Let's Make New Mammals!

Baby Zonkey Born In California

I vote we name it Debra since it's called zonkey.

A friend proposes we call it Ucos - Unholy Creature of Satan.

Usually people cross-breed organisms to make improvements in the original species.
But I'm not really sure what the greater benefit of combining a donkey and a zebra could be.

Apparently I have not been watching enough Animal Planet because this isn't the first time half zebra/half something else have been created. This site lists the official names of zebras crosssed with horses, ponies, and donkeys.

I think we've taken this top of the food chain thing one link too far.

Bush says Screw Geneva

I just received this link to Yahoo news from my friend via IM.

Good news: the heat is off from the global community over those pesky torture snapshots. Bush is above any and all formal and informal torture laws. In other words, he's giving the bird to the Geneva Conventions.

You have got to be kidding me.

The only semi-positive thing about this scenario is that Bush has, effectively, taken blame for it by saying, "Yeah you know what? I think it's okay. Nothing to see here folks, move along." If he had been a LEADER, national and international, he would have held the involved parties accountable for the kinds of anti-global community decisions they made.

In any other western nation, this would be enough to guarantee a loss in the Presidential elections. But here, Bush is still popular.

To condemn another country's leader for human rights abuses and then turn around and claim that you have the right to ignore basic human rights is to assure your slot in the Presidential Hall of Shame as the Most Hypocritical President in American History. What kind of "compassionate conservative" would allow this kind of heinous abuse to go on in OUR NAME? None.

Today we have seen the President's true colors. He's nothing of the goofy cartoon character we have made him out to be. No, he is, in fact, a hypocrite and a liar who takes our nation's great name in vain, and with that every name of every soldier who has ever fought and lived through or died in every war carried out in the name of the United States. And he knows exactly what he's doing. He has all along.

As a native citizen of this country, today I am both embarassed and ashamed. And although my apology doesn't mean much in terms of mending foreign relations at a head-of-state level, it's all I can do. I apologize to the entire world on behalf of the hypocritical and outrageous actions carried out in our name by the Bush Administration. Taking the nation's will in vain is the most un-American action imaginable.

To America: who can blame then, in the end, for associating us with the actions of our leaders? The democratic process is both a blessing and a burden -- with it comes responsibilities, like protesting when the popular vote is discounted by the interference of third parties. Vote. Speak up, listen, and think for yourselves. The truth is right in front of our faces, and it's not visible only to those in ivory towers. We must act. We must save OUR INDIVIDUAL global citizenships before we are cast out of the global community for guilt by association.

To the world: I'm sorry.

On Shady Magazines, Part III

The update on Raven: Humor for Men: Craigs List yanked the ad. It wasn't just the goofy reviews alone that did it... it was the weird way in which this was connected to that subscription fulfillment business that bothered me.

However, my curiosity remains, and therefore I think I'm going to have some fun with the "submissions." They want the funny? I will give them the funny, and out-phony them at the same time. I need a good male psuedonym for this, and I'll invite myself to a new and appropriate GMail account. Perhaps I will even MS Paint some "illustrations."

Yes, this is going to be fun.

On Shady Magazines, Part II

An hour and 46 minutes ago, in my last post, I mentioned a Craigs List ad for a magazine recruiting writers and other creative people. I also concluded that the magazine was, basically, fake.

I consulted a friend of mine who is much more entrenched in the publishing industry than I. From our IM conversation (he shall be known as "wiseman" to protect his identity):

wiseman: it's actually a fairly common but shady parctice
me: interesting.
me: what's the purpose of it?
wiseman: there will likely be some "favourable" reviews appearing from it on products near you soon
wiseman: part of a corporate hype machine
...
wiseman: oh man i work in publishing ... it's rife
wiseman: well when it comes to sales alls fair in love, war and marketing
me: that's nuts.
me: so
me: what of the craigslist post then?
me: i mean, it sounds like something worth notifying craigslist about.
wiseman: oh they want writers
wiseman: they might even do a print run
wiseman: but it's very likely a marketing organ

Upon wiseman's advice, I did a whois query on the domain name. It is owned by a man named Zane Valenti and hosted by by Automated Resources Group, Inc., who handle marketing, PR AND web hosting. Oh, and don't forget SUBSCRIPTION FULFILLMENT. And the only hit google gave me on Mr. Zane Valenti is a reader review someone named Zane Valenti posted about another web hosting company in 2003.

Let the PR propaganda machine churn! I have an idea... I'm going to start a company that offers all of these great things in terms of fulfillment, and I'm going to invent a phony magazine to offer testimonials regarding the efficacy of my company's fulfillment products!

