What emotions propel people into protest? Do they get them stoked or satisfied? I wonder. I like this clip for 2 reasons: 1. the student is so nice, and 2. the respondents (Walker supporters) aren't too ready to speak in terms of emotion. The first answer given is "respect" and the second is "pride." Only the third — "sadness" — is really an emotion. I've observed over the years that a lot of people don't like to think about their political ideas as emotionally motivated.
"Oh, Hate? He's sleeping right now," he said, pointing to a lump underneath a blue tarp. "Hey, Hate!" the man yelled. "Hate!"
The tarp twitched, then stopped.
"Hate! Wake up, man! Someone's here to see you!"...
"Hi, Hate," the reporter said. "Um, fuck you."
"Hi, fuck you, too. I hate you," he responded, without hesitation or an ounce of vitriol....
Via Metafilter, which also links to this collection of articles he wrote back in the 1960s when he was a reporter for the New York Times. Imagine leaving the conventional life and going the way of a colorful street character. What would you be... if not Hate Man... who?
Here, there is no conceivable way in which, in my judgment, her presence on the national stage can improve our discourse, help solve our problems or improve public life. But that does not forbid one from noting the great example she has shown in rearing a child with Down Syndrome, whatever his provenance, or noting her effectiveness as a demagogue, or from admiring her father's genuineness or her skill in exploiting new media. I've consistently tried to do this without undercutting my still-raw amazement that an advanced democratic society could even contemplate putting such an unstable and irresponsible person in a position of any real power.
His approach to the new civility, he says, will be "generous anger: a classically Orwellian term." The idea is "to make strong and lively points without demonization."
That was last June. What counted as "smartass" was a Kopp’s Frozen Custard stand owner saying — in response to Biden's asking what he owed for the ice cream cone — "Nothing, just lower our taxes." A reader — perhaps prompted by yesterday's "bite me" post — reminded me of what I wrote at the time:
Bite me. When the powerful seek to work their will upon us and demand that we be nice about it, that's the right response: Bite me. Even if he were the one being nice about it, we shouldn't have to put up with it without complaint.
I want you to get up right now, sit up, go to your windows, open them and stick your head out and yell - "Bite me!" Things have got to change. But first, you've gotta get mad!... You've got to say, "Bite me!" Then we'll figure out what to do about the recession and the taxes and the oil spill. But first get up out of your chairs, open the window, stick your head out, and yell, and say it: "Bite me."
Did you watch the clip? How did it affect you today, after all the talk last week about the need for newly civil discourse in America? What is the role of angry speech? "First, you've got to get mad," we're told. "Mad as hell." You've got to yell. This is a dramatic speech that has resonated with Americans for 35 years. Why? And what does that tell you about the importance of maintaining civility?
One of the big flaws now is that there is all this noise on the right. When I yell there is a reason for it. There is a political and factual discernment behind it. I am not doing it gratuitously...
I once had a conversation with the man who is now the vice president when he was still in the Senate, who asked me for advice about how to turn anger into righteous inspiration.
Joe Biden took you to lunch to ask you for tips on getting angry?
He said, ‘‘I just come across like I’m angry and out of control, and you seem to focus it and make it look useful and expressive.’’
Controlled, useful-looking anger. Yes, exactly how does one give that appearance and when is it appropriate? And more importantly, how do we on the receiving end of anger defend ourselves against speakers who would love to leap into the primal dimension of our minds and manipulate us by tapping the feelings we felt when we were children, inspired and intimidated by our parents?
Our #1 defense, it seems, is that we've learned to perceive the angry speaker as having taken leave of his senses. Biden sought the secret — which he imagined Olbermann possessed — for getting around that defense. He wanted to know how to seize the power of the patriarch.
Apologize? You can't just apologize unless Williams could just apologize. NPR CEO Vivian Schiller must resign.
