. . .the milkcrate. . .

Gold-Plated Indifference

I failed to blog the last three days due to a debilitating case of cedar fever, Austin's tortuously special brand of hay fever where, according to my allergist, "pollen counts of cedar pollen in Central Texas are the highest know anywhere in the world, for any plant." But I have re-upped my prescription meds, with some low-dose steroids throw in for good measure, so I think I can get through this.

At least going to a medical specialist was an easy option for me: I get good coverage with a reasonable copay through my employer. Obviously this isn't true for millions of Americans, a fact that should chagrin and moritfy us all. Since Bush's proposed healthcare fix has come up in the comments of some of my recent SOTU posts, I thought I'd introduce my thoughts on the matter in an official post. For my money, the most au courant pundit writing about healthcare in America is Paul Krugman: 

"A Healthy New Year" (1 January)

 "First, Do Less Harm" (5 January)

"Golden State Gamble" (12 January)

"Gold-Plated Indifference" (22 January)

My own views tend to mirror Krugman's fairly closely, so, like him, I believe a single-payer system is the most efficient, effective method for providing sustainable healthcare to the majority of Americans. I appreciate, but do not share, the categorical imperative many conservatives feel towards decreasing taxes, but Bush's "standard tax deduction for health insurance" seems to fly in the face of the conservative call for smaller government, which, as I understand it, underwrites that imperative. With a single-payer system there is one moment of government 'intrusion,' namely the annual collection of each individual's share of the total cost.  Bush's plan requires continual and multiple levels of government oversight of taxpayers, healthcare providers, and medical insurers, not to mention his proposal to grant federal funds "to help the states that are coming up with innovative ways to cover the uninsured." Often, state's plans are as complicated as Bush's alleged tax break. For more on this, see Krugman's "Golden State Gamble." To their credit, however, state plans are generally more authentic attempts to help Americans than anything the Bush administration has concocted.

Because Bush's "standard tax deduction for health insurance" is also, to put it bluntly, illogical for the simple fact that people who have inadequate or immaterial healthcare are also unlikely to pay taxes. How can they, then, benefit from tax deductions? Plus, no amount of tax break increases access to information about the intentionally convoluted system of personal insurance. No amount of tax break will help you get accepted for coverage despite your pre-existing condition. And certainly no amount of tax break will decrease the substantive cost of unchecked insurance premiums. I think this is a textbook case of not getting blood from a turnip. A single-payer system, conversely, would indemnify those Americas unable to cover themselves (as well as the rest of us), and it does so in a fair and simple manner, using procedures that are wholly consistent with the market. Just because the demand-side has been collectivized doesn't mean that the supply-side has to be taken away from private providers. Think Canada's system, not the United Kingdom's.

Don't take my word for it: check out Krugman's "Gold-Plated Indifference," where he argues that, "Going without health insurance isn't like deciding to rent an apartment instead of buying a house. It's a terrifying experience, which most people endure only if they have no alternative. The uninsured don't need an 'incentive' to buy insurance; they need something that makes getting insurance possible." Krugman pointedly accuses Bush, "someone with no sense of what it's like to be uninsured," of misunderstanding and misrepresenting the causes and effects of America's healthcare crisis:

No economic analysis I'm aware of says that when Peter chooses a good health plan, he raises Paul's premiums. And look at the condescension. Will all those who think they have "gold plated" health coverage please raise their hands? According to press reports, the actual plan is to penalize workers with relatively generous insurance coverage. Just to be clear, we're not talking about the wealthy; we're talking about ordinary workers who have managed to negotiate better-than-average health plans. What's driving all this is the theory, popular in conservative circles but utterly at odds with the evidence, that the big problem with U.S. health care is that people have too much insurance - that there would be large cost savings if people were forced to pay more of their medical expenses out of pocket.