So what to do next... call the hosting company, notify craigslist, or try to contact Mr. Valenti himself through the emails listed for Raven magazine submissions?

On Ireland, Nader, and Shady Magazines

Thanks to a nod from a buddy at boingboing.net, the people are reading. I should make an effort to update this blog more frequently and continue to write about things with a big more social weight than what I had for breakfast (which, for the record, is usually nothing) and the other trivial information I tend to note in my LiveJournal. I will do my best... just keep reading!

In the news today, Ralph Nader has announced his running mate selection for the upcoming presidential election. From the Nader for President 2004 press release:

Peter Camejo (64) is a financier, businessman, political activist, environmentalist, author and one of the founders of the socially responsible investment movement. Camejo is Chair of the Board of Progressive Asset Management of California an investment firm he founded in 1987. Mr. Camejo is a first generation American of Venezuelan decent who was born in New York in 1939. He has fought for social and environmental justice since his teens. He marched in Selma, Alabama with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. rallied for migrant farm workers and was active against the war in Vietnam. His most recent run for office was as a Green Party candidate in the gubernatorial recall election in California. His participation in the debates in that election resulted in him speaking to a worldwide audience.

"Camejo shares my concerns for economic and social justice as well as the urgent need to protect our environment. He recognizes the disparity of treatment between the rich and poor in the United States as well as the negative impact of corporate control of our government on our environment, health care, working conditions, democracy and culture. Camejo has also been a long-term opponent of the war and occupation in Iraq and the lock-step pro-Israel policy of the United States when it comes to resolving the Palestinian-Israeli issue," noted Nader. "His work in advancing socially responsible investment shows his understanding of how we can work within our economic system to advance social justice. Finally, Peter has shown himself to be skilled in political debate and I look forward to seeing him debate Vice President Cheney and Senator’ Kerry’s running mate."

Active in the environmental movement, Mr. Camejo has served as a member of the Board of Directors of EarthShare in the early 1990s – a coalition of over 40 major environmental groups—and on the Council for Responsible Public Investment which he founded. He also helped form the Environmental Justice Fund, to finance and unify environmentalists of color. From 1999 to 2002, served for three years as a county-appointed trustee of the three billion dollar Contra Costa County Employees Retirement Association. In the early 1990s, he was appointed by the Lt. Governor of Hawaii to be an advisor to the Hawaii Capital Stewardship Forum. He is the author of "The SRI Advantage- Why Socially Responsible Investing Has Outperformed Financially" (2001), "Racism Revolution Reaction 1861-1877," (1976) as well as other books.

Allow the conjecture to begin. Did Nader choose a mainstay in the realm of environmental activism in order to draw support from the Green Party? Is this a tactical move, hoping that the Green Party officially call him "their" candidate so that he can more easily get on ballots? Probably.

Additionally, The Boston Globe reports that anti-American sentiment in Ireland has been mounting throughout the course of the last four years which, coincidentally, happens to be the term of the Bush presidency. Go figure. According to former Dublin bureau chief Kevin Cullen, "There were about 10,000 demonstrators when Reagan visited Ireland; Irish police say they are preparing for at least 10 times that number next week." We have a few more months left before the November elections. I'm taking bets now on how many more foreign relationships the Bush Administration can damage before election day.

In completely unrelated news, if you've ever found Maxim too boring, the Onion too "bland," and Playboy too outdated, or if you long for the days of Spy and National Lampoon, or if you wish you could carry the comedy stylings of the likes of MAD TV, Howard Stern, and South Park with you at all times, then apparently Raven: Humor for Men is the magazine for you. I have neither heard of this magazine nor have I seen it on a newsstand anywhere, and the website isn't terribly informative. I discovered this little gem via my newest obsession, Craigs List. The CL post sounded intriguing, so I checked out their website, and found a page containing samples (possibly not safe for work, if your boss likes to peer over your shoulder intensely). But it's shady. There is no information like the name of the publisher or even a general contact number. There are, however, a bunch of quotes from the likes of Stephen Glass and Jayson Blair. I searched the New Republic site for Mr. Glass's supposed review and, as I suspected, turned up no results, made-up reporting or otherwise. And there is no such person as David Manning listed on the staff page of Ridgefield Press. After doing a little further investigation into Mr. Manning, I found this article on E! Online. According to the 2001 E! article, David Manning is a fake critic previously used by Sony to boost their films with favorable ratings. He is fictional. You can subscribe to Raven magazine online, but the website shows no phone number for subscription/circulation sales. I decided a Google search might tell me more, but all I got were a bunch of links to goth blogs and forums. So I Googled the parent company, Energize Media, Inc. and learned only that "energize media" is an overused marketing phrase. In short, I don't think this magazine really even exists. Are people so pathetic that they'd pull a prank like this just to fish for stories to tack their name on and send to other publications? And, more importantly, are there people out there who have subscribed to this seemingly non-existent magazine? Or is this all part of finding "funny" writers?

