Oliver With a Twist

So, to continue where I left off with my previous post, A Net Gain for Oliver, back in February I was contacted by a French journalist, Fabienne Faur, a lifestyle writer for Agence France-Presse, which describes itself as follows:

Agence France-Presse is the world's oldest newswire with journalists in 165 countries. We publish worldwide in English, French, Spanish, German, Portuguese and Arabic. AFP delivers the news to thousands of media outlets worldwide from newspapers to magazines, radio and TV stations and online services. It reaches an audience of more than one billion people daily.

He explained that he was working on a story about John Oliver as an Englishman who has been successful in the United States as a comedian and host of Last Week Tonight With John Oliver, and wanted my views on Oliver, on how why Americans seem to love the English sense of humor, on what Oliver is doing on his show, how it relates to what journalists are or are not doing, and to the work of other comedians and entertainers in the US.

Here now is my response:

There is a long history of successful English comics in the United States. Among the names that come to mind are the film genius of Charlie Chaplin, Stan Laurel playing against his American straight man Oliver Hardy, the brilliant character comedy of Peter Sellers, and the amazing ensemble known as Monty Python, and more recently Sacha Baron Cohen, to name a few.

There are several different things Americans love about English humor. First, we love the accent. You can say just about anything in an English accent, and it automatically puts a smile on an American's face. And there is something about the British accent that makes silly talk sound much funnier to us than it does back in England. For example, the Monty Python program featured a great deal of topical humor and national references that were completely lost on American audiences, but what we found funny was the way they talked, their mannerisms and expressions, and the fact that we had no idea what they were talking about made it even funnier, and also is the reason why their comedy did not become dated here the way that it did over in England. So John Oliver just has to open his mouth and already he sounds funny to us. Add to that the cultural differences, particularly the English reserve, tendency towards formality, restraint, and politeness, and those differences come across as comedic to an American audience. And English humor often incorporates violations or challenges to their politeness, restraint, and formality, which Americans can readily identify with. Additionally, American culture is decidedly anti-elitist, and we equate English accents with elitism, that's why our movie villains typically have English accents, so we love it when an English actor is the butt of a joke, utilizes self-deprecating humor, or generates humor by acting in a foolish manner.

Of course, there are some differences when a Cockney accent is in play, which often is associated with putting down the upper class or otherwise acting the fool. And there is a lower class connection as well, when you consider Benny Hill, for example, which relates to the American view of Europeans in general. Based on the Puritan roots of American culture, we see ourselves as more innocent and moral, whereas Europeans are viewed as more seductive, sexually active, risqué. This works well for Oliver in that his program on HBO is able to include language and nudity that other channels, such as Comedy Central, do not allow.

Another advantage that English comedians have is their education. Humor correlates quite strongly with intelligence, and while there is a powerful strain of anti-intellectualism in American culture, associated with our anti-elitism, we can appreciate intellectual humor and educated references, and the English excel at that kind of comedy in the same way that we excel in humor based on popular culture. Liberals especially appreciate intelligent comedy, and John Oliver's appeal is very much to the liberal side of the political spectrum. You could say that, in contrast to Jon Stewart who criticizes journalists and politicians, Oliver's approach is to educate his audience, albeit in a highly entertaining fashion. And again, his English accent serves him well, automatically conferring on him a degree of authority that an American doing the same kind of program would have to earn over time.

There is no question that Oliver is following Jon Stewart's lead, and Stewart was not the first to do parody and satire of television news, but Stewart did open up new territory and take things to the next level, in providing critical commentary on television news, and the absurdities of newscasters and politicians. Both Stewart and Oliver are doing the job that the press ought to be doing, acting as a fourth estate and holding politicians, corporations, and the new media themselves accountable for their actions and statements, pointing out their contradictions and hypocrisies, and in their own way upholding the Enlightenment ideal of rational discourse. Stewart created the opening, and Oliver has made a significant contribution by expanding it even further.

What I find to be one of the most interesting things about what he does is the way he identifies himself, and especially his use of the first person plural pronouns, us and we. Sometimes he talks about "us" as including himself as an American, and sometimes he presents himself as English. The way that he moves back and forth between the two is something I haven't seen before, but it makes sense because if he were to criticize American society without including himself, that might come across as elitist, and alienate his audience. Of course, there's also the reality that Britain has become, in some ways, a part of greater America, along with Canada and Australia, at least as far as our shared media environment is concerned.

The quote that M. Faur picked out was just a couple of sentences from all that, which is par for the course, of course, of course.  






 

So anyway, recall that the FCC ruling in favor on net neutrality was delivered on February 26th, and John Oliver was credited as having a major impact on the issue, so while that was not the original focus of the piece, who took on greater importance in the aftermath of that decision. And depending on the outlet that picked up the story, they placed greater or lesser emphasis on that connection. For example, in the Panamanian paper, El Siglo, the Spanish language version of the article ran under the headline, El "efecto" John Oliver, pone a reír y pensar a EEUU. The story is dated March 2nd, and my quote reads as follows:

"Hay un efecto 'John Oliver' que impacta en la vida real", tituló recientemente la revista Time. "Jon Stewart había llevado muy lejos la crítica de la información en la televisión y a los hombres políticos", comenta Lance Strate, profesor de comunicación de la Fordham University en Nueva York. "Oliver lo amplificó aún más".

