MOOCs are for Mooks

So, I couldn't resist the play on the acronym for Massive Open Online Courses (and the fact that it's Courses, plural, renders the s at the end of MOOCs redundant, but that's online learning for you). The equally online Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines mook as a slang term denoting "a foolish, insignificant, or contemptible person" and admittedly that's a bit harsh, but then again, I didn't invent the acronym, nor am I anything but one of a multitude of critics of this latest form of distance learning.

And I bring this up because not too long ago I was interviewed by Ellis Booker for an article on the subject published in InformationWeek on December 20th under the title of Massive Open Online Courses Meet Higher Ed, accompanied by the subtitle of Massive open online courses (MOOCs) are prompting discussion about higher education's future and business model.

The article begins, appropriately enough, by posing some key questions:

Can a class contain 100,000 Internet-connected students? Can grading be crowdsourced? Will colleges and universities someday confer certifications on students who've never stepped foot on campus, never interacted with a live teacher and never paid a dime?

These are just some of the existential questions confronting academia thanks to massive open online courses, or MOOCs. MOOCs are distinguished as much by their network- and computer-mediated scale as their free-for-all philosophy.

 So, what's the origin of this new educational phenomenon? That's the next point that Booker tackles:

The first MOOC is believed to have been the 2008 course "Connectivism and Connective Knowledge," created by George Siemens, then an associate director, research and development with the Learning Technologies Centre at the University of Manitoba, and Stephen Downes, an online learning and new media designer and commentator.

Their course content was available through RSS feeds, and students could participate via threaded discussions in Moodle, blog posts, Second Life or synchronous online meetings. The course was taken by 25 tuition-paying students at the University of Manitoba; another 2,300 members of the general public registered for the course online, free of charge.

 From here, Booker takes us directly to the present day:

From these humble beginnings, MOOCs have grown. According to one recent count, there are 230 MOOCs today, with more than 3 million students. In a milestone last year, an online course in artificial intelligence from Stanford attracted 160,000 students -- 23,000 of whom completed it.

In fact, the fastest-growing purveyor of MOOCs isn't a college or a university. Coursera is a venture capital- backed online platform, now with more than 33 participating schools offering online courses to 1.3 million students.

So, now that we have MOOCs explained, I think it worthwhile to add that the acronym MOOC, and especially the terms massive coupled with online have a connection to an aspect of new media that involves something other than pedagogy. What I am referring to are the initials (not acronyms because they're not really pronounceable) MMO and MMORPG.  MMO stands for Massive Multiplayer Online, which is used in reference to gaming, so the typical reference is to MMO games.  MMORPG is a little more specific, referring to Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game, sometimes used in reference to MMORPG games, which is of course redundant (and must I repeat myself on the significance of that point?).  MMORPG's include World of Warcraft, and various games based on the universes associated with The Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, Star Trek, etc.

And while we're on the subject, these games are descendents of MUDs, which started out as text-based online games, the acronym standing for Multi-User Dungeon.  As the format, which shares some common ground with chat rooms, was adopted for non-fantasy and even non-gaming functions, alternate meanings for the initials were introduced, i.e. Multi-User Dimension, Multi-User Domain, or even Multi-User Dialogue. One type of MUD is known as a MUSH, a Multi-User Shared Hallucination (the allusion here is to William Gibson's definition of cyberspace in his science fiction novel Neuromancer as a shared consensual hallucination). Another variation is the MOO, which stands for MUD, Object-Oriented, which refers to object-oriented programming, meaning a MUD where the virtual objects contained within it are programmable.

And let's not forget where this all began, with the fantasy role-playing game Dungeons and Dragons, which has been abbreviated as D&D or DnD. Originally played as a kind of board game, albeit without an actual board per se, but with maps and charts and the like, along the lines of war and strategy games, these games were based on computer technology nonetheless, specifically on computer-generated statistical probability tables made available in print form, used in conjunction with rolling a variety of dice with many different sides to determine specific outcomes.

What's the point of all this, you may ask? Well, it's merely to point out that MOOCs can be said to have descended from gaming rather than schooling, and perhaps have as much if not more to do with entertainment than education. That's certainly a point that is consonant with Neil Postman's critique of education via television in Amusing Ourselves to Death. And while we're on that subject, let's note that the very term massive recalls the older term mass, as in mass consumption, mass culture, mass media, and mass communication.  And while these massive forms may have some redeeming qualities, is mass communication really the best model for pedagogical practices?

Okay, this has been a long digression, so let's get back to Booker's piece, and hear from one of the leading cheerleaders for all things online:

"The possibility MOOCs hold out is that the educational parts of education can be unbundled," Clay Shirky, an associate professor at New York University and a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, wrote in a lengthy post in November.

"Once you imagine educating a thousand people in a single class, it becomes clear that open courses, even in their nascent state, will be able to raise quality and improve certification faster than traditional institutions can lower cost or increase enrollment," Shirky wrote.

Umm, increase quality? Really? Shirky may know something about new media, sure, and may be one of the leading cheerleaders for online communication and social media, but his understanding of quality in education leaves something to be desired. Holding aside the basic economic law of diminishing returns, there's a little thing we call teacher-student ratio that has a great deal to do with quality of education.  But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's move on to a new section of the article, with a heading of "Why Now?":

Distance learning has been a topic of discussion and experimentation for at least two decades, which begs the question: Why the current excitement?

"Why now? That's a question I've been asking myself," Kemi Jona, a research professor in learning sciences and computer science at Northwestern University, said in a phone interview with InformationWeek.

Noting the "long trajectory" and expensive failures of the past, Jona said the answer has less to do with technical advances (broadband connections to the home, tablet computers) than with economics -- specifically, the high cost of tuition and the global fiscal crisis, which combined to cause many to question the value of a post-secondary degree.

Jona is among those who see multiple advantages in online classes, ranging from "not subjecting a 19-year-old to an 8 a.m. chemistry class" to research suggesting that online environments may be more conducive to risk-taking and student participation. "It's not socially acceptable to look stupid [in person]," Jona said.

Jona's last point rings true in reference to online learning, and you might say that it applies to online behavior in general, that people are more likely to take risks when sitting comfortably in front of a computer screen rather than taking the same risks when actually in a real, live situation, which brings us back to gaming, come to think of it. But this has noting to do with massive online learning, as opposed to, say, small seminars conducted over via the internet. Well, maybe a little, as there's safety in numbers, otherwise known as risky shift, but how much participation can there really be in a course with thousands of students? And participation with whom?  Certainly not the professor. So, maybe we're talking about graduate students working as teaching assistants, but now on a massive scale?  Or will it all be programmable, automated, bot-led discussion sections. I can just hear some student say, Professor Siri, a question? Anyway, greater participation is not the same thing as greater learning. 

The earlier point is the one that is most to the point:  economics.  MOOCs represent a cheaper form of education than traditional college classes, and there is no arguing with that, but let's just say, you get what you pay for.

But where do I come in, you might ask. Well, I hope it was worth waiting for:

Not surprisingly, other educators are suspicious about MOOCs.

"It's not an accident [these] are coming out of the most prestigious and well-endowed universities," Lance Strate, professor of communication and media studies and director of the Professional Studies in New Media program at Fordham University said in a phone interview. The initiatives are, he said, "in some ways, a kind of publicity stunt to help reinforce the image of these [schools] as leading institutions of higher education." Fordham has no MOOCs, nor plans for one, according to Strate.

Strate isn't alone in his suspicions. If the unbundling of education happens, Harvard and Yale will be fine, but maybe not the "4,000 institutions you haven't heard of," Shirky wrote in his essay.

