Saber beats Rock

WHEN THE LIE'S SO BIG

Hey guys Happy Thanksgiving. I found this while looking for pics for the November project. Hope you find it as interesting as I did.


http://flickr.com/photos/95769784@N00/56113108/

Baltimore Immigration Summit

I was on a panel for the Baltimore Immigration Summit earlier today. It was an interesting experience in terms of getting an incredibly intense overview of the state of immigration in Baltimore City, especially in light of the recent election and changing control of the government. The event was very, very political and themed in response to the recent attempts to build a wall along the Mexican border. The event's subtitle was "Building Bridges" (as in, instead of building walls to divide, let's build bridges to connect).

The keynote speaker, Juan Carlos Ruiz, was very involved in the protests of last spring and the recent senetorial election in Virginia. He spoke about working to organize immigrant communities in political action and activity - and when it came to discussing the attitude of former-sen. Allen, Ruiz actually called him Senator Mucaca.

So, yeah, just wanted to put that out there. Because even my presentation (based heavily in history) ended up being heavily political; almost every question I was asked by the audience was about the state of governance in Baltimore City and political activity in the Korean-American community.

News ... ?

Rhetoric, nay, propaganda:

Here

Voting brings the crazies out

Well, I went in and voted for O'Malley, Cardin, Della, McHale, etc. Lucky me, I get to vote at my church. Of course, I was wearing my Della/McHale t-shirt with my coat and sweatshirt unzipped when I walked in.

The lady gave me a dirty look, but she didn't say anything. I didn't know not to walk in with my shirt showing. I voted and then went outside to pass out papers for Della and McHale with four other people. It was a lot of fun. Brian McHale is a really nice guy. I met him about 6 years ago.

Well, this crazy guy came up and flipped out on us. He screamed at us at first thinking we were supporting Kimos. Then he called the four people we were supporting idiots.

After that, he made fun of Brian McHale for having been a long shoreman. He said he wasn't good enough to be a politician. First, he was complaining about rich people. Then he complained about McHale for being of the wrong class. I was angry, to say the least.

He began talking about public schools, saying they were all bad except Poly. I told him I went to Poly and what it was really like. He got angry and said that I was just one person and my experience didn't count.

Then he made fun of us for living in this neighborhood all our lives, saying it wasn't ours anymore and it belonged now to all the upperclass people and stuff like that. The rest of the time was great.

Surveillance: videotape as visual rhetoric

I don't know if anyone else has been following the debate over civilian videotaping of police activity, but some citizens in West Baltimore who have been videotaping police in their neighborhood have been receiving alot of press attention, from the Baltimore Sun to CBS News. Citizens see the video as a form of self-defense from what they consider to be overly aggressive behavior by cops. Disgraced former police chief and current radio talk-show host Ed Norris is so outraged by community counter-surveillance that he actually called on police to respond only to emergency calls, but ignore the corner drug dealers if citizens didn't appreciate police enough to not videotape them.

One thing I thought was interesting is that for the people doing the videotaping, the video provides a vital function in terms of forensic rhetoric, since the ethos of the average black male resident of a large American city is apparently insufficient for complaints of police misconduct to be taken seriously.

Although the official position of the Baltimore City Police Department is that they have no problem with the videotaping--they say they want to know if cops aren't playing by the rules--you can be sure that cops are pissed.

I posted about this in depth on my blog, so I'll just link to that post at the end, since I have video, links to the Sun article, etc. over there. But I wanted to mention something here, since I think the question of video surveillance is an interesting segue to the "image" portion of our seminar. Citizen countersurveillance is a powerful tool, and there's indication that we could see a full-fledged Copwatch program emerge in the coming months.

Turning the cameras back on the cops

The battle over the narrative of 2006

I'm not sure why I omitted the Huffington Post from my blogroll submissions, but it really was a glaring omission. I was just reading an interesting post by Ariana Huffington on the battle to control the meaning of the 2006 election:

"Even before the polls close -- hell, even before they open-- the battle within both parties to control the '06 narrative, to define what the results of this election mean, has already begun.

Tuesday's key fight is the get-out-the-vote ground war, but behind-the-scenes the struggle is to spin the results -- whatever they may be.

Sensing victory in the House, and keeping their fingers crossed on the Senate, the Democratic Party's competing factions -- DLC centrists on one side, progressives on the other -- are eagerly trying to frame the hoped for good news as proof that their side is right."

Read More...

Who is The Party for the Average Joe?

Yesterday, following an impassioned conversation about free speech (which included whether it was worse to burn a flag or the Constitution but that's another discussion), a law school colleague said "The reason I am a Republican is because it is the working man's party. The Democrats are so elitist that they have lost touch with the average American." (The irony of this statement coming from a future attorney who will most likely be upper middle class was not lost on me by the way).

I was actually flabbergasted and have been churning this statement around in my head ever since. In my mind, the Democrats are the party that fight for the little man/underdog, and the Republicans are the party of the upper-middle and upper class, complete with tax shelters and big business... and I'm not sure if or when that really changed. On strict policy lines, I don't think it has. But perception?

- Did all of this actually change post-9/11?

- Has the war successfully rallied people into believing that the Republican party is the party of the Average Joe?

- Or was it Gingrich and his Contract for America, with the real traction around the "return to traditional values"?

- Or, was it the success of Bush I'm-a-Texan-cowboy-and-the-guy-you-want-to-have-a-beer-with-
despite-having-made-millions-after-my-Ivy-League-education-
and-privileged-background vs. Kerry I'm-clearly-from-the-
Northeast-fought-in-the-war-and-then-protested-it-and-
proudly-went-to-an-Ivy-League-school?

I mean, if the past two presidential elections are any indication, there isn't any overwhelming poll data that I've seen that shows that average Americans are vastly Republican, but maybe people really believe this now.

I'd really be interested in everyone's thoughts about this and the answer to who that party is.

Rhetoric on Rhetoric?

I heard about this site on the radio today - the ultimate play on political rhetoric. The guy who runs this site is actually a lefty libertarian but Dems and Republicans alike are eating it up.

link to liberalsmustdie

Little more music

This is Eric Schwartz singing his song. If you're at work plug in the headphones:

Was I the only one who got Kerry's joke?

I'm suprised no one's posted this. Kerry was speaking to a student audience, encouraging them to get good grades, otherwise, they would, "get stuck in Iraq." I thought this was an obvious jab at Bush and his "C" student remarks,

but then the next day I saw the eruptions that made Kerry's comments= People in the military are stupid. At first Kerry said he wouldn't apologize to anyone, but alas he has come out with an apology after the public outcry.

This is a perfect example of rhetoric manipulation. This is a case in which the artist, and those that back him/her with money, have the ability to literally flip how a communication is decoded by an audience.

The artists that control social action like Kerry have probably been reminded that they are still servant to the giant of public sentiment. It's just a race to see who can prod them in what direction