A View From Germany

So, back in 2015 I was interviewed for ZDFinfo, which is a German public television outlet, for a documentary they were making about Twitter. It was aired as a special program entitled, Twitter: Revolution in 140 Zeichen? (Twitter: Revolution in 140 Characters?). The film was broadcast on March 21st, 2016, which was the 10th anniversary of the launch of Twitter.

So, yeah, ok, it's taken a long time to get around to it here on Blog Time Passing, but there were some technical issues that are not worth going into, and anyway, better late than never, right?

So, anyway, what I did was to edit together my four brief segments on the film to make one YouTube video that's about 2 1/2 minutes long. As most of what I have to say is inaudible because of the German translator's voiceover, I offer this to you as something of an amusement. You can hear some of my comments, though, and it's possible to get some sense of what's being said in German as well.

I should note that, while the documentary is somewhat celebratory, it does make room for critical views such as my own. One reason for the positive outlook of the film is that it was made before all the concern about Russian interference in elections was well known, and at a time when it looked like Trump did not have a chance to win the Republican nomination, let along the presidency (I knew otherwise, but that never came up). 

Much of the documentary looked back on Obama's use of Twitter, and did so in a favorable context. My criticisms echoed what I had written in Amazing Ourselves to Death, published back in 2014, and are about the negative effects of the medium, regardless of the political positions and ideologies of the users.

So, now, here's the video, for what it's worth:






I used the title, A View From Germany, for this post to echo a blog post I published back in 2015, A View From Japan. That featured a similar video, drawn from interviews for a Japanese public TV special on the history of broadcasting, on the occasion of their own 90th anniversary. Those excerpts are similar in the presence of a voiceover, while also providing a rare glimpse into the chaos of my office.

The Shameless and the Shamed

I suppose it's about time I posted my September 1st op-ed for the Jewish Standard  here on Blog Time Passing. Entitled, The Shameless and the Shamed, it is just as relevant now as it was a month ago, or at any time during this new political era we find ourselves in. Anyway, here it is:


Let’s play a game of word association. I’ll say a word and you say the first thing that comes into your mind. Ready?

The word is shameless.

If you answered Trump, then please feel free to continue reading. If not, then you may want to stop right here.

To be frank, I have no desire to bother trying to make a case for why Trump’s behavior ought to be described as shameless. If you can’t see it by now, then whatever proof I might muster won’t make a difference to you. I could easily fill this entire column with evidence, but it wouldn’t matter. And if I merely cited the most recent examples as of this writing, by the time it is published they’ll already be fading from awareness, displaced by newer instances.

In sum, I have no patience left for those who would deny a truth that is so very self-evident.

As I was writing this, the words “have you no shame, sir,” popped into my head, but a quick Google search showed that I had misremembered the quote. It was during the Army-McCarthy Senate hearings in 1954 that the chief consul for the U.S. Army, Joseph N. Welch, said to Senator Joseph McCarthy, “Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you no decency?”

With those words, both the Republican senator from Wisconsin and the Communist witch hunt that bore his name—McCarthyism—were fatally shamed. Television played an instrumental role in this, because the hearings were broadcast on the ABC and Dumont networks. It also followed two See It Now exposés produced by the legendary broadcast journalist Edward R. Murrow.

McCarthy’s chief counsel, who was a key participant in the exchange that prompted Welch’s denunciation of McCarthy, was attorney Roy Cohn. Two decades later, Cohn would represent a young Donald Trump, and he became something of a mentor to the real estate developer. Cohn is also credited with introducing Trump to Rupert Murdoch, the media mogul who gave us the scandal-ridden Fox News cable channel, whose claim to be “fair and balanced” also is delivered without shame.

The connection between Trump and McCarthy is not confined to scapegoating, but also extends to manipulation of the news media. The conservative historian and former Librarian of Congress Daniel J. Boorstin coined the term pseudo-event to describe news that is manufactured by journalists and publicists, rather than gathered based on real world occurrences. He argued that the introduction of steam-powered printing presses in the early 19th century made possible the publication of daily newspapers, but there were not enough actual events, train wrecks, hurricanes, elections, armed conflicts, to fill their pages. It therefore became necessary to create pseudo-events that would not have happened except for the presence of the news media, such as interviews, publicity stunts, press releases, press conferences, and leaks. This is what Boorstin wrote about McCarthy in his book The Image:

It is possible to build a political career almost entirely on pseudo-events. Such was that of the late Joseph R. McCarthy, Senator from Wisconsin from 1947-1957. His career might have been impossible without the elaborate, perpetually grinding machinery of ‘information.’… And he was a natural genius at creating reportable happenings that had an interestingly ambiguous relation to underlying reality. Richard Rovere, a reporter in Washington during McCarthy’s heyday recalls:

He knew how to get into the news even on those rate occasions when invention failed him and he had no unfacts to give out. For example, he invented the morning press conference called for the purpose of announcing an afternoon press conference. The reporters would come in—they were beginning, in this period, to respond to his summonses like Pavlov’s dogs at the clang of a bell—and McCarthy would say that he just wanted to give them the word that he expected to be ready with a shattering announcement later in the day, for use in the papers the following morning. This would gain him a headline in the afternoon papers: ‘New McCarthy Revelations Awaited in Capital.’ Afternoon would come, and if McCarthy had something, he would give it out, but often enough he had nothing, and this was a matter of slight concern. He would simply say that he wasn’t quite ready, that he was having difficulty in getting some of the ‘documents’ he needed or that a ‘witness’ was proving elusive. Morning headlines: ‘Delay Seen in McCarthy Case—Mystery Witness Being Sought’.

