Paul Slansky is frustrated that conservatives have captured the American Flag as their symbol.

The emblem of the country’s highest aspirations was mindlessly ceded to the holier-than-thou zealots who used it as a bludgeon against the less fanatical.

Here’s Slansky’s solution: Progressives should take the American Flag back by displaying it ourselves. He argues that when everyone starts wearing the flag, it will be neutralized, a la The Sneetches.

Barack Obama, who earlier took some flack for his empty lapel, is on the cover of the latest Rolling Stone with flag pin gleaming. We should follow his lead. Everyone who’s voting for Obama — and especially those who are public figures (i.e. Keith Olbermann, Jack Cafferty, Rachel Maddow) must immediately procure a flag pin and not be seen without it before November 5th. If you can’t do it with pride, do it as an act of subversion.

I understand Slansky’s frustration. I feel it myself. I often feel like a stranger in my own country, especially when xenophobes parade around while waving my flag. I understand Slansky’s strategy too, and it just might work. But there are a some principles that much bigger than the American Flag.

One of those principles is that we shouldn’t give in to thugs by agreeing we must display cheap little flags to be patriotic. Being compelled to wear those little flag pins is the first step on a slippery slope toward abject stupidity. Look, here’s a photo of Abraham Lincoln not wearing a flag pin. Here are several photos of Ronald Reagan not wearing a flag pin. Here’s a painting of George Washington not wearing a flag pin. I don’t hear any conservatives hyper-ventilating out there. Therefore, this issues of patriotism is not really about the flag. If it were, conservatives would have dug up the remains of those dead Presidents and added little plastic flags to those remains.

The flag is merely a symptom of a much bigger problem. The real problem is that too many Americans are becoming simple-minded. Americans need to start focusing on things that are truly important. Let’s show our fellow citizens some real respect by challenging them to look past those little plastic flag pins. If progressives start wearing little flag pins, then conservatives will each wear two of them, which will launch an arms race of faux patriotism. Where will it end? Fifty foot flags waving in every conservative’s front yard? Now that’s some real patriotism, eh?

Displaying the image of the American flag is not important except to simpletons and thugs. If we have learned anything over the past few years, isn’t it that wearing the flag is a cheap and therefore unreliable display of patriotism? Haven’t we seen that unpatriotic people (those who have turned the Constitution on its head for the past seven years) can easily wear a flag while damaging the United States? It’s easier for thugs and simpletons to spy on their fellow citizens or to waterboard their perceived enemies while wearing little flag pins than it would be for them to really honor the Constitution.

Isn’t this also what Zahavi’s work has clearly demonstrated, that signals are not reliable unless expensive? Shouldn’t we be paying much more attention to expensive signals of patriotism? Shouldn’t we be looking for those who honor the Constitution through their sustained intelligent efforts, especially when it isn’t convenient for them to do so? Working hard to abide by the principles of the Constitution would be a reliable signal of patriotism. Such reliable displays (e.g., taking steps to stop torture and to return control of the public airwaves to the public) leave the multitudes of modern day fake patriots in the dust. People wearing little flag pins is the functional equivalent of turtles wearing little signs on their shells that say “I’m fast.”

If some wizard stole every image of the American flag, we could still have a great country. We could even change the flag into something else (e.g., a triangular cloth flag emblazoned with the image of the moon) and we could still have a great country.

“Where did that old stars and stripes go?” someone might then ask.

“We changed it into a triangle-shaped flag with picture of the moon,” we might respond. “We found that the traditional American Flag was turning into a mere fetish for too many fake patriots. We’ve got a new flag now and we’re striving to make the United States even better than it was before. For example, we have publicly financed our elections to almost eliminate the corrupt influence of corporate money on politics.”

“But you couldn’t possibly be a real American –you don’t even wear a flag pin.”

“Actually, we focus on our democracy rather than our flag.”

The American Flag is only a symbol of all the things that many of us collectively strive to be. The American Flag is only important because we’ve agreed that it represents certain things. To think otherwise–that the American flag is something intrinsically important–is to commit the sin of reification. People who reify symbols are fundamentalists. Let’s not be fundamentalists.

I can think of a better way of approaching this problem of flag-waving Neocons than by playing their game. How about showing the Neocons (and the timid, the thugs and the simpletons) that we can run this country in a thoughtful and efficient way, in accordance with our proud history and our great Constitution, without pretending that we’re doing a better job simply by wearing plastic flag pins.

Actions speak louder than little flag pins and all thoughtful citizens already know this.

