The Introductory Clause

The Plateau?

2012-01-28T12:15:00.008-06:00

I clearly remember, as a child, being frustrated when hearing about how little things used to cost. It was incomprehensible that the comic books I was paying seventy-five cents for used to go for a nickel or a dime apiece, that a pack of baseball cards could be had for a few pennies, or that coins alone could get you into the movie theater. Of course, nobody told me how little the average income was in those days, so I had a rather flawed understanding of how inflation worked. The result is that I had a vague sense that things had gotten harder over the years, and I was nostalgic for an existence that nobody ever experienced.

But this melancholy was paired with a weird kind of optimism. I didn't see things getting any worse. Particularly when comic book prices were raised to a buck apiece, I saw this as a logical telos. The dollar was the central signifier--the same price that one paid for a fundraising candy bar. It wasn't conceivable that this central unit could be exceeded--no way would they inconvenience a kid to shell out a coin on top of the piece of paper they were already asking!

Now as an adult, I still find myself in a weird place. I clearly remember comic books costing less than a dollar, but now that they sell for three or four bucks a pop, it scarce seems possible that this was ever the case. I have a hard time believing that I once filled up my car with gasoline for about a buck a gallon, but I seem to remember having done that (and taking it for granted that it would always be about that much). And I have a clear memory of a point in time when no baseball player was paid three million dollars in a single year.

Actually, I can clearly recall buying a baseball magazine that listed every player in the "two million dollar" club (around 20 or so if I recall correctly), analyzing whether they were "worth it." Then I recall an offseason where Kirby Puckett and Rickey Henderson each broke the three million barrier. In hindsight, it's incredibly hard to believe that Minnesota and Oakland paid out the biggest contracts in all of baseball. It's just bizarre that Kansas City made the biggest splash in the free agency market in 1990, giving them the biggest payroll in all of baseball (they would end up with horrible returns on their financial investments).

Oakland upped the ante again by giving Jose Canseco over five million dollars per year in 1990. I remember hearing stats guru Bill James on the radio saying: "I've predicted that by the end of the decade we'll see a $10 million dollar player. We are only a few months into the decade, and we've already got a $5 million dollar guy." I still didn't buy his prediction... and by the end of the decade we had seen a $20 million player. Contracts have been signed that allow players in one year to eclipse the entirety of that 1990 Kansas City payroll.

But I find a couple of interesting aspects of the current financial status of professional sports. First, inflation over the last decade has been slight. Players aren't making all that much more now than they were 10 years ago, and certainly the percentage increase has slowed drastically in comparison to the increase over the course of the previous decade.

Second, even though players are making exponentially more money than they were 20 years ago, I perceive that the public has grown more content with exorbitant salaries. To be sure, most people would assert that athletes are overpaid (even though by objective standards they are not--knee jerk reactions don't consider the revenue that they create). But I'm not hearing as many complaints as I used to. I remember going to a Milwaukee Brewers game in the mid-1990s, where a friend of my dad's turned to him and asked "Can you believe these guys make more money in a year than you and I will make in our lifetime?" I remember an occasion in the early 2000s when I witnessed a guy turn down a free ticket to a Brewers game with the excuse that "they make too much money."

I'm not suggesting that such a sentiment doesn't exist at all anymore, but I'm convinced that it is less pervasive. It is as if we needed time to get used to the fact that athletes make a lot of money relative to most people, but now that this has been the status quo long enough, it is less objectionable. We are resigned to the present situation, even as we wistfully but vaguely hold the notion that it wasn't always this way. And at the same time, we seem to have the tacit understanding that salaries have plateaued. As far as I know, Bill James isn't predicting the emergence of a $50 million man. It all reminds me a little bit of when comic books cost a dollar.

Nostalgic for the Present

2012-01-21T10:44:00.008-06:00

The other day, my "little" brother posted on Facebook that the song "All My Friends" by LCD Soundsystem made him nostalgic...for things that haven't even happened yet. In a strange twist of meta-irony, this comment made me nostalgic for an Onion article that I read about 15 years ago, which commented on the acceleration of nostalgia--an article I was able to unearth thanks to the retroectionary power of the Internet (I made the word up the word "retroection" to describe the resurrection of something retroactive. I don't expect it to catch on, though). The money quote from the article: "We are talking about a potentially devastating crisis situation in which our society will express nostalgia for events which have yet to occur."

Taking away the hyperbole, however, and the 1997 article actually emerges as a fascinating and incredibly prescient analysis of cultural consumption of nostalgia. (And the fact that the article predicts retroactivity may just make this the most ironic thing ever produced by an entity built on irony). I was struck by this quote:

"Before long," Williams warned, "the National Retro Clock will hit 1992, and we will witness a massive grunge-retro explosion, which will overlap with the late-period, mainstream-pop remnants of the original grunge movement itself. For the first time in history, a phenomenon and nostalgia for that particular phenomenon will actually meet."

And that actually kind of happened. A few years later bands like Creed and Nickelback would emerge as spot-on iterations of "late-period, mainstream-pop remnants of the original grunge movement," at the same time MTV was putting out specials around the fifth anniversary of Kurt Cobain's death. (And in recent years the National Retro Clock flipped back to 1992 again).

Then consider this quote from the Onion:

According to the report, retro-kitsch aesthetics—previously the domain of a tiny group of forward-thinking, backward-looking alterna-hipsters, or "retro-cognoscenti"—have become so prevalent in the national pop-culture psyche over the last decade that they have been absorbed into the marketing strategies of major retail chains and mass-media promotional campaigns.

And compare with this quote from Simon Reynolds in the Slate article linked above (which was published last year):

what is striking about the recent "9ties R Back!" blather is the absence of any real sense of "by popular demand." The retrospection feels rote, the predictable upshot of the way that commemorative cycles have become a structural, in-built component of the media and entertainment industry. This revival is largely top-down, not grass-roots.

The Onion also identifies 2005 as the year when the "nation will entirely run out of past," which is about the time Facebook started taking off and our culture arguably shifted from innovating to curating. In his book Retromania, Reynolds argues that this shift is to be lamented. While The Onion jokes about a "national retro crisis," Reynolds believes that this is precisely what has occurred to our culture, that we are too obsessed with the past to forge new trails.

But I'm not totally convinced that new trails are all that necessary. Perhaps this is the predictably conservative sentiment of a thirtysomething parent who has seen enough change in pop culture to be satiated and content with stasis. But I also consider the implications of the conviction that creative innovation is necessary. To urge society to "progress" is on some level to condemn the past. Is it a fact that someone who died prior to 1950 lived a lesser life than us for having never known rock and roll? Is someone who died in 1990, old and full of years, to be pitied for having missed the grunge explosion? Are we to shed a tear for all those who passed on before they were entertained by Seinfeld or The Sopranos? For that matter, for all the souls who have departed this Earth prior to the invention of television, are we to feel that they have missed an essential experience of what it means to be human? (Or is it more likely that raised up to peer at our existence, they might levy that exact judgement against us?)

If we admit that it is possible to have lived a fulfilling existence prior to any particular idiom's genesis, then we have to admit that it is okay for us to wallow in stasis and in "retromania." And it is not like the last decade saw no worthwhile innovation...we had LCD Soundsystem, after all.

Sick of it?

2012-01-19T13:42:00.003-06:00

In a poll conducted three months ago, 83% of Americans reported that they were already sick of the 2012 presidential race. Now, the results of this poll have only been reported by one source, and that source is an online satirical magazine, but still... anecdotal evidence leads me to believe that there is a veneer of validity behind this assertion. And if this is the case, Americans ought to be pleased with the rapid winnowing of the GOP presidential field, even though fewer than one-third of one percent of the national 2008 electorate has so far turned out to vote.

Meanwhile, a Google search of "sick of Tebow" yields over 5.8 million hits. I guess CBS is glad the Broncos lost last week, since so many people are so sick of Tebow that they wouldn't have watched the AFC Championship game had he been in it. (Despite the fact that ratings for games involving Tebow the last few weeks were up dramatically over similar games a year ago...and despite CBS now reaching out to try to get Tebow as a guest analyst this week).

These two examples illustrate a couple of fascinating trends in our culture:

1. Events and phenomena are getting more drawn out and more saturated. The calendar season for every major American sport is significantly longer than it was 50 years ago (barring a labor interruption of course). Academic calendars have been lengthened. The presidential campaign season is insanely longer than it used to be. Christmas starts in October. The reasons behind these lengthenings may be various, but nothing seems to be getting shorter. As for saturation, I think that can be largely attributed to the media climate. With many media sources now competing for attention, they ride the "hot hand" and give special attention to what is "trending." And in the case of the media feeding culture, I don't think it's impossible that supply may inspire demand.

2. While events and phenomena get longer, our attention spans have gotten shorter. The same media climate, the sheer number of things that are now accessible to us, lead us to impatience and instant gratification. Remote controls and mouse clicks give us the power to sift through content rapidly. And consequently, we grow impatient with things that are overexposed.

3. While we complain about overexposure, we also don't want to miss out on trends. Especially since the death of a monoculture, the few elements that remain that carry mass interest and appeal--such as presidential races and NFL football--will naturally be even more saturated.

So we are stuck in a loop where we are implicitly demanding saturation, annoyed when it happens, but then left wanting more when it finally ends (which leads us to look for something else to obsess over, starting the cycle all over again). So while it might not be inaccurate to say we are "sick of" something, we should also admit that this is not synonymous with a desire for it to end.

Why "Tom"?

2012-01-07T14:30:00.006-06:00

Like most people who maintain a blog, I spend a lot of time thinking about cultural phenomena-- what makes some things popular with a mass audience, some things popular with a niche audience, and other things not particularly popular with anybody. Perhaps it is obvious, but I've found that the second category is the most difficult to understand, followed by the third category, with the first being the easiest. At least I thought I had it all figured out.

I decided that the formula to becoming a popular mainstream recording artist was to construct narratives in accessible formats, with just a tinge of novelty. My theory was heavily influenced by Chuck Klosterman's analysis of the popularity of what he calls "Wal-Mart country music" in Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs. His argument for why Eminem became the most popular rapper in the nation had nothing to do with racial dynamics, authenticity, or for that matter, beats: "He enunciates better than any rapper who's ever lived. He's literally good at talking." Klosterman goes on to explore how important lyrics are in modern country music, and how much they resonate with their audience--Wal-Mart shoppers (i.e. the mainstream).

I ran across this article a few years ago, which explores the power of narrative to shape our view of reality. While again the country music genre may provide the most readily apparent examples of narratives, I've come to realize that a large percentage of the most popular songs have at least a simple plot outline. While the Beatles are one of the most critically-acclaimed bands of all time, I think their popular success can be attributed to the sheer number of narratives they conveyed. For every "Revolution #9," there was an "Ob-la-de Ob-la-da," which told a rudimentary story. (And of course, they enunciated well).

But while the audience wants accessibility and familiarity, there needs to be some element, however small, which serves to set the product apart from other products. "She Loves You" was an accessible mini-narrative that could have been written by any number of bands--until the "Yeah, yeah, yeah" chorus made it distinctive. Or sometimes it's not the content but the packaging that makes something stand out. Did the Beatles popularize the moptop hairstyle or did the moptop hairstyle popularize the Beatles?

And extrapolating from the recording industry, I determined that some combination of accessibility, narrative, and novelty results in popularity. And I found a lot of confirming evidence and very little to disconfirm my theory. But then my son became a fan of Thomas the Tank Engine.

He's not quite two years old, so he is too young to follow a plot. His still-limited vocabulary means that not much is truly accessible to him. And yet he has developed a true attachment to a select group of fictional characters, including the aforementioned Thomas, Superman and Batman, the Veggie Tales cohort, Curious George, and of course, Elmo. Recently, he's been making his initial forays into capitalistic interpolation. Yesterday in the grocery store he caught sight of Veggie Tales fruit snacks, pointed at them, and excitedly kept repeating "Tales, tales, tales!" (This was a particularly short interpolation period, since his first exposure to Veggie Tales came in the form of a couple of DVDs he received from relatives at Christmas). And then today in a department store he ended up with a Thomas the Tank Engine T-shirt after he pointed and enthusiastically exclaimed "Tom!" (He later repeated this exclamation in the car even with the shirt out of sight, and then tried to put it on at home even before he had his coat off).

What I am trying to figure out is why he prefers some characters over others. He seems to have some affinity for the entire Sesame Street cast, but he clearly favors Elmo. Why does he love Thomas, but show apathy toward the tank engine's PBS colleague, the Cat in the Hat?

Some may suspect that parental influence is the decisive factor, that his mother and I must have displayed our own preferences and that he is picking up on our cues. Or that sheer exposure is decisive in forming his attachments. I don't discount that his affection for Superman and Batman is in large part a consequence of his father's demonstrated attachment. And his fondness for Curious George is probably related to the fact that A)He owns two Curious George books that are frequently fodder for bedtime stories and B)The Curious George cartoon airs in the morning at a time when his parents are getting ready for the day and an electronic babysitter is helpful.

But that still doesn't explain his Elmo affinity. And "Tom" and "Tales" have only been introduced to him casually--he has taken the initiative in implicitly declaring his partiality for them. I wonder if there isn't something elemental in his valuations, something that might even inform why we esteem what we do. I stumbled onto another theory of popularity a little over one year ago, in which I hypothesized that we are drawn to things that combine the familiar and the strange. Thinking about what some of my son's favorite characters have in common, there is a thread of anthropomorphism, which is almost by definition a combination of familiar and strange. A train car with a human face, for example, qualifies.

But aside from Curious George, who has extenuating circumstances, there is another common thread among all of the favorite characters--primary colors (red, blue, and green). My favorite superheroes have always been Superman and Spider-Man. These characters have also been the flagship characters for their respective comic book companies. There is really not a lot that these characters have in common, though, except for having a red and blue color palette. Could that be an underlying reason for their enduring popularity?

Perhaps all of my theories are not unrelated. Maybe the primary color comprises the "familiar" in the familiar/strange dynamic. Maybe the primary color makes the product accessible, and for a child, maybe the specificity inherent in a name is enough to constitute a primitive narrative. It is frustrating to realize that by the time my son is old enough to tell me why he likes certain fictional constructs, his reasons will have probably changed. If only he could enunciate better... But I suppose he enunciates well enough to get his parents to buy him things he wants.

Free Time in 2012?

2011-12-31T08:41:00.002-06:00

What do you do in your "free time"? I've come to grow weary of this cliched question. I would guess that a large number of adults, certainly those with young children, would scoff at the notion that there is such a thing as "free time" in their lives. And yet--I've carved out time once a week in 2011 to write a blog post. But at this point, after more than six years, I'm not sure this qualifies as a free choice so much as an ingrained habit. And I suppose this is a good description for any of my so-called "hobbies." Any leisurely pursuits of mine in the previous year, and in the handful of years prior to that, qualify as reflexive. And I don't anticipate a change in this status in 2012.

But I still can't help but be interested in other people's answer to the "free time" question. Most of the Christmas letters I saw this year followed the same general template, with annual updates on jobs, health, new or deceased family members, and travels. But I would appreciate coming across those that indicated some kind of exotic expenditure of time (e.g. avid interest in the bull riding circuit).

If people of modest means find a way to step off the beaten path, one might expect that those who are wealthy, especially those that don't have to report to a workplace for months at a time, would have the ability to really seek out all that life has to offer. So I went to nba.com and packers.com to read the P.R.-posted bios of a sample of professional athletes. Once you get past the sections detailing charity works of various magnitude (one athlete was simply credited with volunteering at a fundraiser as a high school student to benefit a classmate with cancer) most bios listed a player's "hobbies." And far and away the top two hobbies for pro athletes:

1. Watching movies
2. Playing video games

Also, the far and away most popular TV show for athletes to watch is Family Guy. To be fair, a number listed golf or outdoors activities, but it struck me how few did anything interesting with their lives "outside the lines." I suppose it's not at all surprising--athletes get their fill of travel, and they have to physically exert themselves so much as part of their jobs that they might want to pursue sedentary "activities" during off hours (though as an English teacher it always pains me to see how much of the population is apathetic or even adversarial to reading).

Next, I went searching for information on how those who want to lead the free world spend their free time. But while there is an abundance of biographical information on those seeking the Republican nomination for president, it is surprisingly difficult to locate listings of hobbies. (Jon Huntsman is an exception: he likes Harleys, motocross racing, and taco stands). While nationally prominent politicians have resources, I suppose their full-time hobby is campaigning, so they are limited
in their ability to explore anything off the beaten (campaign) path.

So not to present too bleak of a picture, but it looks like most of us aren't in a position to pursue a new hobby in the new year, and even those who might have that capability aren't sufficiently motivated to pursue it. But perhaps what we can do (for now) is to live vicariously. We might not have time (or inclination) to devote to exploring bullriding, but we can take a few minutes to have a conversation to share in the enthusiasm of somebody who does. We might not have the time or money to set up a fish tank in our homes, but we can comment when somebody else posts a picture of his or her fish on Facebook, perhaps leading to further conversation. We might not be able to scale a mountain this year, but we could read a book by someone who has. It seems to me that any of these things would be more memorable than watching another movie or playing another video game.

Merry Christmas 12/30/11

2011-12-30T09:03:00.006-06:00

As I write this post on December 30, I haven't seen any evidence anywhere that Christmas decorations have been taken down. Then again, it's hard to necessarily identify what is absent--it's easier to notice what is still present. And while driving through the Wisconsin countryside last night, I could see that houses were still illuminated throughout the horizon. Driving through towns, city decorations are still prominent. Stopping at a Subway restaurant,a fully ornamented tree was on display.

I imagine that at this time next week these sights will have faded into memory. I've never really payed attention to the exact day that the holiday season has transitioned. The traditional Epiphany holiday is not celebrated by stores, so the notion of 12 days of Christmas is probably known to younger generations as a concept only expressed in the words of an eccentric song.

From my understanding of the ancient world, there was really no such thing as a single-day holiday. Festivals had to be worth the logistical efforts involved in their staging, which naturally would have been rather more arduous in those days than what we are accustomed to. So the pay-off would have to be grander, the narrative of celebration more prolonged. Of course, our holidays too tend to be prolonged, particularly the Christmas holiday, it's just that the narrative has been frontloaded. Largely because of commercial interests, the buildup has become the emphasis, the climax relegated to the status of a coda, the falling action truncated.

But beyond sequences of celebration, I find this phenomena to be a troublesome element pervasive in our contemporary times. The media news cycle has also contributed to a climate of rapid obsolescence. Anything we consume is packaged with an expiration date, even intellectual considerations that may actually benefit from a longer period of digestion.

I speak from experience, having once worked in talk radio. One example that comes to mind: part of my job responsibilities involved lining up guests to discuss supposedly relevant topics. A week prior to the opening of the new Soldier Field in Chicago, an architecture critic wrote a review in one of the Chicago papers. I contacted him to see if he would be willing to discuss his review on our radio station, and when he proved agreeable, I suggested we line something up for the morning after the first Bears game. He was a bit surprised by this proposal, wondering if I wouldn't prefer to have him on prior to the game. I noted that it would be nice for people to have first seen the stadium on TV to have a better frame of reference for his expert opinion. He agreed and the interview was scheduled...then I had to repeat my thought process to the announcers who would be conducting the interview, who thought it would be better to talk about something before it happened, rather than run the risk of dwelling on "old news."

But I'm of the opinion that there is no such thing as "old news." I think it would be just as relevant to have that critic on a sports radio station today, given that the stadium still stands and nothing has really changed in its architecture. Anything that is worthy of conversation isn't worthy just because of the calendar (and things that are "current" aren't always worthy of conversation).

I'm not suggesting that Christmas trees be displayed year round. But on the other hand, on a cold, desolate February night, I don't think I would mind seeing houses illuminated throughout the Wisconsin countryside.

Ramble On

2011-12-18T15:21:00.005-06:00

I re-heard a word this week, a word that I've heard probably hundreds of times, but never once originally uttered live my entire life, at least in the particular context I am referencing.

And if it sounds like I am rambling, that is by design. Taking a break from Bob Dylan's Christmas album, I was listening to a version of his 1965 song "Live Minus Zero/No Limit," which contains the lyric: "The bridge at midnight trembles/The country doctor rambles." I don't think Dylan is implying that the country doctor is spewing verbage...which I believe is the only context I've actually heard the word "ramble" applied to in my lifetime. But just off the top of my head I can think of a number of rock songs of the 60s era which use the word to refer to traveling, likely aimless traveling. The Rolling Stones had a hit with "Midnight Rambler" in 1969. Led Zeppelin released "Ramble On" that very same year. A few years after that the Allman Brothers charted with "Ramblin' Man."

Perhaps the explanation is simple. Perhaps all these references trace back to Robert Johnson's 1936 recording of "Ramblin' on my Mind," a song all of the above artists would likely be familiar with (Eric Clapton certainly was, as he recorded his own version). As the blues lexicon has faded from our popular culture, it would make sense that this particular usage of the word would become obsolete, even as the songs are preserved by classic rock radio.

But if you've ever read this blog before, you know I'm not going to settle for the simple explanation. I've got to think that based upon word usage, for a particular time in the 20th Century, "rambling" was an action valued by large segments of the culture, a value that is no longer widely held. Certainly, it was a part of the beatnik/hippie ethos of the mid-20th Century to take to the road and explore parts unknown--and not just by driving themselves. A recent blog/podcast from the Freakonomics authors explored the decline in the practice of hitchhiking, also offering up the theory that a revival of the practice would be of a net benefit to society.

Their argument is that fear of crime was just one factor in the decline of hitchhiking. The other factor was that there has been a large increase in automobile availability. Some used to hitchhike out of a sense of adventure, but most did so out of necessity. And for most of them, the necessity just isn't there anymore. Even if someone breaks down, roadside assistance is a phone call away---and it is obviously much easier to make that phone call since the invention of the cell phone.

While hitchhikers were forced to "ramble," out of necessity, I've got to think that even motorists were sometimes forced to become ramblers. With no cell phones, no Mapquest or Google maps, no GPS systems, and no websites that allow one to plan destinations ahead of time, there was by necessity more randomness involved in covering territory. And randomness leads to rambling.

There is no way to ever know such a statistic, but I would like to know how many people every year set out in an automobile without a fixed destination in mind. And I would like to see a comparison of this number over the years. My guess is that at the time period when the word "ramble" was finding its way into songs, the number of real life ramblers was at an all-time high.

And now, for most of us, our rambling is much more abstract. Now, perhaps the only way we are free to travel without a map is when we give expression to a stream of consciousness. But the risk we take then is that we get accused of rambling.

The Most Repetitive Time of the Year

2011-12-10T20:02:00.004-06:00

"Joy to the World" was written in 1719. "Silent Night" is from 1818. "Jingle Bells" was first heard in 1857. "Here Comes Santa Claus" found its way into the world in 1934. "Holly Jolly Christmas" came around in the mid 1960s. But to anyone born after 1970, these songs have all existed for their entire life, so there is really no distinction to be made in point of origin. It's a little bit difficult for me to fathom that there ever was a time when people would have known "Joy to the World" but not "Silent Night." It's even odd to consider that there was a time when kids would have sang about Rudolph without ever having heard of Frosty.

As the graphic above points out, out culture has canonized, codified, and now closed off its Christmas standards. While there was a boom in additions to the Christmas canon during the middle part of the 20th Century, by 1970 we'd reached a critical mass. That year's "Feliz Navidad" became the final entry. (Though first John Lennon and Yoko Ono and then Bob Geldof and Midge Ure have found a bit of a backdoor to inclusion by coming up with a subgenre of Christmas protest songs).

The caption on the graphic takes a cynical view of the matter, theorizing that the reason we have a frozen canon is because Baby Boomers are looking to constantly replicate their childhood experiences. While I don't doubt that the American Christmas is a nostalgia-driven phenomenon, I don't think it's just Boomers that are imposing this replication on subsequent generations. The Xers and Millenials are apparently all too content to adopt the same standards, without demanding any new additions themselves.

But why then did we have a time period where we suddenly did see an explosion of new Christmas songs? Many will notice the secularization of the holiday in the titles in the graphic above. And the process of commodifying Christmas began in earnest right around this time (for example, Rudolph was created by a department store chain in 1939). In moving the center of the holiday from the church to the shopping mall, it would stand to reason that a song like "It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas" would assuage the guilt and encourage the consumerist impulses of the holiday shopper. Whereas "Gentle Mary Laid Her Child" might inspire one to quiet reflection, a center of commerce would rather the customer be inspired to different impulses in hearing "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree." And you might regard the inclusion of Santa Claus in any song as a code for "toys and goodies"--i.e. "Toys and Goodies are Coming to Town," or perhaps "I Saw Mommy Kissing Capitalism."

And the other obvious factor that led to the popularization of those songs of the mid-20th Century was the rise of mass media. Many of those songs were first introduced to society in films. Many wouldn't have been created in the first place if not for the demands of the (then) new media. If Bing Crosby had been born 50 years earlier (or 50 years later), nobody would care if we had a white Christmas, but because he was born in 1903 and was at his career peak during the golden age of radio, meteorology this time of year is placed under increased scrutiny.

In light of these factors, it's not surprising to me that our holiday soundtrack is stagnant. The novelty now is only to be found in anticipating what artist will release a Christmas album and what particular songs they will record. And certainly now that our monoculture has been smashed by the World Wide Web, I don't anticipate ever living to see a radical alteration of the increasingly entrenched roster of standards. But I'll try not to let it get me down. I'd rather not have a Blue Christmas.

Pleasure Seeking Trouble

2011-12-04T22:11:00.002-06:00

Last week, my favorite professional football team (the Green Bay Packers) and my favorite college football team (the Wisconsin Badgers) won important games. The Packers all but sewed up their division with what turned out to be a pretty easy victory over the Detroit Lions. The Badgers shellacked Penn State to advance to the Big 10 Championship. Despite the magnitude of the games, I don't recall too much conversation about either one in the succeeding week.

This week, both teams won again. But for me, there has already been a noticeable difference in the level of interest. Everywhere I went today there was conversation about last night's Badger game. I haven't been out in public since the Packer game ended a few hours ago, but I would predict the same level of conversation about the Packers tomorrow. The difference between this week and last week? This week's games weren't nearly as easily won. At times the Badgers looked like they would certainly lose. They overcame some obstacles, made some unlikely plays, and escaped after an odd penalty against their opponents. The Packers appeared at times to be vulnerable for their first loss of the season, most notably when their opponent tied the game with under a minute to play. Overtime seemed certain, but the Packers mounted a furious drive in that closing minute and kicked a field goal to win as time expired.

In both the Badger and Packer game this week, analysts referred to the contest as a "heavyweight fight." I tend to laugh at this metaphor, because the few heavyweight fights I've seen in my life (I've seen few since most are on Pay-Per-View) have been boring--a couple of fat guys hitting each other with no noticeable effect, until one inexplicably tips over (Such as the 1990 Cooney vs. Foreman fight). But to borrow another cliche, these games were "seesaw battles."

And that's fine and good if you don't have a vested interest in the outcome. Seesaw battles are going to be entertaining if you are watching for the sake of being entertained. But theoretically, fans don't watch for that reason. They invest in the success of a team they choose to affiliate themselves with, and then take pride (or suffer humiliation) with that team's fortunes. Therefore, victories in "heavyweight fight/seesaw battles" shouldn't be as savored as those in which your guys run roughshod over the opponent.

And yet--we tend to celebrate victories the greater if they have a measure of agony in the achieving. Actually, St. Augustine noticed this phenomenon long before football was invented. He wrote:

The conquering commander triumphant; yet had he not conquered unless he had fought; and the more peril there was in the battle, so much the more joy is there in the triumph. The storm tosses the sailors, threatens shipwreck; all wax pale at approaching death; sky and sea are calmed, and they are exceedingly joyed, as having been exceeding afraid. A friend is sick, and his pulse threatens danger; all who long for his recovery are sick in mind with him. He is restored, though as yet he walks not with his former strength; yet there is such joy, as was not, when before he walked sound and strong. Yea, the very pleasures of human life men acquired by difficulties, not those only which fall upon us unlooked for, and against our wills, but even by self-chosen, and pleasure-seeking trouble.

I like that as a definition of sports: "Pleasure-seeking trouble." From now on, instead of saying that I'm going to watch a football game involving one of my favorite teams, I'm going to announce that I will be engaging in "Pleasure-seeking trouble."

What's in Two Names?

2011-11-26T08:15:00.005-06:00

Lately, I've been watching the 1948 Superman movie serial (a series of 15 episodes that were shown weekly in theaters prior to full-length movies). I could probably do a series of blog posts on how media from the post-World War II era compares to media today and how shifts in media reflect societal shifts. But today I will limit myself to one observation.

Consider this list of characters from the 1948 serial: Brock, Conrad, Hackett, Graham, Leeds, and Morgan. By way of comparison, here is a list of characters from three consecutive episodes from season three of Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, a TV series from the 1990s: Lucille Newtrich, Leigh-Anne Stipanovic, Donald Rafferty, Steve Law, Hank West, Lisa Rockford, and Skip Wallace. A subtle change, but it says a lot about how society changed in a half century.

Having read a lot of 19th Century (and prior) literature, I can clearly see that the '48 iteration of Superman's adventures are rooted in a then-longstanding literary tradition. The titular characters of novels may have been afforded special treatment, but by what name do we know the sidekick of Sherlock Holmes? Who did Elizabeth Bennett fall in love with? And in The Scarlet Letter, I don't think Dimmesdale was the character's first name.

Never mind heroes, it's interesting to also consider the nomenclature of villains. Dimmesdale had Chillingworth to cotend with. When Lex Luthor was first introduced in comic books, his first couple appearances he was known simply as "Luthor." Think of the most iconic cinematic villains of the last 30 years: Freddy Krueger and Hannibal Lecter are referenced by their first names.

Female characters, usually not as prominent as males in the older narratives, are another interesting case. As supporting characters they tended to be affixed with last names and a prefix (think of Mrs. Olsen in Little House on the Prairie), while main characters were usually afforded either first name status, or full name references (Elizabeth Bennett, Hester Prynne, Lois Lane). To fully examine the implications of these practices would require a separate post, but suffice it to say that at the same time women were attempting to carve out identities separate from men, their status in narratives was curiously both conforming to and resisting societal norms.

And also of interest, children were the one demographic group that was completely free of the burdens of a family name. Tom Sawyer famously clung to his childhood fantasies in Mark Twain's portrayals. But why should we grow up and face reality as long as people were still calling him "Tom"? Only when he became "Sawyer" to his peers would he feel the expectation to act accordingly.

Fascinatingly, the situation today, particularly among males, is completely reversed. When one first makes an acquaintance in adulthood, unless the situation dictates a high level of formality, the principles are most likely to address each other by first names. But among children and particularly among adolescents and young adults, the last name is usually the preferred means of address. What does this mean?

First, we need to consider why the general shift occurred, why in 1948 Superman interacted with people known exclusively by their surnames and in 1995 he was dealing with people with two names. It may be an easy, knee-jerk reaction to blame solipsism, to claim that society has shifted from the mindset of filial obligation and self-denial to an era of me-first entitlement. But given that this shift in narrative practice occurred at precisely the same time that the Baby Boomers came of age--I'm not going to overthink things and I'll go with the easy, knee-jerk reaction.

