Facing Myself on Facebook – Part I: The Present
I have been wanting to write about Facebook for awhile, but have not been quite sure how to tackle it. Everyone has their own take on Facebook and no one denies what a huge impact it is having on our social discourse along with Twitter. What we don’t read about that much is the impact it has on each of us as individuals, so I have decided to explore that. Facebook has impacted how I deal with my past, how I live in my present, and how I face my future.
I will start with the present. In order to do so I need to share a little more about my past than I have before, and tell you about my friend David Nolan.
I first met David in the late 80’s – the third Saturday that Wetlands was opened to be precise, though I must admit to not remembering it directly. However, there was no way for us NOT to have met that night. The band I was managing, dreamspeak, was headlining. It was our first weekend NY headliner that included a real guarantee, and turned out to be the largest city club crowd we had played in front of to date. Afterward the entire staff, the band and I gathered at the bar and shared in some champagne to celebrate. We may have even met earlier, as I discovered a few years ago that he had in fact seen dreamspeak before that show and even taped them at a live show I produced in Tompkins Square Park back when the park had a bandshell and A LOT of homeless people. In short, we were in each other’s lives but not of each other’s lives.
Flash forward a few years and I leave NYC for the Bay Area. By the time I returned in 1999 the music business and I had separated for the last time. I settled into Jersey City and a new career as a Business Intelligence Professional (yes, an oxymoron three-way). I remained close to some people from my music days and before, but by that time had lost track of and touch with most of those I had known in the NY music scene, not to mention High School, College and various places of work. I made new friends in Jersey City and moved on with life.
Flash forward one final time to late summer of 2008. My sister had been bugging me for months about how I needed to get on Facebook, how she had reconnected with so many people. I was very wary of ’social networking’. What about those people by whom I did not want to be found? What reminders might I face of things better left forgotten? The mid-nineties had been a very painful time in my life, and I was truly frightened of having to relive them. Eventually though curiosity and my inner geek got the best of me and I set myself up on Facebook. I started by connecting with people I was still connected with in the real world, but through their friend lists and group lists I quickly found myself reconnecting with people from the late 80s – early 90s NY music scene. This in turn lead me to a group centered around a bar that was the epicenter of my music scene back then – Nightingales – and thus to an actual ‘real world’ reunion of people from the Nightingale’s music scene being planned by a small group of people that included David Nolan.
I saw several people that night I had not seen in decades, and others that I had not met but heard of from others. It was a wonderful time. I spent most of the night talking to two people, David Nolan and one other I had done some work with but not known all that well named Michael Weiss. I had “friended” both of them in the month leading up to the reunion and enjoyed catching up online, so it seemed pretty natural to spend a lot of time talking to them. Eventually we said good night and went our separate ways.
But then something happened that would probably never have happened if not for Facebook; we continued our conversations. Through Facebook I got to know about Michael’s family, his MS and his leadership in the MS community (more on that in Part 2), even his unbelievably mellow dog. I became friends with his wife online and started conversing with her as well. At the same time I discovered that David Nolan and I had the same interest in current events and the minutiae of political process as well as very similar political and personal philosophies. We would each post stories of interest to us and then join the debates that would undoubtedly ensue as our Republican, Libertarian, and Neo-Con friends and acquaintances would join the fray. Unbeknown to them, we would often message each other privately to comment on some of the things being said or to make each other aware of a thread the other was not on when we needed ‘backup’. We introduced each other to people online, shared several laughs, and offered advice and support to each other when needed. Even though we would not be in the same room together again, we became good friends.
My friend David Nolan died Thursday night. He had a heart attack at the age of 48 and he was gone. I found out about it on Facebook Friday afternoon. It was the third death of a past or present friend that I have learned of on Facebook – one years after it happened, the other two within 24 hours. This one, however, felt different. David Nolan was not just in my life as he had been in the 80s, he had become of my life.
Now I find myself grieving, mourning the absence of someone whom, from a purely technical outlook, had not been ‘present’ since October of 2008. Over the course of the 10 hours since I learned of his death I have asked myself several questions. Is this normal? Do I have the right to consider him a good friend? Does it make sense that I am this upset?
I have accepted, in fact I know and feel to the core of my being, that the answer to all of the above is “yes”. Social networking has changed the ways in which we can be present in each others lives. Some argue that it is distancing – allowing us to interact with each other at arm’s length. In some cases that may be true. Yet it has also allowed us to become close to people we may never have had the chance to, or even have met, if not for it’s existence.