There is no denying that the reporters who covered McCarthy also were shameless in their pursuit of content, and the same can be said of the news media covering the 2016 election. Recall the comment CBS head Les Moonves made that February about the coverage that Trump was generating: “It may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS…. I’ve never seen anything like this, and this is going to be a very good year for us. Sorry. It’s a terrible thing to say. But, bring it on, Donald. Keep going.”

Shameless pursuit of profit. Shameless self-promotion. Shameless exercise of power. The common denominator is clear.

But what does it mean to be shameless? The experience of shame comes from a concern over how others see us. We feel shame over something because we fear that it will cause others to think poorly of us. Adam and Eve were shamelessly unclothed until they ate the forbidden fruit, “and the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked” (Genesis 3:7). This doesn’t mean that they had been blind, but rather that they had become ashamed in the sight of each other, and God.

We are not only ashamed of something, we are ashamed before someone. Someone whose opinion of us is important to us.

The Torah tells us that Adam and Eve felt shame because they were naked. It does not say that they felt guilt because they had eaten the fruit. Shame is a more basic, primal experience than guilt, based as it is on the fear of what others may think of us. Guilt is shame internalized. We can have a guilty conscience even if we have no fear of discovery. A guilty verdict is intended to be an objective statement about the defendant who is on trial, not about how others feel about that person. And guilt is separate from punishment. Shame signifies its own consequences—to be shamed before others.

Shame is about relationships. It is felt most acutely in regard to the people closest to us, but it also can extend to the larger entity known as the public. If you follow the HBO series Game of Thrones, you no doubt will recall from the season 5 finale how Cersei, then the Queen Mother, was forced to undergo a walk of atonement. She was stripped naked and led through the city, as crowds threw insults and garbage at her, and a priestess cried out repeatedly, “Shame! Shame! Shame!” And if you grew up in the United States, chances are you read National Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter. That book’s title refers to the public shaming of its main character, Hester Prynne.

Television transforms the public of the city square and agora, as well as the reading public made possible by the printing press, into something at once broader and more diffuse. For more than two decades, investigative reporter Arnold Diaz gave us local news stories on WCBS-TV Channel 2 called Shame on You. (I still recall the jingle that preceded the segments: “Shame, shame, shame … shame on you!”)

More recently, social media have amplified both the process of shaming and our sensitivity to it, with many references to body-shaming, fat-shaming, and slut-shaming. Critics decry the decline of civility that leads to indiscriminate shaming on the one hand. But on the other, we have a desire to silence all forms of criticism, and that in turn leads to the accusation that any negative comment is a form of shaming.

We find ourselves in the midst of a series of shame wars.

Television shamed McCarthy, and more importantly, it shamed reporters so that they stopped covering him. The televised Watergate Senate hearings shamed Richard Nixon into resigning the presidency. But CNN’s and MSNBC’s unrelenting shaming of the president do not seem to have the same effect. Perhaps the contrary messages coming from Fox News and Trump’s Twitter feed—the president is notorious for blocking anyone who tweets anything negative about him—insulate him from any sense of shame.

Another possible explanation stems from Trump’s narcissism. Psychologists tell us that narcissism is a defense against powerful, at times nearly unbearable feelings of shame. Shame leads to blame, so that not only does a narcissistic person seek praise and approval, that person also responds in a highly defensive manner to any perceived criticism or slight.

Whatever the reason, a president who has no shame is a recipe for disaster. By way of contrast, consider the American remake of a British working class family TV series called Shameless. Our version, launched on the Showtime cable channel series in 2011, features a family living in extreme poverty, a family that is not working class but instead is part of an underclass. And while the subject of shame is not discussed much in the program, we recognize and even applaud the young family’s skirting of conventional legality and morality in their efforts to survive.

The fear of being shamed is a luxury they cannot afford.

Indeed, a sense of shame is directly proportional to honor, a somewhat archaic yet still significant notion, as well as status, something still very much with us. There is little or no shame possible for those on the lowest rungs of the social order, for example the beggar, while the greatest potential for shame is held by people of the highest status—once upon a time the aristocracy and nobility, today the rich and famous—anyone in a position of leadership at any time.

Honor served as a check against shameful behavior, preserving reputation and privilege, and therefore the leader’s legitimacy. For a person of honor, being dishonored requires that he or she must retreat from public life.

A leader without honor, a shameless leader, is a tyrant. And tyrants do not have a good track record in the United States.

When we talk about the shameless and the shamed, another word comes to our minds. It’s the Yiddish word for shame—shande. We speak of shande not just as individuals, but as a people. It’s the shame we feel collectively when one of our number behaves badly. And it is in this sense that I feel ashamed of our president.