But aren't young people particularly solipsistic? Why would their cohort be the last to hold to an outward identification with a family identity? Here, the simple answer may not be the best one. At the same time that anyone is seeking to assert independence, there is always a part of themselves, sometimes a large part, that is scared of striking out on their own. The practice of surname identification has a foot in both worlds--in the world at large (or school playground, as the case may be), one is leaving behind the name the name they are known by within their family circle, but at the same time retrenching with a name that is safely connected and rooted to a comfortable identity.

Now, if only teen-agers were in charge of writing our stories today, it would be a whole lot easier to keep character's names straight.

Best of Times and Worst of Times

2011-11-20T20:10:00.007-06:00

A few weeks ago, my brother randomly posted on Facebook "What was the best year of the '90s?" I had two reactions to this posting. First, I was impressed that he managed to put the apostrophe in the right place (almost everybody incorrectly puts it before the "s"). Second, I was struck by how divided the responses were. By this I don't mean that the favored years were evenly parsed (though they actually were), but that the criteria for naming a favored year was split between people who based their response on some kind of personal history ("my kids were born") and people who were looking at broad cultural events, often pop culture ("Actung Baby came out").

Whenever we study or consider history in a broad cultural sense, we are exposed to narratives that seek to reduce and distill the essence of what it meant to be alive at a certain time. But obviously, one's personal history might have little to nothing to do with these cultural narratives. When I learned in school about the Great Depression, I went home and asked my parents how my ancestors coped with such hardship. They didn't really know, but hypothesized that the life of a Wisconsin farmer was always hard, whatever the general state of the economy. When I learned about the 1960s and the turmoil that enveloped the nation, I asked my parents what it was like to grow up during a time of such radical chaos, they responded that at least in small town Wisconsin, they didn't know they were growing up during a time of such radical chaos.

I'm old enough to have now lived through a few cycles of prosperity and difficulty. The general cultural consensus is that the bulk of the 1990s could be classified as the former, while the last five years have been a difficult time to be alive. But I daresay that for the majority of all people who have lived through these times, their relative state of happiness has been more contingent on whatever personal choices they have made rather than the general vicissitudes pertaining to a particular era.

But when we evaluate our personal histories and try to, in hindsight, determine our level of relative happiness, we are probably condemned to overestimate the cultural narratives. After all, that is what we are exposed to in media, perhaps even in textbooks. In effect, culture applies a retroactive peer pressure. If you were alive during the Carter administration, you might find yourself manufacturing a sense of unhappiness about that era, just because nobody talks about that time frame in a positive way.

But I suppose there is no great harm in such a phenomenon. And after all, when we study history we don't have time to go through and study every individual on a case-by-case basis. And when we agree to share history, it makes for easier Facebook conversations.

A Short Story

2011-11-12T15:32:00.008-06:00

English majors study a lot of things en route to a degree in English, but one somewhat odd component of the study of English is the study of English studies. (And paradoxically, perhaps only an English major would think the previous sentence is not only well-written, but clever). In other words, English majors spend a fair amount of time discussing why certain literary works are discussed. And a fair amount of time is spent debating what genres are favored by various audiences, why the genres are favored, and how that changes over time. And sometimes time is spent lamenting all of the above. In particular, the "death of poetry" is proclaimed, analyzed, and despaired over. At one time the dominant mode of literary expression and consumption, it's commonly held that now the only people who read poetry are poets.

I don't think we need to over analyze why poetry is not terribly popular in the commercial market. Poetry is not widely discussed for the same reason that paintings, sculpture, and symphonic compositions are not widely discussed. People are hard-wired to consume and discuss narratives, and most contemporary poems don't relate coherent and satisfying narratives.

Of greater interest to me is why the "short story" is not a more dominant genre in our culture, why there is not more demand for them. I'm guessing that almost everybody who has a trace of literary appreciation can cite a few memorable short stories they read during their schooldays. Given the convenience with which they can be covered in a high school curriculum, short stories still thrive in those environments. I fondly remember "The Monkey's Paw," "Contents of a Dead Man's Pocket," and selections from Bradbury, O'Henry, and Poe. One explanation is that demand is conditioned by supply--and supplying novels is more obviously lucrative than supplying a short story, perhaps even a collection of them. Also, when people are looking for a narrative they are looking to get lost in the narrative, to suspend their reality to enter another, and a full-length novel allows for a more satisfying field trip.

But on the other hand, there is much about contemporary culture that would suggest that there should be more demand for a short story. The Internet and social media are fostering a culture where short, bite-sized morsels of content are being shared, consumed, and discarded. With a proliferation of entertainment options, the less demanding of one's time, the more likely that any particular option will be chosen. Also, technology has made distribution ideal. The rise of e-readers and the ease of downloading digital units are perfect for the consumption of short stories. The iTunes store sells albums but makes the bulk of its revenue from selling short, individual songs. Wouldn't an iTunes of short stories be logical and lucrative?

But it's not just in the literary arena where it would seem that we should be poised for a golden age of short narratives. Youtube has conditioned us to watch videos for a few minutes at a time. But TV shows are actually moving away from the self-contained narrative. People now consume entire seasons of TV shows in a span of days, hooked on the serial nature of many of today's shows. But does it have to be that way? Just as most people remember specific stories from high school literary anthologies, people of a certain age can likely recall a particular Twilight Zone story that has stayed with them over the years.

So given that we demand and consume narratives, and given that we live in a culture that would seem to make the dissemination of short narratives ideal, where are the short stories? I have a theory. I think they are everywhere being consumed by everybody all the time. It's just that they are not based in fiction. I came to this realization this week when I ran across a national news story about a man who allegedly killed a woman, stole her ring, and used it to propose to his girlfriend. This story had absolutely no redeeming social value. There is nothing to be gained by becoming aware that this happened. And the same could be said every day and every week. We are fed stories about freak occurrences, about vile actions committed by villains, about cruel and unusual twists of fate, even about the heartwarming actions of unlikely heroes. And although out lives aren't overtly affected by being exposed to these narratives, they continue to pour forth.

Maybe someday they will even be studied in English classes.

One Step to Improving Your Life

2011-11-05T16:24:00.005-05:00

I've read more than a few books in my life, but I've fastidiously avoided anything that is labelled "self-help." I'd always thought that "self-help" literature is mislabeled, that true self-help doesn't require somebody else's thoughts and directions written, bound, and sold. But given that a 2001 book labeled "self-help" is required reading for a class I'm taking, I've found myself exploring some new territory.

Because I've been vigilant to the point of not even surveying this type of literature in the past, I don't know to what extent this book is representative of the genre, but I've come away impressed. The author, John Gottman, is a researcher who has decades of first-hand observational data that he uses as a basis for his theories and suggestions in the area of interpersonal communication and relationships. Wikipedia tells me that he has been profiled and interviewed by many media outlets over the years (and I came to realize that I've previously read about his work in Malcolm Gladwell's Blink).

So in short, I've become convinced that this guy has knowledge and suggestions that everybody can benefit from knowing about--and I'm inclined to think that there are some marriages that could be saved and relationships that could be salvaged if only people were exposed to Gottman's ideas. But there is no guarantee that any person, much less the people who most need to access these ideas, will discover this book. Particularly as bookstores keep cycling new books through and discarding old ones and broadcasters mine for novel content, even legitimately meaningful ideas get lost in the shuffle.

Meanwhile, a study was publicized this week linking prolonged sitting to cancer. While I suppose you could make the case that this information is not Earth-shattering, that it is well known that a sedentary lifestyle leads to greater health concerns, I would still assert that this is important information, that it has far-reaching implications in the fields of business, entertainment, and education. And I'm sure there was some casual discussion and attention paid to this study on Twitter this week, perhaps on a few talk shows, and maybe a few people seriously thought about making life changes. But I predict that five years from now, almost nobody outside of medical researchers, including the people who talked or thought about it this week, will remember this study.

We may be living in the information age, but we are nowhere near perfecting information flow, ensuring that the right information reaches the right people. Government, education, and media are probably the most prominent institutions we've tasked with figuring out how to achieve this, but government is tied down by bureaucracy and inertia, schools are doing all they can to meet baselines, benchmarks, and standards, and the media is beholden to the new and the sensational. Ideally, there would be some kind of national clearinghouse to vet and distribute information, but in practice such an agency would probably perpetuate a distopia.

So until Google comes up with the right algorithm to somehow match existing but obscure theories with the people who would most benefit from examining and applying them, we're on our own. And until then, I've learned that it helps to be a little open-minded about where to look for them.

Postgame Pressers and the Art of Evasion

2011-10-30T13:50:00.004-05:00

Most of us are accustomed to occasionally having to answer difficult questions about our behavior, our actions and inactions. As children, we have to explain to our parents why we didn't do our chores, why we got a bad grade on our report card, or why we got in a fight with a sibling. As adults, we have to explain to our bosses why we were late to work, why we didn't get a project done in the allotted time, why a customer is complaining. Bosses have to answer to their bosses and CEOs answer to a board. But very few of us are held publicly accountable for our actions. Elected officials or those in positions of power may occasionally have to answer difficult questions from a reporter. And fewer still have the task of answering public questions in the immediate aftermath of a decision. Even politicians for the most part have time to anticipate, reflect, prep, and eventually spin answers to difficult questions. And that's what fascinates me about post game press conferences in sports--it is one of the few times when a person is asked to publicly account for a decision almost instantaneously to making the decision.

That said, more often than not the press conferences are still banal. Reporters generally don't want to damage working relationships, so they tend not to be too pointed in their queries, and usually don't ask too many follow-up questions. And coaches and athletes are pretty well schooled in how to avoid "incriminating" themselves, usually giving standard responses to questions that they have more or less heard before.

But occasionally interesting things do happen in press conferences. Most people remember the instances where the "heat of the moment" gets to the respondent and results in a spectacular display of emotion. But of greater intrigue for me are the moments when a coach ruminates on some kind of philosophical discourse. College football coaches are particularly notorious for this. Perhaps being in an academic environment emboldens them to become faux philosophers. Consider Wisconsin coach Brett Bielema's comments after the Badgers heartbreaking loss on a last second Hail Mary against Michigan State last week: "I'm not spiritual but everything happens for a reason. I really do think that." Personally, I'm not sure how deterministic teleological outcomes can be attributed to purely material forces, but I'm guessing that many would still give him a pass on his logical consistency if his answer didn't seem like a convenient way to avoid responsibility for taking timeouts that enabled Michigan State to have enough time to complete their unlikely touchdown pass.

Speaking of the avoidance of responsibility, that is how I read most postgame comments. There is no doubt that there is a lot of luck involved in sports, and it can be awfully tempting for a coach to invoke luck, "the fates," "destiny," or the "[name of sport] gods" when a decision doesn't work out. And it's even more tempting when the media perpetrates the same phraseology to explain events that unfold. ESPN's Skip Bayless originally picked the Texas Rangers to win the World Series, but after the St. Louis Cardinals' unlikely triumph in Game 6 (following an unlikely late season run to even make the play-offs), he picked the Cardinals to win game 7, reasoning that they had proven that they were a team of destiny. And since the Cardinals won game 7, there is no reason he won't employ such "logic" in the future.

Without denying that luck and random variation plays a huge role in sports, I'm inclined to believe that all too often factors that can be controlled are confused with factors that can't be controlled. I'm not sure the Cardinals would have made the World Series had the Milwaukee Brewers not started Mark Kotsay in centerfield in game 3. Roenicke's reason: "I think Kotsay going in there, I always feel good when Kotsay is in the lineup. Especially when we start him, he seems to have a big day; something always good seems to happen when he's in there. The numbers matched up good." At least he mentioned numbers, though it appears that most of decision was based upon "feeling," and no mention is made of the significant decrease in range that Kotsay has compared to other centerfielders. The Brewers lost the game 4-3, with all four St. Louis runs scoring after Kotsay couldn't get to a flyball that one of the other centerfielders would have almost certainly caught.

So in light of what ended up occurring, did Bielema or Roenicke use the occasion of the postgame press conference to admit they were wrong? Of course not--that almost never happens. You are more likely to hear a manager blame a phone miscommunication (which was an excuse given in a World Series press conference this year) than express regret over a decision (which was not done in a World Series press conference this year).

But along with mea culpas, what you usually don't hear are statistically-based defenses of decisions. In many ways, the standard responses of coaches are no different than they were 20 or even 50 years ago, even though technology and greater sample sizes (through the passage of time) have given decision makers greater means to evaluate decisions. After seeing what happened to my favorite sports teams over the last couple of weeks, I'm inclined to turn game management over to a computer. Even if that means that postgame press conferences will never again be as interesting, at least they won't be as infuriating. Until that happens, though, maybe we should just let coaches and managers off the hook. If any of us had to stand before an assembled pack of interregators at the end of our workday, how rational would our responses be?

School Plays and the Free Will Paradox

2011-10-22T13:06:00.010-05:00

In the midst of writing last week's post about Bill Clinton, I was struck by one particular quote, but since it was tangential to my main point, I chose to set it aside. Now, after a week of consideration, I'd like to take it up again. Here is what the 42nd President recently said about his golf game: "Haiti just about ruined my golf game. My best year as a golfer was the first year I got out of the White House. I got down to a 10 handicap. But I'm not close to that now. I just don't play enough.

Last week's post documented how busy he has been with charitable initiatives. But apparently that wasn't the case for the first year or so that he was out of office. In fact, this quote reminded me of a news story that I saw years ago. It took me about five minutes of Googling to uncover what I was looking for, but I eventually located a USA Today article from March 2001. The article explores Clinton's difficulties in transitioning from the presidency to private life, and it starts with an account of him attending an elementary school play in Bedford, New York, the kind of event that is generally only attended by those related to the student actors. When asked why he was at the play Clinton said he had been invited by the school and that he "had the morning free."

What intrigues me about Clinton's activity is that it is arguably an exercise of complete and total freedom, and also arguably evidence of complete constriction and lack of agency. And it exposes a paradox regarding freedom, control, and autonomy.

On one hand, the ability to attend a random community function indicates unfettered individual mobility. Most of us attend functions out of obligation. Even when we give our time of our own free will to a cause or organization or to the interest of a loved one, the exact nature of our time commitment is prescribed for us. Dates and times for our presence are affixed, and though we could often still choose to back out without substantial penalty, doing so still means that we lose some privilege or social capital that we desire. And this is how it needs to be, since any organizing structure that relies on members to show up if they happen to have a morning free is doomed to failure. The students and teachers and even the parents needed to show up that day for the play to exist, for the former president to have an option to attend. But for the free agent, in this case Bill Clinton, the ability to take advantage of the cohesion of others, the ability to flutter in and out at the behest of personal whims rather than dictates, indicates a special kind of freedom outside of social structure.

But the USA Today article does not present Clinton's attendance in this light. It is not the upbeat story of a man freed from constraints, who has given his mandated service to the world and now is able to happily coast along from one random, original, and invigorating experience to the next. It is a story of a man lacking purpose and meaning. The quote "I had the morning free" is code for "I had nothing better to do." And this resonates as especially pathetic given that mere months prior to that, there was no more important man in the world, no person whose decisions were more impactful on the world. The extent of his impact now is to accept invitations that nobody likely expected him to accept. Rather than the school play being one of an infinite number of activities he may have chosen that morning, in this sense it was the only alternative to the golf course, and because it allowed him to make an impact, however meagre, he was more or less forced into this action

Yet for one who is not used to making an impact, no such dilemma asserts itself. For one who doesn't wish to contribute to the advancement of any group, organization, board, or society in general, there is no need to surrender any autonomy. But can such a person, if he or she even exists, be said to have had any autonomy to begin with?

And one may wonder if it is possible for a former president to find some resolution amidst this paradox. As Clinton's golf game has gotten worse, his ability to impact the world through the work of his foundation has increased, and presumably he doesn't have as many mornings free. But last year he did manage to drop in unannounced at a pancake breakfast for firefighters.

Whatever Happened to...

2011-10-15T08:14:00.005-05:00

Bill Clinton turned 65 this year. Suddenly hot GOP Presidential candidate Herman Cain is 65. If Mitt Romney has his way, he will have the GOP nomination wrapped up on the day he turns 65 next March. And in 2019, Bill Clinton will be able to fully speak to a question that was debated during his re-election campaign in 1996. He'll finally be the age that Bob Dole was then, so he can talk about whether a 73-year-old can be president.

I'm sure becoming president at 46 felt like a good idea at the time for Clinton, but it has led to an interesting post-presidential dynamic. How does he spend his time now? After being the most important and most scrutinized person in the world for nearly a decade, does he attempt to maintain and command some residual influence and attention? Teddy Roosevelt and JFK may be the only other presidents who were ever positioned to experience what Bill Clinton is going through, but neither of them lived to be 65 (Roosevelt got malaria and died at 60--after a tumultuous post-presidential decade which saw him try to start a third party movement).

One of the pivotal moments of Clinton's rise to prominence was a late night appearance on the once hip but now long-forgotten Arsenio Hall show. Arsenio may be long gone, but David Letterman is still around--and last week the two cultural figures of the 1990s got together. Clinton didn't play the saxophone, but he appeared on Letterman's show to promote a benefit concert this weekend, in which big name performers would be celebrating the 10th anniversary of his charitable foundation. On the bill is U2's Bono, who was at the height of his popularity when Clinton was first elected. Also on the bill is Lady Gaga, who at 6-years-old was too young to vote when Clinton was first elected.

One can follow the concert on Twitter, which of course didn't exist when Clinton was in office. Actually, what makes Clinton's current situation intriguing is that even though relatively little time has passed since he was president, the dramatic ways in which life has changed since the 1990s make his tenure seem longer ago than it was. Even if the economic collapse and the threat of terrorism hadn't happened in the intervening decade, the technological innovations alone would have made the Clinton-era seem quaint in hindsight. Never mind smartphones, cell phones were rare when Clinton first took office. Never mind Facebook or Twitter, there was no Google until late in Clinton's presidency. And the World Wide Web itself was just beginning to catch on during his first term in office. (When Bob Dole announced his campaign's website address during a debate in 1996, it was noted even at the time as a significant moment).

So how has Clinton lived amongst such an odd circumstance? Of course, there was an attempt to return to the White House in 2008 as first gentleman. I'm still struck by how normal everybody (media and voters) treated that situation. I guess people were prepared for a bid by Hillary for a long time which made it seem normal, but would anybody in 1991 have imagined that a former first lady would ever almost win a presidential nomination? But the other way that Bill Clinton has passed his time since leaving the presidency is in doing charitable work. According to the website for the aforementioned concert:

Over the past 10 years, President Clinton's vision and leadership have resulted in nearly 4 million people benefiting from lifesaving HIV/AIDS treatment; more than 12,000 U.S. schools building healthier learning environments; more than 26,000 micro-entrepreneurs, small business owners, and smallholder farmers improving their livelihoods and communities; and more than 2.2 million tons of greenhouse gases cut or abated in some of the world's largest cities. And he has redefined the way we think about giving and philanthropy through his Clinton Global Initiative, whose members have more than 2,000 commitments that have already improved the lives of 300 million people in more than 180 countries. In addition to his Foundation work, President Clinton has served as top United Nations envoy for the Indian Ocean tsunami recovery effort and currently serves as the UN Special Envoy to Haiti and the co-chair of the Interim Haiti Recovery Commission.

A personal drawback of all this work is that it has made Clinton a worse golfer. He told USA Today: "Haiti just about ruined my golf game. My best year as a golfer was the first year I got out of the White House. I got down to a 10 handicap. But I'm not close to that now. I just don't play enough. President George W. Bush and I were doing this project in Haiti, and he was ragging me. He said. 'I'm down to a 10 now.' I was there my first year after office. I said you're just going to have to resist the temptation to do good if you want to keep playing well. I said you start traveling and it will wreck you."

Clinton undoubtedly had a lot of detractors as president (whether it was a vast right-wing conspiracy or not), but one way to make the detractors go away is to stop being president and committ your life to directly helping others. And given the gridlock and the scandal that enveloped his presidency, one could make a case that as his scrutiny and notoriety have receded, his abilty to actually make a positive impact on the world has increased. And though only he can answer the question, one has to wonder if his mindset, his personal satisfaction, his mental health, and his overall level of happiness are higher now than when he was flying around in Air Force One.

So maybe the presidency is a good way for young people to prepare for a fulfilling career in philanthropy. It will be interesting to see what Barack Obama is up to when he turns 65 in 2026.

Immediate Mediators

2011-10-08T08:45:00.003-05:00

Last night, the Milwaukee Brewers played one of the most memorable games in the 41-year history of the franchise. In the nearly quarter century that I have been watching Brewer games, I have attended, watched, or listened to parts of probably a couple of thousand games--this despite the fact that in a majority of these games, the Brewers lost. In that time, the Brewers have played less than 10 postseason games. So with the relative value of my emotional investment, by all rights I should have been glued to the proceedings last night.

And I was in a way. I was following pitch-by-pitch text and graphics on a smartphone. I was not able to do more than that because I had a commitment to announce a local high school football game for a radio station. My broadcast partner and I got into a pretty good groove of following two games at once, talking nonstop about one but emotionally living and dying with the dramatic turn of events in the other (I was particularly impressed with my partners ability to also keep reasonably accurate statistics of the football game). It is an interesting experience and somewhat peculiar to our contemporary era to be living in two places at once. It's also somewhat of a paradox of our contemporary era that the wall between an immediate experience and a mediated experience is collapsing.

I think it is fair to say that in our society (and in others, including those of the past) simplicity is romanticized. We are often presented an idealized vision of a pastoral, bucolic, rustic existence, where individuals keep to themselves, aspire to nothing more than an honest day's work and its intrinsic rewards, and relationships with others are uncomplicated, based upon mutual respect and familial bonds (ironically we usually get this vision through media portrayals--it's amazing how often narratives in media attempt to subvert the vehicle through which they are conveyed).

But at the same time, it's usually been a characteristic of human societies that we have attempted to enlarge our zones of experience. For all the value placed on a simple life, for most of us that is an unrealized ideal. We seek to complicate our lives, with webs and waves of complications. We take on multiple commitments, sometimes leading to requirements to be in more than one place physically at the same time. We aspire to more than a day's work--we plan and plot future paths for ourselves, and we make contingencies for all of the possibilities that could arise in our plans. We subdivide and stratify our relationships with others (Google Plus wants us to designate people into "circles" for the purpose of sharing information). We "blend" families. And most of all (and not that this is a bad thing by any means), we want to know what is going on outside of our immediate sphere of experience. If something significant happens beyond the range of our senses to perceive it, we still want to know about it.

Of course, the subjective "significance" is usually created by mediated experience in the first place. Few would be interested in Michael Jackson's doctor's trial if not for the media phenomenon surrounding his death, and that phenomenon was only possible because of the widespread media exposure that his music received when he was alive. But of course, very few are truly affected immediately by whatever occurs in that particular trial. So in effect, we are constantly living double lives, perceiving and contemplating both that which effects us immediately and that which does not--again, waves of complication.

But these complications don't seem all that complex to us because society has more or less worked out how to balance it all. We've been born into a world where this is the normal course of affairs. The only thing that upsets the balance we've achieved is another vehicle for mediation. And that's where the smartphone/tablet/laptop comes into play. By carrying around one small device, our immediate "zone of perception" goes from the rather limited purview of our senses to the limitless possibilities of the web. And we've now reached a condition where many people, largely led by the youngest generation among us, are living the double life simultaneously, literally in two (or more) places at once, experiencing both the immediate and the mediate.

This is especially ironic for me when I consider my experience last night. My literal job was to be a mediator, to describe for people who weren't in attendance at the football game what was going on. But most likely most people who were listening to me were also multi-tasking, probably watching the Brewer game or looking at their phones or talking to others or negotiating curves while driving. And considering that I was also giving Brewer updates during the football game, they were probably well aware that I was also having a mediated experience at the same time they were, though it has become such a natural part of our existence that they probably didn't think twice. I know I didn't think much about it at the time. I just think we were all glad that the Brewers won.

Broken Cameras and Self-Surveillance

2011-10-02T14:33:00.009-05:00

As a general rule, even though I've nearly six years of blog posts to draw from, I don't like to extensively revisit previous entries. I would prefer not to fall into the habit of recycling old ideas. It would be too easy to consistently go back to what I said in 2007, drop in a few updated ruminations, and call it a day. It's more challenging, and I would argue more rewarding, to create something from the ground up. But because of events that occurred yesterday, I'm going to make an exception.

Our small town dedicated a new fire station with a community open house. Being the father of a 19-month-old, I saw this as a great opportunity to let my little boy marvel up close at fire trucks. Actually, he already already visited the station earlier in the week as part of "library storytime," and had acquired a little plastic fire helmet to wear around. But trips to a firehouse never get old for a toddler, so we had him don the fire helmet yesterday morning and we made our way to the station. At one point during the dedication ceremony, I held my helmeted little guy aloft. An older woman next to me said "That would make a great picture!" I smiled and nodded, not sure if she was asking to take my picture. She didn't say anything further and neither did I. But I was a little disturbed. Must I think of every moment with my son as a photo op?

Later, while my son and my wife had climbed aboard a fire truck and were seated inside, I asked my wife to hand me the camera. Despite my earlier reservations, I figured that photo ops like that didn't come around everyday. But I don't have a ton of experience taking pictures. I had a Diet Pepsi in one hand that I didn't want to set down, and I figured that only one hand would be required to snap the picture. You can probably tell where this is going. In the effort to press the button, I lost my grip on the camera itself, allowing gravity to drive it to the concrete below. Over 24 hours later, the screen is still displaying "System Error."

So how should I feel about this? Aside from the guilt of ruining what is essentially my wife's one and only camera, I became reflective about the importance of pictures. I vaguely remembered once writing a contrarian blog post in which I all but advocated the ban of photos. I managed to locate it: November 2007. What follows is some of the original post in italics followed by my updated commentary.

I have a general dislike for personal photographs. I believe I took some Polaroid snapshots as a kid, but I think it has been about twenty years since I have taken a photograph without coercion or irony.

Okay, as admitted above, this streak has ended. Unsurprisingly, having a kid is what triggered this change. I certainly still don't attempt to assiduously document everything the way that I think some parents might, but at times I actually have a desire to have a photographic record taken (again, see above, though at times with disastrous consequences).

I am particularly unenthused about the idea of photographs as mementos. I've never carried a photograph of a loved one with me (come to think of it, I've never carried a wallet, either, which is another odd aesthetic preference I'd have to admit to holding). My students find it odd that I don't have a picture of my wife on my desk. Now, I'm not a total cad. I don't prohibit my wife from displaying various photographs of us around our home, though if were up to me I'd rather look at pictures of chewpacabras.

The last line might seem random, but I actually had a picture of a chewpacabra (or a purported picture anyway) on my dorm wall as a college freshman. And I still never have of my own volition hung a personal picture to look at, even of my wife or son. I know what they look like. But especially since the birth of my son, my home walls have continued to flourish with evidence that my family has existed.

When one holds to such an unpopular aesthetic preference, it can be incredibly validating to discover any kind of support. Such came to me when I ran across a folk-pop singer named Richard Julian, who has a song called "Photograph" (not to be confused with the Ringo song.) He sings "I prefer a memory to a photograph" and notes that the latter is two-dimensional, while the former is three-dimensional. I would actually go one step further and assert that the memory is four-dimensional, since it can include the element of time.

I have absolutely no memory whatsoever of this artist or this song. I question whether I ever heard the song or if I ran across the lyrics somewhere. (I do still understand my Ringo reference though). I suppose it's pretty ironic to have completely forgotten a quote about the power of memory. I wish there was a control group somewhere that had looked at a picture of Richard Julian four years ago.

Some may argue that memory is notoriously fallible, and that photographs offer an objective record. I would certainly agree that memory is fallible, but I would assert that when discussing sentimentality, objectivity is hardly necessary. I'm glad photographic technology exists as a way to document certain things (such as mug shots or items up for eBay auctions), but I'll never agree that family vacations need an objective record.

I still can't think of better uses for photographs than mug shots or eBay auctions. In other news, you can find my vacation photos on Facebook.

Actually, the more I think about it, the more I question the true historical objectivity of even "candid" photographs. Given that many photographs are staged in some way, they could be seen to be simulacra--a copy of something artificial to begin with. And even if a photograph captures a perfect fidelity of the physical nature of a scene, there is always a litany of contexts that it can never capture. The viewer of the photo will map that meaning onto every subsequent viewing of the photo. The problem is, if the purpose of the photo is to arouse a remembrance of the original event, its very artifice can overdetermine how the event is remembered. Rather than becoming an aid to recall, a mere tool, it becomes the vehicle. It forces the gaze of the viewer, it communicates to the viewer what should be considered, it replaces the nearly limitless power of the imaginative faculty with a narrowed imperative.

You can tell that I was only months removed from grad school at this time with my use of the terms "simulacra" and "overdetermine." But despite the pretentiousness of the prose, I can't argue with myself. If photos were just a trigger mechanism they would be great, but by circumscribing memory, they can limit as much or more than they enable. And furthermore, I now find it additionally problematic if our experiences simply become anticipations of documentation. We hold as conventional wisdom that happiness comes from "living in the moment." How can we truly do that if we are always looking to lock down any given moment simply so that it can exist in the future?

Additionally, I am now concerned about the proliferation of photographic images and what that means for their future value. In the past, because of limitations on resources and storage space, the origin and then the preservation of a picture required a certain degree of conscious control. I wrote just recently about the decline in relevance of media photos from overexposure (pun intended?), and I think that some of the same principles apply to personal collections. How significant can any one photo become if you are averaging 17 per day?

I'm honestly not sure what kind of a historical researcher would have an easier job--a contemporary researcher attempting to use 19th century photographic archives to understand what life was like in that era, or a 22nd century researcher attempting to use contemporary Facebook mobile uploads. The one has limitations in data, the other such an overabundance of both candid and fabricated images that discerning true representations may become a huge challenge.

My 2007 self would be happy to know I'm still quoting Bob Dylan. In an interview earlier this year, he was asked about films that influenced him when he was growing up. He responded: "I grew up in a small town hidden from the outside world, and the films from the '40s and '50s were like a window into the future, like classic literature, and had great meaning. It's hard to explain that, especially in this age of narcissism and self-surveillance. A lot of people wouldn't know they are alive unless they have photos of themselves to prove it—from the cradle to the grave, actually."

This cuts to the core of my suspicions of the practice of accumulating photos. Dylan is not the first to accuse the millennial generation in particular of being narcissistic. But the term "self-surveillance" is one that I hadn't heard before. It certainly raises interesting considerations about the motivations that one may have for an obsessive documentation of existence. But then again, it's not exactly easy to take pictures of oneself. (And as I found out, it's not a simple thing to take a picture with one hand). Are we really attempting to document our own existence, or are we attempting to document existence itself? And who is to say that the jambled, jumbled mess of images that we end up with is not an accurate representation of the jambled, jumbled mess that our lives entail?

And furthermore, to once again revisit a previous blog post, I wrote about a year ago upon the occasion of the fifth anniversary of this blog, that "by forcing myself to write something every week, I have embedded in amber small artifacts of not only my thoughts, but my very consciousness. I have left evidence for myself and others that not only have I lived from 2005 to 2010 in the physical sense, but I have lived in the intellectual sense. My mind has been active, alert, and aware, responding to both the world around me and the world inside of me." In some ways, I guess the impulse that makes me write is not too far removed from the impulse that makes others take pictures.

I guess we'll have to replace that camera.