Method Man & Redman: the Sitcom

Just when I didn't think television could get any more ridiculous, Fox outdoes every ill-conceived reality show (except for The Swan) with a new sitcom.

Picture the following: two of the toughest and most well-known hip hop stars living in a mansion in New Jersey with a geeky Steve Urkle-like sidekick and, worst of all, a laugh track. That's basically "Method & Red," the new Fox show featuring Method Man and Redman.

These guys are one of those celebrity duos with awesome chemistry. Their 1999 album "Blackout" is in this white girl's opinion one of the best hip hop albums of the last 10 years. And when the two appear in a movie, it's usually good for a mindless laugh or five. So when I heard the sitcom was coming out, I was a little excited. I knew it wouldn't be comedic genius, but I thought it might at least make me giggle.

I am seriously disappointed.

The plot of last night's series premiere went as follows:
Method Man and Redman move into a rich, white neighborhood in suburban New Jersey. They buy their mansion because Method Man has made a promise to his mother. The neighbors, led by an overzealous and nagging realtor, decide to vote the hip hop stars out of the neighborhood. Method Man and Redman attempt to woo the neighbors with fruitcakes. In the end, the neighbors vote to give them the boot until the Norman Bates-esque neighbor stands up in their defense. (While distributing fruitcakes, Redman helped said neighbor lift said neighbor's father out of the bathtub.) The neighbors realize the error of their racist ways and let Method Man, Redman, and Method Man's mother stay in the house.

Obviously, with the FCC on a rampage, scenes featuring the duo smoking blunts won't be welcome. But there has to be a way for this show to not suck so horribly. And there must exist some writer creative enough to steer them from recreating the entire series of Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. The rich-white-people-fearing-black-people-in-their-hoity-toity-neighborhood thing was worn out by Will Smith, but my objection has nothing to do with rehashing of the stereotype. It's with the addressing a stereotype the exact same way everyone else does. As a huge fan of Lenny Bruce, I believe that the more often we are forced to confront stereotypes and bullshit, the more likely it is that society will be able to move away from such things. However, the show's writing is weak and lacking in wit and the situations are far from original, leaving it devoid of any useful social commentary. It's nothing different, and it's stupid.

My only constructive suggestion, aside from hiring a whole new team of intelligent writers, is to get rid of the laugh track. It's unnatural and distracting, especially when the main characters are these guys. They're above canned laughter, and there's no rule that says a sitcom must be adorned with a laugh track. Take a cue from a successful and funny Fox sitcom, "Arrested Development," and trash the lame laughs.

Barry Garron's Reuter's review offers a more favorable opinion: TV Review: "Method & Red"
The review written by Vince Horiuchi, TV Columnist for the Salt Lake Tribune, is much more critical -- of both Fox and this show: TV: Fox's trio of new comedies settle for appealing to simple minds

Abso-Blooming-lutely Special Centenary

If you've never read James Joyce's Ulysses, you are not alone. Sadly, most people haven't, even though it one of the greatest literary works of the 20th Century. It's so great that I drunkenly spent $17 on a 1961 print of the book last weekend.

It's a novel with episodes based on Homer's Odyssey, only instead of being a journey over years in ancient Greece, it takes place on one day in Dublin: June 16, 1904. It follows Leopold Bloom as he goes through a normal day in Dublin and is rich with puns, allusions, and some of the most revolutionary stream of consciousness writing I've ever seen. Dublin has put together an incredible festival: Celebrations mark Joyce centenary, but there are local celebrations all over the world, including one in San Francisco at O'Reilly's in North Beach. Even Google recognizes the day -- check out the Joyce-inspired logo on google.com.

The BBC has a great piece up today, Cheat's Guide to James Joyce's Ulysses. It's funny if you've read the book, and helpful if you haven't.

So have a gorgonzola sandwich and some burgundy, and celebrate the anniversary of a fictional adventure through Joyce's Dublin.



While I'm being literary, I think another BBC article is worth noting: Oprah helps Tolstoy top book list. That's right, since Oprah chose Anna Karenina for her Book Club, suddenly housewives are running out to buy their copies.