So, yeah, I'm a bit cynical, but status and prestige is definitely a factor in the rush of elite institutions to field MOOCs, as opposed to a straightforward desire to bring education to the masses. No doubt, the presence of MOOCs will soon play a role in US News & World Report rankings.

And I give him credit, Shirky does raise an ominous point, in that higher education could go the way of the media industries under this scenario, as in increased concentration of ownership. Could Harvard and Yale become the educational equivalents of Time-Warner and Disney/ABC?

Anyway, Booker gives the "inventor" of the MOOC the last word:

Does this mean existing institutions should lay low?

Not at all, says the professor whose 2008 class is credited with being the first MOOC. "If MOOCs are eventually revealed to be a fad, the universities that experiment with them today will have acquired experience and insight into the role of technology in teaching and learning that their conservative peers won't have," George Siemens wrote in a December post on his Elearnspace.org blog. These days, Siemens is an assistant professor in the Center for Distance Education and a researcher and strategist with the Technology Enhanced Knowledge Research Institute (TEKRI) at Athabasca University in Alberta, Canada.

Siemens is no doubt right that there is something to be learned by those who follow the fad, but maybe it's something that the rest of us already know.  And maybe there's also something to be lost, a cost to all this, and who will be the ones to pay that cost? Maybe the students who take these courses, and think they are getting something that they in reality are not? If it's all a grand experiment, or let's say it's all just a game, then there are winners and there are losers. If the experimenters are the winners, then aren't the subjects destined to be the losers, to be the mooks for the MOOCs?

The Deprivations of Privacy

Time for me to repost here another one of my guest posts for the blog run by the Hannah Arendt Center at Bard College.  This is my 4th contribution to their Quote of the Week feature, the first 3 being Charlie Chaplin and Hannah Arendt, We Create the Conditions that Condition Us, and History and Freedom, all of which followed my initial guest post for them, which I wrote about here in an entry entitled Arendt Come Due.

So, this latest item, The Deprivations of Privacy, was posted over on their site on December 3rd, and the title is linked to it so to let you go take a look if you want. And before I proceed to adding it here, I just want to note that the post went up on their blog on that Monday, and 2 days later, on that Wednesday morning, I heard from the director of the Arendt Center, Roger Berkowitz, that the post brought 2600 people to their site, with many more hits continuing to come in after that.  And of course I'm happy about that, for my own sake sure, but also pleased to contribute in this way to center and the promotion of Arendt's work and thought.

So, lest you be deprived any further, and with thanks to Bridget Hollenback for providing the illustrations, here it is now:

"The emergence of society—the rise of housekeeping, its activities, problems, and organizational devices—from the shadowy interior of the household into the light of the public sphere, has not only blurred the old borderline between private and political, it has also changed almost beyond recognition the meaning of the two terms and their significance for the life of the individual and the citizen. Not only would we not agree with the Greeks that a life spent in the privacy of "one's own" (idion), outside the world of the common, is "idiotic" by definition, or with the Romans to whom privacy offered but a temporary refuge from the business of the res publica; we call private today a sphere of intimacy whose beginnings we may be able to trace back to late Roman, though hardly to any period of Greek antiquity, but whose peculiar manifoldness and variety were certainly unknown to any period prior to the modern age. "

-Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition

Here are the titles of some recent posts on the Deeplinks Blog, which is published by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, America's leading organization advocating for citizens' digital rights:

• Who's Tracking Your Reading Habits? An E-Book Buyer's Guide to Privacy, 2012 Edition
• Ninth Circuit Gives the A-OK for Warrantless Home Video Surveillance
• Attempt to Modernize Digital Privacy Law Passes the Senate Judiciary Committee
• NASA's Data Valdez: Thousands of Employees' Personal Information Compromised in Embarrassing Data Breach
• Don't Be a Petraeus: A Tutorial on Anonymous E-Mail Accounts
• ECPA and the Mire of DC Politics: We Shouldn't Have to Trade Video Privacy to Get Common Sense Protections of Our Email
• EFF to Supreme Court: Limit Release of Driver Info
• Do Not Track Update:  Professor Peter Swire to Co-Chair W3C Tracking Protection Working Group
• Reform to Require Warrant for Private Online Messages Up for Vote, but Down on Privacy
• Jones Meant What It Said: EFF Urges Court to Stop Warrantless GPS Tracking

Privacy is far from the only issue addressed by the EFF, but this list does account for 10 out of 16 posts appearing on the Deeplinks Blog between November 21st and 29th of this year.  And concerns about invasions of privacy surface repeatedly in regard to Facebook's data mining of user profiles and updates, Google tracking and analysis of search queries (not to mention their indiscriminate street view photography, monitoring of wifi signals, and use of gmail address books), and Apple's tracking of the whereabouts and movements of iPhone users (also done by Android and other mobile systems).  Companies are known to monitor their employee's internet use, email, and some even demand access to their social media accounts.  Law enforcement and other government agencies (foreign and domestic) seek access to citizens' email and text messages and records of websites visited and documents downloaded.  Personal messages, photos, and videos are forwarded and distributed without permission.  Sites like Wikileaks publish secret government and corporate documents.  Hackers break into databases, steal information, take credit card numbers and banking information, and in the ultimate invasion of privacy, engage in identity theft.

As much as the modern understanding of privacy seems to be under assault on account of new media and digital technologies, it's also true that many of us readily reveal personal information via online profiles and posts, post our personal photographs and video recordings, divulge our location through Foursquare and social media status updates, enable GPS tracking on our mobile devices in order to take better advantage of various apps and services, enter credit and debit card numbers on websites assuming that they are secure, and treat email, instant messaging, and SMS as if they were absolutely inviolable channels of communication.

Privacy is being consumed.  Online, our privacy is consumed by the advertising, marketing, and public relations industries, while we in turn are encouraged to serve ourselves up as personal brands (as befits cattle).  But through social media, we ourselves also consume other people's private lives, perusing their profiles, attending to their status updates, looking through their photographs, listening to their podcasts, watching their uploaded videos.  Online we participate in a great orgy of consumption, as personal and intimate details are freely exchanged. On television, we consume the privacy of a select few, but in the age of the internet, paralleling our online devotion to following the lives of ordinary people just like ourselves, we have the relatively new genre of reality TV, which serves us up real housewives and biggest losers, bachelors and bachelorettes, apprentices and survivors, amazing racers and American idols. We are cast in the role of Big Brother, but not in the Orwellian mode of surveillance in the service of social control, but rather in a trivialized form of peeping tom titillation, spying for its own sake, the pure pleasure of voyeurism as another instance of the consumption of privacy.  It's a short step from ogling others to googling them.



There is nothing new about our consumption of private lives.  What is new is the extent to which it is being carried out.  We are in the process of fulfilling Andy Warhol's prophecy that in the future everyone will be famous, but only for fifteen minutes, or was it only for fifteen people?  Without a doubt, fame and fandom are being leveled and democratized as never before, as the erosion of privacy that has long been the price of fame for celebrities has now been extended to everyone who has an online presence.  We have long grown accustomed to consuming the privacy of famous individuals in the form of celebrity gossip distributed through online services such as TMZ, through television programming such as Entertainment Tonight, and through print media such as the supermarket tabloids and People magazine (not to mention the fact that all too often this type of content is featured by legitimate news media).  Celebrity is a phenomenon that's older than television, but television's emphasis on the up-close and personal, the way that the small screen favors the close-up, lends itself to unveiling of intimate detail and expression.  As much as he was an icon of hardcore broadcast journalism, Edward R. Murrow pioneered the format of bringing television cameras into the homes of celebrities in Person to Person, a program he hosted from 1953 to 1959.  As television came to dominate the media environment of the late 20th century, the proliferating presence of cameras and microphones made private life all but impossible for celebrities. It is no accident that the term paparazzi traces its origins back to the same year that the Kennedy-Nixon debates signaled the beginning of image politics, 1960 (the term is derived from a character named Papparzo, a news photographer, from Federico Fellini's famous film, La Dolce Vita).  Is it any accident that the synonym for television set is monitor, as television's basic function is the monitoring or surveillance of the environment?