Today we biked over to see the 2½ hour long gay pride parade. “You’re here, you’re queer, we’re used to it.” About 40,000 other people came to see the parade along the edge of my neighborhood today.

You can see the crowds looking down Grand Boulevard. Many people were festively dressed. There were many couples of every gender combination, and many pets and some children.

See Mayor Slay at the head of the Gay Pride parade, waving under a mural of Jesus on the Messiah Lutheran school.

Did you ever notice the yellow lilies in the median on Grand? Here, the throng standing on the southbound side watch the bees in the northbound lanes.

And it is no surprise to have a heavily cheered and well attended block of Obama supporters in this parade.

Yes, there were beads, beads, beads!

And the scattered showers failed to scatter the crowds:

Even unsheltered riders in the parade were undeterred by the rain:

And the rain passed, and a good time was had by all:

And after the parade, there were the stage shows and the booths. Food, drinks, finance, churches, travel, home improvement, wearables, and more.

It was a colorful day in one of our landmark parks, this 28^th annual Gay Pride Festival in Saint Louis, Missouri. On the eastern edge of this “red state”.

It’s difficult to watch hecklers, even when you agree with them. On a superficial level they are rude. By interrupting formal speeches they are preventing the officially designated speaker from delivering his or her message.

But what alternatives do we have when modern-day powerful politicians carefully exclude people who disagree with the speaker? Here’s the modern formula for political mind-control:

1.    Inept/corrupt politician talks to a large audience; and
2.     Audience warmly applauds the long stream of BS.; and
3.    There is no hint of any dissent.

This combination has worked wonders for George W. Bush.  Time and time again, he speaks only to a pre-filtered and therefore friendly audience that, in reality, represents only 20% of America.   And consider that Bush almost always speaks before private audiences, where dissenters can be excluded even more easily.   When Bush dares to stray out in front of an audience that he has not hand-picked, he gets roundly booed.   John McCain is now picking up where Bush left off by giving most of his speeches before highly screened audiences.

I’d like to take this moment to appreciate the efforts of at least some hecklers.   First of all, take a look at this video of John McCain being heckled at the recent conference of the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials.  The hecklers were accusing McCain of being a war criminal.  Admittedly, these are harsh words, truly.  And, again, this is a rude display.  But there are good reasons to think that anyone supporting military action in Iraq did so illegally and that these illegal acts have caused hundreds of thousands of people to die and millions of people to be permanently displaced from their homes.  Hence, the accusation “war criminal.”

Consider what happens at events where there are no hecklers while McCain touts his war-monger ideas.  Consider, first, that humans are a species of animals that run in herds. We are emotionally attracted to people who appear to be liked by lots of other people.  Consider, also, that polite silence appears to constitute approval.  When ideas are stated repeatedly yet unopposed, we see them as even more credible than they are.

And here is a point that is critically important:  when even a single member of a group speaks up in dissent, it makes it much less likely that an audience member will feel pressured to fall in line with the other members of the group. This effect was thoroughly demonstrated in the 1950’s through a series of experiments by social scientist Solomon Asch.

Excluding potential audience members, a trick at which conservatives excel, works a fraud on everyone attending the speech and everyone viewing it later on a video.  What else would you assume when a huge audience graciously listened while McCain promoted war-mongering?  We presume that audiences constitute a cross-section of the public at large.  This fraud is further perpetuated when we are not also shown videos of the numerous techniques used by political operatives to pre-filter an audience to make sure that the audience was thoroughly friendly?

Finally, notice how the television commentator framed the people protesting McCain in the above video. Perhaps “protester” would be the most neutral word for someone who shouted words of protest at a war-monger who tried to exclude people of dissenting viewpoints from his audience.   Instead, the commentator used the word “heckler,” a word that suggests incorrectness, and it suggests that most of the people who sat quietly agreed with McCain’s speech.

For the grand finale, of course, the “heckler” is usually escorted off the stage by law enforcement officials, suggesting that the heckler is a law-breaker, even when the heckler is often bravely and patriotically making sure that we don’t fall prey to the illusion of the “thoroughly happy audience.”

Too bad we can’t heckle the corporate broadcast media.  How different things might be if someone could pop up next to a television news desk and yell a few words of dissent . . .

Here’s a terrific article by Tim Karr of Free Press.  Why not exert some intelligent political will and make certain that blistering high-speed broadband is available to anyone who wants it at a reasonable price?   Karr’s article comes with some disturbing statistics:

Access to broadband today is held in the grip of the cable and phone cartel. This duopoly controls access for more than 98 percent of online American homes. And it’s the main reason why American pay far more for much slower speeds than what’s available in the rest of the developed world.