Not guilt, because I didn’t vote for him, but shame as an American, before my friends and colleagues from other nations, shame before the rest of the world, and shame before history, posterity, the generations yet to come, and yes, before God.

In being shameless in his conduct, Trump has shamed all of us, and put our collective honor and status as a nation at risk.

It is a shande, plain and simple. And how shall we respond?

Bernie Sanders as Joe Lieberman's Revenge

So, if you've been reading my blog for the past year or so, you my have noticed that every so often I post an entry about an op-ed piece of mine published in the Jewish Standard, a weekly periodical serving the northern New Jersey area, along with New York's Rockland County. I've been asked to supply something for the paper about every six weeks or so, and I do my best to oblige. The op-ed also would be posted on their website, and afterwards I would eventually share it here on Blog Time Passing.

Well, this past spring I was informed that the Standard was partnering with one of Israel's English language newspapers, the Times of Israel, and would use their blogging platform to simultaneously publish entries on both sites. And would I be interested in participating? Being an old hand at blogging, I said sure, so I am now officially a Times of Israel blogger as well. Here's the link to my blog there. And in fact the  Jewish Standard's new site is entirely in partnership with the Times of Israel, so they really are changing with the times.

So, my first post on this new blog consists of my most recent op-ed for the Standard, originally published in the July 17th edition of the paper, and entitled Lieberman's Revenge. Click on the link if you want to see it on the Times of Israel blog, where it was posted on July 20th. Right now, as I look at the post, the third paragraph appears to be wrapping around a non-existent image. That's not my doing, and I'm told an ad appears there some of the time. Hopefully this glitch will be ironed out soon. In the meantime, yes, of course I'll post the op-ed here as well.

But before I do, let me explain that this op-ed is a commentary on the current race for the Democratic Party's nomination for president, and the emergence of Bernie Sanders as a viable alternative to Hillary Clinton. Sanders' sudden popularity brought to mind, for me, the question of whether there could ever be a Jewish POTUS (an acronym that sounds like it could be a Yiddish word, but stands for President Of The United States, a product of Twitter's telegraphic discourse). On that topic, I noticed an interesting meme being sent around on Facebook by his supporters, and it appears that it originated on Twitter:

An interesting point that no doubt would be lost on all those social conservatives who decry the "war against Christmas" (waged by the secular-humanist left). But holding political persuasion aside, the question is a complicated one for Jewish-Americans, more so than for other minority groups, who typically view the candidacy of one of their own as a matter of ethnic or religious pride. Our long history of being strangers in strange lands means that we were excluded from being a part of hereditary ruling classes, and from having any established status at all. Viewed as foreigners, we were allowed limited autonomy, internal to the local Jewish community, to govern our own affairs, subject to the external authority of the state. While the modern nation-state opened the door to full citizenship, the tradition of exclusion from leadership positions carried over well into the new era. And with the long history of being subject to prejudice, oppression, and persecution, during which time keeping a low profile was the only real defense, the question of could is inextricably linked to the question of should.


But my point in this op-ed was to note the ironic connection between two Jewish-Americans presidential contenders, Joe Lieberman, who sought the Democratic Party's nomination in 2004, and Bernie Sanders today. Connecting the two, even though they differ dramatically in their political leanings, is how I came to view Sanders' candidacy as Lieberman's revenge. That's not to imply anything like a conspiracy (God forbid!) or anything intentional about it, just a bit of poetic justice maybe? Well, you can make up your own mind. Here it is:

Could there ever be a Jewish president of the United States? That was a question that was raised repeatedly as I was growing up back in the sixties. On the one hand, we were told that here in the USA, anyone could grow up to be president. That idea was emblematic of the egalitarian foundation of American society, the basis of our democratic system of government. On the other hand, there was the practical reality that everyone who had been president came from a very limited demographic, all of them men, all of them white, most of them Anglo-Saxon with the occasional Dutch or German representative (e.g., Martin Van Buren, Dwight Eisenhower), and all of them Protestant.

So when it came to the question of whether we would ever see a Jewish president, the conclusion we typically came to was that it was possible, but unlikely.

This is not to discount the significance of the 1960 election, when John F. Kennedy, a Roman Catholic of Irish ancestry, defeated Richard Nixon. No doubt, the advent of our first Catholic president made the idea of a Jewish president seem at least a little possible, and served as a spur to the discussions that took place within Jewish circles about whether it could happen, and if it did, whether it would be good for the Jews or bad for the Jews. In some ways, we were more comfortable with a figure like Henry Kissinger, who became the 56th U.S. secretary of state, or more recently Rahm Emanuel, who served as the 23rd White House chief of staff. That sort of advisory or ministerial role has a long precedent in our history, reaching all the way back to Mordecai in the Book of Esther, and Joseph in Genesis. By way of contrast, we have the 19th-century example of Benjamin Disraeli, who served as prime minister of the United Kingdom, but only after converting to the Anglican Church as a child.

Rahm Emanuel

And, as is well known, Kennedy tragically was assassinated before completing a full term in office, and while there have been several other Catholics who have seriously vied for the presidency, including his two brothers, the nine presidents who followed all have been affiliated with one or another Protestant sect. It is worth noting that the first Greek Orthodox presidential candidate was nominated by the Democratic Party in 1988, and had former Massachusetts governor Mike Dukakis defeated George H. W. Bush, his wife, Kitty Dukakis, would have become the first Jewish first lady of the United States. Here, too, we could find a precedent in the biblical personage of Esther.

