Kill Bin, Pt. 1

Did anyone else find the rather bald reference to "killing bin Laden" in the Clinton-Wallace "interview" to be a bit coarse? Bush has talked about killing him, too. I mean, I suppose, that is certainly a goal. But wouldn't a softer sell, like "dismantling Al Qaeda to prevent future terrorist activities" not only be easier on the ears, but also, perhaps, less symbolic and more effective?

Broken Back

Clinton v. Wallace

Was this the straw?

Has the Dam of Silence been breached? Did that silence prevail because the Democrats refused to stoop to the brazen, mudslinging level of the Republicans? Did Clinton's outburst allow the now ensuing commentaries—like Keith Olbermann's—to come out from behind the trees?

Again, I don't mean this to sound naïve. I'm just getting back on the political horse again after some time away (in a foreign country with its own recent political upheaval—and by "upheaval" I don't mean to trivialize a true upheaval like Thailand's, but I refer to the change in Party control in Sweden). I realize, of course, that journalists like Olbermann have been speaking against the Bush administration before now. I just wonder if such a high profile voice like Clinton's might be just the political machete the Democratic Party needs.

That poor, long-suffering camel.

Spanking the Alumnus

This from Daily Kos about Terry MacAuliffe tearing into Trinity alum Tucker Carlson about the Chris Wallace-Bill Clinton showdown. Might this be a growing trend? Have the Dems finally decided to take a stand? Can a trend or wave like this be translated (or simplified) into a meme? Read further down to Al Franken's "smackdown" on Tony Blankley of the Washington Times.

Has Coffee Run Cold?

We discussed the self-awareness aspect of blogging. Also asking, "Who's my audience?" Does my blog write me? Check out what our Coffee has to say about it:

I realize that, I haven’t really been blogging anything substantive or personal, as of late. A lot of my entries have been little more than YouTube video clips and “My Favorite Things” lists. I’ve written to appease the reading masses, which I said I’d never do… just for the sake of staying current with posts, which is wrong, wrong, wrong and so against why I do this.

Hillary Rodmeme Clinton

Interesting that the E-Wire (or Election Wire 2008) on MyDD.com has a link about Hillary's reaction to Bill's counterattack from a website calling itself "The Intersection of Faith and Life." Note the "News & Culture" links at left. Oy.

Memular Culture

Isn't pop culture just one big breeding ground for memes?

I'm reading about them on Susan Blackmore's website and she refers, like many, to Richard Dawkins' book, The Selfish Gene. He suggests “tunes, ideas, catch-phrases, clothes fashions, ways of making pots or of building arches” as examples of memes.

Look at the television show VH1's I Love The '80s. It's like a popularity contest (or memularity contest) for memes. Which ones survived? Do our references to Jim Nabors and Ruth Buzzi on Krofft Superstars' The Lost Saucer induce a case of the recognition-giggles? Should Hal Sparks be on the list of memetic geniuses because of his vast knowledge of trivia from things past? Where does one draw the line between trivia and memes? While there is a certain glee (and corresponding sickness) that goes along with the ability to remember the secrets of the Rubik's Cube (let alone its myriad permutations—remember that pyramid version?) but it is the concept and phrase of Rubik's Cube that actually survived. There is certainly an element of shared experience in meme development. Just mention Superelasticbubbleplastic to anyone over 30.

And does memory have anything to do with memes? Well, I mean, it does, of course. But the ability to memorize trivia or song lyrics is a bit different from the whittled down form of the meme. I found myself a few years ago at a Tony Awards party where Debbie—excuse me—Deborah Gibson performed right after she finished her performance as Belle in Beauty and the Beast on Broadway. Now, she did not sing anything from that early Disney foothold on the Great White Way, but instead sang what the crowd was jonesing for: Only in My Dreams. I sang along with every word. We all did. Where those lyrics were being stored in my brain, I'll never know. However, it was amusing nonetheless. But knowing the lyrics of a song from your school days when, perhaps, you were hyper-focused on popular music does not really elevate the song to meme status. Remembering the battle with Tiffany for number one pop mall diva might.

And what does all this have to say about the manipulative nature of pop culture? We might like to believe that artists just magically have success and that those Top 100 charts are a genuine reflection of the public's interest. But they aren't. They are manipulations made to generate sales—to make money, my friends. Therefore, many of these pop culture memes aren't organically generated or disseminated, because it's the ones with the financial backing to hit the widest audience (translate: advertising) who succeed.

Like the awards shows, for example. Leslie Jordan, who won an Emmy this year for his role as Beverly Leslie on Will & Grace, confessed that he (like many, many others) had taken out ads in Variety and doggedly petitioned for Emmy nominations in prior years and was actually surprised when he finally won. The viewing public would like to believe that these awards are generated to reward artistic merit. But as we saw from Shakespeare In Love's win over Saving Private Ryan years ago, Miramax's Harvey Weinstein just spent more money licking the asses of the Academy Voters.

