How to review stuff

Tim Carmody at Snarkmarket wrote a thoughtful essay on reviewing books, movies, and other works in the new-media environment. In a nutshell, he points out how swarms of reviews posted at Amazon (for example) can have competing objectives, centering on what he labels immanence versus transcendence.1

immanence n.

The “thingy-ness” of an artwork, its physical form as we experience it. Examples: As digital media proliferate, a book might be experienced as a weighty hardcover, a Kindle file, a set of Google Books snippets, or a misquoted excerpt encountered in someone’s blog.

transcendence n.

The “ideal, imagined, almost Platonic form” of a work of art that transcends all our particular experiences of it in various forms. Example: The Godfather is recognizable as The Godfather, whether we encounter as a signed first edition of Mario Puzo’s novel, a much-abused paperback in a movie tie-in edition, or the first disc in the Blu-Ray release of The Godfather Trilogy. Unless we’re focused on the history of the immanent forms themselves (the novel, the paperback, the movie on DVD), we usually treat them all as versions of the same work.

The difference between these helps explain a gap between traditional newspaper reviews, which emphasize the value of the transcendent work, and consumer reviews at Amazon and countless other sites, which are more likely to focus on the particular experience with one (immanent) form of the work.

teh kidz r alright

I was recently directed to yet another complaint about the decline of literacy, the corrosive intellect-leaching power of digital technology, and our collective guilt for letting Western civilization subside into a mire of tweets, blogs, and gaming.

iPhones Have Consequences, by Sally Thomas, is a witty, engaging essay on the subject, supported by memorable anecdotes. I believe it delves deeper into the question than most such efforts, and it’s well worth reading.

I feel I must address her argument that the present college generation is dumber than we forty-somethings, seeing as I’ve argued exactly the opposite. It’s my view that the forty-somethings are the dumbest generation currently on offer, and the so-called “twixters” or “tweens” are more curious than we, and have read more and thought about more than we had at their age.

Why we call it waterboarding

I recently found some supporting evidence for my theory (in this post, one of my most read) that the term waterboarding is intended to make nonsense of a victim’s suffering by comparing his torture to an extreme sport. (Think of snowboarding, etc.)

Well, a while ago Isabel Macdonald searched newspaper archives to learn about the history of the word waterboarding in print. She found that “until May 2004, the term had actually meant an aquatic sport similar to surfing.” Since then it has rapidly come to signify water torture.

In a May 2004 article, a New York Times reporter quoted an anonymous “counterintelligence official” who said the CIA was using “a technique known as ‘water boarding,’ in which a prisoner is strapped down, forcibly pushed under water and made to believe he might drown.” That seems to be the first time the word went public. Evidently it was already in use among U.S. interrogators. No explanation of the term is offered.

Alan Dershowitz, who notoriously argued in favor of legal torture in 2004, was probably the first to use the single word waterboarding, instead of water boarding, in the mass media.

You can read the whole story in Macdonald’s article for fair.com.

Socialism is gonna get your momma

So today the real Americans turned out en masse to protest “socialism,” government spending, middle-class tax cuts, taxes (period), and the election of a Kenyan Muslim as president of the United States. Not that we’re racist or anything. Just patriotic. You can tell by our “Don’t Tread On Me” flags and our use of Boston Tea Party symbols.

I’m not a fan of conspiracy theories. Still, these rallies remind me of past controversies (flag burning, the pledge) that have commanded media attention and stirred public passions without any practical result — except a widening of the gulf between Americans. It’s not hard to believe these episodes are designed — not by some central planning board, but by some one or other of the interests in favor of maintaining a shrunken, disunited electorate in a perpetual state of mild panic. The more we cut ourselves off from each other, the easier we are to control.

The cant about “socialism” is both deeply felt and absurd on its face. No one knows what effect the so-called stimulus measures will have on the economy. But Republicans in Congress have determined that no matter what happens, they can oppose the measures without fear of consequences. Even if the measures prove effective in hindsight, their effect will be gradual and difficult to separate from the effects of other events, both planned and accidental; therefore easy to obscure. If the economy comes roaring back in as little as five years, the Republicans will simply chalk it up to the virtues of the American people, which managed to bring us out of recession despite the stultifying effects of Big Government. And Democrats will fall over themselves to design a nice new tax cut before the other party beats them to it.

