Is there a cause of action for the invasion of privacy that takes place these days when someone catches something stupid that you do — in public — and puts it on YouTube? Hey, don't be stupid! The consequences are much higher today with the internet and viral video. It's a big deterrent. If the legal system turns that deterrent into a monetary gain, it will be incentivizing stupidity.
We need to learn how to live in the world as it is. When we're in public, we have a new dimension of visibility because of digital cameras and the internet. I've been thinking about the effect this is having on politics. Politicians have to watch every single thing they say. That's difficult.
Remember how one word uttered by George Allen destroyed him, because he foolishly thought he was speaking only to a small group and did not foresee how it would play on YouTube. Politicians will have to speak clearly, with a consistent message, and not something tailored to the particular group that they are speaking to at the moment. Obama was able to overcome his "bitter clingers" remark, which was specially designed to reach the hearts of wealthy San Franciscans. But it wasn't easy, and it still dogs him.
Heads up, everybody. Don't stare at the one thing that's right in front of your nose — whether it's your Blackberry or your biggest, wealthiest fans. Pay attention. There's a low wall just ahead, you're about to tumble into the fountain, and the internet is waiting to make you the next sensation.
"The other day I got a text from a boy, but it wasn't hot. I mean, if you're going to text me every day, you haven't seen me for months and you're trying to seduce me, you'd better spice up that text and make it more exciting than 'How was your day? I hope you're having a beautiful one.' Sadly, I haven't been doing a lot of kissing lately."
Looking to extend my hysteria, I went to the source blog (Damn You Auto Correct) and got pulled into a somber reverie by this one, where the question "How jealous are you?!" brings the response "Spool!" That was supposed to be "soooo!" The texters both hope that "Spool!" will become a new exclamation.
I'm sure that, being a political comedian, Maher is perfectly happy that he was capable of generating, alternately, anger and mirth. And good for him for making himself relevant again. I actually love comedy riffs that go to weird stream-of-consciousness places and connect things outrageously, especially when the comedian is hitting the hot buttons of people who don't have an easygoing and big sense of humor. Maher does all that. Of course, he falls way short of the ultimate comedy hero — Lenny Bruce* — because he's not challenging people in his own audience. In fact, he's stroking those people and encouraging a desire they already have: to laugh at someone they want to marginalize.
And by "someone" there, I mean Sarah Palin, not Brett Favre. No one needs much help laughing at Favre at this point. Just tell us what he did and stop and wait for the laughs. Maher's main comedy idea was to connect Favre's sext to Sarah Palin:
To me this story really isn't about sports or sex or how necessary caller ID is. It's about how pathetic and clueless white American males have become because the kind of guy who thinks there are women out there who just cold want to see your cock is the same kind of guy who thinks Sarah Palin is swell and tax cuts pay for themselves....
And if Brett Favre's penis could talk, what would it say? Well, other than no photos please, I think it would say, I'm not a witch. I'm you. Because for hundreds of years, white penises were America. White penises found America. They made the rules and they called the shots, in the workplace, in the home and at the ballot box. But now the unthinkable is happening. White penises are becoming the minority. 2010 was the first year in which more minority babies were born than white babies. This is what conservatives are really upset about.
And this is what lefties are really upset about: American history is the story of greedy white pricks who need to be cut down.
That the president is black, and the Secretary of State is a woman, and every shortstop is Latino, and every daytime talk show host is a lesbian. And suddenly this country is way off track and needs some serious restoring.
He's working the old meme about the Tea Party that distracted liberals in 2009. But it's 2010, the election is breathing down your neck, and tarring the Tea Party as angry racists did not work.
If penises could cry, and I believe they can...
That made me laugh, even though he'd lost me with the trite evil white man stuff.
... then white penises are crying all over America. And that's where this crew comes in. The lovely MILFs of the new rank. And their little secret is that their popularity comes exclusively from white men. Look at the polling. Minorities hate them. Women hate them. Only white men like them.
The only truth I'm hearing ring in that — and I haven't looked at the polling — is that liberals (quite rightly) loathe the strong, attractive women who have emerged on the right. And minorities and women have for many years tended to go for the Democrats. So those minorities and women, polled, will say they oppose Palin. But some minorities and plenty of women lean toward conservatism. If they feel repelled by conservative women like Sarah Palin, wouldn't that be evidence of sexism? By contrast, the white males who love Palin should for being open to women stepping up to political power. If these men only saw the women as sexual beings, they would tear down the political aspirations. They would scoff at and mock them... the way Bill Maher does. I think Maher was aware of that flaw in his comic rant. Here's how he tries to flip it the way he wants to go:
I'm no psychiatrist but I do own a couch.
This is a concession that he thinks women exist for sexual purposes.
And my theory is that these women represent something those men miss dearly: the traditional idiot housewife.
Maybe you have that theory because that's what you want in a woman. The housewife is a woman who stays home, and conceptualizing women as idiots is something men do when they want to block their aspirations outside of the home. This is what Maher is trying to do to Palin and the other conservative women. How can he pin that mindset on the men who support the women's ascension to power? No one wants an idiot to represent them in government.
Yes, we vote for idiots all the time, but it's because we project our hopes onto them and imagine them to be, in fact, brilliant:
________
*Here's Dustin Hoffman acting out the most striking example of Bruce challenging his own audience. Very offensive language.