Taking a Bite Out of Crime

2011-09-24T13:59:00.009-05:00

I've come to realize that my 19-month-old son bears an affinity for anthropomorphic bipedal characters. He visibly recognizes Milwaukee Brewers mascot Bernie Brewer and Sesame Street's Elmo. Just today he thrilled to a live mall appearance by Curious George. And when needing him to get a couple minutes of downtime while watching him, I have exploited this by finding Youtube videos that mesmerize him, such as the trailers for this fall's Muppets movie. Recently, while racking my brains for characters that he might enjoy seeing, I somehow alighted on McGruff the Crime Dog. I realized that although I know I have definitely seen live McGruff mascots through the years, most of his television appearances (and therefore Youtube videos) were of an animated McGruff. Still, even though it wasn't quite what I was looking for, I couldn't help but click on one particular video, one that I think I saw every day for a stretch circa 1987, but hadn't subsequently seen in well over 20 years.

The video is a fairly typical 1980s anti-drug PSA, McGruff co-starring with a one-hit wonder of the day who delivered a sixty second ditty about the importance of saying "no." You couldn't watch children's TV for more than 10 minutes in the 1980s without seeing an anti-drug message, and they aren't all that uncommon today, either. But there is one line in the song that stuck out upon my recent listen, one that my childhood brain didn't question at all, but one that now fascinates me: "If you know a user even part of the time/tell 'em to stop/take a bite out of crime." Obviously, the last part directly references McGruff's famous slogan, but I still don't think it would be used today.

There are numerous reasons why young people are urged today to intervene and attempt to influence their peers not to experiment with drugs, but helping to decrease crime is not even on the list. While individual criminal acts are often the subject of public propaganda campaigns, the general sentiment that crime in the abstract must be curtailed is not something that resonates the way it used to.

One can see further evidence of this in the superhero genre. We are undoubtedly in a golden age of superhero films, with several now being released every year. But it is interesting to consider how today's superhero films differ from the original golden age of heroes. When Superman and Batman first appeared in comic book form in the late 1930s (and Superman's radio show took off in popularity a couple years after that), the primary antagonists for the heroes were street criminals, gangsters, mobsters, robbers, and thugs. Superman is considered the first superhero, and his first appearance in a comic book was basically a series of confrontations with the above. Later, superheroes would branch out and fight Nazis, monsters, and aliens, and eventually supervillains.

But even when superheroes would finally transition to the silver screen, an emphasis on superheroes stopping street crime and common criminals remained. The 1978 Superman movie saw a protracted sequence where the Man of Steel halted robberies and apprehended bad guys on the night of his public debut. Even when he was stopping nuclear missiles, his primary antagonist, Lex Luthor, was billing himself as "the greatest criminal mastermind the world has ever known." Batman's origin is famously connected to random street crime, but his 1989 film took that origin to another level by breaking with previous versions and making the psychotic Joker the antagonist in the Wayne murders. Although the updated 2008 film version starts with the Joker's bank heist, this film would later make clear that his pursuit of criminal activity is only a means to his real goal of psychological and philosophical warfare with society. And other contemporary superhero films rarely portray heroes stopping non-superpowered criminals. (In fact, many recent superhero films show heroes called upon to stop threats of their own making; Green Lantern and Iron Man come to mind in particular).

Part of the reason for this evolution could be attributed to narrative convenience--it's easier to tell compelling stories about heroes when they are facing threats more equal to themselves. But I'm convinced that part of the explanation is also sociological; people in this generation don't fear crime as much as they used to. Superman co-creator Jerry Siegel's dad was a merchant who died after an armed robbery (how the death actually occurred is disputed; the most likely account is that he had a heart attack brought about by the stress of the robbery). And for the initial generation of consumers of superhero stories, the threat of violent crime was real. It was a time when gangsters and mobsters were celebrities. And the 1980s was also a time when the "War on Crime" was a tremendous concern. There was a real fear that the crack epidemic and gang warfare in urban areas would lead to a large scale societal breakdown. But now that crime statistics have bottomed out and we have seen a dramatic decrease in violent crime, we no longer hear regular exhortations to "take a bite out of crime." McGruff would have never been born in today's climate. But we've got so many anthropomorphic bipedal characters that we probably wouldn't even miss him.

Why Office Laborers Love Football

2011-09-17T15:58:00.011-05:00

George Will once wrote about football: "It combines two of the worst things about American lives. It is violence punctuated by committee meetings." But perhaps you could make a case that it is these two things that also account for its popular success. The popularity of violence as entertainment in our society is self-evident, but maybe the appeal of committee meetings as entertainment needs some explanation.

The "committee meetings" that Will is referencing in football are the huddles, the division of labor into offense, defense, and special teams, and the even further divisions into smaller units (such as linemen, linebackers, and secondary within a defense). But there is nothing about specialization itself that causes people to recoil. Most of our occupations involve a high degree of specialization. The stigma that surrounds committee meetings is the assumption that they are inefficient and nonproductive. (Another quote, this one from Milton Berle: "A committee is a group that keeps minutes and loses hours").

But what it is remarkable about the sport of football is that there is an entire committee devoted to the preservation of time. The key position in football is the quarterback, and I wouldn't be the first to compare him to a CEO. Just as every business needs a head decision maker, a football team needs one as well. And aside from pure physical differences, the factor that most separates good and bad quarterbacks (and possibly CEOs) is the ability to make good reads, quick decisions, and crisp throws without the luxury of time. But given enough time to throw the football, even a mediocre quarterback can be deadly for a defense.

And I suspect that most people in most jobs, given the luxury of a leisurely amount of time, can deliver results. But most people in most jobs would probably list lack of time as one of the biggest obstacles to their ability to do their job well. And for most of us, it is all up to us to manage our time, to deal with all of the distractions and annoyances that come our way. But the most privileged among us have a line of protection against these distractions and annoyances--in the form of administrative assistants and other staff who have the specific job of deflecting pressure from the central managers and enabling them to perform at their highest possible level.

So with the American business model represented on the gridiron, it really should be no surprise that football is America's favorite sport. Perhaps offensive linemen aren't given the recognition and glory that is given to the so-called "skill position" players, but the fact that they play a vital role and are afforded some recognition is more than not only any other sport, but any other type of entertainment may claim. Football may not be the only form of entertainment that allows spectators the opportunity to revel in violence, but it probably is the only form of entertainment where pretty much a full cross-section of American workers can see their specific roles played out on a grander scale...provided they have the time.

The Most Trusted Newsfeed in America?

2011-09-11T21:39:00.002-05:00

Amongst the more solemn reflections that come with the anniversary of 9/11, I think it is natural to also reflect on how the world is different now than it was ten years ago. One thing that struck me while watching news footage was that this was the last major news event of the Jennings/Rather/Brokaw era. Growing up in the 1980s and 90s, it would have been unfathomable that the nightly network news would ever be irrelevant. I remember the Nielson TV ratings being published in the newspaper every Wednesday--what was always listed were the top 10 primetime shows, the overall ratings comparison for each network...and the three nightly news broadcasts. Even as CNN rose in prominence with the first Gulf War, the networks were where people turned when big events occurred. And this was still true on 9/11--I remember watching ABC most of the day, as Peter Jennings did a marathon turn at the anchor desk. It would have been difficult to believe at the time that a few short years later he would be dead. I remember watching Dan Rather late into the night on election night 2000--it would have been difficult to believe that in a few short years he would be involved in a messy divorce from CBS, involving lawsuits and accusations of breaching journalistic ethics.

Actually, what happened to Dan Rather might be considered metaphoric for his era. I always had what could probably be called an irrational affection for Rather, for two reasons. First, I felt sorry for him when he got beat up by a deranged guy (this event occurred when I was fairly young; if a news anchor got beat up today by a deranged guy, I suspect my reaction to the incident would be more like Michael Stipe's reaction to the Rather incident). Second, when I was in fifth grade, we spent hours upon hours learning about the Kennedy assassination (it was the 25th anniversary). We watched a lot of seemingly ancient black-and-white CBS footage. I learned who Walter Cronkite was, and was amazed to see a young Dan Rather reporting on the scene from Dallas. From this moment on, I venerated Rather for the mere fact that he straddled the line between black-and-white and color, that he represented continuity, an important link to the past. And as I got older, even though I was presumably more critical in my thinking, this link actually became more, not less, important. So much of my world was changing. I became an adult, went to college, got married, moved to a different state, and through it all Dan Rather, the guy who reported live from Dallas when Kennedy was shot, was still hosting the nightly news.

And then the whole thing collapsed. Not only did Rather's tenure come to an end, it did so amidst scandal. Rather inherited Walter Cronkite's desk. Cronkite was the "most trusted man in America." And though none of the news anchors of my generation were widely given this appellation, I don't think it's a stretch to assert that they were generally trusted, at least for the majority of their respective careers. So not only has the "network news era" come to an end sometime in the last ten years, so has the assumption that there are voices of neutrality, that there are people in the media who will "tell it like it is," without advocating a specific political agenda.

Perhaps I am romanticizing the past through my childhood perceptions. Perhaps conservative middle America has always viewed East Coast-based network news with suspicion. I do remember hearing the mantra that the media had a liberal bias, and the rise of conservative talk radio in the 1990s did much to advance this suspicion in certain quarters, while also serving to create a backlash among those in other quarters, who decried the conservative bias on the radio dial. Yet I don't think it was until the 1990s when cable news emerged that large numbers of people began to view broadcast news as inherently polemical, and view that I think bled into the perception of non-cable networks. And at a certain point network news became both marginalized (I don't think I can name the main anchors for the three networks today, and I would guess that a very low percentage of people can) and more distrusted. But I would argue that it was the former that actually helped contribute to the latter, and not vice versa. As much as we probably should be suspicious of monolithic--or, more accurately, oligarchic voices, it is probably more natural to be trusting of them. Once voices are diffused into pluralism we can start to see cracks and chinks in the veneer of the TV news desk, and the chain going back to Cronkite (or Huntley and Brinkely or Edward Murrow) is severed.

I'm not sure we fully understand the political implications of this severing, much less the psychological ones. And regarding the latter, hopefully we never fully find out. For it would probably require another tragedy on the scale of 9/11 to understand how our changed consumption of news shapes our attitudes toward mind-numbing catastrophe. I'm not sure whether it can be asserted that the reporting of Peter Jennings, Dan Rather, or Tom Brokaw was good for the country after 9/11--but I will say that in a cataclysm, I would trust them more than I would trust a scroll of text on a telephone.

On Punishment

2011-09-05T08:17:00.000-05:00

As of this writing, the world at large does not know the whereabouts of Muammar Gaddafi. He is in hiding, officially still clinging to hopes of restoring his government in Libya, though most likely seeking to avoid punishment for his decades of misdeeds. Yet even if he somehow manages to avoid capture, I wonder if that necessarily means that he can avoid punishment. It's hard to know what goes through the mind of a megalomaniac dictator, especially one absolutely corrupted by decades of absolute power, but I have got to wonder about the psychic toll of being reviled by the civilized world. I wonder if being mocked or dismissed by the civilized world could be an even worse fate for one used to being honored and revered.

I thought about this while reading Chuck Klosterman's recent comment on the University of Miami football program. While the university faces severe NCAA sanctions because of improper benefits given to players, Klosterman wrote that he didn't want to see any punishments at all levied: "They're a corrupt program and everyone knows they're corrupt, and that's its own penalty. And college football is better when the Hurricanes are awesome." The implications of this comment are interesting to consider. One could make a comparison to recent steroid-enhanced home run records that have been set in baseball. Barry Bonds probably wouldn't have hit the most home runs in baseball history if there was no such thing as steroids. But there is and he did, and his accomplishment (like his single season record) means nothing to anybody. There is no asterisk in the record book, no official decree that his accomplishments should be weighed with caution, but society is smart enough to view his records dimly. And though we don't know precisely how Barry Bonds feels about this, it may not be a stretch to presume that when he thinks of his records he doesn't feel the warm, fuzzy emotions that his predecessors in the record books felt (his pre-1998 predecessors anyway), and he certainly can't bask in the glow of public adulation the way that they did. If the Miami football team were to somehow escape their current scandal unscathed, and they were to win a championship in the near future, the fallout may be less pronounced than that in baseball, but quite likely the lack of respect afforded the victors would result in a weird kind of hollowness for fans and members of the team alike.

Philosopher Michel Foucault wrote Discipline and Punish in 1975, in which he argued that how society enforces laws and standards has undergone a transformation in modern times. Whereas once the state attempted to make a public show of its force against those who violated its standards (through methods like drawing and quartering), now society takes a much more complex approach to keeping its perceived miscreants in check. Social pressure (and the mere threat of surveillance) makes more of an impression on behavior than attempting to make a public example of specific individuals. And in the last quarter century, technology has enabled both surveillance and public judgement to flourish. (Regarding the former, in many cases individuals effectively broadcast their own activity that there is no need for others to monitor them).

Any grade school child who has been shunned by peers, even for a brief time, knows that this can be a more effective form of torture than anything that a teacher or principal can dole out. There was significant public outcry about the Casey Anthony verdict a few months ago, with the popular perception being that she was not punished enough. If she did what she was accused of doing, this is undoubtedly so. And yet, given that she has to live with the knowledge that society has rejected her--how does that kind of psychological toll compare with the consequences of physical confinement? If Muammar Gaddafi is never found, would it still be correct to say that he has escaped punishment? If Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens never go to jail does that mean that they haven't been made into examples?

The phrase "The pen is mightier than the sword" has become a cliche. Can we soon acknowledge that there is also a force stronger than the cell?

Best Blog Post 2011

2011-08-27T16:07:00.009-05:00

A couple days after I wrote last week's post, in which I declared the cover of Sports Illustrated to be irrelevant, the Milwaukee Brewers made the cover for the first time in 24 years. And just like that, my Facebook and Twitter feeds blew up with mentions of Sports Illustrated. Local media outlets reported on the occurrence almost as if the team had accomplished an objective level of success, not as if a national competitor had simply made an editorial judgment on what story would be featured that week. But for all that, I'm not about to retract last week's post. I still think the cover of Sports Illustrated is irrelevant. And I should know. I was in Who's Who of American High School Students four years running.

Wikipedia tells me that this publication ceased to exist in 2007. We always hear that our education system is in need of reform, but who knew there are no more noteworthy high school students in America? Or, a more likely explanation for the cessation of the publication: Google made it easy for people who receive notification of the award to realize that it was essentially meaningless, that it existed simply to sell books to proud parents. To call inclusion in "Who's Who" a "recognition" would be wrong, since a "recognition" requires a third-party to execute the verb.

But although the Who's Who may be an extreme example, in reality most awards, honors, and recognitions exist in such an arrangement. There is no shortage of plaques, trophies, and certificates of achievement in this world. And the vast, vast majority of them would be recognizable only to those who have ownership of them or those who feel that they should own them (though I suspect that a surprisingly large percentage of owners wouldn't even be able to identify their own hardware).

Some awards exist in order to help recipients pad resumes, some serve the legitimate function of determining who should have access to limited resources, and many are simply there in order to allow individuals to feed their egos. But the common threads among many are 1) like the Who's Who, the award serves the additional purpose of building the reputation (or the bottom line) of the institution bestowing the award and 2) after a minimal passage of time, very few remember who won the award. I'd say that if either of those criteria are present, it should serve to temper any enthusiasm for a recognition, or alleviate any frustration at not being a named recipient. In short, it calls into question the relevance of the distinction.

And this brings the discussion back to Sports Illustrated. No doubt in the future a fair amount of Brewer fans will remember when Prince Fielder, Ryan Braun, and Nyjer Morgan graced the cover in 2011 (moreso if the Brewers go on to experience postseason success). But fans of other teams? SI subscribers in general?

And, as is sometimes the case, the words of an anonymous Internet commentator can reveal a lot about a situation. A poster on Brewer fan site Brewcrewball.com wrote: "Does anybody know where I can get a Sports Illustrated in the Milwaukee area?"

The Rise and Fall of the Cover Image

2011-08-20T09:03:00.007-05:00

In 1989, one of my prized possessions was a commemorative edition of Sports Illustrated, celebrating the 35th anniversary of the magazine's existence (and only in hindsight do I realize that this was a cynical cash ploy, that 35 is not a milestone that is typically celebrated--but when you have only lived 11 years, any anniversary that ends in zero or five really does seem significant). Anyway, this special edition contained an image of every cover of every SI ever published. I drooled over this thing like some pre-adolescents drool over Playboy. And though I lost track of it somewhere over the years and haven't seen it in a long time, a Google search confirms that I have a word-for-word recollection of a subhead on the title: "The Champ Ali Graces Our Cover for a Record 31st time." And the cover showed a then-contemporary picture of Muhammed Ali holding up a classic SI with himself on the cover.

Forget the cover jinx inanity--back then people talked about SI cover appearances as if it were a cultural currency. This special edition also had a table in back with the stats, so one could see in the pre-Wikipedia era which athletes had made the most cover appearances. (I noticed at the time that Jordan was gaining on Ali, and now he is far and away the leader all-time, with Tiger Woods also having passed The Greatest).

And I still remember when it was a big deal in 1992 when Bonnie Blair, Kristi Yamaguchi, and Kathy Ireland made the cover in successive weeks, marking the first time ever that women were featured on the cover three weeks in a row (though I think the fact that one of the above was a swimsuit model negates any claims that SI would have to progressivism). And this might have been the last time that I really thought about SI covers. But a couple years after that, in 1994, my attention turned to Time Magazine, accused of doctoring O.J. Simpson's mugshot to make him look worse.

It didn't help that Newsweek ran the same mugshot undoctored.

What all of these reminisces have in common is that they are from an era when weekly magazines shaped the way that we thought about the world around us. There was a daily media, but the place to go for thoughtful analysis and commentary, to take a step back from immediate events and try to put occurrences into context, was either the Sunday morning news shows or the glossy weekly magazines. But the latter offered something that the electronic media didn't have. Since TV was (and is) so ephemeral, even though it was a visual media, it was difficult for any television image to penetrate the national consciousness (interestingly, due to their repetitive nature, TV commercials were somewhat successful in this regard, especially the iconic political ads such as LBJ's little girl picking daisies and Dukakis in a tank). So it was cover images of magazines that often set the agenda for national conversations, that gave a concrete visual representation of abstract phenomena.

But ironically, because we are now in an era when media has made such representations exceedingly easy, they now proliferate and therefore lose their currency. The only way that a Newsweek cover can get traction anymore is if it is controversial on editorial grounds.

And that of course brings us to the Michelle Bachmann cover controversy. What intrigues me about this development is how many people probably first encountered this cover virtually. I wish there were stats on this; my guess would be that the majority of people who have seen this image have not seen the actual magazine itself. And this is ironic because the story has become viral on the basis that the cover depiction is supposedly important, that the decision that Newsweek editors make has some bearing on public perception of Michelle Bachmann. But, in another twist of irony, a Google search on "Newsweek" and "Bachmann" fails to locate the actual Newsweek story anywhere in the first five pages of results (I gave up looking after that).

It used to be that a handful of privileged editors would elevate certain images to the fore of public consumption. But we are fast approaching a world where no image will be automatically awarded a favored status. It will be up to the hive mind to determine what if any images will be seared into the minds of the masses...for better or for worse.

O Captain My Captain

2011-08-13T08:48:00.003-05:00

Captain America spoilers herein:

Making a movie about Captain America is a risky proposition. In the months leading up to the latest big budget high-profile release from Marvel Studios, media attention focused on the viability of a star-spangled hero in foreign markets--which are now crucial to a blockbuster movie's revenue stream. In the end, this largely proved to be a nonfactor. Despite the option given to overseas distributors to change the title of the film, few did, and the end result has been robust box offices and a Hollywood Reporter story with the headline "'Captain America' Surprisingly Loved by the World."

I personally was not surprised by the overseas reception. While audiences in other nations may have objections to policies of the American government, they haven't ever let that get in the way of their consumption of American pop culture. But I still had three concerns about how the filmmakers would execute the character's concept.

First, Captain America is an easy character to turn into a political marionette. When one is literally draped in symbolism, it can become awfully easy to view the character as a symbol to be manipulated. And of course, that is how the movie's Senator Brandt views Steve Rogers, turning him into a stage performer in order to rally the homefront. But the writers and director never stoop to this tactic themselves, never using the character to make a ham-fisted political statement (something which was done by the makers of the straight-to-video 1990 Captain America movie, which involved a villain motivated by anti-environmental interests and a direct appeal during closing credits for viewers to support the Environmental Protection Act of 1990). But even the Senator Brandt character, while shown to be wrongheaded and willing to exploit the Captain for personal political gain, has a degree of nuance. He wasn't wrong to assert that Cap could help build morale on the homefront, and it isn't totally unreasonable to assume that just one super soldier couldn't do a whole lot of good in military missions.

Second, anytime you portray fictional soldiers fighting a war, there is a danger of insensitivity to the reality of the horrors of war. Add Nazis to the mix and there is a further danger. What kind of commentary would it be if this revisionist history showed that a souped-up individual was necessary to beat Hitler, when in reality a U.S. and Allied military beat Hitler without the help of any superheroes? But the writers wisely used Hydra as a rogue offshoot of the Nazis, so that Captain America (and the unnamed Howling Commandos) could concentrate on eliminating this threat, while the rest of the war could presumably proceed as it actually did historically. As for the portrayal of soldiers, I think there are only two satisfactory outcomes for the hero of a war movie. The hero must either die, or must experience some degree of feeling of alienation upon returning to the civilian world. Anything else would cheapen the message of what war really does to people. The genius of the Captain America mythos is that we actually get both outcomes. He makes a heroic sacrifice at the end. Even though he had much to live for (symbolized by the "date" he makes with his "dying" breath), he realizes that it is more important to surrender his personal good for the greater good. But then when he awakens decades later, he finds himself in a world nothing like the one he left. And despite the efforts of others to ease the transition, he sees through the facade immediately. I find the subtext in the final scenes incredibly powerful. Even the post-credits scene where Nick Fury tells Captain America that his services are still needed strikes me as a subtle reminder of what today's soldiers go through, with their multiple tours of duty.

Finally, for as much mileage that superhero movies have gotten from the Joseph Campbell template, I was kind of hoping that Captain America would largely skip the hero's journey route. After seeing Spider-Man, Iron Man, Thor, Green Lantern, and even Batman and Smallville's Superman trod the path of "learning valuable lessons" that gives rise to heroism, I hoped to not see that here. I always thought that Captain America, like Superman, should be a fully formed hero from the outset. And in fact, the movie does a terrific job of portraying this. Steve Rogers is already a hero in the opening scenes. He is unrelenting in his attempts to join the military, but also is pointed in answering Dr. Erskine that he "doesn't want to kill anybody," that his motivation is not to kill Nazis, but to stand up to bullies. And when he shows a willingness to fall on a grenade to save his fellow recruits, we already get a glimpse of the man who would soon figuratively fall on a grenade in order to save the world.

With such a solid grasp of the character and the way in which the filmmakers were able to balance thematic sensitivity with a strong moral message and the requisite action, it's no wonder this film did so well both in America and worldwide. Now we only have to wait nine months to see Chris Evans' Cap interact with Robert Downey Jr.'s Iron Man. Avengers Assemble!

Do Writers Still Matter?

2011-08-07T12:15:00.008-05:00

"There was still a sense in 1986...writers around the world were in many ways at the center of the national argument, in a way we may feel is no longer the case....I don't know quite why it doesn't happen so much in America anymore. There was a time when writers like...Mailer and Sontag and Didion and DeLillo and Robert Stone...a whole generation of writers who very consciously looked for a public voice...I'm not sure who their equivalents today might be..."

--- Salman Rushdie at the 2011 PEN world voice festival.

I've thought much about what Rushdie is saying above, even well before I heard him say it. I've long had the suspicion that my generation is the first in centuries that has had no desire for literary spokespeople. Rushdie of course will be forever remembered more for fallout after writing The Satanic Verses than for anything else. Twenty-five years later, it is still not a stretch of the imagination to assume that an extremist Muslim leader would call for the assassination of someone for blasphemy against Islam. But I don't think it is as easy to imagine a scenario where a novelist would be targeted. Perhaps in a telling indication about a change in society, it was cartoonists who suffered in a more recent controversy.

So what exactly has changed to bring about a world where writers are less likely to face a fatwa, but also less likely to contribute to "national argument"? It's easy enough to blame technology, to assume that novelists have simply been superseded by tweeters. But I think there are a number of factors at work in diminishing the voice (and power) of the writer.

1) There was a time in the mid-20th Century that writers became rock stars. Kerouac and the beats, Wolfe, Kesey, Hunter S. Thompson and the like were lauded along with The Beatles and The Stones. Bob Dylan hung out with Alan Ginsburg. Rushdie himself made one of his rare public appearances during the fatwa at a U2 concert. So why aren't writers rock stars anymore? Perhaps because we don't really have rock stars anymore. I wrote three years ago that we have entered an "archival era," that creative innovation has largely ceased and now we are just unpacking all that is out there, rehashing when appropriate. So if the writers of the past actually still speak, what need is there for new ones?

2) A significant way in which 20th Century writers achieved prominence was through the academy. Literary scholars appointed a Faulkner or a Joyce to a position of artistic merit, and subsequent generations were trained to esteem them as well. But eventually, scholars turned to deconstructing the canon rather than building it. When Roland Barthes wrote an essay in 1967 called "Death of the Author" and Michel Foucault wrote "What is the Author?" two years later, the concept of a literary sui generis was cast into disrepute. Should it be any surprise that when kids in college learn that it doesn't matter who wrote a book, that they quit looking for insight from people who write books?

3) It's a cliche that "It's easier to tear down than to build up." But in the past, that hasn't necessarily been true. It wasn't always easy to acquire a platform from which to tear down. Robert Greene was a 16th Century English writer who would be completely forgotten today, if not for a pamphlet he wrote with a passage that appears to contain a jab at Shakespeare. This is noteworthy because there are few surviving documents from Shakespeare's contemporaries that reference The Bard, much less one that says something negative. But the document wouldn't have survived had Greene not had some degree of success himself as a writer, however modest relative to his immortal target. More recently, before Roland Barthes was a full-on poststructuralist committed to deconstructing authors, he was known as a master of semiotics, known and read by critics and scholars.

But now, thanks to the Internet, anyone can lob a stone and get a reaction. A couple of my favorite contemporary authors are Malcolm Gladwell and Chuck Klosterman. Both of them had surprising best sellers right before the explosion of the Web. They've written subsequent books in the "Web era," and while they have carved out highly successful careers and huge followings, they've got their fair share of detractors, who flourish on the Web. Recently Klosterman and Gladwell allied themselves with Bill Simmons' new website Grantland, which led to a particularly scathing critique from an anonymous blogger achieving some degree of notoriety.

I'm well aware of the danger of the implications (to say nothing of the hypocrisy) of asserting that only accomplished writers should be able to criticize accomplished writers. But at a certain point, when there is a culture of negativity, when it is infinitely easier to tear down somebody else's creation rather than to fashion one's own, we shouldn't be surprised when there is less supply or demand of writers that matter.

4) "One of the things I remember [about the 1986 PEN festival with Updike, Bellow, Sontag, etc]...which is really different than the PEN festivals we're having now is how bad-tempered it was, how all the writers were fighting with each other like cats and dogs"-- Rushdie

While conventional wisdom is that technology has caused a decline in overall civility in society, writers themselves are apparently getting along with each other better than they used to. But I'm not convinced this is something to be happy about. Writers have always tended toward the political left, but I get the sense that there used to be less of a codified dogmatism than there now exists. Christopher Hitchins strikes me as someone who is exceptional in his range of opinions--fervently anti-religious to the point of participating in organized debates with evangelicals, strongly in support of American interventionist policies in the Middle East including the Iraq invasion, and morally outraged about "enhanced interrogation techniques" to the point where he underwent waterboarding to bolster his claim that it is torture. But off the top of my head I can't come up with any more names of writers who have the ability to surprise with their opinions. Sure, a talented writer can still find a way to take a commonly-held idea and package and disseminate it in a compelling way. But once the content itself loses the edge of unpredictability and when style is the only thing that separates one writer from another, audiences will be less motivated to seek anyone out.

So whereas Shelley famously called writers "unacknowledged legislators of the word," maybe it is time to cut the last four words off of that quote.

How Young People are Old

2011-07-31T17:49:00.006-05:00

Last weekend, I spent several hours pouring sodas at a festival/carnival, in tandem with a rotating cast of teen-agers. This Friday night, I went out to dinner with a 71-year-old man. Yesterday, I was a groomsman in my little brother's wedding, surrounded by young men in their early to mid-20s. Clearly, I have been absorbing the cultures of generations that I do not belong to. And I'm struck by a particular similarity between generations older and younger than me, one that I believe does not extend to my cohort.

One of the teen-agers I worked with had a particularly strong knowledge of contemporary hit singles. As we poured sugar water, we could hear a P.A. system down the way blast out a variety of music. I recognized Lynard Skynard, the Rolling Stones, Def Leppard, and Bon Jovi, but my young colleague had to inform me when I was hearing Katy Perry, Shakira, and, yes, Justin Bieber. Although her knowledge was strongest when dealing with the contemporary, she wasn't wholly ignorant of music that was recorded prior to her birth. She professed a love of the Beatles, as well as an enthusiasm for 1980s hair metal. I couldn't help but interrogate her about the content of her itunes library. She informed me that she had a wide variety of music, but that she didn't have any particularly artist's discography. In fact, when subjected to my relentless quizzing, she revealed that though she knew a number of Beatles songs, she didn't necessarily know any albums.

The 71-year-old I dined with actually started listening to music before Rock and Roll was popularized, so his taste runs more to Sinatra and classical. We didn't talk much music, but we ended up talking about the early days of television. If one wanted to know about popular TV shows of the 1950s, Wikipedia is unnecessary if you are in the presence of this gentleman. He informed me of the geographic origins of popular television entertainers. Actually, I was struck by how so much of his recitation involved names of people (e.g. Bob Hope and Milton Berle), rather than titles of particular shows. I ventured to ask him about networks--which shows were on which networks, whether there was a particular network that was most popular, etc... This proved to be a blind spot for him, as he simply said "If a show was good, we watched it. We didn't care what network it was on."

And finally, while in the back room at the church, waiting to commence my brother's nuptials, I learned that more than one of his friend's consider themselves a DJ, able to remix songs. When discussing how much of the wedding dance music was to consist of such "remixes," I took occasion to rail against the musical ignorance of the Millenial Generation. "The problem with DJs these days is that they don't actually know any songs. They have a small library of core, canonical singles, but lack a true foundational knowledge of the history of music." Of course, one of the groomsen was a DJ himself and objected to my sweeping generalization. I put him on the spot. "Blood on the Tracks is considered by many critics to be the greatest album of the 1970s. Name one track on Blood on the Tracks." Of course, he couldn't do it. He protested that he didn't know albums, that he just possessed a working knowledge of songs. I then challenged him to name a Bob Dylan song, and the first one he said was "Tangled Up In Blue"...which is of course the first song on Blood on the Tracks.

The teen-age soda pourer and the groomsman DJ may lack knowledge of albums, but if they had grown up in the era of the 71-year-old dinner companion, they certainly wouldn't have had a knowledge of albums either. The music industry didn't realize until the mid-1960s that there was money to be made in selling long playing records with more than a couple of songs on them, and it was around the same time that recording artists sought the opportunity to challenge themselves by making a coherent conceptual collection of songs as an artistic statement. And though the album flourished for decades, the itunes generation has now gone back to the roots of the music industry, cherry picking particular songs of interest.