I wonder if Tolstoy would have reacted to the addition of his book to Oprah's list the way Jonathan Franzen did when Oprah wanted to include The Corrections on her book club list. He didn't want to be considered "Middle Brow" and threw a fit in the media. Franzen's objections were strange, considering Oprah promotes Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison like it's her job. But I understand why he wouldn't want his book to be included on a reading list whose target is not the literary community, unless the Literati has suddenly become a collective of housewives and talk show lovers.

I'm pretty sure that Tolstoy would not have been happy to see his book sales skyrocket on the NY Times best-seller list at the behest of a TV talk show host. As a friend put it, "he would see it as the betrayal of mother russia and the nobel serfs and crush oprah and her cosy media empire."

Information Overload and the Coulter Pledge

'Have you no sense of decency, sir?': 50 years ago, Army-McCarthy hearings were TV milestone

Fifty years ago today, before a live national television audience, Attorney Joseph Welch uttered the famous words, "Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you no sense of decency?" As the gallery burst into applause, a clueless Senator Joseph McCarthy looked at his sidekick in Pinko-hunting, the legendary walking paradox Roy Cohn, confused and blissfully unaware that this televised moment was the beginning of the end.

Media scholar Ben Bagdikian covered the hearings as a reporter for The Providence (Rhode Island) Journal-Bulletin.

"McCarthy was an important part of post-World War II history as television became a major instrument of American politics, with all of its sins and advantages," says Bagdikian, now 84.

The hearings, he adds, "were the first demonstration of how melodrama in politics was made for television. The hearings were great drama, and television ate it up."

As the first nationally televised congressional inquiry, it set the stage for TV-political co-productions to come, including the Watergate, Iran-Contra and Thomas-Hill hearings. In each case, the enabling presence of TV cameras did more than cover the event. TV also drove it.

Like Watergate's Sam Ervin or Iran-Contra's Oliver North, the Army-McCarthy hearings boasted a colorful cast of characters, and none more so than McCarthy and Welch. As any viewer could see, they were a study in contrasts: the erudite, patrician Welch vs. McCarthy, a roughneck who gloried in his lack of refinement.

"I felt that if the public could see just how McCarthy operated, they would understand just how ridiculous a figure he really was," the late ABC network President Leonard Goldenson wrote in his 1991 memoir, explaining his decision to air the hearings gavel-to-gavel.

News by radio and newspaper didn't convince the public of McCarthy's ruthlessness, but a live telecast did, at a cost of $600,000 to a struggling network, ABC. The cost was great to the network, but the benefit to the nation was greater. McCarthy stopped in his tracks.

We take it for granted that we can watch live broadcasts of Senate Committee inquiries and Commission hearings live and replayed over and over again on C-Span. We take it so for granted -- if that's even a phrase I can use -- that no one wants to watch C-Span "because it's boring."

Yesterday I found myself home from work, sick, lying on the couch with the remote in my hand. I channel surfed, as I do most sick days, and came to C-Span, where Ashcroft was testifying before a committee. I tried to watch for a few minutes, but I found the man so irritating that I just couldn't stay tuned in. I flipped away. When I got near the news channels, I felt a sudden twinge of panic pass over my body, and I flipped through them quickly, trying not to let the crawl suck me in. And only today, when I read this article about the McCarthy telecast, did I realize why we take our access to government processess for granted: INFORMATION OVERLOAD.

Yes, I've come to the conclusion that too much information can, in fact, be a very bad thing. It's only June and I can't wait for the election to be over, even though I understand that we've only just begun (cue Barbara Streisand).

Without the 24 hour news networks and unfettered access to Internet news sites, perhaps more people would sit down and watch national decision makers defend bad decisions before committees. Perhaps more Americans would have noticed that Rumsfeld was not upset over the abuse, but over the fact that the media released the pictures to the public before he could develop a proper spin strategy or suppress them altogether. There's so much we see, but so much we miss simply because of the amount of information thrown our way. We have to make choices now. We can choose to listen to Rush Limabaugh or we can choose to listen to Al Franken. We can choose to read the Washington Post or we can choose to watch Fox News. In order to truly grasp the big picture, however, we'd have to synthesize every single media outlet, and that's simply impossible. So we choose what we want to hear and tune everyone else out. In the process, we stop viewing the world clearly and start watching helplessly through media filters. And sometimes we can't stand to hear any of it at all, and apathy sets in.

