Archives for January, 2004
Ferndale
Saw the famous Ferndale Institution where former Saskatchewan cabinet minister and convicted murderer Colin Thatcher is spending his 25 year murder sentence. There are no fences and there is a private 18 hole golf course for the inmates. He livines in a town house that is larger than my house. There is an episode of The Simpsons where Sideshow Bob is in jail and the jail has a rowing team. That isn’t parody in this case, it is reality. I don’t believe in capital punishment but at the same time I am not sure I believe in townhouses and golf courses either.
I know institutions like this provide incentive for good behaviour and I assume they are designed to be an incentive to inmates who have no other incentive to behave otherside but it seems more than a little weird… in a Simpsons kind of way.
Post-Modern Onramps
Rudy is asking over at his blog, Urban Onramp, is nothing new in postmodernity over here. Reading some Hans Kung this week and he is talking about some of the same questions that we asked except he was wrestling with a premodern Roman Catholic Church moving into modernity (pre-Vatican II). While some of his answers are different, he was doing the same kind of deconstruction/reconstruction we are trying to do. I think we are all trying to do what Karl Barth called us to do, everyday and every hour we are to start again at the beginning.
Comments are back
for now. Still thinking them through.
Church doesn’t care about the poor
Why Are You Such a Loser, Dennis Kucinich? Wolf Blitzer
Note: The original post had me attributing the second quote to Jay Rosen. It was actually by someone leaving a comment. (doh!) The corrected version is below…
That’s what CNN’s Wolf Blitzer asked the candidate after the votes from New Hampshire were in. How would you answer it? This is what Jay Rosen thought of Wolf Blitzer’s question
When the press looks for its credibility problems today, it ought to look more at moments like these. To me, it’s in-credible, Blitzer’s question. The public serice validity I assign it is zero. Most of the audience, most of the time, senses the bad faith in it, whether we “like” Kucinich or not. In a catalogue of low points for the campaign press (which, done well, is an idea for a kick-ass weblog… ) this was one.
Correction: One of the commentors (not Jay) goes on to say this
As a psychologist I recall my training in doing psychotherapy. And one supervisor would often ask us if our question was for the benefit of the patient or just out of curiosity. We had to learn to analyze the question before we asked it, to consider it’s effect upon the listener, to keep in mind the purpose of the interview, and to restrain certain impulses in view of our task on behalf of the patient.Has journalism lost its mission? It sounds like there needs to be a process where reporters are subjected to the same critique process we would use to evaluate teachers, therapists, physicians, and other service personnel. We’re not going to return to a restaurant if our choice of entree is belittled. We won’t return to a physician or dentist if our physical ailment is belittled.
Sadly, much of what appears on a news program seems to be appealing to the same audience and using the same tactics as the talk-shows and reality shows, where people are deliberately humiliated or exposed as “entertainment.” I have long been bothered by the type of comedy on TV as well, but at least in this case there is a script and the people are actors.
To me the humiliation of people in an interview is another example of a civilization in decline. Rome provided entertainments where people were thrown to lions. We moderns just throw them to the media!
ABC News :: Reconsidering their coverage of the Dean Scream
by Diane Sawyer
After my interview with Dean and his wife in which I played the tape again — in fact played it to them — I noticed that on that tape he’s holding a hand-held microphone. One designed to filter out the background noise. It isolates your voice, just like it does to Charlie Gibson and me when we have big crowds in the morning. The crowds are deafening to us standing thereSo, we collected some other tapes from Dean’s speech including one from a documentary filmmaker, tapes that do carry the sound of the crowd, not just the microphone he held on stage. We also asked the reporters who were there to help us replicate what they experienced in the room.
Reena Singh, ABC News Dean campaign reporter: “What the cameras didn’t capture was the crowd.”
Garance Franke-Ruta, Senior Editor, American Prospect: “As he spoke, the audience got louder and louder and I found it somewhat difficult to hear him.”
Dean’s boisterous countdown of the upcoming primaries as we all heard it on TV was isolated, when in fact he was shouting over the roaring crowd.
And what about the scream as we all heard it? In the room, the so-called scream couldn’t really be heard at all. Again, he was yelling along with the crowd.
Neal Gabler, Senior Fellow, Lear Center USA: “When you’re talking about visuals, context is everything. So, you’ve got a situation in which you have what I’d call the televised version of reality, which is not the same as the actual reality in room. You know in a situation like this, no one takes responsibility.”
Comments from network executives:
CBS News: “Individually we may feel okay about our network, but the cumulative effect for viewers with 24-hour cable coverage is — it may have been overplayed and, in fact, a disservice to Dean and the viewers.”
