current events

35-for-35: 2001 – “Subdivision” by Ani DiFranco

November 19, 2016 by krisis

My second-favorite shot of Ani, shot by Danny Clinch.

[Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug][/Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug]As occasionally problematic and non-intersectional as Ani DiFranco can be, sometimes her willingness to just say stuff makes for compelling, provocative songs.

Case and point: her song “Subdivision” from 2001’s double-album Revelling/Reckoning, which starts with the line “White people are so scared of black people.”

Despite the bombshell opening line, “Subdivision” is not a song exclusively about racial divides, but about Ani’s beloved home town of Buffalo and her beloved country. Her city has seemingly been left behind by a march of modernity. Here, she wonders if that march is just about having the money and privilege to put more space between ourselves and our fears. Maybe if we’re far enough away we no longer have to confront them.

Except: when we’ve forgotten, buried, or sublimated all that we’ve been running away from, how will we know when it is stil driving our biases?

I had a sense of foreboding when I picked “Subdivision” as my song from 2001 as I prepared for this campaign last month. I’d be posting it just 10 days after the election. I wondered how its message would play in a post-election America, the same country we lived in the day before the election but potentially seen through a new lens. What would it say about a world where Hillary Clinton won the election? What about a world where Donald Trump won? Would it be equally true in both?

Now we know the outcome, and I ask that you simply listen and take from it whatever message you hear. That first line will always stand out for me, but in this redefined world it is teaching me something different than it was a few weeks ago.

Subdivision
by Ani DiFranco

White people are so scared of black people
They bulldoze out to the country
And put up houses on little loop-dee-loop streets
And while america gets its heart cut right out of its chest
The Berlin wall still runs down main street
Separating east side from west

And nothing is stirring, not even a mouse
In the boarded-up stores and the broken-down houses
So they hang colorful banners off all the street lamps
Just to prove they got no manners
No mercy and no sense

Live-Blogging The 1st Presidential Debate

September 26, 2016 by krisis

campaign-2016_758_426_81_s_c1 I’m live-blogging the debate tonight in the same format I have in the past – assigning values as we go.

On main questions, candidates will split 7 points.

On specific rebuttals, candidates compete for their own total of 3 points in individual rebuttals.

On crosstalk, I will award up to 5 points to either candidate I see fit.

“Achieve Prosperity”

“Two economic realities” – record job growth and income growth, but income inequality is significant.

Clinton: Pivots into an opening speech, invokes her granddaughter’s birthday. “Invest in you – invest in your future. Jobs in infrastructure, advanced manufacturing,” technology. Also wants to raise minimum wage, guarantee equal pay for women, introduce profit sharing, supporting people struggling to balance family and work. “Difficult choices you face and stresses you’re under,” hits family leave, sick days, asks the wealthy to pay their share. Says, “Donald, it’s good to be with you.” “Who can shoulder the immense, awesome responsibilities of the presidency?”

Points: 4 of 7. The typical big plan you hear from a president, but it’s credible.

Trump: “Our jobs are fleeing the country. They are going to Mexico and to many other countries. Look at what China is doing to our country – [?] our product and devaluing their currency … they’re using our country as a piggy bank to rebuild China and many other countries.” Mexico building some of the best plants, some of the “the most sophisticated plants.” “As far as childcare and so many other things, I think Hillary and I agree on that … but we have to stop our jobs from being stolen from us, our companies leaving the United States and” firing everyone. I’ll be “reducing taxes tremendously … for small and big businesses.”

Points: 3 of 7. Trump gave a terrific recap, but he seems focused on an old style of economy that’s focused on industry that we might not even have anymore.

Clinton rebuttal: “I think trade is an important issue, we’re 5% of the world’s population and we have to trade with the other 95%.” Immediately chases his tax plan, “trickle down economics all over again.” Calls it “Trumped up trickle down,” almost gets a reaction from Trump. Hits hard, “the more you help wealthy people … the better off people will be.”

Points: 3 of 3. Could not have been better or more effective to rebut Trump.

Trump, on creating 25 million jobs and “brining back the industries that have left this country.”

Trump rebuttal: “My father gave me a very small loan in 1975 and I built it into a company that is worth billions and billions of dollars” and some of the biggest? best? assets all over the world. “We have to renegotiate our trade deals.”

Points: 1 of 3. He already seems a little rattled and imbalanced. He tries to say that Clinton should have been “doing this for years” in terms of fixing bad trade deals, but it’s not connected to any kind of answer. Also, he’s got to blow his nose (or bump some cocaine, not sure.) Holt needs to interrupt him to try to get him on track. He’s rambling crazily now. [Read more…] about Live-Blogging The 1st Presidential Debate

Clinton’s Cough and Trump’s Kryptonian Children

September 7, 2016 by krisis

Today the leading story on the political internet is that Hillary Clinton coughed yesterday, closed followed by Trump’s children being a cadre of evil Kryptonians escaped from the Phantom Zone.