At the same time, A French language outlet, RTL, had the headline as, Neutralité du net: John Oliver salué après la décision américaine, and my quote looked like this:

"Jon Stewart avait porté très haut la critique de l'information à la télévision et des hommes politiques", dit Lance Strate, professeur de communication de la Fordham University à New York, "Oliver l'a encore amplifiée". Les deux humoristes "font le travail que la presse devrait faire, en dénonçant les contradictions et l'hypocrisie des politiques, du monde des affaires et des nouveaux médias", dit-il.

But you probably want the English language version, which appeared first, I believe, in Business Insider, the headline reading, John Oliver, the British comedian spurring America to action. So let's take a look, shall we? Here goes:

Washington (AFP) - John Oliver may have been ruled out of the running to replace Jon Stewart but the British comedian's role in helping sway the debate over "net neutrality" has cemented his status as The Daily Show host's spiritual heir.

Oliver was the first name on most people's lips last month when Stewart sent his legions of fans into mourning after announcing he was stepping down from the satirical Comedy Central show after nearly two decades as host.

The prospect of the 37-year-old Birmingham native sliding into Stewart's chair receded, however, when HBO swiftly announced it was renewing his own show, Last Week Tonight With John Oliver, for two more years.

Yet Oliver's role in galvanizing American opinion over the once-arcane concept of access to the Internet was in the best traditions of Stewart, a master of using biting humor to unravel complex questions of the day.

So far, we're on pretty familiar ground. Now the story shifts to the FCC ruling on net neutrality:

Oliver's 13-minute segment on "net neutrality" last year, in which he exhorted viewers to deluge the US Federal Communications Commission forum with objections, is widely credited with crashing the FCC's comments page.

Within 24 hours of Oliver's rallying cry, more than 45,000 comments on net neutrality had been posted on the FCC forum, according to the Washington Post.

Fast forward to last Thursday, and the FCC acquiesced, approving landmark rules to prevent broadband providers from separating online traffic into two unequal lanes, which would allow them to charge fees for better access.

Many people gave credit to Oliver.

"The democratic support for this decision relied heavily on citing the millions of citizen comments submitted via the FCC's website, and those comments were overwhelmingly inspired, directly and indirectly, by Oliver's advocacy," Aram Sinnreich, a professor of journalism at Rutgers University, told AFP.

Oliver, whose show just kicked off its second season, gained massive popularity in 2013 when he stood in for Stewart to guest host The Daily Show while the Comedy Central comedian took a leave of absence to make a movie.

"I'll do anything for him, whether it's hosting this show or disposing of a body," Oliver said.

At this point, we have a new section entitled, "The 'John Oliver effect'":

HBO came to Oliver with the 30-minute show, which has only grown in success since.

Stationed at a desk, wearing a standard suit and tie plus dark-rimmed glasses, Oliver has pilloried, in a series of clear, well-documented and wonderfully funny arguments, vitamins, the militarization of American police, FIFA soccer corruption and the bikini-clad women of Sports Illustrated magazine.

Time magazine recently ran an article titled: "How the 'John Oliver Effect' Is Having a Real-Life Impact."

It credits Oliver, in part or whole, with a list of accomplishments including increased donations to an association of women engineers, a proposed bill in the US state of Washington to allow online video comments on new legislation, and Attorney General Eric Holder's announcement that he will enact major limitations on a controversial confiscation law.

Okay, what about my little quote, you are no doubt wondering by now. Well, get ready, here it comes:

"Stewart created the opening, and Oliver has made a significant contribution by expanding it even further," said Lance Strate, a communication and media studies professor at Fordham University in New York.

"Both Stewart and Oliver are doing the job that the press ought to be doing, acting as a fourth estate and holding politicians, corporations and the new media themselves accountable for their actions and statements," he said.

And that's it for me, but here's the rest of the story:

Furthermore, said Paul Booth, a professor of media and cinema studies at DePaul University in Chicago, "many Americans do love the English sense of humor."

"Oliver definitely embodies some of the best traits of British humor—he's sly, witty, charming, able to poke fun at himself, a bit awkward," he said.

Cambridge-educated, Oliver began his career in Britain before hopping the pond to audition in 2006 for The Daily Show, becoming its "British correspondent."

Married to an American, Oliver claims to love reality TV and hate massages.

"The idea is horrifying to me that a stranger would physically force you to relax," he recently told Vanity Fair magazine.

In summarizing his take on humor, he said: "If you want to do something evil, put it inside something boring. Apple could put the entire text of Mein Kampf inside the iTunes user agreement, and you'd just go agree, agree, agree—what?—agree, agree."

The English language version of the story also appeared in Lebanon, in The Daily Star, and in quite a few other places that I wasn't able to keep track of. So it was pretty cool to wind up with a multilingual quote on the subject, for which I can only say merci beaucoup, muchas gracias, and thank you very much!

A Net Gain for Oliver

So, in my last post, On Jon Stewart and The Daily Show, I noted that among the names mentioned as a possible successor to Jon Stewart as host of The Daily Show was John Oliver, who had previously been a frequent "correspondent" on the show (referred to as "Senior British Correspondent"), and actually taken over as guest host for eight weeks during the summer of 2013, as Stewart took time off to direct his feature film, Rosewater.