Krugman concludes that, "Mr. Bush. . .is still peddling the fantasy that the free market, with a little help from tax cuts, solves all problems." A statement with which I agree, and whose source, I believe, is rooted in what Krugman labels as Bush's "condescension." One of the principle delinquencies I see in conservative ideology is the scapegoating of the poor: the assumption that living in a democracy means the interminable and readily available actuality of options mixed with accusations that, because they make bad choices, it is their own fault for being poor. I'm not sure if these twin notions are grounded in an unshakeable, though not entirely wrongheaded, confidence in 'the American Dream' (you know, work hard, get ahead), but to my eye and ear they are largely unwarranted and spurious notions, the purpose of which is to make it easier to ignore America's deeprooted class crisis, and to accept our persistent failure to solve it.

Because, rhetorically speaking, scapegoating, as Kenneth Burke put it, is "the use of a sacrificial receptacle for the ritual unburdening of one's sins." In my formulation, and I think Krugman would agree, Bush, as an avatar of conservative thought, wants to intimate that it is poor people's own fault, because of their bad decision making, for not having proper healthcare coverage instead of placing the blame where it belongs: bloated insurance premiums, non-negotiated pharmaceutical formularies, reliance on emergency care, and a paucity of preventative care, all feeding off of governmental ignorance and neglect. And if it's their fault, we don't have to feel guilty and/or responsible for their conditions. "The stuff about providing "incentives" to buy insurance, the sneering description of good coverage as 'gold plated,'" Krugman coolly concludes, "is right-wing think-tank jargon. In the past Mr. Bush's speechwriters might have found less offensive language; now, they're not even trying to hide his fundamental indifference to the plight of less-fortunate Americans."

As with so many issues facing us, globally and locally, this one requires a paradigm shift, a change in perception towards what is the actual problem, and what is required to actually solve it. The first step is to recognize that poverty is a social disease, not a personal one. The reality is that, for all its metaphoric power, 'the American Dream' is often damaged, and sometimes flatout erroneous. But as a country, we have to stop unloading our dissatisfaction about that fact onto the most disenfranchised segments of our society. Reaganite 'welfare queens' no longer exist (and it was Clinton's 'welfare reform' that killed them). Mexican immigrants are not stealing our jobs and milking our social programs. And poor people are not bringing us down. But we are failing to bring them up. Shame.

'Strong' Word(s)

Last time we'll discuss Bush's SOTU, promise, but I want to follow up on the point I made on 22 January about Bush not really comprehending that the authority of a speaker--his ethos--is derived from an audience's validation, their acceptance, of his credibility. My suspicion was that Bush's speech to the nation would miss the centrality of audience in effective rhetorical situations.*

What we actually heard was a better attempt, I'd say, at cultivating a genuine ethos than in the past five SOTUs, but it is still, I'll argue, an imperfect attempt. First, we have to recognize a subtle but signifcant fact about this particular rhetorical situation: the POTUS's speech is not to the American people, it is about the American people. The strict audience for the SOTU is the joint Congress; the "rite of custom" to which Bush refers is that enumerated in Article II, Section 3 of The Constitution, whereby the POTUS "shall from time to time give to Congress information of the State of the Union and recommend to their Consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient." Thus, we get passages like this, where we get the sense that they're talking about us while we're still in the room:

Congress has changed, but not our responsibilities.  Each of us is guided by our own convictions -- and to these we must stay faithful.  Yet we're all held to the same standards, and called to serve the same good purposes:  To extend this nation's prosperity; to spend the people's money wisely; to solve problems, not leave them to future generations; to guard America against all evil; and to keep faith with those we have sent forth to defend us.  [Underline emphasis added.] 

But since 1) legislators are the directly elected representatives of the people, and 2) the speech is broadcast, all at once, across every media outlet imaginable, the larger audience can be said to be every American. And, indeed, Bush recognizes the presence of this larger audience, and his speech is quick to include them, that is, us. Check out the transformation of the word 'us' in the above paragraph: when Bush claims that "each of us is guided by our own convictions" he is, of course referring to the ideological split between the members of the legislative and executive branches, and the partisan disagreements within the Congress. But that final "us" of the paragraph telescopes beyond just The Hill. Now "us" is all Americans, and soldiers are fighting to defend all of us.