The online debates I joined in with David got me writing regularly and thoughtfully for the first time in years. As I expanded my Facebook world and became friends with a professional writer who encouraged me with his kind words about my comments I became inspired to start this blog. This blog, in turn, has expanded my horizons in terms of how I communicate and who I communicate with. While I do not publish as often as I should, this blog is one of the great joys of my life – and I doubt it would have happened if not for David Nolan.
David Nolan, without even sitting in the same room with me once in over 18 months you have helped me become something I have always wanted to be – a writer. I will miss you terribly. Rest In Peace.
Writing About Writing About Racism
Last week someone on Facebook called me a racist. In fact he said his new nickname for me was “racist dave”. I would probably be deeply offended by this if not for the fact that just a few posts earlier I had called him a racist. I re-read the entire thread and decided then and there that my next blog post would be about racism.
Why not? Like almost everyone I have witnessed and/or been a victim of some sort of discrimination, be it racial or religious. I consider myself to be extremely open-minded and non-judgmental, so writing about racism should be easy, right?
Wrong.
I started by reading the original exchange out loud to my sister, who very quickly picked up on something I hadn’t. My statement was only non-racist because of my point. However, if you missed my point then the statement would in fact appear racist. The person to whom the comment was directed missed my point. It is entirely possible he missed my point because of the racial angle, however the angle was unavoidable to make my point.
The discussion, which can be found here, began with the breaking news of the shootings at Ft. Hood. A friend of mine, whom in her previous work in mental health had interviewed Timothy McVeigh for the government in the wake of the Oklahoma City bombing, posted on Facebook looking to see what information anyone might have. I replied with what little I had heard,and another person immediately replied that it looked like a sleeper cell to him. I suggested not jumping to conclusions.
Then the name came in. Nidal Hassan, or as the other poster whom I will simply call PC put it “Nidal Hassan. hmm.” This lead to a back and forth on assumptions based on his name. At one point I tried to draw a parallel between PC’s assumptions and the treatment of Asian Americans during WW II. This is where things got ‘complicated’.
See, PC happens to be of Chinese descent, and has a Chinese last name. Since PC was failing to note that an Arabic name does not make one a Muslim, which in turn does not make one a jihadist I decided to drive the point home by pointing out that he may not have liked the way he would have been treated in America during WW II because of his last name. My point, which I mistakenly assumed to be self-explanatory, was that to many he would have just been the hated “yellow man” so regularly portrayed in political cartoons and ostracized. I already knew by his last name that he was not, in fact, Japanese.
His reaction was immediate and angry. Clearly I was a racist, according to PC. My assumption that he was Japanese showed that I could not tell the difference between one Asian and another. In fact, I can. My whole point was that one could just as easily make a choice not to differentiate, as he had in the case of Hassan. I thought my point obvious. However, my sister made me see that while it was obvious to me it may not have been obvious to PC. She pointed out that when one has been a victim of discrimination, as she and I have both been for our Judaism, it is easy to assume that a comment that miscategorizes you is racist, even if the miscategorization is the point.
OK. Lesson learned. I decided that in writing about racism I would discuss the issue of multiple perspectives. I would look at how difficult it could be to differentiate between the appearance of racism and actual racism. All I had to do was clearly define the various forms of racism.
Oh boy.
It turns out that we have come up with so many different ‘types’ of racism you need a scorecard to keep track of them all. In researching for my article I came across writings about innate racism, blatant racism, subtle racism, institutional racism, reverse racism, pathological racism, learned racism, and on and on. What’s more, every attempt to define one of these terms wound up borrowing from or being practically the same as another. I realized that if I tried to write about the different types of racism I would wind up with a dissertation, not a blog post. I also realized it would be a lousy dissertation at best.
My next idea was to go back to the roots of my conversation with PC. I would write about racism from much the same perspective as the Supreme Court wrote about pornography, the “I know it when I see it” argument. Of course since I had just learned that how you see it depends on your own racial history I would need to include examples of perspective. All I would need to accomplish that was to put myself in the shoes of a black man, an Indian, a Pakistani, a Sunni, a Shiite, a Palestinian, a Tutsi, a Hutu, a….. oh, crap.