I have spent so much time adding those links on my aunt's dial-up account that I have completely lost track of where I was going. So, to wind it up, I want to explore/discuss the inherent nature of memes. Is there a distinction between organic memes and monied memes? Would we call them poor vs. rich memes? Or free vs. expensive memes?

OK, I'm outta here.

No President Left Behind?

Do y'all think that this trend by Republican Congresspeople to turn their backs on Bush and distance themselves from his decisions is all part of a strategy to keep the Republicans in power? That this disassociation is actually disingenuous on their parts and purely in place to ride the wave of anti-Bush sentiment into the upcoming elections? That their positions are actually sanctioned by the Party itself, if not even initially suggested by it? That Bush is a lame duck, so the Party doesn't mind hanging him out to dry—all for the sake of the Party's future?

Forgive me if this sounds naïve.

My Own Meme Machine

Now, in response to The Meme Development Project, I have my own little story. A couple of months ago, I was part of a purposeful creation of a meme. We hope it will take off, especially in the upcoming elections.

In May 2006, a friend approached me to contribute to a project wherein he wanted to record the Star Spangled Banner in several different languages. This was in response to the recent uproar surrounding a Spanish-language version of the American national anthem. To quote our producer's mission statement:

We created this multi-lingual version of the Star-Spangled Banner to raise awareness of Senate Resolution 458 and House Resolution 793, which state that English is the only language in which our National Anthem should be sung or recited. This resolution was unanimously passed by the Senate and is currently before the House Judiciary Committee.

If you listen to the recording (click on the title of this post), it starts off with one line in Italian, one line in Spanish, then two lines ("whose broad stripes and brights stars," etc.) sung by yours truly in Swedish, continuing on in Bulgarian...

(in Italian)
O say, can you see, by the dawn’s early light,
(in Spanish)
What so proudly we hail by the twilight’s last gleaming?
(in Swedish)
Whose broad stripes and bright stars, through the perilous fight,
O’er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming.

Do listen to the entire track. (Lyrics are posted on the website, so you can follow along. I hope you read Tagalog.) While it was done rather quickly, so as to be put up on the Internet while these resolutions were being discussed, we had hoped it would have a future life, if immigration issues become a major theme in the November elections.

Perhaps we, as a class, will see the development of this meme in political spheres. (Wouldn't that be wild?) Perhaps not. But I did think it was an interesting attempt to spread a meme.

Memelicious

OK, so I'm reading the Wiki-memia. Wow, it's long. I just wanted to mention points of interest along the way.

Meme as Unit: The idea that a word or phrase from a speech might have a longer life in the cultural consciousness than the original speech itself. "Play it again, Sam." And, how interesting that the original phrase is actually "Play it, Sam." This might correspond to my previous post about colloquializing the not-exactly-right phrase (not intended to sound angry but ponderous, although a re-read betrayed my underlying frustration, I think). The Lady Coffee set me straight about the free-flowing hand of the blogger. Find the comment here and give it a read. She makes good points. (The capitalized "She" may even be reading right now...)

I am so easily diverted. I have come to realize that having a blog is like having what one thinks in one's own mind is a captive audience. One can write about ANYTHING for as long as one likes and not be concerned with the yawns or the diverted gaze or the pretend-emergency-phone-call. The blog can easily become a receptacle for verbal diarrhea. (Is that gross? I have images of kissing the porcelain god there. Perhaps written diarrhea is more appropriate and less corporeal. Or is it simply the unnecessary comparison of a blog with a toilet that is distasteful? Have I crossed a line with the blogging community? Is this disrespectful of the art form or medium? Or is it just a mildly entertaining metaphor?)

MAN, it is easy to go off topic. Back to "Memes as Unit": I am interested in the survival of incorrectly adopted phrases. How is it, when it is so easily verified by viewing the film, that we still quote Casablanca incorrectly, a mere 64 years later? It doesn't take much to look up Four score and seven years ago... Are we sure he didn't originally begin with "Four score and nine years ago"? What happens to these memes when the original context is forgotten? We all can quote Lincoln's Gettysburg Address but how many can go further than those "keywords"? Will there be generations quoting forgotten speeches, films, books, giving them completely new, extra-contextual meanings? Just as "could care less" has been adopted by American society at large and afforded a grammatically different meaning which matches the original phrase, I marvel at the evolution of these linguistic mutants.

OK, so after plodding through the Wikipedia article, I thought I should summarize it before I completely lose my eyesight and the ability to type. Basically, as I understand it, it goes like this: Memes that meme for the meme of meming might not meme, but those memes which are memically memerated might memally meme. Or: I meme therefore I meme. Or: Just meme it.

