"00011100000000100011" said one Senior White House official.
Some reporter-blogger-journalist-Twitterer overhears someone close to the White House saying one thing or another about health reform, then publishes it and the whole blogosphere starts hyperventilating.
Seems like there are tinier and tinier bits of information floating around the inter-webs. Parsed and re-parsed. Snippets of things beltway ring leaders say or intimate, often anonymously, from which we try and create a narrative.
Whole thoughts are rarely captured. We're down to microscopic. Pieces. Of. Thought. that get distributed and repeated every nanosecond of every minute of every day.
And they are little bits and bytes; a Hannity-style video splice from a speech President Obama once gave as a Senator three years ago, an edited quote attributed to White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, five words from Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.
Round and round they go, where they stop nobody knows.
This seems to confirm yesterday's fragment of a sound byte taken from something Marc Ambinder thought he overheard Glenn Greenwald infer from what White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs seems to have implied in answer to a question that wasn't actually asked by MSNBC White House Correspondent Chuck Todd.
Granted, it would be great if what President Obama and his cabinet said was strong unambiguous and consistent. And they definitely need to work on that.
But maybe we all need to work on taking some things that are reported--no, not some things, lots of things-- with a grain of salt.
Let's take a collective breath every now and then.
Let's take into greater consideration the motives of those that would love to misinform, misquote, and mix mash and mire otherwise simple declarative intelligent statements coming from anyone with a (D) affixed to their name for the sole purpose of creating mass hysteria. To demonize, delay and grind to a complete standstill the slightest sign of progress. To attain the merely reflexive goal of snuffing out anything that has the faint pulse of hope.
Maybe we need to do a better job of editing out the madness. Otherwise, we're really not communicating at all.
And this is all just an exercise in circulating binary code.
Seems like there are tinier and tinier bits of information floating around the inter-webs. Parsed and re-parsed. Snippets of things beltway ring leaders say or intimate, often anonymously, from which we try and create a narrative.
Whole thoughts are rarely captured. We're down to microscopic. Pieces. Of. Thought. that get distributed and repeated every nanosecond of every minute of every day.
And they are little bits and bytes; a Hannity-style video splice from a speech President Obama once gave as a Senator three years ago, an edited quote attributed to White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, five words from Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.
Round and round they go, where they stop nobody knows.
This seems to confirm yesterday's fragment of a sound byte taken from something Marc Ambinder thought he overheard Glenn Greenwald infer from what White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs seems to have implied in answer to a question that wasn't actually asked by MSNBC White House Correspondent Chuck Todd.
Granted, it would be great if what President Obama and his cabinet said was strong unambiguous and consistent. And they definitely need to work on that.
But maybe we all need to work on taking some things that are reported--no, not some things, lots of things-- with a grain of salt.
Let's take a collective breath every now and then.
Let's take into greater consideration the motives of those that would love to misinform, misquote, and mix mash and mire otherwise simple declarative intelligent statements coming from anyone with a (D) affixed to their name for the sole purpose of creating mass hysteria. To demonize, delay and grind to a complete standstill the slightest sign of progress. To attain the merely reflexive goal of snuffing out anything that has the faint pulse of hope.
Maybe we need to do a better job of editing out the madness. Otherwise, we're really not communicating at all.
And this is all just an exercise in circulating binary code.
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Gary,
This statement needs to be published 24/7:
'Maybe we need to do a better job of editing out the madness. Otherwise, we're really not communicating at all.'
I think this is something all need to do better!
Terrific post!
Thanks! Rec'd.
August 19, 2009 5:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
Second
August 19, 2009 5:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
Third
August 19, 2009 10:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
thanks Aunt Sam, you too, Johnnie (below)
I know, to a certain extent, what we write is, psychologically speaking, projection. It feels good though.
August 19, 2009 5:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
Third, fourth, and fifth. I'm very large.
August 19, 2009 8:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
114723!?!?!! I KNEW IT! We're all screwed. That doggamn Obama.
