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Tuesday, February 11, 2014
Archived Blog
Monday, May 17, 2010
How to pretend to say something
As usual, the BBC is doing the best coverage of the US elections. This is a brilliant quote by Arkansas Senator Blanche Lincoln from a BBC radio piece that aired this morning. She manages to say absolutely nothing, while pretending to be simple and profound.
"You build a levee around your rice field as it floods, and then you walk that rice levee," she says. "You don't run down the levee because if you run... you bust the levee."
And what do you do when you get all the way round?
"You walk it again."
Thursday, May 13, 2010
Branding and the Ownership Society
I was trying to figure out why Justine's post and comments made me angry.
Lots of things make me angry, and not always for obvious reasons. What she says is true, you have to write about things "you are genuinely passionate about."
Authors have always done this. Shakespeare, Voltaire, Shaw, Chekhov, Pinter, Joe Orton, David Hare, Eudora Welty, Claude Brown, Kurt Vonnegut, Zora Neale Hurston... passionate, relevant, honest.
That is not a brand.
A brand is a vibe and image that are developed, usually in conjunction with an advertising agency to promote a company and it's products. It often involves
- a logo (sometimes one powerful enough to become a sigil)
- a print and television ad campaign
- a celebrity
- a slogan "Just Do It"
- sometimes a song
To say that "Corporations can't control the message anymore" is not accurate. They have a message and they are controlling it. There's a reason why the public option for healthcare isn't in the healthcare legislation, even though polls show most people in the U.S. want it.
In a recent NPR interview, small boutique publishers said the number of times you have to catch someone's attention now for them to remember you is not 3, but 9.
We are all being told now that the internet has changed everything, and it has. But are we really being honest about what is has changed? In some ways it's like the presenting the concept of not having government run health care as the "Ownership society." You don't have to deal with all that bureaucracy any more. Now you start a savings account and pay for all your own medical costs. You "own" it.
You "Own" your career and your brand and your content. But what it really means is that you (with your computer and whatever resources you can muster) are competing with huge mega-corporations for the attention of an increasingly overwhelmed public. And it's best to be realistic about what the results of this David and Goliath competition are going to be for most artists.
I have independently produced a music CD called "a raw, eclectic tour de force" by Gotham Magazine and a documentary film that won Best Documentary at the Sunscreen 2008 Film Festival and screened at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. I am proud of the work I've done, but I spent the last 2 years clearing out tens of thousands of dollars in debt, and recovering from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.
This new idea that we are the brand, the brand is us and all we have to do is put it out there and rewards will follow is naive. We are competing on a non-level playing field, and the extra collateral that indies put up is in 80 hour weeks, credit card debt, and the sometimes daily frustration that somehow we are still not measuring up.
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Private vs. Public
I've been reading a lot of information about developing a personal brand and maintaining an online presence. Like this one that embraces the branding process as an expression of one's inner soul. I think there is only so much "rebranding" a word can take before it becomes double-speak in the 1984 sense. The word brand is a part of a corporate vocabulary that has been used for decades to communicate a strong public image usually developed by a company's leadership in conjunction with an advertising agency. For people to now begin to use this word to mean "an expression of your soul" is a stretch.
For one thing, the internet is not the place where one can truly bare one's soul safely. Because prospective employers and colleagues will use my blog as a reference, I can't write for example about the dreams I had the last 2 nights about my mother, although it is something deep and speaks to issues I am wrestling with. The internet can rarely substitute for the private journal. It is a public sphere and even when it seems to be expressing honest and personal passions, how much is real, and how much is for "branding purposes?" We do so much in public we begin to lose track of what is real and what we create for the brand. Like Warren Beatty asking Madonna in "Truth or Dare" - Is it worth doing if it's not on camera?
I find an inverse relationship between how much time I spend online and how much writing/real work I actually get accomplished. I understand maintaining an online presence is a professional necessity, and yes hopefully one expresses oneself honestly, well, and on meaningful subjects. But I don't think it can be confused or substituted for the process of inner exploration and the development of a world that the writer or any artist must engage in.
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
School Board Elections are NOT BORING
Wow.
A 2 out of 3 fresh slate of candidates was elected to the Jersey City School Board last week including Carol Lester (center right in photo) who runs a charter school. The winning candidates were backed by our reform-minded city councilman Steven Fulop.