Did you know that technically speaking, there is no such thing as a Hutu or a Tutsi? Seriously, these tribes were created by the colonists in order to foment internal discord and keep the Rwandans from turning on the occupiers. No one foresaw that these labels would stick to such a degree that eventually these two ‘tribes’ would become involved in one of the largest genocides of the modern age.
Then again, all racism is manufactured, regardless of the type. One person, or group of people, are somehow slighted by another group, or require some ‘other’ to blame for their circumstances, or need to distract the masses from a real enemy, or channel a fear born out of personal trauma, or justify a behavior – and thus racism is born. In the end any and all racism requires rationalization of the irrational, or at the very least the projection of the behavior of a select few onto all of those that share some characteristics with those few.
So now I realize that trying to write about actual racism is a lost cause for all but the best and brightest. Read President Obama’s books, or his speech on racism (most likely written by Jon Favreau) and you can begin the process. In the end racism appears to me to be all about inequality, perceived or actual, and thus I can not really write about it. To put myself into the shoes of anyone other than myself on the subject could be perceived to be – could actually be – racist. To write about it purely from my own perspective would be interesting to some, and perhaps open a few eyes to the antisemitism that is still prevalent in America, but it will not open any new doors to anyone who has not witnessed it. I certainly wouldn’t try to convince anyone that the election of President Obama is in and of itself an end to a certain sort of racism. If racism is all about perception then individual events, no matter how large, can not mark a beginning or an end.
So what is left? I suppose that by avoiding denial of racism, pointing it out, convincing people to try to understand that existence itself is a subjective experience and we can not hope to fully understand what does or doesn’t motivate an individual let alone a group, I can hope to make a difference. By “knowing it when we see it” and not being afraid to say so – like pointing out that many who call Obama a socialist/communist/Nazi without knowing the meaning of those terms are on some level really just avoiding using the N word, we can make a difference. But try to write about what it is specifically and then define how as a group we solve a problem that is a result of seeing ourselves as groups? Oy.
Five Things 24 Hour News Should Do
In the wake of news cycles that have variously centered on “Balloon Boy”, Meghan McCain’s tits, Obama Vs Fox, and the tragedy at Ft. Hood I have been giving even more thought than usual to the state of 24 hour news and what it should be. Here are my suggestions for making the 24 hour news cycle more palatable – or at least more likely to include a warning sticker that it is not palatable (“In the case of outrage lasting more than 4 hours, please call your doctor as this may be a sign of a much more serious condition called a moral center”). Take a look, then share your five.
1. GO AWAY
The whole reason for numbers 2 thru 5 is that this is a lost cause, but I honestly believe the world would be a better place without the 24 hour news cycle. I admit that as an information and politics wonk/addict I was besides myself with joy when CNN first came on the scene. I also admit that there are times when a story requires that level of coverage. I will even admit that there is 24 hours worth of news (see #2), but that is not what 24 hour news serves. Instead it chooses one to three stories and covers them to death. Since they all choose the same one to three stories they have to come up with more and more information to fill the time. The result is dozen of talking heads judging every aspect over and over again to the point that people just tune out. Also, stories are chosen more by how much time you can fill than they are by actual importance. If they only had an hour a day they would have to offer new information, compactly presented with the relevant facts, in order to compete with each other. As a result people would have more information and less bullshit. Yes, Pat Buchanan is entitled to his warped opinion that Sotomayor was an affirmative action appointment, but I don’t really need to hear it ten times on ten different programs. Plus, the 24 hour news leads to intellectual laziness. “Experts” feel remarkably comfortable getting facts wrong, since they will have a chance to either clarify or obfuscate what they said an hour from when they said it. Political spokesman are offered the opportunity to easily float “trial balloons”, adjusting their argument from one hour to the next depending on reaction to it rather than having to actually decide on a stance in advance knowing that, for at least a day, they will be held to it.