But I'd argue that fast and dirty pronoun conflation isn't really an effective ethical strategy, not, at least, in the strictest rhetorical senses of the word. Moreover, he quickly microscopes the "us" in the follow paragraph back to just the country's leadership:

We're not the first to come here with a government divided and uncertainty in the air.  Like many before us, we can work through our differences, and achieve big things for the American people.  Our citizens don't much care which side of the aisle we sit on -- as long as we're willing to cross that aisle when there is work to be done. Our job is to make life better for our fellow Americans, and to help them to build a future of hope and opportunity -- and this is the business before us tonight.

This paragraph marks, as I read it, Bush's first stab at ethos. Here we see him trying to shoehorn all three of Aristotle's ethical qualities--good sense, good moral character, and goodwill towards the audience--into a single movement. I suspect you can suss out the way he is trying to establish goodwill with the largely hostile Democratic Congress, and by extension the seven out of ten Americans who no longer trust him, by reaching across the aisle in order to enact "a future of hope and opportunity." And you can see him trying to (re)build his moral character by conceding the frustrations "our citizens" feel towards partisanism. And, finally, you can see him trying to showcase his good sense when he blueprints "our [their] job" and "the business before us tonight."

Then it's basically forty-five minutes of you've heard it all before, right?

I mean, of course you have. Like I said on 22 January, "What are the chances that he can postulate workable strategies during the eleventh hour of his presidency?" His credibility is shot. Even if he was masterful at constructing ethos, even if he could get us--the people and their representatives--to validate his authority, there's just no 'there' there anymore. If you want proof, listen to his previous five speeches where he told you right upfront, presenting it as if it were--I'm tempted to say scripture, but let's call it--fact, that America is "strong." (The Daily Show did a nice bit on this yesterday.) Last night,  however, that line is his closer:

In such courage and compassion, ladies and gentlemen, we see the spirit and character of America -- and these qualities are not in short supply.  This is a decent and honorable country -- and resilient, too. We've been through a lot together.  We've met challenges and faced dangers, and we know that more lie ahead.  Yet we can go forward with confidence -- because the State of our Union is strong, our cause in the world is right,  and tonight that cause goes on.  God bless. [Emphasis added].

His rhetorical strategy here has to stem from an awareness of those low, low popularity numbers, and the exigencies of facing a hostile majority. Because he's used up his trust equity, his ethos, with the American people, he can no longer frame the speech in terms of strong. This time he must build a case for America's strength. He must work, rhetorically speaking, towards a strong union, not starting from one. He must provide evidence, confirmation, and good sense. I'll leave it to you to decide just how strong we actually are, and whether or not what he outlined last night makes us stronger.

But I will say this: it strikes me as a bad sign when, in order to gain ethos, you have to quote your enemy. "Our enemies are quite explicit about their intentions," he begins:

They want to overthrow moderate governments, and establish safe havens from which to plan and carry out new attacks on our country.  By killing and terrorizing Americans, they want to force our country to retreat from the world and abandon the cause of liberty.  They would then be free to impose their will and spread their totalitarian ideology.  Listen to this warning from the late terrorist Zarqawi: 'We will sacrifice our blood and bodies to put an end to your dreams, and what is coming is even worse.'  Osama bin Laden declared: 'Death is better than living on this Earth with the unbelievers among us.'

There is an odd sort of authority at play in the above lines. But it isn't Bush performing his own authority so much as harnessing that of Zarqawi and bin Laden. There is also, no doubt, a healthy dose of fearmongering being employed: their authority isn't rooted in Aristotelian goodwill, but rather the deadly actualization of the opposite. (True, even though Zaraqawi's been dead for months, and we have no idea about bin Laden.) Republican strategist, some might say diabolist, Frank Luntz agrees with me.  Luntz is the guy who invented the phrase "death tax" to replace estate tax and "healthy forests" to replace clearcutting, so he understands the power of words.

In that spirit, I found Bush's penultimate SOTU "healthy."

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* Think of each instance of communication as a triangle, where the speaker (writer), the text (oral, verbal, visual), and the audience (real and imagined) compose the three points: each connecting to each. Without the presence of all three, the triangle is broken, i.e., communication is likely to breakdown.