Results according to NJ.com
Sterling Waterman - 7,183 votes
Angel Valentin - 6,678 votes (incumbent)
Carol Lester - 3,988 votes
Also the teacher's budget was approved, which is a big commitment from the community considering that property taxes here are already sky high.
We'll see what they can do with limited resources, but overcoming the machine candidates and getting fresh perspectives onto the board is very impressive.
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Pilot Program
I want to put together a one-day conference to brainstorm about an interactive civics program for kids. The idea would be to get together some of the people I interviewed in the film and develop a curriculum for a short time frame - like once a week for 6 weeks. Then try the program out here in Jersey City, maybe this summer. The project could be filmed and made into a short piece to be used as a model for other schools.
The program will be called "Become Your Dream" - based on the phrase that the artist DE LA VEGA tagged all over NYC. I spoke with him, a while back and he was cool with the idea.
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Blogging Again
I voted today for 3 positions on the Jersey City School Board. It was the most depressing time I've ever voted. There is no money for the schools, and the taxes already are crazy high. I talked to a woman at the local city council office who described herself as broker than broke. People are unemployed/partially employed (that would be me) and they would normally support a raise for their teachers, but the teachers are asking for a 4% raise each year with zero inflation - and no one on the board has even seen a copy of the contract that was negotiated. Everything here in NJ seems to be done in some swapped-out deal in a deep dark back room and now the state is totally broke, and a lot of elected officials are either under indictment for something or pleading guilty to bribery and corruption charges. Meanwhile there are plenty of people at the top of the School Administration system and other government offices still making 6 figure salaries and driving mercedes. The vote was for 3 School Board positions and whether or not to ratify the contract for the teachers. If you ratify the contract the taxes go up and if you don't ratify it the teachers are devalued and either way there's going to be layoffs.
Total lose/lose scenario.
Friday, November 28, 2008
PolitiFact.com
PolitiFact.com. Cool website for factchecking.
They've got an article up now researching Hillary Clinton's foreign affairs experience that is relevant to her upcoming Secretary of State nomination.
Dick Morris' comments about her are particularly offensive,
"Clinton critics like Dick Morris, a onetime political adviser to President Bill Clinton, ridiculed her foreign agenda as little more than ceremonial fluff.
'During her international travels, there was no serious diplomacy, just a virtually endless round of meetings with women, visiting arts-and-crafts centers, watching native industries and photo opportunities for the local media,' Morris wrote recently."
As though "meetings with women" are inherently trivial. Grr.
Thursday, November 6, 2008
Fashion Slide Show - Michelle Obama
I like how she is always smiling, and radiates such warmth and energy.
And here's an article on the dress she wore on election night.
Universal Voter Registration
New York Times is reporting growing support for a federal system that would automatically register all eligible voters. This is way past due. We don't have a Department of Voter Registration in the federal government because states have authority over election issues. But we really need federal oversight, or help at least. My understanding is that most of Western Europe uses this kind of system. I spoke with a woman from the BBC who said that in England when you turn 18, you get a notice in the mail, saying your voter registration is ready, and you just have to go down and sign it. The system proposed in this article sounds even simpler, you would be registered automatically. One question I have is - what are the opportunities to register for people who for some reason get accidentally left out?
"There is also increasing support for broadly expanding voter registration rolls, possibly by having the federal government require the states to make registration automatic for all eligible voters. Supporters say universal registration could reduce registration fraud and the confusion at the polls that results when voters are purged from the rolls.
Such a plan would be costly and technologically difficult, and it could run into resistance from Republicans who have been wary of expanding registration, citing concerns about ineligible voters being added to the rolls. Some state officials say they would prefer to set registration standards themselves.
But independent experts say easier registration and voting methods would ensure that huge crowds like those on Tuesday turn out without being discouraged by the long delays experienced in many states."
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
Triumph's Advice to Voters
Here’s the cool video that Triumph made for the “Holler Back” benefit.
The music is from Corb Lund - who is in the soundtrack of the film. The track is called Expectation and the Blues. It's an awesome song.