It has put us at a tremendous disadvantage - one that has been widely documented. But what’s alarming is new information about the demographics of access - the so-called “digital divide.” According to new analysis by Free Press (my employer), only 35 percent of U.S. homes with less than $50,000 in annual income have a high-speed Internet connection.

Not having access to broadband means that one is left out of the national conversation.   And with Web 2.0, it has become a two-way conversation for those of all of us who really care.  As Amy Goodman often says, that conversation should involved everyone in the community–she imagines it as a big kitchen table, where everyone has a fair opportunity to have a seat and have a say.   That’s not how things are turning out, and there’s no reason for not doing better, at least for those of us who believe that actually doing something, rather than waiting for the “free market” to take care of everything important.  Consider Lawrence Lessig’s comment on the free market:

“What’s bizarre about where we are in the history of building infrastructure is that this is the first time we have tried to undertake the building of fundamental social infrastructure against the background of a Neanderthal philosophy, which is that you don’t need government to do anything.

“That Neanderthal philosophy has governed for about the last eight years, and it has allowed us to slide from a leader in this field to an abysmal position. And it’s about time when people recognize that of course the private sector has a role, a central role, maybe the most important role, but it’s never enough.

Karr makes it clear that making reasonably priced broadband available will make the U.S. stronger, smarter and more efficient.   With every passing month, it is also becoming more of a moral issue.

What happens when the executive branch is allowed to operate in secrecy and without constraint? This was answered in 1976, by the United States Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, chaired by Senator Frank Church:

The natural tendency of Government is toward abuse of power. Men entrusted with power, even those aware of its dangers, tend, particularly when pressured, to slight liberty. Our constitutional system guards against this tendency. It establishes many different checks upon power. It is those wise restraints which ‘keep men free. In the field of intelligence those restraints have too often been ignored.

The three main departures in the intelligence field from the constitutional plan for controlling abuse of power have been: (a) Excessive Executive Power.

In a sense the growth of domestic intelligence activities mirrored the growth of presidential power generally. But more than any other activity, more even than exercise of the war power, intelligence activities have been left to the control of the Executive.

For decades Congress and the courts as well as the press and the public have accepted the notion that the control of intelligence activities was the exclusive prerogative of the Chief Executive and his surrogates. The exercise of this power was not questioned or even inquired into by outsiders. Indeed, at times the power was seen as flowing not from the law, but as inherent, in the Presidency.

Whatever the theory, the fact was that intelligence activities were essentially exempted from the normal system of checks and balances. Such Executive power, not founded in law or checked by Congress or the courts, contained the seeds of abuse and its growth was to be expected.

(b) Excessive Secrecy.

Abuse thrives on secrecy. Obviously, public disclosure, of matters such as the names of intelligence agents or the technological details of collection methods is inappropriate. But in the field of intelligence, secrecy has been extended to inhibit review of the basic programs and practices themselves.

Those within the Executive branch and the Congress who would exercise their responsibilities wisely must be fully informed. The American public, as well, should know enough about intelligence activities to be able to apply its good sense to the underlying issues of policy and morality.

Knowledge is the key to control. Secrecy should no longer be allowed to shield the existence of constitutional, legal and moral problems from the scrutiny of all three branches of government or from the American people themselves.

(c) Avoidance of the Rule of Law.

Lawlessness by Government breeds corrosive cynicism among the people and erodes the trust upon which government depends.

Here, there is no sovereign who stands above the law. Each of us, from presidents to the most disadvantaged citizen, must obey the law. As intelligence operations developed, however, rationalizations were fashioned to immunize them from the restraints of the Bill of Rights and the specific prohibitions of the criminal code. The experience of our investigation leads us to conclude that such rationalizations are a dangerous delusion.

As you can see, the Committee pointed its finger at the government, the public and the press.  Attitudes needed to be changed all around.

This is yet another parallel between modern times and the the Vietnam War era (I realize that that war had ceased by 1976).  Many other parallels were detailed by the movie “War Made Easy.”

The above passage is analyzed in more detail at Common Dreams.

Hardly a day goes by when you don’t hear yet another Republican claiming that the “surge” is working in Iraq. And see here and here.

If the surge is really working, let’s see daily videotape showing Western reporters strolling freely through Baghdad’s neighborhoods, outside of the Green Zone, chatting with Iraqis.   Better yet, let’s celebrate the “surge” by having a parade in downtown Baghdad. Perhaps George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Condi Rice and John McCain can lead the parade.  Let’s count the number of McDonald’s in Iraq.  Let’s consider the number of Westerners going to Iraq for vacations.  Consider, also, that strong-arming the Iraqi government to build 58 permanent military bases in Iraq. That’s our long term “solution.”  Isn’t that like saying domestic violence is a “solution” in an abusive relationship?