Taking the McCarthy anniversary in a different direction...
Apparently there's a movement, on the right, of people who believe that "McCarthyism" is little more than liberals crying wolf. Ann Coulter included her spin on the liberal conspiracy in a book boldy called Treason. I think that, like Holocaust deniers, it's important to listen to why they believe what they believe, but not really think too hard about it. That's why I plan to read all of Ann Coulter's books. That's right. Every single one. I will become enraged and likely slam the books shut; I will scream and yell at the pages; but I feel that before I talk any more about how insane I think she is, it's important for me to understand her better. I refuse to buy them, for obvious reasons. Thank goodness for libraries. At least if Ashcroft ever decides to check my library records, he'll get an entirely different impression of me than if he actually checked my book collection.

McCarthyism happened. People's careers and lives were smeared by a foolish attempt to pinpoint Communists within America. If people like Ann Coulter would stop stereotyping liberals, we'd all get along so much better.

The Decline of the NY Times

Relevant Links:

• From the Editors: The Times and Iraq, from NY Times, 5/26/04
• The Times and Iraq: A Sample of the Coverage, from NY Times, 5/26/04
• Jack Schafer: Mini Culpa, from Slate, 5/26/04
• List of articles containing false WMD information, from KnightRidder, 3/15/04
• Iraqi exiles gave false information to media, from The Miami Herald, 3/16/04
• Michael Messing: Now They Tell Us, from the NY Review of Books, 2/26/04
• Howell Raines: My Times, from The Atlantic, May 2004

from the Editors' Note:

Over the last year this newspaper has shone the bright light of hindsight on decisions that led the United States into Iraq. We have examined the failings of American and allied intelligence, especially on the issue of Iraq's weapons and possible Iraqi connections to international terrorists. We have studied the allegations of official gullibility and hype. It is past time we turned the same light on ourselves.

In doing so — reviewing hundreds of articles written during the prelude to war and into the early stages of the occupation — we found an enormous amount of journalism that we are proud of. In most cases, what we reported was an accurate reflection of the state of our knowledge at the time, much of it painstakingly extracted from intelligence agencies that were themselves dependent on sketchy information. And where those articles included incomplete information or pointed in a wrong direction, they were later overtaken by more and stronger information. That is how news coverage normally unfolds.

But we have found a number of instances of coverage that was not as rigorous as it should have been. In some cases, information that was controversial then, and seems questionable now, was insufficiently qualified or allowed to stand unchallenged. Looking back, we wish we had been more aggressive in re-examining the claims as new evidence emerged — or failed to emerge.

See what happens when you don't take the time to RESEARCH your stories and sources, but simply accept word-of-mouth or word-of-administration as the next major scoop?

You serve yourself a piping hot plate of crow.

Since the Jayson Blair scandal broke and Howell Raines departed from the New York Times, the paper's reputation has hung in the balance. If you take the time to read the Raines article, you will see that underperformance in the newsroom was something he aimed to abolish. Unfortunately, his mission was thwarted by one particular journalist whose offenses went beyond innaccuracy and reached new levels of dishonesty through plagiarism. Plagiarism, in the pages of the New York Times.

And now this. The recent admission of lazy journalism does not do much to help the paper's cause. While all major media outlets are guilty of drinking the WMD Kool-Aid, the Times should have known better. A paper that was once considered the greatest America has to offer has been disintegrating because it's stopped reporting the news and started regurgitating information. Creating stories based on information from sources who are clearly less than reliable is not JOURNALISM. It's like writing a story on the pit bulls and talking only to people who hear you're writing this story and want to have their sagas of being been bitten by them put in the paper. It's not JOURNALISM, it's taking only what comes to you.

Journalism would have been looking closely enough at the facts, and at the histories of the people surrounding the facts, to figure out that the scoops were possibly part of an Iranian plot to infiltrate the US media and bolster support for war in Iraq. THAT is journalism.

As an aspiring journalist, or whatever I happen to be on any given day, the fact that anyone in the Times newsroom would reach any level below "brilliant" is obscene to me. While they may not be living out their own ultimate dream, think of all the people who spend their life trying to get a desk at the NY Times. It's like a 9 year old Little League player watching his favorite Major League team sit down on the diamond and let the visiting team run up the scoreboard hit after hit. I once thought the NY Times was as good as newspapers can get, and that to be a reporter for the Times was the greatest honor I could achieve. And only genius writing and reporting could get me there.

Apparently, all it takes is being able to incorporate "information" from "sources" into paragraphs of conjecture.