But to be fair, while television, and before it radio, allowed audiences to view the outside world while remaining themselves unobserved, providing a kind of two-way mirror (aka a one-way window) on events, they also have constituted an intrusion of the outside world into private homes, and thereby contributed to the erosion of the private sphere.  And long before the internet, the adoption of the telephone allowed strangers as well as friends and relatives to invade our privacy at any hour of the day or night, interrupting even the most intimate of activities (before the widespread use of answering machines, some referred to this phenomenon as telephonus interruptus).

Over the course of the 20th century, the increasing presence of cameras and microphones have subjected private life to increasingly greater public exposure, but more generally the wiring of the environment (the environment in effect wearing a wire) and the unimpeded flow of wireless transmissions permeating the very air that we breathe has placed privacy under increasing assault. In the aftermath of Watergate, Marshall McLuhan noted that on account of the electronic media, "the entire planet has become a whispering gallery, with a large portion of mankind engaged in making its living by keeping the rest of mankind under surveillance."  McLuhan held Arendt in high esteem, and he incorporated Arendt's observation that the ancient Greeks viewed the private individual as an idiot, noting that modern ideas about privacy are an aberration, rather than a natural and universal human understanding about how we should live our lives.

It often comes as a revelation to individuals not familiar with the Constitution of the United States to learn that there is no specific articulation of a right to privacy in the Bill of Rights or elsewhere, and that privacy rights are the product of judicial interpretation of, for example, the Fourth Amendment protection against "unreasonable searches and seizures."



This absence is not an oversight on the part of the founders of the American republic, but rather a reflection of the fact that the modern concept of privacy was a novelty in the late 18th century.  And as surprising as this may be, the ancient Greek understanding of private life typically comes as a shock.  As Arendt goes on to explain:

In ancient feeling the privative trait of privacy, indicated in the word itself, was all-important; it meant literally a state of being deprived of something, and even of the highest and most human of man's capacities. A man who lived only a private life, who like the slave was not permitted to enter the public realm, or like the barbarian had chosen not to establish such a realm, was not fully human. We no longer think primarily of deprivation when we use the word "privacy," and this is partly due to the enormous enrichment of the private sphere through modern individualism.

The root meaning of privacy is the same as privative and deprived, as lacking a role in or access to the public arena.  For Arendt, privacy provides the space for the individual's thoughtful contemplation, but must serve as a backstage region, to use Erving Goffman's dramaturgical metaphor, for the staging of public action, political activity involving collective deliberation and cooperation.

Underlying this is the essential point that the public and the private are interdependent, which is why "the barbarian," or member of a tribal society, has neither.  Conceptions of both the public and the private are tied to the nascent notion of the individual, of identity separate from the group, which only began to form following the introduction of writing and the advent of literacy. Writing, as Eric Havelock put it, "separates the knower from the known," allowing for objective distance from one's tradition and tribe, and from one's own thoughts.  This inward turn opens the door to the idea of the private individual, while the act of reading and writing itself require a degree of isolation.  Readers read alone and apart from one another, even if they read the exact same text at the exact same time.  Listeners constitute a group, a collectivity, as an audience (which is a singular noun, whereas readers are plural).  A public then is dependent on the existence of the private individual, as the public is composed of individuals who govern themselves because they can think for themselves, speak their own minds, and deliberate as equals. Equality too is linked to writing, as it is with the introduction of codified law made possible by writing that we gain the idea that we are all equal in relation to the same set of rules and commandments.  Public and private then have their roots in antiquity, but do not become fully formed until the modern era, following the introduction of the printing press, which also opened the door for the modern ideology of individualism.

As public and private have a common origin, so too are they commonly at risk due to the same forces.  Politically, totalitarianism seeks to remove all of the barriers that make private life possible, at the same time that the public sphere is dismantled to create a single homogenous field of power through surveillance.  Economically, in ancient Greece, the center of public life was the agora, which also served as the marketplace, but only a few years before Arendt published The Human Condition, the modern marketplace began to be referred to as the private sector, as corporations usurped the human invention of private identity, and have systemically undermined the last vestiges of the public sphere as they seek to create a single homogenous field of consumption through the manufacture of desire.  We might well wonder why corporate executives for the most part have been allowed to escape the heavy media scrutiny that political leaders and other celebrities are subjected to?  Why are they allowed to hold on to the privilege of privacy where other prominent (and not so prominent) members of society are not?  Wouldn't we all be better off if they were held to the same standards of transparency now required of politicians and government officials?



Underlying the general blurring and dissolution of the private and the public that we have been experiencing is the electronic media environment, which has undermined, superseded, and shortcircuited the media environment associated with literacy and print.  In place of individualism, which was based on the compartmentalization of private life kept separate from the public sphere, we have personalization, which involves providing open access to personal data, history, and activity, and the persona itself.  In the absence of boundaries, honesty becomes of the highest value, but it's typically the honesty of self-disclosure, narcissistic self-revelation in the interests of self-promotion, as when celebrities go on talk shows to confess to personal problems as part of what is, or seems to be, an image revitalization strategy.  Openness in communication is treasured, even though indiscriminate openness can be damaging rather than healing depending on the context and manner in which it is approached.  Transparency is put forth as a basic principle for internet activity, and while awareness that we are being observed generally results in more ethical behavior than would otherwise occur, there are times when some amount of secrecy in politics is needed for successful negotiation.

Arendt teaches us that the modern concept of private and public is not immutable, and having changed before can and is changing again.  And having been born the year before Arendt published The Human Condition, I am not entirely comfortable with the increasing loss of the distinction between the public and private, nor can I completely relate to the post-individualism of younger generations.  But given our current trajectory, our options may be limited to living with surveillance carried out by powerful entities such as governments and corporations, or meeting surveillance with sousveillance, to use the term popularized by University of Toronto political scientist Ronald Deibert, with citizens pointing their cameras back at the cameras pointing at them.  Or more generally, our best option may be to work for a transparent society, to use author David Brin's notion, where our personal sacrifice of privacy is compensated for by transparency on the part of the rich and powerful. If we must be deprived of the boundary between private life and public activity, and instead live and work in glass houses, let's make sure no one gets to gets to mirror theirs, just because they have a great deal of silver.
 

Signs of the NY Times

So, time for me to add one more interview with me by Palash R. Ghosh for the International Business Times, the fourth in a series that began with interviews I blogged about previously, The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly of TV New, Cable News Left and Right, and The DC-Hollywood Connection.This new interview was published on December 10th under the title of New York Times: Falling Revenues, Job Cuts In A New Digital Age.  As is our tradition here on Blog Time Passing, you can click on the link to read it over on the IBT site, or read it right here. The choice is in your hands. And away we go:

Widely revered as the ‘gold standard’ of print journalism, not even the august New York Times (NYSE: NYT) can escape harsh economic realities. Falling ad revenues and subscription rates, as well as increased competition from online outlets, have forced the ‘Grey Lady’ to announce another round of buyouts and possible job reductions – the third such similar measure over the past four years.

International Business Times spoke to a media expert to discuss the New York Times’ current problems and how it may cope with a cloudy future.

Dr. Lance Strate is professor of communication and media studies and director of the professional studies in new media program at Fordham University in New York City.