Statistics of the Union

Tomorrow is Bush's penultimate State of the Union address (SOTU), and, as this ABC News/Washington Post poll (22 January, pdf) exhibits, he "faces the nation this week more unpopular than any president on the eve of a State of the Union address since Richard Nixon in 1974." Ouch. I won't wade through all the statistics here, but read the first six pages of the report for yourself.  None of America's overwhelming disapproval of Bush and his policies is shocking, but it provides an opportunity to talk about what I consider an elemental flaw in the rhetorical strategies of Bush and his fellow neocons: they misunderstand, and thus misuse, ethos. Stick with me. Understanding ethos, that dimension of persausion describing how audiences perceive speakers (writers as well), is critical because it provides audiences with tools for judging the quality of a speech's content by judging the quality of the speaker.

Modern rhetoric mainly defines ethos in terms of authority, giving paramount influence to whether or not a person is licensed to speak on a particular issue. License is generally defined as 'source credibility,' which can be gained through either knowledge or experience. This is why we trust four out of five dentists when they recommend a particular gum that cleans plaque off our teeth: they have the specific, requisite knowledge to speak on the hygienic abilities of gum. And this is why we trust convicts to 'scare' us 'straight:' they have the requisite experiences to tell us how it really is in prison. Authority-ethos is the reason we see so many expert witnesses on Law & Order. The thing to notice about authority, however, is that it is conferred on speakers by audiences. It isn't inherent in the speaker. Trusting a doctor when she gives medical advice is logical, but her authority, rhetorically speaking, ultimately comes from her patients trusting in her knowledge and experience.

Classical rhetoric is similar, though it defines credibility in different ways. Aristotle considered ethos a central component of effective persuasion, and he outlined three qualities "which inspire confidence in the orator's own character--the three, namely, that induce us to believe a thing apart from any proof if it:" good sense, good moral character, and goodwill towards the audience. That is, audiences can tell a lot about the quality of a speech's content by whether or not the speaker seems practical, virtuous, and genuinely concerned. Later critiques of Aristotle pointed out that, though it's possible for these characteristics to be inherent in the speech and speaker, generally speaking, it is the audience who validates these qualities.

Ok, so my point is that tomorrow, as you watch the SOTU, listen for statements by Bush that don't quite get how ethos works. Bush's relentless 'trust me' line is not only wearing thin, it misses the mark by a country mile: trust cannot be demanded. It must be given by the American people, and as the above poll indicates, that isn't happening.  Bush is likely to address the 'surge' at length, and he's likely to have plenty to say about immigration, healthcare, education, and "energy security," but he has already squandered whatever authority people once granted his administration through the (mis)construction and (mis)implementation of incompetent and incomplete policies. What are the chances that he can postulate workable strategies during the eleventh hour of his presidency? And I guarantee that what he outlines won't be rooted in Aristotelian ethos. His previous SOTUs have introduced the lofty and now-obviously impractical democracy doctrine (2004 and 2005), and the bombastic but decidedly un-goodwill-ed "axis of evil" (2002).

I'll let you decide whether or not he's virtuous.

So, even though he says he isn't bothered by his low popularity, as he did on 60 Minutes (14 January), I think he should be. Because it's that popularity that imbues his position with potency. The fact that he doesn't recognize that fact is indicative of his misunderstanding of the office.

the power of negative thinking

Even though it's been out for a few months, I just ran across this book by Joshua Foa Dienstag, Pessimism: Philosophy, Ethic, Spirit, (B 829 D54 2006 for those Library of Congress junkies reading this). Dienstag, a political science professor at UCLA, argues that pessimism isn't simply an attitude of defeatism, but a philosophically and politically viable, and healthy, weltanschauung. Optimism, held in almost spiritual esteem in America, is "both dangerous and morally suspect," he claimed in an interview from November 2006. But philosophical pessimists, he suggested, recognize that "There's a big difference between the pursuit of happiness and an expectation of it," and, moreover, that unhappiness is an inescapble component of life, a realization that actually assists a person's effort to live contentedly. Optimists expect happiness, and are often disappointed when reality fails to meet those expectations. "Having an expectation of happiness," he stated in the same interview, "just compunds ordinary suffering by making it seem like injustice."  It's hardly surprising then, "that a nation of optimists can produce a politics of resentment."