Meanwhile, while talking about television, I thought back to a Chuck Klosterman column I read a few years back. Klosterman is a few years older than me, but I would consider him to be of my generation. He wrote "I have always wondered this: Why am I able to see any random television program, often for less than ten seconds, and immediately recognize which network the show is airing on? To me, the differences seem obvious and undeniable....For reasons I don’t understand, I can identify the look of any major network instantaneously. So can a lot of other people. We can do it without even trying." But in researching it, Klosterman found that his initial hypotheses, that there is a technological difference in the production, was wrong. The fact was that he watches so much television that he has an ability to (in Gladwellian terms) thin-slice an ethos of a network. As he writes: "I am able to deduce differences between networks — but it’s for content-driven reasons that I’ll never be fully aware of."

But I think in the early days of television, such an ability was unlikely to be held. Since everything was so new, all networks were possibly in a state of conformity. Time needed to pass in order for programmers to take chances, for identities to evolve, and for philosophical or ideological differences to emerge. And now, in the DVR era in which people casually time shift their viewing habits, and in an era in which many people watch television shows for the first time on DVD releases, the importance of network identify (at least among over-the-air programming), is again minimized. Like the consumption of music, consumption of television has essentially come full circle.

So the end result is that the older and younger generations consume discrete entities, while the middle came of age looking for a more unified product. And I realize it's awfully easy to have a particular bias about one's own perspective, but I worry that we are losing something by devolving. The groomsman DJ and I ended up having a nice conversation (after he got past the initial shock of the intensity of my pontificating). It turns out that though his Dylan knowledge needs some work, he is expert in Van Halen's discography. He acknowledged that to truly appreciate the career of the band, it's important to know the progression of albums that they produced, the aesthetic feel of each album, and in particular the distinctions between the eras (largely characterized by having different singers). To truly have more than a superficial quotidian knowledge of something, a context and a foundation needs to be acquired.

My advice to then to young people (and perhaps even older people): find somebody of my generation to spend some time with.

On Ignoring

2011-07-24T21:02:00.003-05:00

"Just ignore them." When I was growing up, this was the standard advice for how to deal with bullies or hecklers. I was never sure it was good advice, though. It seemed to me that to ignore a bully was to invite a challenge: "What more do I need to say or do before this person will react to me?"

I thought about this while watching Milwaukee Brewers centerfielder Nyjer Morgan play in San Franscisco this weekend. Rather than describe what I saw, though, I'll turn things over to San Francisco Chronicle writer Bruce Jenkins:

Morgan was simply a disgrace in center field Friday night, at least by modern-day standards. The bleacher fans were riding him, as is their custom with most any opposing outfielder, and Morgan heard every word. He routinely engaged them with words and sweeping gestures, at least one of them carrying the hint of malice, and created a tempestuous atmosphere that easily could have led to alcohol-fueled retaliation.

Of course, being a Brewer fan I may be a bit biased, but I'd take issue with Jenkins' partisan tone. It would seem to me that the disgraceful individuals were those who make taunting the opposition "their custom," individuals who one suspects of having a likelihood to engage in "alcohol-fueled retaliation." But in any event, he does bring up an interesting point about "modern-day standards." According to conventional thought, the player in that situation should be the "professional." He should be used to being heckled, learn to ignore it, and carry on normally.

But what enables one to tune out taunting, heckling, or bullying? The obvious answer would seem to be that a high degree of self-confidence (self-esteem, even) would permit one to become selectively deaf. But the odd thing about the Nyjer Morgan situation is that the individual in question appears to be among the most supremely self-confident people walking this planet. I suppose it is possible that the insecure could potentially construct a facade of self-assurance, but I would have to think that in most cases it takes a measure of self-confidence to stand up to bullying or heckling, while the truly insecure would be more likely to cower away in shame.

But aside from self-confidence, what makes Nyjer Morgan (or his self-styled alter- ego "Tony Plush") such a favorite among Brewer fans is that he is constantly seeking to connect with them. On a Brewers off day he asked on Twitter what he should do with his spare time. A fan suggested that he fly a kite on the Milwaukee lakefront. A few hours later, Morgan posted a picture on Twitter of himself flying a kite on the Milwaukee lakefront (shown above). For me, a particularly interesting Nyjer Morgan epiphany came when FSN showed footage of Morgan playing for Pittsburgh a couple of years ago. Morgan was "miked up" during the game, and he was well aware of this fact, constantly dropping comments that he knew would resonate with a television audience. At one point he said hello to "the guys in the truck," suggesting that they be recognized for their efforts.

Particularly devoted sports fans know that the "guys in the truck" refer to the production crew, who literally are in a truck outside of the stadium, co-ordinating the camera cuts, replays, and graphics. They are truly indispensable to the success of a broadcast...but since they are behind the scenes I'd like to know how many athletes would ever think about them. Athletes obviously have a lot to think about on the field, and I'm sure they are not above thinking about what announcers might be saying about them, but to actually be thinking about the behind-the-scenes crew indicates to me a particularly high level of awareness about the functioning of the world around oneself.

We all know people who essentially don't think or comprehend anything that does not directly pertain to them. I've at times tried to engage in abstract conversation with such individuals, and it is often a bizarre experience. It can be as if they are literally deaf to what you are saying; other times they may acknowledge that you have said something, before turning a conversation back to more comfortable territory.

Nyjer Morgan appears to be the opposite of such a person. He appears to be hyper-aware and hyper-attuned to what is going on around him. Like anyone else who has an extreme personality characteristic, this can be both blessing and curse. It enables him to be magnetic and draw people to him, to enjoy life to a high degree... and to be completely unable to stoically stand still when drunken louts are shouting insults at him. So before we are so quick to tell people to "ignore" critics, opponents, bullies, or hecklers, maybe we should think instead about how to best encourage people to positively interact with the world around them. At worst, maybe victims can instruct their taunters to "go fly a kite." With any luck, they might actually do it.

If Janet Jackson's Nose Was a Carrot

2011-07-17T19:34:00.005-05:00

I watched the halftime show of the 2004 Super Bowl alone. Consequently, when the infamous Janet Jackson "wardrobe malfunction" occurred, I had nobody to turn to and ask "Did that just happen?" And given that the total amount of time that there was any nudity on-screen amounted to less than one second, I think it was legitimate to enquire as to the accuracy of my perception. Not having a live human to compare notes with, I logged onto the World Wide Web (using a dial-up connection), and tried to find evidence that somebody else had seen what I had seen. I checked Google News, then used a few search terms that a good parental filtering system would have blocked, then checked sports sites, and nowhere did I find a mention of anything related to a wardrobe malfunction. Finally, I found a live chatroom on espn.com, and saw that somebody had typed something to the effect of "Did they just show Janet Jackson's breast?" Even though nobody answered the question, and even though the anonymous soul who had typed it wasn't sure of the answer to the question, this was sufficient to satisfy me that I wasn't out of line to have perceived such a thing. I put the matter out of my mind and focused on the second half of the game (which was a truly outstanding Super Bowl).

Later that night, I saw news stories reporting that CBS had issued an apology. By the next day, the story of the halftime show was bigger than the game. And now, several years later, I'd bet that the sensational media fallout has colored people's recollection of the original event, and most don't remember their initial perception. Most likely, numerous people who would claim to have seen Jackson's exposure didn't actually realize at the time what had happened. Obviously, for many the Super Bowl is a communal event, and I'll bet that in gatherings across the nation, one person turned to another and asked for confirmation of what had occurred. Given the extreme unliklihood of the occurrence, and given how fleeting it was, I think my reaction of questioning what I had seen was a common one. In other cases, those who didn't see it would perhaps have been informed by others. But I'll bet in a number of those cases, there were arguments about what had really happened.

Of course, now the game has changed. If "Nipplegate" had happend at last year's Super Bowl, it wouldn't take me any time at all to be able to confirm my perception. A quick check of Facebook or Twitter would tell me immediately whether I was hallucinating or not. Social media may not construct a perfect hive mind--there is certainly dissention on any given issue (the fallout from the Super Bowl controversy itself engendered a variety of dissenting opinions). However, the degree to which we are experiencing a common objective reality is likely greater than ever before (no reasonable person argues today that the exposure of Janet Jackson didn't actually happen).

So in a world where our perceptions are shaped by collective judgment more than ever, what are the implications? It's been more or less proven that most of us are relatively unconfident of our ability to perceive. We've known since the Asch conformity experiments of the 1950s that people will often surrender their own judgment to the majority, even when the majority is wrong.

I posted a question on Facebook awhile back: "You are the TV play-by-play announcer for Monday Night Football. At one point during the game, you notice that one of the team's quarterback has had his nose turn into a carrot. At least, that's what it looks like to you. But absolutely nobody else is seeming to notice this. What do you do or say?" Everybody who chose to respond noted that they would first find some way to confirm the perception before commenting on the air.

The above example is obviously loaded. You are dealing with high stakes when you are forced to make a judgment on potentially exposing yourself as a fool before millions of television viewers. But even though most of us are never in a position to be exposed before so many (with apologies to Janet Jackson), that doesn't mean the stakes aren't higher than they used to be. As the hive becomes more encompassing and the expectation of conformoity more enchanting, our capacity for self-reliance atrophies. And it may just become less, rather than more, possible for someone to point out when an emporer has no clothes.

Why It's Frustrating to be a 21rst Century Baseball Fan

2011-07-09T13:09:00.007-05:00

When I was in grade school, I lived a little more than a mile from my school...and I somehow had a 45-minute bus ride home. Since handheld electronic devices had not yet achieved prominence, my classmates and I would devise all manners of entertainment to pass the time. I introduced a way to simulate a baseball game with dice (or, more accurately, a "die."). Each player had a stack of nine baseball cards, and when one of the players was "up," the die was rolled. A "one" resulted in a single, two was a double, three a triple, four a homer, five was an out, and six was a strikeout. Yes, the league batting average of .667 and slugging average of 1.667 was a bit ridiculous, but we had fun with the slugfests. Over time, we came to regard certain players as having certain tendencies. Mike Marshall of the Dodgers (the hitter, not the pitcher) proved to have a good power stroke. Hack Wilson (I had a worthless "retro card", not a vintage 1920s collectible) came to be known as "Strikeout Man."

I'm really not sure how much my friends believed that certain cards were more likely to obtain certain results. I know that outwardly I appeared to believe this myself, but inwardly I knew that all of our results were random. Even as I would tout the likelihood of a Mike Marshall home run when he came up to bat, I harbored an unspoken skepticism, aware that the luck could end at any time. I wouldn't learn until years later that repetition is proof of randomness, rather than something that flies in the face of it. Ask someone to flip a coin 200 times and record the results. You can always tell who is faking it because they will have no runs of six, seven, or eight heads or tails in a row, which should happen as a result of random variation.

Actually, most streaks in sports could be explained by the same reasoning. The concept of a "hot hand" (or a "cold hand") has been exposed as a myth, multiple times. The recent book Scorecasting, which seeks to demolish a number of myths prevalent in sports today, uses Ray Allen's shooting in the 2010 NBA Finals as an example. In one game, he made seven three pointers in a row. In the next, he missed 13 in a row. In the first game announcers and teammates called him "red hot," while the next game he apparently was "ice cold." For the two games together, he was 8 for 19, or 42%...and his career average for three pointers is 40%. So although there are some notable differences between real life and my dice game (the biggest of course being that there is a variation in skill levels between the participants in real life), one core principle is true: an athlete should not be expected to perform a certain way based upon a small sample size of recent performances.

Fortunately, in the high-stakes multi-million dollar world of pro sports, those who are entrusted to make decisions on personnel and strategy are smart enough to trust overwhelming statistical evidence and to disregard fallacious antiquated belief systems based on "gut feeling". Or not. Milwaukee Brewers manager Ron Roenicke has on multiple occasions indicated that he believes in the "hot hand." Although the Brewers have both a right-handed and a left-handed centerfielder, earlier this year Roenicke indicated that he wouldn't go with a straight platoon (though platoons have been shown to be statistically preferable in many cases). Rather he said he would be playing whichever centerfielder was "going well." (Fortunately, this hasn't necessarily proven true, as he has actually favored a straight platoon the last couple of weeks). And a couple days ago, Roenicke made a comment that gives fans an insight into his game strategy: "When we go into a series - we have a chart that says who's hot. And if we see a guy's got some kind of streak going, we try and stay away from that guy. We don't really try to go after him and pitch to him." I wish he hadn't revealed that. It's difficult feeling like you know more about good strategy than the guy paid to strategize for your favorite team.

Another recent example of an infuriating decision occurred about a week ago, when Roenicke used right-hander Kameron Loe to protect a lead in the 8th inning. Four straight left-handers came to bat, all of them reached base, and the Brewers surrendered their lead and eventually lost the game. Three other relief pitchers in the Brewers bullpen have better statistics against lefties than Loe. So why did Roenicke use Loe? At some point this year, he had decided that Loe was his "8th inning guy." The "8th inning guy" is a relatively recent invention, following the invention of the "9th inning guy" a.k.a. "closer." Since the late 1980s, baseball teams designate their supposedly best relief pitcher as the closer. One would think that since that time, 9th inning rallies have declined across the board in baseball. SI's Joe Posnanski ran the numbers last winter:

Teams held 95.5% of their ninth-inning leads in 2010. Teams held 95.5% of their ninth-inning leads in 1952....Basically, teams as a whole ALWAYS win between a touch less than 94% and a touch more than 95% of the time. This has been stunningly, almost mockingly, consistent. The game has grown, the leagues have expanded, the roles have changed, the pressure has turned up, but the numbers don’t change.

So all that the invention of the closer has done has given us a new stat (saves) that artificially inflates the value of a specific player on every team and leads to an increase in payroll (which inhibits teams' ability to upgrade at other, more important positions). But Roenicke (and he is not alone in this) felt the need to augment his "9th inning guy" with an "8th inning guy," even at the expense of giving his team the best chance to win. Fortunately, it appears that the loss last week made Roenicke re-think things. From Brewers.com:

"Not that we won't use Loe in that role again, because we will," Roenicke said. "But we're going to look at matchups a little better. ... We're not going to put him out there when there's so many left-handers that he's got to go through."

The purpose of this post isn't to lament the current state of my favorite baseball team. (Other blogs can do that just fine). My point is to draw attention to the unusual circumstances facing an informed baseball fan in this era. Much of the conventional wisdom of baseball, in both evaluating personnel and in implementing strategy, has been called into question in the last ten or so years by a movement called Sabermetrics. And much of that recently discovered knowledge can be gleaned by interested fans who visit the right websites. But given that most of the people in baseball who are in a position to make decisions first got their start in baseball before the rise of Sabermetrics, there is a gap between what a fan might know to be a good course of action and what a manager or general manager might do.

At any given point in history, in any given field of human endeavor, it is fairly common to find laypeople who think they know more than the professionals. And they have almost always been wrong. In almost all cases, the dedicated specialists are to be trusted more than backseat drivers. And, not for no good reasons, they've become accustomed to ignoring the advice proffered from the backseat. But in some isolated instances, and I think contemporary baseball qualifies, the drivers would do well to heed the passengers. But until that happens, the passengers find themselves in a rather frustrated state. It's bad enough to see your team lose, but when they lose because of factors which you can foresee leading to a defeat, it can be downright exasperating. It almost makes you want to take up baseball card dice games as an alternative.

What Are You Going to Do With That?

2011-07-02T08:31:00.003-05:00

As somebody who has spent quite a bit of time over the last 15 years in universities, having received undergraduate and graduate degrees in English, I had thought I had heard every last argument for and defense of a liberal arts education and the practice of getting an "impractical" degree. But a Stanford student with an English major and a classics minor makes a point that I hadn't heard before, one that is simultaneously humorous, disturbing, and thought-provoking. Miles Osgood tells The Chronicle of Higher Education:

The stories are true: The closer I get to graduation—to an honors B.A. in English—the more I'm asked, "What are you going to do with that?" What bothers me about the question is not its wry concern for my working future, or even its implied dismissal of my academic past. What bothers me (honestly) is that it's always the same question, word for word.

The language of our world—where the Internet provides our reading, television our theater, and advertising our art—has grown increasingly dependent on stock phrases. I read, write, and study literature in large part because its more careful language can order this world of chance events into scenes and narratives of heightened form and significance. Our trite, repeated lines order the world too, but only by flattening it.

I thought of this yesterday while reading a standardized test essay submitted by an anonymous student somewhere in the USA. In response to a prompt about the value of extracurricular activities, literally almost every other sentence was a cliche (e.g. "Whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger" and "There is no 'I' in team."). I wanted to give the writer the benefit of the doubt and assume that they were satirizing the concept of writing a standardized test essay, but I fear that would be too generous of an assumption.

I'm always suspicious of arguments that blame technology and/or popular culture for some kind of mass societal decline. And yet...evidence would seem to indicate that the "flattening" of language that has resulted in stock phrases and cliche-ridden essays is a product of mass media. I recently saw an interview with Civil War scholar Adam Goodheart. He discussed the pleasures of doing primary research with documents of that era, particularly letters written by soldiers. He commented on the richness of language used by people of modest education and the depth and vividness with which they conveyed their circumstances. And he contrasted that richness of language with the relative paucity of later eras (including our own), noting that the most obvious explanation for the shift was the emergence of mass media.

If the result of this shift is simply a loss of aesthetic quality, some would argue that this would be enough of a reason to bemoan our loss. But ironically, Osgood suggests that there are practical considerations. If language is how we order our world, the "flattening" of language would also lead to a more simplistic view of reality, implications of which may be on display in the political and economic problems confronting our nation today. And more in line with the traditional defenses of liberal arts education, the individual who can sidestep the use of reductive phraseology may also succeed in living a more fulfilling experience.

So although the common stock phrase used in defense of liberal arts education is that it makes people "well rounded," perhaps the phrase could be amended so that it is said to allow people to be exposed to and then express themselves in "rounded language." Is it necessary to major in English and minor in classics in order to have a more rounded perception? Of course not--but it might help in allowing people to realize that such a perception is needed in the first place.

Real False Alarms

2011-06-25T08:30:00.004-05:00

Imagine you are a studio head in Hollywood. After a few of your recent films have been "misses," you feel pressure to have a hit. The next one you put out better be good, or it could be your job. You listen to pitches warily. A producer sits down across your desk and gives you this spiel:

In this Pixar age, the public has shown an appetite for smart, moral children's films. And as we've long known from Disney, there is less risk involved when making an adaptation of a somewhat known commodity. I've got the idea to adapt a story that is already in the public consciousness to such a degree, that perhaps 100% of the movie-going public, including children, has heard the title already. It is a story that has resonated across cultures for centuries, first a favorite with ancient Greeks, and then adapted in children's publications in Europe as early as 1484, with subsequent re-tellings in 1574, 1687, 1692, 1867, and most notably in America in 1965. To say that it has stood the test of time and has mass appeal is an understatement. And most exciting of all, the story has never been adapted into a long form motion picture. There is no previous adaptation we'd have to live up to or compete with. We would be filling a gap, providing an unmet need in the public's appetite.

So do you go ahead and give it the green light immediately? Or do you insist on knowing a few more details, such as the title? And if the latter, what effect would it have if the producer told you it's a story that has had many titles through the centuries, but the contemporary public knows it as "The Boy Who Cried Wolf"? Could a story that grade schoolers can tell in 1:45 be stretched into a full-length narrative?

Obviously, in an adaptation-happy film climate, the fact that this story has not been made into a movie implies that it works better as a short parable than as a full length exposition. And yet, I think there is something to be said for its ubiquity through the ages and its continued ability to penetrate public consciousness. Of all of Aesop's Fables, arguably the only one that rivals it in terms of popularity is "The Tortoise and the Hare." But a search of the latter term on Twitter reveals that it has been mentioned three times in the last three days (as of this writing). The phrase "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" has been tweeted in various contexts 58 times over the last 24 hours. Although it may never be a "trending topic," it is amazing how consistently this millenia-old story is invoked in ultra-modern media.

So are there any lessons to be learned from the popularity of this story (aside from the patently obvious one that Aesop hits us over the head with)? I think it's fair to say that it reveals a fear of sending off false alarms, and a condemnation of those who do (for example, one Tweet compares weather forecasters to the boy, a comparison I'm sure did not originate yesterday). And this makes sense. This alone could account for the story's appeal across cultures. Nobody wants to live in a society where alarms can't be taken seriously. The uselessness of the car alarm is a particularly absurd aspect of our culture that Aesop could have never imagined.

But I would like to propose a difference between false alarms generated from humans and those generated from mechanical devices. I would argue that the former, unlike the latter, are incapable of generating false alarms. To be sure, they can give misdirected alarms, as I think is the case with Aesop's boy. I'm not suggesting there really was a wolf when he first yelled that there was. But when the townspeople found that there was no wolf, they should have realized the boy was sending an alarm of a different sort. In order for him to engage in such an act, there had to be something not right with him, or with his society, or with the system for protecting sheep. Perhaps the boy was pathologically ignored by those who should have given him attention, and he was acting out in the only way he knew how. Perhaps he should have been given a companion to help keep him company. Maybe, to replace one platitude with another, the town shouldn't have "sent a boy to do a man's job." In any event, I can't help but condemn the townspeople equally if not more for the tragedy that eventually occurred.

And come to think of it, maybe exploring these unconsidered aspects of the story could make for a good movie.

In Defense of Regret

2011-06-19T11:40:00.003-05:00

Despite Andy Warhol's famous pronouncement that in the future everybody would be famous for 15 minutes, and despite the emergence of mediums that he couldn't have even imagined, we are still a long way from realizing such a vision. In a nation of 300 million, a minuscule percentage of individuals ever speak to an audience in the thousands, much less millions. And most of those who do get an opportunity to address mass audiences, such as celebrities or people in position of power, are well prepared for the task. But a minuscule percent of the minuscule percent of those who are given fame and attention, however fleeting, are people plucked from obscurity. And a fair number of these people are mentally unbalanced, criminals or social misfits who are given attention only because of an abnormal action that they have committed. And a fair number of others are given attention only because of some kind of victimhood, commanding attention only because they have survived a particularly unusual form of trauma, an experience that most likely gives them a unique perspective on life. So it is only a handful of individuals who truly represent something resembling a "common person's perspective" who are given a spotlight.

I suppose it is arguable whether Traci Nobles can be considered a "common person," as it is not a common thing to have an online sexual relationship with a congressperson. But then again it's really only the last word in the previous sentence that makes her actions particularly uncommon. She still does not have a Wikipedia page, but for about two minutes last week, she was given an audience of millions. She appeared on the NBC Today show to discuss her online relationship with now former U.S. Representative Anthony Weiner (interview starts at 3:07 in the clip below).

I can only imagine how surreal it must be to go from a typically mundane life to having one's words broadcast for millions. I would imagine the experience to be so psychologically overwhelming that one's self-awareness would be at a minimum, particularly since these interviews usually only take place in the immediate aftermath of an event, when there has not yet been time for honest reflection and analysis. So I suspect that in an interview setting, even with a few hours (or at most days) of preparation, the answers that a person gives will be superficial and instinctual, which is to say representative of a worldview or mindset that exists among the culture at large.

I think this was very much in evidence during Nobles' interview. She repeated the cliched tautology "It is what it is," not once but twice, indicative of the fact that she wasn't particularly interested in finding any meaning in her experience. When asked what she would say to Weiner's wife, she made a statement both understandable and totally irrational: "I don’t even like to think about that, really, because at the time I didn’t really think about his wife." Obviously, she means "I don't like to think about that because the fact that he is married is inconvenient," but the construction she uses is fascinating. In effect, she is saying that because she willfully ignored the situation in the past, she is more or less condemned to follow the same path accordingly, for as long as is required. She cannot answer that question because she is blocked from thinking about his wife, since that is simply the entrenched status quo.

Though Nobles was tentative and hesitant at point during the interview, she does not hesitate one second when answering whether she regrets anything: "I don't regret it. I don't regret it. It's part of my life, it's changed me in some way or made me who I am today, so I don’t really regret anything." Note how vague the changes have been ("in some way"). This is actually a common sentiment that I've seen or heard multiple times before, paraphrased as follows: "I can't regret any experiences, because I am the sum total of my experiences, and to want to change prior experiences means that I would somehow cease to exist." But such a belief does not admit for the possibility that one could acquire any perspectives without direct, first-hand experience, a position that I can't imagine a reasonable person holding.

So why would people hold such a contradictory mindset? Part of it might be our natural human tendency to want to avoid accepting guilt for wrongdoing. But part of it might be even deeper. Notice what all three of these sentiments have in common: "It is what it is...I can't think about that now because I didn't think about it then...I can't regret anything because it's part of my life." The common undercurrent is a kind of fatalistic determinism. In a sense it's a denial of free will, a belief that events and occurrences are outside of our responsibility or control. I don't think this is an attitude that one acquires in the immediate aftermath of a dramatic life event, but one that had been present long before, perhaps even helping contribute to the occurrence in the first place. And in a nation where hardly any of us become famous enough to attract attention, even for fifteen minutes, perhaps it becomes easier to be lulled into thinking that we don't act, that we are acted upon by forces that are what they are.

Vandals in Amber

2011-06-12T22:23:00.006-05:00

Five years ago, there was a new X-Men movie in the theaters and the Dallas Mavericks and Miami Heat were in the NBA Finals. Since these occurrences have repeated this summer, I have had the occasion to reflect back upon the summer of 2006. I was living in Kentucky at the time, but I was able to take a couple weeks in June to come back to Wisconsin for a visit. So I was in the Badger state on June 6th, which happened to be the date that two young people, in commemoration of the numerical happenstance of 6-6-06, decided to spray paint Satanic graffiti at a prominent Catholic Shrine (Holy Hill).

Considering the extent of the damage (over $30,000, since it involved fragile old statues) and the popularity of the shrine, this qualified as a big crime. It is hard to get away with big crimes in small towns, even moreso when you are the type of person who spray paints things like "Hail Satin" [sic]. So the culprits, a 17-year-old (David Groth) and his 21-year-old cousin (Tyler Groth) were apprehended just days after the vandalism. What was already a sensational story for the local news media went into overdrive when the 21-year-old agreed to an interview with a Milwaukee TV station. When asked why he did it, he was quoted on-camera as saying "I'm a punk. It's what I do." And since the concept of a "budget repair bill" had not been hatched and the Green Bay Packers were not making a Super Bowl run, this became the hottest topic of conversation in the state of Wisconsin. For about two weeks or so, anyway. But in those two weeks, the topic was inescapable. People went beyond talking about these two "punks" to discussing youth and the decay of society. Columnists were inspired to come up with grand theories about the overall meaning of this incident, one of which inspired me to write a blog post.

After awhile the story faded away, then resurfaced briefly a few months later when the two were sentenced (the younger cousin received 18 months in prison, the elder six months in the county jail). Holy Hill briefly resurfaced in the news a couple of times, once when the Vatican upgraded its status, and again in 2009 when someone stole over $200 dollars in coins that had been thrown into a pond (this story did not lead to heavily philosophical newspaper columns about society).

So five years on, I found myself curious to know what the two culprits have been up to. Are they incarcerated? Are they in a punk band? Do they still commemorate anomalous calendrical occurrences? Are they now on Twitter, live tweeting acts of vandalism? Google isn't a lot of help. The summer of 2006 is preserved in amber, multiple news accounts easily accessible. But their electronic trail since then is sparse. A search of Wisconsin court records turns up some information. Tyler, the one who gave the TV interview, has managed to stay out of trouble for the most part. He was apparently sued as the result of a car accident, but has not faced any criminal charges. David started his 18-month prison term in January of 2007, meaning he must have been released in mid 2008. Since then, he has received two separate jail terms (of two and three months) for resisting an officer and illegal possession of prescription drugs.

Digging a little deeper into Google results, I did manage to find a particularly fascinating nugget. In a blog post dated exactly five years ago, entitled "Tyler Groth, Worlds Biggest Dumbass" [sic], a blogger put forward the pretty standard argument that the vandals are irredeemable reprobates that should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law (in so many words). The fascinating nugget is found in the comments section, in a comment posted nearly a year later (presumably the author was conducting the same kind of Google investigation that I did). He wrote: "Tyler is a friend of mine. All I've got to say is that drugs were involved. But it was not an attack on Catholicism. It was a dumbass thing to do and he realizes that...now. The thing is he has trouble saying "No" to people. Painting stuff was David's idea but Tyler was the one with a car so David had him drive out there."

Three things about this post intrigue me:

1. While it was widely reported in the media that David already had an extensive criminal record at the age of 17 and Tyler didn't have a rap sheet (which became the attribution for their varied sentences), the media essentially portrayed them as co-conspirators. I realize it is presumptuous to take a blog comment at face value, but assuming it is an accurate account, it strikes me as provocative that for all of the media attention on the case at the time, it is only a fleeting, obscure blog comment almost one year later that captures a central aspect of the situation that was otherwise unreported. This makes me wonder--how much are we missing with any news story by focusing so heavily on the initial glare? Given time for stories to breathe, how much deeper and fuller could we understand things? (I actually wrote about this not too long ago).

2. The author of this comment is not anonymous. He posts his real name. But nobody in the media would have known to contact this person for his perspective. How many people are out there who have knowledge that would be of interest to the public, and are willing to share that knowledge, but are never contacted? Given the technology and ways of communication at our disposal, should our media outlets be doing a better job attempting to locate these people?

3. If this version of the story is true, it puts Tyler's TV interview in a whole new light. It comes across as false bravado by someone who knows he too easily gave into peer pressure. He didn't do it because he was a punk, he did it because he was weak. And that's an awfully difficult thing to admit to the world. It's much easier to present an attitude of smugness. And in the short term, it's probably easier to be cursed and scorned than laughed at and scorned, or even pitied and scorned. But perhaps now, with more perspective, Tyler would do a different TV interview. Maybe he would even tell us things that we could learn from. I'm sure that many of those closest to him would want the media to leave him alone, that his reputation has been damaged enough, that we should leave the Google searches frozen in amber. But if we all wanted to know what he was thinking five years ago, why wouldn't we want to know what he is thinking today? And if we aren't interested in knowing what he is thinking today, should we have been interested five years ago?

Words and Drama

2011-06-04T09:31:00.004-05:00

Many contemporary philosophers believe the maxim that "language creates reality." They would argue that if there was no word for "freedom," we would have no concept for "freedom," and would therefore never demand freedom. A similar but less dramatic philosophy would be that language and reality simultaneously shape each other. The abstract desire for freedom gives rise to a concrete representation (in the form of a word), which solidifies or accelerates a demand.

Another scenario would see existing words re-fashioned to serve a different function. For example, I used a word in the preceding paragraph ("dramatic") which has taken on an additional function over the course of my lifetime. When I was in high school, if I had told a classmate that I "had drama last hour," I would be communicating that I had just come from a specific English class (where I would perhaps be studying Sophocles or Moliere). If a high school student were to say the same today, what would be understood by the listener was that there was some type of interpersonal conflict, in which somebody's feelings were hurt.