IB TIMES: The New York Times is suffering from the same troubles as other print newspapers – falling ad revenues and dwindling subscribers. But have they not compensated for these shortcomings through paid digital subscriptions? Why are ad revenues falling? Is it due to the still-fragile economy? Or is it because advertisers want to put their money on online news outlets?

STRATE: Newspapers, by and large, were barely getting by, just hanging on, before the economic downturn, so the fragile economy is not the major cause of newspapers going under, but rather simply exposed their precarious financial situation, and sped up the process of their demise.

Newspapers lost a major source of income some time ago when what used to be called ‘classified advertising’ shifted over to the internet, so that people who want to buy and sell goods and services go to sites like Craigslist and eBay, and job openings are listed on sites like Monster.com. Further erosion of revenue came from the shift of local advertising to sites like Facebook, and through offers like Groupon. Online advertising has a major advantage over print and broadcast in that they can tell advertisers exactly how many people click on an ad, and how many clicks result in purchases, whereas mass media ads cannot provide that kind of feedback, nor can they deliver target audiences with the specificity of online media.

For example, a Facebook ad can be directed based on a variety of demographics, including location, age, gender, etc.

IB TIMES : But even digital advertising is falling for the Times. Why is this, when presumably more people are accessing the paper on their mobile units?

STRATE : Newspapers came late to the game online, and are still struggling to figure out how to monetize their offerings, and mobile presents new challenges that even successful online sites like Facebook have had problems with, which was why shares in Facebook immediately dropped in value right after its initial public offering.

And there is so much competition from so many sources now. When in the past did the New York Times have to compete with CNN, the BBC, the Huffington Post, or any number of prominent independent bloggers?

IB TIMES : Have other major newspapers across the U.S. been laying off employees and offering buyouts to managers as the Times has?

STRATE : Absolutely! It's the only alternative to going out of business completely. And of course, the result is a steep decline in the quality of journalism that the newspapers can provide, which, in turn, lowers their value to readers, so it's a self-reinforcing downward spiral.

IB TIMES : From my perspective, the Times seems to cater to well-educated, upper middle class (or wealthy) urban liberals. When I ride the subway, I never see blue-collar people (regardless of race) reading the Times. Am I wrong in this assessment?

STRATE : No, you are correct. In the New York metropolitan area, the New York Daily News and the New York Post have long been the papers with mass appeal, and the Daily News at least has traditionally outsold the Times.

The Times does have a national following, however, and is considered the top newspaper in the United States, followed by the Washington Post, and it has subscribers all around the country, and abroad.

The Times provides a common forum for the political, economic, and social elites of this nation -- what other paper carries news of society weddings, ads for mansions and multimillion dollar luxury apartments, and op-ed pieces by the leading intellectuals and most powerful individuals of the world?

IB TIMES : Do the New York Post and New York Daily News cater to readers that the Times either does not want or whom they alienate?

STRATE : I don't think the Times has sought to reject those readers. If anything, they would like them to move up to the Times, and the newspaper has had a very active, aggressive program to get schools to use the paper in classes, providing low-cost subscription rates for educators and students, from grade school to university level.

I remember having to read the Times in elementary school for a period of time, and the teacher even taught us how to do the straphanger fold used by subway and bus riders to manage the paper, along with understanding how the right-hand column was the top story, followed by the left-hand column, and so on.

So their goal would be to educate and elevate, but unfortunately this runs counter to the trend where people increasingly have been turning to television for their news, and broadcast journalism has largely shed the stigma it once held of being a degraded form that did not go beyond the surface of the headlines.

For readers brought up on television, the tabloid papers like the Post and News, and USA Today for that matter, more closely resemble what they're habituated to, and that carries over into the online environment.

IB TIMES : The Times frequently features very esoteric subjects – reviews of obscure books, travelogues to exotic lands most people cannot afford to go to. Does this add to its image as an “elitist” and “out of touch” paper?

STRATE : Absolutely. It indicates that they are in many ways concerned with readers who are not part of the 47 percent that Mitt Romney wrote off, or to some extent, the 99 percent that the Occupy Movement refer to.

IB TIMES : How does the demography for the Times differ from that of the Wall Street Journal?

STRATE : The Wall Street Journal is more specialized in its focus on business and finance, and most of all much more conservative and Republican, whereas the Times is liberal and Democratic in orientation, and does aim for a wider audience, one that includes intellectuals. To use an old-fashioned term, you might say that the Times is written for the ‘intelligentsia,’ the class of people who form the intellectual elite, a group that tends to be more left-leaning than others, just as the economic elite typically leans to the right.

IB TIMES : Would the Times be better served by getting rid of the print product and becoming purely digital? Or would that entail other risks?

STRATE : Look at it this way, newspapers were printed on cheap paper that was not meant to be at all durable, but rather to be thrown away, or, in the old days, to be used as fish wrap.

And that still has some utility if you're trying to break in a new dog, for example. But ultimately, there is no need for pulp-type print media anymore, because electronic text does the job cheaper and easier, and with less waste. So the only thing keeping the Times on paper right now are older readers who don’t go online or don't want to read the news in a digital format, or are just in the habit of reading the daily paper in paper form.

And there always will be some who are traditionalists, laggards (not that I blame them, mind you), or nostalgic, but in the end the economies of production and distribution will simply make printing of ephemeral media unfeasible.

The Times may actually be one of the last to eliminate their print edition, and may continue to produce a limited supply as a specialty item, but given the high quality of e-readers today, and their continued improvement, there will be no alternative to going purely digital, and in the end it will be their best hope of retaining significant advertising revenue.

IB TIMES : Critics of the Times have long complained that the paper is too “liberal” and “out of touch.” Could they increase readership if their editorials moved more to the center?

STRATE : Traditionally, newspapers have kept a sharp distinction between the editorial page and objective news reports, and the Times does provide a variety of views on their Op-Ed page.

But I do think they have alienated some readers with their reporting, because there are choices that they make about what to report on, what emphasis to give it, where to place it, etc. And at this point, I don't think they can afford to lose any more readers, so responding to criticism and doing all they can to avoid the perception of being overly liberal would probably be in their best interests.

Having said that, the fact that the Times is a liberal paper is a part of its identity, and it could hurt them to abandon that altogether, so what they probably need to do is aim towards a Democratic centrist position.

IB TIMES : In the 1940s and 1950s, New York City had something like seven or eight daily papers. How on earth did they co-exist and survive?

STRATE : Simple, no competition.

Actually, radio was the first medium to challenge newspapers, and cut into their revenues. But even with radio, most people turned to newspapers to be informed, but also to be entertained by reading the sports pages, the comics, etc. Newspapers were inexpensive, making their profits mainly through advertising rather than the purchase price of copies and subscriptions.

And papers also had multiple editions through the day, so, for example, you might read the Times in the morning, and pick up the Post in the afternoon. It is hard to imagine today, but without Smartphones, the internet, and even television, people had a great deal more time on their hands, and newspapers were a way to fill that time, including filling in the blanks on Crossword puzzles, Daily Jumbles, and the like.

As television became the dominant medium by the end of the 1950s, local stations, and networks, claimed increasingly more advertising revenues, which increasingly sent more newspapers out of business.

Indeed, before the emergence of TV, every decent-sized city had multiple, competing papers, and the public was much better for it. You might even say that as newspapers disappear, the reading public that went along with it disappears as well, and as the reading public disappears, so too do newspapers. They are interdependent parts of the media ecosystem, and we are left with a society in which there no longer is any real understanding of what a "public" is or what is meant by the term, and without a public there can be no real sense of what it means to be private either.

And that is about all for the interview. I know it's not an in-depth discourse on the state of print journalism, and the prospects for its future, but I think the interview does provide some food for thought, and further contemplation, or at least I hope so. And with that, I'll just say, see ya in the funny papers!