But it produces more than just resentment in politics, and this is why I think Dienstag's six-month-old comments have continued relevancy, esp. in light of the upcoming 'surge,' and the fact that almost fifty million Americans are still uninsured; the optimistic determinism expressed by the Bush administration asks more from people than it can ever possibly repay, trafficking in promises of a future that is, supposedly inevitably, happier and safer. Think about Bush's thumbs-up on the deck of the USS Lincoln in front of that huge 'Mission Accomplished' banner a week after the initial invasion of Iraq. Think about Bush telling a single mother working three jobs that her position is 'uniquely American.' Think about what we're bound to hear during next week's State of the Union address: Stay the course. (And) Happy days will be here again. Certainly plenty of politicians trade in assurances and positive thinking, but what we've seen the past six years is, as Dienstag states, "the rhetoric of sacrifice [being] abused to justify suffering and centralize power."

Or, as Camus explained, "the future authorizes every kind of humbug." Perhaps this particular Camus quotation is unfamiliar to Bush, though Dienstag and his interviewer both pick up on it, but Bush has famously read "The Stranger," some of which must have made an impression on him. (My flippant side wants to quip that all he got out of Camus was the 'killing of the Arab.') Recall the speech he gave last August at the national convention of the American Legion: "The images that come back from the front lines are striking, and sometimes unsettling," he informed us, "When you see innocent civilians ripped apart by suicide bombs, or families buried inside their homes, the world can seem engulfed in purposeless violence."

But also recall that this is the same speech where he introduced the struggle against terrorism (the neologism is 'Islamofascist') as "the decisive ideological struggle of the 21st century," a phrase he repeats three times. The ideologies he opposes are standard fare by this point: freedom versus tyrrany, democracy versus fascism, terror versus...let's call it optimism. So, yeah, there's 'purposeless violence,' but then again, he continues, "The truth is there is violence, but those who cause it have a clear purpose." His timbre here, as most everywhere since, is one of breezy but intransigent affirmation. These are truths that will allow us to navigate precarious moderntimes, and the subtext is that Bush and his hawkish inner circle see these truths clearly, and are clearly lead by them. Our job is simply to believe in them, sacrificing any critical and moral incredulity we might experience. In this single speech Bush uses the word "sacrifice" half a dozen times.

The problem with truth defined ideologically, as Bush often does, is that ideology is highly contextual, meaning that the relevance and applicability of each ideology's content depends on the producer of that content, where it was produced, and why. That is, ideology is fluid, not static. And it's inherent truthfulness is rarely self-evident. So, it is generally a way of ordering the world not by what actually is, but by what we believe ought to be, and often what we think we need to do to get there. I'm not knowledgeable enough to speak on what terrorists think the world ought to be, but from what I can tell from seeing and hearing Bush over the past six years, his ideology seems painfully optimistic. He believes we can change the future. For the better. Americans and Iraqis are paying the price for his happy sophistry. Dienstag, the pessimist, thinks that "We just have to give up our fantasies about controlling the future. We should let the future surprise us." And if it disappoints us, we won't be so shocked. Or screwed.

What $1.2 Trillion Can Buy

If you read the 'About Me' portion of this blog, you'll see that my biggest societal pet peeve is waste--the pococurantism, fecklessness, and overconsumption running rampant in America today. I recognize that what constitutes governmental 'waste' is open for a discussion which cuts to the heart of what role government should play, but I think most of us can agree that, in terms of lives lost and money spent, the invasion of Iraq has been a colossal waste. Check out what we could be doing with the $200 billion a year we're spending on this war, not to mention the life toll we could be avoiding. For more, read David Leonhardt's piece in the NYT about 'What $1.2 Trillion Can Buy' (17 January).

