Humor versus Seriousness as Political Persuasion

I've been thinking about liberal and conservative "public voices." It strikes me that some of the most well-known liberal voices in American today are comedians or people known for being funny. Like the fabulous Jon Stewart of the Daily Show (see the link to the left) or Al Franken of SNL and Air America (http://www.ofrankenfactor.com). Al Franken even has a new book coming out called The Truth (With Jokes).

Now the equally prominent voices on the right are not nearly as funny. They are serious guys like Rush Limbaugh and Pat Robertson (I'm not going to put links to their sites on MY blog--they get plenty of links elsewhere). Robertson would never write a book called The Truth (With Jokes); he'd be more likely to write something like The Truth (With Sermons).

So why is it that humor is the favored mode of communication among liberal public voices and sternness is the tone of most conservatives? Why has each side turned to such different means of persuasion? I guess the fact that right now the US is pretty evenly made up of liberals and conservatives proves that neither side has a lock on persuasion. Of course good political humor is serious commentary, so I think the dudes on the left have it all right, but why does the stone cold rhetoric of the conservatives work on so many of my fellow Americans?

I haven't yet mentioned the fact that these prominent public voices are all straight (I presume) white guys, but that is a subject for another blog . . .

Are Blogs for Authorship or Exchange?

I was catching up on reading one of my favorite blogs -- Steven Johnson's (at www.stevenberlinjohnson.com ). I came across one entry entitled "Two Things I Would Like," (from August 4, 2005), and I became very disappointed in Johnson. Once I got over the feeling that one of my fave authors had clay feet like the rest of us, I was stimulated to ask some questions about the purpose of blogging.

Before I get into my questions, let me post here the quote from Johnson's blog that got me mad/sad then curious/analytical. Johnson was asking his regular readers to recommend some software that would let him convert his blog entries into files on his hard drive. He wrote:

I'd like the title, date, and primary text included, but have no interest
in all the other info -- categories, comments, trackbacks, etc. (It'd also be
nice to have the title of the document by the title of the blog entry, not some
weird numerical thing).

What really bugged me was that he had "no interest" in saving any of the comments on his blog, just his own words. To me, 50% of the value of a blog is the comments -- the communication and collaboration between author and readers. Without the comments, a blog is just a home page -- a writing space for authorship rather than exchange.

What makes this "genre" (if you will) so innovative is the give and take between author and readers. Blogs exemplify the way that we make meaning: collaboratively. A blogger's entries can seem like a tree falling in the forest without anyone hearing it; the comments are proof that the tree really fell, and together they make rhetoric -- language in social interaction.

Now, maybe I am just being a little harsh on Johnson. Maybe he dutifully reads all of the comments on his blog and co-constructs meaning with them in that moment of reading. But, if I were to save my blogs as files, I'd want the comments too. Publicly stating that he has no interest in saving them strikes me as hubris. Maybe that is a requisite quality of best-selling authors --- but I wanted to believe that Johnson was more pure than that, more true to the poststructuralist theories he seems to embrace in his books.

The Week Before Class Starts

So, it's the week before class starts; I am hurriedly putting the last touches on my syllabi while conducting a series of pre-semester workshops.

This blog was going to be the place where I documented my planning of my new class entitled "Writing in Electronic Environments." The plan was that I would reflect upon and detail every step of my planning process, including links to cool sites I came across and pithy comments on books and articles I found to assign. But not much of that has really happened . . .

I came across a website that has articles about academics blogging. One woman said that she was going to blog about her research and that it just did not happen, so that made me feel a little better. Then another entry said that blogs are really only good when they are uniformly focused and the entries are cohesive -- well, my blog really does not fit that de(pre)scription: I've posted on everything from David Bowie to my son's vacation to musings on the public nature of text and audience. Then again, one of the articles on this sight said that academic blogs should not be all business but should be personal too.

So, with a few days left before class starts, I'm trying to get back to my original intent of blogging about the process of creating a class about electronic writing. Maybe the entries will get jazzier once school starts (or more or less cohesive or more or less personal : )

The Boys in DC

I'm a big fan of The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer (http://www.pbs.org/newshour/). I wait for Friday nights with much anticipation because that is when "the boys" come on the show to discuss the week in politics ("the boys" being David Brooks and Mark Sheilds).

This weekend my son and husband are in Washington DC visiting relatives. One of our relatives works as a reporter at the NewsHour, so she got my husband, my son, and my nephew and exclusive tour! Here are some snaps:

At Jim's Desk!!!!!!!

TV is a medium of visuals, primarily, but one of my favorite TV personaliaties is rarely seen, but often heard: he is the silver-tongued NewsHour reporter Kwame Holman. So check out this rare visual of Kwame!

Fave Bowie Songs

I just finished watching a David Bowie concert on my local PBS station (www.kvie.org). I got to asking myself, "What's my favorite Bowie tune?"

In high school my theme song was sort of "Little China Girl" because I worked in the China and Crystal department at a local department store. That song came out while I was working there, so my pal Gita dubbed me "Little China Girl."

But I was a Bowie fan well before that album; one of his catchiest songs has got to be "Young Americans." The lyrics are so quick and wry -- and I much love social and political commentary. And, at the time, I felt the song was a nod to my life as a young American (just like I personalized "Little China Girl"). Narcissism looms large in my music ranking, I guess . . .

But, song are not just lyrics - -it is the music that sets a song apart from a poem, after all. So, I'd have to say that my most favorite David Bowie song is one that hits me at the primal, gut level: "Heroes." I love this song because of the music and the sound of his voice (not necessarily the words - heck, I can't even understand all of the words). They're both so haunting and full of desperate hope (I guess the better part of hope is desperation, isn't it). I especially like the version he sings in German ("Helden") - again I cannot understand all of the lyrics, so I connect with the song emotionally.

Emotionally connecting with songs . . .hmmmm, not exactly a news flash. But a fun reminiscence nevertheless. What's your fave Bowie song and why?

What makes groups thrive?

I recently joined a group, and I am wondering about what makes a group work. The group is made up of some people who are quite a bit more conservative than I am (socially, politically). This bothers me a bit, and I am thinking about quitting the group and maybe finding a group made up of more like-minded people. But then, I recall reading an essay by John Perry Barlow (for more info on this EFF guy, click here http://homes.eff.org/~barlow/), in which he claims that the communes of the '60s failed because they were not diverse enough. He goes on to claim that a community needs dissensus (as opposed to only consensus) to thrive.

So then I think, maybe I should not quit this group but instead bask in the dissensus. I'll figure out my own group membership thing, but tell me what you think about the nature of groups and what makes them survive.