Schiller spills 'er guts:
And don't you just love the notion that ordinary human feelings are mental disorders that should be kept hidden? In NPR's delightful vision of the future, no one will dare to speak about how they feel and every inappropriate twinge that breaks through your self-protective numbness will be medicalized and treated. Imagine a country that adopts a psychiatric treatment model for political dissent. It's easy if you try.
Don't let the horrible photo chosen by Media Matters here stop you from listening to the audio. It's an excellent performance by Rush, including his approximation of the George C. Scott performance:
The transcript — along with the Dukakis and "Dr. Strangelove" clips — is here. He's talking about the new Bob Woodward book:
Woodward asks about terrorism, terror attacks, and so forth. Obama says, "We can absorb a terrorist attack. We'll do everything we can to prevent it, but even a 9/11, even the biggest attack ever, we absorbed it, and we're stronger." That, to me, is the equivalent of Dukakis being asked, "If your wife were raped and murdered, would you favor the death penalty?" So Woodward says, "What about terrorism?" Obama figures, "Ah, we can handle it. We can absorb it. We're even stronger." That's not cool. That is cold, and it reminded me of something. One of my all-time favorite movies is Dr. Strangelove. A Stanley Kubrick movie. And one of the characters in this movie is General Buck Turgidson....
And Buck Turgidson is one of these stereotypical generals. He just wants to nuke the world. He just loves war and hates the Russians, hates the commies. He just wants to nuke everything. And Buck Turgidson said, "Mr. President, we are rapidly approaching the moment of truth, both for ourselves as human beings and for the life of our nation. Now, truth is not always pleasant thing. But it's necessary now to make a choice: To choose between two admittedly regrettable but nevertheless distinguishable postwar environments, one where you get 20 million people killed, the other where you'd get 150 million people killed." Turgidson was saying, "Let's send more B-52s! Let's just wipe these people out while we're at it, since we can't call this one back. Let's just be rid of them. We'll kill 20 million of them and that's it. They can't kill any of ours. It's a livable situation, Mr. President."
Peter Sellers playing President Merkin Muffley says, "You're talking about mass murder, general, not war," and Turgidson replies, "Mr. President, I'm not saying we wouldn't get our hair mussed but I do say no more than ten to 20 million killed tops, depending on the breaks." Here's a guy totally cold and unaffected by the possibility of ten to 20 million people being killed in an accident and wants to say, "Let's go wipe 'em out even further." The president can't believe what he's hearing. You have Dukakis, "If your wife was raped and murdered, would you favor the death penalty?" "No, Bernard. As you know, I've long and consistently opposed the death penalty during all my life." Obama is asked, "Mr. President, what is your attitude on terrorism?"
"Well, we could absorb one of those, a terrorist attack. We'll do everything we can to prevent it but even a 9/11, but even the biggest attack ever we absorbed it and we're stronger. We can deal with it." All these examples are of leftists and they are cold, removed, unemotional, unaffected, uninvolved.
Did he just call Turgidson a leftist?
Anyway, you know how it must pain the average-citizen leftist to hear that Obama, like Dukakis, is cold and unemotional. It can't be true! Obama is about empathy.
[Click here for video of George Lakoff explaining Obama's "empathy campaign."]
Remember when Bill Clinton made us — some of us — think he feels our pain? Obama, aloof, observes that we have an excellent capacity to absorb pain. We're pain sponges, apparently, so there's nothing to get too worked up about.
I'm not saying we wouldn't get our hair mussed. But I do say no more than ten to twenty million killed, tops! Uh, depending on the breaks....
"When you go to Burger King, you don't have to list the six things you don't want. Linguistically, it's stupid, and I'm a stickler for correct English... I yelled, 'I want my multigrain bagel!' The barista said, 'You're not going to get anything unless you say butter or cheese!'"