But perhaps the hemorrhaging of money and blood is about to be stemmed. According to the AP, the Pentagon has decided to stop asking Congress for emergency supplemental payments to fund the invasion. Moreover, there is an increasing number of Congressional Republicans who are suddenly vocally against the invasion. An impending bipartisan resolution is likely to pass the Senate in the coming days--watch for it either right before or right after the State of the Union address--denouncing Bush's 21,500 troop 'surge.' Though this resolution will be nonbinding, meaning that there is no real power of enforcement reflected in its language, it is hardly toothless. The newly minted Democratic Congress is taking lots of flak from talking heads and the blogosphere because many people see this resolution, particularly its 'nonbindingness,' as empty symbolism. But they're missing the point. A bipartisan and public censure of Bush's new Iraq plan will do much to empower current, and embolden potential, opponents of the war. If that happens, perhaps it will be easier in the near future for Congress to pass more unsparing, and more binding, resolutions to end this war.

The one thing I think we can take to the bank: those 21,500 troops are going to Iraq. Unfortunately, Bush still has the authority, the backing, and the funding to get it done, despite what the majority of the Congress, and the American people, think. These additional troops will put the in-country number at approximately 150,000, which is still fewer than the initial invasion strength. How can we ever hope to stabilize the situation with troop strengths just large enough to play cat and mouse with the insurgency? People like General Eric Shinseki, Army Chief of Staff, were stressing--before March 2003--the need for at least 300,000 troops to successfully invade and stabilize Iraq. He was replaced. And people like Lawrence Lindsey, a Bush economic advisor, were stressing that the invasion would cost upwards of $200 billion. He was replaced.

As I see it, there are two viable options:  either pull out coalition troops altogether immediately, and let whatever happens (civil war, economic depression, genocide) happen (meaing America must live with the collective guilt that we inflamed it), or provide a genuine 'surge' of troops in Iraq, say, double what it is now, to stabilize the country through shear weight of presence. Neither option is palatable. But at this point, there's no way to get the toothpaste back inside the tube.

Surge Against the Surge

As the Thomas Edsall op-ed in the NYT, 'Happy Hour' (18 January) suggests, the newly minted Democratic Congress's 'First 100 Hours' contrivance may actually be working. Domestically, I think that Pelosi and her Dems are making all the right moves right out of the gate: minimum wage increase, stem cell research funding increase, tuition loan decrease, oil company tax break decrease, and a tightening of campaign ethics.

But the thousand-pound elephant in the room (pun intended) is still the invasion of Iraq, which, it's common knowledge, most Americans are solidly against. In fact, almost sixty percent of Americans oppose Bush's proposed 21,500 troop 'surge.' Even Robert Novak is scared what the political fallout of this new offensive will mean for Bush and the GOP. (Hoping for the other guy to fumble isn't a winning strategy.)

So, while I think it's right and proper that the Congress should begin immediately redressing these domestic concerns that Bush, Hastert, et al have allowed to slip over the tenure of their residency on The Hill, it's obvious that the people's tolerance towards the Congress not acting on Iraq sooner than later is slim to none. As the above LA Times article (18 January) indicates, "The public clearly wants Congress to address the issue in some fashion: Forty-five percent of those polled said Iraq should be Capitol Hill's first priority, more than double the next-closest issue (dealing with healthcare, which drew 20%)."

What that action looks like is up for debate I'd say.

Automatic for the People

In honor of R.E.M.'s induction into the Rock Hall of Fame, here are a couple clips from their first ever television appearance, on the David Letterman Show in October 1983: Radio Free Europe and So. Central Rain. Notice the painfully introverted Michael Stipe; this is the Stipe of my youth, who mumbled lyrics purposefully (and perhaps a bit abstrusely), leaving their interpretation up to the listener. NB also the fact that 'So. Central Rain' is so new that it does not yet have a name.

For me R.E.M. is essential to my personal growth, as I'm sure it is for many, many others. Listening to those early R.E.M. albums, esp., 'Murmur,' 'Fables of the Reconstruction,' and 'Life's Rich Pageant,' made me eager to experience the weird, wide world beyond smalltown Indiana. But it also helped me realize, perhaps paradoxically, and certainly more significantly, that place is important. Being from somewhere is important, a point of pride.