It's sort of like Rolling Stone, which went from the cutting edge writing and actual reporting of the 70s, to the mediocre writing and dumbed down subject matter of the last 10 years. And that was Jann Wenner's doing, in order to make it more marketable to the younger generations, which, judging by quality, Wenner must have assumed were also dumber.

If the Times wants to keep itself from becoming just another media outlet, as it is quickly devolving into, the Editors and leadership at the paper need to take hold of the reins and remember what the New York Times is supposed to be about: ALL THE NEWS THAT'S FIT TO PRINT.

Not ALL THE PRINT THAT FITS THE NEWS.

On Secession

From ChristianExodus.org:

ChristianExodus.org is orchestrating the move of 50,000 or more Christians to one of three States for the express purpose of dissolving that State’s bond with the union. The three States under consideration are Alabama, Mississippi and South Carolina. The exact destination will be chosen by vote of our membership. Our move will commence when the federal government forces sodomite marriages on our local communities or once we reach the 50,000-member mark, whichever comes first.

Contrarily, from the Free State Project:

The Free State Project is a plan in which 20,000 or more liberty-oriented people will move to New Hampshire, where they may work within the political system to reduce the size and scope of government. The success of the Free State Project would likely entail reductions in burdensome taxation and regulation, reforms in state and local law, an end to federal mandates, and a restoration of constitutional federalism, demonstrating the benefits of liberty to the rest of the nation and the world.

What we have here are two organized groups of people wanting to split the nation up and claim states as their own for completely different reasons. One group, the Christian Exodus folk, for purely religious reasons; the other group, the Free State Project folk, for purely secular reasons. I'm starting to think this is what it may come to -- "ethnic" territories, if you will, based on religious inclination. They could have their Christian state, and we could run around and be as pagan and unholy as we like without infringing on their moral crusade.

If this gains steam, if people start to join the respective movements and they grow to the point where they are impossible to pass off as lunatics, perhaps we really should sit down at the negotiating table and start trading states. I don't see why not. The "Moral Majority" does not seem satisfied with a nation united under a secular Constitution, and the secular portion of the population is getting damn tired of being force-fed someone else's moral edict. You don't want gays to get married? Fine. Have a few states, and live under God's Law, but leave those of us Constitution-lovers out of it.

We are a very young nation, but at the same time no Democracy has been around as long nearly as long as the United States, and so no one knows what the average lifespan is on something like this. Perhaps at some point within my lifetime it will be necessary to make serious changes to the infrastructure. Perhaps we will see the end of the "United" States, whether it be peaceful or violent. Hopefully we will all have the foresight to sit down and figure it out before it turns violent, but I don't have that much faith in the American people.

Evangelical Pulp Fiction

This week's Newsweek cover story, The Pop Prophets is about America's best-selling literary duo: Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins. They are out-selling all of America's favorite pop novelists, from Stephen King to John Grisham. But their subject matter is neither the legal system nor valiant returns from the dead. They are fervent Evangelical Christians, and their stories revolve around evangelical ideology. From the rapture (not the 80s electroclash band, either), to the judgment, these authors have successfully molded the tenets of evangelical Christianity into a series of pop culture novels.

Once something is made accessible on a pop culture level, it is more likely to catch on and gain widespread popularity. The interesting thing here is where it's catching on. You won't see it tucked under the arm of your average New Yorker on the downtown 6 train. According to Tyndale, the publisher, 71% of readers are from the South and Midwest, and only 6% are from the Northeast. Their "core buyer," Newsweek reports, is a "44-year-old born-again Christian woman, married with kids, living in the South. This isn't the 'Sex and the City' crowd--which helps explain why it took so long to notice that one in eight Americans was reading all these strange books about the end of the world." The people who you would stereotypically expect to love this books are the ones who love these books. However, it is important to note that, "After September 11, 2001, there was such a run on the latest "Left Behind" volume, "Desecration," that it became the best-selling novel of the year. And it's no coincidence that the books are a favorite with American soldiers in Iraq."

I don't mean to be depressing, or conspiratorial, but I believe that there is a definite threat somewhere in this. While the majority of readers come from the particular people noted above, the novels are popular outside of the usual Christian southern demographic. When a nation falls into a time of strife and tragedy, and when no end seems to be in sight, and when there is just no rational explanation for the kind of suffering and war that we have seen over the last few years, it's only natural for the people of that nation to look for a reprieve, answers, or hope of an end. This kind of Revelation-driven Christianity offers just that: a guaranteed reprieve, unequivocal answers, and a definite end. And, as Newsweek reports, times of tragedy equaled a boost in sales for the authorial team. This subscription of the masses to a particular ideology, or even the entertainment of it by the masses, allows the ideology to establish legitimacy.