Then came the year 2000, when Al Gore chose the U.S. senator from Connecticut, Joe Lieberman, to be his running mate on the Democratic party ticket. And while Lieberman was the first Jewish vice presidential candidate to win the popular vote (albeit riding Gore’s coattails), the conservative-dominated United States Supreme Court decided the election in favor of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. Gore and others harbored a degree of resentment towards Lieberman for not going all in, and running simultaneously for re-election as senator, a race he won. But in truth, with the economy still going strong under the Clinton-Gore administration, the election was Gore’s to lose. And he did.

Joe Lieberman

Lieberman became a presidential candidate in his own right in 2004, and for a brief moment we came closer to the possibility of a Jewish president than ever before. But he was identified as a centrist at a time when the Democratic party was moving to the left, as the shock of 9/11 began to recede and the reality of Bush’s occupation of Iraq began to take hold. Consequently, Lieberman’s candidacy was not very successful, and the United States senator from Massachusetts, John F. Kerry, a Roman Catholic just like the other JFK, gained the Democratic nomination, only to go down in defeat against Bush’s re-election bid. Whether Lieberman would have done any better or any worse than Kerry is hard to say.

Kerry’s defeat did not slow his party’s leftward tilt, which posed serious problems for Lieberman, especially given his somewhat hawkish stance on foreign policy issues. This came to a head in 2006, when he lost the Democratic primary in Connecticut, and decided to run for re-election to the Senate as an independent. While he won the election, he lost the support of many former colleagues in the Democratic party, including Gore and Hillary Clinton, who abandoned Lieberman and endorsed his rival. And while he remained more or less affiliated with the Democrats during his final term as senator, which ended in 2013, Lieberman in turn endorsed Republican John McCain in the 2008 presidential election, and spoke at the Republican National Convention that year. Rumor had it that he had been considered a potential running mate for McCain as well, and perhaps might have served McCain better than former Alaska governor Sarah Palin.

Of course, the 2008 election was extraordinary, in that we elected the first African American president. And back in the sixties, conversation about whether there would ever be a Jewish president would sometimes also turn to the question of what would be more likely, that there would be a Jewish president or an African American president? The answer was far from clear, as both possibilities seemed altogether improbable. The fact that Barack Obama was elected and then re-elected is a great testament to the progress we have made as a society, and also a reflection of significant demographic changes within the population of the United States.

The 2008 primaries were also significant in regard to some of the other primary candidates. For example, for the Republican party, former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani had been a contender, and could have been the first Italian-American elected to the White House (many urged Democratic New York State Governor Mario Cuomo to run back in the 80s, but to no avail). Mitt Romney came close to taking the nomination away from McCain, and then became the Republican candidate in 2012, making him the first Mormon to come close to winning the presidency (whether Mormons are considered Protestants, or even Christians, is open to debate). Back in 2008, former United States senator from New York Hillary Clinton was considered the front-runner for the Democratic nomination, and had Obama not overtaken her in the primaries, she might have been the first woman to serve as president.

And so we come to the present moment, and the impressively diverse set of major party candidates set to run in the 2016 primaries. On the Republican side, this includes New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, a Roman Catholic; former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, a Roman Catholic convert; United States senator from Florida Marco Rubio, a Roman Catholic of Cuban descent; United States senator from Texas Ted Cruz, whose father also was Cuban; retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, an African American; and Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, whose parents immigrated to the U.S. from India.

On the Democratic side, we have former first lady, senator, and secretary of state Hillary Clinton once again running as the heir apparent; former Maryland governor Martin O’Malley, a Roman Catholic; and the United States senator from Vermont, Bernie Sanders, born and raised, and bar mitzvahed, in Brooklyn, New York.

Although their politics are quite distinct, in tossing his hat into the ring to compete in the Democratic primaries, Sanders is following in Lieberman’s footsteps as a Jewish candidate for president. And the amazing thing is that Sanders is suddenly mounting a credible challenge to Hillary Clinton. I find this somehow ironic, given that Clinton and others turned their backs on Lieberman when he was down on his luck, because Lieberman was seen as too conservative. Now, along comes Sanders, who like Lieberman has independent party affiliations while remaining associated with the Democrats, but whose politics is significantly to the left of Clinton, to the extent that he identifies himself as a democratic socialist. So now it is Clinton who is losing ground among the party faithful because she is seen as too conservative.

Bernie Sanders

I imagine that the success Sanders is achieving in the polls and in the all-important activity of fundraising is starting to give Clinton some cause for concern, maybe even an upset stomach? That’s why I would call what’s happening right now, with apologies to Montezuma, Lieberman’s revenge.

Could Sanders win the Democratic nomination next year? And if he did, could he beat whomever the Republicans pick out of their extremely crowded field, thereby becoming the first Jewish president of the United States of America?

It’s possible, but unlikely. But the really nice thing about all this is, it’s unlikely because of his politics, and not because he’s Jewish.

