Archive: Oct 2011

In light of the Occupy Wall street protests across the nation picking up steam (check out this video from Oakland) it is worth looking back on the sources of the protest. Here is the best video I’ve been able to find that explains the mortgage crisis.

The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo.

Michael Weiss offers a provocative argument for why the OWS/99 movement faces serious challenges:

OWS sees itself as a battalion against a lifestyle and a mindset that people don’t, in fact, deplore so much as they do the ruin that that lifestyle and mindset causes. Until the movement figures out how reconcile this uniquely American contradiction, and account reasonably for why it exists, OWS will only be subject to further derision and dismissal.

Andrew Sullivan references a classic scene from the movie Boiler Room to support this point.

What do you think of Weiss’ argument?

I have a new article out in Communication Quarterly on the Onion News Network: “Crafting Hyperreal Spaces for Comic Insights: The Onion News Network’s Ironic Iconicity.” I’ve been an admirer of ONN’s humor for quite a while, but also believe the inundation of comic discourses that have emerged in American political communication since the 1990s has been relatively undertheorized.

In other words, we need a better vocabulary for teasing out the operations and functions of these evolving comic formats, which I argue give us a great deal of insight into contemporary public discourse in the larger mediascape—and tell us about what forms of communication
are most amenable to democratic possibilities in the future. This article describes an innovative hyperreal, socio-political technique called “ironic iconicity,” which differentiates the communication strategies of ONN from other formats such as The Daily Show. Here’s one of my favorite, classic ONN clips, which is unpacked in the article:

In the Know: Situation in Nigeria Seems Pretty Complex

The Occupy Wall Street protests have garnered a great deal of attention in recent weeks. The core argument is that the “top one percent” has gotten a free ride in the last few decades, particularly during the last few years where the financial sector has seemingly not been held to account for their role in the financial crisis. But who is the “top one percent”?

Suzy Khimm on Ezra Klein’s blog sheds light on this question.

You’d be in the top 1 percent of U.S. households if your income in 2010 was at least $516,633. Your net worth in 2007 was $8,232,000 or more, and your average income this year is $1,530,773.

Khimm also shares some charts from Dave Gilson that looks deeper into who these “1 percenters” really are. In this chart, he notes that those in the top one percent have a broad range of professions. You’ll note from the chart than only 14 percent come from the financial sector, and a scant 2 percent are classified as “entrepreneurs.” As a side note, how did any professors make this list (1.8 percent)!

This data doesn’t play into the story the “99 percenters” want to tell about the “top 1 percent.” The preferred narrative is that the top one percent come from the financial sector (e.g. their wealth is not earned in the same way an entrepreneur’s wealth is earned).

But another of Gilson’s charts does help the 99 percenter’s story. According to this chart, the top one percent owns a majority share of the nation’s stock/mutual funds, securities, and business equity) when compared to the “bottom 90 percent.”

What does this say about the validity of the Occupy Wall street movement? Should they be focusing their efforts on challenging concentrated wealth regardless of whether it is in the financial sector or not? Or is Wall Street the perfect villain? It is easier to claim that Gordon Gekko should pay more in taxes (Yah….that was his name. I know, we weren’t very ironic in the 1980’s). Does it matter if the story of who constitutes the “top 1 percent” is more muddled if the objective is met? Do the means justify the ends?

A Liberal minority government, one seat shy of the coveted majority.  The turnout was a record low and many pundits are saying that the Progressive Conservatives and Tim Hudak frittered away a golden opportunity to unseat the Ontario Liberals and Premier Dalton McGuinty. Some cynical journos are folding their arms decrying the state of politics as reaching an alltime low with inflammatory rhetoric…sometimes, ironically, shovelling more inflammatory rhetoric onto the fire. {As an aside, I really don’t recall the alleged Liberal insinuation Coyne is referring to, let alone it entering into the political discourse in the 2007 election. If someone has a reference/quote/cite, please comment.}

