Revealing Political Rhetoric

"Politics is the struggle for existence" - Wallace Stevens, Opus Posthumous, "Adagia"

Although political rhetoric has always been charged, emotional, even brutally competitive, the language used by news outlets reveals a good deal about the way that they deal with politics. The term long-used to describe our current style of coverage - "horse-race" politics - isn't quite as accurate as it once was. I think that a more pithy name would be "gridiron politics." Take a look at some of the recent language used in a Washington Post article discussing the antics of pedophile cum congressman Mark Foley (visual pun definitely intended):

"Strategists:" these people used to be called "consultants" or "advisors."
The "strategy" of these strategists "relies on waiting for the story to die down . . . while also accusing Democrats of exploiting a personal lapse for political gain."

Bluntly stated, the pot will call the kettle black. Let's not forget that these are the same people who "exploited a personal lapse" by trying to remove a man from office for lying about a blowjob received from a consenting adult. That, by the way, is a "personal lapse." Pedophilia is not a "personal lapse." It's a goddamn felony. Play defense - maybe wait for the punt, then RAM IT DOWN THEIR THROATS! Knute Rockne would be proud.

"The impact of the Foley scandal will be felt" - Hit. Hit hard.
"local factors could amplify the scandal's destructive power" - Men, Football is war. This is getting ridiculous.

The Washington Post is not alone in its rhetorical strategy; however, as a respected publication, it does set standards for others to follow. The worst aspect of it all is this: the coverage has become so competition-oriented, with reporters struggling to frame political stories in athletic or military metaphors, and reporters in other departments beginning to adopt similar binary structures of conflict, that I'm not sure Americans could understand actual, issue-oriented news coverage anymore.
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currently on miPod - Carl Maria von Weber, Symphony no 2.2

Voter Confidence Quandary

It's time I inserted my own voice into the controversy concerning electronic voting. As an increasing number of states consider moving to electronic voting, industry-leading Diebold continues to try to quell the swelling number of studies and reports of security flaws in its equipment. Meanwhile, a number of websites, including engadget, i-am-bored.com, blackboxvoting.org, and openvotingfoundation.org have posted pages detailing methods by which the machines may be hacked. The Center for Information Technology at Princeton University, of all places, has published a full research paper detailing the massive and serious security flaws in the hardware and software (which Diebold still maintains are extremely secure) of the voting machines that will be used in 357 counties - representing ten percent of all registered voters - across the US in the coming November election.

My opinion? Electronic voting is a foolish outgrowth of what should be considered - following the dot-com crash - outdated and unfounded cyberlibertarian beliefs, more specifically:

1. Technology will efficiently and accurately solve all of our troubles.
2. The Free Market is better than governmental regulation in all cases.

To take these in reverse order: the free market cannot be relied upon to adequately secure individual human rights. The free market has a shitty record in this department because corporations - although they legally act as individuals - care only for the bottom line and pleasing shareholders. If you search Google, you'll find countless images and descriptions of child labor abuses during the Victorian era - before child labor laws: missing fingers (those tiny little bastards could remove objects from gears pretty easily), 16 hour workdays (until the Ten Hours act was passed, making it legal for 13-18 year olds to work only ten hour days), kids playing in the street in raw sewage, and more! Take a look at victorianweb's site about the subject. Hey, take a look at the good old USA, where the meat-packing industry was so corrupt that laws had to be passed against the canning and distribution of rotting meat and other disgusting practices. The free market may be great, but when deregulated, it's a bastard (and the leading cause of communism).

Technology cannot solve all of our problems. Even "secure" technology is rife with flawed security issues. No computer software is too tough to be safe from an enterprising hacker: Google "security flaws" and you'll get over 14,400,000 hits. Anything that can be programmed can be hacked. Hardware designed by human engineers can be modified by geeks nationwide.