More important, let’s count the number of Iraqis who have been permanently displaced.  If the surge is working, why are so many Iraqis still living in places like Syria?  Consider this report from DemocracyNow:

Refugees International estimates that up to five million Iraqis have been displaced since 2003. That’s one-in-five Iraqis who have had to flee their homes since the US-led invasion of their country. Two-and-a-half million Iraqis have been internally displaced, and an equal number have managed to leave the country to Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Turkey, the Gulf States and, most of all, Syria, which hosts 1.5 million Iraqis.

Consider, too, how the “surge” is working. You won’t see this in the American corporate press.  You’ll hear a host of lies, including lies from the mouth of John McCain.

American citizens are now being conned about the “surge” just like they were conned about WMD.  Here’s the truth about the “surge.”  If we dared to freely publish photos from Iraq for only one week, that “war” would be over and the American soldiers would be on their way home.

The “bipartisan” telecom immunity bill is about to be made law.  It contains a specific provision granting amnesty to the telecoms which has been titled “”Protection of Persons Assisting the Government.”  How bad is this new law?  That depends on how badly you prefer that Courts be open and accessible to citizens.  You see, the proposed law provides for secret dismissals of lawsuits.

Glenn Greenwald has written a scathing review of the bill at Salon:

Perhaps the most repellent part of this bill (though that’s obviously a close competition) is 802(c) of the telecom amnesty section. That says that the Attorney General can declare that the documents he submits to the court in order to get these lawsuits dismissed are secret, and once he declares that, then: (a) the plaintiffs and their lawyers won’t ever see the documents and (b) the court is barred from referencing them in any way when it dismisses the lawsuit. All the court can do is issue an order saying that the lawsuits are dismissed, but it is barred from saying why they’re being dismissed or what the basis is for the dismissal.

So basically, one day in the near future, we’re all going to learn that one of our federal courts dismissed all of the lawsuits against the telecoms. But we’re never going to be able to know why the lawsuits were dismissed or what documents were given by the Government to force the court to dismiss the lawsuits. Not only won’t we, the public, know that, neither will the plaintiffs’ lawyers. Nobody will know except the Judge and the Government because it will all be shrouded in compelled secrecy, and the Judge will be barred by this law from describing or even referencing the grounds for dismissal in any way. Freedom is on the march.

Unbelievable . . .  Not Greenwald who is an astute and highly credible media critic.  I’m reacting to the proposed law.

I highly recommend visiting Salon for a review of Greenwald’s entire article.

I was reading my daily dose of blood pressure spike (creationism news) when I found this tidbit on TheConservativeVoice.com:

It is my strongly held belief as a conservative, pro-life, pro-traditional marriage, pro-family, pro-creationism vs Darwinian Evolution believer that there is no way in God^‘s green earth that that old white guy, who would make history as the oldest first term President if he proves me wrong, can beat the young, inexperienced, eloquent and charismatic black man named Barrack Obama if his life depended on it, and it may because 72 year olds drop dead everyday of much less rigorous stress than running for President.

I’ve said before on this forum that it seemed that the Republicans felt that they had a chance against Hillary, but feared to run against Obama.

He continues:

African Americans who do not care about his socialist, anti-baby, pro-Gay/Lesbian/Bisexual/Transgender agenda will come out with great hope and pride for the first African American who has aspired to become the most powerful man in the world. And, if not for my social and religious convictions, I would not blame them one bit for voting for one of their own. America could withstand eight years of Bill Clinton and we can withstand four of Barrack Obama.

Personally, I think we could withstand a term or two of return to fiscal responsibility, getting the government back out of the bedroom, and removing White House obstruction to sciences.

Can We? Yes we can!

You read that right! No reader of Dangerous Intersection, radical materialist or hard-bitten skeptic believes in science. To say otherwise is to give a false impression of what science actually is. Science is not something in which a person believes or does not believe. Science is not a belief system; it has no holy screeds or sacred tenets. It is merely a tool, a method of gleaning knowledge, and the language used in reference to it should reflect this.

What on earth am I ranting about? Well, it goes back a few years to the Discovery Institute, and spans all the way to the present with Ben Stein’s film Expelled. The intelligent design/evolution debate has become quite the pop topic, and hence, the endless battle of science vs. religion has come into everyday discussion as well. Everyday people in normal daily settings run through these issues, turning any public place into a potential battleground.