Together Again at Tech-Mex

So, while I was in Mexico City this past March to to give a series of lectures at Universidad Panamericana, as I mentioned in my recent post, My Panamericana Visit, I also had a chance to see my friends and fellow media ecology enthusiasts, Octavio Islas, and Fernando Gutiérrez. 

And I was quite happy to learn that Fernando has moved up in the world, and is now Director (equivalent of Dean) of the División de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades (School of Social Sciences and Humanities) at the Santa Fe Campus (a section of Mexico City that is home to many business headquarters, kind of their high tech center) of Technológico de Monterry (Monterrey Tech). 

Congratulations, Fernando!

 
So, I had a chance to visit his campus, and give a guest lecture to one of his new media classes, an enjoyable experience. The students were all bright and attentive, and there were also several faculty members present. And I suppose that's how my little presentation to the class wound up on Twitter:

RT @AndresRBG7: Today we have @LanceStrate in @Tec_Santa_Fe thanks to @fer_gut He'll be talking about #mediaecology pic.twitter.com/TmggOtSJnd

— Lance Strate (@LanceStrate) March 17, 2015

 
Of course I spoke about media ecology, and the Media Ecology Association:

RT @fer_gut: With @LanceStrate one of the founders of the Media Ecology Association #mediaecology @Tec_Santa_Fe pic.twitter.com/WZpriJ1fcD

— Lance Strate (@LanceStrate) March 17, 2015

But I talked about media ecology especially in regard to the study of new media:

RT @AndresRBG7: "We remade the world" @LanceStrate in @tecdemty @tecsantafe with @fer_gut pic.twitter.com/R37nSqEjvF

— Lance Strate (@LanceStrate) March 17, 2015

And speaking of new media, this also gave me the opportunity to try out embedding tweets in a blog post, something I had not had the opportunity to experiment with before. Funny to see that little 15 second video, which really is mostly medium, very little message:

RT @AndresRBG7: "We remade the world" @LanceStrate in @tecdemty @tecsantafe with @fer_gut pic.twitter.com/R37nSqEjvF

— Lance Strate (@LanceStrate) March 17, 2015

And also more than a little self-reflexive, in that it is a video of me showing the class another video (while I'm talking over and about it). And in case you're curious about the video I was showing, it was one I included in my 2011 post, The Choral Village. The video, by composer Eric Whitacre, wonderfully illustrates the potential of new media for collaborations that would not otherwise be possible, while also exemplifying the dematerialization accomplished by electronic media, the disembodiment that we experience, or what McLuhan referred to as being discarnate and angelic, as well as what Sherry Turkle so aptly summarized as being alone together.

But what was truly marvelous about my Mexico City trip was the opportunity to be together together. Nothing can quite take its place.

Of Fees, Futility, and Mike Huckabee

So, this one requires a little review. 

On December 18, 2013, an article entitled Talk Is Not Cheap: Why Do Ex-Politicians Earn Huge Money From Making Speeches? was published in the International Business Times, said article including some quotes from your humble servant, yours truly. I shared the article, accompanied by some discussion and analysis, in a post entitled, Giant Speaking Fees-Fi-Fo-Fum, back on February 23rd of 2014.

I thought that was the end of it. Wrong again!

Out of the quotes in that published article, which were taken from a larger set of quotes I had provided to the reporter, a single quote was recently re-quoted (is that anything like re-gifting?) in an article published by the Daily Dot. And in case you're not familiar with this outlet (and I have to admit that I was not myself before now), here is how they describe themselves:

The Daily Dot is the ultimate destination for original reporting about Internet life. We recognize Web users are deeply passionate about their communities and offer them stories that highlight the members of those communities. Our writing is definitive, comprehensive, and pulls from the best traditions of journalism. It is coverage that, uniquely, is not just on the web, but of the web.

So, the particular article in question was published on May 6th of this year, written by Matt Rozsa, and entitled, The Real Reason Mike Huckabee Keeps Running for President. If you want to click on the link and take a look at the article over on the Daily Dot site, please be my guest. I'll provide you with most of here, minus the links and added material, so if you want to follow up, again, go check it out.

So, Rozsa starts it off like this:

Shortly after Mike Huckabee ended his campaign for president in 2008, he began another career—this time as the host of his very own show on Fox News. If you want to understand Huckabee’s reason for making a recent entry into the 2016 race, you must start by recognizing that being an Also Ran can be very, very profitable.

After all, Huckabee’s chances of actually winning are quite slim. “Mr. Huckabee would seem to face greater obstacles than during his first presidential campaign, when he battled only a couple of rivals for the party’s conservative base,” writes Trip Gabriel of the New York Times. “Now half a dozen or more declared and likely candidates appeal to social conservatives, and Mr. Huckabee’s party has moved further rightward.”

If his vulnerabilities among the GOP’s conservative base weren’t damning enough, he is also damaged by his own checkered history when it comes to espousing ideas that are (to put it generously) controversial:

At this point, Rozsa provides several tweets dealing with Huckabee's offensive remarks make in the past, which you can view over there, I won't bother with them here, let's just get on with the point of the article:

These tweets demonstrate that the Internet is very much aware of Huckabee’s past views on gay rights, such as quarantining AIDS victims and supporting legislation permitting discrimination against gay people, as well as his paranoid Christian agenda in general. (Remember that time he claimed the American government was trying to criminalize Christianity?) Although presidential nominations are snagged by appealing to one’s party base, general elections are won by winning over the center, and considering that the American center opposes the injection of religion into politics, Huckabee’s very political brand guarantees his own unelectability.

