www.sandersresearch.com
Issues &
Answers
August 30,
2005
Blogging
Truth
By Linda
Minor
“The
allegations that the left is exploiting Cindy couldn't be further from
the truth. I see millions of people following Cindy, not the other way
around. I got an e-mail from Cindy that she was going to go to
Crawford, not from MoveOn.” Scott Galindez, Truthout.org, August 18,
2005[1]
Camp Casey
miracle
Cindy
Sheehan, mother of the late Casey Sheehan, has galvanized both mothers
and fathers in a grassroots movement notable because of its use of a
network of internet bloggers who are no longer dependent upon obtaining
news reports from centralized media. They have created a new method of
disseminating news that avoids the taint of the financial strings that
bind the corporate owned and financed infrastructure of national media.
“A
weblog, web log or simply a blog, is a web application which contains
periodic posts on a common webpage. These posts are often but not
necessarily in reverse chronological order. Such a website would
typically be accessible to any Internet user.”
From
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blogging
The
movement which sprouted on a two-lane rural road northwest of Crawford,
Texas about two miles from George Bush’s ranch, began as a
spur-of-the-minute decision, according to Cindy, as she is now commonly
known. Having traveled from Vacaville, California to lead an emotional
convention in Dallas, Texas for Gold Star Families for Peace, she and
her sister were about to head back when they heard a news report that
fourteen soldiers had been killed that day in Iraq. Looking at the map,
they realized Crawford was only about 150 miles away. Incensed by the
President’s remarks that the soldiers had “died for a noble cause,”
Cindy decided to camp outside the Bush ranch until the President
explained the noble cause for which her son had died.
Each
day at what was dubbed “Camp Casey,” Cindy was joined by new protesters
from all parts of the globe, some of whom have set up camp beside her;
others stay only a few hours in order to voice their support and get a
feel for whether the protest is sincere or staged. Media reports never
fail to mention that Sheehan acquired the assistance of media
consultant, Fenton Communications, whose services were paid by Ben
Cohen, millionaire creator of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream, who, with help
from other internet-based groups like MoveOn.org, organized candlelight
vigils for the war dead on the evening of August 17.[2]
Dot-com
miracle
Howard
Dean’s media consultant Joe Trippi, author of a book called The
Revolution Will Not Be Televised also interviewed Cindy and
apparently offered his advice.[3] Trippi,
a veteran of Ted Kennedy campaigns, waxes eloquent concerning the
internet potential in allowing average citizens to participate in
democracy. In his memoir about the Howard Dean presidential campaign of
2004 he describes what he calls the “dot-com miracle” that followed
Dean’s political demise at the hands of corporate media. Trippi calls
the wake-up call Dean’s supporters received the “opening salvo in a
revolution, the sound of hundreds of thousands of Americans turning off
their televisions and embracing the only form of technology that has
allowed them to be involved again, to gain control of a process that
alienated them decades ago.”
Trippi’s
excitement becomes contagious when he admonishes corporate advertisers:
Every
business that spends $20 million on television advertising and just
$20,000 to post a static web site that is updated once a month had
better watch their backs. Every institution that doesn’t understand
that the technology is finally here to allow people to reject what
they’re being given and demand what they want had better start
paying attention.
The
revolution comes for you next. [emphasis in original]
Echoing
Trippi’s optimism in a less negative way, ex-candidate Howard
Dean—elected in February 2005 to chair the Democratic National
Committee, after being drummed out of his presidential bid by an
orchestrated media attack—told the DNC members: “Today will be the
beginning of the reemergence of the Democratic Party…. The first thing
we have to do is stand up for what we believe in.”[4]
The
promised revolution in democracy and straight talking—if they
transpire—will be a welcome change. The potential does exist. Time will
tell whether such grassroots tax-exempt organizations can continue as
voices for democratic politics or whether financial wizards will
succeed in turning the independent blogs into yet another
money-laundering system to manipulate those voices.