I’ve heard a lot of the less experienced science advocates say things about science that frankly aren’t accurate. While these people mean very well, they fail to frame their debates properly, and the content of the discussion suffers for it. Since science vs. religion has become as much a layman’s debate as an expert’s one, I think the time has come for those of us on the science side of things to agree on the language we should use.

I have no expertise in science, religion or philosophy, I have no refined understanding of the psychology of persuasion, and I am no orator. However, I still have the gall to make a few semantic suggestions for any person who plans to engage in a lengthy discussion on evolution, intelligent design, or the general clash between religion and science. My tips, and their justifications, are as follows: (more…)

I was leaving comments on other blogs this morning, and I had a thought. The Blogosphere is not just a platform for pundits, but a release valve for all the potential unabombers and other crazies. So here I am: One of the crazies. As one who comments much more often than I post, I had to feel that the backbone of the blog world is really the commentators.

That’s it. A pun from a cell-phone sel-fportrait.

I know that pre-written store-bought greeting cards are not the cause of America’s current downfall, but they are a symptom of America’s cultural, moral and educational decline. Really. I know that many of you are thinking that I’m way off base here, but let me give you a few examples based on today’s trip to my local grocery store (the name of the St. Louis grocery chain is “Schnucks”).

First of all, I just don’t get why we need to segregate “boy” cards from “girl” cards. Take a look at these cards for boys and you won’t be surprised at the themes. There are lots of superhero cards and other action/adventure characters and themes.

Now compare the “boys” cards to the “girls” cards, where you’ll find princesses and other characters much more concerned about their looks than with their accomplishments.

As if girls don’t enjoy superhero stories (my daughters certainly do) or anything other than trying to look pretty. This greeting card sexual segregation reminds me of this recent post on America’s rampant sexualization of young girls.

There are also cards for men and cards for women, of course, and they too are segregated. Why do we use greeting cards to instill a message into our girls and women that they should be interested in their own looks and body image to the exclusion of their accomplishments? This destructive message should be stopped immediately, especially when so many girls are getting messed up by this message, which causes them to stop taking their education seriously when they hit puberty.

There are other problems on the greeting card aisle. Consider the sympathy cards.

If someone close to me were to die, the last thing in the world that I would want from anybody would be a store-bought greeting card with a campy message.

Sending a card instead of writing me a note (or in e-mail) tells me that you would rather spend four dollars to let a stranger write a message then taking the time to communicate something meaningful. I suspect that many people will think that greeting cards are perfectly OK because many customers are not professional writers and they are, therefore, and incapable of precisely expressing themselves on emotional occasions. I think this argument is absolute garbage. The purpose of a note should be to take some time to attempt to express one’s own thoughts. If people are unwilling to take the time to write notes of their own, it’s better that they said nothing at all.  Just send a $4.00 gift certificate. It will accomplish as much or more. (more…)

Apparently the Pacific Justice Institute is suing a couple of Berkeley professors for putting up a website that explains evolution. The PJI apparently sues anyone who might constrain Christian evangelism in America, including in public schools. I read about this current suit here, on CitizenLink.org.

CitizenLink is a newsletter for Focus on the Family, a non-profit political action group for Pro-Life, evangelical Christian, and/or Young Earth education policies, but with redeeming social action programs. As long as they don’t mention candidates by name, they don’t have to pay taxes.

The legal claim is that evolution is a faith-based idea, and that the professors used Federal Grant money (National Science Foundation grant no. 0096613) as part of the funds needed to develop the site. Apparently the site disregards Creationist sources and ideology, and as such is religiously biased and violates the separation clause.

www.UnderstandingEvolution.com is full of references and citations, explanations, illustrations, and teaching guides to try to lead one to an understanding of many facets of what evolution is, and how it affects, well, everything. Topics include easy to follow answers for skeptics, like “How does evolution impact my life?”, “What is the evidence for evolution? ” and “What is the history of evolutionary theory?”. There are guides for teachers at all levels.

As such, this site has been a thorn in the side of Intelligent Design since 2004. Let’s see how much mainstream press this current nuisance suit attracts.

In my most recent post on Dangerous Intersection, as well as others previously, I’ve written about the many ways in which the traditional media has willfully discarded its obligation to inform the public. And so far, as the 2008 presidential election gets into full swing, there are no signs of improvement. If anything, the traditional media has sunk lower than ever before, thrusting legitimate stories aside to pursue trivial distractions and shallow and meaningless issues of “character”.

