, but when Doc Searls praises you so highly, you’ve been granted more authority then the rest of us anonymous Joes.

Go and enjoy your recognized punditry Dave. Or deny that you are one. Your choice my friend 🙂

Reading Doc’s post I just kept on thinking to myself… “oh the irony…”. I love it 🙂 Honestly though, your writing does deserve some more attention and I’m very happy to see you starting to garner it.

Interesting Conversations at Philly Blogger Meetup

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We had another fun and thought provoking meetup last night in Philly. One of our conversations has led me to post at Philly Future a question: is it only the young and the rich who blog?

Note I have a rather flexible notion of who is young and who is rich. If you’re not a senior citizen – you’re young. If you shop at Starbucks for coffee – you’re rich.

I think that just about covers 99% of the bloggers I personally know.

Where are the seniors and where are the lower middle class and poor bloggers? Reply at Philly Future.

Rich-poor gap gaining attention

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csmonitor.com:

The Fed chief than added that the 80 percent of the workforce represented by nonsupervisory workers has recently seen little, if any, income growth at all. The top 20 percent of supervisory, salaried, and other workers has.

The result of this, said Greenspan, is that the US now has a significant divergence in the fortunes of different groups in its labor market. “As I’ve often said, this is not the type of thing which a democratic society – a capitalist democratic society – can really accept without addressing,” Greenspan told the congressional hearing.

The cause of this problem? Education, according to Greenspan. Specifically, high school education. US children test above world average levels at the 4th grade level, he noted. By the 12th grade, they do not. “We have to do something to prevent that from happening,” said Greenspan.

From Think Progress: Minimum Wage: By The Numbers:

4.3 million: Number of Americans who have fallen into poverty since President Bush took office

$5.15: Federal minimum wage

26%: How much the inflation-adjusted value of the minimum wage has eroded since 1979

0: Number of times minimum wage has increased since 1997

7: Number of times Congress has increased its own pay since 1997

$0: How much more a year people earning minimum wage earn today compared to 1997

$28,500: How much more a year members of Congress make today compared to 1997

$10,700: Amount a person making minimum wage will earn in a year

$5,000: Amount below the poverty level working 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year at minimum wage will leave a family of three

7,300,000: Number of workers who would benefit from an increase in the minimum wage

72%: Percentage of adult workers who would benefit from an increase in the minimum wage

1,800,000: Number of parents with kids under the age of 18 who would benefit from an increase in the minimum wage

11 million: Number of jobs added to the economy in the four years after the last minimum wage hike

$8.70: Amount minimum wage would have to be today to have the same purchasing power it had in 1968

2.5 years: Amount of health care for two children which could be bought by raising the minimum wage from $5.15 to $7.25

86%: Percentage of Americans who support raising the federal minimum wage

“reforming into thousands of cultural tribes”

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Chris Anderson, in his latest post, “Massively parallel culture” says:

…Rather than the scary fragmentation of our society into a nation of disconnected people doing their own thing, I think we’re reforming into thousands of cultural tribes, connected less by geographic proximity and workplace chatter than by shared interests. Whether we think of it this way or not, each of us belongs to many different tribes simultaneously, often overlapping (geek culture and Lego), often not (tennis and punk-funk).

What’s interesting is that the same Long Tail forces and technologies that are leading to an explosion of variety and abundant choice in the content we consume are also helping to connect us to other consumers, whether through Amazon and Netflix reviews, blogs, p2p networks or playlist sharing.

Here goes how I see it: Web 1.0 technologies helped us to define our own personal niches by letting us filter: find and consume entertainment, goods, services information exactly to our liking. This empowered us to focus our attention and consumption to our own idiosyncratic tastes. Web 2.0 technologies enable us to communicate and connect with others who share these preferences, concerns, and joys – but only if we are so motivated.

Left Self Correcting?

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Chris Bowers of MyDD posts a roaring call to arms and announces he is going local – he wants to pursue reform of the local Philadelphia Democratic party.

He’s joining the terrific group Young Philly Politics that have been pursuing the same.

Meanwhile, Shelley Powers, a writer whose opinion I respect, declares she’s going Green.

I just mentioned three Democratic leaning bloggers pushing for either reform of their own party, or leaving it all together.

How much of this is blowback from November? How much of it is because we feel empowered to make change? Or maybe more precisely – how much of it is because we don’t feel empowered – that we don’t feel a collective ownership of the party?

A commenter in the MyDD thread rebuts that instead of forming whole new organizations that maybe we should be working actively to change what is already here: “If you want to make changes, contact your committeeperson, say you’d like to go to the next ward meeting and get involved, then go. Being a footsoldier in local politics is a thankless job and volunteers for it are few – you won’t have much competition. Or volunteer to work at the polls. Don’t know how it is in other wards, but after the election, all the pollworkers in my ward are invited to a post-election party where one can smooze and network.”