Americans, embrace the Celebrity of the Summer — the man who just couldn't take it anymore and got mad as hell. But please, do not attempt this path to celebrity. Everybody wants to be famous — except you, I know you, the reader who is about to post the indignant assertion that you don't want to be famous — and we can't have everybody freaking out all at once. That could get ugly. But Steven Slater, you have passed through the portal that separates ordinary life from the life of a celebrity. Dramatically, with the release of that jet plane escape slide, Slater has slid into our hearts.
JetBlue suspended Slater even as Facebook fans began raising money for his legal defense and demanding he get his job back.
He has quickly become a global sensation. MySpace photos of him posing on planes - one with a Bud Light in his hand - hit the Internet.
The linked Daily News article includes a poll, which is running strongly in Slater's favor, with only 17% of respondents picking the negative option. 9% would even like to see him on a TV reality show. And if you cast your eyes to the right-hand margin to the top-10 "Most Read" list, you'll find stories about Slater ranking at #1 ("Carry-ons were JetBlue flight attendant's biggest turnoffs"), #2 ("JetBlue flight attendant basks in celebrity status"), #3 ("JetBlue flight attendant Steven Slater is the toast of the online community"), #6 ("Molloy: Flight attendant does what we dream of doing"), #7 ("Molloy: Slater isn't first to pull one-finger salute"), and #8 ("Move over Sully! Workers unite around Steven Slater").
So what does this say about us, that Slater is the man of the moment?
Here's the statement by NAACP President Benjamin Jealous trying to shift the blame to "Fox News and Tea Party Activist Andrew Breitbart" for editing the Shirley Sherrod video to heighten an apparent confession of racism. When he saw that video, Jealous's reaction against Sherrod was immediate. She was toxic and had to be spat out.
To react like that is to display the same human weakness that underlies racism itself. You see one thing, you see the whole person as nothing but that one thing, you feel instinctive aversion and fear, and you reflexively push that person away. Blaming those who showedyou thatone thing does not absolve you from your responsibility to rise above the level of instinct and fear. It is up to you to go beyond your first perception, to search for the truth, and to use reason and judgment before you make a decision about someone.
Jealous doesn't acknowledge this personal responsibility. Indeed, he continues to operate in this instinctive, reactive mode. It's not as if he went looking for the truth about Sherrod. Sherrod came forward and defended herself by relating the whole story and complaining about the edit. Her presentation was a new embarrassment, and Jealous's current statement is a reaction to that. Moreover, his shot at "Fox News and Tea Party Activist Andrew Breitbart" is another instant reaction. Not only does Jealous assume a motive behind the edit — "the intention of deceiving" — he assumes Fox News and Breitbart did the editing. But Breitbart says he received the video already edited.
***
Here's the full Shirley Sherrod video. I will comment on it in a separate post.
As of this writing, [last week's Jezebel post titled "The Daily Show's Woman Problem"] has generated almost 1,000 comments and nearly 90,000 page views. It's a prime example of the feminist blogosphere's tendency to tap into the market force of what I've come to think of as "outrage world"—the regularly occurring firestorms stirred up on mainstream, for-profit, woman-targeted blogs like Jezebel and also, to a lesser degree, Slate's own XX Factor and Salon's Broadsheet.
Ha. A lesser degree. Hidden question: How can we get those page views?
There are various strategies: "concealing (i.e., suppression), adjusting (quickly calming anger, for instance) and tolerating (openly expressing emotion)." Be flexible. For more social success.
The Journolisters — including Cole? — must be desperately trying to discipline each other not to leak. And yet the evidence is — if [Jeffrey] Goldberg is to be believed — that the leaks have been going on all along. Whenever someone not on the list was talked about, somebody in that 400 may have seen fit to let that person know what was being said. Think of all the reasons you might decide to forward the email. You might know the person being talked about and think they needed to be be alerted about some scurrilous accusations or plans. You might object to what was being said or dislike the person saying it and want to do something about it without drawing attention to yourself.