Sunday, November 2, 2008
Saturday, October 18, 2008
Thursday, October 2, 2008
4 Swing States
Courtesy of JustOneMinute
"Karl Rove sees four battleground states for the Presidential race - Colorado, Virginia, Michigan, and Ohio."
An excerpt from Karl's Op Ed in the Wall Street Journal
"Other states will see serious competition, including Florida, Pennsylvania, Nevada, New Hampshire, Missouri and Wisconsin. But Colorado, Virginia, Michigan and Ohio are likely to be the center of the action. To win, Mr. Obama needs to pick up 18 electoral votes more than John Kerry received, meaning Mr. Obama must carry Colorado or Virginia and add another small state to his column. If Mr. McCain carries Michigan as well as Ohio, it would make Mr. Obama's Electoral College math very difficult. And if Mr. McCain can limit GOP losses to one or two small states from those won by the GOP in 2004, he'll be America's 44th president."
Monday, September 29, 2008
Why Vote? The Candidates Don't.
Politico.com reports that McCain and Obama may both skip the vote on the bailout. The article says that Obama hasn't cast a vote in the Senate since July, and McCain has skipped all votes since March. According the the voter guide prepared by Project VoteSmart Obama missed 6 of the 17, or around 30% of the votes they considered significant and McCain missed a whopping 9 of the 17 - or almost 50%.
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
2 Views of Sarah Palin
Kirsten Powers
"Since they didn't know anything about her, they started making things up. Anything that fit the caricature of a right-wing hypocrite was thrown up with, seemingly, no fact-checking.
They said she opposes contraception, when she said in a campaign debate that she is pro-contraception. They said she cut funding for pregnant teens, when she provided a massive funding hike.
They accused her of cutting funding for mentally disabled children, when she raised it 175 percent over the former administration. She was said to have been a member of the wacky Alaska Independence Party; The New York Times had to run a retraction."
Deepak Chopra
"Palin reinforces the overall message of the reactionary right, which has been in play since 1980, that social justice is liberal-radical, that minorities and immigrants, being different from “us” pure American types, can be ignored, that progressivism takes too much effort and globalism is a foreign threat. The radical right marches under the banners of “I’m all right, Jack,” and “Why change? Everything’s OK as it is.” The irony, of course, is that Gov. Palin is a woman and a reactionary at the same time. She can add mom to apple pie on her resume, while blithely reversing forty years of feminist progress. The irony is superficial; there are millions of women who stand on the side of conservatism, however obviously they are voting against their own good. The Republicans have won multiple national elections by raising shadow issues based on fear, rejection, hostility to change, and narrow-mindedness."
Friday, September 5, 2008
Both Campaigns Raking in the Dough
From Bloomberg.com:
"John McCain's campaign expects to leave the Republican National Convention with $200 million in the bank and be able to match the Democrats' spending in the next two months, an aide said.
...Obama, 47, has raised more than $400 million for his presidential campaign. Since clinching the nomination in June, he has raised about $80 million a month for his campaign and the Democratic National Committee.
His fundraising goal, if met, may mean $100 million more to spend on the campaign than the Republicans."
Imagine if the campaigns spent $50 million dollars each and the rest of the money went to teach civics in the schools. That might be a real contribution to better government.
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
A Reflection on a Potential McCain Administration
The Palin controversies point to something much more important than her daughter being pregnant. They indicate that John McCain, under pressure from social conservatives made an immensely important decision - who will be President, if he's elected, and something happens to him - in haste, and without full knowledge or preparation. The NY Times is reporting an almost nonexistant vetting of Palin.
"Representative Gail Phillips, a Republican and former speaker of the State House, said the widespread surprise in Alaska when Ms. Palin was named to the ticket made her wonder how intensively the McCain campaign had vetted her.
'I started calling around and asking, and I have not been able to find one person that was called,” Ms. Phillips said. 'I called 30 to 40 people, political leaders, business leaders, community leaders. Not one of them had heard. Alaska is a very small community, we know people all over, but I haven’t found anybody who was asked anything.' "
We've all seen in Iraq that rushed decisions made under pressure from certain segments of a president's team can have disastrous consequences.