Voting is the fundamental right of the citizen in our nation. The right to vote is too important to risk with any computerized system. Paper ballots, marked with ink (instead of punched cards) are the only means by which voters can be certain that a computer will not "miscalculate" or "accidentally delete" their votes - they can be sure that their vote is recorded accurately, at least until someone "accidentally throws away" their vote. The fact that we have to have this discussion makes me ill.
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currently on miPod - Symphony no. 3, 1st movement - Antonin Dvorak

Admirable and Rare

As often as I mention the chickenhawks running the war in Iraq, I am quite pleased to celebrate a politician who will put his money where his mouth is. The New York Times reports that Jonathan L. Paton, an incumbent Arizona Republican seeking his second two-year term in the U.S. House, will be at Ft. Benning, GA, preparing for a five-to-six month tour of duty in Iraq and - perhaps - Afghanistan [article link]. Paton, a longtime supporter of the war, is also a Lieutenant Intelligence officer in the Army Reserve.

Paton's decision to deploy is a sign of character that one does not often see in Congress, one that this Democrat is more than ready to applaud. Although five other congressmen are also reservists, congressmen are automatically placed on Standby Reserve, making it less likely that they will be called up. Paton chose to go, despite the loss of four days of campaigning in a heated race with four others seeking his seat. While on duty, Paton is allowed to hold office and remain on the ballot - as he should be - but not to campaign.

So I say to Lt. Paton: you are a fine example of the leadership that is sorely lacking in the United States Congress, and I hope that you return safely, with the legislative seat that you have earned not with words, but through your own actions. To the rest of congress, I say: more of you should have the courage of your convictions to act upon them, rather than just talk about them. The saddest fact about Lt. Paton's action is that in our current political climate, his detractors will call his actions grandstanding, a ploy to ensure re-election. This revolting statement ignores the fact that, as an Intelligence Officer, Lt. Paton is placing himself directly in harm's way, doing himself what he asks others to do.

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currently playing on miPod: Oleander, "Champion"

More Feces from the "Fart" of it All

Ohio. Lovely place. Home of the Cuyahoga River, which has caught fire no less than five times (June 1949, March 1951, November 1952, December 1951, and the "big one" of 1969) [see a picture of the 1969 fire on the NOAA.gov site]. Home, more recently, to the second great American electoral fraud scandal of the 21st century (which is how old, now? Oh, SIX YEARS). Finally, someone's called them on it. Widely covered everywhere but in the national media (with it's huge "liberal bias" and all - see my last post for more on this), it's another case of widespread disenfranchisement of voters. A team of independent investigators has turned up massive irregularities, including denial of provisional ballots - which is illegal in the United States following the passage of the Voting Rights Act - as well as "loss" of legitimately cast ballots, election returns coming in hours prior to the closing of the polls, the closing of polls with voters waiting in hours-long lines in minority districts, and more.

Responsible for this? Well, the secretary of state runs the elections. I'm sure he has no guilt in the matter, despite resisting independent investigations into the matter for over a year, until he finally caved in to a subpoena. He was going to destroy the paper ballots - per state law, they are allowed to be destroyed after two years - until he caved again when threatened with a lawsuit. Now, according to the New York Times, he's temporarily placing the destruction on hold, but that doesn't do a hell of a lot of good, at least as long as he's got the authority to lift that hold whenever he pleases. Even in Florida, they've placed the ballots from the notorious 2000 election scandal into the state archive.

At this point, I'm sure that I'll be accused of partisan raving. That's all well and good - the corporatization of media organizations made sure that a profit-seeking press would have to resort to making all news adversarial and sensational. When day after day, we read about our world through a conflict-driven lens rather than an informational one, which buffers conflict through actual in-depth discussion, I expect nothing less.