Hold on, I am just going to fashion my framed Journalism diploma into a deadly throwing star that I can use as a weapon during the impending end times. I’ll be right back.

Let’s start with Hillary. It’s not that she coughed once. She coughed several times. It was a coughing fit, actually, enough so that she excused herself from the presence of reporters.

On one hand, it’s a lightweight story that humanizes a candidate. We’ve all had that moment of coughing, sneezing, or eye-itching in the middle of a meeting. Hey, it happens to Clinton, too! She’s not a robot. On the other hand, it’s part of a continuing narrative about Clinton’s declining health and unfitness for the presidency.

trump-millenial-outreach-outsider-01 None of that is the actual story. We’ll get back to that in a moment.

The big politic meme of the week has been a Trump outreach campaign targeted at millennials. In the outreach, three of Trump’s children pose stonefaced in a either a terrible photo or a terrible photoshop job above the caption “This is not a Republican vs Democrat election. This is about an insider versus an outsider.”

There is so much to unpack about that photo and caption, and why this outreach is warranted in the first place. However, do you know what people were mostly tweeting about? How much the junior Trumps resembled a host of cinematic villains – from Children of the Corn to Slytherins to the Kryptonians who escaped the Phantom Zone in Superman 2.

The reality is that Donald Trump is barely beating the collective third party candidates among likely voters of the millennial generation. An August Quinnipiac University poll had him at 24% to Clinton’s 48% in a four-way race against Johnson and Stein (here’s the raw poll results). Yes, that’s right, Clinton is beating him by a 100%.

I have not seen that fact tweeted or commented a single time on all the villainous memes. I also haven’t seen discussion of the fact that the youth vote is purely a turnout game, since this huge swath of voters rarely hits the 50% mark in participation. What other Get Out The Vote efforts is Trump’s campaign undertaking with this population? Should he even engage, given his low percentage of support? [Read more…] about Clinton’s Cough and Trump’s Kryptonian Children

Black Lives Matter (and I want to use my white voice to talk about it)

July 7, 2016 by krisis

Black Lives Matter. Please, say it out loud if you have never before.

You and I are not special or noteworthy for being willing or able to say this. Saying it does not create action or change. It does not pledge our allegiance to a specific movement. To get to a place where America is ready to take action to protect and value black lives, we must first believe there is value. To believe a thing, we have to acknowledge it. To acknowledge it, we must say its name.

The quote is from Desmond Tutu. Photo by Daniel in Babylon, 4/27/15.

Black Lives Matter.

Let me stop some of you before you chime in with “All Lives Matter!” Indeed, all lives do matter! All of the time, all lives matter. Happily, we can agree on that. However, at a point some of those lives may be more critically endangered, more systemically oppressed, more widely undervalued than some others.

This is one of those occasions. I think it’s good and right to be able to say “Black Lives Matter” and to allow that to focus conversation and action. It doesn’t erase or neglect all lives, just as Feminism is about an end-state of equality for all, including men.

I really look forward to being able to say “All Lives Matter” in America and knowing everyone means it the same way. Until we get to that point, as a society of firefighters trying to quell the flames of injustice we need to turn the majority of our attention to the one house that has been burning brightest, hottest, and longest.

It is the house of that of the black community – perhaps too apt an analogy, considering that arson attacks against historically black churches are just one indicator that not everyone understands or believes that Black Lives Matter.

Because they do. Black Lives Matter.

II.

Last night a terrible, heart-rending thing happened and for once the entire world saw it through the same objective eyes.

A black man named Philando Castile was driving his girlfriend and their daughter in his hometown of Falcon Heights, outside Minneapolis Minnesota, when he was stopped by a police officer due to a broken taillight on his car. Per his girlfriend’s account, when the officer approached the front of the vehicle, Castile advised him that he had a permit for a concealed weapon and that he would be reaching for his wallet.

The officer shot Philando Castile in the arm and kept shooting three more times. His girlfriend, Diamond Reynolds, began broadcasting the event to the world with steely calm moments later via Facebook Live. Here is an excerpt from New York Times television critic James Poniewozik’s review of the broadcast:

“Stay with me.”

These are the first words that Diamond Reynolds speaks to her dying boyfriend, Philando Castile, in her video on Facebook Live. He’s slumped in the driver’s seat, blood soaking his white T-shirt, a police officer pointing a gun through the car window, as Ms. Reynolds’s 4-year-old daughter sits in the back seat.