August 19, 2009 6:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
If you type in 114723 to Google, you get:
"Obama: Good for the Jews?"
Coincidence?
August 19, 2009 7:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
that is deepy funny:)
August 19, 2009 7:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
deeply. sorry.
August 19, 2009 7:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
Deepy works for me. Some words are so good they need to have definitions written for them. Remember sniglets?
August 19, 2009 8:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yes, like Butt-sects and truck nuts!
August 20, 2009 11:55 AM | Reply | Permalink
Concidence?
I Think NOT! ~8-}
August 20, 2009 1:02 AM | Reply | Permalink
"This seems to confirm yesterday's fragment of a sound byte taken from something Marc Ambinder thought he overheard Glenn Greenwald inferring from what White House Press Secretary seems to have implied in answer to a question that wasn't actually asked by MSNBC White House Correspondent Chuck Todd."
LMAO... excellent... pinned the tail on the donkey with exceptional phrasing!
Thanks, I needed that.
August 19, 2009 7:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
And if you input it into a fractal expression you get....pretty pictures.
C
August 19, 2009 7:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
ipso fracto
August 19, 2009 8:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
NOOP
(then recommended.)
August 19, 2009 8:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
It's a good thing we have only two arms...imagine what it would be to write code in octinomials?
Thanks for this so much. So much of what I hold dear is held in what you say here.
August 19, 2009 8:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
thanks amike,
I imagine we could force octopuses into slave labor camps to write octinomials day and night for us. (I might save this notion for a separate rainy day post:)
August 19, 2009 8:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
Great post.
It's incredible how malleable the collective consciousness has become.
The "nano-story" someone else on TPM was writing about recently was thinking along the same lines.
Your comparison to binary is excellent though.
Many really have become nothing but signal repeaters.
When we do nothing but "pass the meme" we're acting more like a technology than a human.
Or maybe I should say more like a wire than a processor.
Thanks!
August 19, 2009 8:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
"Or maybe I should say more like a wire than a processor."
That's very interesting. Nicely put.
August 20, 2009 12:09 AM | Reply | Permalink
I think it tends to show that some of us spend a leeeetle too much time on the net.
Take a deep breath. Go for a walk. Run over a truck tire.
=D
August 19, 2009 9:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
Sort of like we're missing the big picture by being distracted by the pixels.
August 19, 2009 9:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
...and sometimes, not even actual individual pixels. But inferred or implied pixels.
August 19, 2009 9:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
01000001010101110100010101010011010011110100110101000101!
August 20, 2009 12:08 AM | Reply | Permalink
I hear what you're saying.
August 20, 2009 12:36 AM | Reply | Permalink
I knew you were a binary kind of guy, not like those unitary guys we've seen so much of here as of late.
August 20, 2009 2:30 AM | Reply | Permalink
Ha!
Nice post Gary.
August 20, 2009 3:34 AM | Reply | Permalink
Remindes me of this article:
August 20, 2009 2:57 AM | Reply | Permalink
I'm sure you've read about neuroplasticity, how neurons and neural networks are capable of rewiring, re-organizing--as we change our thinking our brains actually change shape. And as we change our information consumption habits, there seems to be, as the article you link to suggests, a shortening of our attention spans. Which makes it all the more important to push for factual content in what we consume on the web so we don't end up spinning our wheels on every micro-byte of spin and rumor. Weeding out the madness is a skill we might want to master. Otherwise, we'll end up chewing on more than we can bite off. Sometimes that's good--after all, the internet has evolved from a place we go to consume news to an interactive community we seek out information and relationships and conversations in which we just want to shoot the breeze.
August 20, 2009 9:29 AM | Reply | Permalink
We may need a kludge to nix the subterfuge.
Since sense is often made of charade.
But the fine line makes belief.
August 20, 2009 4:32 AM | Reply | Permalink
things are getting blurry. I can hardly find that fine line. Can you?
