yldoow's Blog

An Open Letter to the New Yorker

2008-07-14T15:00:04Z

Hello New Yorker,

I like your magazine. I like the poems, I like the short stories, I like the long news pieces, and the occasionally uproarious cartoons. Seeing your magazine also fills me with a bit of nostalgia as my friend A has been reading it religiously over his morning cup of tea since our college days.

Generally speaking, I also like satire. Voltaire is perhaps my favorite French playwright. Even so, I can't imagine what you were thinking with your most recent cover. It does not follow the conventions of satire since it is not highlighting or representing anything true, and it does not debunk, but instead underlines the pervasive and pervasively believed lies about the embattled Democratic nominee.

I assume this was not a hit job on your part since your readership will, almost to a person, be voting for Obama. Instead, it seems to be a display of the massive hubris of a certain class of smart, but tragically un-savvy American voters, as well as a profound disconnection from and misunderstanding of the way that politics and political discourse works.

In short, this is a prime example of arrogance + ignorance. A deadly equation under any circumstances, not to mention during the most important presidential campaign in recent history. I know you may have thought that in the end this equation would = wit, but I'm afraid you were wrong. Quite. Let me add my voice to the many who will seek to disabuse you of your egg-headed delusion.

Your recent cover is the editorial equivalent of accidentally shooting your unsuspecting friend in the face. Now, the entire Democratic party is along for the ride to the hospital and we'll be stuck, languishing in emergency, for the next several news cycles.

The upside is that you, dear New Yorker, will sell this issue. Yes, indeed. Not for the 18 pg. article about Obama-the-organizer that's inside -- nobody that hasn't been reading the New Yorker for years is gonna take the time for that one. Instead, it will be so that folks who have rarely been acquainted with your text-heavy layout can rip off the cover and display the pretty color picture in all it's contextual glory on their garage walls next to confederate flags or, as the splash screen that provokes a giggle on the way to the home page set to the National Review Online.

Way to go, guys!

I tell you what, with friends like these we won't even have to wait for 'the terrorists' to come get us, we can just hold up at home, go about our business, and feign surprise when a wayward, well-meaning, know-it-all cousin spazzes out in a violent orgy of geeky laughter, throws an elbow, and accidentally knocks us down the stairs.

Thanks New Yorker, for reminding us all of how practically stupid being an intellectual snob can really make you. A cautionary tale that many, obviously, need to hear before the final leg of this campaign robs us of any room for dumb-ass, mass produced gaffes like this.

Sincerely,
yldoow

When Does an Intransigent Media Narrative Become a Lie?

2008-04-28T17:04:57Z

I'm a little bit of a media analyst -- not only as a hobbyist wonk, but by training (I'm a doctoral candidate in political science at the University of Chicago). This actually makes me pretty media tolerant. Journalists have a tough job and operate under constraints that are not only institutional (about resources and time) but also social and linguistic (about common cultural understandings). Because of the constraints that journalists operate under, they organize stories with narratives. This is an artifact of language and not a failing of the news media because facts, though concrete, actually tell us very little without any context to give those facts meaning.
For example, it is a fact that in the U.S. married people are less likely to be in poverty. simple counting will tell you this -- take a look at the aggregate data and this truth is plain as day. But what does it mean? Does it mean that the act of getting married itself somehow insures against poverty? Does it mean that two people who are married are more likely to have two incomes in the household? Does it mean that people who are married are more likely to be committed to each other's well-being? Or that they are more likely to be financially creative? Are they better at networking? are they more likely to be able to call on extended family for resources? Are they simply more likely to have more people in their extended family, thereby upping their chances that somebody, somewhere is making a decent living? Or, is it that the individuals who are likely to eventually get married come from socio-economic backgrounds that are different than those who do not? Is it that those individuals who are most likely to eventually marry tend to have higher levels of education, higher incomes, higher income capacity, more stable families of origin, greater wealth (especially inherited wealth), and more access to both job training and jobs themselves due to their geographical location (away from blighted urban communities or forgotten rural outposts)?
The fact is, without additional information about context we cannot know the answers to these questions and therefore cannot know what the fact that married people are less likely to live in poverty means. However, the absence of contextual information which helps give facts meaning, not in what some see as the wishy-washy sense of insight or understanding, but at the baseline, empirical level of simple accuracy, does not stop a narrative from beginning to form around this fact.