On Guns and More

I know we have all been deluged with reports, interviews, and other messages regarding the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Connecticut that claimed the lives of 20 young children and 6 adults. I admit to being deeply affected by this tragedy, as a father, and as a teacher, but I find it hard to imagine anyone not being dismayed by this event.

Earlier this year, I put up a blog post entitled, What to Blame for the Colorado Shooting?, and some of my thoughts on these type of events can be found there. But I think for many of us, this latest round is the last straw when it comes to gun violence. I sure hope it is. So I want to take a little time to share some thoughts that go well beyond that previous post. If I had more time, I'd provide a more comprehensive, if not exhaustive argument, but for now, this will have to do. And I hope you'll forgive me for getting up on my soapbox and getting all political and preachy. I just need to get this off my chest.

There is no one cause for these mass shootings, so anyone arguing that it's not guns, it's mental illness is just plain wrong. It's both, of course, except when the shooter is not mentally ill, say for example when a child is an innocent victim of a drive-by shooting, in which case it's guns and crime that's the cause.  But there is a common denominator between the two main reasons why children are gunned down, and that's guns.

So I'll start with guns, and have the most to say about guns, but then I'll also move to other factors that also play a role, like mental illness, and crime, and licit and illicit drugs, and media content as well.

But it all begins with guns, or firearms, which we can consider as a medium or technology, as McLuhan does in Understanding Media, briefly in the first chapter entitled "The Medium is the Message," and later in a chapter devoted to weapons.  As a medium, what is the message of firearms? Clearly it's violence, destruction, injury, death, or at least the threat of same. As Mark Twain put it, when you have a hammer in your hand, everything looks like a nail, and when you have a gun in your hand, everything becomes a target.

Yes, there are other kinds of weapons, like the bow and arrow, the knife, the sword, etc. But the innovation of firearms, as a technology, made it possible to injure and kill more efficiently, faster, with greater force, with greater damage, in greater numbers, from greater distances, with less personal contact, with less sense of responsibility, with less connection to the consequences, and with less effort, hence the gun's appellation, the great equalizer. 

Take away guns, and you won't eliminate acts of violence, but you'll make them more difficult to carry out. It will take longer, which allows for more time to rethink what you're doing and change your mind. It will make the damage done less severe, and give victims a better chance to defend themselves. People will still die from knife wounds, but there is a world of difference between running away from someone with a knife, and someone with a gun. There is a world of difference between defending yourself against someone coming at you with a knife, and someone firing a gun at you. And the damage done by a knife is often less severe than damage done by bullets.

Guns make it easy to kill, easy to do harm to another human being. If it is unethical, immoral, and evil to harm another human being, a point on which more religious and ethical systems agree, then in what sense are firearms ethical, moral, and good, or even neutral?

Let's put hunting aside. This isn't about hunting. Let's assume that's not a problem, holding aside the accidental shootings that occur among hunters, and the fact that hunting rifles and shotguns can be used to harm human beings. Let's say that hunting is acceptable, and allow for the limited class of firearms that have traditionally been associated with the hunting of game, as long as ownership and use involves careful registration and licensing.

So, what other reason is there for gun ownership? Target practice? A sport? Or a hobby? Collecting? Sorry, that is a poor reason for putting others at risk.

So what then? Self-defense? Certainly a legitimate concern, but how about using non-lethal weapons, like tasers, stun guns, and pepper spray? Granted, tasers can be lethal too, especially for anyone with a weak heart, but they certainly are less likely to kill than a bullet through the heart or brain, and cannot be used the way automatic and semiautomatic weapons can, to spray bullets rapidly to mow down a group of people. If more police were equipped with tasers, we'd avoid incidents like the recent police shooting in Leonia, New Jersey. Not to mention the well reported Trayvon Martin shooting by a neighborhood watch coordinator.

Again, there are no absolutes, no guarantees, any object can be used to cause harm or even kill. Framing the problem as either-or/all-or-nothing is wrong (that's what's called two-valued orientation in general semantics). It is painfully apparent that right now there is too much violence, and even if we can't eliminate it, if we can reduce it then that is what we ought to do.

Some point to the fact that in cities, counties, and states where gun control laws have been enacted, shootings still occur, and might even be more frequent than elsewhere (no surprise when we're talking about poverty-stricken urban areas). In some cases, it's because the guns used were legally obtained, as was the case in Newtown, which suggests that regulation and restrictions have not been strong enough. If one person can obtain guns legally, and then they can be used by another person illegally, how do you prevent gun violence? Not by making it easier to obtain guns legally. And if the guns were obtained illegally, then that suggests a need for stronger enforcement. 

Part of the problem with local gun control is that you can just travel across city, county, or state lines and obtain the firearms you want. There are no customs searches or x-ray screenings across these borders, the way there would be if you were crossing national borders. If anything, this argues for the need for homogenous regulation and restriction nationwide. Anything less and the efforts at gun control cannot be more than partially effective.

And if the problem is that the shooters in Newtown and elsewhere are mentally ill, how do you keep guns out of the hands of such individuals? How else than by restricting access in general. How do you keep guns out of the hands of children? Hiding or locking them up may work, assuming the child doesn't know where the hiding place is, doesn't know where the key is, or can't figure out the combination, so the safest bet is to not have any around in the first place.  How do you keep guns out of the hands of criminals? If they can't be obtained legally, even by proxies with perfectly clean records, then at least we're making it harder for criminals to obtain them, and easier to spot when they have them.

Even if we eliminate gun sales today, there already are so very many guns in circulation, and that will remain in circulation for a long time to come. There is no quick fix, and any short term assessment that indicates that gun bans aren't working ought not to be taken seriously, just as early studies that showed that anti-smoking advertising on TV actually increased smoking did not take the big picture into account. This will take cultural change, and especially generational change, just like smoking did. It won't be easy to kick the habit, but it can be done.

At this point, some reference to the second amendment may seem overdue.  Well, okay, consider this. The Bill of Rights is not the Ten Commandments.  It is an historical document that made sense in the late 18th century. It's something to be proud of. But it's not scripture. Consider the fact that the third amendment is largely irrelevant today, and would hardly merit mention in any contemporary document enumerating individual rights:  "No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law." It's quaint, and that's all.

Now, let's look at what the second amendment says: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." Now admittedly, this is by the same somewhat grammar-challenged authors who gave us unalienable rights instead of ones that are inalienable. But the tortured syntax here, and the deliberately ambiguous phrasing suggests a conflicted mindset behind this amendment, and a compromise that made sense only in that earlier era. As many have pointed out, we no longer deal in militias, we have a standing army. But the bottom line is that, unlike the first amendment which states firmly and clearly, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances," the second amendment is decidedly unclear and confusing. It should be stricken on account of that, if for no other reason.

And yes, I said stricken. It's not written in stone, not handed down from on high. The Constitution itself was designed to be amended as future generations see fit. The amendments themselves can and have been amended, and that includes being repealed. So why not repeal the second amendment? What if the Bill of Rights had included an amendment detailing the right to own slaves? That's certainly not outside of the realm of possibility, and we'd surely have a different attitude about the first ten amendments to the constitution if that were the case. There is no rationale for continuing to include the second amendment as a fundamental human right. Repealing the second amendment wouldn't automatically result in the banning of all firearms, but it would help to remove the irrational opposition to gun control.

What is the point of the second amendment anyway? I mean, the real, underlying rationale? I'd say that the fundamental human right involved is the right to defend yourself if you are threatened or attacked, and to defend others as well. So let's dump the crazy language of the Second Amendment, and add a new one that says something to that effect.