So, are we as a nation doomed to become more and more ill-informed? Is our standing in the world only going to get worse while the populace is lulled into distraction by the TV screen? Is there no reason for hope?

Well, actually, there is. But it’s not the media is improving. Rather, it’s that Americans are increasingly recognizing its failings and abandoning it in huge numbers (HT, as always, to Glenn Greenwald).

Those trend lines tell an alarming story. The combined average audience for the big-three evening newscasts in 1980 was about 53 million viewers. By the fall of 2006, when Couric was getting ready to make the jump from NBC’s “Today” show, the three national evening newscasts had a combined audience of about 27 million viewers.

How’s that for a trend line? The evening newscasts lost about half of their audience over 26 years. They lost viewers at a rate of 1 million a year, and they’re still losing them. Last week, according to numbers Nielsen released Tuesday, the combined audience was 21.5 million.

The rise of blogs and the Internet has undoubtedly accelerated the decline, but it is not the sole cause. As the article says, this downturn began as long ago as the 1980s. According to the Project for Excellence in Journalism, people’s declining opinions of the news industry are partly the cause:

As we have noted in other reports,since the early 1980s, the public has come to view the news media as less professional, less accurate, less caring, less moral and more inclined to cover up rather than correct mistakes.

…The number of Americans with a favorable view of the press, for instance, dropped markedly in 2006, from 59% in February, to 48% in July. The metric can be volatile, but that was still one of the lower marks over the course of a decade.

And in one of the most basic yardsticks of public attitudes, the number of Americans who believe most or all of what news organizations tell them, there were continued declines. Virtually every news outlet saw its number fall in 2006.

With continuing stories like the revelation that the news channels hired bought-and-paid for Pentagon agents to spread favorable propaganda about the Iraq war in the guise of an “independent voice” - and those same channels’ ongoing and shocking blackout of this story - it’s not hard to understand why the American public is increasingly abandoning them and turning to other sources, such as the Internet, for news. And the sooner the better, I say.

Granted, on the Internet, it’s easy to find sources of information that are more fiercely partisan and agenda-driven than even Fox News, and whose disinterest in the facts is even worse than the traditional media’s. But the great virtue of the Internet, as former Vice President Al Gore said in The Assault on Reason, is that it’s a medium where the barriers to entry are low. Anyone can participate, and this makes it very easy to find a broad spectrum of differing views. Thus, in a key sense, the news from the Internet is balanced in a way that news from traditional sources can never be. (Of course, I’m preaching to the choir here, aren’t I?)

This productive cacophony of views is a far better analogue to the marketplace of ideas than the traditional media, where a few unaccountable individuals have enormous power to shape the focus, tone and direction of coverage that informs (or fails to inform) millions of people. In the increasingly diverse media landscape of the future, it will be far more difficult for meddling politicians and wealthy corporations to manipulate public opinion to their advantage.

What are we to make of this latest flap over a teen icon revealing herself as a potentially sexual being?

I was only dimly aware of Hannah Montana till the Vanity Fair scandal (if scandal is the word). Now it seems I can’t get away from her, which is, of course, the goal of marketing—to make something inescapable for the general public. There are elements of the incident that require less froth and more examination. The accusations of “whose idea was it in the first place and how was Mylie Cyrus manipulated?” are loud and in many ways naive.

First off, Hannah Montana is a Disney product. I don’t think we’re yet quite comfortable with the idea of a person—even a fictional one—being a “product” like a box of soap or a car, but this is indeed what the character is. Designed, engineered, and road tested, Hannah Montana is a money-making machine for Disney and the various participants in the show and franchise.

Pause for a moment and consider: Disney.

It is difficult to imagine a marketing machine that is better at what it does. Which means the chances of something being done with one of its properties that it (a) doesn’t know about and (b) doesn’t approve are next to zero. Especially when you add to that:

Vanity Fair.

Big magazine, famous magazine, a magazine people in show business lust to get into. In the vernacular, Lot A Bank there.

So we’re talking about two major corporate entities, huge public presence, who are involved—without a doubt contractually—in a presentation of a property. Again, the oddness of talking about a person as property is unsettling, but this is a show business idiom quite common. Agencies discuss “properties” all the time and they’re talking about musicians, actors, artists.

Throw into the mix Annie Liebowitz, who is arguably iconic herself. From the early days at Rolling Stone up through the present, Annie is a public figure. Meaning that, especially “in the business”, everyone knows what she does. She would also have been involved in the arrangements between Disney and Vanity Fair.

So far so good. Everyone knew what was going on.