However
this “revolution” plays out, we can be assured the ensuing struggle
will not be bloodless. Oligarchical interests have a long history of
engineering propaganda to control the thoughts of the masses. They will
not simply give up that control without a battle which will most likely
involve legislation to limit independence of the internet by increasing
access by non-profits and persons with little financial resources.
In
a culture like ours, long accustomed to splitting and dividing all
things as a means of control, it is sometimes a bit of a shock to be
reminded that, in operational and practical fact, the medium is the
message.
Marshall
McLuhan, Understanding Media
If McLuhan
was right…
Those
of us who are part of the “baby boomer” generation can remember
Marshall McLuhan, who warned us that the media can not only become the
message, but that it also delivers a massage. Gary Wolf, who wrote an
article in September 2004 for Wired magazine, has not forgotten
McLuhan:
Marshall
McLuhan believed that new media cannibalize their predecessors: Writing
preserved stories that had been spoken or sung; television was visual
radio; on the Internet, people send each other letters. McLuhan's point
is that you can't simply look at the content of a medium to judge its
effects, for the contents will, at first, be traditional. Instead, you
have to look at the context and the way the contents are consumed.
Which
is more important, the medium or its contents? In the case of MoveOn,
this is a testable hypothesis. If McLuhan was wrong, then MoveOn, next
year, will be merely the sucked-dry remnants of a gigantic fundraising
list, expiring in the aftermath of the campaign. If McLuhan was right,
then MoveOn will continue to evolve and grow, assimilating all the
familiar forms of politics into itself, extending them, heightening
their impact, and using the material of yesterday to produce tomorrow's
unpredictable effects.[5]
“If you can
keep it…”
We
are reminded of the words of Benjamin Franklin, when asked what type of
government new American Constitution of 1789 gave the former British
colonies. He answered, “a republic—if you can keep it.” In that
context, “if” is a very big word.
[1]Scott
Galindez reports on
the scene at Crawford. Truthout has been putting out minute-by-minute
reports of the activities taking place at Crawford from the beginning,
beginning with journal reports of William Rivers Pitt. The ongoing
archive can be viewed together with video and audio
clips uploaded by citizen reporters on the scene.
[5]The founders
of MoveOn.org were the subject of Gary Wolf’s Wired magazine
article in
September 2004. Wolf framed the crucial question that concerns us now
in that article: “How does a large collection of citizens influence a
great national campaign without succumbing to a fatal dependence on a
small cadre of professionals?” A well-written article by John K.
MacKenzie, “The Slings and Arrows of Outrageous McLuhan,” reprinted
from the 1966 Transactions of the Council On Medical Television,
appears online. McLuhan’s ideas have also
been well summed up by Cecil Adams on his own very entertaining
website called “The Straight Dope,” in which he explains:
Although
McLuhan isn't a household name anymore, the astonishing growth of the
Internet has burnished his reputation. He's listed as "patron saint" on
the masthead of Wired magazine. The upper tier of academics
didn't take him too seriously in the 1960s (this was a man who, during
a public debate, allegedly told his interlocutor, "You don't like those
ideas? I got others"), and I don't see much evidence that they do now.
But to generations of grad students, as well as to the many publicists
and popularizers of cyberspace (so named in 1982 by sci-fi writer
William Gibson, a McLuhanesque writer if ever there was one), he's a
prophet.
Some of McLuhan's key concepts:
· The
medium is the message. Never
mind the content; what's important is the medium itself. The media are
extensions of our senses; as they change, they utterly transform our
environment and affect everything we do--they “massage” or reshape us.
· Hot
versus cool media. Hot
media are high definition (“well filled with data”) and demand a
relatively passive audience; cool media are low definition and require
intensive audience participation to fill in the blanks. Hot media
intensely engage a single sense; cool media loosely engage multiple
senses. According to McLuhan, movies and radio are hot media while
television and conversation (on the phone or in person) are cool ones.
Print is generally a hot medium (the eye must closely follow a linear
arrangement of symbols) but can be cooler depending on context.
· The
global village. Today's instant
communications have all but erased time and space and rendered national
boundaries meaningless.