Friday, August 29, 2008
Obama assassination plot revealed
"One of the men arrested, Nathan Johnson said the other two men, Tharin Gatrell and Shawn Robert Adolph, "had planned to kill Barack Obama...on Thursday...," which was why they were in Denver, and that "Adolph was going to shoot Obama from a high vantage point using a 22-250 rifle which had been sighted at 750 yards." According to the FBI, "Johnson was directly asked if they had come to Denver to kill Obama and he responded in the affirmative." The Denver police found in their possession two high-powered rifles with scopes, 85 rounds of ammunition, a bullet-proof vest, walkie-talkies, wigs, fake I.D.s, hotel reservations near the convention and 4.4 grams of methamphetamine, an amount, however, too small to be charged with more than simple possession. (Yet, for some reason, Colorado U.S. Attorney Troy Eid put a much greater focus on this relatively little amount of meth and their use of it than on the other apparent highly incriminating pieces of evidence obtained, including Johnson's statements). All three men have long criminal records, are suspected of having ties to white supremacist groups, and one of the men, Adolph, who was on the Weld County, Colo., sheriff department's "Most Wanted" list for burglary, larceny, aggravated motor vehicle theft and other charges, has a violent criminal history and is being held on $1 million bond for outstanding warrants."
"During U.S. Attorney of Colorado Troy Eid's peculiar press conference Tuesday night, he characterized the men as "just a bunch of meth heads," framing his question-and-answer session with reporters more like an anti-drug campaign sloganeer than a chief law enforcement official: "You know, I don't know, uh, bunch of meth heads get together, I don't know what they do, I don't get inside their brain. But we take them very seriously what they do. I have to just emphasize this is a group of people, there were a number of people, that are using meth. I don't know how many of you know meth, anyone here not know about meth? This is a really terrible drug. People do all sorts of stupid things on meth." He followed that response with: "There is no credible threat right now and there was no credible threat based on the evidence that we have to Senator Obama or anybody else related to what we know about this case." Asked what the weapons could be for (not to mention the ammo, bullet-proof vest, wigs, fake I.D.s, etc.), Eid answered only, "You know, I don't know what they were for and we'll keep looking into that." Eid went on to say, "You know, they didn't, they didn't reveal a plan. I think what you can see in the affidavit was, uh, a lot of racist rantings and a lot of dislike for the idea of Senator Obama as an African-American person of color being able to pursue that office."
Sarah Palin
From this article about the 3 women who were under consideration for the Republican VP pick, including Sarah Palin.
Sarah Palin
Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin may be nationally unknown, but in her state she is nothing short of a political phenomenon.
Palin, 44, would add youth to the GOP ticket. As governor she has shown a willingness to veto some of the state’s large capital projects, no small plus for fiscal conservatives. But it’s her personal biography, which excites social conservatives, and reformist background that might most appeal to McCain.
She’s stridently anti-abortion, and recently brought to term her fifth child — who she knew would have Down syndrome. A hunter, fisher and family woman with a rapid professional rise, Palin is a natural for Republican framing.
In 1982, Palin led her underdog high school basketball team to the state championship, earning the nickname “Sarah Barracuda.” Two years later she won the beauty pageant in her hometown of Wasilla, Alaska — and was also named “Miss Congeniality.” By her early thirties, she was the mayor of Wasilla.
In 2003, as ethics commissioner on the state's Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, she risked her rising political star by resigning her position in protest of ethical misconduct within the state’s Republican leadership as well as then-Gov. Frank Murkowski’s acceptance of that impropriety. Though this briefly made her an outcast within the party, within a year several state Republican heavyweights were reprimanded for the conduct she’d decried.
Her reputation with the party thus redeemed, Palin defeated Murkowski in the 2006 Republican primary on the way to being elected governor.
As governor, she’s continued challenging the state’s powers that be, even winning tax increases on oil companies’ profits. Her approval rating has soared as high as 90 percent, making her one of America’s most popular governors.
“Palin is becoming a star in the conservative movement, a fiscal conservative in a state that is looking like a boondoggle for pork barrel spending,” said Kellyanne Conway, a Republican pollster who specializes in women’s politics.
“She’s young, vibrant, fresh and now, and a new mother of five. She should be in the top tier,” Conway continued. “If the Republican Party wants to wrestle itself free from the perception that it is royalist and not open to putting new talent on the bench, this would be the real opportunity.”
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