Naturally, one must wonder: Could Huckabee really be deluded about his own chances of winning? If not, what possible reason could he have to enter the campaign?

“Huckabee is one of a number of people who have managed to make a career out of staging one long, endless, futile presidential run,” explains Drew Magary of GQ. “If you have enough money, a few rich benefactors, and a handful of bafflingly stubborn constituents, you can usually cobble together a campaign that is doomed to fail, but deliberately so.”

Now, here's where we get to the connection to the earlier article regarding speaking fees:

Politicians from both parties indulge in this practice. Rudy Giuliani earned more than $9.2 million in speakers fees in the year before his 2008 presidential campaign, while Hillary Clinton has been to known to accept as much as $200,000 for individual speaking engagements since her tenure as Secretary of State came to a close.

Other pricey Also Rans include Al Gore, whose agency requires him to be compensated “$100,000, plus travel, hotel, security, and per diem expenses”; Mitt Romney, who has averaged between $40,000 and $60,000 per appearance since his unsuccessful 2012 campaign; and Howard Dean, who has been paid $20,000 for speeches as short as 10 minutes in duration.

Of course, the original article on speaking fees was as much if not more so about the winners, like Bill Clinton, as it was about losers like Gore and Huckabee. And this article, on the other hand, is not limited to the topic of speaking fees alone:

Nor is it merely speaking that can rake in the cash for an erstwhile presidential contender. A study by the University of Minnesota’s Eric Ostermeier determined that Sarah Palin—who voters with good memories may recall toyed with a presidential bid in 2012 before being snapped up by Fox News—earned $3 million during her three years as a commentator there, averaging out to $15.85 per word.

Though not earning nearly as much as Palin, many political observers theorized that Huckabee decided against running for president in 2012 because he’d have to give up the $500,000 annual salary from his show.

So now, let's get to my own little quote, or re-quote, in this article:

Dr. Lance Strate, a professor of communication and media studies and associate chair for graduate studies at Fordham University, argues that former presidential candidates can successfully demand egregious sums of money because they have star power. Strate told the International Business Times, “For some, there is the basic interest in being associated with a celebrity, the prestige that comes with the presence and participation of a famous and influential individual.”

And there you have it. Now it's on to bigger and better things:

The digital age has only exacerbated this trend. “Throughout modern campaign history successful candidates have tended to outpace their competitors in understanding changing communications,” explained a 2012 Pew Research Center study on Web and social media use during that year’s presidential election. This ranged “from Franklin Roosevelt’s use of radio, to John F. Kennedy’s embrace of television, to Ronald Reagan’s recognition of the potential for arranging the look and feel of campaign events in the age of satellites and video tape.”

Whereas previous technological advances merely extended the reach of a candidate’s message, however, the Internet allows them to remain in the public eye as long as they can generate headlines on Twitter. Candidates who are able to flourish in this climate may not have demonstrated an ability to effectively serve in public office, but they certainly prove something else entirely—namely, that they are marketable commodities.

Actually, there are no headlines on Twitter, but as long as you are a trending item, or at least a popular subject, sure that would be true. But celebrities do not live by Twitter alone, and the bottom line is that there are many platforms that can create and maintain visibility, and many ways that fame can remain even after the individual is no longer with us. YouTube, for example, is a prime example, in this regard.

And as for running for president as a ploy to gain greater fame, well I imagine that the name Donald Trump comes to mind for you as well as for me. Anyway, back to Rozsa:

While it’s bad enough that former politicians have the ability to so egregiously cash in on their fame, the more-likely-than-not phony campaigns of candidates like Huckabee take the problem of money corrupting politics to a whole other level.

Aside from the questionable fiscal ethics of conjoining a bid for elected office with one’s personal financial agenda, running for president simply to make money later distorts our democratic discourse. Every candidate who campaigns insincerely takes time, money, and attention away from those making good faith bids for power. Even worse, when a genuine candidate and a mercenary one have overlapping constituencies, the unelectable alternative can take votes away from the option who could realistically advance the cause of his or her constituents.

Now, I have mixed feelings about this argument. I do agree that turning the serious matter of running for elected office into a public relations strategy to promote the celebrity's own visibility is bad for democracy. This is the kind of argument that resonates with Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death and my own Amazing Ourselves to Death. 

On the other hand, the idea that having too many candidates constitutes a problem, something we're hearing a lot of lately with some 20 odd (and I do mean that in both senses) major party candidates right now, and that we should only focus on the candidates that have the best shot at winning strikes me as inimical to the proper functioning of a democracy, of the free marketplace of ideas, and I think that happens all too often. I know that this is a point on which my colleague and friend, Paul Levinson, and I agree.

Let them all have a voice, our political process is much too constrained as it is, I mean, why are only two parties given serious consideration? Doesn't that limit political discourse to a narrow range? Wouldn't more parties, as well as more candidates, broaden the range of opinions and ideas, and therefore make for better deliberations?