Some are saying the “hat trick” comment by Stephen Harper at derailed Hudak’s Tories::

My take is that the Ontario Liberals dodged a bullet. They lost their majority, losing 19 seats to the PC {-12} and NDP {-7}, but hold on to power. I thought McGuinty was in trouble, but the Liberals ran a smart campaign given the circumstances and it paid off. This election could have been much worse for the Liberals. While watching the election from New York and Illinois, all of the campaigns {well, let me clarify, the big 3} were appealing to centrism and there were big issues that really motivated voters to go to the polls. My guess is that explains the low turnout more than anything {BTW, Elections Ontario will be looking into the decline.} After all, the PCs and the NDP were left with the charge of advocating a change, but not too much change, since the mantra of this election was the middle of the road. I think the big winner is Andrea Horwath, leader of the Ontario New Democrats, who increased her political capital in this election, as well as her likability and visibility. The Conservatives in Ontario at the provincial and federal levels must be scratching their heads to a certain extent. A Liberal implosion at all levels failed to materialize and the idea of a new era with the Conservative Party of Canada being the natural governing party of Canada seems far from a certainty.

The Manitoba New Democrats rolled to a 4th straight majority win over the Progressive Conservatives. Canadian election campaigns are mercifully short and while the Manitoba contest was a curt 4 weeks, the advertising and rhetoric was brutal in this battle for the political middle. The Manitoba economy, like parts of the upper Midwest of the US isn’t reeling like the rest of North America, so there wasn’t a great thirst for change. The opinion polls had the Progressive Conservatives up earlier in the year, but the New Democrats rallied under Premier Selinger.

The Progressive Conservatives narrowed the gap in terms of the popular vote, but gained no additional seats. Andrew Coyne of Macleans expressed his annoyance at the current first-past-the-post {candidate with a plurality of votes wins the riding, i.e., district}::

He used the “anomalous” results to plug his articles on election reform. I’m actually in favor of election reform, such as STV, but I have serious doubts if it would matter in Manitoba. The province is divided:: the rural south votes Progressive Conservative by a wide margin, while urban Winnipeg and the aboriginal North votes NDP by a sizeable but lesser margin, on average. The unofficial results are here. Given the geographic party split of the province and the two-party “duopoly”, I’m not seeing a lot of opportunity for vastly different results. If there were larger ridings with more seats per riding, the STV gamechanging math breaks down when one looks at the regional breakdowns for 2007. The NDP and PCs had their respective regional strongholds and it will be interesting to see how the final 2011 shake out.

This doesn’t mean I feel STV shouldn’t be implemented, but that the 2011 Manitoba results might not be the best case to pitch for it. Tomorrow’s Ontario provincial election, well, that’s a different story. Ontario has three strong provincial parties {PC, Liberal, NDP} and strategic voting is likely to be a factor in quite a few ridings.

Hank Williams Jr., sporting a Joaquin Phoenix look à la the actor’s I’m Still Here-related appearance, is in hot water for this Fox News interview::

It’s a bit hard to take someone who isn’t blind and wears sunglasses indoors too seriously. Williams compared Obama to Hitler, in reference to Obama’s golf outing with Speaker of the House John Boehner, evoking another instance of a TV variant of  Godwin’s Law.

ESPN pulled Williams’ Monday Night Football theme and Hank Jr. offered a statement, but not an apology::

“Some of us have strong opinions and are often misunderstood. My analogy was extreme — but it was to make a point. I was simply trying to explain how stupid it seemed to me – how ludicrous that pairing was.”

Fox News was eager to leverage Williams’ celebrity and get his 2¢ on the 2012 Presidential candidates, billing him as a pundit of sorts who knows “a little bit about politics.” I’m not sure which would be the more cynical move. Having Williams on the show with the high likelihood that he would bash the Democrats or having him on knowing he might self-immolate, providing fodder for viral video and subsequent ratings boosts.