August 20, 2009 1:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
Sorting is my main problem after it all goes into the media blender. What comes out has become interconnected and difficult to separate. I rely on my brain, such as it is, to try to see the fine lines. With neo-historical and pop-culture references, biblical analogies, blah blah blah, our minds make new connections automatically.
Sometimes I can't even remember who started some scurrilous rumor but I will remember the gist of it and it gets me down or makes me angry. But that's why I write anyway. Discernment, or sensitivity to the "lies" isn't static, but for the most part is translated for us within a reporting skill obfuscated by the money of corporate interests. All we can do is respond inside the paradigm. There is no "outside," but at least we keep expanding the universe with our words. Fact-checking is essential but still doesn't account for mass hysteria or internal reactions to catchy political phrases.
What I'm trying to say is that people react with their emotions to overwhelming amounts of dubious information. How those emotions morph into belief or make believe is beyond my ken. In my poem, I was only wishing there was a combination of software and hardware that could flag the trickery and solve our dilemma, kind of like a pre-pre lie detector, but I was only dreaming. Because who will decide?
August 20, 2009 6:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
I can't imagine a world where everyone hears something and comes away with a precisely or even vaguely common notion, feeling or reaction to what was said. That will never happen.
The best that can be hoped for is a general agreement of the majority that falls someplace in a middle range of possible interpretations.
One very big problem we have in this modern age is there are millions of people speaking at once and we all have the means of contributing to the conversation. Every voice is worthy of being heard. However, we have no means of doing that. It may never be possible. This leaves us with having a need to select persons, who we implicitly trust, to be our voice.
The process of selecting who will be our voice is of the utmost importance and is influenced in many ways. Some of these ways are to our liking, some not and some are clearly inappropriate. If this process isn't working very well we need to figure out how to change it so it does.
Right now I happen to think it isn't working very well. In support of this assertion I direct your attention to our congress and the fact that we have members who are theoretically guided by the same set of laws and the same constitution but who arrive at precisely opposite conclusions and are unable to find much to agree upon. This is not a rational result and I have to wonder why this is and how we go about obtaining a rational result.
August 20, 2009 4:50 AM | Reply | Permalink
You are so very correct. Just read lots of people right here on TPM who haven't enough attention span left to read a single WaPo article for themselves, wasting emotion on a short quote taken out of context and put through a spin cycle or two with an inflammatory inacurrate headline.
August 20, 2009 5:39 AM | Reply | Permalink
Do you want to come and take over my class when I attend the 50th anniversary of the class of 1959? On the basis of this comment alone you'd do a marvelous job.
August 20, 2009 7:30 AM | Reply | Permalink
Perfect example, other than the 'content' of the article supporting this blogger's thesis, it was a complete waste of time. Guess that's why I hadn't bother reading it.
August 20, 2009 8:51 AM | Reply | Permalink
pi
August 20, 2009 10:16 AM | Reply | Permalink
3.14145926535897932384626433 okay at what point do news stories get too tiny and insignificant to be of any value at all?
August 20, 2009 10:32 AM | Reply | Permalink
Right about here, "The President said, 'I don't think so.'" At which point the Right wing sound machine fell all over themselves reporting that the President in unable to form thoughts and it stupid. They are seeking a Constitutional amendment to bring about his ouster. People in the crowd were reported to have begun crying and tearing out there hair. One woman pleaded, "What happened to the America I love? I want my country back?"
August 20, 2009 12:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
so much unfound inference teeming with nano-corollaries that multiply and flourish in an environment starved of reason. A collective brain starved of oxygen.
August 20, 2009 12:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
The Nazi thing is a bridge too far. Here's a fresh perspective on that parallel.
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/blogs/gregorzap/2009/08/people-in-pajamas-at-the-town.php#comment-3569085
August 20, 2009 2:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
You need to repost this periodically.
Rec'd.
Great post.
August 20, 2009 2:02 PM | Reply | Permalink