Georgia Gwinnett College is spending $1000 per professor to pay for smart phones for professors who are supposed to respond to student texts within 24 hours. Professors already have computers and respond to email, so what is the point of this? You want students dashing off little notes full of typos and abbreviations and professors struggling with teensy keyboards and adapting to the ultra-concise writing form? And what happens when there are misunderstandings? These are inevitable in texting.
Leave texting to friends and family and to coworkers who interact casually. Professors — however friendly they may seem in person — must relate to students in a professional way.
Tee Barron, an associate professor of mathematics, says she sometimes gets texts from students asking questions that they could easily have answered by consulting a classmate or the syllabus, but that can be corrected with a benign rebuke. “I’ll sometimes text back, ‘Hahaha by the time it took me to e-mail or text me you could have found this out yourself and now you’re going to have to anyway,' ” Barron says. “I think after the first couple times the [students] who are high-maintenance and try that — they start getting it.”
So you're going to taunt and tease them into behaving appropriately? But you're not modeling appropriateness! You're letting them think you have a cutesy, jokey relationship. And who would text the 27 words "Hahaha by the time it took me to e-mail or text me you could have found this out yourself and now you’re going to have to anyway." (I'm counting "hahaha," a misspelling of "ha ha ha," as 1 word.) In the real world of texting, it's going to be more like "get it yrsf" or "u gotta b kiddng" or something even more abbreviated and subject to misreading.
It might work for Tee Barron, a math prof. Maybe math students are coolly unemotional, consuming messages, but I think student-teacher texting is likely to go bad... very bad. And that's assuming fully virtuous professors who don't even dream of entering into inappropriate relations with students.
"This is evident from the moment we meet them, isolated and wordless before a beautiful fire. Their only correspondence is an occasional invective jotted on a scrap of paper — this discreetly flicked across the room to the recipient's lap."
This 1967 novel — "The Cat" by Georges Simenon, which I loved when I read it in the 70s — seems to presage texting.
I need to get some blogging up, and I actually have about 5 things I've been meaning to write, that is, after the completion of various Sunday morning activities, such as transforming the corn leftover from last night into breakfast and analyzing why I didn't quite replicate my mother's corn fritters. But somehow, I'm reading the comments over on Richard's blog — not even my own blog.
(I did read some of my blog's comments on my iPhone in the middle of the night, and I'd just like to say, Lem, I'm sorry no one was in the buckets of flowers with you last night to say, yes, we're your friends and thanks for telling us that you've found comfort here.)
I just noticed your new blog header. NICE! I like it a lot. I do have one comment though. Pen authors need to watch out for what I will call "texting creep".
That refers to the quote in Richard's banner:
SCRIBBLED SECRET NOTEBOOKS, AND WILD TYPEWRITTEN PAGES, FOR YR OWN JOY... SUBMISSIVE TO EVERYTHING, OPEN, LISTENING... SOMETHING THAT YOU FEEL WILL FIND ITS OWN FORM. --JACK KEROUAC, FROM "BELIEF AND TECHNIQUE FOR MODERN PROSE"
Kerouac wrote "yr," long before anybody was indulging in rampant abbreviation for texting purposes. I'd read that quote in Richard's banner many times, but this morning was the first time I was moved to Google the quote. I wanted to make sure of what I was already sure of, that the abbreviation was Kerouac's. And the cool thing about that, for which I offer a penny to Penny, is that I found the whole context, "Belief and Technique for Modern Prose," which is written — Richard elides this — as a numbered list. I love lists, especially numbered lists.
(We've been eating salads from that 101 salads list, and, for example, #2 really is — as billed — "[a]stonishing.")
There are only 30 items on Kerouac's list, so it's easier to read than not to read. Nevertheless, I'll copy a few here, with commentary:
3. Try never get drunk outside yr own house
And don't even yell as if u were drunk outside yr house, especially at a cop.
6. Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind
Consider it done! Since 2004.
8. Write what you want bottomless from bottom of the mind
I often write bottomless. Much more than topless. Because I like to write in bed.
13. Remove literary, grammatical and syntactical inhibition
K.
15. Telling the true story of the world in interior monolog
Would all the political bloggers please take a day to do exactly this? Then, if you can do it, do it all the time.
18. Work from pithy middle eye out, swimming in language sea... 23. Keep track of every day the date emblazoned in yr morning 24. No fear or shame in the dignity of yr experience, language & knowledge
Phillip Alpert found out the hard way. He had just turned 18 when he sent a naked photo of his 16-year-old girlfriend, a photo she had taken and sent him, to dozens of her friends and family after an argument. The high school sweethearts had been dating for almost 2½ years. "It was a stupid thing I did because I was upset and tired and it was the middle of the night and I was an immature kid," says Alpert.
Orlando, Florida, police didn't see it that way. Alpert was arrested and charged with sending child pornography, a felony to which he pleaded no contest but was later convicted. He was sentenced to five years probation and required by Florida law to register as a sex offender.
"You will find me on the registered sex offender list next to people who have raped children, molested kids, things like that, because I sent child pornography," says Alpert in disbelief, explaining, "You think child pornography, you think 6-year-old, 3-year-old little kids who can't think for themselves, who are taken advantage of. That really wasn't the case."