That’s assuming that we, the people learn nothing from our experiences with scarcity except fear and resentment. It’s a safe bet, if one I would prefer to lose.

In our panic, we seem determined to defend the Western tradition of taxing cottages and hovels while exempting palaces and castles. In uncertain times, you see, we peasants can take a modicum of comfort from the thought that our lords’ estates are still intact.

Working men’s dollars are to be taxed when earned and taxed when spent. Every dollar must be taxed; even pensions from the government are to be taxed upon receipt. But the earnings of our betters must be zealously guarded from “double taxation” lest our civilization come crashing down.

Got it?

• Photos from today’s D.C. tea party (Washington Independent)
• Video from the same tea party (Washington Independent)

Update: The evening news reports sixteen tea parties in Alabama today. Probably the largest of these was at the Hoover Country Club in metro Birmingham. Like the other “grassroots” events, this one was star-studded and drew surprisingly attentive media coverage (including syndicated radio celebs Rick and Bubba, “the sexiest fat men alive”). Degree of Madness has the details.

‘New media’ circumvent gag order on ‘old media’

Over in Britain they’re having bailout issues as well. The Guardian newspaper just published a series of leaked memos showing how Barclays Bank conspired to evade taxes — while receiving huge sums of public money to avoid bankruptcy.

A whistleblower at the bank leaked seven memos describing the tax avoidance schemes. The Guardian posted them online on Tuesday as Barclays lawyers worked feverishly to get a court to order them taken down. These efforts paid off by 2:30 a.m. Wednesday, when a court order forced the newspaper to remove the documents at once.

The wheels of justice certainly do turn more swiftly when you have a stable of lawyers at your beck and call.

Fortunately, by this time the documents had been copied and reposted elsewhere on the Web. You can see them for yourself at Wikileaks.org, a site devoted to just this kind of disclosure.

There’s been a lot of talk about who will do in-depth investigative journalism once the newspapers have gone the way of the dinosaurs. It may be that no other institution will emerge to support demanding investigative work, which cannot be done by bloggers in their spare time.

This story suggests, though, that the new media environment may provide more opportunities for successful whistle-blowing. After all, this story was not the result of ferreting by Guardian reporters, but of leaks from inside Barclays. A court succeeded in squashing the newspaper’s effort to publicize the information, but it was beyond the court’s power (or, to be fair, its intention) to squash the entire Web.

Wikileaks quotes a comment at another “old media” website, the Financial Times, on the significance of these Barclays memos.

The depth of deceit, connivance and deliberate, artificial avoidance stunned me. The intricacy and artificiality of the scheme … was absolutely evident, as was the fact that the [bankers] knew exactly what they were doing and why: to get money from one point in London to another without paying tax, via about 10 offshore companies. Simple, deliberate outcome, clearly stated, with the exact names of who was doing this, and no other purpose.

Whatever happens next, I think the present moment has rich opportunities for collaboration between “old” and “new” media.

Small talk

Given any new technology for transmitting information, we seem bound to use it for great quantities of small talk.

That was biologist and essayist Lewis Thomas in The Lives of a Cell, published in 1974. Still a good book.

Collecting debts from the dead

I have an elderly neighbor who is certain to die in crushing credit card debt. So this NYT article on a “new frontier” in debt collection grabbed my attention. (Edge of the West linked to it here.) It’s a profile of DCM Services, specialists in getting the bereaved to assume responsibility for the unsecured debts of the dear departed.

“Dead people are the newest frontier in debt collecting, and one of the healthiest parts of the industry. … New hires at DCM train for three weeks in what the company calls ‘empathic active listening,’ which mixes the comforting air of a funeral director with the nonjudgmental tones of a friend.” This “empathic” approach, it turns out, is the most effective way to persuade grieving relatives to assume responsibility for debts they are not liable for. Not that the company goes out of its way to clarify the absence of liability.

The approving business reporter glides smoothly over the implications of all this. Never mind the fact that these debts may consist entirely of compounded interest on fees and penalties assessed arbitrarily by the credit card issuer, after the original principal has been paid off and then some. The job of DCM employees is to steer grieving survivors into looking upon the payment of these debts, no matter how they came about, as a kind of tribute to the dead.