From my perspective, the tendency for people to form narratives with limited information is, in principle, completely fine. As numerous social scientists -- sociologists, linguists, anthropologists, and even economists -- from Walter Lippmann to Pierre Bourdieu have pointed out, there is no way that humankind would be able to carry out our daily activities if every utterance and act demanded a full contextual vetting. we create narratives because it is efficient and because total knowledge is beyond the grasp of humankind.

Mass media, like every other communicative mode utilized by humankind exhibits this characteristic tendency to simplify into familiar stories. the news media gets a lot of flack for this tendency, because they purport to sell "truth," or present "just the facts," something other than a broad interpretation of a tiny sampling of events that occur across the world. But this limitation, as i said above, is impossible to avoid. The news cannot present us with the truth of the world, cannot inform us about the full contextual valence of each event, every phrase, that's not their job (it's the job of social science). However, it is the job, and moreover the democratic responsibility of the democratic press to craft, present, and change the narratives of the narrow sampling of events that they are able to cover based on an accurate account of the facts that are available by press time. When journalists and media organizations fail to take factual information into account because it does not fit a pre-existing narrative, is the point at which we begin to have a serious problem. sometimes with colossal and deadly consequences -- exhibit A, the war in Iraq.

It is for this reason that i am more than a little peeved, with the coverage that the MSM is giving the recent appearances of revered Jerimiah Wright in an interview on PBS' Bill Moyers' Journal last Friday night and a speech at the Detroit branch of the NAACP yesterday evening.

I was as dismayed as anyone else when i saw the initial snippets of sermon that were played on a continuous loop, though not because I couldn't believe *gasp* that a black preacher would say such things, but instead because he looked and sounded sort of stupid and kind of insane and what i know of Trinity United Church of Christ as a resident of Chicago involved in various progressive causes did not jive with the character in the news. Now, having seen two extended encounters with wright, I agree with Ben Smith of politco.com that Wright comes across as "a very liberal churchman" but not as either an idiot, or a hate-monger. The fact that Obama attends such a progressive church -- a church that recognizes and conducts gay marriages and pursues as a part of it's theology various causes of social justice -- might very well be a problem for Obama, but it is a very different problem than "why is Obama in the pews of a church with a bigoted pastor?" Same facts, different narrative. But in this as in many cases, on portrayal is more accurate and therefore more truthful than the other.

Now, the coverage i have seen of wright's most recent appearances does it's best to stick to the original narrative -- continuing to try to pick incendiary passages out of the context of what are, whether you agree with them are not, brilliantly crafted and delivered distillations of a particular progressive point of view. But what else should we expect from a man who has two masters degrees, a PhD and speaks 5 languages? yes, i'm talking about Wright. and I'm still talking about him when i describe a man who refused his education deferment to volunteer for the U.S. Marines at the height of the Vietnam war, staying on in the navy after his tour in the marine corps had ended to become a cardiopulmonary technician at the national naval medical center in Bethesda, Maryland.

Now, there's nothing that says that a man who has done military service and is highly educated cannot also be a wackjob, a separatist, a racist, anti-semitic, etc. but if you listen to rev. wright speak in either an interview format or in a prepared speech it is evident that this particular individual is not.

I'm not surprised that the MSM seems to be avoiding 1) changing their own narrative 2) complexity on this issue -- with the only question that they are asking being "will this be harmful to Obama?" and the only answer they are giving in uni-voiced lock-step being "yes, of course." -- but i am curious as to how long they will continue to actively mis-represent this person in the face of mounting evidence that they, in the first instance, got their story very, very wrong?

My guess is that it can and will go on indefinitely, not only are we dealing with a media narrative that, because of it's univocity is intransigent, but also real ideological differences (wright is preaching about decidedly liberal ideas) and lastly real racial misunderstanding and resentment. however, like the other political powder-kegs that Obama has walked into this primary season, there are substantive questions that could focus our attention on longstanding American challenges. questions about who we are as a nation and what we fight for when we fight for its flourishing. Questions about whether, as rev. wright asserts in his NAACP speech, "a change is gonna come" because many people are committed to the notion that "different does not mean deficient."

I am inclined because of personal disposition, my positionality as a black woman, a media analyst and a political scholar to say that these questions will remain untouched in favor of the easy narrative that's got momentum. But i also would have told you, based on all these same markers of identity and training, that Obama was not gonna win Iowa, the primary would be over by Super-Tuesday, the Clinton brand in the democratic party would be Teflon, and Hillary Clinton was the inevitable nominee.

