The Style Council

Last summer, the Obama Administration got embroiled in controversy with the Henry Louis Gates, Jr. arrest and Barack’s comments about the Cambridge police. This summer, Andrew Brietbart set off a chain reaction with clips of a video at a NAACP meeting that he felt showed how a black USDA official, Shirley Sherrod, was expressing racist views. Here’s Brietbart explaining his position on Sherrod’s talk and his allegations that the NAACP audience was “applauding her overt racism”, although he also acknowledges how she draws distinctions between the “haves” and “have nots” in the context of the story::

Subsequently, the Obama administration pressured her to resign.

Well, as it turns out, the clip wasn’t the whole story. Sherrod’s talk in its entirety is about bridging the race gap and how she had to come to terms with her own feelings. In the aftermath, the wife of the white farmer that Shirley referred to in the video and helped, Elouise Spooner, came forward and said that she did right by them::

When the story broke, I saw it in Toronto on CNN, which was only showing clips which were damning and those outraged at Sherrod’s “racism” at a NAACP meeting. It was a jaw-dropping story, how it was framed, but I wasn’t all that surprised when I saw how the story was more complicated and not at all surprised to hear that the Obama administration is backpedaling after figuring out the rest of the story. Apparently, CNN jumped on the bandwagon, throwing caution and good journalism to the winds::

“CNN’s Rick Sanchez said producers there were intrigued by Biggovernment.com’s posting and immediately started reporting on it. But with all the questions involved — Was this a fair characterization of Sherrod’s full speech? Can she be reached to give her side of the story? — they wouldn’t be ready to discuss it on his afternoon show until Tuesday, he said.

By then, the story rushed by.

“As journalists, we have to protect ourselves the best we can,” Sanchez said. “It’s easy for it to happen to anybody, by the way — jump to a conclusion, get excited, look at the coverage. It’s kind of like creating a bandwagon effect. Once you get on the bandwagon, you can’t hit the brakes. According to the SF Chron::

“CNN’s Rick Sanchez said producers there were intrigued by Biggovernment.com’s [Brietbart’s] posting and immediately started reporting on it. But with all the questions involved — Was this a fair characterization of Sherrod’s full speech? Can she be reached to give her side of the story? — they wouldn’t be ready to discuss it on his afternoon show until Tuesday, he said.

By then, the story rushed by.

‘As journalists, we have to protect ourselves the best we can,’ Sanchez said. ‘It’s easy for it to happen to anybody, by the way — jump to a conclusion, get excited, look at the coverage. It’s kind of like creating a bandwagon effect. Once you get on the bandwagon, you can’t hit the brakes.'”

So, while CNN and Fox were both focusing on the reverse racism angle of this story, Fox’s O’Reilly kicks it up a notch. He cites several stories that the mainstream media didn’t cover as a journalism fail and evidence of a left-leaning bias. Bill practically accuses other networks of embracing a leftist agenda over giving the audience what they want::

All of this frenzy even duped the NAACP, which initially denounced Sherrod. While the media, politicians, and organizations are quick to jump the gun on incendiary bombs like this, what gets lost are the issues at hand on race and the Tea party movement. It gets convoluted, as even ousted Tea Party Federation activist Mark Williams defended Sherrod, as the controversy swirled. At around 7:30 EDT, there were two “highest rated” comments on the full video {link to all comments}, which shows that views are being expressed that show that people aren’t willing to follow a us-them mentality with respect to the Tea party movement and the NAACP::

“I am a white, Christian, Tea Party conservative from Texas….and I must say that while I appreciate much of Mr. Breitbart’s work, he really blew this one with his selective editing. I appreciated much of what Ms. Sherrod said about racial perspectives from all fronts. She sounded like she was sharing honest feelings based on her background, and how she came to terms with that. She should get her job back! Most of the Tea Party folks that I’m around would feel the same way.”—spastikmunkey

“I’m an Old (57) White Male. After watching this, I believe it is wrong for Mrs. Sherrod to lose her job. Yes, she had – and has – some racial issues – especially understandable given what happened to her father – but her heart is good and she has worked to overcome them and do the right thing. I’m all about grace and allowing people to grow. I only hope that blacks will give whites the same room and understanding. It’s the only way we’ll ever achieve racial reconciliation of any depth.”—lostcause53

The actions of CNN and {allegedly} the Obama administration, given USDA deputy undersecretary Cheryl Cook who phoned Shirley and told her the White House wanted her to resign since her comments were causing a controversy, show how the media and politicians are preoccupied with hype and spin, as opposed to getting the facts straight.