“Not everyone has the temperament to make such calls,” the report continues. “About half of DCM’s hires do not make it past the first 90 days. For those who survive, many tools help them deal with stress: yoga classes and foosball tables, a rotating assortment of free snacks as well as full-scale lunches twice a month. A masseuse comes in regularly to work on their heads and necks.”

The meek and self-denying are the company’s easiest prey: “One widow wrote that a collector ‘was so nice to me, even when I could only pay $5 a month a few times.’ Saying that money was ‘so tight’ after her husband died, she added: ‘It was very hard for me, and to get a job at my age. Thank you.’”

“We will never sell death,” an industry flack announces, with a marked air of protesting too much. Well, yes, they have launched a website called mywayforward.com, with “information, tools, and, someday, products.” The website has a prominent link to the NYT article. Helps build credibility.

This is wrong in so many ways. It also suggests an intention on the part of the debt manufacturing industry to one day make survivors liable for every last dollar of debt that could be foisted upon a dead relative during their lifetime. Right now, quite a few people hang up on the empathic active listeners of DCM Services. But given time and a tractable Congress, those people too can be made to pay.

Imagine: A revenue stream that flows from generation to generation, widening and deepening with the population itself. Money for nothing. Everyone shall be made to pay. That’s the dream.

Two more for the record

I happened on this page of Obama front pages from last November — what looks like a pretty comprehensive collection. (But where’s the Guntersville Advertiser-Gleam? The Greene County Democrat? Oh well.)

Anyway, I picked up our two local Spanish weeklies when they each put Obama on the cover, and I still have them lying around. These are from the inauguration, not the election.

You (probably) saw them here first:

Latino announced “Hope is reborn” (Renace la esperanza).

Paisano Alabama was more circumspect: “Now Obama is president” (Obama ya es presidente). A short editorial in the left column begins, “Message to Obama: Don’t let us down.” (No nos falles.)

What drives headlines

I’ve just caught up (thanks to the AHA blog) with the dispute over a New York Times story about the Watergate tapes. The Times’ ombudsman, Clark Hoyt, wrote this article criticizing his colleagues, especially weekend editor Alison Mitchell’s decision to give front-page play to the Feb. 1 story. The suggestion came from the paper’s culture desk, but it was Mitchell who decided to run with it. Placing the story on Page 1 falsely implied that it contained news-making — no, history-making — revelations about Watergate.

What even Hoyt declined to say plainly is that the Page 1 placement of the story strongly suggests an attempted tie-in to the movie Frost/Nixon. Hoyt briefly mentions the film in his first sentence, then moves on, as if the headline’s coincidence with the movie were just that: a coincidence.

I can understand the impulse to use the film to give a fillip to the ailing Gray Lady as revenues keep sinking and media keep changing. But this was a serious error in editorial judgment — one that failed to consider the power of Page 1 to imply notability in any story that appears there. Marketing logic seems to have carried the day. I also detect a whiff of desperation, as the days when the country had a “newspaper of record” seem to be coming to an inevitable end.

Beyond the shoe throwing: America fails in Iraq

The Bush Administration has proclaimed so many fake milestones and signs of “progress” in Iraq that (according to Patrick Cockburn in the London Review of Books) a genuine milestone has gone by almost unnoticed. The Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA for short) between the U.S. and Iraqi governments immediately curtails U.S. military and mercenary autonomy in Iraq, forbids permanent U.S. military bases, and sets a timetable for withdrawal, with the last U.S. soldier to leave in 2011.

Approved November 27 by Iraq’s Parliament, the final version of SOFA is a far cry from the initial U.S. proposal back in March, which would have established an indefinite U.S. military presence on Iraqi soil. Like the British occupation of Iraq between the world wars, a U.S. occupation would have made a mockery of Iraqi sovereignty. Over eight months of negotiations, the Iraqis essentially dug in their heels and wore down the American side.

Since Cockburn’s report appeared, there have been signs in the news that U.S. military leaders do not intend to hold up their side of the bargain. Radio Free Europe, a U.S. government organ, is busy portraying the post-SOFA environment in Iraq as a “legal maze” for well-intentioned American professionals dealing with supposedly inadequate Iraqis.

This issue will continue to be important, without generating major headlines, for at least the first half of 2009. Many of the president-elect’s fellow Democrats have never been interested in ending the Iraq war. They just believe they can do a better job of running it.

• Status of Forces Agreement (PDF) published at whitehouse.gov