The fact remains, however, that this should not be a partisan concern. The right to cast a vote is a fundamental cornerstone of American citizenship. This is not about Democrats, Republicans, Ralph Nader, George W. Bush, or John F. Kerry. This is not about abstract interpretation of legal fine points extrapolated from overly broad amendments to our Constitution. This is about our fucking right to vote. When any group engages in tactics designed to disenfranchise the citizenry, when "widespread irregularities" and "tampering" indicate that anyone has interfered with the basic right of a citizen to cast a vote and have it count, when evidence PROVES that something is not right, every member of our society should be concerned.

One small example of the tampering? In one precinct of Miami County, the official tally recorded 550 votes cast. The official signature books and ballots indicate that 450 people voted in that precinct. This means that 122% of the votes in that precinct were counted. More disturbing? In several other counties, blank ballots were found - ballots with votes recorded that indicated no precinct of origin - which once upon a time would indicate ballot box stuffing - Tammany Hall type shit.
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currently on miPod - String Quartet no. 9, Antonin Dvorak

blogs vs. the media vs. the citizens

First, I'll state the following, which should be obvious to everyone but - apparently - is not: there is no communication, no statement, without bias. From birth, we are conditioned to see and think by our unique individual experiences. I'll give you a basic lesson in semiotics, ripped straight from Saussure's Course in General Linguistics: every utterance is composed of a chain of signs. Each of these signs is composed of a signifier (the word) and a signified (that which the word is supposed to connote). Each signifier initially holds a different meaning for the hearer - if I say the word "tree" to you, you may think of a pine, while I think of an oak - thus, chains of signifiers tend to lessen (but never erase) the lack of clarity. This is a thumbnail description, but adequate for my purposes - if you want to understand more, visit the wikipedia entry (this one's accurate enough, I've checked it out).

Anyone engaging in a communicative act must thus be able to adequately arrange his chain of signifiers to convey a meaning close enough to the thoughts coursing through his mind. Thoughts that are intended for communication must be arranged and ordered - translated - through the conscious mind. This is why we have such cliches as, "Words cannot express," "I don't have the words, " "Words alone are inadequate to ..." and so on. All utterances thus translated will have some taint of bias, of individual perception, because, after all, it is the individual perception that serves as the origin of meaning. Any attempt at objective language merely conceals bias by suppressing the appearance of interpretation: even the results of scientific experiments must be interpreted by the human experimentors.

Now to get down to the fucking point. The constant barrage of accusations of "bias" hurled around in our society is beginning to make me ill; furthermore, it's sickening our nation. Everyone is biased. Those who feel drawn to careers as reporters and analysts are not immune, they may, in fact, be even more guilty than the rest of us. Hate and invective on both sides of the political spectrum are exacerbated by and reciprocally fuel the "bias wars." Editors-in-chief of our media do not help things by assuming that accusations of bias, coming from both sides, mean that their coverage is, after all, unbiased. Think of the motto of the New York Times, coined by Adolph Ochs in the way-back-when: "All the news that's fit to print." Who exactly chooses what news is fit to print? Human beings, with human perceptions, and thus, human biases.

I know of someone who once claimed that all reporters should be round up and shot as traitors. They were letting their biases get in the way of their responsibility, he claimed, as the so-called "fourth estate" of government. Where did we get this "fourth estate" shit? By assuming that the "freedom of the press" clause in the First Amendment meant that the press, as an unbiased governmental watchdog, served as an unofficial "fourth branch" of the government. The trouble is, back when the First Amendment was penned, all newspapers were openly controlled by political parties. The American Star of Philadelphia was owned and controlled by the Democratic-Republican Party of Thomas Jefferson. The Federal Gazette was controlled by (surprise, surprise) the Federalists. The "freedom of the press" was basically a safety clause ensuring that political parties could freely organize without suppression by an opposition party in power. The expectation that the press should be unbiased didn't surface until the early twentieth century, and then only in the U. S.