2. SINCE YOU WON’T GO AWAY, TRY COVERING MORE NEWS
Darfur, anyone? Palestinian self-policing successes in the West Bank? Massive increase in local protests in China? Transformation of Russia into a Kleptocracy? Contradiction in US Foreign Policy in treatment of Saudi government Vs refusal to speak with Taliban? Refugee situation in Western Pakistan? Women’s issues all over the world? Poverty in the United States? yadda yadda yadda. Seriously, is there so little news that MSNBC has to spend its weekend re-running Lockup a gazillion times? Which brings me to…
3. IF YOU ARE GOING TO HAVE A POINT-OF-VIEW, DON’T YIELD TIME.
This is directed specifically at MSNBC. As a liberal/progressive/socialist/communist/America-hater (I am defining myself as FOX News would), I am glad to have a national news outlet that counters FOX. So why do you give them the floor for the entire weekend? I often work late and want to be entertained when I get home, so I and many like me are most likely to pay attention to the 24 hour news on the weekend. Unfortunately, all I get from MSNBC on the weekends is Lockup or To Catch A Predator. Are you really going to force me to turn on CNN or FOX to find out anything current and relevant? MSNBC, has it occurred to you that the reason you have lower ratings than the other news station is that people who first turn into you on the weekends might not know you are a news station?
4. END THE ECHO CHAMBER
Seriously, don’t any of these hosts know more than 5 people? Every show, every day, has the exact same experts commenting. Each host has found a cadre of people who think like them along with one person who thinks differently but is easy to beat up. These are the people you see on their shows day after day. Enough of the same talking head scientist day in and day out telling me what all of the other scientists agree on. If they all agree on it can’t you find someone else to say the same thing the next day? The worst offender is Keith Olbermann who literally has the exact same people on every day without exception. However, I find it more annoying on FOX, where the guests on each show are often the hosts of other shows on the same network. The morning show has Beck, Beck has O’Reilly, O’Reilly has Geraldo, and Geraldo has someone from the morning show. It is one giant self-affirming circle jerk. The one exception to this rule, and outstandingly so, is Rachel Maddow. Not only does she mix up her guest list from day to day, she actually has …wait for it…opposing viewpoints. Not only that, but those opposing viewpoints are often those of the very people she held to account on her previous broadcast. Her coverage of the “astroturfing” of grassroots protests by the right has included live discussions with the heads of the very organizations she has accused of being behind it. Furthermore, these discussions have been exactly that – discussions. No talking over people, no turning off their mics if they start to disagree vehemently with her. Actual, real journalism folks.
5. DECIDE WHAT YOU ARE AND OWN IT.
Quick Quiz. Match the 24 hour news network with its slogans
Networks:
CNN, MSNBC, FOX
Slogans:
“We Report. You Decide”, “We’re Talking Politics”, “Fair and Balanced”, “The Most Trusted Name In News”
Answers:
CNN: “The Most Trusted Name In News”. Seriously? According to who? It is hard to think of a network that jumps to conclusions without facts quicker. The motto should be “Because if we can’t be right, we can still be first.” These are the people who started the stampede to ruin Richard Jewell’s life over the Atlanta Olympics Bombing and who do more speculation reporting than anyone else. How many times do they have an “eye in the sky” image with three or four experts just guessing at what is going on? On top of all of this you have Lou Dobbs, who struggles so hard to hide his blatant fear of all things “other” behind economic worries, all to no avail. The man’s show is one solid hour of hate. Finally, who exactly is it we are supposed to trust? Half of their coverage these days consists of reading emails and tweets from viewers. “Let’ see what DemonHunterX of Nebraska is saying on twitter”. No, let’s not. If I want to get my reporting from twitter I have a way to do that. It’s called twitter. Seriously, this got so out of hand during the Iranian election street protests that people were calling into CNN begging them to take down the live twitter feed because it could be used by the Iranian police to identify and round up protesters. It took them 5 minutes to start showing them, but over 90 minutes of protests to stop. Also, I don’t trust anyone who thinks they can make a valuable informational point via a pie chart spinning in their palm or “beaming in” a holographic will.i.am.
