Earlier today– I can’t remember if it while I was on my bike ride, grading/wrapping up stuff for the summer term, reading my Google Reader feed, or what– I had this feeling that my long suffering and delayed project, Blogs as Writerly Spaces,had kind of run its course. I mean, I haven’t done anything with it in months and months (I have poked at it more recently than my link above might suggest, but still), and I kind of have a bit of a “milked dry” feeling about the whole thing. I’ve worked my survey data (such as it is) and other research into at least five different presentations over the years, and it has been feeling a little wrung out to me. Besides, blogging is kind of “been there, done that” nowadays, right? How do I write a book-length project (or hell, even a decent article-length essay) about this phenomenon that has either become irrelevant in the shadow of Facebook, Twitter, and whatever is next? Who cares about a medium that has either faded away or has been subsumed/consumed by MSM to the point where even freakin’ Stanley Fish has a “blog” as part of the New York Times?
Anyway, this was all in the back of my mind while listening to the radio on the way to Costco and I was listening to “Here and Now” and they had a story (mp3) about this story in Salon by Justin Elliott, “How the ‘ground zero mosque’ fear mongering began,” and I had a tiny twinge of second thoughts on my project. Maybe there’s something there there after all. Elliott has a time-line how this mosque/community center/whatever it is controversy got so out of hand, and how a right-wing conspiracy theorist blogger named Pamela Geller (her blog is called “Altas Shrugs”) started and fueled this whole thing. Elliott has a time-line and corresponding links to Geller’s blog to make a pretty compelling argument how her blog made this into a story. Granted, Geller is more “connected” than most bloggers (her bio points to appearances on various news outlets, and she was apparently on Hannity’s radio show, etc.), but I think Elliott makes a pretty compelling argument that this non-story turned into a story in part because of Geller’s persistence and blogging. Take a look at Atlas Shrugs now and it’s clear that she’s still using this story, or it’s still using her.
The politics here are interesting in a way, but the dynamics of the rhetorical situation are much more interesting to me. And maybe I ought to not completely close up that book project yet.
Everyone I talked to today seemed to be in a fine mood about Obama winning and such, but everyone I interacted with today seem kind of sleep-deprived.
While Obama was running, it was for the most part not really about race. And yet, the “big media” story today seems to be about race– that is, everyone is really excited that Obama won because he is an African-American/person of color. I’m happy about that of course, but I am mostly happy about Obama winning because he is so smart, he’s got fantastic ideas, he sees and understands complexity, he wants to talk to other people around the world, he didn’t have a freakin’ mental collapse when the shit hit the fan about the markets (ala McCain), he’s actually in the prime of his life and not near the end of it (ala McCain), and he was so pain-stakingly the obvious best choice that I was worried that Americans were going to do the stupid thing again.
I would say more about how it’s probably a little too early to say “all is well with race issues now in America since Obama won,” but Deb Hawhee said it better and first, so there you have it.
Hate radio is going to have a field-day over the next few years, and I’m worried about what will happen (or not) to the Daily Show.
Finally, there’s a little bit of “strike back” against the lies of the John McCain campaign and the utter confusion and flip-flops of the candidate himself. Take a look at this new ad from Obama:
I’d like to see something even a more aggressive, personally. I think it would be completely fair game for Obama to go on, look straight into the camera, and say something like “John McCain and his campaign are flat-out lying and they owe me and the American people an apology for sinking to these low and desperate tactics.” Or something like that.
And something needs to be made of this too: there was a story on NPR this morning with the misleading headline, “McCain: ‘I Know Americans Are Hurting Now.” Be sure to take a listen. The stock market dropped 500 points yesterday and a slew of economists and experts have been parading through radio and TV shows saying that this is the worst financial crisis since the great depression. And yet, as this story clearly reports, McCain was muddled at best. At the same time they were running an ad about the failed economy, McCain was at a rally in Florida where he said (more or less) “I still think the U.S. economy fundamentals remain strong.” An hour or so later, he gave a different speech at a different rally where McCain repeats the phrase “our economy is at risk” over and over. Un-freakin-believable.
Yesterday, I heard a pretty interesting story on the public radio show “This American Life.” The overall theme of the show was called “Human Resources,” and it will be available at this link (I think?) starting on Monday. The lead story was “The Rubber Room.”
The rubber room is essentially a holding facility for teachers in the New York City school system who have been suspended for something and are awaiting some kind of hearing and/or reassignment. Basically, these people have to show up to this place and do nothing (well, they can play cards, sleep, chat, etc.) for seven hours a day and get paid for it. On face-value, this might seem like some kind of scam. But as the story suggests, it is far from a happy-go-lucky kind of arrangement. Interesting stuff.
They are trying to make a documentary movie about this, and there’s a web site called RubberRoomMovie.com where you can view a trailer, learn more about the whole set-up, etc.
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