Now, the photoshoot was crowded. Lots of people there. Including Mylie Cyrus’s parents. Not sure who mom is, but dad—Billie Ray—is an entertainment industry insider. He’s been around a long time. He has survived quite well. He knows the ropes. He is not a “stage dad” in the sense of not knowing what’s going on.

I’ve laid this out at some length to show how utterly unlikely it is that the photographs of 15-year-old Mylie in a pose more appropriate to a 20-something were an accident. That no one knew what was happening. It’s not like this was done in a basement studio, digitally, and the shots immediately posted to the web. Disney would have had to clear the shots. I cannot imagine it wasn’t in the contract that someone at Disney would get to look at them and say, one way or the other, whether they could be published. Of the two, Disney is by far the bigger gorilla—Vanity Fair was not likely to hold them over a barrel.

So what then is the Big Deal? And, if this is so inappropriate, why was it allowed?

Control over a teen-age superstar is doable. Look at Leann Rimes. Her burgeoning sexuality, while certain present and eminently marketable, was not “unleashed” till she was over 18. Her parents kept a handle on it. We can doubtless find other examples. Reese Witherspoon. Jody Foster. Helen Hunt. Even earlier, Annette Funicello.

(Though Annette is a curiosity—she never really stopped being a Mousketeer. Her emergent sexuality—blatant and impossible to get around—somehow failed to take her into “adult” consideration. Management may have been too tight and she remained—popularly—the girl on the beach who never went past the first kiss. This happens—actresses who have the audacity to “grow up” and find themselves trapped in an adolescent image. Sally Fields is a case in point. She went from Gidget to The Flying Nun, completely bypassing a mature sexual phase, and nearly remained stuck with it. She made a minor film—I forget the title—in which she appeared nude. In an interview, she admitted that the decision to do so was calculated to shatter the Gidget/Flying Nun image so she could then be taken seriously as an adult actress. The tactic might be questionable to some, but the result was a critically-successful career.)

Managing the property is the whole game here. And Hollywood (and Nashville, etc) have a problem with starlets like Mylie. Once they establish them as an icon for preteens to teens—what is called “tweens”—what do you do when they grow up and start acting like women?

Age here isn’t the issue. Let’s face it, sexuality strikes in the teen years, some sooner than others, and the limelight of a successful career seems somehow to advance the timetable. We are all-too-familiar with the meltdowns in instances where the transition is, well, bungled—Lindsey Lohan and Britney Speers are the poster girls of crash and burn. (more…)

Yall might could be tiring of my babbling on about Bible study in science classes. But I shall continue. According to this article, Louisiana has, and Florida still may pass amendments to their education codes to give free reign to teachers who choose to use texts other than (and conflicting with) science books to teach biology in science classes. Although these remarkably similar bills don’t actually mention the Bible, Creationism, nor their apparent origin from the Discovery Institute, their intent is clear.

I’ve been following this issue for a while (here’s one of my earlier posts), and continue to find it disturbing.

The main argument they make is that nothing is “proven” in science. Dedicated and well educated scholars have been trying diligently for over 200 years to disprove evolution. Yes, the battle predates the birth of Chas. Darwin! So far, no luck. Every piece of evidence and each new tool reinforces this theory. But with shrewd political action, the anti-science crowd could win enough popular support to hide the actual science from American kids. Theocracy, here we come!

If Pope Urban VIII (nee Cardinal Mafeo Barberini) had the political clout of American Fundamentalists, the Copernican/Galilean theory of heliocentrism might still be challenged in schools.

I have been anticipating the FCC switch from analog to digital for several years. The original plan was to have the final demise of NTSC (”analog”) broadcast in 2006. Now, it will really happen. The change that they averted when they went to color is finally here. Everyone needs a new TV.

Unless you have cable or satellite. Then you can wait until your old box dies. But I use rabbit ears in my multipath hell of a location in the city. On good days, I can get 7 channels of regular interest, plus 4 explicitly Christian channels (24, 26, 49, 51. The 700 Club shares 11). Sometimes I cannot get ABC-30 or CW-11 clear enough to record or avoid watering eyes. Other times Fox-2 and My-46 are too bad to watch, too. So I really only have 3 reliable channels in analog.

Enter digital clarity. Yesterday I got my gummint subsidized converter box and hooked it up. Now I get perfectly clear (in numerical order) Fox-2.1, CBS-4.1, NBC-5.1, local weather 5.2, and PBS 9.1-9.4. That’s it.

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Check out this billboard. Apparently, there is a “Bike Show” at the “Family Arena” in St. Charles, Missouri (St. Louis area). If you attend the Bike Show, you can “Register to Win a Free Breast Augmentation.”