You have a right to defend yourself, yes. But that does not excuse putting other people at risk, let alone causing harm to others. There are reasonable ways to approach self-defense that doesn't require resorting to firearms. And if your concern is defending yourself against the government, or a foreign invading force for that matter, well, forget about it. Governments have missiles, bombs, tanks, etc. The days of the Minutemen rallying to the defense of fellow citizens are over.

And if you're saying that repealing the second amendment is unreasonable, that what we need is reasonable gun control, well, let me point out that the National Rifle Association is unreasonable in its opposition to any limits being imposed on firearms. In that, they are serving the interests of the gun industry, of manufacturers and sellers of firearms, and not of citizens. But the problem is, what happens when you take a reasonable approach and the other side insists of being unreasonable? It's kind of like going in unarmed and trying to talk a gunman into giving up. Good luck with that. And the simple truth is, there is no reasonable argument for the extreme position on the right to bear arms anymore, and little justification for even moderate stances on the issue.

Take away the means and you go a long way towards taking away the act. Take away the medium, and you take away the message.

But invoking a truly ecological, systems view, it's important to note that gun control is only part of the problem. In many ways the main part, but it is true that it's not enough. So let's consider the mental health issue. While mental illness does not account for all, or even a majority of shootings, it does account for some, and some of the worst. So what can we do about it? Make mental healthcare easily available to all, whether they can afford it or not. This amounts to an expansion of "Obamacare" to cover therapy. We can't force mental health services on individuals against their will, not unless they are already acting violently, but we can make it accessible for anyone who is depressed, troubled, etc. And let's not forget that physical health problems can lead to psychological issues. The two are not all that distinct, and all the more reason to make sure we provide full healthcare for all.

Therapy often involves medication these days, and there has to be much stricter oversite of prescription drugs.  All too often, the pills people are given solve one problem only to create another. Any drug that, upon testing, suggests any violent side effects whatsoever should not be approved for use. We do not need cures that are worse than the disease. This means resisting the political pressure brought to bear by the pharmaceutical industry. They are not as guilty as the gun industry in creating an environment in which these shootings occur, but neither are they innocent. Caution has to come first, the Hippocratic creed of do no harm has to be the starting point. And if the trade-offs do seem worth it, anyone taking medication with potential side-effects leading to violent or suicidal behavior need to be closely monitored, a further role for healthcare professionals.

Of course, most shootings occur due to criminal behavior. And one of the main reasons for gang violence of this sort is the illegal drug trade. The solution, then, is to legalize recreational drugs. Eliminating prohibition will deflate organized crime today, just as it did back when we ended the ban on alcohol. It will certainly give our economy a much needed boost. Sure there will be problems resulting from increased drug use, which will require expanded physical and mental healthcare services, but increased revenues from taxation will more than cover such expenditures. And some health issues, such as the spread of AIDS, poisoning and overdoses, will be alleviated. There are trade-offs, sure, but this would reduce the prison population significantly, reduce the crime rate, reduce gun violence. This may seem to contradict my earlier point about medication, but the common ground here is the need to regulate use, and monitor individuals using drugs with side effects that can lead to violent behavior (say amphetamines as opposed to opiates).

Of course, there are other reasons for crime, and we may never eliminate it totally, but fixing the economy and doing all that we can to reduce poverty, making sure that everyone is given a minimum standard of living no matter what, and the opportunity to better themselves through education, and through hard work, would make a great difference. So yeah, there'll be some freeloaders. So what? It is absolutely wrong to refuse to help people in need out of fear that some may abuse it, or out of anger that some do. Let the abusers and cheats be, as long as they maintain a peaceful existence. Let everyone have enough to eat, decent housing, safe neighborhoods, and a measure of freedom and dignity, and fair opportunity to improve themselves and their lives beyond the minimum standard, and we will eliminate any sociological justification for violence, aggression, and theft. We can then legitimately deal will wrongdoing on the basis of moral/ethical conduct, or simple human frailty.

All of this speaks, I hope, to the restoration of some expanded sense of civil society, of personal responsibility and community ties.  It's an understanding that each one of us is a human being deserving of respect, and that we all need to agree on a basic sense of human decency.

And that does lead, finally, to the media of communication. Unlike the second amendment, the first amendment has served us very well, and has done so consistently over the history of the American republic. So, what's needed is not government censorship, or regulation, but public outcry among citizens, a consensus that there are lines that ought not to be crossed, and an expression of disgust when they are. Let's not leave it to the religious right and social conservatives, while we as progressives may privately feel uneasy about some of the media content, but are reluctant to side with our political opponents on these issues. Let's agree that there are limits, and that it is harmful to our collective psyche to have so much violence, so much sexual display, and for that matter, so much cursing, all so easily accessible to children. And let's especially consider the role of active simulations and gaming, because there is a world of difference between watching unethical and immoral behavior on the screen as committed by others, and engaging in it yourself in a virtual world. I understand the arguments about playing a hitman in Grand Theft Auto being simple fantasy in a virtual world, and cathartic in functioning, but would individuals say the same thing if there were a videogame that had people engage in rape? In the abuse and murder of children? I know this will not go over well with some folks who would otherwise agree with me up to this point, but taking an ecological view, we have to try to understand how all of these things work together. And we have to move beyond the tired old political divisions that result only in discord and stalemate.

I'll add here that encouraging limits on electronic media more generally would also be part of the solution. Technology sabbaths, fasts, and the like are needed. Making time to think, to talk, and to read, read books, real books, with print on paper. We need this balance to regain some measure of reason, of rationality, of critical distance

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.  Life comes first, it must be protected from harm. Liberty must include freedom from threat and from want.  And the pursuit of happiness cannot come at the expense of the happiness of others. I want to believe that deep down, most of us know what is good and what is not, and with that understanding we can reason together and create a better, saner society for ourselves, and for our children.

Is the i-T Connection It for IT?

Sorry, I just couldn't resist the puns linking the word "it" (as in, "it girl" and "Coke is it!"), the acronym IT (Information Technology), and the new agreement that will allow Apple's iPhone to be made available to customers of the wireless carrier, T-Mobile (hence i-T). Connection is also a pun in this context, but you picked up on that right away, didn't you?

And while this is not exactly an earthshaking event in the big scheme of things, and if anything, I'm a big schemer kind of guy, but, well, if someone asks, I'll tell them what I think. So when the E-Commerce Times reached out to me for a comment on this new development, I gave them my views, which they included in the article they published, written by Erika Morphy, entitled, T-Mobile May Pull Off a Painless iPhone Launch.

The article was posted on December 7th, and begins with the following subheading:

Now that T-Mobile will be getting the iPhone, speculation is centered on how it may help -- or perhaps hurt -- the company. Other carriers have faced difficult challenges in their early iPhone days. T-Mobile CEO John Legere has promised a new way of selling the device, however, that will be both easy on the company and easy on consumers' pocketbooks.

 The article begins by setting the stage with the following basic information:

Buried halfway through a wordy investment statement from Deutsch Telekom: "T-Mobile USA has entered into an agreement with Apple to bring products to market together in 2013."

Those 17 words launched a frenzy of speculation. Was this finally the agreement that T-Mobile had been waiting for? Would it soon provide the iPhone and possibly the iPad to its customers?

T-Mobile CEO John Legere confirmed to investors at a conference in Germany that the company would indeed sell the iPhone in 2013, according to reports, and said that it would be offering it with a dramatically different plan. 

 The next section has a subheading of "Be Prepared" and lays out some of the questions and concerns regarding this new development:

The big question has been answered, but many others remain. Will carrying the iPhone increase customer satisfaction at T-Mobile? Can its network handle the data-hogging devices?

As for customer satisfaction, probably not -- at least, initially -- if the experiences of AT&T, Verizon Wireless and Sprint are any guide.