The people who need to be watching things like the "Jesus Factor" episode of PBS' Frontline are not. They instead devour a series of books disseminating Evangelical Christianity, the Christian equivalent of Fundamental Islam, via the popular novel. And they feed the machine, which has essentially engulfed the far right end of the political spectrum. With a president in office whose religious beliefs are no secret, and who has made it known where he stands on the moral scale, and whose faith may, in fact, offer hope for some (particularly those who believe God has chosen him to be president) that a vote for him is a vote for their faith, it's no wonder why Bush is still popular. I absolutely believe that the popularity of these novels sheds light in the age old question: "Why do people still support Bush?"

Our Founding Fathers were certainly not amoral atheists. Quite the contrary. They were all God-fearing Christians, but they recognized that maintaining a separation between church (religion) and state (government) is fundamental to the survival of their experiment (democracy). While government has always historically legislated morality, right now we are in a time when progress and morality are clashing. For instance, instead of gay marriage being a "Constitutional" issue, which it ought to be, it is a "moral" issue, with a push against it coming from the Christianized far right. If church and state truly were separate, there would be no debate over whether or not homosexual couples should have the same rights as heterosexual ones. In fact, there would be no such thing as "gay marriage" or "straight marriage" in the eyes of the law. There would be civil unions, and only in the eyes of the couples' chosen deity would there be marriage. That is true, honest separation of church and state. But that's getting a little far from reality, so we have to work with what we can, and "gay marriage" is very clearly the Constitutionally-sound answer. And let's not forget that our President and many of his followers think that gay marriage is not only wrong and must be banned, but that this ought to be done through a Constitutional Amendment. Regardless of how viable it is, a president's contention that Constitutional discrimination is the way to go shows just how incredibly misinterpreted American Ideals have become.

Thus, we come full circle. The mass marketing of ideas through pop culture doesn't debase them anymore, it validates them. A testament to the herd theory? Perhaps. But more than that, it demonstrates how fragile our Constitutional ideals really are in the face of society vulnerable to ideological maniuplation.

At any rate, I'd also like to add that Dennis Hastert's questioning of McCain's service to the nation should clinch a loss for him in his next run for re-election.

The Secret Art of Media Manipulation

from National Journal's Hotline, 5/19/04

"Here are the latest presidential ad spending estimates from TNS Media Intelligence/Campaign Media Analysis Group (TNSMI/CMAG), CNN's consultant on ad spending. TNSMI/CMAG estimates ad spending in the nation's top 100 media markets. The actual spending amounts nationwide are likely higher."

"Estimated ad spending, 5/10-5/16"
"Kerry: at least $6.7 million"
"Bush: at least $4.0 million"
"Kerry + Dem Groups: at least $8.3 million"
"Bush + GOP Groups: at least $4.1 million"
"Democratic Groups running ads: AFL-CIO, MoveOn.org, New Democratic Network"
"GOP groups running ads: Citizens United, Club for Growth"

"Estimated ad spending, 3/3 - 5/16 (general election-to-date)"
Kerry: at least $33.2 million"
"Bush: at least $60.6 million"
"Kerry + Dem Groups: at least $71.6 million"
"Bush + GOP Groups: at least $60.7 million"
("Morning Grind," CNN, 5/19).

Why did Kerry outspend Bush by at least $2.7 million in one particular week? Isn't the negative PR from the Abu Ghraib scandal doing enough damage on its own? Or is it not doing *enough* damage, and Kerry's camp feels it needs to deliver some kind of extra right hook to get the job done?

Problem is, I think a lot of Americans believe that the abuse is either 1) the result of a few perverted soldiers who have been driven insane while serving their country, or 2) not abuse at all, but effective means of eliciting information from prisoners. The media has not been quick to explore the possibility of the abuse as an order from somewhere either within the Pentagon or very very close to it, which leads a lot of people to look at such a possibility merely as conspiratorial conjecture cranked out of the liberal propaganda machine.

When will the media reinstate the principle of Objectivity?

According to every wind-blowing pundit, on both sides of political center, in the American media, this is to be the dirtiest race in the history of American politics. While that could be hyperbole, it could also be an on-target assessment of the way the campaign strategy has evolved. While during the 70s it was detrimental to one's campaign to stage a fiercely negative attack on one's opponent, today the spinsters have figured out a way to bypass public negativity by going through the backdoor: leaks to the media.