…

First Ms. Reynolds calmly gives her description of what happened: They were pulled over on Wednesday for a broken taillight in Falcon Heights, Minn.; Mr. Castile told the officer that he had a licensed firearm and reached for his identification, and the officer shot him.

When the video begins, Mr. Castile is moving. A minute later, he’s still and slack. She worries that he is already gone.

Philando Castile died early this morning from his gunshot wounds. It is the day before his thirty-third birthday. [Read more…] about Black Lives Matter (and I want to use my white voice to talk about it)

Review: The Private Eye by Vaughan, Martin, & Vicente

June 23, 2016 by krisis

Lately, I trust journalists less than ever before. Or, maybe I trust them, but I don’t trust the stories they’re telling.

Last week during the gun control filibuster on the Senate floor I compiled the names and demographic information from all the participating Senators, and my friend Lauren created an interactive infographic with the information. I did not read a single media story that named all of the participants after the fact.

I know this is a theme in conservative American politics right now – the bias of the mass media. I’m not talking about bias. I’m talking about facts.

The past few weeks have been full of big new stories nationally (Orlando and gun control) and locally (sugary drink tax and the DNC), and the biggest of those stories have been missing so many facts. They’re all headlines and quick hits. Hot takes with no depth. No quoting from primary sources. Lots of people coming away with incomplete ideas and parroting them as reality.

Those same weeks have also been full of truth. I become deeply invested in last week’s filibuster from the floor of the Senate and did not consume a single pundit’s take on it. I watched it live and was my own pundit. Yesterday’s sit-in in the House circumvented pundits even further – it couldn’t even be broadcast by networks because the House was out of session and cameras were off, so representatives broadcast it directly to the public via Periscope, cutting all all possible middlemen.

Of course, the next day journalism swept in – but, as a first-hand witness to the events in question, I found the subsequent coverage lacking. Where were the names of the participants, the lengths of time they spoke, the information they shared? I put more information together about the filibuster with data visualization from my friend Lauren than I saw from any news site!

I don’t trust journalists or I don’t trust the stories they tell, but I can hardly blame them. After all, I have a journalism degree and I never set foot into that field. I went CorpComm because I wanted job security and a standard of living, and that was before online outlets were effectively subsidizing their print editions and running on pay-per-click ad units. But I still believe journalism should represent unfiltered truth with a neutral point of view, unless it professes itself as opinion. I had a lot to say about the filibuster, but none of it made its way into the data.

What if journalists didn’t have to worry about the funding and the hits, and could focus on terrific journalism? There are some outlets today that fit the bill, and I don’t think it’s coincidence they produce some of the most thorough reporting. I know it’s hard to picture state-run journalism, because so often it’s journalists who expose the flaws in the state, but that’s one version of what I’m talking about. Instead of asking journalists to make personal sacrifices to do what they love and write for maximum eyeballs, imagine a minimum number of reporters guaranteed on each beat, with job security, fair pay, and a retirement plan.

Do you think the journalism would get better or worse? Does it take sacrifice to want to dig as deep as journalists dig? Or, would the skill and commitment increase?

The Private Eye

The Private Eye collects the 10 chapters of a complete web comic story by Brian K. Vaughan, Marcos Martin, and Muntsa Vicente.

Tweet-sized Review: The Private Eye finds Vaughan & Martin a bit too clever for their own good; I liked the world better than the story

CK Says: Consider it.

The Private Eye is a much more interesting world than it is an interesting story – and, it’s a pretty decent story.

Private Eye is an Eisner and Harvey Award Winning comic story conceptualized by Brian K. Vaughan and created in collaboration with Marcos Martin and his wife, colorist Muntsa Vicente. It was initially released beginning in March 2013 as a web-only comic via Panel Syndicate, with its 10 chapters released across 24 months. Each chapter was available as a DRM-free as a pay-what-you-will download.

You can still purchase it that way, or you can opt for a gorgeous $50 hardcover version released in December that includes the complete Vaughan/Martin email chain conceptualizing the story and their method of release (complete with fretting over what to call the website and how to make a profit from it).

The story of Private Eye depicts an America where the press has taken over peacekeeping for the police thanks to a landmark omni-leak of every possible piece of data. The event, called “The Cloudburst,” exposed everyone’s online information to everyone else. It wasn’t the leaked account balances or private nudes that did everyone in, but the search histories. It turns out that was as close as you could come to knowing what was going on inside someone else’s head – their deepest fears and desires. A lot of those heads were pretty dark places. [Read more…] about Review: The Private Eye by Vaughan, Martin, & Vicente