In taking this position, I hope you understand that I in no way endorse the candidacy of Huckabee, who Rozsa rightly points out is seen by many as something of a bigot:

Of course, in the case of candidates like Huckabee, the toxicity of their cause is in its own right a problem. Despite the enormous strides made in recent years on issues like gay rights, there are still many Americans who wish to make a political crusade out of denying basic civil liberties to men and women with different sexual orientations.

Even though he won’t become president, and is unlikely to be the Republican nominee, Huckabee’s candidacy will still serve as a focal point for anti-gay bigots throughout the country, giving them an outlet to exercise (at the very least symbolic) electoral power. To play this role sincerely is deplorable; to do so with the primary goal of making money is even worse.

At some future date, a historian studying the early 21st century may look back at the hucksterism of men like Mike Huckabee and wonder how he got away with it. For now, unfortunately, we have to live with yet another doomed campaign.

The upshot of all this, once again, is the problem of the blurring of the boundaries between politics, journalism, and entertainment, which again brings me back to our fatal amusements and amazements.

 ............................................................................ 

How are we to view Huckabee, after all? As a former governor, presidential candidate, and generally speaking, a politician? As a broadcast journalist? Or given the criticism of television news in general, and FOX News specifically, as an entertainer? His politics may be reactionary, but in his blurring of the boundaries, what he represents is downright revolutionary. And that too is cause for concern. 

Abuse on Twitter

Back on February 7th, I was quoted in a Tech Times article entitled, Three Immediate Things Twitter Must Do To Curb Online Abuse And Win Back Users, written by Christian de Looper. I had been asked to comment on the problem of abusive tweets and the general issue of online abuse, and on what Twitter needs to do to address the problem, so let me begin by providing you with my full response to the query:

Twitter is not the only social media platform that has a problem with online abuse on the part of its users—YouTube, for example, is notorious for the problem. The fact that it has become a public relations concern for Twitter reflects the fact that it is second only to Facebook when in comes to communication and social interaction on the internet. 

Twitter ought to be concerned, and can learn a lesson from the fall of MySpace, where a sense of "lawlessness" and "anything goes" contributed to the mass migration to Facebook, where controls over user behavior are more stringent, creating a very safe, you might say suburban, white bread kind of environment. First and foremost, to follow Facebook's lead, Twitter would have to become much more responsive to user complaints, essentially issuing warnings and shutting accounts down whenever any user is accused of abusive behavior. 

The problem they face is that Twitter has gained much from its wide open atmosphere, not so much an open frontier like the old MySpace, but more like an urban and urbane melting pot of myriad voices. Crack down too much on offensive tweets, and you lose the open atmosphere that makes Twitter so attractive, and you alienate users who view that sort of activity as censorship. Twitter will need to engage in a very tricky balancing act between the need to provide a safe and attractive environment and otherwise show users they are in control and care about abusive behavior, while maintaining their status as an open and democratic platform. The problem they face in the virtual world is exactly the same problem we face in open societies in real life, between security and freedom, between the needs of the community and the rights of the individual.

Long time readers of Blog Time Passing may find my comparison of Twitter, Facebook, and the old MySpace familiar, expressed for example in my post of March 1, 2009, About Face(book).

Be that as it may, let's turn now to de Looper's recent article about Twitter, which begins with the following introduction:

A memo written by Twitter CEO Dick Costolo has been leaked, with Costolo admitting that Twitter "sucks at dealing with trolls."

The memo also resolved that Twitter needs to fight online abuse head-on. But what exactly can Twitter do to put an end to harassment on Twitter?

Now comes those three things Twitter can do to curb online abuse, and the first one is where my quotes, taken out of the larger commentary I provided, comes in:

1. Twitter Needs To Get Ruthless

Twitter has been very passive about its online abuse problem. The company has not made real efforts to combat the issue.

"To follow Facebook's lead, Twitter would have to become much more responsive to user complaints, essentially issuing warnings and shutting accounts down whenever any user is accused of abusive behavior," said Lance Strate, professor of communications and media studies at Fordham University, in an email with Tech Times.

Twitter, however, is in the middle of a balancing act. The service currently has a very "open" vibe about it, and cracking down too hard on users could take away from this.

"The problem they face in the virtual world is exactly the same problem we face in open societies in real life, between security and freedom, the needs of the community and the rights of the individual," continued Strate.

So, now, that's it for me, but let's get the other two bits of advice, shall we?

2. Twitter Needs to Be Public About Its Abuse Battle

Online abuse is not a problem unique to Twitter. YouTube is notorious for Internet trolls that comment on videos with the idea of wanting to take people down a peg. Often comments aren't even related to the videos being posted.

The problem for Twitter, however, is a little different because of the public relations issues involved. If Twitter is going to successfully put an end to abuse on its platform, it needs to be public about it. The issues surrounding public abuse on Twitter could end tomorrow, but that doesn't mean that users will think that it has. Twitter's reputation is important when it comes to gaining users. In fact, many users have left Twitter because of its online abuse problem, and it's likely that they won't come back until Twitter is able to successfully deal with the problem.

3. Twitter Needs To Do It In-House

In the past, Twitter has rather famously left dealing with online abuse to third parties, most notably Women, Action and the Media (WAM!).