Yikes.

What Can Happen

From Wall Street Journal via Kottke.org 12 September 2006.

Mucho Video

Here's a NYT article about the explosion of video as a business for several of our major purveyors of Internet content. Good to read just to keep up with the changing times and mull over the future of this Internet thing.

One of "the people who were most successful last year"

So, I went, as instructed, to Brett's blog. (He's our star blogger from last year's class, I'm told.) It's definitely worth a read. But I'm not here to review his work. I am here to point your attention to an article he wrote about on 21 September 2005:

Jack Shafer's "Weasel-Words Rip My Flesh!".

Check it out. It's about vagueness in writing. Good for our work.

But ya could...

In the midst of my exploration of the blogosphere (I won't even put it in quotes, as it must be a widely accepted part of our national lexicon by now), I came across a commonly misused phrase that bites the ear that hears it.

To quote our "local blogging icon" (and please don't take this to be overly critical. I enjoyed reading her blog. This is just a common mistake),

"While the media’s fascination with Ms. Hilton shares some of the blame, those of us who could care less, are having her shoved down our throats."

Please understand that the colloquialization of "couldn't care less" into "could care less" completely destroys the logic behind the pronouncement. It changes the sentiment entirely. Or perhaps not the sentiment, per se, but most certainly the meaning.

And in so doing, we are not clearly presenting our cases. Some might claim that "everybody says that," as a weak attempt to justify the mistake. I understand the metamorphosis of language as it is regionally affected and that contributes to the vibrancy of language as a medium. It is an indicator of a living culture of English, in this case. How cool it must be to have been the inventor of English and to see that it is still in good use after all these years and that its users have taken its development into their own hands, constantly creating new words and phrases as the culture itself develops. English is far from being a dead language. (What's Latin for "blogosphere"?)

As we of the "pajama brigade" (I will use quotes here, as I did not invent the term) clutter the Information Superhighway with our deepest and darkest, might we not, at the very least, strive to employ good grammar? Might we not attempt to raise our readers by setting a good written example? Putting something down on paper, having something published, even giving a speech used to require an expertise in language. A writer would not want to print it if the piece were not perfect. Her reputation would be at stake. The phrases "put it in writing" and "written in stone" evoke a weight, a heavy weight, given to the art or act of writing. Are bloggers as concerned with these aspects of a printed piece, when the material may be thrown up on the Web in an instant, only to be replaced by a new entry the following day? Do we think before we blog?

This acceptance and continued use of linguistic mistakes fuels the notion that education is not necessarily valuable. Now, I made a leap here. I'll link it with one word: nucular. If the (claimed) President of the United States continually mispronounces a common political term, with no apologies or an explanation that "everyone in Texas says 'nucular,'" then how can we, the people, be expected to correct those wayward colloquialisms? Bush continually jokes about the way he "mangles the English language," as if this were excusable because he's the "guy you'd wanna have a beer with." Bush comes across as weak (I'll refrain from saying "dumb" or "illiterate") when he fails to use his intellect. He's not stupid. He can't be. He is just on the Dumbing Down of America train, as some rationale for the poor record on education we have in this country. By acting "like one of us," he releases Americans from the drive to become educated.

I won't go on about how I don't believe education will ever truly be addressed in this country, but will remain an election issue. By keeping us uneducated, the government can maintain power over us. If we don't know what's going on in the world, we won't know there are other ways of doing things. Fast food, beer and football keep us complacent. Oops, I said I wouldn't go on about this.

I wish we could use the incorrect form of the phrase when we say, "President Bush could care less about education in America." That would be a nice truth.

Angry Fruit

Regarding what appears to be Doug Englebart's assertion within Larry Press' article on Marshall McLuhan:

"We shape our tools and afterwards our tools shape us."

In researching a paper about THE GRAPES OF WRATH this summer, I stumbled upon a number of references to the challenges of bringing socially conscious film work to mass audiences. Previously the sole territory of the documentary, socio-political content in filmmaking had only just begun creeping into what used be "pure entertainment" with such vehicles as GONE WITH THE WIND (1939) and THE GRAPES OF WRATH (1940). This change in what was being presented to the viewing audience was much discussed in the media. The question was "who's shaping whom"? [The questions IS "Who's Zoomin' Who?" if you're Aretha—–or Katie Couric earlier in the week.] Was the changing tide in American society/consciousness influencing movie producers in their choice of subject matter? Or was the film industry affecting national sentiment? Some writers concluded at the time that the film industry was REFLECTING BACK what they perceived was on the population's collective mind. I propose that this mirror allowed the public to understand that their feelings were justified, thereby paving the way for further evolution. And perhaps TOGETHER we all moved forward.

Christopher for President!

I have begun, my friends. I have thrown my hat into the ring.