For all three providers, customer satisfaction declined after the iPhone was introduced, David VanAmburg, director of the American Customer Satisfaction Index, told the E-Commerce Times.

"That was not a black eye to Apple in any way -- its products always do quite well. Rather, it was a matter of bandwidth at the network providers, and the ability of the providers to manage their networks in way that keeps satisfaction at a higher level."

In short, VanAmburg said, there were disgruntled customers at AT&T, Verizon and Sprint, and there will likely be some at T-Mobile as well. 

 So, now that the stage has been set, enter yours truly, in a section with the heading "Odd Man Out" (which does not refer to me, I hasten to add):

Still, the news can't be anything but good for the company, said Lance Strate, professor of communication and media studies at Fordham University.

"With this agreement, T-Mobile ceases to be the odd man out of the big four U.S. wireless service providers," he told the E-Commerce Times.

"T-Mobile has suffered from the absence of the iPhone option, so if nothing else, this will stop the bleeding, so to speak -- stem the loss of customers and allow them to retain their market share rather than fade away into obscurity," Strate explained.

It probably won't add much to the company's customer base, as the once-volatile market has become fairly stable, he continued, "unless they are willing to offer something significantly different from the competition in regard to data plans and pricing -- and I don't think they'll be able to."

 Now, let me interject with, "what do I know?" before continuing on with what Morphy has to report:

Yet that is exactly what T-Mobile's Legere has suggested the company will do.

Instead of offering the usual subsidy with a contract -- a model that can be a huge financial burden to carriers -- T-Mobile will sell the iPhone at full price. However, customers will be able to pay $99 down and $15 to $20 a month for 20 months to ease their out-of-pocket strain, Legere reportedly told investors.

As for T-Mobile's network, it should be able to handle the iPhone, said Strate, mainly because most of the T-Mobile iPhone users will be existing customers who switch over from Android smartphones.

So, at least I figure Legere won't contradict that last speculation, even if I'm wrong.  In any event, allow me to exit stage left, as we come to the final act, with the heading of "The LTE Issue":

T-Mobile will definitely be able to handle the traffic if the iPhone is an LTE-ready one, said Andreas Scherer, managing partner of Salto Partners.

Such a move would fit nicely with the company's overall strategy, he told the E-Commerce Times.

"As T-Mobile prepares for its merger with MetroPCS, the company is upgrading its LTE infrastructure heavily. The idea is that both companies will upgrade their existing client bases aggressively to the new network. The iPhone 5 fits perfectly in this picture," Scherer explained.

T-Mobile positioned its MetroPCS acquisition as allowing it to become a "bigger, better, bolder" provider when it was announced in October. That meant being able to provide 4G services and deeper LTE coverage in several metro areas as well as a greater choice of products -- including, we now know, the iPhone.

 So, it looks like I'm on safe ground here, even if my comments haven't fit the situation to a T, but you know it's tough to hit a mobile target.  And seriously, I do think we're moving into a period of more stability now when it comes to mobile services and wireless carriers, and that only makes sense. 

We're well past the days when there were major gaps in service areas, and you could walk down the street and step into a dead zone. So we should also be well past the days when a particular mobile device is available only through one or more particular carriers. Freedom of choice in a free marketplace is best for all concerned. It's not a substitute for democratic action, of course, but it is sound economic policy.

There is something about interpersonal media that favors monopolies or near-monopolies, like the postal service and good old Ma Bell, and the way that the internet that we know was the result of the merger of many different computer networks.  Simply put, the more individuals that are a part of a network, the greater its value, and that value increases exponentially as the network grows.  Stability and homogeneity are need to guarantee the best quality and most effective service, and the highest degree of interconnectivity.

So, that's that. If you disagree, well, by all means, say so, or in other words:  Tag! You're i-T!

The DC-Hollywood Connection

So, in my last post, Here Comes the Judd?, I mentioned how I appeared on  HuffPost Live (about 11 1/2 minutes into a segment archived under the title Port Strike) to comment on celebrities and politics, and the possibility of Ashely Judd running for the Senate in Kentucky.  And in my post, I noted how this online streaming video program described how they work: "We don't find our guests using a traditional Rolodex. Instead, we reach out via social platforms, see who is tweeting and Facebook posting something interesting on our chosen topics and contact them, asking if they want to come on HuffPost Live and expand on what they said."

So, in my case, I believe that what they came across online via social platforms, or maybe through good old fashioned googling, and subsequently found interesting was my recent interview published under the title of, Should Politicians And Celebrities Mix?  This is my third interview for the International Business Times, following up on the previous interviews which I blogged about not too long ago, The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly of TV News and Cable News Left and Right.  And like the other two, this new interview is by Palash R. Ghosh, this one being published on December 1st.  I already gave you the link, so now, without further ado, here it is:

Hollywood stars and Washington politicians have been linked to each other since the beginnings of the celebrity culture that has so defined the 20^th century and beyond. Although being seen with (or more importantly, receiving handsome donations from) movie and music stars can add some dash, glamour and sex appeal to the otherwise dull, drab world of politics, celebrity links can be a double-edged sword.

Much of the public are tired of the celebrity culture that mass media relentlessly promote -- they are particularly cynical about multi-millionaires who act, sing and dance professing knowledge about social issues and foreign policy.

In the recent presidential election, Barack Obama attracted widespread support (and money) from celebrities, making him the toast of Hollywood. That scenario has renewed criticisms that the film industry is “too liberal,” but this wasn’t always the case. Indeed, before the 1960s, Hollywood was actually a bastion of reactionary conservatism.

International Business Times spoke with an expert on mass media to discuss Hollywood’s long links with big-time politics.

Dr. Lance Strate is Director of the Professional Studies in New Media Program at Fordham University in New York.

IB TIMES: In the recent presidential election, much was made about the tremendous support (and campaign donations) Obama received from the well-heeled Hollywood community. Celebrities like Matt Damon, George Clooney, Alec Baldwin, Spike Lee, Eva Longoria, Michael Moore and many others are outspoken about their political views. Is this a relatively recent phenomenon – or have Hollywood and Washington always been linked?

STRATE: Celebrity culture has its origins in the 20th century, and it has evolved along with innovations in media and communications technology.

It's largely been the influence of television that has blurred the boundaries between entertainment and politics, beginning in the 1960s, and increasing over the past half century.

But it's not just Hollywood; it's also recording artists such as Bruce Springsteen and Meatloaf, and athletes such as Derek Jeter and Lebron James. Historian Daniel Boorstin defined a celebrity as a person "known for his well-knowness," and fame -- which is a function of visibility via media such as television -- is the only objective indicator of authority and legitimacy generally recognized today, so it follows that celebrities gain the power to provide socially relevant and persuasive endorsements.

Of course, appearing on television, even if it is due to some level of talent in acting, singing, or playing ball, has no direct connection to expertise in evaluating a candidate's ability to serve, govern, or even their ideological coherence, so this ought to be viewed as detrimental to the democratic process.

IB TIMES: The popular conception now is that Hollywood is overwhelmingly liberal (excluding conservatives like Clint Eastwood, Mel Gibson, Kelsey Grammer and a few others). How long has this perception existed? Is it accurate?

STRATE: It's an old, old story, dating back to the silent movie era.

Certainly, Hollywood has been more international; take for example Charlie Chaplin who was English, and liberal enough to have been exiled during the Joseph McCarthy era, not to mention the many performers and filmmakers who fled Europe following the devastation of the First World War and the rise of fascism and Nazism.

And long before the Hollywood film colony and even the invention of the motion picture, actors were viewed as disreputable, morally questionable, libertine, and open to sexual promiscuity, homosexuality, etc., and therefore socially liberal, and Hollywood certainly followed this pattern.