When I first heard the new application of this word some years back, I immediately approved of it. I felt that it was a well-understood, succinct summary of a kind of common phenomenon, particularly in youth culture. I felt that by naming a thing, it could be better understood, and perhaps better corralled. It's one thing to advise teen-agers to avoid getting caught up in complex interpersonal rivalries, but it's likely much more effective to suggest that they avoid "drama." But apparently not everybody was so approving. I found this post on an Internet message board, dated June 29, 2007:

I have become frustrated with the current usage of words in our language. I hear statements being made that make absolutely no sense. The standard excuse is that the person is speaking slang. Well, Im tired of it. I realize slang has been around for years but if you ask me todays slang is really dumb.

For example the use of the word drama in our society has become a major annoyance. I often hear people say, "I dont need the drama". "He/she has too much drama." The meaning of the word drama can be found at http://websterdictionary.net . If you look it up the definition basically refers to poetry or writings that paint a picture of human life. It also refers to people acting out sitautions in plays and on movie/tv. How people started using the word drama as a negative description of a person with a volatile personality is a mystery to me.

This post betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of how language works, but I'm not sure it is the poster's fault. Our society treats the dictionary as a Bible of language, when it really should be considered a Kelley Blue Book of language. Rather than authoritatively fix the definitions, the purpose of the dictionary is to reflect current usage. And since our language is "living," it will naturally change.

But there is something else about the above quote that interests me. It starts out with "I have become frustrated." I can see one becoming frustrated with offensive use of language. But why should an altered use of the word "drama" frustrate someone? Even if it is an offense against the dictionary, it's not like the dictionary actually is placed next to Bibles and hymnals in churches. Is this person a member of a "church of the dictionary" dedicated to the preservation of the purity of language? If there is such a church, their high holiday must be New Year's Day, since that's when the Lake Superior State University list of "banished words" is released (annually since 1976). The list gets a lot of media attention, though nobody takes it seriously to the point where they readjust their vernacular habits. If anything the list is regarded as an interesting compilation of additions to the language. To truly banish many of them would at best leave gaps between our culture's practice and our ability to talk about our practice, and at worst lead to regression. Many of the words and terms on the list are related to technological advancements, and to still maintain opposition to them now would be embarrassing. Banishing the word "blog" might have sounded like a good idea in 2005, but I would like to think it's garnered acceptance by now. And this year's list seeks to banish the use of "google" as a verb, an entry that already seems embarrassing.

Reading the "rationales" for words on the list is like reading the diatribe against "drama." The tone is the same--resentment and indignation. So what is the root cause of this aggression toward additions to a language that we all agree is "living"? Is it simple elitism, a resistance to vulgar dialect? I don't think so. I think the explanation has to do with the connection between language and reality. Our language is changing only because our world is changing. And a lot of change makes a lot of people uncomfortable. So when somebody submits the word "blog" for banishment, under the auspices of disliking a word that "sounds like something your mother would slap you for saying," they are really expressing anxiety over the existence of a word that "your mother" never would have heard growing up. But it's not only the existence of the word that provokes anxiety, but the existence of a new concept that changes the world (i.e. alters reality) for both better and worse.

Who knew that a few little words could cause so much drama?

It's Not the End of the World, and I Don't Feel Fine

2011-05-29T11:58:00.005-05:00

I've decided to give in and write about Harold Camping's "end of the world" prediction that didn't come true last week (actually, Camping predicted "The Rapture", which is a little different than predicting the end of the world. And I used to think the word "impeach" was the most misunderstood concept in America). Over the days leading up to the May 21, I attempted to avoid reading or hearing news accounts of the prediction, and I tried to avoid taking part in any conversation about it (though I was less than successful on both resolutions). What was my objection to joining this national "water cooler" topic? I was just annoyed that something that happens with regular frequency was being treated as a special occurrence. If somebody put out a press release saying that he was abducted by aliens, he would not be granted any special audience with the American people. At best, he would have his name added to the long list of "Contactees" on Wikipedia. And of course, Camping himself had already made such a prediction in 1994, which did not receive nearly as much attention as this one. Logically, one would think that if any prediction would receive attention it would be the first one, with any subsequent claim afforded less consideration. So reasoning that the story has no right to exist, I did my best to plug my ears, close my eyes, and deny the reality that it did.

But an Associated Press essay written shortly after May 21 inspired me to examine the matter, after all. My first instinct was to blame the situation on the news media's need to find content to disseminate (see my post two weeks ago). But the essay points out: "As with so many curious cultural blips, from the balloon boy to the angry flight attendant, it's easy to say that attention to this was created and fed by the media. But that doesn't account for the social networks — for the millions on Twitter who made topics like 'rapture' and 'judgmentday' trend throughout the day." I would argue that the same need to find content that drives news sources is also a driving force behind Facebook and Twitter. Just like networks and newspapers feel pressure to find content, social media users have to talk about something.

But then again, for every trending topic there are countless topics that whither on the vine. What is it about "doomsday" that inspires discussion? Forget Harold Camping for a second; if you surveyed a cross-section of the American population by asking when the Mayan calendar ends, I think a majority would correctly respond "2012." But if you asked when the Mayan people thrived, where they lived, or anything else about them except when their calendar ends, I highly doubt you would get a majority.

Examined from another angle, it seems illogical to be concerned about the end of the world, when the much greater likelihood is the end of our world. No events of global significance occurred on May 21, but if it was a typical day, over 150,000 people around the world died. Every day is an apocalypse for somebody; every day is judgment day for someone. And we will all get our turn. So why are so many preoccupied with the expectation that it will be a universally shared experience?

My theory is that even though most people probably don't know what the word "telos" means-- we live under its influence. We are accustomed to joining stories in progress. If we come late to a party and a group of friends is watching a movie, we don't ask them to go back to the beginning. If they press pause and tell us what we missed, that is usually sufficient to proceed. But once we've invested in a story, we hate to have to leave before it is done. If the history of the world is a story, we've become accepting of the fact that we are latecomers who have been filled in on what we missed. But it is disconcerting to know that we will be checking out early. It would give us closure to know that we won't miss anything, that events will not be proceeding without us.

But then again, given that news stories and Internet posts about balloon boys, angry flight attendants, and Harold Camping's predictions are what people are actively consuming, perhaps we can be rest assured that after shuffling off our mortal coils, we won't be missing anything worth talking about anyway.

Myth, Progression, and the Future of a Genre

2011-05-21T14:56:00.006-05:00

I plan to do something this summer that I don't think I've ever done before: go to the movie theatre four times. With rare exceptions, I only see movies based on comic book franchises, so with Thor, Captain America, The X-Men, and Green Lantern all getting blockbusters, I'm making an unprecedented number of contributions to the box office. Factor in a couple of animated direct-to-DVD movies (another Thor and another Green Lantern) and the two hour (before commercials) series finale of Smallville, and I'm feeling sufficiently catered to.

As with any movie based on source material, it's interesting to make note of how and why filmmakers chose to deviate from an original narrative. But there is a difference between comic adaptations and most all other kinds. Movies based on literary works or even on ancient myths are working with a structured narrative with a clearly defined endpoint. Although any given comic book story can have a resolution, the universes that spawned these characters are ongoing. And it wouldn't exactly be lucrative to end them. But aside from the fiduciary interest that corporations (Disney and Time Warner now own all Marvel and DC characters) have in keeping the characters stories from ending, there is a cultural argument for their continued existence. If, as some have argued, characters such as Superman, Batman, and Spider-Man are our culture's answer to the Greek myths, the continued addition to a tapestry indicates a continued cultural vitality.

But that also creates a rather unique challenge for the creators (or caretakers) of the characters. How do you progress characters through a narrative that does not end? The only other medium that comes close to facing such a dilemma is the television soap opera. But soaps are built around ensemble casts and even the most iconic characters are phased out or de-emphasized over time.

A practice in the industry that has arisen in response to this challenge over the last several decades has been termed "illusion of change." In the early 1990s DC Comics killed Superman, eventually replacing him with four different Supermen. It was a bold move, resulting in lots of media attention and renewed interest in the comic. After some time had passed, the original Superman returned to life and assumed his old role, with the replacements fading into the background. And this general process has been repeated with almost all superheroes since then. Almost all of them have been at some time or another replaced, only to return and claim their old job back. Occasionally some other radical change occurs: Spider-Man's Aunt May dies, Superman splits into two separate energy beings, Batman's butler Alfred quits his job, or Wonder Woman starts wearing pants. But eventually things revert to a "classic set up," until the next time the status quo is temporarily disrupted.

Of interest to me, then, are the unusual instances when some change to the status quo sticks, and when it becomes so enmeshed in the ongoing comic narrative that it also becomes part of other media adaptations. Perhaps the best example of this is the marriage of Superman and Lois Lane. For over 50 years, according to conventional wisdom, one of the things that made the Superman myth work was the concept of a love triangle that actually involved two people. Clark Kent loved Lois Lane, but Lois loved Superman. It was thought that if you would destroy this dynamic, you would destroy much of what makes the Superman story appealing. But more than 15 years ago, Lois irrevocably learned that Clark and Superman were one and the same man, and she married him. Since then, two separate television adaptations, including the recently ended Smallville, also had the two of them walk down the aisle.

Another example of a change that sticks can be found in the bat mythos. As a general rule, superheroes don't age. But Robin grew up. In 1984, Dick Grayson moved out of Wayne Manor and adapted the identity of Nightwing. Subsequently, a number of other characters have fought alongside Batman under the name Robin, but the original Robin never came back to the nest...until recently. When Bruce Wayne returned from one of those deaths that superheroes tend to come back from, he found that Grayson had shed the Nightwing costume and had honored his legacy by becoming Batman. And the erstwhile Robin was actually doing a pretty good job in the role. So rather than force his ward to regress, Bruce allowed Dick to continue watching over Gotham City, while he decided he would also put the cape and cowl back on and patrol the rest of the world.

Whether that particular change to the classic Batman set-up will stick is anyone's guess. The track record of the industry would seem to indicate that it won't. But I hope it does. Comic book movies have been going strong for over 10 years now, and the next couple years will continue to see some high-profile projects. But as the initial wave of trilogies starts to wind down, it will be interesting to see if these iconic characters stay in the public consciousness. The X-Men franchise has reverted to prequels. The next Spider-Man film next year will be a "reboot," supposedly retelling the origin that was established in the 2002 film. Batman's director has said that after the next movie, his franchise will be ending.

The first real decade of comic book movies has drawn heavily on multiple decades of comic book stories. But if this genre is to be sustained, I think the source material needs to continue to expand, evolve, and explore new terrain. If the majority of the changes to our myths continue to be illusory, I doubt that I will have a summer like this one in a long time.

Time Isn't a-Changin'

2011-05-14T08:10:00.004-05:00

"Even the article which you're doing, the way it's going to come out, don't you see it can't be a good article? Because the guy that's writing that article is sitting in a desk in New York. He's not even going out of his office. He's going to just get all of these fifteen reporters and they're going to send him a quota...He's going to put himself on, he's going to put all of his readers on, and another week he'll have some space in the magazine."--Bob Dylan to Time Magazine, 1965

"The only person you have to think about lying twice to is yourself or to God. The press isn't either of them, and I just figured they're irrelevant."--Bob Dylan to CBS (Ed Bradley on 60 Minutes), 2005.

Bob Dylan is famous for going through metamorphoses in his career, but as he nears his 70th birthday, one thing has been constant: his skepticism that the media has the ability to portray reality (and particularly his reality) accurately. Not that mass media has been static throughout Dylan's 50-year-career: the online world would have been foreign to the young hipster who sat down (to borrow a media cliche for "being interviewed") with Time Magazine in 1965. But the aging curmudgeon waded into that world yesterday, in order to combat his old enemies. Dylan has had a website, a Facebook page, and a Twitter account for some time, but nobody thought that the man himself had too much to do with them. So it was a surprise when yesterday he posted a message on his website to his "fans and followers."

The gist of the missive is that there has been a lot of misreporting over the last year over Dylan's Far East concerts, and he manages to insinuate that the media apparatus of no less than three countries is flawed. He takes to task the American press for not double checking facts they were reporting (such as the notion that he had been denied permission to play in China, something he says is a false story created by a spurned promoter). He calls out by name British magazine Mojo for misreporting attendance figures and the composition of the audience ("check with concertgoers" he exhorts). And he subtly mocks the Chinese press for promoting him as a '60s icon along with pictures of Joan Baez, Che Guevara, Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg: "The concert attendees probably wouldn't have known about any of those people. Regardless, they responded enthusiastically to the songs on my last 4 or 5 records. Ask anyone who was there."

In all three cases, he not only diagnoses the flaw, he also prescribes a solution. And the common theme is to "ask" or "talk" to anyone who might be able to give truth and insight. It's amazing that the very malady that Dylan identified in the media in 1965 is still the cause of so much misinformation today. It's not that our media overlords are trying to influence public policy by knowingly slanting information. It's that they've got space to fill, deadlines, and sometimes limited resources to get done what they need. And if anything, these conditions have been exacerbated over the years. Resources are becoming even more stretched as traditional advertising revenue streams dry up in new media. And in 1965, at least the editors at Time magazine had a week to put together their stories. Now they have to update content constantly. And back then they had to worry about limited competition. Now they are scrambling to compete with countless alternative news sources. Operating in such a climate, it is easy to see how meticulous fact-checking can be sacrificed. And in today's media, once a story is out there, it can be retweeted and linked exponentially, and with each promulgation there is less of a sense of responsibility by the disseminator to check for accuracy.

There is one other thing that Dylan perceived about the media in 1965, one more limiting factor in its ability to "tell the truth": "I’ve never been in Time Magazine, and yet this hall is filled twice, ...I don’t think I’m a folk singer; you’ll probably call me a folk singer, but the other people know better. The people that buy my records and listen to me don’t necessarily read Time Magazine." What Dylan is recognizing here is the mainstream's inability to fully comprehend a subculture. The outsider can't become an insider in such a limited amount of time. When he finds out at the outset of the interview that the reporter will be attending his concert, he tries to warn and prepare him: "Okay you hear it, see it, and it’s gonna happen fast and you're not gonna get it all, and you might even hear the wrong words."

So even if a reporter takes Dylan's advice and tries to seek out the truth first-hand, it is likely that cultural barriers will still prevent him or her from truly "getting it." So in such a hopeless situation, it's not surprising that the confrontational tone that Dylan takes throughout the Time interview takes a magnanimous turn. Right after he remarks that the readers are being "put on" and that the reporter's article will eventually mean nothing, he says: "I'm not putting that down, because people have got to eat and live... (long pause) but at least be honest about it."

A New Old Media

2011-05-07T10:11:00.006-05:00

The term "shot heard round the world" was first applied to the bullet that apparently started the American Revolution at the Battle of Lexington and Concord. This event occurred in 1775, but it took until 1837 before Ralph Waldo Emerson retroactively bestowed the title. And in a metaphorical sense, he was not wrong. The world did hear about this shot. It just took awhile. News didn't travel fast in those days, as exemplified by the Battle of New Orleans, a War of 1812 battle that was fought after the war was over, since news of the peace treaty did not reach the combatants for two months.

If I had easy access to news archives (and the time to study them), I would be interested in investigating how much the newspapers of that era devoted to covering the dissemination of the news. My hypothesis is that they didn't mention anything related to how people acquired knowledge of the major events of the world. I think it would have been taken for granted that information was at a premium, that it did spread, but that it spread in uneven, unpredictable, and imperfect ways. In such a climate, I wonder how much responsibility news publications felt to be the official standard bearers of truth and accuracy. Our contemporary sensibilities are that media outlets should be held to the highest standards of factual accountability, almost as if they are presenting exhibits in a courtroom. But from what I know of newspapers of the early days of America, they were highly ideological. They would seek to inform the public, but they had an agenda for doing so (and one can surmise how facts, already slippery things when people attempt to view them neutrally, become distorted when they are viewed through the prism of a particular bias).

Last week, a Navy Seal fired a shot which was likewise heard around the world. And unlike the shots fired in the 18th or the 19th centuries, the time lag between that shot and when the world heard about it has drastically diminished. But not only did the media report on the shot itself, part of the story was how the public came to learn about it (and how they reacted to it). The role of social media was highlighted in many articles, with stories about how the news first leaked on Twitter, how a man in Pakistan inadvertently tweeted about the operation before the shot was even fired, how sports fans in Philadelphia started a celebratory chant after many of them received the news from mobile devices, and how many people first found out about the death of Osama bin Laden through either Facebook or Twitter.

I personally found out from a Facebook post. I commented on the post saying, "This is the biggest news I've ever learned from Facebook." Moments after seeing the post, I ran across another post claiming that bin Laden had been killed in a bombing. Later I switched over to "old media" and I learned that it was not a bombing, but an intense firefight with Navy Seals. Later I learned that there was only one armed resistor in the compound. Still later I learned that bin Laden had used a woman as a human shield, later I learned that the woman was his wife, and still later I learned that he didn't use her as a human shield at all. And later still I saw several links on Facebook to purported pictures of bin Laden's corpse (though I knew enough not to click on them).

It's easy to blame social media for the rapid dissemination of false or misleading information in the wake of a major news event. But neither Twitter or Facebook existed at the time of the Columbine school shooting, and we now know that much of what was reported in the immediate aftermath of that event was false. And Facebook has nothing to do with the misinformation that was spread after the death of Pat Tillman.

Newspapers have been referred to as the "first draft of history," a description that simultaneously celebrates and cautions. And it is apparent that we have entered an age in which even that description needs revision, where a new media has taken on that function. But as exciting as it has been to see a new media develop in my lifetime, to be able to see huge stories break on platforms that I wouldn't have recognized even a few years ago, I would be even more excited about the emergence of another "new media," one that could have theoretically developed centuries ago, but never did.

Wouldn't it be nice if somewhere between the first draft of history and whatever draft is currently being disseminated in the halls of academia, we had some forum through which the public at large could be informed about events that, through the passage of time, we can more clearly comprehend? Obviously, investigative journalists can break stories at any time, but with the pressures that media outlets face to stay current, unless there is some outside agent that provides motivation, that first draft runs the risk of becoming ossified. So I propose a new media, which can find its niche by its devotion to the old. And there is a bit of a precedent: if Emerson could "report" on an event 62 years later and give it a title that still reverberates, there is no reason that shots fired today (or last week) can't do the same.

Comment America

2011-04-30T09:24:00.003-05:00

A few days ago, when I opened my morning newspaper (or executed the digital equivalent thereof), the first thing I saw was the face of a guy (Bob Murray) I went to high school with. I haven't talked to him in person in over 15 years, but I friended him on Facebook a few years back. I've enjoyed reading his humorous status updates since then, and so when a year ago he posted "I'm thinking of making a movie called Date America where I would take a cab across America and go on dates with women that I meet on-line" (or something to that effect) I thought it was another joke. It turns out he was serious. And now as he embarks on the journey this week, the local media is paying attention....and so is the local peanut gallery.

It would be too easy to write a blog post every week taking issue with the comments section of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, or any other newspaper for that matter. But the comments that accompanied this article were different than the standard, in that rather than directing venom and vitriol against public figures or the news media, the target was a guy who simply decided to do something harmless but a little bit out of the ordinary (okay, a lot out of the ordinary). A sample of some of the backlash:

This method will result in an ex-wife. This is not how you find a spouse. What happened to meeting someone in college, or introduced by friends, or through work, at the library or the grocery store? Now it's either the Internet or some type of reality show, apparently. Weird.

this guy is a d-bag. How about meeting someone through friends like normal people?

Ugly dude is hurting for attention. Look at me, I'm taking a taxi looking for dates! Yippee, I hope I get on TV! Instead of doing this, please go see a DENTIST or go over to the UK, you'll be a big hit

Now, I can see why some people would turned off from the idea of dating a guy who wants to make a movie out of the experience. But nobody is asking these commentators to be a part of it. Why do they feel the need to express such contempt? Part of it may be the inevitable reaction to living in a changing world. Any time you start a sentence with "What happened to..." I see that as code for "I'm not comfortable that things aren't like they used to be." If only the Internet had been around, I'm guessing that an ancestor of the above commentator may have written: "This method will result in an ex-wife. This is not how you find a spouse. What happened to having your spouse picked out for you by your parents? Now it's either furtive notes and glances or some elaborate courtship. Weird."

And in fairness, there is something to be said about the potential problems of living in a world where everybody is clamoring for a media spotlight. But is that really what is going on here? Bob's lead quotation in the article is "I love adventure." I suppose you don't need to take him at face value, but this would indicate to me that if he finds love, gets media attention, or makes money from the project he's not going to be unhappy, but what this is really about is shaking things up and doing something different for the sake of doing something different (perhaps this theory can be further confirmed by the opening lines of the promotional video he's made).

And gas prices and recent economic conditions notwithstanding, we live in a time when it is perhaps easier than ever before in history to get out on the road and seek adventure (especially if you are single). The Internet has permitted us to strike a balance between the potential spontaneity of the classic American road trip (or going further back, the romanticism of a knight errant) and the safety and structure of being able to plan ahead and communicate with others. And rather than Kerouac having to spill his memoirs onto a 120-foot-long scroll, you can now easily document your adventures in real time for anyone who might be interested. So it seems that Bob is tapping into the archetypal and the contemporary all at once.

But why does that make people angry? Actually, I think another on-line commentator is onto something:

"All of the negativity speaks volumes about how people have difficulty seeing others get attention for their efforts. Taking potshots in the comments section is a cheap way to "get into the paper," as opposed to Bob, who has apparently spent a great deal of time and effort on this idea."

Even as we live in a time when it is easier than ever to embrace adventure, it is now also equally easy to recoil from it, to retreat to our screens and shy away from real contact with others. But when we see that someone else has become invigorated rather than enervated by technology, it may awaken a stirring within us. It's too bad that for so many the stirrings take the form of jealousy and anger rather than inspiration.

How to Dress Up Empty Seats

2011-04-23T09:00:00.003-05:00

A road trip the Milwaukee Brewers recently completed is causing me to re-evaluate a blog post I wrote last fall. At the time, I commented that there had been a generational shift, that at one time even the most popular entertainers couldn't sell out venues, but television united millions, whereas now television ratings are in decline and the live experience is at a premium.

I still don't foresee a time when a Super Bowl will ever fail to sell out, the NCAA Final Four will continue to be played in domes with tens of thousands of attendees, and the most popular music acts (which today would be the likes of Justin Bieber and Lady Gaga) will continue to sell out venues within minutes. And, yes, Charlie Sheen's tour continues to fill houses. But beyond the very top level, the demand for the live experience seems to be declining.

In back-to-back series that the Brewers played in Pittsburgh and Washington, a viewer couldn't help but notice the gaping sections of empty seats. In one game in Washington it was surreal seeing a grand total of two people in the section behind home plate. And neither Pittsburgh or Washington is mentioned in this article, which details eight teams setting record lows or near-record lows in attendance at their stadiums in the last couple of weeks. Also not mentioned is Baltimore; I watched a half inning of an Oriole game (with sparse attendance) this week and the announcers spent the entire time not talking about the game, but about how great of a baseball city Baltimore used to be. Meanwhile, concert attendance over the last decade has plummeted, particularly among the youngest demographic. And then there is the NBA, which in contrast to the NFL, has opened their books to the players' union, indicating that many franchises are not financially healthy, in large part because of empty seats.

There are probably a number of factors at work here: the economy obviously hasn't been robust lately, and this year's baseball attendance in particular may already be affected by gas prices. Television ratings for any one program or event may not be what they used to be, but the experience of staying home and watching TV, now in hi-def and on-demand, is perhaps more popular than it ever was. (And some argue that baseball teams don't even care that much about attendance anymore, since cable TV revenue streams are where the real money is at). And there are just flat out more distractions than there used to be. A lot of people would apparently rather stare at their phone than sit and watch a baseball game unfolding in front of them. Meanwhile, ticket prices still reflect a time when there were limited sources of entertainment, when demand was higher for diversionary events.

So what can or should promoters do? If they were smart, they would follow innovative ideas coming out of Milwaukee. Several years ago, when the Brewers were terrible, there was a section in Miller Park that was almost always completely empty. One of the TV announcers at the time, Daron Sutton, with a flair of theatricality, confronted the Brewers president on the air, suggesting that they should designate the section once a week as the "Buckethead Brigade" (both Sutton and partner Bill Schroeder had above average hat sizes), selling the tickets at a greatly reduced price, including free T-shirts, and making it a community. The plan was implemented, and every week the section was full of cheering fans in yellow shirts, making as much noise as the rest of the stadium combined.

And this scenario has played out similarly at Milwaukee Bucks games the last couple years. Bucks center Andrew Bogut has bought out an entire section of the Bradley Center, and given tickets away for free to fans who promise to come and act crazy. The result is that even as last year the team's lack of success led to a decline in attendance, there was always a little bit of a home court advantage, with a rabid section (known as "Squad 6" after Bogut's jersey number) of standing, cheering, flag-waving, chanting fans.

But why stop at one section? If you can get good revenues from premium seats, suites, concessions, souveniers, and possibly parking, do you have to try to squeeze additional revenue from every seat in a venue? In an era where creating buzz and generating excitement is at the top of most marketer's agendas, isn't it more advantageous to cultivate a frantic fanbase rather than an affluent but staid fanbase? And if television is the all-important revenue stream, wouldn't you want to project for the TV cameras an air of excitement rather than empty seats?

As for the music industry, I do think it shares something in common with sports. Just as teams benefit from instilling loyalty in their customers, musicians benefit from building brand loyalty. But rather than view concerts as an attempt to exploit the loyalty, perhaps they can be used to build it. Concerts were originally conceived of as promotional vehicles for a band rather than money-making endeavors themselves, and maybe now we have come full circle. Promoters can still sell premium tickets (maybe even lucrative VIP backstage tickets), but perhaps by dropping some prices to bargain basement levels, they will stand to increase in the long run. And they also may want to look into this invention called television. With 3D and surround-sound technology, a concert experience in the home can rival the in-person experience. Charging a five dollar pay-per-view and getting an audience of one million would seem to be more lucrative than charging eighty dollars per ticket and getting an audience of ten thousand, both in the short and the long term.

And who knows? Maybe if live events once again become all the rage, people will turn off their TVs, promoters can begin to slowly raise prices, and we can start this cycle all over again.

Free Passes

2011-04-16T08:55:00.003-05:00

Details are fuzzy after a couple of decades, but at one point in my childhood I remember a family friend telling a joke. I responded as I had been trained to do by my elementary school peers: "That's so funny I forgot to laugh." Later, I was reprimanded by my parents for this comment. And this made me feel terrible--I was not at all trying to be disrespectful. I thought that this was legitimately how one responded to an attempt at humor. Young children have a hard time being disingenuous, so the concept of a fake laugh was not in my arsenal, and I knew enough that to stare back in a mute pose was not acceptable, so I responded with what I thought was an acceptable attempt at continuing the repartee. To have this rug pulled out from under me, to find that I had violated a social convention and was now guilty of causing offense, was defeating. And that was one of many instances in my childhood in which I felt remorse for how I handled a social contact with an adult.

But in hindsight, I feel no remorse at all. I was a kid! As an adult, I now know that you shouldn't have any expectations for a sociable response from a kid. If the guy who told me that joke a couple decades ago actually was offended, it was his own fault. He should have told a better joke. But should I have also gotten a free pass from my parents? Should they have reprimanded me?

I thought about the concept of a "free pass" while reading an article about the oldest man in the world, who just passed away (and I hope I am not violating any social conventions by noting that this is probably a fairly regular occurrence). A reporter apparently had the opportunity to conduct an interview with this man, Walter Breauning (who died at the age of 114) fairly recently, and Breauning was lucid enough to give an account of his entire life, as well as his reactions to world events that covered over a century. The article starts with Breauning expressing dismay that his grandfather told stories of killing Southerners in the Civil War, and it ends with Breauning complaining about American involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan.

But in between that tidy narrative of the life of a peace-loving old man, we get this doozy of a paragraph about World War II: "The man who otherwise preached kindness and service to others acknowledged that he had mixed feelings about the war and the Nazis. He expressed some sympathy toward Hitler."

Although the article is heavy with direct quotations, there are notably none here. The author quickly moves on to getting Breauning's thoughts about Truman and the decision to bomb Japan (he was in favor). Now, for literally almost anybody else in the world, an admission of "sympathy toward Hitler" would become the central focus of a news profile. And for almost anybody else in the world it would result in judgment and condemnation. The late Cincinnati Reds owner Marge Schott was suspended from ownership for two years mostly for her comment that Hitler "was good at the beginning."

But obviously, this incident illustrates that if we advance far enough in age, at some point the standards are again lowered, and we once again allow a certain degree of transgression against "acceptable" beliefs and behavior. But I wonder if we extend this license beyond the young and the old. Obviously, the comments and actions of people with developmental disabilities are viewed more permissively than fully functioning adults. And I've got to think that class is a factor as well: there are likely instances where those of a privileged status are reluctant to "call out" those who, because of an underprivileged background, may not have learned the same manners and propriety standards as the more privileged.

But this does raise some troubling implications. At what point does the lack of condemnation become oppressive in its own right? If I had never had a parent tell me that it is unacceptable to say "That's so funny I forgot to laugh?" in certain social situations, and I was still doing it as an adult, would there be anyone to tell me I was violating social conventions? Is it right to just let people figure these things out for themselves, or should there be some mechanism whereby violators can be at least informed of society's folkways and expectations? It's one thing to give people free passes, but it's quite another to pretend to give free passes and still administer a hidden charge.

A Crash, Crash, Crash

2011-04-09T13:26:00.003-05:00

Last month, Foo Fighters released a video for their new single "Rope." In less than 30 days, it has amassed 1.2 million views on Youtube. That is almost exactly one million more views than Stone Temple Pilots' "Big Bang Baby" video, released 15 years ago (but to be fair, uploaded to Youtube 18 months ago). Set side-by-side, the similarity between these two videos is striking. They both feature numerous close ups of the band playing in front of an all-white background. But upon closer inspection, it is not just time that separates these two productions--they indicate fundamental differences in the eras that spawned them.

Music fans speak wistfully about a time when MTV showed music videos. But I think this lament has actually been going on longer than the total time MTV actually showed videos. By the time "Big Bang Baby" came out, MTV had already moved on. It was a moot point for me, though. Growing up without cable (and certainly without Youtube), my exposure to this video came, weirdly, through an NBC program that aired videos on late Friday nights. My brother Tim had enough foresight to capture the "Big Bang Baby" episode on VHS videotape, which we proceeded to watch regularly in the spring of 1996. Neither one of us could clearly articulate the appeal of it, but Tim came up with the description that the performers "looked like humans." What he was recognizing, of course, was that the highly stylized, big budget entertainment that we were used to had been replaced by an intentionally lo-fi production resembling the "home movies" that were produced on VHS camcorders of the 1990s. But being teen-agers in 1996, we didn't have the term "lo-fi" in our vocabulary. That would be added to our consciousness around five years later, when it became a trend in the re-emergence of "garage rock." So were STP proto-neo-garage rockers?