Obviously, I and nearly everybody who is paid to have an opinion on these things, were completely wrong. It seems I've been wrong for two main reasons. on the one hand, some of the folks who are the subject of all this speculation are not acting in the usual manner. Obama has not run a traditional campaign either in organizational style or message and this uniqueness has meant that the entire primary season has been unusual. Also, according to traditional political wisdom, Rev. Wright should have been banished, muzzled, locked-down, should be inclined or made to stay out of the extremely hostile glare of media attention, but instead he is speaking out. And, strangely, not angrily, but with humor and more than a little bit of skill. This unusualness is very risky, but given the other element that has enabled the unlikely unfolding of this campaign, not stupid. That other element is the humbling reality that the American people have also shown ourselves to be full of surprises. Full of enthusiasm and attention for a political process that social scientist, politicians and pundits had amassed plenty of data to show is so unlikely and unusual as to be literally incredible -- that is, not deserving of the benefit of credulity.

But we have all been shown to be mistaken.

It is my hope that the American people will continue to surprise experts with our interest and depth, our ability to acknowledge the complexity of the world if given half a chance -- a chance that Obama keeps giving us, even and perhaps especially in unscripted and therefore dangerous moments. Will this hope be disappointed? Quite possibly. But i'd like to point out that so far, despite the supposedly learned carping of observers of various stripes, this hope has yet to prove hollow.

When Does an Intransigent Media Narrative Become a Lie?

2008-04-28T16:47:05Z

I'm a little bit of a media analyst -- not only as a hobbyist wonk, but by training (I'm a doctoral candidate in political science at the University of Chicago). This actually makes me pretty media tolerant. Journalists have a tough job and operate under constraints that are not only institutional (about resources and time) but also social and linguistic (about common cultural understandings). Because of the constraints that journalists operate under, they organize stories with narratives. This is an artifact of language and not a failing of the news media because facts, though concrete, actually tell us very little without any context to give those facts meaning.
For example, it is a fact that in the U.S. married people are less likely to be in poverty. simple counting will tell you this -- take a look at the aggregate data and this truth is plain as day. But what does it mean? Does it mean that the act of getting married itself somehow insures against poverty? Does it mean that two people who are married are more likely to have two incomes in the household? Does it mean that people who are married are more likely to be committed to each other's well-being? Or that they are more likely to be financially creative? Are they better at networking? are they more likely to be able to call on extended family for resources? Are they simply more likely to have more people in their extended family, thereby upping their chances that somebody, somewhere is making a decent living? Or, is it that the individuals who are likely to eventually get married come from socio-economic backgrounds that are different than those who do not? Is it that those individuals who are most likely to eventually marry tend to have higher levels of education, higher incomes, higher income capacity, more stable families of origin, greater wealth (especially inherited wealth), and more access to both job training and jobs themselves due to their geographical location (away from blighted urban communities or forgotten rural outposts)?
The fact is, without additional information about context we cannot know the answers to these questions and therefore cannot know what the fact that married people are less likely to live in poverty means. However, the absence of contextual information which helps give facts meaning, not in what some see as the wishy-washy sense of insight or understanding, but at the baseline, empirical level of simple accuracy, does not stop a narrative from beginning to form around this fact.

From my perspective, the tendency for people to form narratives with limited information is, in principle, completely fine. As numerous social scientists -- sociologists, linguists, anthropologists, and even economists -- from Walter Lippmann to Pierre Bourdieu have pointed out, there is no way that humankind would be able to carry out our daily activities if every utterance and act demanded a full contextual vetting. we create narratives because it is efficient and because total knowledge is beyond the grasp of humankind.

Mass media, like every other communicative mode utilized by humankind exhibits this characteristic tendency to simplify into familiar stories. the news media gets a lot of flack for this tendency, because they purport to sell "truth," or present "just the facts," something other than a broad interpretation of a tiny sampling of events that occur across the world. But this limitation, as i said above, is impossible to avoid. The news cannot present us with the truth of the world, cannot inform us about the full contextual valence of each event, every phrase, that's not their job (it's the job of social science). However, it is the job, and moreover the democratic responsibility of the democratic press to craft, present, and change the narratives of the narrow sampling of events that they are able to cover based on an accurate account of the facts that are available by press time. When journalists and media organizations fail to take factual information into account because it does not fit a pre-existing narrative, is the point at which we begin to have a serious problem. sometimes with colossal and deadly consequences -- exhibit A, the war in Iraq.

It is for this reason that i am more than a little peeved, with the coverage that the MSM is giving the recent appearances of revered Jerimiah Wright in an interview on PBS' Bill Moyers' Journal last Friday night and a speech at the detroit branch of NAACP yesterday evening.