Of course, Oliver has been hosting his own variation on The

Daily Show since April of 2014, Last Week Tonight With John Oliver, on HBO. Whether he was contractually unavailable to take over Stewart's Comedy Central program, or simply preferred the deal he had with HBO (or in a more unlikely scenario, was not given the option of taking over The Daily Show), I don't know, and I suppose it doesn't matter much in the long run.

And I think it important to add that Oliver is an accomplished comedian, with a long career doing stand-up, and some significant appearances on television sitcoms, including the fan favorite show, Community. Like Jon Stewart, he is not a journalist, but like Jon Stewart, his comedy news program has served as an important form of social criticism, and media criticism. I think it a reasonable assumption that he has read Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death, because one of the segments on his HBO program is called "And Now This," a formulaic saying once commonplace in broadcast news that Postman pointed to as encapsulating many of the problems that occur when television tries to deal with serious subjects. Paradoxically, both Oliver and Stewart validate Postman's criticism by simultaneously turning news into entertainment while critiquing the process.

By the way, I follow up on Postman's 80s critique in my book, Amazing Ourselves to Death: Neil Postman's Brave New World Revisited. But you knew that...






So, while Oliver's lack of journalistic background is sometimes apparent, for example when he went to Russia and interviewed Edward Snowden this past April, more often than not he has provided some very powerful critiques. One of them was on a subject near and dear to my heart—net neutrality. It hasn't been something I've gone very deeply into here on Blog Time Passing, but it has come up in some of my previous posts, for example going back to 2007, my first year of blogging, Net Neutrality, or Not, also on a related issue in 2010, All Foxed Up, or Time(Warn'er) for Cable Neutrality, Tell Old Pharaoh to Let My Channels Go!, and ABC You Later, Cablevision!, as well as just a little more than a year ago, Purge the Merge!, followed up last July by Purge the Merge! Part 2 (and happily, the merge in question was indeed purged!).

And just in case you're not familiar with the issue, or even if you are, let me share some of the YouTube videos I've used in teaching about new media at Fordham University over the past decade to help explain the subject to students. First is this straightforward presentation uploaded back in 2006, when net neutrality first became a major issue:






For a more dramatic, exciting, and, yes, amusing (and note the inclusion of a Jon Stewart segment on the subject) video, this winner of a 2007 Webby People's Voice Award also serves as an interesting example of what can be done on YouTube:







And one more from the early days, just a talking head this time, but the head belongs to Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World-Wide Web. And as someone who did not try to commercialize the web, but rather made it publicly available to serve the greater good, he was able to speak with a great deal of moral authority:







So, now,  these three videos, and many others like them, make their point all well and fine, but if I may employ a baseball metaphor, all three represent base hits, while John Oliver's segment on the subject, appearing in June of 2014, knocked the ball out of the part, a grand slam by any measure:






It's a great segment, and it had an immediate impact, as related in this segment from a few days after Oliver took on the Federal Communications Commission:





Note how they acknowledge the blurring of the boundaries between comedy and serious discourse in their discussion, and pretty much celebrate it. Now let's fast forward to November of 2014, as President Obama comes out in favor of net neutrality, and the following CNN segments give Oliver, along with Stewart and Colbert, due credit:





And on February 26th of this year, the FCC finally, finally ruled in favor of net neutrality, a development that Oliver did not fail to take note of, along with the immediate backlash that ensued:







So, as far as net neutrality is concerned, a victory for sure, but the issue is far from settled, as lobbyists for the cable and phone companies that provide internet service continue to try to influence Congress to pass legislation that would undermine or eliminate net neutrality. Clearly, the price of maintaining an even online playing field is eternal vigilance, and we best remember that we won't have John Oliver watching out for us forever.

Returning to the amusing and amazing ourselves to death argument, having more access to the internet is not necessarily a good thing, but in this case, net neutrality does protect sources of serious discourse, which otherwise would not be able to compete with the slick, entertaining content provided by the companies that could afford to pay for an internet fast lane, like, ummmm, HBO, and Comedy Central.

  Paradoxes abound! Anyway, I have more to say about John Oliver, but let me save it for another time, and conclude this post by noting that this is a victory for the concept of fair play, an ideal that once meant a great deal to us, that perhaps has faded a bit, but clearly is capable of being reinvigorated. It would be best if we could just begin with the value of fairness, but if we can't, at least we can arrive at it indirectly through our current obsession with play. 

And let me be clear that the problem is not play in and of itself, play is central to education, and playfulness is the key to creativity. The challenge is in finding a balance between work and play. All play and no work makes Jack an ax murderer after all (reference to the Stanley Kubrick film, The Shining, in case you didn't get it).  And the bottom line that we need to keep in mind is that it takes some serious work if we want to keep things fair!

Jeering at Comcast

So, I'm still playing catch-up, and it was all the way back in February that a reporter for the International Business Times, Oliver Tree, interviewed me about the Comcast cable network's decision not to carry Al Jazeera English, the Arab world's English language news network.  His article, with the provocative title of, Why Does America Hate Al Jazeera?, was published on February 23, but the controversy lives on.

