Sunday, October 28, 2007
Agnew Again
How do you feel about Agnew's opinion that reporters did not give President Richard Nixon a chance to properly explain his opinions or be heard or understood?
Breton, "Freedom of Love"
Andre Breton -- the man who wrote "Freedom of Love," the piece about the poet's "with the waist of an otter" -- was the leader of a movement called the Surrealists. They felt that a lot of what matters to humans is subconscious or semi-conscious and not completely logical, so they used startling analogies to summon feelings and things that they felt were obscured by what we usually consider as logic or as common sense.
Is there conflict between human logic and human feeling, and if so, how does that work?
Some say that "human logic" is an oxymoron, but how can logic happen without a human logician?
If each of us senses separately, what is "common sense"?
Is there conflict between human logic and human feeling, and if so, how does that work?
Some say that "human logic" is an oxymoron, but how can logic happen without a human logician?
If each of us senses separately, what is "common sense"?
Dooce
In what ways does Dooce relate to kinds of media performances that are called gossipy?
Dooce herself (it's her nickname as well as the site name) has become a small-time celebrity, probably because her blogging was indiscrete enough to get her canned from her job, but also because she spills her guts online about her depression and hospitalizations, and because she gets personal about her relationship with her daughter and her husband -- all items that relate to the concerns of young and middle-aged women who raise children.
It seems to me that in some ways Dooce is very similar and in some ways very different from gossip mags and the schlock that's called entertainment news. Gossip mags like People make a lot out of celebrities' very personal lives and problems. Many people find this either predatory, trivial or both, yet very many people are fascinated by all this, including people who would rather not admit it.
If the most personal parts of our own lives are the parts we value most, in what sense is knowing about those parts of other people's lives trivial or nosy?
Now, what does this say about someone like Dooce, who's not telling us about other people's lives? (Well, alright, I reckon she has had a talk or two with her husband and has some doozies coming up with that daughter, but she's not ratting out strangers or acting like she's personally concerned with people she has never met.) Is this only a moral distinction, like a person has a right to talk about personal things they're details from that person's own life? Or if the nature of this information differs from tattle-tale reports of Ms Spears' or Ms. Hilton's recent difficulties, how does it differ?
Dooce herself (it's her nickname as well as the site name) has become a small-time celebrity, probably because her blogging was indiscrete enough to get her canned from her job, but also because she spills her guts online about her depression and hospitalizations, and because she gets personal about her relationship with her daughter and her husband -- all items that relate to the concerns of young and middle-aged women who raise children.
It seems to me that in some ways Dooce is very similar and in some ways very different from gossip mags and the schlock that's called entertainment news. Gossip mags like People make a lot out of celebrities' very personal lives and problems. Many people find this either predatory, trivial or both, yet very many people are fascinated by all this, including people who would rather not admit it.
If the most personal parts of our own lives are the parts we value most, in what sense is knowing about those parts of other people's lives trivial or nosy?
Now, what does this say about someone like Dooce, who's not telling us about other people's lives? (Well, alright, I reckon she has had a talk or two with her husband and has some doozies coming up with that daughter, but she's not ratting out strangers or acting like she's personally concerned with people she has never met.) Is this only a moral distinction, like a person has a right to talk about personal things they're details from that person's own life? Or if the nature of this information differs from tattle-tale reports of Ms Spears' or Ms. Hilton's recent difficulties, how does it differ?
Dooce
I suppose all the questions and ideas I mentioned with regard to "Yellow Wallpaper" apply to Dooce as well.
What do you think of blogs? It occurs to me that yo might feel different about different types:
What do you think of blogs? It occurs to me that yo might feel different about different types:
- The personal blog, like Dooce, in which the topic grows out of the blogger's personal life and obsessions, almost like a public diary.
- Blogs kept primarily by one person, but which deal primarily with a personal approach to some topic, like Rocinante or Insta-Pundit
- Blogs sponsored by an online journal or some other entity with its own interests, like professor's blogs or, say, Chomsky's blog on the Z-Magazine Website.
- Blogs kept by a lot of people equally, like Common Dreams.org
- This.
Yellow Wallpaper, Gilman
Perkin-Gilman published "The Yellow Wallpaper" in 1892, a few years before I thought. But a lot of current issues run under the narrative. Some have to do with gender issues, but many also have to do with self-determination in general.