– Andrew Heyward, President - CBS NewsABC News: “It’s always a danger that we’ll use good video too much.”
– David Westin, President - ABC NewsCNN: “We’ve all been wrestling with this. If we had it to do over again, we’d probably pull ourselves back.”
– Princell Hair, General Manager - CNNFox News: “It got overplayed a bit, and the public clearly thought that, too, and kept him alive for another round.”
– Roger Ailes, Chairman and CEO - Fox News
Sadly too late to blunt the damage. I am not saying this is why he lost New Hampshire but it made a large difference to his campaign.
Blogging about blogging
A lot of you have been e-mailing about suggestions for my blog. Before I answer any of those, here is a bit of background.
The day I launched my photoblog and my idea of posting a picture everyday this year, I got some feedback from someone that told me that they were all the wrong size and style for worship graphics. I thought it was a joke. Apparently it wasn’t as I got a couple more asking for them to be posted in 800 x 600 and a little less contrast. About the same time, traffic took off but Technorati links didn’t. A couple of magazines had listed my site as a place to get resources about postmodernity and a place to discuss theology and such. It brought a bunch of people who had no idea what a blog was into my site that had no idea what postmodernity was (or worse, thought they had it all figured out) didn’t know who I was, or what a blog was. They were looking for articles and graphics, and discussion lists and were horribly disappointed… and had no problem letting me know that.
What started as a hobby with less then 10 people a day in 1995 or 1996 on GeoCities (back when it was cool and less than 100,000 users) has grown. As Scott said to me this week, it has become a part time job. The e-mail becomes staggering. Between my address at theooze.com and jordoncooper.com, I downloaded over 1200 messages this morning. Anyone want to process that much e-mail, virii, and spam? I get e-mail asking for to do interviews, write articles, answer theological questions, ask advice on Christian websites, articles asking for pastoral advice, advice on how to get rid or a pastor and in one case a Bishop, and in one horrible case, a pastor who had been sexually assaulted by another pastor. Some of the theological questions run into the pages. There is also the comments, and the Instant Messenger conversations. I was having coffee with Leighton yesterday and I said, there isn’t a single person on my IM list that I don’t like but I don’t have time to talk with people all of the time. What used to be Jeb, Gloria, Dennis, Cathy, and Carrie and I on the Lakeview Church network has grown to almost 100 people on two different IM services. I told LT yesterday that I was thinking of going to AIM just to start again. He just about hit me as that would mean that he would have to have Yahoo! IM, MSN, and AIM all going at one (I wish Trillian was a little bit better built).
Lately I keep reading this phrase, “I am taking today to clear out my inbox”. Remember when Saturday’s used to be spent playing with your kids or watching hockey. Now it is dedicated to clearing your inbox. I know some people who laugh at that and think it is an overstatement. Well, I have 400 unread e-mail right now in my inbox that has made it past my spam filters and I have already spent and hour working on it. That isn’t sustainable. No wonder why people are observing that e-mail is broken.
The obvious solution people suggest is stripping my e-mail off of my website, changing my e-mail address and only give it out to people who I want to give it out too. That would work but then I would be like all of the people who don’t post their e-mail address that I pronounce anathemas upon. Many times I have tried to do an interview for TheOOZE only to be frustrated by an author without any contact information. I can totally understand it but I am not sure I want to do it.
When I talk about this site getting lamer, it is because as it has become more popular and more time consuming, it makes me think again about posting many links because of the backlash and time. I think in the end, it causes me to be much more careful in what I post. A lot of people were enraged when I doubted that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Even among Free Methodist pastors in the U.S., the e-mail was scathing and angry. In the end… well, we all saw the stories about David Kay. Funny, not too many e-mail suggesting that the names they called me may have been wrong. In the end, it showed me that there are certain things that one can’t talk about without inflaming huge and largely irrational passions. Not all people are like that but quite a few are.
Comments. I really have no idea what to do with them. I have been thinking of bringing them back as they are a great resource for me in that a lot of you post some great follow-up sites and ideas. My favorite Metafilter threads are the ones where they start off with a great link and then someone else posts another great link and by the end of the discussion you have learned a lot of great stuff. Around here I really enjoy the, “if you liked that book, you will enjoy this, this, and this”. The other side of the argument not only what Meg wrote but also the idea that comments take away from the blog in that people can hold the conversations on their own pages. Something that we used to see even a year or two ago a lot more than we see now (although what we saw with Jenny Baker’s post). I wonder if commenting is taking that away?