It's really too late now to get the 400 listmembers into line. Stuff has gone out. People like Goldberg have it and will use it when they decide it's right. You can try, like Cole, to say that using it will be vicious and destructive, but presumably, the email was vicious and destructive, which is probably why it got forwarded! And, anyway, you can't beat that many people into line. In that huge group are some writers who take orders, but there have to be others who are vindictive or careless. Some may be unsuccessful and jealous. Some may believe staunchly that information wants to be free or that a list of 400 is pretty much a public list with no valid restrictions. You can't control them all.
[N]o, Ann, I’m not on and never have been on JournOlist (why would anyone even begin to think I was on that?), and I am not trying to “discipline” or punish list members to not disclose more private emails.
Why would anyone even begin to think you were on the Journolist? Because you aren't as famous as you seem to think you are. I just read a post of yours that was linked on Memeorandum as discussing an issue I was interested in. I don't follow your blog. That's why I put my little parenthetical — "including Cole?"— in question form. The subject of that sentence is, you should note, The Journolisters. It's not about you at all, unless you are also on the list. The structure of the sentence indicates that whether you are/were on the list was a side issue to be acknowledged but not pursued. Ever heard the phrase "get over yourself." I don't use it often but: Get over yourself.
Cole continues:
You would think that would be a matter of honor [sic] for those who chose to join the list that they would not leak more emails, and if Ann can not figure out why it is disgusting for Goldberg to use emails to try to destroy someone using things written in confidence rather than engage them on the merits of any particular issue, I’m not going to waste my time trying to explain it to her. The Goldbergs and Althouses’s [sic] of the world really deserve each other, and that, I guess, is punishment enough.
You're so emotional about this that I don't know if you'll be able to grasp this when I try to be as clear as possible... or maybe I shouldn't "waste my time" on you either. You don't seem to have any curiosity about human nature and how social and political systems work. What I was doing was observing and speculating about how people behave. In that light, your behavior continues to be worthy of analysis. You're hot to force everyone to think that disclosing email from a 400-person email list is "disgusting." You'd like to nail it down that only "disgusting" motivations could be involved. I'm interested in exploring the full range of possibilities. I'm not a journalist. I'm an intellectual. Compared to you anyway.
***
Remember the liberal meme that George Bush was "incurious"? But aren't these liberal journalists incurious? They had this email list that was designed — apparently — to figure out how to structure the various news stories to serve the interests of their party. The Journolist was a self-herding device. They wanted to be good cogs in a machine that would generate power for the Democratic Party, didn't they? For career and social rewards? That's my hypothesis. As an intellectual, I would like to study how that worked. I'll write a book about it if someone will send me the raw material I need — the complete archive of the Journolist. I need a Deep Throat. I promise not to regard you as disgusting.
***
Let's test Cole and the other performers of outrage about how they feel about illustrious leakers of the past. Deep Throat. Daniel Ellsberg. Please do your "honor"/"privacy" routine in that context.
"We know that language moves us emotionally," said the lead author, David Havas, a psychology graduate student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. "What this study shows is that that's partly because it moves us physically."...
The researchers asked 40 women waiting to receive first-time Botox injections to read a series of 60 sentences on a computer, pressing a key when they understood each sentence. To make sure participants were reading the sentences, the researchers periodically checked their reading comprehension. Participants repeated the test, using a fresh set of questions, two weeks later when the Botox treatment's paralyzing effect was at its height.
After treatment, participants were slower to understand sentences conveying sadness or anger than they had been before treatment. There was no such change for happy sentences. Mood analyses ruled out the possibility that the women were simply happier after receiving Botox, making them quicker to comprehend happier material.
The results indicate that our own facial expressions help the brain make sense of the social world, Havas says.
"Our facial expressions reveal social context by mirroring expressions of those around us, giving us insight into their emotions, states of mind and future actions," he says. The Botox study, he says, suggests that our facial expressions also guide how we interpret language.
When the face's ability to provide feedback is disabled, as in Botox treatment, our understanding is hindered.