Being more progressive, actors were more open to Communism than the mainstream of the United States, especially before the truth about repression in the Soviet Union became widely known in the mid- 20th century.

So there is certainly some basis to this view, but let's not forget that Ronald Reagan was a product of Hollywood, and the Reagan revolution shifted the United States in a more conservative direction than we had known since before Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Other prominent conservative entertainers-turned-politicians have included Sonny Bono, Shirley Temple, Eastwood, Fred Grandy, Fred Thompson, and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

And then there's former football star Jack Kemp, and professional wrestling icon Jesse Ventura. And while the folks on the screen get all of the attention, let's not forget that there are studio heads, and presidents and CEOs of media corporations, who tend to favor the Republican party.

IB TIMES: When Oprah Winfrey endorsed Obama in 2008, she was widely criticized, particularly by her Republican fans. Oprah is probably too rich and powerful to be hurt by negative publicity, but generally speaking, does the public resent it when celebrities make political proclamations?

STRATE: I would just suggest, first, that Oprah can in fact be hurt by negative publicity, but she can easily withstand it. Generally, fans feel a strong sense of connection to the celebrities they admire, feel a sense of relationship and identification with them, and if a celebrity does something that goes against what the fan believes in, it create dissonance for the fan.

So, when a celebrity endorses a candidate that the fan does not favor, it may reduce the negative feeling the fan has towards that candidate, so in that sense celebrity endorsements can be effective, but it is likely to be balanced out by the fan feeling less positive towards the celebrity. You could call it ‘spending social capital’ if you like. But I don't think the public minds if celebrities endorse candidates they themselves favor.

And I think the public accepts that a celebrity, who has well established political views, a conservative like Eastwood for example, will endorse a candidate who matches those views, and it won't affect their own views of either the candidate or the celebrity. It's when the endorsement is unexpected that resentment is most likely.

As for celebrities doing something other than endorsing, that is, speaking out on the issues, they can be eloquent spokespersons, and when their remarks are properly scripted, I think most people accept them in that role. But when celebrities speak off the cuff, sounding simplistic or patronizing or doctrinaire, or just talk to an empty chair, then they are held up to ridicule, and resentment.

IB TIMES: During the 1930s and 1940s, under the tight control of movie studio bosses like Louie B. Mayer and Samuel Goldwyn, ‘liberals’ in Hollywood were castigated as ‘Communists’ (something that would have grave consequences under McCarthy in the 1950s).

So, in those long-ago days, were Hollywood liberals stifled, while prominent conservatives like John Wayne and Gary Cooper ruled the roost?

STRATE: During the 1930s and 1940s, political views were largely a private affair, which is why informants were needed, to identify which actors, writers, directors, etc., sympathized with the Communist party, or had any leftist connections. Ronald Reagan was an FBI informant, and also became head of the Screen Actors Guild, leading the effort to identify "un-American" members of his profession, and cooperating with the blacklisting effort associated with McCarthyism -- this was really the beginning of his entry into politics. So Reagan definitely was a powerful figure in the post-WWII/early Cold War era of the late 1940s and 1950s.

John Wayne was certainly an icon of the Republican party, but not an activist like Reagan, and neither was Gary Cooper, who would not name names when testifying before Congress.

IB TIMES: Two prominent Republican presidents from California, Richard Nixon and Reagan, both enjoyed the loud support of many Hollywood celebrities. Were they criticized for this the way Democrats Bill Clinton and Obama have been?

STRATE: No, although there was some degree of mocking of John Wayne within the counterculture. But in Nixon's day, celebrity endorsements were minimal and low-key, and they still were for Reagan.  Reagan had an added motivation not to seek out Hollywood endorsements, because circa 1980 it was still seen as questionable to have an actor running for president, so in order to bolster his image as a serious candidate he needed to minimize his connections to the entertainment industry.

IB TIMES: John F. Kennedy appeared to be a unique case – as a handsome, wealthy playboy and due to his father’s connections; he was deeply linked to Hollywood long before he entered the White House. During the 1960 campaign, his glamour and charisma attracted many stars, notably Frank Sinatra and Marilyn Monroe. Did this rankle the public, or did they simply accept that his affluent lifestyle included relations with celebrities?

STRATE: JFK's connections were inherited from his father, and they did represent a departure from the past, but that fit in with his image as a youthful, and telegenic (a new phenomenon) president.

But it's also true that Hollywood reached the peak of its popularity during the mid-20th century, and it was often remarked that movie stars were for American society what royalty was for European nations.

So for Kennedy, hobnobbing with the entertainment elite was not inconsistent with his own status as part of socioeconomic elite now risen to political power.  The stars of the silver screen were larger than life, but television was about to cut them down to size, so that today a president going on a late night talk show to speak to Jay Leno or David Letterman would hardly be seen as glamorous.

IB TIMES: During the McCarthy-Communist witch-hunt period, a lot of anti-Semitism seemed to be directed at Hollywood (the ‘Hollywood Ten,’ for example, were almost all Jewish). Do you think anti-Semitism influences the prevailing view – even today – that Hollywood is “too liberal?”

STRATE: Yes, it most certainly does. Jewish-Americans have tended to support the Democratic party, and otherwise tend to be more liberal than the mainstream, and better represented than the mainstream in leftist circles. Jewish-Americans also had strong involvement with the Hollywood film industry, although the Jewish movie moguls tended to be more conservative and Republican, which is typical of captains of industry and the wealthy in general.

Certainly, anti-Semitism played a role in the McCarthy witch-hunts and other attacks on the film industry, and continued in the form of that longstanding absurd claim that the Jews control the media.

IB TIMES: One of the biggest film stars ever, Marlon Brando, was heavily involved in left-wing political activism during the 1960s and early 1970s. Did this hurt his career or was he just viewed as a crackpot?

STRATE: Brando was such a big star, so well regarded, that it did not affect him to any great extent, and he also was generally excused for being eccentric.

Of course, the famous incident where he refused to accept the Oscar for his role in The Godfather in 1973, and sent [the fake ‘Indian’ actress] Sacheen Littlefeather in his place to make a political speech about the portrayal of Native Americans in film is a much cited turning point in the American movie industry, and much satirized and mocked, I hasten to add.

But it does seem like this is the moment when Hollywood "jumped the shark" to use show business terminology, and liberal politics was shoved into the limelight, creating an association that has only become stronger with time. It didn't really hurt Brando himself, but it did hurt Hollywood.

IB TIMES: Although many black athletes endorsed and campaigned for Obama, athletes generally avoid any kind of political activism. Are they worried that such activities will hurt their outside commercial income?

STRATE: If commercial advertising is the basis of significant income, then yes, you do not want to alienate any portion of your audience, or the advertisers who might hire you to endorse products -- products are mostly presented as apolitical, the idea is to maximize sales.

For the most part, film actors and to a slightly lesser extent TV actors do not want to dilute or cheapen their image with advertising endorsements (except abroad where the domestic audience won't see them), so that sort of commercial income is not significant for entertainers.

But sports stars can lose large sums if they do any harm to their image, which can be on the account of immoral activities off the field (drug use, infidelity), or the perception that their achievements came about through unfair advantage (e.g., steroids). While political endorsements are not in the same category, they do take away from the athlete's image, and therefore will make them less valuable in regard to commercial endorsements.

Interestingly, this political reticence gives professional athletes a statesman-like image, and makes them all the more influential if and when they do engage in political endorsements or other forms of activism.

And there you have it! I know there's so much more to be said on the subject, but that's the nature of the interview, isn't it? And tell me, would it have been in bad taste, in commenting on the liberal image of actors, to note that an actor assassinated the first Republican president of the United States?