Media space should suggest an ordering of thought, some internal/external sense of shape, depth, surface, and position and pattern. Is it possible to teach students to think about these concepts when it comes to shaping an essay or by manipulating words on the printed page or page printed from digital surface? We know from Kolb that repetition in argumentation is important to the ends of argument, yet if a student is asked to repeat an argument word for word in an essay, they’ll be called on it, yet in hypertext, a link may “cycle” back to a previously encountered criteria to reinforce or remind as a matter of design.

In the essay (those asked for by trained composition teachers) we request a different kind of stylistics: variance of content as it unfolds: repeat but make sure you vary. There’s a marked difference here in the design, the shape, and surface of ideas across the landscape of writing. But is there a base form that should dominate: is this base form the sentence, the paragraph, the essay? Do different disciplines want the same things in their arguments and explications? An underlying logic, but different formal demands? Can the formal demands, the shape of an argument, be removed from concept? Can an excellent idea be read beyond its grammatical bed?

From today’s Post:

Sinclair Broadcast Group of Maryland, owner of the largest chain of television stations in the nation, plans to preempt regular programming two weeks before the Nov. 2 election to air a documentary that accuses Sen. John F. Kerry of betraying American prisoners during the Vietnam War.

Sinclair has ordered its 62 stations, some of which are in the critical swing states of Ohio, Florida, Iowa and Wisconsin, to air “Stolen Honor: Wounds That Never Heal” during prime-time hours next week. The Sinclair station group collectively reaches 24 percent of U.S. television households.

Ordered is the key term here, but I also hear that the time is being offered for free. Hundt, FCC Chairman, has apparently sent a letter of inquiry, asking SB what the hell’s going on, given the licensure of american air waves by the Feds.

The old cliche of the liberal media, always a political mouse without a tail, has always been a “clingphrase” for people who wonder why “politics exists” but over the years it seems that the repetition of the idea and other influences have manifested in a climate of faux fairness and false evenhandedness in media. (The idea of a “campaign issue” falls into this category too: Iraq isn’t a “campaign issue,” it’s a matter of real life, even for media managers. “Campaign issue” suggests an issue only important to campaign coverage, thus a manipulation of context, a false context). Over the last couple of years I’ve seen crap that makes me wonder: what the hell will they think of next?

Nobody knows what this move means, but I sense that it’s just what it smells like: shit.

A few thoughts on the debate quick. Visually, I thought Fox’s dual screen was a little odd, since this presents a “composition” and “balance” problem, inviting juxtaposition. Sen Kerry is taller that W by about 4 or 5 inches. So, in the side by side W had to be raised a little so that his lectern was a few inches higher than Kerry’s.

The farce was uninteresting substantively, in my mind, although I guess one could argue that each segment could be taken as a lesson on “delivery.” Kerry, however, came off visually as poised, controlled, and calm and reflective. W on the other hand came off visually as angry, frazzled, fumblesome, staring, and inept in his obvious repetition of arbitrary loaded phrases.

“. . . group of folks . . .” Wow.

I finished skimming the agreed upon rules for upcoming events between Bush and Kerry posted here in pdf format (which is itself politics). Something strikes me as weird about the agreement and the look of the document it rests on. It looks like an image of a typed document, as if it must be presented to look old, official, fixed, just beyond the ability to cut and paste as text, as if it it weren’t meant to be “text,” but an image of “text.” It reads like a joke, a parody of how things “should” work, as if it had been written by John Stewart or Sir John Falstaff on behalf of Hal. So this is the state of affairs.

As a student of rhetoric and politics in a lot of forms and times, I have to admit that such an agreement, such debates, such decisions make me sick and embarrassed. In Composition we’re talking about evaluation, and we could certainly bring the art of evaluation–making claims and discussing ho w a thing meets criteria–against the “memorandum of understanding” is really a “memorandum for obfuscation and trickery.”

What should debates look like, what is the criteria against which they should be judged? A debate should have a clear context and reason. It should be flexible and open so that debaters can show their depth of knowledge, wit, familiarity with evidence and issues, and their ability to think on their feet. It should be combative yet controlled, but that control should come from the interlocutors’ knowledge of “situational” ethics and rules of debate. They should be allowed to contradict, raise questions, and ask for clarifications. The moderator should control equivocation, interrupt filibuster. Questioners should be free to ask whatever they want so that the wit reveals itself. We need the mind in the open to some degree, better that than nothing at all.

In this time of political cliches and pixel-sized scrutiny of every candidate and day to day media memory loss and the bottom line of news as business, in this day of colorless yak and actors acting like newspeople, of commentators whose mouths spray strychnine and campylobacter, of bureaucratized party politics filled with cynics and losers and robots, in this space of smiling lies and blood for more of them we are often not what we say we are. Democracy? No. Something else. I don’t know if democracy is the right term, since I know people who could argue that such a term is imprecise and was “always” false. We’re a federal republic, a cyborg running on batteries. We may be a shadow looking for a form.

The “memorandum” is a “paradise” document; it’s a lie; an immoral scam; a blow to decent, reasonable people who try to do the right thing day to day in this country and who deserve better.

From Stephen Farrell, one of the die-hards:

Against this sound and fury, pro-war critics complain that good news is being ignored, and they are right. So, too, is a lot of bad news. Kidnapping, looting, criminal opportunism and xenophobia make it simply too dangerous for Western journalists to visit many areas.