(Embedding of the video has been disabled, but here is the link)

Insomuch as the garage bands were rehashing what came before, STP was way ahead of the curve. Watching this video in the context of today, a narrative of nostalgia is much more apparent to me then it was then. Even before the video starts, the SMPTE color bars suggest a pre-cable milieu. Scott Weiland's neon pants suggest the 1980s, but his posturing is reminiscent of David Bowie in the 1970s (while his interplay with guitarist Dean DeLeo brings to mind Steven Tyler and Joe Perry). Going farther back, when Robert DeLeo steps up and shares the mic with Weiland, we have a Beatles on Ed Sullivan moment. Meanwhile, drummer Eric Kretz is wearing a shirt that he may have borrowed from the Beach Boys:

And then there are the special effects in the video: the over-the-top lips at :20 somewhat characteristic of 1970s camp, the spinning spiral at :59 that looks like it came out of a Scooby Doo cartoon, the psychedelic stars at 1:47, and of course the Brady Bunch sequence at 2:42--all are evocative in their own right, but taken together they form layers of association. Toss in moments of Led Zeppelin TV smashing, gorillas in Hawaiian shirts, and money being thrown around, and you end up having all the imagistic elements associated with music videos of that era--but they stand out all the more for the white background. And we haven't even discussed the song itself--riffs borrowed from punk and glam rock along with a chorus overtly ripped off from the Rolling Stones, the total package is just packed with historical signifiers. (Addendum: Wikipedia has an unsourced claim that the band was influenced by Tony Basil's "Hey Mickey," another white-background music video).

But when a production is packed with history, what does that portend for the future? Foo Fighters were around and making videos at the same time as "Big Bang Baby" came out, and have proven to be one of the most resilient bands of their era. Perhaps it can be speculated that Dave Grohl has steadfastly attempted to make his band ahistorical. I once saw an interview in which he had insightfully compared Foo Fighters to Wings. Once you have already been in a band that has not only made history but has been enshrined in the pantheon of rock innovators, all you can do from there is just put your head down and record straight-forward, unpretentious, melodic songs that sound good live.

And that's pretty much what they've done for nearly twenty years now. They consistently churn out catchy, radio friendly hit songs. But if someone has never heard a Foo Fighters song before, you could play them five hits from five different years and they would have very little chance of identifying what song came from what year. And that brings us up to today, with the song and video for "Rope":

But whereas the white background of "Big Bang Baby" proved to be symbolic of the concept of "presence", in which multiple images and ideas could be mapped, Foo Fighters background is one of absence. There are no signifiers. We are now several years removed from the rise of retrograde garage rock, and we've reached a predictable epoch. Once nostalgia has run its course, what comes next isn't a renaissance, it's simply a blank canvas upon which nothing is projected.

But a curious thing does happen at 2:51 of the Foo Fighters video. We get a fake fadeout (a bit of a rock cliche), and then the rest of the video is the background superimposed with flashes of every color of the spectrum. The band becomes shadows, and the strobe effect dominates, before a final shot establishing that the band was in a box the whole time. Fifteen years ago, Scott Weiland sang "We used to see in color/but now it's only black and white/because the world is colorblind." Of course, television progressed from black and white to color, but the implication is that as the medium advanced, our ability to filter our reality regressed. (The opening line "I've got a picture of a photograph" also establishes that we layer one representation on another). But in the end, the Stone Temple Pilots are content in letting the viewers fill in their own color, whereas Foo Fighters try on one after another, frantically pleading for some color to enliven their reality (even as it obscures them in the process). Unfortunately, the strobe flickers and they are left with a little bang, baby.

Charlie Sheen, CEOs, and Gigli

2011-04-02T13:05:00.004-05:00

Domestically, the biggest news stories of 2011 have a common link. Whether you are talking about the Wisconsin budget bill, the NFL work stoppage, or even the Charlie Sheen meltdown, there is a core issue of labor-- how much workers are worth. I somehow have managed to avoid having an economics class post-high school, and other than a few "Dismal Science" columns on-line and the Freakonomics books, I haven't done much to educate myself. But since I have a self-imposed mandate to write about something every week, I'll venture into a realm of unfamiliarity.

I assume that the only two categories that people are compensated for producing are goods or services. And I would guess that the former category is simpler in assigning value. Markets will determine how much value your good has, and the more people that buy your good, the more money you will get.

But of course, the production, distribution, and promotion of goods usually involve an added labor cost, and services are necessary to be rendered. And services are harder to gauge. I'm sure economists would argue that markets are also created to determine the value of services, but it seems that these markets are more easily influenced by artificial and often arbitrary value judgments.

And I'm sure many would argue that the compensation of professional athletes fits this description. Fans would be ill-advised to sit in the bleachers of a Major League Baseball game and play a drinking game based on how many comments they hear made about player salaries (in no small part because the price of that particular good in ballparks is artificially inflated, but that's the topic of another blog). And I have actually heard people cite player salaries as a reason that they don't follow professional sports. But it seems to me that the market for athletes is much fairer than those for other highly compensated professions.

There is a good number of adult males in the state of Wisconsin who can play the game of baseball with some degree of skill. And when many people say, "I would play Major League Baseball for free," I don't think they are lying. If the Milwaukee Brewers wanted to save a lot of money in the short term, they could raid the rosters of the Rock River League and I have no doubt they would find a full complement of players who would sign for the Major League minimum...and if every other team kept their payroll and roster in-tact, the Brewers would finish with a historically bad record. And eventually people would quit paying money to come to games (even if ticket prices were slashed to bargain basement levels). So I think there is a case to be made that professional athletes comprise a cohort of legitimately elite performers, and as long as there is a demand for elite performances, the market seems fair.

On the other hand, I'm not so certain about Charlie Sheen and his cohort. We all can agree that just like there are bad professional baseball players (who tend not to last long as baseball players), there is such a thing as bad actors. And there must be good actors, of which Charlie Sheen is apparently one of them. But we just don't have the empirical measuring sticks for actors that we do with athletes. The closest we have is box office performance or TV ratings. But I'm not convinced that we couldn't pull the best couple of actors out of any small town community theater in America, put them in the lead roles of a sitcom like Two and a Half Men, and have the show fare any worse than it does with known name actors. As Chuck Klosterman asked recently on Bill Simmons' podcast: "Is Two and a Half Men a hit because Charlie Sheen is popular, or is Two and a Half Men a hit because TV is popular?" And even with the advantage of name recognition, is there any actor or actress that can guarantee a positive financial delivery for a film? In 2003, the name "Bennifer" dominated popular culture, but Gigli delivered about $7 million on a $54 million budget. You could have plucked out the worst actors out of a community theater presentation and they could have matched that performance.

Entertainers tend to get attention for their salaries, but it's possible to make an eight-figure income without being a household name. Michael White sounds like the guy who sat next to you in social studies class, and he very well might have--before becoming CEO of DirecTV, which paid him almost $33 million in total compensation last year. I doubt he's related to Miles White, CEO of drug company Abbott Laboratories, who took home a modest by comparison $20 million. But they both pale in comparison to Viacom's Philippe Dauman, who pocketed a cool $84.5 million.

Just like there are baseball players and actors in every hamlet and burg in America, there are CEOs everywhere. Of course, most of them operate businesses substantially less complex than Fortune 500 companies. I would surmise that most corporate decision makers would argue that the market for CEOs is like that of baseball players, that to just give the job to any old Joe would be a competitive disaster. But then again the corporate world has seen its share of Giglis over the last few years.

Why Johnny Doesn't Have a College Degree

2011-03-27T16:24:00.005-05:00

A few days ago, I had the privilege of visiting with a 98-year-old man, whom I had never met before. He was anxious to share some of his life experiences, such as his decision to go to college during the Great Depression, and the $60 per semester tuition he had to pay (which included books, though he had to return them when the class was done). At some points, the conversation knew no generational lines; we alternated discussions of the past with the present--we discussed the NCAA Tournament and the poor showing of the Wisconsin basketball team the previous night. It was rather remarkable to think that this man is only 22 years younger than the sport of basketball itself. At one point, he was asked to what he attributed his sharpness and alertness of mind. Did he read a lot? "I read the newspaper some," he replied, "but I watch TV, too," he was quick to add.

Television, of course, has been vilified and demonized, charged with hastening the decline of civilization. Newton Minnow famously called it a "vast wasteland," while Jerry Mander famously wrote four arguments for its elimination. One of Mander's most cogent points for me is that "you really can't summarize complex information. And...television is a medium of summary or reductionism - it reduces everything to slogans. And that's one criticism of it, that it requires everything to be packaged and reduced and announced in a slogan-type form." I do think he has a point, and that a case can be made that the pervasiveness and the dominance of the medium has also affected a transformation of other mediums. In placing side-by-side written texts from before and after the era of television, one can easily see a trend toward simplicity. Sentences used to be longer and more complex, and in nonfiction, ideas were developed in lengthier and more thorough discourses. And I think few would argue that attention spans are shorter than they were before the invention of television.

But for all that, it's hard to argue that society has gotten dumber over the last 75 years. Granted, some might argue that the recent financial meltdown can be attributed to the intellectual shortcomings of those wielding power, but there is also a lot of evidence that we've gotten smarter. The average IQ score in the U.S. has gone up 22 points from 1932 to 2002. Technology and innovation have continued to move forward. Groups that were underprivileged because of cultural biases have been afforded more opportunities, and in general, the greatest leaps forward in civil rights and moral acceptance of others has occurred during the TV era. And in a particularly fascinating study, television has been lauded as the cause for female empowerment in rural India.

But even as TV is credited for helping females achieve in India, in another part of the word, males are taking a step back. Two weeks ago, an op-ed in the Philadelphia Daily News explored the gender gap in U.S. higher education: "Men make up 42 percent of enrollment in American college-degree programs. At smaller schools, that share can drop to as little as 30 percent. Adult degree-completion programs have seen women outnumbering men for years, accounting for as much as 80 percent of enrollment. Except for in medicine and law, where the sexes are almost equal, women are well outpacing men at all levels and kinds of degrees awarded."

A more extensive analysis was published last year in The Atlantic. Entitled "The End of Men," the article also examined the gender gap in higher education. The author, Hanna Rosin, writes:

Throughout the ’90s, various authors and researchers agonized over why boys seemed to be failing at every level of education, from elementary school on up, and identified various culprits: a misguided feminism that treated normal boys as incipient harassers (Christina Hoff Sommers); different brain chemistry (Michael Gurian); a demanding, verbally focused curriculum that ignored boys’ interests (Richard Whitmire). But again, it’s not all that clear that boys have become more dysfunctional—or have changed in any way. What’s clear is that schools, like the economy, now value the self-control, focus, and verbal aptitude that seem to come more easily to young girls.

Of the three factors listed above, I would put "verbal aptitude" at the top. Language skills, or the ability to listen, talk, and write, are the basis for success in academics, in part because the desire to listen, talk, and write will naturally help one's ability to maintain self-control and focus. So what would give females an advantage in "verbal aptitude"? Jerry Mander wouldn't want me to oversimplify, but I have a theory: I don't think boys are watching enough television.

Being an English teacher, predictably I still think that sitting and reading is the best way to develop an aptitude for language. But I also think that listening to language is also a key in development. Being in different social situations will allow one to build aptitude (something that is probably on the decline as more people seek out virtual spaces to interact). But short of that, I do think that there are advantages to hearing the verbal repartee of fictional characters, the monologues of late night hosts, the interviews on talk shows, or the descriptions of live events offered by sports broadcasters.

But there is one medium that I think would have a negligible effect at best in building verbal aptitude, and it happens to be a medium that is becoming dominant with young males of this generation: video games. Video games are being blamed for social maladies such as obesity and desensitization to violence, but I wonder if the most pernicious effect is one that is under the radar. Maybe we won't know for another 75 years. If a 98-year-old in the year 2086 attributes his sharpness and mental clarity to video games, I'll admit that I was wrong.

Tsunamis, Dead Bodies, Jokes, and Reality

2011-03-20T12:36:00.003-05:00

Last week I wrote about insensitivity in the wake of tragedy, of both the intentional and the unintentional variety. A few days later, Slate.com posted a column dealing with the same subject. Jack Shafer took a sympathetic view of the situation, claiming that "where I come from, the only power strong enough to defeat radiation is a sick, hurtful joke." But as I wrote previously, I'm skeptical that such jokes actually serve a psychological need. I'm not totally disinclined to buy the Freudian theory that jokes can be a way to talk about that which would otherwise be repressed, but I have a hard time believing that people halfway across the world are suffering repressed trauma as the result of natural disasters that affect strangers.

But there is one remark that I made in last week's post that I am now reconsidering. I suggested that it was likely that in the aftermath of the bombing of Hiroshima, jokes were likely circulated. Now, I'm not so sure. Shafer also looks to the past, in order that he might find a precedent that would perhaps justify today's practice, and he finds it in the Jewish custom of the Badkhn. Apparently, the Badkhn was a kind of jester specializing in offensive jokes who would turn social events into what we might call roasts. Centuries ago, when rabbis outlawed levity from public events, the Badkhns were allowed to persist because they weren't actually considered funny. So, the story goes, they popularized a tradition that the likes of Gilbert Gottfried and Sarah Silverman follow today.

But there is a difference between someone speaking at a roast and Gilbert Gottfried joking through Twitter about bodies washing up onshore. Proximity to the subject of the joke is crucial to consider. When you are making a joke about someone you can see, you are taking a real situation and making it absurd. When you are joking about a news story, you are taking an abstraction and making it more abstract.

Our first reactions when public figures transgress against sensitivity in times of tragedy are shock and censure. Some might argue that this is exactly what somebody like Gottfried is after, that he is fulfilling a needed social function, that we need to be constantly provoked in order to establish boundaries. And Shafer seems to think that Gottfried is being disingenuous when he apologized and said he meant no disrespect.

But I think it is entirely possible that many who tell such jokes are legitimately surprised when there is a backlash. Because the vast majority of people alive today have grown up with television, we take for granted that our realities have been mediated. A typical adult has seen multiple natural disasters, tragedies, and horrors of unspeakable dimensions played out in their lifetime. A majority of these incidents have been scripted and staged, others have been filmed and relayed from distant parts of the world--and very few have directly impacted them. Is it any surprise then, that when a tragedy occurs, many of us will view it as an abstraction, at least partially? And the less real that something is, the more likely we will view it as the typical fodder we are offered up through the media everyday--including narratives that we can initially immerse ourselves in but then disregard without a second thought, or gossip that we can laugh and joke about.

So I'm not sure that people in the 1940s would have joked about Hiroshima. Even though it happened halfway around the world, it wasn't an abstraction. The terror of a nuclear bomb made itself known first in reality without having been portrayed in fiction. But the threat of a nuclear meltdown today? It's just as likely to inspire a joke about Godzilla as it is to inspire fear.

But in the final analysis, even as the line between reality and abstraction is blurred by technology, at least there is a picture there to begin with. Had this tragedy befallen Japan 300 years ago, I can't imagine there would have been much support from the international community. Having some off-color jokes in circulation seems to be a fair trade-off for the sympathies, concerns, prayers, and relief efforts that flow from the hearts of those who, if not for media, would have a smaller, if more precise, view of reality.

The One About Insensitivity

2011-03-12T15:13:00.004-06:00

If you were in southern Wisconsin in the early 1990s, chances are if you stopped a random man, woman, or child and asked them if they had heard a "Dahmer joke," they would have to answer in the affirmative. Nobody was tweeting them and they were certainly not being broadcast by the mainstream media (which was pretty much the only media that existed in those days), but they spread virally the old-fashioned way. For some reason, there was a huge demand for one-liners about a cannibalistic serial killer who used to work in a chocolate factory. Of course, the phenomenon of the inappropriate or insensitive joke was/is not limited to Wisconsin. Challenger jokes somehow became a national meme before people talked about memes. O.J. jokes were big in the mid-90s. And I would guess that there might have been a few Hiroshima jokes uttered more than 60 years ago.

The Freudian explanation for this phenomenon (that we work out repressed feelings in humor) seems almost too easy to assign as a cause. I don't think that all that many Wisconsinites were truly affected by Dahmer's deviance, to the point where they had unconscious fears that they had bubble up as jokes. More likely people were transgressing just for the sake of transgressing, violating a taboo just for the illicit thrill that is derived from flaunting the folkways of society.

But there would be no thrill if there were no taboo, so it is important to the joke teller or the "joke hearer" that there remains some cultural standard for them to rebel against. So in order for there to be insensitive jokes, there needs to be a standard for sensitivity, and we need to be reminded that the standard exists. And the Internet has enabled that negotiation to be openly displayed time and time again. It is fascinating to see this pageant play out repeatedly on social media, on message boards, and on comments sections. The sports gossip website Deadspin (part of a larger network of gossip blogs called "Gawker Media") is a particularly interesting nexus. The site, famous for breaking the story of Rex Ryan's foot fetish and Brett Favre's text messaging scandal, has a cadre of designated-elite commentators who duel with each other to post the most clever and biting reactions to news stories, and they often resort to humor which many would find offensive. At the same time, the site often promotes their own kind of morality, taking a kind of Holden Caufield aggressiveness toward "phonies," railing against meathead fratboy humor, defending historically underprivileged populations, and targeting for criticism other media outlets that exhibit insensitivity.

Recent examples among the latter: An article highlighting (and condemning) a Philadelphia newspaper column which joked about the potential to throw batteries at a baseball player and an article mocking another sports website for using the Japan earthquake as a basis to discuss natural disasters that had impacted sports events in the past. Deadspin also once declared a newspaper column "the single worst piece of sports journalism ever committed to the page." And as histrionic as this statement is, it is also quite possibly true: the column in question uses a news story about a woman who was kidnapped at age eleven and forced to spend 18 years in captivity as a basis to discuss how the sports world had changed in those years.

Of course, the difference between the insensitivity demonstrated in those instances and the insensitivity demonstrated by Dahmer or Challenger joke tellers is that the latter are aware of their transgression, while the former are oblivious. And for reasons delineated above, this is why the second group is a threat to the first. Those who knowingly violate standards don't want to see them lowered.

Talks Are Ongoing

2011-03-05T08:59:00.003-06:00

We live in an era of "behind the scenes" access. Embedded journalists report from war zones. Surgeons are tweeting from operating rooms. Cameras and microphones are everywhere. We can go inside huddles or locker rooms to hear what coaches are saying. Celebrities agree to do reality shows that, however filtered, give us glimpses of their environment beyond the spotlight. DVD commentaries reveal the thought processes of those involved in film production. Even if the access isn't instant, we usually don't have to wait long. Anyone wanting to know more about the inner workings of the Bush administration now has numerous memoirs and investigative books to pick through (or even more recently, there is a book that offers inside dope on the 2008 Obama campaign). Private phone conversations, diatribes, and messages are routinely leaked. And now even classified government documents can be downloaded by anyone who cares to see them.

But for all that, there is one category of discourse which is as off-limits now as it has always been. Labor negotiations are a mystery to me. I've had one job where my salary was negotiable, and I think negotiations lasted for less than sixty seconds. So when I read about either individual or collective bargaining happening (and it is usually in the sports pages that I encounter these stories), I have no frame of reference to conceive of what actually goes on in such sessions. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell keeps on talking about how his league's collective bargaining agreement will be settled through "negotiation, not through the media, and not through litigation." That sounds great, but I find myself curious about how agreements are settled through negotiation. What I do know is that several hours have already been devoted to the negotiations and that a federal mediator has been a part of it. What I would like to know is whether this kind of approach is the most efficient way to reach an agreement.

I realize that a league collective bargaining agreement involves many facets and will end up being a multi-page document that will be scrutinized by several lawyers. But I've got to think that the issues that are currently preventing a settlement aren't the ones that will ultimately end up in the fine print. From all reports, the length of the season and the percentage of revenue allocated for player salaries are the two issues that are dividing the sides. And so one would think that these are the issues that are being discussed for hours on end. Again, I'd like to know how this works.

Of special interest to me is that in news articles about these sessions, the word "negotiations" is often supplanted by the word "talks." This word is also used to describe an individual's negotiations with a team (e.g. "Talks between the Cardinals and Albert Pujols have broken off"). There is an implicit suggestion that to negotiate means to talk, and an implicit value judgment is also given that to talk is productive (sometimes this becomes explicit, such as when we hear "at least the two sides are talking").

If you've read my last two posts prior to this one, you might know where I'm going with this. A couple weeks ago I questioned the utilitarian value of legislative debate. Last week I considered the possibility of reducing the length of classroom sessions, while also increasing their frequency. I wonder if negotiating sessions might be improved by considering such practices. Perhaps if we changed the fundamental structure of negotiating sessions so that they take place through written communications, consensus will be more easily attained. Perhaps we need to split negotiations into several different pockets of interaction instead of having one large bargaining session. Perhaps we need to limit sessions to shorter but more frequent interactions.

Or perhaps the status quo is the best way to conduct business. It's hard to know, though, since we don't have any access.

Content is King

2011-02-26T08:27:00.005-06:00

Earlier this week, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel ran a fascinating profile of Brewers pitcher Zack Greinke. Greinke, one of the best pitchers in baseball, has battled a social anxiety disorder (which almost caused him to retire from baseball at the age of 22). During the interview, the theme that he kept coming back to is that he needs to avoid talking or listening to other people for extended periods of time because it gives him mental fatigue. I've collected three separate quotes below:

"Some lady came up to me yesterday and just started talking nonsense. It takes eight minutes to get a real question out because it's buttering me up. Then they get to the question and it's a stupid question. So I've wasted 10 minutes and in that 10-minute time I didn't get to do what I needed to do. And even if it is a good question, I spend 10 minutes and they take the one quote that didn't mean anything" ...."It wears me out to do stuff like our meetings every day," he said. "If I actually listened to them, it would wear me out. So I go into a little daze. It's always been that way with me. Say teachers are talking to me in math class and they're going over these things. Really, you only need 10 seconds for the answer and they give you five minutes. You spend all this time focusing and most of it is nonsense... "To talk to people, I have to spend energy. If I spend my energy focused on talking to people to make friends, that takes away from the energy I could be focused on getting ready to pitch. So I just try to avoid nonsense talk.

It's not difficult to find laments about the declining attention span of Americans. Conventional wisdom is that with all of the entertainment options and distractions at our immediate disposal, we are more apt to flit from one thing to the next, never really going in-depth or engaging with any one thought or idea, never really living in the moment.

But Greinke offers an alternative way of viewing contemporary life. If we really did fully engage with all of the people and/or things that demand our attention, we would be mentally wearied and worn down. And Greinke realizes exactly why--most of our language is verbiage. One thing that a viewer immediately notices when watching "classic" re-broadcasts of televised sporting events from even as recently as 30 years ago is how little the announcers talked compared to now. Even radio broadcasts would sometimes have seemingly long stretches of dead air (occasionally you can still get this effect listening to Bob Uecker today). I'm always skeptical about claiming that a paradigm shift has occurred, but it does seem to me that we are more uncomfortable with silence than previous generations were. When I was a kid, I would find it strange that when riding with old people, they could go somewhere without turning the car radio on. Now everyone in a car may have their own listening apparatus (perhaps while holding multiple conversations at the same time). And it's not even enough to have an announcer talking nonstop during a televised sports event--now there has to be continuous on-screen graphics and sometimes a screencrawl as well. And if we could get by before without all this wall-to-wall content, it's worth asking if the contemporary emphasis on filling dead air is necessarily a good thing.

I'm no expert on how the mind works, but I wonder if most of us have an innate chemical ability to filter most of this stimulus and really cut to the core of what we need to know, whereas Greinke may lack the natural ability to filter, feeling the need to focus with utmost concentration on all that comes in (only to be continuously frustrated by how unnecessary his mental efforts were). And I'll admit his mention of math class hit a little close to home. I'm not a math teacher, but I teach English classes, largely in 75 minute blocks, twice per week. That usually still isn't as much time as I feel I need to cover the material that I want to (I've found that the only time I've ever taught classes without feeling rushed was when I had a two-hour class three days per week last summer). I feel like I am giving students their money's worth, that I've got clear objectives in my mind about what I want to accomplish in any given class period, and that students who stay focused will benefit from having come to class.

But at the same time I also wonder if there are better models for thinking (and learning) than having two big blocks of time. Even if we do practice "filtering," how good at it are we really? Could we be missing out on important stuff and locking onto the unnecessary? (This may be exactly what goes on in the mind of a person with ADD, but perhaps in all of us to some extent). How can we cut down on margin for error? Perhaps as our technological advancements facilitate distance learning, our classes will become shorter and more frequent. I wouldn't mind experimenting with teaching a class for 20 minutes at a time, twice a day, four days a week. It might be more challenging for teacher and student to make efficient use of the time and focus with utmost concentration, but it could be worth it to maximize our brain's functioning.

I suppose I could come up with some other ideas for how to cut down on superfluity in our society, but I'm afraid I've gone on long enough--any longer and I fear alienating Zack Greinke.

Democracy, Debate, and "Being Heard"

2011-02-19T10:27:00.008-06:00

"This is what democracy looks like"-- A chant shared by more than 400 union workers in Madison's Veterans park this week

"That's not democracy. That's not what this chamber is all about."-- Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald on the Democrats' boycott of the budget vote

"We call on every citizen and taxpayer here, and assembling across Wisconsin, to continue the tradition of peacefully expressing their passionate opinions to their government. We assure you all – you are being heard."-- Assembly Minority Leader Peter Barca

"They shot down debate when people had a right to be heard"-- Democratic State Senator Chris Larson

“Tens of thousands of citizens have petitioned legislative offices to change the bill... I agree with them. They deserve more time to ensure their voice is heard."-- Democratic State Senator Bob Jauch

"The president has chosen to attack leaders such as Gov. Walker, who are listening to the people and confronting problems that have been neglected for years at the expense of jobs and economic growth."-- U.S. House Speaker John Boehner

“We are taking the phone calls and we are listening, but the fiscal crisis that we're in doesn't slow down"--- Republican Assembly Representative Johny Nygren

"I think it's important for them to have their voices heard. I respect that."
--Governor Scott Walker on protesters

To be sure, a lot has been said this week in Wisconsin about unions, about salaries and benefits, about comparisons between the public and private sector, about rights and privileges, about the history of collective bargaining, and about budgets. But what has struck me as interesting has been that there has also been a lot said about democracy and about communication. It's almost as if we have two sets of debates going on: one about concrete and specific ideas, and the other abstractions about how government operates or should operate. There are plenty of blogs you can go to to read about the former. I'm interested in exploring the latter.

What is "democracy"? David Cratis Williams and Marilyn J. Young define democracy as a "communication system," and this is what they write about it: "...it is a process of opening, questioning, advocating, refuting, persuading, debating, deciding, and changing...But even at its 'best', democracy is rarely efficient, and it is always contentious...a static, stable, peaceful end is never attained, even in theory." By that definition and way of thinking, protesters are right to say that their demonstrations are what "democracy looks like."

But the key word for me in the above quotation is "debating." This seems to be the value that both sides are laying claim to in the case of the Democrat walkout. Democrats are claiming that a delay in the vote is necessary to promote further debate, while Republicans say that the debate should take place on the floor of the legislature. Democrats say that not enough time has passed to allow opponents of the bill to have their say, while Governor Walker counters that the unprecedented 17 hours of testimony in front of the joint-finance committee reflects a willingness to allow voice to the opposition.

The quotations above seem to indicate that both sides put a value on debate as a tenet of democracy and that they place a high importance on allowing political expression (even if they differ on what that means in practicality). But I wonder if the rhetoric is so centered around the importance of upholding democratic processes that the process itself becomes the product. In other words, debate and expression is seen not as a means, but an end. When the Democrats seek to delay a vote in order to promote expression, do they have an honest belief that it could result in their opposition changing their minds in the interim? After all, in response, Republicans were quick to say that the tactic has solidified their caucus.

It's standard procedure that before bills are passed in legislative bodies, lawmakers are allowed to take the floor and discuss their support or opposition to the bill. And very rarely do their words have any resonance beyond the halls of their immediate building. Occasionally, a few seconds of a soundbite are excerpted by a media outlet and relayed to a vast minority of the populace. But I have never heard a quotation by a legislator that indicates that she or he had been swayed by testimony. In fact, such an admission would likely be viewed as a sign of weakness by the electorate. Ideological malleability is not a trait that is celebrated by either side of the aisle.

But a system in which bills are introduced and votes immediately taken is inconceivable. No matter our partisan leanings, we all have been brought up in a system, solidified through generations, that preaches that discussion is needed before action (even if informal discussion has already long been taking place) and that to speak out (or, in the passive voice, to "be heard") is not only a right, but an obligation. So is there a way that we could uphold these principles and avoid the charade of inefficiency that we all pretend doesn't exist?

I believe there is. First, we need to start teaching the Wiliams and Young definition of democracy. We need to acknowledge that democracy doesn't begin or end with legislative bodies, that our individual political belief systems are formed through complex environmental factors (and not always as a direct result of reasoned analysis of issues), and that political conflicts are healthy and necessary. And to address the political and psychological need to "be heard," we should take a lesson from the judicial branch. When a bill is introduced, each side should be given time to produce a written opinion, a "majority" and a "minority" opinion. Instead of testimony being given, a member of the majority party should be required to read out loud the minority opinion without comment, and vice versa. And then after the vote is taken, democracy can resume.

X Marks the Spot

2011-02-12T10:40:00.007-06:00

I've read a lot of news coverage about the aftermath of the Green Bay Packers Super Bowl victory, but none of the stories made mention of what happened to the ball that Scott Wells snapped to Aaron Rodgers on the last play of the game. Apparently, it's only in baseball that the ball that was in play for the final out of the World Series becomes a story, particularly when one of the players decides to keep it. Doug Mientkiewicz took a lot of heat a few years ago for "selfishly" holding onto the ball that gave the Boston Red Sox their first World Series victory in 86 years. He eventually donated the ball to the Baseball Hall of Fame. For this, he was praised by the Hall of Fame's Brad Horn:

Mientkiewicz said 'It's in my possession, so I'm going to make sure it gets to a place that everybody can enjoy it, the Hall of Fame. And that's what we often tell players -- "You can keep these items in your possession and a handful of fans will see them, or 15 million fans who have seen things at the Hall of Fame over the course of our history will see them."

And that sounds like a fine ending to the story. But I don't think that the sentiment stands up to scrutiny. What does it mean to "enjoy" an artifact? Does standing in front of a baseball ensconced behind glass actually give anybody tangible enjoyment? If it does, it is only valuable in terms of building up cultural capital. At one time relics were thought to have the power to heal or grant wishes, but now access to the contemporary relic is all about cultural capital--more specifically, bragging rights. People can take a picture that proves they were in the presence of the venerable, and they can tell others something like: "Hey, I saw the backpack that actor Jeff East wore in Superman: The Movie" (which is actually a claim I can make, having visited the Metropolis, Illinois Superman museum). But the actual act of viewing an artifact of memorabilia is usually less physically satisfying than eating a cheeseburger.

That said, I do appreciate the populist ethos of the above quotation, and the mission of many such curators to make the artifact accessible to a wide audience, to spread around the potential to tap into the cultural capital (though there is undoubtedly a certain degree of "bragging rights" at stake for the museums, as they will often compete with each other for acquisitions). But beyond these institutions, there are the cultural hoarders, those who attempt to acquire items for their private collections, often at staggering costs. And there is likewise usually no special "enjoyment" in the consumption of the item. Right now, you can go to bobdylan.com and find the complete lyrics to "The Times They Are a-Changin'"--for free. Or you could pay nearly a half million dollars and buy Dylan's original handwritten lyrics (which aren't as legible as the lyrics on the website). A hedge-fund manager recently chose the latter option (and in so doing, kind of defeated the sentiment of the song). What does he get for his money? Nothing more than the opportunity to tell people that he has something they don't.