I think it’s easy to characterize any social movement in a stereotypical fashion, but I wonder how this plays out in an era of network politics. Where is the agency and what is the exact configuration of the Tea party movement when it comes to positions on race? Clearly, not everyone in the Tea party movement is on board with race as a wedge issue, but can any leader realistically speak for what is a confederation of localized grassroots activity?

Song:: The Style Council-‘Long Hot Summer’

Twitterversion:: [blog] Sherrod debacle highlights media & political #fail, but implications for social movements in networked politics?  http://url.ie/6unp @Prof_K

Crossposted on Rhizomicomm

In 1959, my Chicagoan parents visited Toronto, Ontario and the city left little impression upon them.  Architecturally nondescript, it was seen as an unfortunate product of postwar growth in an uninspired age.  I remembered this and when I was driving from Montréal to Los Angeles in 1992, I didn’t even stop to visit Toronto.  My only recollection of the city was seeing a cluster of highrises in the distance while on a huge swath of a highway with express and collector lanes, the mighty 401.  Living in Toronto over the past few summers, I’ve found the city to be much more fascinating than I gave it credit and a lot has to do with how much of the downtown core is walkable.  I’m reading a book, Walkable City, by Mary Soderstrom that draws heavily on Jane Jacobs, a key urbanist figure here in her adopted Toronto.  Toronto from its inception, started with a grid::

Toronto’s grid, unlike that of New York City’s Manhattan, consisted of short streets and encouraged the development of neighborhoods and community.  José’s blog earlier this year notes how grids are safer than dendritic street patterns.  Jane Jacobs helped to thwart a freeway project, the Spadina Expressway, which would have taken cars from the mighty 401 allowing them access into the heart of the downtown core.  The expressway would have encouraged more sprawled developments outside of the core, but some have argued that Toronto’s anti-car policies have driven development out towards the suburbs, with cheaper land and lower taxes.  One of the outcomes of the Spadina Expressway failure was the creation of the Spadina subway line, which focused development along that corridor.

Flying into Pearson and seeing maps of the Greater Toronto Area, there is no mistake that there is sprawl.  The Toronto I’ve encountered is one of surprises, as the downtown core is walkable and much can be accessed on foot.  While I complain about the local mass transit, the TTC, particularly since it’s often crowded and expensive {cashfare of $2.75 CAN is one of the highest in Canada}, it works.  If you live in the downtown area, one doesn’t need a car and like in Manhattan, a car is often a liability, rather than a convenience.  Nevertheless, I see Toronto as at a city at a crossroads.  Increasingly dependent on automobiles in an era of volatile oil prices, with an infrastructure dependent on gas taxes and registration fees.  Toronto is the largest city in Canada, comparable in size to Boston, but runs the risk of being gridlocked and subject to the “tyranny of the automobile,” as a prescient 1966 Toronto Planning Commission warned.  From a marketing point of view, I see glossy developers’ ads enticing residents with more space and lower prices {and possibly lower taxes} outside of the downtown core, which I’m sure are compelling to many.  Unfortunately, many of these developments aren’t factoring in walking.  While they may be close to mass transit, they often aren’t in vibrant communities with mixed-use {housing and businesses} and adequate amounts of affordable housing.  I’m afraid the thinking is still along the lines of modernity’s arboreal tree, as opposed to the Deleuzean rhizome, but A City Is Not a Tree.

In discussing public financing of infrastructure, a curious split occurs.  When discussing freeways, there’s often a mentality of built more to alleviate the strain.  Like Internet bandwidth, there can never be too much carrying capacity.  The minute one talks about mass-transit, there’s often a discussion of whether or not usage and fare revenues will be sustainable.  Transit-oriented development might be a solution, if increases in property values from proximity from mass transit can be leveraged to finance its construction {an overview of this is here}.

In the past few years, I’ve come across a microculture of mass-transit afficionados.  Some go as far as to create “fantasy” transit maps, particularly of subways or light rail::

I think this stuff needs to get plugged into a Sim-City-like environment, but like any abstraction, it’s only as good as its assumptions.  My utopian vision of Toronto is one with concentrated development along corridors and with a direct connection to Pearson {Airport}.  My idea was a line that went from Pearson to downtown, following Queen in the downtown core, and eventually looping back up to the Bloor-Danforth line.

Any thoughts on your town/city?  Is it walkable?  Does it matter?

Twitterversion:: WalkableCity-#Toronto,Transit& CarCulture.Can TO dvelpmnt be shaped,creating vibrant communities sans cars? http://url.ie/1zuk #ThickCulture @Prof_K

Song:: Come To Milton Keynes – The Style Council