So let's look in on how Oliver Tree introduces the subject:

Last year's Arab Spring uprisings enthralled viewers around the globe with their ferocity and pace. As regimes fell like ninepins, footage of people who had long been choked by the sclerotic hand of aging dictators was beamed around the world as they rose up and overthrew decades of repression in a matter of months.

But, were it not for the efforts of one particular news-gathering service, the Arab Spring might have passed many viewers by.

Qatar-based news channel Al-Jazeera, and its sister site Al Jazeera English, burst onto the scene with incisive and daring reports as first Tunisia, then Egypt and finally Libya succumbed to revolution and bloodshed. The coverage was so good that the channel even gained an endorsement from U.S. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, who, standing before a Senate Foreign Relations committee in May, said the network was "changing peoples' minds and attitudes... like it or hate it, it is really effective." 

 We certainly have heard a great deal about the role of new media and social media in the Arab Spring and similar protest movements, but television remains the most powerful medium of all in shaping public opinion, and the goal of much activity organized via social media is simply to use the new media to reach the old media, influence their agenda and attract their coverage.  Anyway, back to what Hilary was saying...

"Viewership of Al Jazeera is going up in the United States because it's real news," she added.

"You may not agree with it, but you feel like you're getting real news around the clock instead of a million commercials and arguments between talking heads."

A not-so-veiled reference to Fox News, I think it's safe to say, but of course MSNBC also fits the bill as Fox's opposite number, and CNN also favors the dramatic confrontation more and more in the material it uses as filler in between advertisements.  So, at this point, Oliver backs up Hilary's assessment with several factual statements:

The network has since gone on to win a clutch of awards.

On Thursday it was named as News Channel of the Year at the Royal Television Society Awards of Britain--the industry's Oscars--and has won numerous accolades for its coverage of the "forgotten" uprising in Bahrain, including a prestigious George Polk Award for the documentary "Shouting In The Dark".

The network's coverage from Cairo's Tahrir Square during the Egyptian uprising was also widely lauded as the best by any network and they even scooped every global news service as the first to report the death of Col. Muammar Gaddafi in Libya.

 Of course, it only makes sense that an Arab news network would offer the most in-depth coverage of Arab affairs, especially one that is not beholden to any authoritarian regime.  So, anyway, it's time to get to the crux of the issue, wouldn't you say, Mr. Tree?

But despite all the awards and plaudits, the channel is practically nonexistent in the U.S.

Even though Al-Jazeera English has been broadcasting from downtown Washington, D.C., since 2006, it is only readily available in a handful of cities including Toledo, Ohio; Burlington Vt.; Bristol, R.I., Washington and New York - a glaring omission in a country that holds dear the right to choose.

 Interesting set of sites, don't you think?  DC makes perfect sense, of course, given their interest in foreign affairs, and New York is a global city, after all.  Vermont is pretty radical, sure, but Toledo?  Bristol, Rhode Island? Perhaps it has something to do with local demographics. In any event, here's where I come in:

"When you get conservative-oriented folks such as Comcast, and companies that have a Christian orientation, that combination leaves them uncomfortable with an Islamic-oriented network," said Lance Strate, professor of communications and media studies at Fordham University in the Bronx, N.Y.

"Generally the reason given is 9/11, which gives cable networks the perception that their customers would see the inclusion of an Arabic network as a bad thing. This coupled, with the support for Israel among many Christian groups, is a powerful combination." 

I think this is pretty obvious, after all. Liberals tend to favor giving broad interpretation to First Amendment freedoms, free expression of opinion, and pluralism in general. Social conservatives, and that includes the Christian right, have sought to impose restrictions on speech in a variety of ways. And I'm not saying they're entirely wrong about imposing limits, I agree that there should be some, but more often than not, my sympathies are with the left on these issues.

But the root of the problem is not so much in the conservative outlook as it is in the commercial imperative.  I have previously posted my criticisms of the ways in which cable companies exert close to monopoly control over television programming, in what they allow or don't allow, and in what channels they force us to take.  For example, see my previous posts, All Foxed Up, or Time(Warn'er) for Cable Neutrality, Tell Old Pharaoh to Let My Channels Go!, Ordering TV À La Carte, ABC You Later, Cablevision!, and FCC It Now.  So here we go again:

According to Strate, cable companies also have an "arrogance" when it comes to deciding what to include in their packages and "are not even listening to their consumers on non-controversial issues, so when it comes to controversial issues they are certainly not obligated."

But the main point is that, in their drive for profits, cable companies don't want to risk losing profits by offending any part of their audience.  Edith Efron called television the "timid giant" back in the early 60s, and cable companies are not much different than their broadcasting cousins, certainly not in the courage department:

But more than that they are, in Strate's words, "timid giants."

"They are always afraid of offending someone," he added.

 But now, back to the political angle, and the conservative distaste for the network:

Of course, Al Jazeera has gained high-profile enemies in the U.S. as well. Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld famously labeled the channel's coverage of civilian deaths during the Iraq war as, "vicious, inaccurate and inexcusable." In an interview with the channel last year, Rumsfeld famously descended into a shouting match with presenter Abderrahim Foukara, calling him "pejorative" and "disrespectful." 

In spite of the political obstacles, one of the founders of Rethink Press, Xi Wang, was confident the Comcast petition would have an impact.