The new findings fit with the increasingly accepted theory that aspects of higher thought, such as language, judgment and memory, are shaped by our bodily sensations and movements, says Paula Niedenthal, a psychologist at Blaise Pascal University in Clermont-Ferrand, France, and a leading scholar on the role of the body in emotion. According to this "embodied" view of cognition, which has gained popularity over the last decade or so, the brain makes sense of the world at least partly by simulating action.
This has deep implications, far beyond the obvious reason to avoid taking Botox.
Impressively, the advice columnist tells her she's asking the wrong question:
I think a better question to ask is, "How can I be closer to my father?" or "How can I accept him as a human being and seek his acceptance of me?"
It's really a terrible idea to have a political debate/argument with someone if your point of view is that they are irrational, insensitive, angry, fearful, etc. You can't convince him to change what he thinks by saying — essentially — his ideas are the product of his twisted mind. That's not an argument. It's just a counter-wave of emotion. And how could he possibly agree with you? He'd have to use that twisted mind to do it.
So I suggest you seek areas of commonality in nature or art, and in feeling rather than idea. Have some fun together. Build trust and enjoyment through shared experiences. Have patience. Be gentle.
Yeah, people learn how to avoid talking about politics if they or the person they are talking to isn't up for it. Is talking about politics really the main thing you should be doing with the people you want to love?
The Oklahoma City bombing took place in 1995, during Bill Clinton's watch, so maybe little things set him off and the memories come flooding back. Maybe we should be tolerant of the old man's maunderings. But I think that Clinton is super-sharp, that he knows he can connect with the American psyche — not all the time, but some of the time, and that he's deliberately applying his skills for specific, political effect:
"Before the bombing occurred, there was a sort of fever" in the political dialogue that was in ways similar in content to the anger currently boiling up on talk radio and on the Internet, Clinton said at a forum on the 15th anniversary of the attack by Timothy McVeigh that killed 168.
"The fabric of American life had been unraveling" in 1995 amid high unemployment, Clinton said.
"The structure of the Cold War -- the clear bipolar world -- was coming to an end," Clinton said. "There were more and more people having trouble figuring out where they fit in. It is true that we see some of that today."
Clinton said people have the right "to advocate whatever the livin' Sam Hill they want to advocate" but they must observe "the basic line dividing criticism from violence or its advocacy."
Read the whole thing. It's a particularly good monologue. I especially liked digging up the old quotes from Obama: "I don't want to quell anger. I think people are right to be angry. I'm angry." And: "I need you to go out and talk to your friends and talk to your neighbors, I want you to talk to them whether they're independent or whether they are Republican, I want you to argue with them and get in their face."
The Democrats immediately shifted into the theory that anger over the bill is simply not allowed. They merged that anger with actual violence, and they took whatever reports and threats of violence they could find and, in turn, merged them with the anger over the bill.
***
Can we identify neutral principles about anger and violence? How much free expression of anger do we accept in our opponents? When will we listen to it as part of a valuable debate? When do we stigmatize it as part of a system of violence? If the answer to the last question is whenever it serves our political interests to do so, then we are making propaganda.
Glenn Reynolds predicts: A brief poll bump for Obama based on positive news coverage of the bill passage. Then, more decline."
I tend to think people will get used to the change and stop paying attention, and the polls will move back to equilibrium between the parties. People will never be giddy and dreamy about Obama again, but so what? (Note to Althouse haters: "So what?" is a serious question.) We shouldn't be so optimistic about government. That's why we resisted the reform. We didn't trust it. Now that it's happened, won't most people get bored with looking at the government and turn back to their immediate lives? The mistrust that made people say "no" will be processed into jadedness and aversion to politics. People will try to live good lives on their own and be fatalistic about how the reforms will affect them. My basic political orientation is aversion to politics, and I found myself thinking, as soon as the vote count reached 216 last night: Well, I hope some good comes of this and the bad isn't too horribly bad. People aren't going to stay fired up. The natural process is to stabilize and find normal. Isn't that why we're so conservative in the first place?