As recently as last (northern) spring we could travel relatively freely throughout Iraq, even to hotbeds of Sunni resistance such as Fallujah or Ramadi.

We could eat in Baghdad’s restaurants and shop in its markets. We lived in a suburban house until the day we received death threats.

Today, we live in fortified hotels and move around the capital with extreme caution.

A year ago every fatal attack on coalition forces, or suicide bomb, made news. Today they are so common we report only the really big ones.

The deadly chaos also confronts foreign aid workers, who now run their operations from neighbouring Jordan, and rich Iraqis  the lawyers, doctors and wealthy merchants who, daily, fear the kidnap of loved ones for ransom. “Maku Karaba, Maku Amin”  no electricity, no security  is still the cry of Iraqis on the street.

At the moment, this log has been slow because I’ve been busy readying for the Fall semester. Garden work, fencing, and other things have been making for long days and added “work streams” to the school work.

But here’s a quick note. The two most important issues in American culture and politics are the economy and energy (not the moral issues so common and so arbitrary to the babble in the news). It’s a capitalist country, after all, and, as China is a recent example, energy of many types is its fuel.

Along with the gardens, the fences, and the interior work, I’ll be embarking on updating the house to solar power over the next couple of years (I like C C-Ewing’s brief mentions on the topic of domicile ideas, and thus I make this comment.)

It’ll be interesting, at least. For Susan Gibb–we now have a semi-porch.

More coming

From the ABQ Journal:

Some would-be spectators hoping to attend Vice President Dick Cheney’s rally in Rio Rancho this weekend walked out of a Republican campaign office miffed and ticketless Thursday after getting this news:
Unless you sign an endorsement for President George W. Bush, you’re not getting any passes.
The Albuquerque Bush-Cheney Victory office in charge of doling out the tickets to Saturday’s event was requiring the endorsement forms from people it could not verify as supporters.
State Rep. Dan Foley, R-Roswell, speaking on behalf of the Republican Party, said Thursday that a “known Democrat operative group” was intending to try to crash Saturday’s campaign rally at Rio Rancho Mid-High School. He added that some people were providing false names and addresses and added that tickets for the limited-seating event should go to loyal Bush backers.
However, some who left the office off Osuna NE without tickets on Thursday said they’re not affiliated with an operative group and should have a right to see their vice president without pledging their allegiance to Bush.
“I’m outraged at this. I’m being closed off by my own government. It’s crazy,” said East Mountains resident Pamela Random, who added that she is an unaffiliated voter.
John Wade of Albuquerque said he initially signed the endorsement but was having second thoughts before he even left the office. Wade, a Democrat, said he returned his tickets and demanded to get his endorsement form back.
“It’s not right for me to have to sign an endorsement to hear (Cheney) speak,” Wade said. “I’m still pissed. This just ain’t right.”

I never know what to make of these sorts of things, other than to seek out other renditions. Thus this AP article.

Given a particular deliberative mood and the theme of tv news, here’s a good set from Ted Turner:

In the media, as in any industry, big corporations play a vital role, but so do small, emerging ones. When you lose small businesses, you lose big ideas. People who own their own businesses are their own bosses. They are independent thinkers. They know they can’t compete by imitating the big guys–they have to innovate, so they’re less obsessed with earnings than they are with ideas. They are quicker to seize on new technologies and new product ideas. They steal market share from the big companies, spurring them to adopt new approaches. This process promotes competition, which leads to higher product and service quality, more jobs, and greater wealth. It’s called capitalism.

But without the proper rules, healthy capitalist markets turn into sluggish oligopolies, and that is what’s happening in media today. Large corporations are more profit-focused and risk-averse. They often kill local programming because it’s expensive, and they push national programming because it’s cheap–even if their decisions run counter to local interests and community values. Their managers are more averse to innovation because they’re afraid of being fired for an idea that fails. They prefer to sit on the sidelines, waiting to buy the businesses of the risk-takers who succeed.

Unless we have a climate that will allow more independent media companies to survive, a dangerously high percentage of what we see–and what we don’t see–will be shaped by the profit motives and political interests of large, publicly traded conglomerates. The economy will suffer, and so will the quality of our public life. Let me be clear: As a business proposition, consolidation makes sense. The moguls behind the mergers are acting in their corporate interests and playing by the rules. We just shouldn’t have those rules. They make sense for a corporation. But for a society, it’s like over-fishing the oceans. When the independent businesses are gone, where will the new ideas come from? We have to do more than keep media giants from growing larger; they’re already too big. We need a new set of rules that will break these huge companies to pieces. . . .

The loss of independent operators hurts both the media business and its citizen-customers. When the ownership of these firms passes to people under pressure to show quick financial results in order to justify the purchase, the corporate emphasis instantly shifts from taking risks to taking profits. When that happens, quality suffers, localism suffers, and democracy itself suffers.

An interesting broadcast on rhetorical frames and local news political reporting on PBS’s Now tonight. Last weeks bit by Thomas Frank was also quite good.

I watch the local weather really and rarely notice the news part on 11:00 news. I’m wondering what people think about the nature of CT’s political coverage, landscape, and breadth. It’s a small state, right? In CT what “is” local?

My wife, Susan, and I celebrated our 9th anniversary this past week. We lived together for 5 years prior to being married. But due to same-sex marriage we’re waiting for our marriage to fall apart, to crumble, to trickle away.

Still waiting . . .

Still waiting . . .

Still waiting . . .

Still together. Looks like everything’s just fine.