"The most important part of our action is to provide access," she said.

"Influencing public opinion will evolve in an organic way. Once you start watching something, it is a lot easier to dispel any fears you may have."

"If it were to be shown, a lot of Americans might realize just how partial U.S. news networks are."

 But now, to draw the important distinction between making a channel available, and getting the audience to actually watch it.

The question remains, however, is mainstream America ready for the type of straight reporting Al Jazeera contains? If the networks caved in and channel went national, would it gather a wide enough audience to change news broadcasting in the U.S.?

 "I really doubt that it would have any impact at all," Strate mused.

"It would get a self-selected audience in much the same way conservatives watch Fox and liberals watch MSNBC. Which is really an argument for allowing it in a way, as it really wouldn't have that much of an impact."

 And you've got to know that this is true.  We get dozens of foreign stations on our cable system, and I doubt they get much of an audience at all, apart from foreign nationals and immigrants.  As I told Oliver Tree, who happens to be English, even the vaunted BBC America does not get much of the cable audience (except perhaps when Monty Python reruns are on, or Doctor Who).  Heck, even the audience for Fox News is relatively small.  Anyway, back to Oliver for an interesting note:

But according to Wang, Al Jazeera may have found a more surreptitious method of winning American hearts and minds.

"When we were handing in the petition at Comcast, I met American soldiers who were based in Iraq," she said.

"One of the soldiers said he didn't know what Al Jazeera was until he got there and that a lot of soldiers got their news from it. They found it amazing how different the news was presented there to how it is in the U.S."

This may be the case, but I have to wonder how much influence this has on the viewing audience at large, or even whether those soldiers would still be as interested in news about the Arab world after returning home from Iraq?  In any event, it still all comes down to the bottom line:

Ultimately, however, it may not even be a question of politics or numbers, but irrational fear.

"It is not the commercial aspect which is the problem, but a concern among the cable providers of how many customers they may lose by offering it," Strate concluded.

"You don't want to offend your audience, for fear of losing them." 

 And maybe the cable companies are underestimating their audiences. I can't say for sure, but I do believe they are overestimating the impact the addition of Al Jazeera would have on them, and overestimating the negative response they would get.

Ultimately, what we need is television that's more like the internet, where anyone can get access to anything they want to view, pay for what they get and only what they choose to get, and carriers are just that, not gatekeepers.  And you know, it's coming.  Sooner, or later, it's coming.

Lin(k) in the Armor

So, chances are, you've heard about Jeremy Lin, the Harvard graduate now New York Knicks professional basketball player of Taiwanese descent who came off the bench and out of obscurity with an amazing series of high-scoring, well-played games. 


It's one of those Cinderella stories that sports are famous for, with an added bit of ethnic interest, in that Chinese players are rare in the NBA, especially Chinese-American players.  Indeed, one of my son's high school classmates who is also of Chinese descent, was interviewed by the North Jersey Record on what Lin means to him, as a role model representing their ethnic group.

But of course, Lin's story resonates with all American's, as a real life variant on the Horatio Alger myth of the American dream, that anyone can make it with just a bit of pluck, and luck.  He was an underdog, never expected to succeed in the way that he has, and we just love underdogs. So Lin has become something of a craze--they call it Linsanity, word play being a common feature of sports reporting, and this following the formula used several years ago for NBA star Vince Carter, i.e., Vinsanity.


Indeed, Linsanity is credited with motivating the settlement between Time Warner cable and the Madison Square Garden cable network that had made Knicks games unavailable for subscribers throughout the New York Metropolitan Area (myself included) until now.  (For previous posts on conflicts between content providers and cable television, see All Foxed Up, or Time(Warn'er) for Cable Neutrality, Tell Old Pharaoh to Let My Channels Go!, Ordering TV À La Carte, and FCC It Now.)


So, I indulged in a bit of my own play in the title of this post, but did so to make reference to the recent scandal that followed as Lin's hot hand and the resulting 7-game winning streak that he led the Knicks to (or Linning streak as some put it) was snapped on Friday night. You see, it seems that the cable sports network ESPN used a headline for this story that turned out to be a bit, well, problematic:

The Huffington Post ran a story by Chris Greenberg with the rather unsympathetic headline, ESPN Racist Jeremy Lin Headline: Network Apologizes For Insensitive Headline For Knicks Loss.  Here's an excerpt from the piece:

Several hours after the Knicks' Lin-spired winning streak was snapped by the New Orleans Hornets, ESPN ran the headline "Chink In The Armor" to accompany the game story on mobile devices. ESPN's choice of words was extremely insensitive and offensive considering Lin's Asian-American heritage. According to Brian Floyd at SB Nation, the headline appeared on the Scorecenter app. The offensive headline was quickly noticed, screen grabs, Twit pics and Instagrams were shared and it began circulating widely on Twitter.


The use of the word "chink" is especially galling as Lin has revealed that this racial slur was used to taunt him during his college playing career at Harvard. After a brief run, the headline was changed to "All Good Things.."


On Saturday morning a statement was posted on the ESPN Media Zone website by Kevin Ota, ESPN's Director of Communications, Digital Media ESPN Communications.