Now certainly there are items in our culture that we imbue with a certain value because of what they represent. But doesn't that value become cheapened (figuratively if not literally) the moment that they also become representative of the status of the bearer? And is there truly a way that they truly can be "enjoyed"?

I believe there is a way to solve both of these problems. First, if merit were attached to acquisition, the possession would stand to acquire an even greater value. An Ayn Rand fan would argue that having money equals merit, so those who purchase expensive items are simply demonstrating a pre-existent merit. But although I wouldn't dispute that those who hold money should be able to purchase any legal good or service that they feel can enhance their quality of life, the purchase of exclusivity of ownership strikes me as more of an attempt to flaunt wealth than to enjoy its trappings. For one-of-a-kind items of sentimental value, I think that there should be a separate market, one where everybody is at the same starting line.

And the way to accomplish that is though worldwide treasure hunts. The NFL should take the final game ball from Sunday's Super Bowl and bury it in a strategic location somewhere in the country. Then they should put out a series of books, clues, riddles, maps, whatever it takes to turn locating it into a fun game. If nobody finds it, the market has spoken, and that just means it doesn't have enough value and it deserves to stay buried. But for anyone with enough skill, fortitude, and desire, they could be rewarded with, well, a football. But at least they will have experienced enjoyment in the acquisition, the game will have given even more value to the item, and the owner will be more entitled to brag about its possession.

The Smithsonian probably has a fair amount of material that isn't actually giving much "enjoyment" to visitors. Could such items be made more enjoyable by hiding them and daring the public to find them? If they replace their original Oscar the Grouch puppet with a more recent model, and hide the original in a trash can in a railroad terminal in Brownsville, Texas, could that be a greater service to the American people? Could the state of Minnesota hide pieces of the Metrodome roof in cubbyholes throughout the land of 10,000 lakes?

And although auction houses would stand to lose economically from such a culture, the overall national economic stimulus would probably be greater. Tourism dollars would come flooding in to places that might really need it. Even if treasure hunters were to come away empty-handed, they would still be richer for the experience of being somewhere that they would otherwise have never had the opportunity to visit.

Now if we could just track down the whereabouts of that football...anybody check if Doug Mientkiewicz has it?

Hey Look Over There

2011-02-05T21:05:00.004-06:00

One of the important skills I've acquired and cultivated in the last year has been the art of diversion. Having a baby who is always interested in grabbing things he shouldn't, I've had to frequently resort to creating distractions. Perhaps this is actually a latent trait that I've always had but never had to practice. Or maybe I picked it up in childhood by watching cartoons and sitcoms--whether Scooby Doo or Full House, protagonists would frequently "create a distraction," in order to achieve a desired objective.

Perhaps mindful of the prevalence of this practice in society, the sports media has always been quick to attempt to locate "distractions." When a player underperforms, it is often attributed to off-field distraction, such as a contract negotiation. Apparently in the .45 seconds that it takes a player to decide whether he will swing at a pitch, it is not uncommon for much of that time to be taken up with thinking about performance incentives, and then, bam, the ball is already in the catcher's glove.

And ever so often specific incidents are regarded as "distractions." The Green Bay Packers apparently suffered to a 6-10 record in 2008 because they were distracted by Brett Favre's unretirement. I suppose when Mason Crosby missed a 52-yard field goal that would have beat the Vikings in week 10, he was distracted thinking about whether he would have had to try that field goal if Brett Favre was still his quarterback. Sometimes individuals are referred to as "distractions." Terrell Owens and Randy Moss are walking distractions. Somehow their teams have achieved more success than failure throughout their careers, but obviously the lack of Super Bowl rings on their fingers must be due to their teammates thinking about their latest comments to the press during crucial stretches of games.

Speaking of the Super Bowl, there is nothing like Super Bowl week(s) to amplify the media's fixation on locating distractions. Historically, there have certainly been some high profile off the field incidents involving Super Bowl teams: Cincinnati's Stanley Wilson getting high on cocaine just before Super Bowl XXIII, Atlanta's Eugene Robinson soliciting an undercover officer the night before Super Bowl XXXIII, and Oakland's Barrett Robbins going AWOL before Super Bowl XXXVII. In all cases, those individuals' teams lost the game, and pundits blamed them for creating a distraction. (Never mind that the Bengals lost after a last minute Joe Montana drive, the Falcons were lucky to be in the Super Bowl at all and were playing a much superior Denver team, and the Raiders were going against a coach who knew them inside and out having coached them the previous year).

And while nothing quite on the scale of the above incidents, a couple members of the Green Bay Packers were accused of creating a distraction leading up this year's Super Bowl. A google search of "Nick Barnett distraction" yields over 66,000 hits. (Here is one such account for anyone who doesn't know the story). ESPN's Skip Bayless took the hysteria to another level by tweeting "Jermichael, Nick Barnett should've been fined for tweeting unhappiness about team pic. 2 guys who can't play creating turmoil, distraction!" Barnett apologized saying, "just wanted to say I was never trying to be a distration" (sic).

Whatever happens in the Super Bowl, I guarantee that the Packers will not lose because Nick Barnett tweeted that he was sad he wasn't going to be in the team photo. If anything, having tertiary issues emerge leading up to a high pressure event could actually be a blessing--the opportunity to focus attention elsewhere instead of being mentally consumed by the implications of the impending competition could be just what one needs. I'm sure nobody was thinking about these issues during practices or meetings, and nobody will be thinking about them when the game starts.

Now I've just got to figure out a way to keep my son occupied so that I can focus on the game.

Start Snitchin'?

2011-01-29T10:35:00.004-06:00

In many ways, I think my grade school experience was rather normative, though in one curious respect it was a bit of a Bizarro-world. Tattling was not stigmatized. Rather, it was considered a legitimate action that would be taken against you should you violate a taboo. The degree to which one should fear being tattled on was rather arbitrary and capricious. Personal injury or property damage were often guaranteed to result in a report to authorities, but victimless offenses (e.g. use of profanity, academic fraud) could easily result in a swift appeal to justice. (It should be noted that the word "tattling" was rarely used. We referred to the process as "telling.") And curiously, there was never a sense of recrimination for "telling." The ability to "tell" was an inalienable right, and we wouldn't dream of questioning somebody else's ability to exercise this right. One morning on the bus a fellow classmate bopped me on the head with his bookbag, leaving a visible bump (to be fair, it was in retaliation for me throwing his stocking cap). Not only was it a foregone conclusion that I would "tell" the teacher, but several of my classmates urged that I also tell a volunteer parent who was visiting that day, just for good measure. I of course fulfilled my duty, and the assailant was properly chastised, and the next day we were all back to normal.

Only occasionally would I get a glimpse into another world where "telling" was somehow forbidden. Once my mom told me about an incident from her grade school days in which a fellow classmate had broken her glasses. When I asked her what kind of punishment was meted out to this classmate, I was dumbfounded when she told me that the teachers didn't know about it. "Why didn't you tell?" I inquired. My mom, perhaps consciously trying to avoid instilling a "Stop Snitchin'" mentality into me, never did give me a satisfactory answer.

Finally in Middle School I was assimilated into the larger cultural norm, and I became aware of the importance of maintaining a code of silence, one that not just schoolteachers but law enforcement officials have traditionally had to battle. In some respects, it is not difficult to see how such a tacit conspiracy should arise. Particularly in a population in which most members could at various points face some kind of punishment, it is in the interests of the majority to establish a climate where the threat of punishment for any and all is reduced. Also, when there is a perception of power inbalance, the population that is at the bottom of the hierarchy may have sympathy (however misplaced) with others in their cohort who are struggling with those above them (this would explain the embrace of the "Stop Snitchin'" movement in urban areas).

But viewing the situation objectively, is it better for a society to have a culture of silence or a culture of information? I think that in order to answer the question, one needs to first determine if the existing power structures can be trusted with information. Obviously, in the Eastern Bloc when the kinds of networks that arose led to every neighborhood housing spies in its midst, a culture of information was deleterious. But there is also a long list of positive changes that have been enacted as a result of whisteblowers knowing when it was the right time to sing out.

So perhaps a key reason that my elementary school culture defied the national norm is that the teachers and administrators succeeded in creating a climate where their arbitration was viewed as trustworthy, where there was no shame in viewing them as credible distributors of justice. And I think this may have been a key factor in American military operations in recent years--encouraging collaboration from native populations is easier when those populations trust you to justly make use of what they tell you.

But while an appearance of fairness and propriety might go a long way in reversing entrenched rules against the sharing of information, I think there is another factor at work that could succeed in chipping away at this practice. The taboo against airing dirty laundry in public is being eroded. Discretion is not as valued as it once was, but neither is personal privacy. In a world where people seem increasingly willing to go on-line and openly share both their own flaws and the flaws of those close to them, why would they hesitate to share the flaws of others who aren't that close to them? And in a world where private grievances and judgments can quickly become public (see: NFL players on Twitter), why would we be surprised when grievances and judgments are reported to authorities?

Some may lament this turn away from silence and resistance, but most would agree that a world where less crimes are committed and less malfeasance is practiced is a better world. And if one is sufficiently deterred from committing such acts in the first place because of an increased threat of being identified as a malefactor, might that be regarded as societal progress? Was my elementary school just a bit ahead of its time?

Wine, Fast Food, Rusty Cars, and Progress

2011-01-22T08:57:00.007-06:00

Conventional wisdom (which I can glean from reading hundreds of standardized test essays) is that the world is in a state of perpetual decline. Things are always getting worse. "Nowadays" families don't function as well as they did in the past, morals are worse than ever before, violence and crime are always increasing, and the economy is freefalling.

In the short term all of the above trends are cyclical, but in the long term view of history there is no doubt that such cynicism is misappropriated. There is no doubt that the world has been progressing, that given a choice as to when to be born, the best bet would be to request to be born right here and now. According to this highly entertaining British guy, the last 200 years have seen tremendous gains in life expectancy and wealth:

So why aren't we celebrating and patting ourselves on the back? Or at least acknowledging that things aren't always going backwards? Perhaps we delude ourselves in the same way we delude ourselves about wine--out of necessity.

A few years back Freakonomics economist Steve Leavitt wrote a column about wine tasting. He argued that there is sufficient data to show that the cost of wine has no correlation to how good it tastes. (This argument was updated and extended in a podcast last month for those who are skeptical that a $15 bottle of wine, stripped of it's label, tastes just as good as a $150 bottle).

In that podcast, something Leavitt said about food stuck with me. "It's a wonderful, wonderful gift to like cheap food...if you are just by chance born loving cheap food, then you can eat everything that you love." He cites KFC, burgers, and chipotle as among his favorite fare. I can completely identify with this quote. I'll be content with pretty much anything set in front of me, no matter the cost. But what if everyone was like me?

If everyone had the same spending habits that I did, the world would be a radically different place. A few years back I drove a rusty 1991 Ford Taurus (which has since been replaced by a non-rusty 1991 Ford Taurus). While walking to my car with a friend one day, a teen-ager on a bike rode by and mocked my car. As we were driving away, my friend was more anguished by my behavior than I was: "Why did he have to make fun of your car?" he lamented. After all, in a game of chicken my car could easily take down his bike (not to mention that I could cover a lot more ground at less exertion than he could, rust or not). But while it's easy enough to dismiss this young person as a punk kid, I think his mockery was motivated by a realization, probably unconsciously, that I represented a threat to his lifestyle. If everybody was content to drive around rusty old cars, the car market would absolutely collapse, sending ripples through the rest of the economy. Likewise, if it was ever truly acknowledged that cheap wine was just as good as expensive wine, it wouldn't be long before all wines would be cheap, and paradoxically, I would suspect that it would be at this point that cheap wines would really start tasting like they were cheap.

And if we every truly acknowledged that society was an a continuous upswing, we would lose all motivation to keep it that way. We need self-delusion. So everybody needs to walk around in a state of misconception or progress will cease and regression will begin. Only a few elite among us are allowed to see things as they are--and these elites can perhaps be recognized by their willingness to view fast food as a delicacy, cheap wine as luxurious, and rusty cars as an acceptable means of transportation.

Jared Lee Loughner, Politics, and Philosophy

2011-01-16T14:17:00.004-06:00

More than four years ago, I made a prediction about "the next big American assassination." I'm not sure that the attempted assassination of Representative Gabrielle Giffords falls into the category I was considering (since she was not known nationally before the incident), but I think it's worth revisiting my prediction, which I would qualify as partially correct. My thesis was that in the West, where entertainment is pondered more than ideology, where the passionate defense of ideology is often considered aberrant (i.e. "weird"), and where power is thought to reside moreso in a cultural zeitgeist than with specific agents, the next assassin would be somebody attempting to seek fame rather than someone attempting to exert an ideological agenda.

That said, last spring I explored the concept of the death threat, and came to the conclusion that those who threaten violence care greatly about ideology, though they are not going to actually act. Or, as I said at the time: "I'm going to kill you" is code for "I have very strong feelings about something you said or did, but I do not have the language to accurately or eloquently convey the depth of my feeling, and even if I could express my thoughts in a worthwhile manner, I have a deep-seated insecurity about my power to affect my external environment, so I will exact what small measure of control I can and attempt to terrorize your psyche." It's worth noting that in a climate last spring where Giffords put out a statement condemning death threats received by an Arizona colleague, she never received one from Jared Lee Loughner. But in a twist of extreme irony, one of his victims was arrested at a Town Hall meeting for making a death threat against a Tea Party member. In short, I'm convinced that the people who make death threats and the people who attempt to kill other people are two distinct classes of individuals--and the ones in the latter camp are not all that interested in legislative agendas.

But of course, when one attempts to kill a politician, it seems logical to assume that the motivation is political. If the assailant were looking to just instigate random violence, why wait until a congresswoman shows up at a supermarket to start shooting? So in the immediate wake of the shootings, and to some extent even now, the national dialogue has been about discourse and civility. And this hysteria has reminded me some of the immediate aftermath of the Columbine shootings, where the "right vs. left" dynamic echoed the "jocks vs. outcasts" dichotomy posited by pundits at the time, where "incivility" instead of "bullying" was tagged as a cause of violence, Tea Party members take on the role that "goths" played back then, and Marilyn Manson is reborn as Sarah Palin (perhaps the first time these two individuals have been cast in the same light).

But what we should have learned from Columbine is that almost everything we thought we knew about that incident, as reported in the immediate aftermath, was wrong. We've likewise received information about Jared Lee Loughner over the last week that at the very least complicates initial reports. Like Virginia Tech shooter Seung-Hui Cho, he left a bit of an electronic footprint. And many of his former friends and acquaintances have come forth with accounts and anecdotes that perhaps give insight into his mindset.

Much has been made of his reading list (his Myspace list of "favorite books")--published accounts usually mention Marx and Hitler, while others notice a disproportionate number of dystopian novels. Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center observed "an anti-government thread runs through all those works." Andrew Sullivan argues that "paranoia" is a common theme in his reading list.

But I haven't seen much made of the presence of Lewis Carroll's two Alice in Wonderland books on his list. Consider the question that he posed to Giffords at a past town hall meeting that allegedly set him on his path to violence when he received an answer that was not to his satisfaction: "What is government if words have no meaning?" Then consider what Humpty Dumpty said to Alice:

'I don't know what you mean by "glory",' Alice said.
Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. 'Of course you don't — till I tell you. I meant "there's a nice knock-down argument for you!"'
'But "glory" doesn't mean "a nice knock-down argument",' Alice objected.
'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.'
'The question is,' said Alice, 'whether you can make words mean so many different things.'
'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master — that's all.'

This would seem to fit with Loughner's alleged belief that government was controlling language, and through language, controlling reality. Although Loughner's belief system has (rightly) been characterized as bizarre, the central tenants that language creates reality and that reality is subjective are both accepted aspects of poststructralism, the dominant philosophy in academia today.
And though Loughner's many syllogisms aren't exactly logical, given these premises, it's not too outlandish to assume that one would seek to create their own version of reality-- as Loughner seems to suggest he does in stating "I'm a sleepwalker--who turns off the alarm clock."

But why target a politician? Why not just exist blissfully in one's own reality? Perhaps because even in the mind of a psychotic, there is something unsettling about being told that words do have meaning, that there is a government, and that one must conform to someone else's idea of order and reality. Furthermore, according to Mother Jones, one of Loughner's former friends offered an interesting insight into his possible motivation:

Tierney has been trying to figure out why Loughner did what he allegedly did. "More chaos, maybe," he says. "I think the reason he did it was mainly to just promote chaos. He wanted the media to freak out about this whole thing. He wanted exactly what's happening. He wants all of that." Tierney thinks that Loughner's mindset was like the Joker in the most recent Batman movie: "He f---- things up to f--- s--- up, there's no rhyme or reason, he wants to watch the world burn. He probably wanted to take everyone out of their monotonous lives: 'Another Saturday, going to go get groceries'—to take people out of these norms that he thought society had trapped us in."

So if this is at all true (and it is worth pointing out here that this is all speculation), it would seem that my prediction was mostly correct--that Loughner was looking for fame ("he wanted the media to freak out"), and though he was ideologically driven, his ideology was far from mainstream political discourse---even as it was uncomfortably close to mainstream philosophical discourse.

Can You Tell the Names Without a Program?

2011-01-09T19:52:00.004-06:00

I realize that I have written at least in part about the NFL two weeks in a row, and I steadfastly want my blog to have a diversity of content, but I couldn't help but be inspired to write about NFL Commisioner Roger Goodell's missive to the American public. Despite being an avid sports fan, I've never been too bothered by work stoppages. The first I can remember was the 1987 NFL strike, and I had a blast rooting for the Packers scab team. Guys like Alan Risher, Jim Bob Morris, and Max Zendajas actually made my favorite team more competitive than the "A" team was. When the baseball strike came in August 1994, the Brewers were already out of the pennant race, so no harm done. The NBA lockout of 1998-99 simply cut down on the most irrelevant regular season in sports, and since I have never watched an NHL regular season game start to finish, I barely noticed when they cancelled a season.

But now that the Packers are good, I've got to admit that the prospect of losing part or all of a season next fall doesn't sit well with me. It's got me searching for alternatives. I know that in lieu of work stoppages, sometimes unions elect to take "job actions," such as when teachers refuse to do any work outside of their regular contract day. But given that the threat to football is from management and not the union, is there anything that owners could do short of a lockout that would have any impact whatsoever on players' willingness to make concessions?

Actually, owners may not be fully cognizant of the tremendous power they wield over players ability to capitalize on their fame. The player's association has a licensing arm, but ultimately it is the teams' P.R. and media relations staff that disseminate the information that makes players famous, and the league that chooses to put faces in commercials. But I'm guessing that there is nothing in the collective bargaining agreement that mandates that players be identified. What if the league kept the identities of their employees secret?

At first, such a notion sounds absurd. Who wouldn't recognize Tom Brady or Peyton Manning when they drop back to pass? But if you take names off of the back of jerseys, mandate that broadcast partners refer to players by uniform number rather than name, refrain from releasing individual statistics or recognizing records, and stop all marketing related to individual players, what would the net effect be? Hidden behind their helmets, the vast majority of NFL players already toil in some degree of anonymity. Make anonymity the ethos of the league, and would things actually be that different? Fantasy players would initially object, but would drafting jersey numbers really pose that much of a problem for their hobby? Independent journalists would undoubtedly publish leaked rosters, but if there was a cultural shift away from emphasizing names, would people make attempts to reference them while watching games?

Off field behavior of athletes is already considered by many to be problematic, as young people are given dubious role models to look up to. But if the player is reduced to a number, their behavior outside the lines is suddenly completely and wholly irrelevant to the public at large. And there would be no possibility of a Brett Favre circus ever again. One nameless Green Bay quarterback would succeed another, with no need for fans to reassess loyalties.

Chuck Klosterman writes that "The reason the NFL is so dominant is because the NFL is basically Marxist." It's certainly odd to posit that management is on the side of the great champion of workers of the world. Klosterman is referring to the way that NFL owners have historically played nice with each other, sharing their revenues as a means to drive up total revenue for everybody. Undoubtedly, the current attempt by the NFL owners to renegotiate the way that revenue is shared between management and workers is anything but Marxist. But if owners removed identities from their workers, wouldn't that ironically serve to institute the great Marxist ideal of egalitarianism? Football has always been referred to as the ultimate team sport--how much more so if it would become so much about the team that the individual wholly and completely ceased to matter?

And that of course is why such an idea would never work. As much as we pay lip service to the notion that football is all about team, at its core we still care about the people on the team. Every game is actually a mass of simultaneous games--the "big game" is the one that we objectively measure on the scoreboard, but there are dozens of smaller games going on within this larger contest, games that are more subjective in how they are evaluated, more about ego and personal accomplishment than team successes, and games where the winners' rewards are enumerated on paychecks rather than trophies. Occasionally, such games even spill out of the stadium and seep into boardrooms and offices. And when they do, the fans are the ones that lose.

On the Wussification of America

2011-01-01T12:40:00.003-06:00

Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell managed to get some attention for himself this week. Whereas most people who want a soapbox have to resort to hoping that someone somewhere may pick up on their Twitter posts, savvy politicians realize that even if a situation is beyond their scope of influence, they can still get the mass media to pay attention to them. And Rendell was especially savvy because he realized that he could plug into ESPN's news cycle, guaranteeing a continental-sized soapbox.

When the NFL and the Philadelphia Eagles made the decision to postpone Sunday night's game, it set Rendell off into rhetorical overdrive. He managed to invoke the two most overused, overwrought, and oversimplistic arguments you hear. The first is what I call the "up hills both ways to school argument." One would think that this is a tactic exclusive to old folks, but speaking as someone who has read a lot of standardized test essays written by young people, this cliched thinking is endemic to all generations. The basic idea is that in the good old days people worked harder, dealt with harsher conditions, and were more able to respond to adversity. There is usually a nationalistic component to such an argument, with the popular sentiment that "America is losing its greatness." Give Rendell credit for at least taking this tired idea and imbuing it with some flourish, including the use of anaphora:

“This country was born on risk,” Rendell said. “We grew into the greatest nation in the world because we were bold; we had courage; we had a sense of adventure; we had a willingness to go forward and get things done. It seems like we lost that pioneer spirit that made this a special place.”

I would wholeheartedly agree that we have lost some of our pioneer spirit. But that is hardly a bad thing, given we have no land left to pioneer. And so there is a grain of truth in Rendell's further claim that the game represents a "wussification of America." But is that a bad thing? Anybody who ever played the computer game Oregon Trail knows that it was darn near impossible to make it to Oregon with your entire traveling party intact. Somebody would invariably die of dysentery or snakebite or starvation. Now that we've settled Oregon, do we still need to have the same "pioneer spirit" that left so many people dead?

In the 19th Century, one of the reasons that large families were so common was that it was accepted that there was a good probability that one or two children in a family would die. As a new parent, the prospect of losing a child is something that I simply can't fathom. The fact that so many families were able to go on in the face of this does speak to a firmness of psyche that perhaps doesn't need to be invoked today. So should we celebrate that it isn't as often required, or try to compensate by playing football games in blizzards?

One of the common phrases that I hear older people make in regard to the less permissive and more tightly regulated world that we live in now is that "it's a wonder we ever survived." They take a look at a world where seatbelts are required, where food and drink is marked with nutrition labels, where tobacco products carry warning labels and the ability to smoke in public is severely limited, where children aren't allowed to play in the street unsupervised (or talk to strangers), where parents are told to lay babies on their backs without putting anything else in the crib, where lifeguards are always on duty, and yes, where events are cancelled because of bad weather, and they come to the conclusion that because they survived without these safety measures in place, the safety measures are at best superfluous and at worst detrimental. But the logic is flawed. Not everybody did make it. Before these measures were taken, people (and often the most vulnerable among us) died unnecessary deaths. Not that this doesn't happen anymore, but as Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland, the director-general of the World Health Organization, wrote (with some anaphora of her own) in 2002:

The result is that, in many ways, the world is a safer place today. Safer from what were once deadly or incurable diseases. Safer from daily hazards of waterborne and food-related illnesses. Safer from dangerous consumer goods, from accidents at home, at work or in hospital.

So we may be wusses, but at least we are living wusses. Yet Gov. Rendell has a response to the counter-argument that we've reached a comfortable plateau where unreasonable risks are not necessary. He invokes the classic "Yellow Peril":

“If this was in China, do you think the Chinese would have called off the game? People would have been marching down to the stadium, they would have walked and they would have been doing calculus on the way down.”

This argument often follows the "up hills both ways to school" rhetoric. America was once great, and if we don't get back to the way things used to be, we will be passed up by the Chinese (or by Korea or India). But what China are we talking about? Are we talking about the China that is fabricated by eager imaginations in order to pose a threat to our national identity and spur us on to political expediencies? Or are we talking about the China that saw devastating earthquake destruction a couple of years ago because buildings were not up to code and government corruption? So yes, maybe the Chinese would have played that game, but I don't think that's indicative that they are a superior economic power that we need to emulate.

But fortunately, it doesn't appear that Rendell's criticisms have caused the actual decision makers to second-guess themselves. Apparently, Joe Banner, the Eagles president, has heard from a lot of people who don't have motorcades to get them to the game. From the Philadelphia News:

"It's been heartwarming," said Banner, who characterized calls and e-mails to the Eagles as massively, overwhelmingly thankful. "I'm not sure I've done anything that's been appreciated this much in my 16 years here. Banner said he remained solidly convinced the league did the right thing. He said many fans had called who would not have been able to get to the game, and would have spent their ticket money for nothing. Banner said he had heard reports of problems with area mass transit late Sunday night, when fans would have been traveling home; he said many people had thanked the team for not putting them in that position.

Let's hope that those with the power to influence public health and safety will continue to make wise decisions in the upcoming year, and not bow to criticism from those who manipulate the media for their own ends.

How to Create a Cultural Phenomenon

2010-12-26T10:43:00.004-06:00

Of the top 20 most watched TV shows in fall 2010, 18 were NFL games. In a media climate where all TV ratings are in perpetual decline, the NFL bucks the trend. In fact, this is shaping up to be the most watched NFL season in history--which is amazing when you realize that there are more Sunday viewers now than there was back when there were only three channels (four if you count PBS) and no Internet.

Americans just love football, right? One problem--college football ratings are down this year. I'm guessing that people who choose to watch the NFL over college are not trying to make a statement that they prefer a game where prone, untouched players have the right to get up. The rules and plays are obviously similar, and if anything, in recent years college games have come to more closely resemble the style of play one sees on Sundays. Granted the overall athleticism of college players don't equate to the pros, but A) This actually allows for more big plays at the college level, and an arguably more fun, wide-open contest and B) The same could be said about basketball, where college seems to enjoy greater popularity (The NCAA Tourney has more than double the ratings of the NBA Finals).

So what's the difference? Awhile back I came up with a sweeping theory about popular appeal, but I'm now going to posit an additional theory to sit alongside that one. Popular phenomena must have the right combination of the following three elements:

1) Tribalism: There must be an "us" vs. "them" component. This obviously works well for niche phenomena (such as indie rock, for example). A subcultural population can latch on to the notion that they possess something esoteric that empowers them to experience life in a way that is superior to the unenlightened. Tribalism gets tricky when you are talking about something with a strong mainstream appeal, but it is usually there. Even during Beatlemania young moptop fans could fancy that they were appreciating their heroes in the face of opposition from the older folks that just didn't "get it." The same probably goes for the Twilight generation, but Stephanie Meyer has succeeded in giving her base a further tribal component by fostering "Team Edward" and "Team Jacob." And of course, sports has the best of both worlds. The NFL as a brand can have a strong mainstream presence, while giving its followers the opportunity to splinter into separate (and relatively equal) tribes. Of course, college sports offer the same thing (to an even greater degree given that one can quite literally become a member of a tribe through matriculation), so this component doesn't account for the NFL's superior popularity.

2) Narrative Significance: Allow me to deviate from sports for a minute to discuss one of other great passions--comic books. It is a general rule of comic book sales that the first issue sales of a given title will always be higher than the second issue, and that the longer the title goes, the more the sales will drop. However, there is almost always a sales spike when a story comes along which is hyped as one that will be changing a character's status quo (a superhero dies, gets a new costume, acquires or loses powers, enters or ends a romantic relationship, joins or quits a superhero team, etc...). Another way to get a sales spike is through the use of a "tie-in"-- a multi-part story that spans several titles in a company's line of comics. When these things happen, fans then often take to the Internet and bemoan their favorite character's new direction or complain that they have to buy all kinds of comics they don't want in order to understand a story. They long for the good old days when comic stories were "done in one" where you could get a decent story with a beginning, middle, and end, and one that doesn't feel the need to deal in world-shaking ramifications. But the problem with such complaints is that what fans say they want and what they demonstrably want are different things. When it is perceived that a story "matters," sales go up.

In recent years, producers of television shows have tapped into this trend. Many of the popular television shows (in ratings, buzz, and DVD sales) are serials, shows where one episode builds on another, where you miss out if you miss a week. And although all sports benefit from having games "matter" in terms of play-off races, the NFL undeniably has the most meaningful regular season. "Every game matters" was an ESPN tag line for college basketball promos a few years ago (and indeed this may partly explain the appeal of college hoops over the NBA), but it is more true for pro football.

I've heard it argued that the college football season is more meaningful than the NFL because usually one loss, and certainly two, dooms a team's championship hopes. So every game has greater stakes. But this is true only for undefeated teams. Once a team suffers losses, their games take on much less significance. And since more NFL teams are "in the hunt" late in the season, there are a greater number of meaningful games.

In theory, sports fans should be able to enjoy a good game devoid of context. But like comic book fans, the context and the perceived significance of the game matters.

3) Narrative closure: Postmodern philosophers can talk about the virtues of ambiguity all they want, but give an audience an ambiguous ending (e.g. The Sopranos) and get ready for a backlash. People want twists, turns, and surprises throughout a narrative, but at the end, they want resolution.

And they don't want stories that drag on too long. This is why, just as comic book titles drop in sales, there will always be a drop-off in a TV series' television ratings. Lost got more hype as it went along, but less people tuned in to watch it (until the final few episodes of course, when principle #2 came into play). And this is why the Rolling Stones can sell out any venue they play, but nobody cares about their studio albums anymore. So perhaps one reason the NFL is beating television shows in ratings is because it never overstays its welcome--the season comes to an end and then the baggage is tossed overboard and a new narrative begins a new cycle.

College football benefits from this cyclical phenomenon, but it strikes out in providing adequate closure. Given the lack of a play-off system and the frequent irresolution in declaring a champion, fans often feel unsatisfied. And while some argue that debate and controversy is great for a sport, TV ratings show that controversy alone doesn't drive interest. The NFL has plenty of debate and controversy, too, but the assurance that fans have that their investment will be rewarded with closure, and that their weekly investment is meaningful, makes them tune in (and go to games, and buy merchandise, and bet on games, and play in fantasy leagues). Add in a little tribalism and it is hardly surprising that NFL Football is the phenomenon that it is.

Anti-Bieber Fever

2010-12-18T19:30:00.003-06:00

Until I recently had a student write a paper exploring the phenomenon of "Bieber Fever," I'd never sustained more than a few seconds at a time thinking about Justin Bieber. I take full advantage of the fact that I live in a saturated media climate, to the point where I am almost never exposed to something that I don't on some level want to be exposed to. Although I, to the best of my knowledge, have never heard a Bieber song, I am still fairly certain that his music wouldn't appeal to me. Previously, I have been vaguely aware that Bieber was an ultra-popular teen idol, appealing primarily to teen-age and preteen girls, and I was also aware that there is a significant Bieber backlash: I'd seen the Facebook groups like "Please God give us back Bob Marley, you can have Justin Bieber" and the like.