Fast-forward to the rise of the blogosphere. One theory concerning the rise of the political blog in the U. S. is directly related to the "unbiased-biased media." Several observers in the U. K. write that the reason for the explosive growth in popularity of political blogs in the U. S. as opposed to the U.K. is the nature of media bias in the two countries: in the U.K., the press is openly biased, much like the early American press; thus, they don't need a pack of bloggers to point out every factual error or indication of bias, as we do.

I understand the rationale behind the political blogosphere: if a media entity claims to be unbiased, "fair and balanced," etc., then evidence to the contrary should be made public so that those responsible are held accountable. I will agree that we have a first amendment; however, in a capitalist society, we also have a concept called "truth in advertising," as well as slander and libel laws. The problem I have with the self-appointed media watchdogs is that they take it too far: in their reactions to "biased reporting," they automatically assume three points that they take as matters of fact:

1. Any and all evidence of bias is deliberately aimed as an attack upon the "victim" of the bias.
2. Any and all evidence of bias is also evidence that one political party or another is controlling the publishing medium in which the story appeared.
3. It is possible to be unbiased.

Their accusations of bias frequently cause the media to swing violently in reaction, which fuels further accusations from one side or another. This, in turn, fuels the perception of the citizenry that the media is evil and out to get them. As citizens turn from the press - which, even if biased, will give them some idea about the goings-on of the world - democratic deliberation, the supposed heart of our system of government, falters and fails. Give a current-events quiz to a young adult and see if he or she gets better than four out of ten. Then, realize that in fifteen years, their kids will be even further disconnected from the world around them - of all influences that color our perceptions, parental influence is the greatest of all.

My advice? Take it as a matter of course: not everyone will agree with your point of view. Some events will paint your candidate/elected official of choice in a bad light. Some of their actions are shitty, and need to be shared. Some of the things that the opposition does may actually benefit the nation in the long run. Above all? Realize that although everyone is "biased," not everyone is deliberately misleading you. Grow the fuck up.
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currently on miPod - Piano Concerto no. 23 II - "Adagio" - Mozart

Book Review: Richard Lanham's Economics of Attention

I wouldn't normally plug any books on this blog: I think it's somewhat stupid to advertise for someone for free. However, Richard Lanham's new book, The Economics of Attention: Style and Substance In the Age of Information (University of Chicago Press, 2006), addresses so many of the cultural quirks and rhetorical fallacies that I discuss here that I couldn't avoid it. I'll admit, I read and enjoyed his earlier work on rhetoric and the digital - his 1994 book The Electronic Word: Democracy, Technology, and the Arts was one of the texts used in a seminar I took last year - but this book takes the ideas he posited in TEW (most of which proved to be correct) and examines them twelve years later.

Lanham's book is probably one of the finest pieces of rhetorical theory and application to appear in the past five years. In the Preface, he addresses the very reason I gave for writing when this blog appeared:

"Rhetoric" has not always been a synonym for humbug. For most of Western history, it has meant the body of doctrine that teaches people how to sepak and write and, thus, act effectively in public life. Usually defined as the "art of persuasion," it might as well have been called the "economics of attention." It tells us how to allocate our central scarce resource, to invite people to attend to what we would like them to attend to. Rhetoric has been the central repository of wisdom on how we make sense of and use information since the Greeks first invented it sometime in the last millenium before Christ.

The book discusses the "information economy" from a rhetorical perspective: we live in a society in which information is so abundant, and so key to economic success, that those whose work is most attractive to consumers are those who thrive, while others fall by the wayside. The key to understanding the "information economy" is understanding the rhetorical means - visual and linguistic - by which our attention is garnered by information providers; for, as Lanham would suggest, these means are rhetorical: they are conscious decisions related to persuasive means, with all facets save audience under the absolute control of the designer.

I won't spoil the entire book for you. I will say, however, that anyone interested in rhetoric, language, or digital media should at least read this book, if not purchase it. Mine's already full of pencil marks and marginalia.
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Currently on miPod - Overture (Suite) no. 4 in D-Major, 1st mvmt., J. S. Bach