Last night, ESPN.com's mobile web site posted an offensive headline referencing Jeremy Lin at 2:30 am ET. The headline was removed at 3:05 am ET. We are conducting a complete review of our cross-platform editorial procedures and are determining appropriate disciplinary action to ensure this does not happen again. We regret and apologize for this mistake.

Ota also tweeted about the headline, noting the brief window of time that the headline was visible across mobile platforms.

So, lots here on the power of social media, but we all knew that already, didn't we?  By the way, Greenberg went on to state:  "Perhaps most shocking is the fact that this headline has been used before. In August 2008, Deadspin called out ESPN for using nearly the same racially insensitive headline with a story about the U.S. men's basketball team during the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing."  What Greenberg doesn't seem to consider is whether the phrase "chink in the armor" had been used in other contexts as well, contexts not involving anyone not of European descent.  Somehow, I suspect it has.


Look, I am very much concerned with racial slurs.  As a Jew, I have heard on many occasions phrases like jewing someone down, a verb for cheating or bargaining, and have been quite naturally offended by such usages.  And I am the first to call people on the use of gyp and gypped, a slur against the Romani people, one that many people still think of as acceptable, even cute--and while we're at it, get rid of welshing on a bet too.  And I empathize with the older African-Americans who cringe at the way rap stars throw around the old pejorative nigger.


But let's be reasonable here.  The main definition of chink is, "a narrow opening or crack, typically one that admits light."  Synonyms include  crevice, crack, fissure, cranny, rift, cleft, and split.  There's also a second meaning for chink, "a high-pitched ringing sound."  And dictionary.com says the following for chink in one's armor:

A vulnerable area, as in Putting things off to the last minute is the chink in Pat's armor and is bound to get her in trouble one day. This term relies on chink in the sense of "a crack or gap," a meaning dating from about 1400 and used figuratively since the mid-1600s.

So, unlike the other slurs I mentioned, the one that is used for individuals of Chinese descent is a homonym for these other, older uses of the word, or more accurately, these are two different words that happen to share the same sound and spelling.  There is nothing about the racial slur, as far as I know, that is meant to suggest a narrow opening or high-pitched ringing sound.  There is no suggestion in this instance of an Asian warrior dressed in chain mail.  Rather, the slur is an abbreviated nickname for Chinese, one that carries with it an air of disrespect, along the same lines that hebe is used as a derogatory term for Jews, as a shortened form of Hebrew.


I hope I'm not making you uncomfortable in talking about this use of language.  We have to be able to talk about it, don't we?  To study it, examine it, as well as criticize and essentially outlaw it?  It's times like this that Alfred Korzybski's general semantics proves particularly useful, as that discipline requires us to consider our own semantic reactions to stimuli, especially words, and reflect on their meanings and our own personal responses to them, and how those responses might give words power, rather than empowering ourselves to take control of our own minds.


It's like the famous exchange between Alice and Humpty Dumpty in Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass, beginning with Humpty making the point that

There are three hundred and sixty-four days when you might get un-birthday presents —'

'Certainly,' said Alice.

'And only one for birthday presents, you know. There's glory for you!'

'I don't know what you mean by "glory",' Alice said.

Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. 'Of course you don't — till I tell you. I meant "there's a nice knock-down argument for you!"'

'But "glory" doesn't mean "a nice knock-down argument",' Alice objected.

'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.'

'The question is,' said Alice, 'whether you can make words mean so many different things.'

'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master — that's all.'

Who is to be master, indeed!  I was a freshman in college and had just recently been introduced to general semantics via Jack Barwind's Introduction to Communication Theory course, when the movie Lenny, a biopic about the life and tragic death of comedian Lenny Bruce, starring Dustin Hoffman, opened, and I was struck by a part of the opening sequence that involved the use of bigot words for their shock value (unheard of in the very early 1960s), but ending with a plea to take away their power by confronting them.  I'd embed the clip, but YouTube won't allow it, so you have to watch it over on there, go ahead, do it, just come back here when you're done:  Lenny Bruce hard words.


And while I'm on the subject, let me go off on a slight tangent and mention that the word niggardly, which I happen to like for its antique quality, bears no relation to the racial slur that I know you were thinking of.  Here's a write up on it, in response to an inquiry, from a website called The Straight Dope:

the origin of "niggard" is unclear, but not its timeline, which predates the N-word in the English language by a couple hundred years at least. "Niggard" comes up as early as Chaucer, late 14th century. The most commonly speculated origin is Scandanavian nig/Old Norse hnoggr, meaning miserly. Don't know how much faith you want to put in Indo-European roots, but one meaning of the root ken- is conjectured to relate a family of words with a connotation implying closing, tightening, or pinching (the family of related words is hypothesized to include such n-words as nap, nibble, nod, nosh, neap, nip). The racial slur "nigger," on the other hand, doesn't enter the lexicon until the 1500's, first as "neger" or "neeger," obviously from the same root as the French negre and Spanish negro, words for the color black, which are derived from the Latin niger.