The narrator's condition at the start of "Yellow Wallpaper" reminds some people of what's now called post-partum depression. In a way, it's interesting we should even have a separate term for that. Why would women become depressed after childbirth? It happens very frequently, and to women in many different circumstances.
What has made narrator so unhappy before she's even shut up in the room, before the story proper even gets started?
Some might say she has everything she can want. Lots of people were poor; she was fed. Lots of people died of disease with little or no medical treatment; she was healthy and had doctors on call to take care of her. Lots of women were and are abandoned by husbands and significant others; her husband is still there, providing. Lots of people, particularly women, are exhausted by the demands of work and childcare; she has little worries about either.
I could go on.
How does this situation relate to these situations:
What should be done about all this? Who should do it? How?
The narrator's condition at the start of "Yellow Wallpaper" reminds some people of what's now called post-partum depression. In a way, it's interesting we should even have a separate term for that. Why would women become depressed after childbirth? It happens very frequently, and to women in many different circumstances.
What has made narrator so unhappy before she's even shut up in the room, before the story proper even gets started?
Some might say she has everything she can want. Lots of people were poor; she was fed. Lots of people died of disease with little or no medical treatment; she was healthy and had doctors on call to take care of her. Lots of women were and are abandoned by husbands and significant others; her husband is still there, providing. Lots of people, particularly women, are exhausted by the demands of work and childcare; she has little worries about either.
I could go on.
How does this situation relate to these situations:
- Women with post-partum depression today
- Dooce
- The narrator's needs
- Her husband's needs
- Her child's needs
- Her servants' needs
- The needs of child laborers at the time
- The needs of poor mothers who had to work and send their young children to work
- The needs of single mothers today
- The needs of mothers who wish to have professionally satisfying careers and rich social lives, including rich family lives with their children
- The needs of young couples or singles trying to get the education society demands of them while they raise young families, and the needs of those families.
What should be done about all this? Who should do it? How?
Saturday, October 27, 2007
The Real News
The Real News is getting more material. They report differently than I anticipated they would. For one thing, I thought of it as a leftist production, mostly because Jeff Cohen recommended it. But some of the commentators bill themselves as conservatives and voice conservative liberatarian ideas that I did not expect.
All the Real News reports have faces and voices attached, and the way this happens seems very different than Fox or CNN's kind of presentation. Most news items seem to start with a report that sounds built around the traditional journalistic questions "who, what, where, why, and how." But they include or link quickly to commentary by one or another person billed as an expert. Some of these experts are known to me and are people I recognize as experts; others I have never heard of, though perhaps they are known elsewhere or to a different community.
They had a pretty startling report yesterday. One of their reporters had apparently slipped a cell phone with a camara to a Palestinian prisoner in an Israeli prison on the Sinai Peninsula. The prisoner called out commentary and shots of limp bodies strewn over each other in a pile in the prison yard, bodies that may have been shot.
The bodies and other prison scenes went by pretty fast, and I have to say I found it hard to be certain what I was looking at or what the prisoner referred to, even in translation.
I can't recall when I ever had this kind of less mediated or differently mediates information from a news article. But I wonder how you-all feel about this kind of reporting. Does it need more mediation or different mediation? Is it actually mediated more, in a sense, because commentary is available?
To what extent and in what way should this information be edited or mediated?
All the Real News reports have faces and voices attached, and the way this happens seems very different than Fox or CNN's kind of presentation. Most news items seem to start with a report that sounds built around the traditional journalistic questions "who, what, where, why, and how." But they include or link quickly to commentary by one or another person billed as an expert. Some of these experts are known to me and are people I recognize as experts; others I have never heard of, though perhaps they are known elsewhere or to a different community.
They had a pretty startling report yesterday. One of their reporters had apparently slipped a cell phone with a camara to a Palestinian prisoner in an Israeli prison on the Sinai Peninsula. The prisoner called out commentary and shots of limp bodies strewn over each other in a pile in the prison yard, bodies that may have been shot.
The bodies and other prison scenes went by pretty fast, and I have to say I found it hard to be certain what I was looking at or what the prisoner referred to, even in translation.
I can't recall when I ever had this kind of less mediated or differently mediates information from a news article. But I wonder how you-all feel about this kind of reporting. Does it need more mediation or different mediation? Is it actually mediated more, in a sense, because commentary is available?
To what extent and in what way should this information be edited or mediated?
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