I didn't actually make it out to Athens, Georgia until just a couple years ago, but I got a pretty good sense of the place--gothic, lugubrious, dilatory, prideful and passionate--from those early R.E.M. albums. The Midwest isn't any of those things, so the discovery was all the more fascinating for me as a boy.

Here is a picture I took of soul food sage Weaver D.'s sign, which inspired what most people consider to be R.E.M.'s greatest album. (It's great, but I would probably vote for 'Fables' or 'Pageant.' And I've always said that 'Monster' was underappreciated.)

Lincolnish

Today I almost broke my resolution to post at least once a day. But, in order to comply with the letter of my self-imposed law, I'll mention here that I still think The Colbert Report is the smartest show on television, both trenchant and sharp. Many of Colbert's segments flirt with radical epistemology--cf. 'truthiness'--and I'm not the only one who thinks so. Check out Maureen Dowd's opening question to Colbert and Stewart in a recent Rolling Stone interview:

"A fake news show, "The Daily Show," spawned a fake commentator, Colbert, who makes his own fake reality defending the fake reality of a real president, and has government officials on who know the joke but are still willing to be mocked by someone fake. Your shows are like mirrors within mirrors, using a cycle of fakery to get to the truth. You've tapped into a sense in society that nothing, from reality shows to Bushworld, is real anymore. Do you guys ever get confused by your hall of mirrors?"

I think Americans can learn a lot about critical thinking watching these 'fake' newshows. So, yeah, I guess I'm a member of the Colbert Nation. Sometimes I even want to be Colbert.

How iMet My Neighbor on iTunes

My wife mentioned to me this David Kestenbaum piece on NPR, 'How iMet My Neighbor on iTunes' (12 January), about Kestenbaum's experience with his unencrypted wireless. I post it here not just because it's a quirky story, but because it seems to me that it should be socially acceptable for someone to poach your wireless network, for non-nefarious purposes, of course, if it's unprotected: open encryption signals tacit approval. If I had more faith in people, I'd take the WEP off my own wireless, so I think it's great that other people are less gunshy.

Fundamentally, I believe that information, as stewarded by the Internet, has become a necessity in modernlife, a utility akin to electricity and water. Which is why it's disappointing that much of America is still not connected via highspeed broadband, esp. when you realize that seventy percent of adult Americans access the Internet, almost all of them daily.

I guess the 'Internets' isn't a trend. The San Francisco Chronicle (14 December 2006) article from above cites that, "Household bandwith demand continues to increase and is expected to reach approximately 1.1 terabits per month per household by 2010."  Wow.

Check out the full Pew Internet and American Life site for similar remarkable details about the way the Internet, in an amazingly brief amount of time, has rooted itself, ineradicably, in our lives. I for one think this is a positive development, a societal seachange of the same caliber as writing and the wheel. Perhaps the most wholly democratizing force since the election of the first Athenian senate.

The Birds

This last Monday, my mother called me unexpectedly mid-morning to ask if I was ok in the wake of the dead bird scare in downtown Austin. She heard about it on her local NPR affiliate. At the time, I had no idea what she was talking about. Turns out that by not following my usual routine and watching the local news that morning, I missed out on the fact that sixty-three birds were found dead about a block and a half from the Texas Capitol Building. Most of Congress Avenue, the main thoroughfare bisecting downtown, was closed for several hours. Hazmat teams swarmed the block, and the birds were immediately tested for diseases and chemical agents. Nothing was found. So, no bird flu or anthrax outbreak in Austin. Congress Ave. was reopened around noon on Monday, and the Texas Lege started their latest session the following day. I suspect overzealous poison control from some vigilante business owner. But we may never know for sure...

I bring it up to mention a media pet peeve of mine: The dead birds were a top story in Austin for three days (until the yearly 'ice storm' hit), and one of the national leads for that Monday. Fine. In a post-9/11 America I suppose we have to get used to the fact that any anomalous occurrence will be (over)reacted to by both the authorities and the media. But when the outcome of these occurrences turns out to be anticlimactic, where is the follow-up story that brings closure and full disclosure? Where's the inquisitiveness, and, frankly, rectitude, to cover the story from cradle to grave?

Anyway, the photos of the dead birds are disturbing. Very disturbing.