Likely, your conversation on the word occurred about the same time as much of the country's, when poor David Howard made the national news for use of this term. Howard, head of the Office of Public Advocate for D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams, who described his own administration of a particular fund as "niggardly" in the presence of two of his staff members. He has since been quoted as saying he "immediately apologized" for making what might be misinterpreted as a "racist remark," but the damage had been done. Rumors circulated that he had in fact used a racial epithet (one attribution claimed he said, "I'm tired of all these niggers calling me with their problems"), and he eventually resigned. Eventually the mayor, after determining the facts, asked him to rescind his resignation, and he rejoined the administration, albeit in another position. The D.C. mayor's web page lists him as the mayor's scheduler. 

The moral of the story is, this is what happens when people insist on relying on folk etymology and speculation. Howard was pressured to resign by people who, as columnist Tony Snow put it, "actually demanded that he apologize for their ignorance." There are hundreds of words in English, or any language, that sound similar--or even identical--to others, but have completely unrelated origins and definition. Sure, you don't want to offend anyone deliberately, but there's a fine line between not being a jerk and examining every word you speak for nuances that might be misinterpreted by people who don't understand them. If there's one thing the Straight Dope has taught me, political correctness should always take a back seat to actual correctness.

So, how about a plea for Lin(guistic)sanity?  And speaking of Lin, it turns out that the ESPN headline was preceded by a bad call on the part of one of the cable network's sportscasters:





And over on Forbes.com the story was reported under the headline, ESPN Uses "Chink in the Armor" Line Twice UPDATE- ESPN Fires One Employee Suspends Another.  In case you were wondering, it was the sportscaster who was suspended, the headline writer who was fired.  This perhaps says something about the relative value of writers and on-air talent, but maybe also something about the differences between the two different media.  As the Forbes columnist Greg McNeal explains,

the headline is a different matter.  As anyone who has worked in digital media knows, the headline is what draws attention and hits.  Editors and writers try to maximize visitors and shock value with their headlines (check out mine, it got you here didn’t it?).  Unlike an on-air comment, most writers and editors obsess over the headline even after they click the publish button.  So my sense of things is that whoever posted the headline thought about it, giggled, and clicked publish.  In fairness to the writer/editor, the term “chink in the armor” has been used over 3,000 times on ESPN.com, but just because it is a frequently used term doesn’t absolve the writers and editors of responsibility to use common sense. 

Now, in all fairness, we have no idea what went through the headline writer's mind, how much time he had or took to come up with that headline, or what his motives might have been, but McNeal is absolutely correct that the headline is a different matter, or as Marshall McLuhan put it, the medium is the message.  And I also agree that there is a need for common sense, and perhaps more importantly, common sensitivity, sensitivity to the context of the headline, sensitivity to the need to show respect to all human groupings and identities.  Is an apology in order?  Absolutely!  Should a writer be fired for this, assuming it was an accident? I'm not so sure.


But the point that I wanted to get to is one involving orality and literacy, appropriately enough given that this year, 2012, is the centenary of Walter Ong's birth.  The question was raised on the Media Ecology Association's discussion list by J. Martinez, and here is part of my response:

I once read an article in a communication journal on how sportscasters rely on clichés, more so when there's a lot of action in the game, and it struck me that calling a game has some similarity to oral composition/performance (they are one and the same in oral culture). It's not epic poetry, but given that some of the same dynamics are in play, sportscasters rely on formulas and clichés to stitch together their spiel.  

So it's not just that it's harder to pay attention and "focus" when listening than when reading, that there's little or no time to contemplate the meaning of the words as they're flowing by, and that it's harder to keep them in memory when they're quickly replaced by new talk, nor is it only the fact that much of the language is filler used to keep the performance flowing rather than to communicate anything informative, but it's also that a phrase like "chink in the armor" as an oral cliché or formulaic expression is treated as a whole chunk, as chink-in-the-armor, rather than parsed into separate words.  

In Orality and Literacy, Ong explains how in oral cultures there isn't even the conception of "word" common to literate cultures, but rather something more like "vocalization" or "utterance" which could refer to a single syllable or an entire poem or song.  It's only with writing that words are conceptualized as entirely separate and discrete symbols, each with its own separate meaning that exists independently of any pragmatic context.  When written, "chink" appears as an isolated word rather than a part of a larger whole, it allows for other individual, decontextualized meanings, notably the unintentional racial slur, to be ascribed to it.

So, the word as written is much more problematic than the word as spoken--even though the content appears to be the same, it is not.  Martinez also brought up the case of Rush Limbaugh (not Lin-baugh), whose brief stint as a commentator on ESPN was cut short when he brought his conservative commentary about racial preferences to a discussion of NFL quarterback Donovan McNabb:







My response to this was

in the case of Limbaugh, which is less interesting in my opinion, when his comments were made as part of a flow of sports talk, it's quickly passed over.  But when it's recorded, isolated, and replayed, this allows for reflection and criticism, not to mention magnification of whatever is said, and that makes his comments intolerable.  The irony is that he was done in by the same technology that made football successful on television in the first place, the instant replay.  Without instant replay, football has too little action to be really interesting to viewers (an early study of a Super Bowl game by Michael Real clocked the ball in play at something like 8 minutes).

I also went on to note the similar fate that befell Don Imus:



So, here's how I ended my response:

A similar case, I would add, is that of radio "shock jock" Don Imus when he employed a bit of racist/sexist humor talking about the Rutgers women's basketball team in his MSNBC simulcast.  The internet, and especially YouTube, is functioning as a mirror to television, leading to more critical reflection and self-conscious examination of the broadcasting medium.