MSNBC: “We’re Talking Politics”. Well, this is a breath of fresh air. By not claiming to be “trusted” or “balanced” or even “news” I find myself trusting them most. The reason is the lack of pretense. All three networks have wandered far from the reservation when it comes to straight news coverage. At least MSNBC admits it. The irony is that when FAIR and Media Matters both take the time to fact check the three news networks, MSNBC is consistently the most factually accurate. You may not agree with their conclusions, but at least they start from an honest premise. Again, I have to tip my hat to The Rachel Maddow Show. This is, as far as I can see, the only news show that takes the time after showing a claim by a politician, left or right, to discuss if the statement itself is true or not. If you want to know the page and paragraph in the health care bills where a politician’s statement is proven or dis-proven then watch Rachel. She will show it to you right after showing the politician’s statement. No one else is doing this. The rest are all so caught up in process (how will the other side react to the statement and then how will the first side counter-react) that they forget to tell you if there is a discernible truth to be had. Unfortunately, you can also find the opposite extreme on MSNBC with Ed Schulz. Now here is a man I agree with 90% of the time but still can’t stand to watch. Why? He doesn’t make the argument. He simply attacks the person who said something he disagrees with and points out every reason that they are not to be trusted. Often this is all true, but it does nothing to address the issue. He simply kills the messenger. Walking the line perfectly between the two of them is Keith Olbermann. He methodically debunks the ridiculousness of a statement, and then he needlessly kills the messenger – or sometimes vice versa. Now if he could just get over his obsession with shooting down reporting by Fox News and Rush Limbaugh. Honestly, does anyone watching Keith Olbermann believe a word that comes out of the mouths of Bill O’Reilly, Glenn Beck, and Rush Limbaugh? Keith, make better use of the time then reminding us every day that they are dangerous demagogues who can not be trusted and are potentially dangerous. We already know that. Seriously. Plus, it can’t be doing anything good for your blood pressure.
FOX: “We Report. You Decide” and “Fair and Balanced”. That loud banging sound and mumbling you hear is George Orwell pounding on his casket door and screaming “Let me the fuck out of here so I can ring Roger Ailes’ pudgy neck!” I would like to think that what I have written so far makes it clear that I have problems with all of the news channels, and the concept of 24 hour news itself. I hope that I have earned enough trust as an open, honest broker that you will not see it as a partisan attack when I say that FOX news lies its ass off 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. They decide, then report. They decide what they want the audience to believe, then they report it as fact. I am talking about statements about how much health care will cost or what path it leads us down. I may disagree with their conclusions but the future is conjecture no matter who is predicting it. John Stewart pointed out the science behind Fox’s approach the other night, with examples, and it bears repeating here.
First, Fox’s few actual reporters cover an event in a straightforward manner, than wonder aloud how others will react to it. This is followed by 12 – 18 hours of Fox commentators reacting to it, which is followed in the next news cycle with those reactions being reported as news (“Many experts are saying….”). This leads to the followers of those commentators, and the politicians on the right who want to expand on the narrative, chiming in so that 24 hours later the news arm is reporting the wide spread reaction of various organizations to the initial event – again without noting that these organizations get their talking points from the very commentators they referred to the day before as “experts”. Even Fox itself practically admitted it last week. When asked about Obama’s charges that they were not news, Rupert Murdoch responded by differentiating between the news shows and commentary during the week. By his own count, there is 5 hours of news broadcast each day. The other 19 hours is commentary. Also, the 5 hours of news is during the least watched periods of television overall, not just for Fox but on TV.
If that is how you want to play it FOX, no problem. Just be honest about it. Drop the “fair and balanced/we report you decide” crap. But they can’t. They spend so much of their time on the air spreading outright lies (Death Panels? Seriously, you want us to believe that someone seeking re-election some day is supporting a panel that can choose to kill grandma?), that they can’t drop the slogans. Dropping the slogans would be honest. But they are Fox. They can’t be honest. So they can’t drop the slogans that say they are honest. OK, now I am making my own head hurt again.
I think I’ll lie down now and turn the TV on. Maybe there is something on C-SPAN.
Matthew Hoh Resigns: State Department Official Quits Over Afghan War
As a supporter of Obama’s from day one, with a strong belief that he intends to do the right thing, I believe he should pay very close attention to this resignation letter. I think it is a spot on analysis of the situation. Even Charlie Wilson, the Republican ex-Congressman largely responsible for the Afghan success against the Soviets, is saying given a choice between fighting this war and personally fighting a chainsaw he’d choose the chainsaw.
If we wait for the “right time” or “right strategy” to leave, we will be there forever, or until our own system fails under the weight just as the Soviets did. In order to get to Al Qaeda we interjected ourselves into a decades old civil war. We need to extricate ourselves from it now. Any illusion that how many Afghanis die is changed by our presence is just that. The only thing changed by our presence is how many americans die, and how many Afghans look out beyond their own borders at America as the enemy, thus fueling Al Qaeda. We need to get out yesterday.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
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