The fact that Twitter has not dealt with the problem internally shows a lack of caring from the company. It seems, however, as though the company will finally be stepping up.

Twitter must deal with the problem in-house, and must hire people to deal with it. The tools for the company to be able to combat online abuse have been put in place -- there is a "blocked accounts" page where users can see who has been blocked from their feed, for example, and users can more easily report issues. Now Twitter needs to have employees that deal with those problems.

The conflict between safety and growth lies at the heart of Abraham Maslow's humanistic psychology of motivation,  as famously represented by his Hierarchy of Needs diagram

So, once again, it comes down to a fundamental conflict. Openness is democratic, and facilitates originality, creativity, and growth, but brings with it risk and danger, in this instance the possibility of abuse, as well as scams and spam, and various forms of cybercrime. Closing things off provides more of a margin of safety and security, but at the cost of the ferment that made the platform, group, or society interesting and vibrant in the first place. How to find the balance, to avoid being boring as well as to curb abuse, that is the question. 

General Semantics in India

So, I was pleased to have received a new volume in the mail, all the way from Delhi, an anthology edited by Deepa Mishra, a professor of English at the University of Mumbai, entitled General Semantics: A Critical Companion. I'd give you the link for Amazon, but unfortunately it doesn't seem to be available there, but you can order the book from the Kaveri Book Service, where it seems to be very reasonably priced ($13.95 list, discounted to $12.56, as of today, but I don't know what they're charging for shipping and handling).

So, I had the sudden urge to use the "Add a Photo" function on Twitter. Yeah, I know it's old hat, but I've generally avoided that sort of thing. But since there wasn't an Amazon page with the book cover, I figured, let me do one of those twitpics for once.  So here it is:

So like, yeah, ummm, what's wrong with this picture? I took it via Mac's Photo Booth application, and I should have remembered that it does mirror images from the last time I used it:

Well, just another reminder that the map is not the territory, and maybe I'll have better luck (or memory) next time. In any event, with a little help from Mac's Preview application, let's straighten things out:

Yes, that's much better, don't you think? So let me share a little more, but now via my iPhone's TurboScan app. First, here's the front inside cover book flap, or whatever you call it:

And let's get the back cover inside book flap thing as well:

Not too shabby, eh? And let's include the title page while we're at it:

And let's flip over from the recto to the verso side:

Now that you have the basic information, I want to share the fact that I was very touched by the dedication page:

 

I met Balvant back in 2009, when I was his guest, and gave an address and a workshop at the Balvant Parekh Centre in Baroda (see my previous posts, A Workshop in Baroda and Just a Few More Images From India). Here's a photo from then, with Balvant on the left, and his brother NK on the right:

I was saddened to learn of his passing last year. One of the amazing things I learned when I met with him was that he first learned about general semantics and became interested in the subject by reading the journal ETC: A Review of General Semantics back when Neil Postman was editor (which ties us back in to my earlier reverso photo of Amazing Ourselves to Death: Neil Postman's Brave New World Revisited). Anyway, there is a nice write-up about the book over on the Balvant Parekh Centre website, where it says,

As a tribute to Late Balvant K. Parekh who believed in sharing the wealth of knowledge, Deepa Mishra, Associate Professor of English at CHM College has collected and edited articles from scholars who have been studying and doing general semantics for many decades, significant academicians from humanities and social sciences, students, researchers and new entrants to the discipline/ method of general semantics.

There's a picture of Dr. Mishra on the site as well:

And the page also included her own write-up about the book:

General Semantics should not be confused as any particular philosophy or discipline; it can be best regarded as a way of life, which if practiced, can truly open up the latent, but enormous human potential. Breaking away from the Aristotelian tradition which is believed to have casted human thinking in a particular mould, General Semantics does not ground itself in any metaphysical or religious contemplation. It rather draws its conclusions from the rich human experience over the last few thousand years and defines a unique way of engaging with the world around us. This engagement is not only non-conflicting, but also complementary in nature, promising to bind time in an inclusive and forward looking manner; generation after generation. These concepts were initiated by Alfred Korzybski in Manhood of Humanity and subsequently elaborated in much greater detail in his magnum opus, Science and Sanity. However, over the last 90 years, more particularly in the 64 years after Korzybski’s death, his ideas have got limited scholarly and empirical attention, restricted, by and large, only to the United States of America.

The efforts of Balvant Parekh Center for General Semantics and Other Human Sciences can be best regarded as “work-in-progress,” as it is trying to create a new kind of intensity around this early twentieth century thought-innovation. This book is an attempt to capture and showcase some of the recent discussions. While a few of the essays provide a short and precise detour, many of them try to see these thoughts through the prism of the contemporary times. In summary, it is an effective grouping of the old and the new, refreshing to the reader and more importantly, it attempts to create a familiarizing orientation for any new reader.

Of course, no doubt what you would really want to know is, what's in the book, and who the contributors are. Well, depending on your background, you should find at least one familiar name, and maybe a few others. Here are the Contents pages:

So, all in all a very nice volume indeed! Congratulations, Professor Mishra, on a great contribution to humanity's time-binding efforts, and a job well done!