I was as dismayed as anyone else when i saw the initial snippets of sermon that were played on a continuous loop, though not because I couldn't believe *gasp* that a black preacher would say such things, but instead because he looked and sounded sort of stupid and kind of insane and what i know of Trinity United Church of Christ as a resident of Chicago involved in various progressive causes did not jive with the character in the news. Now, having seen two extended encounters with wright, I agree with Ben Smith of politco.com that Wright comes across as "a very liberal churchman" but not as either an idiot, or a hate-monger. The fact that Obama attends such a progressive church -- a church that recognizes and conducts gay marriages and pursues as a part of it's theology various causes of social justice -- might very well be a problem for Obama, but it is a very different problem than "why is Obama in the pews of a church with a bigoted pastor?" Same facts, different narrative. But in this as in many cases, on portrayal is more accurate and therefore more truthful than the other.

Now, the coverage i have seen of wright's most recent appearances does it's best to stick to the original narrative -- continuing to try to pick incendiary passages out of the context of what are, whether you agree with them are not, brilliantly crafted and delivered distillations of a particular progressive point of view. But what else should we expect from a man who has two masters degrees, a PhD and speaks 5 languages? yes, i'm talking about wright. and i'm still talking about him when i describe a man who refused his education deferment to volunteer for the U.S. Marines at the height of the Vietnam war, staying on in the navy after his tour in the marine corps had ended to become a cardiopulmonary technician at the national naval medical center in Bethesda, Maryland.

Now, there's nothing that says that a man who has done military service and is highly educated cannot also be a wackjob, a separatist, a racist, anti-semitic, etc. but if you listen to rev. wright speak in either an interview format or in a prepared speech it is evident that this particular individual is not.

I'm not surprised that the MSM seems to be avoiding 1) changing their own narrative 2) complexity on this issue -- with the only question that they are asking being "will this be harmful to Obama?" and the only answer they are giving in uni-voiced lock-step being "yes, of course." -- but i am curious as to how long they will continue to actively mis-represent this person in the face of mounting evidence that they, in the first instance, got their story very, very wrong?

My guess is that it can and will go on indefinitely, not only are we dealing with a media narrative that, because of it's univocity is intrasigent, but also real ideological differences (wright is preaching about decidedly liberal ideas) and lastly real racial misunderstanding and resentment. however, like the other political powder-kegs that Obama has walked into this primary season, there are substantive questions that could focus our attention on longstanding American challenges. questions about who we are as a nation and what we fight for when we fight for its flourishing. Questions about whether, as rev. wright asserts in his NAACP speech, "a change is gonna come" because many people are committed to the notion that "different does not mean deficient."

I am inclined because of personal disposition, my positionality as a black woman, a media analyst and a political scholar to say that these questions will remain untouched in favor of the easy narrative that's got momentum. But i also would have told you, based on all these same markers of identity and training, that Obama was not gonna win Iowa, the primary would be over by Super-Tuesday, the Clinton brand in the democratic party would be Teflon, and Hillary Clinton was the inevitable nominee.

Obviously, I and nearly everybody who is paid to have an opinion on these things, were completely wrong. It seems I've been wrong for two main reasons. on the one hand, some of the folks who are the subject of all this speculation are not acting in the usual manner. Obama has not run a traditional campaign either in organizational style or message and this uniqueness has meant that the entire primary season has been unusual. Also, according to traditional political wisdom, Rev. Wright should have been banished, muzzled, locked-down, should be inclined or made to stay out of the extremely hostile glare of media attention, but instead he is speaking out. And, strangely, not angrily, but with humor and more than a little bit of skill. This unusualness is very risky, but given the other element that has enabled the unlikely unfolding of this campaign, not stupid. That other element is the humbling reality that the American people have also shown ourselves to be full of surprises. Full of enthusiasm and attention for a political process that social scientist, politicians and pundits had amassed plenty of data to show is so unlikely and unusual as to be literally incredible -- that is, not deserving of the benefit of credulity.

But we have all been shown to be mistaken.

It is my hope that the American people will continue to surprise experts with our interest and depth, our ability to acknowledge the complexity of the world if given half a chance -- a chance that Obama keeps giving us, even and perhaps especially in unscripted and therefore dangerous moments. Will this hope be disappointed? Quite possibly. But i'd like to point out that so far, despite the supposedly learned carping of observers of various stripes, this hope has yet to prove hollow.