It goes beyond a roomful of interns digging up strange votes and legislative faux pas. These are teams of research experts, adept at tearing through public records to find any piece of information that could be spun as purely negative and leaked to the AP.

This underhanded but brilliant strategy has had two main effects on the media's role in politics. First, and most obviously, it is a way to run a negative campaign without having to endure backlash from the public. Second, and most dangerously, it is haphazard manipulation of the media, and the scariest part is that the media accepts these leaks without checking the facts to ensure that they aren't accepting something angled to mislead. These nuggets of information planted by the campaigns should be researched and could be developed into real news stories. For instance, is Kerry a waffler or is that the image the media has accepted? A careful objective examination of his voting and speech records could clear this up in a short series of articles. But only the left is willing to set the record straight, and because they are biased, their opinion is invalidated by the mainstream. It's a cycle of disbelief and distrust enabled by the easy "yeah we'll take your word for it!" attitude of the mainstream media. Instead of acting as the watchdog of the government, the media is acting as its lapdog.

For more on this opposition research strategy, check out Playing Dirty by Joshua Green from the May issue of The Atlantic

Interestingly, Green's article mentions opposition research employed by the Clark campaign against Howard Dean. The Progressive's editor, Matthew Rothschild, sat down with the defeated frontrunner to talk about what went wrong. Dean doesn't mention the secretive negative strategy at play, but he does discuss with Rothschild the press and its general corporate leash and the effect of public negativity (in the form of TV ads slamming candidates, as in the Dean-Gephardt exchange).

Q: Is going negative a response that doesn't work anymore?
Dean: It always works, but never in a multicandidate race. The ones who aren't going negative get the benefit.

Q: There is some speculation, perhaps idle in the press, that you were self-sabotaging, that you really didn't want to win, and the closer you came to getting the nomination, the more gaffes you committed.
Dean: That was pretty silly. That's one of the problems with the media. There's a lot of opinion pieces under the guise of news, and once one person comes up with it, it gets repeated. Most of that started out in gossip columns in The Washington Post. The idea that someone is going to spend two years and $50 million and doesn't really care is pretty silly.

Q: What do you make of the way the press treated you?
Dean: I think the press in general is a failed institution in this country. For two reasons. This has nothing to do with the race. I'm not sure it would have made any difference. But the biggest problem with the media is first that 90 percent of Americans get their news from eleven corporations so that the loyalty in the editorial staff and higher up is principally to the shareholders rather than to the public. And the second problem is that entertainment has supplanted news value.

Q: A lot of your supporters feel the press had it in for you, or did you in. Do you agree?
Dean: You know, I don't know. I think the older supporters may feel that way. The younger supporters tend to ignore the press. The pitfall of what's happening in the media is if you're under thirty, you get your news from the Internet and The Daily Show, and there's not much discrimination between what they find on the front page of The New York Times and what they find on the Internet. That's not a bad thing, in the sense that people don't get spoon-fed anymore.

Q: The Daily Show may be savvier than some of that other stuff.
Dean: Oh, I don't know, I don't get to watch The Daily Show.

Q: You should. It's funny. Some of us thought the media didn't like you not because you were bristly but because you were too far left. Many in the mainstream media believe the conventional wisdom that the Democrats need a centrist candidate, so the closer you came to getting the nomination, the more panicked they became. Do you think there's any legitimacy in that?
Dean: I don't think there's much legitimacy to that. I'm sure there were personal factors involved, but I'm not one who buys the notion of a media conspiracy. I think there are different views in the media, from Fox News to The New York Times, from The Weekly Standard to The Nation. But I don't think there's an ideological conspiracy in the media to keep certain candidates out. I really don't.

Yes, a large part of me is still brooding over Dean's defeat, although it makes perfect sense. It's just sad that it had to happen. In my fantasy world, Howard Dean would be the ideal people's candidate, not just a hothead who can't hold his temper, and whose opponents go underground into the AP to destroy.

George W. Bush: Compassion

I have had a blog on Live Journal for about 2 years now. I like it, but I wanted to create something that I would have to take a bit more seriously than that. So I thought I'd start one here, in an attempt to keep it focused on fairly serious things, like getting Bush out of office politics, literature, and the like.

An op ed in yesterday's LA Times, NYU's Lawrence Weschler calls attention to a particular section of George Bush's website. It is a warm and fuzzy section, offering a heartwarming message and pictures of the Commander in Chief posing mainly with black people. It's very weird. Why? Because the heartwarming message is one of compassion. In fact, the section of the site is titled Compassion. Of all the hypocritical, self-aggrandizing PR stunts...