I’d avoid buying only your raffle ticket in the name of the family, however, because if it is the winning ticket, the family members will have to fight over who gets the free breast augmentation.

I’m wondering what they’ll offer next at the Family Arena. Perhaps the next raffle will be for one of those alleged penis enlargements that show up so often in spam.

[For St. Louis areas residents who are interested in admiring this billboard in person, it is located in the City of St. Louis, on South Kingshighway a few blocks north of Chouteau].

The new Ben Stein movie, “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed” opens today. It is only showing in Wehrenberg Theaters farther out from the city. (Movies.com link). Before today, it has only been seen by fundamentalist congregations, hand-picked audiences, and selected legislatures.

If you’ve read my earlier post and long comment thread about it, you know that I am not suggesting that you go and pay them for producing this piece of nominally documentary film.

In brief, the movie is about the theological Darwinist conspiracy to keep seekers of truth out of academia. There are plenty of clips of Nazi atrocities interspersed with quote-mined interviews with actual scientists. It apparently makes Michael Moore productions seem fair and balanced.

It has been shown to closed door presentations to legislatures as bills were being discussed to include or allow “alternate theories” to scientifically established ideas in science classes in several states, including Florida, Texas, and my own Missouri.

If ever there was a Dangerous Intersection between faith and society, this film is on that cusp.

I wrote an earlier post about describing yourself in six words. Today, I spotted this Youtube video that required the numerous subjects to describe themselves in one word or phrase. This is fun to watch on many levels. I can’t help but want to think that I know many of these young adults just by their mannerisms and expressions. On that basis (is it a reliable method?) it seems like many of the adjectives seem appropriate.

Here it is:

My friend Russ sent me this link to an article in our local paper entitled, “Cowardly hypocrisy of Darwin fish displays”. The title does a good job of strongly framing a weak argument. After I read it, I decided to post my response here:

The article begins by framing anything interpretable as anti-Christian as equivalent to Muslim extremism; Jihadism. It illustrates the modern use of the ancient bi-stroke alpha as a covert Christian identity symbol in a repressive Islamic region.

Because of this still extant use in remote locations, the article advocates eschewing these tongue-in-cheek parody icons in the name of political correctness. It equates mockery with intolerance. The article never explains what makes it “cowardly” to openly display a Darwin fish. In the face of such hostility from the majority faith, “brave” seems a more apt term.

I do grant that Christians are a persecuted minority in a few places. In those places, Evolution is generally accepted as a Christian plot to weaken faith in Allah. In those places, a Darwin fish car would be bombed more quickly than a Jesus fish car.

Darwin fish aren’t generally mocking Christianity as a whole, but rather the Flat Earthers, Young Earthers, and Geocentric Universe sects. Most Christians actually believe in the (thoroughly proven) naturalistic explanations of nature, while firmly believing it to be God’s work. But there is a high correlation between the anti-scientific congregants and car fish.

We live in a country in which Christianity is by-far the dominant religion, one in which polls show that faith in virgin birth is more important to general health than the roots of modern medicine. With rationalists comprising a slim minority, and those openly admitting to it in public a small part of those, I don’t see how these icons can do any harm. A slim minority of Christians may well take offense. But they have the power, and therefore have nothing to fear.

I also give fish cars more room, as I do with cars driven by old men in felt hats. Call it profiling, if you must. But I trust drivers who believe there is everything to live for here, rather than those who openly proclaim that the point of life is to reach an idyllic eternity.

Marc Gunther created his blog to probe Corporate America for signs of social responsibility.   Hence, the name of his blog: “Marc Gunther - Corporate America: Making the World a Better Place . . . or Not.”

My sister-in-law (an architect who specializes in green issues) referred me to his site.   Marc’s posts are thoughtful and he has some impressive contacts with high-placed corporate types, giving him lots of good insight into the conscience (or not) of some huge and powerful organizations.

I especially enjoyed his post on the struggles of some well-to-do folks who are tired of even more well-to-do folks building houses bigger than theirs (the site of this squabble is the Hamptons).   This post is titled “Green Monsters.” The reference is to the so-called “green” luxury homes in the Seattle area (4,500 square feet) that were recently burned to the ground by eco-terrorists.  Though Gunther is sympathetic with the message of the eco-terrorists, he rejects their method. 

I do mean to suggest that those of us who are privileged ought to think and talk more about how much consumption is enough. Personally, I wish someone would find a way to raise questions about the morality of monster homes without burning them down. It’s probably too much to exp