McLuhan and Ong have emphasized the oral/aural qualities of broadcasting, and while some of what we hear is scripted, and therefore governed by the written word, allowing for self-conscious editing and self-censorship, and some of it is recorded and then edited as video and/or audio in various ways, live television and radio relies on a degree of spontaneity that will always allow for the possibility of error, and accident, and therefore offense.  Even with delays and oversight and careful understanding of what is acceptable, we never know what might bubble up from an individual's unconscious mind, what monsters from the id might appear.


But without the spontaneity of the live, the immediate, the unplanned and unexpected, without the possibility of novelty, mistake, and failure, is it possible that we'd be losing something exciting and vital about our media experience?


On the other hand, there's always Twitter... 

FCC It Now

Edward R. Murrow's program, See It Now, encapsulated the power and potential of television in its early years.  Now that TV has matured, and gotten somewhat long in the tooth, so to speak, and its influence is waning in the face of our new (and new new) media, I have to wonder if we are witnessing the industry equivalent of a nervous breakdown, or midlife crisis, or perhaps even its death throes?

I've been addressing these problems, as they relate to the cable industry, in a series of posts (starting with All Foxed Up, or Time(Warn'er) for Cable Neutrality,  Tell Old Pharaoh to Let My Channels Go!, and Ordering TV À La Carte, and just recently, ABC You Later, Cablevision!), and arguing for cable neutrality and the audience's right to choose the channels that we pay for.


Now, in a recent AP report, dated March 10th,  it seems that cable television providers, who have operated largely outside of the jurisdiction of the Federal Communications Commission, and Federal oversight, and very happily so, and with great disdain at the thought of government intrusion on their operations, have suddenly found that maybe the First Amendment isn't as absolute as they were saying it was, and they've called on the FCC for help.  

Satellite services, which do have something to do with the FCC, relying as they do on the airwaves, have joined with cable providers in asking for the government bailout, er, I mean assistance in the face of what they see as big bully broadcasters.


The report appears under the title Cable, sat TV firms ask gov't to stop TV blackouts (I found it courtesy of the Technology Review site), and begins

Cable TV, satellite and other video providers have asked the government to intervene in ongoing fee disputes with TV networks -- big-money conflicts that are expected to escalate this year as more contracts expire.

The most recent showdown left millions of Cablevision Systems Corp. customers around New York without an ABC station at the start of the Academy Awards.

About 15 minutes into the show, a scrolling announcement told viewers that a tentative agreement had been reached.

So, unless the government steps in to protect our precious right to television, we can expect more of the same kinds of incidents that led to millions of Cablevision subscribers missing the opening to the Oscars as performed by Steve Allen and Alec Baldwin.  The root of all this evil is money, of course:

As advertising revenue has weakened, TV networks have begun to demand cash for their over-the-air programs rather than some of the advertising swaps that have been acceptable in the past.

And so it is money that motivates the non-broadcast television industries to turn to politics, making for somewhat strange bedfellows, it seems:

Rising tensions between subscription TV providers and the networks have brought together rivals including Time Warner Cable Inc., Dish Network Corp., DirecTV Inc., Verizon Communications Inc. and even a consumer rights group often critical of the companies, Public Knowledge.

The group of 14 companies, consumer and trade groups sent a joint petition to the Federal Communications Commission on Tuesday, seeking a change in the way broadcasters give cable TV and other providers permission to carry local channels on their lineups.

Of course, some of the industry convergence that's been going on can lead to somewhat incestuous bedfellows, making things rather awkward indeed:

One company was conspicuously absent from the petition. Comcast Corp., the nation's largest cable TV operator, would become a broadcaster if its plan to take control of NBC Universal is approved.

So, it seems that the broadcasters are playing hardball:

The National Association of Broadcasters is not backing down.

"To see billion dollar pay TV companies asking for government intervention to protect their exorbitant profits is just plain wrong," the industry group said in a statement.

 
The problem, though, is that it's the broadcasters who have the power to pull the plug, and in the case of Disney/ABC, they did in fact pull a fast one on the viewing public, in forcing a TV fast on them.  So it's the cable companies that end up as proponents of we the people?

Early this year, Time Warner Cable customers faced the threat of losing their Fox stations, which broadcast shows like "The Simpsons," and "American Idol," during a standoff with News Corp., which owns Fox.

"Consumers are increasingly being put in the middle of disputes," Time Warner Cable said in a statement. "The petitioners implore the FCC to act expeditiously to help prevent further consumer harm."

Cable TV and other video providers are concerned that broadcasters have threatened to shut down, or actually ceased, TV signals when talks don't go their way. They want regulators to stop broadcasters from yanking TV signals during contract talks. They also want the FCC to put into place mandatory arbitration or other measures to resolve disputes.

And hey, what they propose is perfectly fine by me, but the problem is that they want it both ways.  The want to be free of the FCC when it's convenient for them, and they want the FCC's help when it's in their interests.


I say, the FCC should intervene, but on the side of the consumer, the people, and give us cable neutrality and TV à la carte.  Edward R. Murrow would approve.  Otherwise, we'll be saying FCC ya later, TV, turn the sets off altogether, and get our entertainment fix online instead.  Can you say, iTunes?