And my response to the entire phenomenon has been utter and complete apathy. It's hard to muster up any feelings when you've seen teen idol fads cycle several times throughout your lifetime. I was in elementary school when New Kids on the Block exploded in popularity. I was too busy listening to sports talk on the AM dial to care what was being played on the top 40 stations, but I was well aware that New Kids were a big deal. So when I got to middle school, the NKOTB backlash was something that my young mind just couldn't comprehend. The most popular band in the world had somehow become the least popular band in the world, seemingly overnight. People actually wore shirts that said "New Kids Suck" (imagine someone wearing a "Beatles Suck" shirt in 1966). I remember eating dinner with my parents' friends, and hearing them express bewilderment with their daughter's change of heart regarding her favorite band ("We have a closet full of stuff that she refuses to wear anymore").

I think the fall of the New Kids is still a unique phenomenon--though teen idols often lose popularity as their audience matures, it is rare that their exact audience turns on them with such vengeance. The New Kids got caught up in an early 90s vortex that saw theatricality and gaudy excess give way to gritty cynicism (hair metal and bubblegum rap giving way to grunge and gangster rap). But there has always been a backlash against fads, and several years later I would wholeheartedly take part (in what limited capacity I could) in the backlash against the Backstreet Boys and 'N Sync (though I will defend Hanson to this day). It actually made me angry that many of my contemporaries would listen to what I considered to be such horrible music when good music went unappreciated. When Billy Corgan announced in 2000 that the Smashing Pumpkins were breaking up because it became too hard to "fight the good fight against the Britneys of the world," I actually didn't regard this as ridiculous.

But from my perspective today, I realize how utterly misplaced my emotion was, how ineffectual it was to waste any time or energy despising a pop culture phenomenon which will eventually dissipate anyway. And again, given the fact that with my ipod and my satellite radio I can avoid any music I don't want to hear, I see no need to concern myself with what others are listening to (aside from a restrained pity that so many kids today just don't know what they are missing). So the phenomenon of Bieber Fever doesn't hold much interest to me.

But I am interested in the backlash. I still have never listened to a Justin Bieber song, but after reading his Wikipedia page, I can't understand why anyone would hate him. Yes, I know that his image is constructed in corporate boardrooms, but as Jack White observed a few years ago, we may need to deconstruct the idea of artistic authenticity when it comes to popular music. And if the narrative of Bieber's rise to popularity is to be believed, it is perfect--a true Horatio Alger story for the 21st Century involving incredible serendipity (a music exec accidentally stumbling on a youtube video), and a Dickensian story about a young boy, both innocent and experienced, taking control of the world on the basis of his sheer talent. And as I can attest to, even if these narratives do nothing for you, it is still completely possible to ignore him. But also according to Wikipedia, there are plenty of people who spend their free time trying to bring him down:

He has been a frequent target for Internet bloggers and message board posters—notably by users of Internet message board 4chan, users of YouTube,and various Facebook groups. Pranks have included a successful campaign to push "Justin Bieber Syphilis" to the top of the Google Trends Hot Searches list; hacked YouTube videos that were altered so as to redirect users to adult websites or trigger pop-up messages saying that Bieber had been killed in a car accident; his Last.fm photograph being changed to pornographic images; various rumors circulated, from rumors that Bieber had died, joined a cult, or even that his mother was offered $50,000 to pose topless in Playboy magazine—none of which were true. This all forced the affected companies to update their security protocols to reverse the damage, and Bieber himself tweeted to fans reassuring them that he was still living and that false rumors about his mother "just grossed and weirded [him] out." Most notable was the campaign to send Bieber to North Korea as part of his world tour (entitled My World Tour).This was carried out in part by 4chan, digg, and reddit users voting for the country on the tour's website, for the free competition to nominate a bonus country for the tour—the second-placed country being Israel, which presumably was voted for by Israelis genuinely wishing to attend the concert.

Why all the hate? According to British writer Nick Collins: "Bieber's character also appears to strike a particularly sour note with his Internet critics, with many remarks commenting on his youthful appearance, his teen-pop songs, his image as a heart-throb to young teenage girls and his manner of speech, which his detractors say is more suited to rappers than someone of his middle-class background." The latter accusation (i.e. that he is a "poseur") is a particularly tired one that pretty much anyone of any stature in pop music (even Bruce Springsteen) has dealt with in a career. The previous one reeks of jealousy ("maybe girls would like me if Justin Bieber didn't exist"). The others hardly seem grounds to mount a campaign.

But it seems to me that Justin Bieber's greatest sin in the eyes of his detractors is that he is not subversive. New Kids on the Block's fall in popularity corresponded with the rise of 2 Live Crew. In a world where parental advisory stickers can be regarded as a badge of honor, where "Grand Theft Auto" set the tone for a generation of video games, where every Halloween a Saw movie tops the box office, the fact that a squeaky clean teen-ager can ascend to such heights may actually make some people nervous. If he is rewarded for staying between the lines, what does that mean for those who would prefer to wallow in the mire?

Or perhaps Bieber haters just see him as the vanguard of a coming Canadian cultural imperialism-- or is that just another way of saying that they fear a new reality of non-subversive entertainment?

Thoreau and Storm Team Coverage

2010-12-11T18:01:00.003-06:00

I write this blog post with a blizzard bearing down. According to a meteorologist: "This will be one of the bigger and stronger storms in recent history with the combination of snow and wind." The rain hasn't changed over to snow, but TV reporters are already staked out in the elements, commenting on conditions (alas, since there is no standing snow yet we haven't got that close up shot of the ground with the reporter shuffling her feet to indicate how much has fallen). Flipping around the channels, I've also seen the obligatory report from a hardware store, complete with an interview with a guy who is buying a shovel.

This is the kind of formulaic winter storm coverage familiar to anyone who lives in Wisconsin, and it persists in the face of seeming public contempt. Whenever there is a newspaper story about an impending storm, I always play a game where I check the on-line comments section to see how many posts there are before somebody complains about media coverage. I've never had to go beyond the fourth post. (To be fair, there is usually a backlash against the backlash, with somebody shortly thereafter jumping in and defending the local media).

A couple days ago we got a couple inches of snow--nothing that provided a great disruption to travel or commerce, but a bit of an inconvenience for some drivers. The TV stations didn't go wall-to-wall by any means, but they did provide live shots and reports from outdoor locations. And this didn't sit well with some commentators, who remarked that snow in Wisconsin during the month of December does not constitute "news."

This does raise a valid question. What is "news"? I think the people who accuse weather coverage of being "sensationalism" are on to something deeper than they realize. In Walden, Henry David Thoreau writes: "To a philosopher, all news, as it is called, is gossip." He goes on to develop the idea that once somebody is acquainted with a general principle, there is really no need to be constantly updated with the latest iterations of that principle. In other words, once we are aware that there can be such a thing as a house fire, in which people can lose their possessions, pets, or perhaps their very lives, do we really need to know the details of every house fire that happens in our general vicinity? And once we know there is such a thing as a homicide, do we need to know the details of how homicides in a given geographical radius (which have been defined by the reach of now obsolete analog television signals) actually occurred?

Having once worked as a news reporter for a small town radio station, I definitely got the idea at times that the information I was disseminating was gossip. In reporting on who had been charged in the county court with dealing drugs (and naming names in the process), in making calls to hospitals and relaying information about health conditions of accident victims, and even in covering contentious local elections, I would often think back to Thoreau's quote about news and gossip, as well as his own corollary: "They who edit and read it are old women over their tea."
Thoreau, of course, was basing his ideas on print newspapers. He probably never could have envisioned the degree to which instantaneous, around the clock, electronic media would amplify his observations.

So while I don't fault anyone for complaining about the seeming histrionics of "storm team coverage," I fault them for not being more consistent in their criticisms. If live shots of reporters standing in snowdrifts are inappropriate, then so are most live shots of reporters standing in front of police tape.

Masked and Anonymous?

2010-12-05T19:09:00.003-06:00

Did you hear the one about the guy who walked into a pizza place and ordered 178 pizzas? True story-- a few weeks ago a guy shows up at a Massachusetts business called Antonio's Pizzeria and tells them he is a member of Bob Dylan's road crew (he apparently was wearing some credentials around his neck), and that he'd be needing $3,000 worth of pizzas. So eight employees work until 5 a.m. the next morning getting everything ready. They wait for the guy to show up, and then they wait some more. If they know their Dylan songs, perhaps they start thinking about a line from "Lonesome Day Blues": "I tell myself something's coming but it never does." They find out the hard way that the guy was a fraud, that he had no affiliation to Bob Dylan (who was in town to do a concert, but definitely didn't order any pizzas). So they call the cops, report the fraud, donate as many pizzas as they can to charitable causes, and throw away the rest.

But surprisingly, the story doesn't end there. A few days later it was reported that police had identified the culprit. The details of the detective work were not released, but here is what we know:
1. The suspect is from New Jersey. He did go to Massachusetts to go to the concert, and subsequently returned to New Jersey.
2. His face was captured by the store's video surveillance

Whatever the details of the case, I find it remarkable that somebody from a different state was identified apparently on the basis of his visage alone. Conventional wisdom is that the Internet has enabled individuals to enter an age of anonymity, that we can now hide behind our computer screens and assume alternate personae that allow us to lob invectives with impunity. But the irony is that once you venture off of the virtual grid, there is a better chance you'll be literally recognized than at any point in history. For centuries one could get lost in the frontiers, the wildernesses, or even the populated urban areas. And even in relatively recent times organizations like the KKK thrived on the covering that a hood and a little bit of darkness provided. But in an era of ubiquitous cell phone cameras, increasingly sophisticated facial recognition systems, and superior forensic science, the grid has widened. (And even in the virtual world, many people have learned the hard way that identity is not as opaque as it seems. Discovery of an identity is often just a subpoena away).

Conventional wisdom also holds that we live in an era of fragmented identity, where we can create multiple alternate on-line personae. But when people spend more time on Facebook than on Google, Yahoo, YouTube, Microsoft, Wikipedia and Amazon combined, the end result may be a collapsing of personae. No longer are we showing different faces to the various social circles that we encounter (which has always been the historical default), but we present a broad, consistent and arguably unified image of ourselves to all of our "friends" (which is much more of an inclusive term that is applied much more liberally than ever before).

There was a time when comparisons between the WWW (world wide web) and the WWW (wild, wild west) were abundant almost to the point of cliche. But if we think about what it meant to be a citizen of the wild west--to be afforded anonymity with each new location traversed, to be afforded the opportunity to reinvent oneself, to be afforded the opportunity to quickly build and discard relationships, and yes, to be afforded the opportunity to be a troublemaker and then get out of Dodge before the sheriff could get on your trail--it is pretty much the opposite of the post-World Wide Web existence we all know.

And if you don't believe me, I dare you to walk into a pizzeria and order 178 pizzas.

Five Year Anniversary Post

2010-11-27T09:19:00.004-06:00

I've seen or read more than one narrative that centers around an adult learning something about his or her childhood and background that calls into question what they thought they knew about their heritage. Perhaps they find out something shocking about their actual paternity or maternity, or they learn that a grandparent was a spy, or the family dog was actually a robot. And frequently in these stories such revelations occur in a holiday setting, when a family reunites and conversation turns to the past.

To a very small degree, I may have had such an experience over Thanksgiving dinner this year. Growing up, I had always thought that my ethnic background was German, Polish, and Swiss. I was under the impression that my paternal grandmother was full-blooded Swiss--she was a first-generation American, after all. But as of this week I found out that her dad (my great-grandfather, whom I never knew) was born in Austria. There was some debate among my family (still left unresolved) as to whether his heritage was Austrian or Swiss. Speculation turned to his religious affiliation and the cemetery that he was buried in--knowledge that was not previously transmitted to my generation.

Although the discussion did not resolve anything, it did leave me with an impression. It feels odd to know so little about an ancestor who is really not that far removed from me. I'm sure he had interesting stories and perspectives based on his cultural experiences, and of course, his decisions directly impacted my very existence. But he left behind no real record of who he was or what he thought. And these reflections motivate me to want to provide something for future generations, so perhaps my kid's grandson will know me as more than an abstract name that the older folks bandy about.

I've written before about how this blog could be a legacy. As I wrote in that post, when I started this five years ago (and we are now at the five-year anniversary of the first post), I never thought about this possibility. But of course, a blog that is created for the express purpose of communicating to the future is doomed to fail. Paradoxically, one needs to be very much in the present in order to formulate anything worth saying to the future.

But of course, five years on from that first post, I find myself in that author's future. Never mind the potential to communicate with my great-grandchildren, this blog also allows me to communicate with my past self. By forcing myself to write something every week, I have embedded in amber small artifacts of not only my thoughts, but my very consciousness. I have left evidence for myself and others that not only have I lived from 2005 to 2010 in the physical sense, but I have lived in the intellectual sense. My mind has been active, alert, and aware, responding to both the world around me and the world inside of me.

Let me stress that this does not make me special--I'm sure the above description of my consciousness could equally apply to everybody else. But not everybody has a record of that consciousness. And I can speak from experience when I say that having such a record is fulfilling. I try to sell my classes on the "generative power of writing"--the idea that one gets in touch with thoughts that would otherwise have never been unlocked if not for the act of composing words on a screen or page. I can also testify that this happens to me on a near weekly basis because of my self-imposed requirement to post a blog entry. I wish that others would experience such fulfillment, both in the act of composing and in the lasting knowledge that such a composition exists.

Innovating Utopia?

2010-11-20T14:34:00.004-06:00

"You can't legislate morality." This line is guaranteed to be uttered whenever there is a public debate about laws that govern behavior. The problem I have with its application is that it is an absolute statement, and therefore a bit of a strawman argument. Of course you can't effectively guarantee prohibition of anything, but the law and its consequences can certainly serve as a deterrant which can curb behavior. And I think this is what supporters of any kind of prohibition are expecting--that society will not condone behaviors that they feel are harmful to the general welfare of a population, and that to a certain degree, those who might otherwise engage in a certain behavior will think twice and refrain from the action. Nobody expects that any law will be adhered to perfectly by everyone.

Of course, an even greater deterrant than punishment is the physical inability to perform a task. If someone barely knows how to turn on a computer, you can be assured that this person will not be engaging in illegal file sharing. We can only speculate how much more money the RIAA or the MPAA would lose if baby boomers who had no moral compunction against downloading also possessed the knowledge to do it.

Still, for every law that has been introduced or every regulation that has been put in place, there has arisen a cohort of individuals who figure out how to cheat, how to beat the system. As they say, when there is a will there is a way. But that saying can actually be applied both ways. I think we are now entering an era where if the collective will is strong enough, certain prohibitions can be upheld with near 100% effectiveness.

For example, the technology now exists to block cell phone texting functioning in moving vehicles. And in most states there are now laws against texting while driving. Put two and two together, and it doesn't seem that far fetched to think that anyone's willingness to flaunt the law could be rendered moot. And the mind wanders to other possibilities. Apparently, we live in a society where we are willing to surrender convenience (and perhaps much more) in the name of safety and security. Considering that exponentionally more people are killed every year on highways than are murdered by terrorists, is it crazy to think that technology could be mandated in order to reduce human error? I'm guessing it wouldn't cost too much to make cars that won't start unless seat belts are fastened. Are ignition locks for everyone inconceivable? Forty or so years from now, when the Eisenhower Interstate System turns 100, while it be retired in favor of the (Insert Future President's Name) Automated Highway System?

As driving is a privelege and not a right, such unilateral actions would presumably hold up fairly well in courts. But then again, protection against "unreasonable search and seizure" is a right, and this right is being interpreted rather loosely in airports. Could we perhaps see a day where every firearm is manufactured with some kind of "smart" detection which only allows itself to be fired by a legal owner? Could every item of any value be implanted with a GPS chip that prevents theft?

Maybe we can't legislate morality, but can we automate it?

Reply All

2010-11-13T14:34:00.003-06:00

I won't bore you with the details, but in one of my work e-mail accounts this week, I received well over 100 messages related to the same topic. On the day the topic started being discussed, I estimate that I received a new e-mail every five minutes.

Predictably, it didn't take long for the conversation to become a meta-conversation. In other words, while the original conversation continued, a conversation about the conversation also sprung up. Some started to complain about their inboxes becoming cluttered (thereby adding to the clutter), while others defended the e-mail chain's right to exist. One person asked that a particular group of employees be excluded from future mailings, only to see two people from that group chime in and ask that they not be excluded, thereby leading the original person to e-mail a retraction of the request. One person created a virtual message board at a website and urged people to continue the discussion there, while more than one person told everyone to keep e-mailing and avoid the website. And finally, two people sent specific advice about how those uninterested in the conversation could block further e-mails from their inboxes.

In the spirit of Godwin's Law, I could propose a corollary: "As a group e-mail discussion goes longer, the probability that someone will complain about the existence of the discussion approaches one." I've never been a part of an e-mail distribution group in which judicious use of the "Reply All" function is not vigilantly enforced. Of course, this is somewhat understandable: some of us do care about productivity (though personally, I found that reading these e-mails was a nice way to procrastinate on grading papers for a few extra minutes and still feel like I was working).

But even without using the fancy Microsoft Outlook blocking features, I hardly think that anyone's productivity was involuntarily diminished as a result of the e-mails. Given the obvious visibility of the subject lines, I suspect that one uninterested in the conversation could have deleted all of the e-mails in under one minute, or about the time that one spends tying shoes in any given day. And certainly, the amount of time that is spent composing and sending a counter-message is greater than the time needed to delete them.

I realize there is a slippery slope element at work here. Some feel feel that they have to hold the line at a certain point, that by permitting some e-mail conversations to slip through without protest, they are tacitly encouraging a daily inundation. I'm skeptical of such paranoia, and I wonder if it is actually indicative of a deeper fear.

Historically speaking, until recently, the methods by which we allowed the outside world to penetrate our consciousness were finite. At first, for most of the existence of humankind, communications were limited to either those who were in our direct presence, or those who could reach us via written language. The first had a natural filtering mechanism (we literally can't have too many people in the same space), while the second still required the use of costly and limited resources.

But then perhaps Samuel Morse had some vague inkling of the modern e-mail chain when he sent one of the first telegraph messages in 1844: "What hath God wrought." For the next hundred plus years, we would continue to devise communication methods that would make it easier for "senders" to reach more "receivers" with less investment of resources. While we tend to focus on the societal advancements that have resulted, we have also given up control over our ability to filter messages. And each subsequent advancement has resulted in less control.

But not until the development of digital technology has the gap between potential audience penetration and the resources required become so extremely inverted. When we get a load of junk in our (physical) mailboxes, we may be annoyed, but we also know that there are only so many trees in the world, and so much postage that any given sender can afford to pay. But when we get a load of spam (and isn't it interesting that we had to coin a new word to convey our special contempt for junk e-mail?), we feel an extra level of powerlessness. For all we know, this could be the tip of the iceberg. The spammers could be gearing up for an all out digital blitz that would dwarf what we've seen thus far. And even legitimate communications are considered suspect if they exceed a predetermined boundary of restraint we've subjectively erected.

Of course, this phenomenon goes well beyond e-mail. It's entirely possible that the level of "noise" we are attuned to has now exceeded our capability to filter it. Unfortunately, we can't fill out feedback forms on superfluous websites, exhorting them to cease to exist. But sometimes we can take a few minutes to compose an e-mail complaint to unleash into the ether ourselves--ironically doing our part to add to the cacophony.

Rock the Vote?

2010-11-06T18:23:00.004-05:00

Details get fuzzy after 20 years, but I clearly recall, as a seventh grade student, being told, shortly after election day, to get a sticker from my social studies teacher. Apparently, everyone who had a voting parent was to receive such a sticker. The prospect of receiving a sticker held about as much appeal for me then as it would now. I think I got over stickers when a vindictive custodian forcibly removed them from my desk (along with all of my classmates' desks) in second grade. But feeling obligated, I trudged to the front of my room and asked for said sticker. My teacher peered at me skeptically and with a tone of suspicion demanded to know if my parents had voted. I truthfully informed him that they had, and he begrudgingly doled out the reward, but I remember being completely prepared to return to my desk without a sticker if the situation required any further attempt at persuasion. I don't recall what I did with the sticker, though I doubt it lasted 24 hours. Interestingly, 14 years later, I would leave a polling place in Kentucky with a sticker of my own, as a reward for my participation in the democratic process. (I likewise have no memory of the fate that befell this particular item, though it wouldn't shock me if the sticker of my adulthood somehow ended up cosmically joined with the sticker of my youth).

Another voting memory: The first time I was eligible to cast a ballot, as a senior in high school, a gentleman by the name of Patrick Crooks was running for the state of Wisconsin's Supreme Court. Crooks ended up winning, though no thanks to one of my classmates who voted against him. When I discussed the election with this classmate, he informed me in all seriousness that he voted for Crooks's opponent because it didn't seem right to have a guy named Crooks on the Supreme Court. When I told him that this seemed like a rather dumb reason to cast a ballot, he said with righteous indignation: "It was either that or not vote!", as if the simple act of voting, not the intent or the outcome, is what mattered most. (I later talked to another classmate who said that he voted for Crooks precisely because he did want a Crooks on the Supreme Court; both of these people, it can be pointed out, were academically high achievers).

More recently, in last week's election, I saw individuals castigated, both in-person and on-line, for make the declaration that they would not be voting. I also saw the standard voter appeals, the "rock the vote," "commit to vote," and "get to the polls" appeals. I saw die-hard liberals and conservatives, against all reason, urge people of the opposite political persuasion to counteract their efforts.

But of course one doesn't need to be thrust into the middle of a political cycle to see that we are a nation that is obsessed with voting (and polling). I realize that one click of a mouse is not all that demanding, but to me, that still seems like too much to ask to vote in a meaningless on-line poll. But go to any media website and you'll see some asinine poll question (A couple random ones I just found through googling: The Detroit Free Press is wondering what you wear to bed, The Fort Worth Star Telegram is asking if Gov. Perry will run for president in four years, and Channel 5 in Cleveland is wondering if you found $3,600 in the street, if you'd return it). And I know that people actually do vote in these polls--when I worked for a radio station I used to come up with poll questions for our station's website. I suspect that many people took longer in considering how to cast their vote than I did in thinking of actual questions. And then there is Dancing With the Stars, American Idol, or any number of made-for-TV competitions in which "America votes." And finally, the last couple of years, my enjoyment of baseball games has been marginally decreased by having to sit through the "text to vote" segment, in which viewers are asked to text "A,B,C, or D" in response to what is usually a question that panders to popular sentiment (example: this year Milwaukee Brewer fans were asked to vote on the "greatest milestone achievement" in baseball in 2010, with Trevor Hoffman's 600th save sitting alongside accomplishments by players who didn't happen to be Milwaukee Brewers. Guess who won that vote?).

If America was a species, it would be easy to understand this phenomenon. We would say that the drive to vote is in our DNA--it is an instinct crucial to our survival. (And perhaps in a figurative sense, this may not be inaccurate). But just as some of our genetic predispositions can, left unchecked, end up harming us rather than ensuring our survival, the notion that voting is automatically good is dangerous. Informed voting, based on critically thinking through issues and positions, is good. Voting for the sake of voting, in order to conform to a cultural expectation, is not. The nonpartisan "get out and vote" appeals are well-intentioned, but I believe are ultimately more harmful than helpful. If people aren't intrinsically motivated to vote, I don't want them voting. But even more than that, I don't want any more stickers.

A Warrior by any Other Name

2010-10-30T13:12:00.006-05:00

Today I broadcast a high school play-off football game between the Indians and the Spartans. Incidentally, I also announced an Indians in the second week of the year, which was also against the Spartans. But that was a different group of Spartans. And it should be pointed out that the Indians that I announced are different than the team that used to be called the Indians, but have been ordered by the state of Wisconsin to quit being the Indians. (I suppose it's important to point out that I am in Wisconsin--there are enough schools in this state alone nicknamed "Indians" or "Spartans" to cause confusion; when you factor in how many teams nationwide have these names, it's beyond confusing).

"My" Indians might very well have to change their name someday, too, depending on if somebody files a formal complaint with the state Department of Public Instruction. Wisconsin recently passed a law allowing for challenges to Native American team nicknames on the grounds of racial and ethnic insensitivity. Of course, this is not a new controversy; in all the time I've been a sports fan I've never not known this to be an issue. In my state's history, the decision by Marquette University to change from the Warriors (a name under which they established a great men's basketball tradition) to the Golden Eagles ignited a firestorm that has lasted for years.

I was a young Marquette fan when the change was made, and I had missed most of the storied history that had been established under the "Warriors" moniker. But my reaction to the change then is pretty much my attitude now--I thought "Warriors" was a dumb name for a sports team, and I thought "Golden Eagles" was even worse. Unlike fans of the University of Wisconsin, who say they are going to watch a "Badger game," Marquette fans have always said, regardless of nickname, that they are going to watch the "Marquette game." Just like "Indians" and "Spartans," the name "Warriors" is so generic as to lose any power of unique identification, and "Golden Eagles" is just a lame attempt to somehow take the uber-generic "Eagles" and make it unique (and a failed attempt at that, as Marquette found themselves some after the change competing in the same conference with the Southern Mississippi Golden Eagles).

While my criteria for a good nickname used to be rooted in a desire for uniqueness, I have now come to believe we are missing something important in this debate about tradition, identity, and sensitivity. We fail to realize that sports nicknames are essentially ridiculous. We've all been born into a world where our favorite teams are always identified by a pair of nouns, one proper and one common: a geographical location or name of institution, followed by some type of person, animal, or thing, usually pluralized. Yet we overlook the fact that we can easily get by without the latter. European soccer fans somehow manage to take their devotion to teams to extremes without nicknames. During the Olympics, we somehow manage to support "Team USA" without feeling the need to call them "The Eagles." The contribution of nickname to the fan experience is entirely peripheral, consisting primarily of logos and the design of memorabilia. And when we think about it, even this is ridiculous. The fact that the Miami Dolphins have an insignia of a friendly sea mammal on the side of their heads as they bash into guys with different color helmets should only remind us that to take sports too seriously is absurd.

So rather than ban Native American names, I don't think it would be terrible to just ban all nicknames altogether. Of course, tradition is too entrenched at this point to ever allow that to happen (to say nothing of the influence of marketing departments). And to be fair, I still cling to the idea of having some kind of unique identifier in place to mark my favorite teams as somehow special (though I am well aware of the absurdity of every fan wanting their team to be "special").

The Cleveland Browns haven't won anything worthwhile in a long time, but perhaps they can help us to reconcile the above problems. This is a team without a real logo, named after a guy (Paul Brown) who gave shape and identity to the franchise. I kind of like the idea of every franchise or every school going back into their history and locating a kind of "patron saint" of the franchise, one who embodies all the values and ideals the team would like to project. Even the staunchest Wisconsin football fan would have to admit that the name "Packers" is an incongruous name for a football team, but wouldn't "Green Bay Lombardis" capture something special? Would Marquette McGuires be a good compromise for Marquette administrators and fans?
To those who argue that such a radical move would take an avenue of fun out of sports, I'd again point to Cleveland. "The Dawg Pound" grew organically, as opposed to an arbitrary edict from a marketing expert. Even the Washington Redskins, owners of arguably the most controversial name in all of professional sports, have seen fans of their own accord embrace an alternate nickname for members of their team. Since the composition and chemistry of teams change over time, they could be constantly deriving new nicknames based on their current roster or style of play (and at the professional levels in particular they are constantly changing logos and colors anyway). So with a permanent "patron saint" moniker, and temporary fan-driven unofficial names, we could preserve tradition, preserve fun, eliminate offensiveness, and assert uniqueness.

And just in case you were wondering, the Indians beat the Spartans 15-13, and will now move on to play a school that I think has the best name in the state--the West De Pere Phantoms.

Narrative Consumption: Ignorance vs. Discernment

2010-10-24T16:08:00.003-05:00

I may be an English teacher with a love of the literary classics, but I am not ashamed to admit that I have affection for the paperback thriller. I had actually never read one until a few years ago, when stuck without any reading material and time to spare, I found myself in a hotel gift shop with limited options. After perusing the back covers of their inventory, I settled on a book called Killer Instinct by a guy named Joseph Finder. The plot was laid out for me on the back cover: a salesman named Jason befriends a tow-truck driver named Kurt, gets him a job in security at his company, then faces a severe moral dilemma when a series of unfortunate accidents take place within the company, all of them somehow benefiting Jason. The obvious implication is that Kurt is orchestrating these events, and the book jacket implies that Jason knows he doesn't want to risk getting on Kurt's bad side. This seemed like an intriguing story to help me pass the time.

Unfortunately, the book didn't take up as much time as I wanted it to. Despite clocking in at over 400 pages, I breezed through it. But I still felt I got my money's worth. It was one of those proverbial page-turners that you can't put down, and in the end I was thoroughly satisfied with both the money and time I invested in it. Of course, the plot summary on the book jacket was what drew me in; I wouldn't have bought it otherwise. And therefore, particularly throughout the first half of the novel, there weren't any great surprises.

I've read a couple of Finder novels in the years since, and I've always glanced at the back cover to get a feel for what the story would entail. I imagine this is pretty standard procedure for most people. Particularly given the time investment that a novel demands, most of us are going to want to know in general what is in store for us before deciding to commit. And even though a movie or a television show requires less time, I would expect that very few of us go into these experiences totally blind about the plot. Certainly, it is hard to envision anyone plunking down movie tickets without doing a little bit of due diligence, and ditto for purchasing or renting a DVD or download. And even in viewing television, it seems unlikely that anyone with digital cable would sit down to watch a show or movie without hitting the "info" button on the remote.

The prevalence of entertainment options and the power of marketing campaigns have normalized all of this, and it is taken for granted that part of the entertainment experience involves the hype machine. But recently, I purchased another Finder book, and I started reading it without so much as glancing at the back cover. I was surprised when a plot twist occurred about forty pages in, one that almost certainly would have been trumpeted on the back cover. There is no doubt in my mind that I have derived greater enjoyment not knowing anything about the plot before jumping into it.

And this has made me question whether our society's approach to consuming narratives compares with previous generations. Cinema existed before television. In the early days of movies, did people simply go see whatever was playing, or did they have some idea of what they were going to experience? Did people who purchased novel serializations in 18th Century magazines know what they were getting into? Did playgoers in the Elizabethan era even know if they were going to a tragedy or a comedy when they bought tickets to the Globe?

Obviously, there is a trade-off. What we lose in narrative immersion we supposedly gain in discernment. But are we more satisfied customers than those who consumed entertainment less discerningly in previous generations (assuming they did)? Do we really sit through proportionately less turkeys and clunkers than our grandparents did? And even if we do (which I somehow doubt), is the trade-off worth it? Are we really enjoying our narratives as much as we could if we know what is going to happen? Can we really immerse ourselves in a story if we are constantly thinking back to what we have already learned about it?

Perhaps we can't put the genie back into the bottle, but for the most part, we can choose to individually opt out. It is possible to go to the movie theater and ask for a ticket to the 7:00 show in Cinema 4, and see what unfolds. It's also possible to log onto Amazon and order books that others might recommend, even if we don't so much as read the back cover. I would recommend anything by Joseph Finder.