I don’t mind discussion in the comments. I think they are cool. The problem is the expectation that I take part in them and address all of them. I am posting between five and ten posts a day. That doesn’t take long but participating and keeping up with 35 to 70 potential conversations takes a little bit of time. The problem is that I am not the author of 80% of the content here. Despite linking and blockquoting to other posts, some people still think that I am the original author. Those posts are not doctrine or even my opinion. They are just tossed out there. People are always asking my opinion about them but in the end, the result is unless I really get into it, I found it interesting and opinion shaping and that is it.
I think Howard Dean’s (you know the guy whose campaign broke many of our hearts) weblog confused a lot of people. It was very focused and written to create a focused movement. Organizational blogs are also like that. The difference between this and a blog like Fast Company or George W. Bush’s is that this is a personal weblog. It doesn’t have an agenda. A bunch of us laughed and mocked the e-mail I got commenting that they thought this blog should be more “purpose driven” but as a personal weblog, it is anything but. My reading is diverse, my television watching is diverse (am watching a documentry on the Bush White House now), and if you look at my Bloglines feeds, my blog reading is pretty diverse as well. I am not creating a movement but am just posting some thoughts while being part of one. I think there is a huge difference that if often mixed. People are always asking me, “do you have one book or site that can explain postmodernity”. No, I haven’t found one yet. I have read Len Sweet’s stuff, Brian McLaren, Spencer Burke, Stanley Hauerwas, AKMA and stuff from Richard Florida, Dee Hock, Peter Drucker, Jane Goodall, Thomas C. Oden, Michael Moore, Eugene Peterson, Tony Campolo, Hans Kung and about 200 books a year, and 135 weblogs a morning. This is a compilation of all of those sources and many, many more that are creating my theology and worldview. It is a personal space. Not private but a reflection of my journey, not a creation of a movement.
That is part of the problem as the site grows. You can’t really turn over your personal site to a collection of moderators and editors like sites like TheOoze and Hockey Pundits. Hockey Pundits can survive without me but it seems a little foolish to keep jordoncooper.com alive without me (but that could just be ego)
The thing I like the most about this blog is that ability to introduce new ideas, posts, and people to a wider conversation. When I look at Scott Williams’ blog and see people linking to him through my blog, I think that is very cool. I want to do that more. One of the things that is coming online in a day or two will be a form that will make it easier to fire off a link to a post or a person to me. We have used it on Hockey Pundits and stole the idea from BoingBoing. If you have written a great post, or saw one and want to share it, use this form. Use it to announce the birth of your own blog. Use it to announce a brilliant link. Use it to announce a great book recommendation.
I am taking a couple of steps to allow people figure out what this place is and how to interact here. Those will be coming over the next week or so. We will what happens then.
Christian foot soldiers battle for Bush
Onward Christian/Republican soldiers, marching off to war…
Their strict moral agenda is based on literal interpretation of the bible. They are anti-abortion, against sex before marriage. They are in favour of greater local control, and lower taxes.
The idea of extending marriage licences to gay couples is particularly repugnant to them.
“Gay men do not live for a long time. They have a lot of disease… It’s a moral issue, but also a health issue,” says Jim, unconcerned that in the secular world, his views reek of homophobia.
Karen is very active in local Republican politics, and she is convinced that George W Bush is their best hope for keeping the deterioration of American society at bay.
“He’s the leader of the party that’s got the right ideas, particularly for national security, but also for some of these moral issues,” she says.
A side note, is it just me or does the BBC see all American Christians as fundementalists?
With a banner like that, who can’t resist linking to it. Yeah, okay, most of us but I have the flu so my mind is weak.
Kind of done…
Flying home later this morning. Got this started last night.
Relationships
Randall Friesen articulates some thoughts excellently. He articulates what I have not been saying clearly
Scott’s blog
http://scott.newheights.bc.ca :: link now so you can say I linked while it was still cool.
Organizational Learning and Howard Dean
From Sojo Mail
“Already, the Kay report identified dozens of weapons of mass destruction-related program activities and significant amounts of equipment that Iraq concealed from the United Nations.”
- President George W. Bush, in his State of the Union address.
“I don’t think they existed.”
- David Kay, former U.S. special adviser leading the hunt for WMDs in Iraq, on the lack of evidence of Saddam Hussein’s alleged arsenal.
Source: Newsweek
Hear that? That was my idealism getting run over by a truck
Our Cabin Weblog- Recently listened to music
- David Gray – Be Mine October 19, 2008
- David Gray – December October 19, 2008
- David Gray – Knowhere October 19, 2008
- David Gray – Real Love October 19, 2008
- David Gray – Last Boat To America October 19, 2008
- Recently additions to my library
- An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.
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