http://blogcritics.org/ A sinister cabal of superior bloggers on music, books, film, popular culture, politics, and technology - updated continuously. en Copyright 2005-2007 by the authors Tue, 16 Sep 2003 09:30:49 EDT http://backend.userland.com/rss Blogcritics.org custom software http://blogcritics.org/ Phillip WinnSunday, August 26, 2007, marks the switch of all Blogcritics.org article feeds from full-content to short-content. This is the result of several converging factors, and is unfortunately a permanent decision (as permanent as any decision can be on the web, that is). We are aware of all of the reasons that this is a Bad Idea, and we are aware that some of you will be quite upset about having to click on something to read the free content, and we're sorry. Unfortunately, despite great effort, full-content feeds are not currently economically viable. Two other factors are involved: full-content feeds have resulted in an unprecedented level of content theft, with BC content appearing on many websites, usually spam sites, without attribution or permission. This duplicate content causes a cascading set of problems, not the least of which is that search engines generally aren't favorable to duplicate content, and don't always guess correctly. Finally, our RSS advertising partner is strongly in favor of short-content feeds. We hope that you'll continue to subscribe to BC via RSS, and when an article grabs your eye, it's only a click away, still free on the BC website. Thank you for your understanding. Administration0@blogcritics.org Sun, 26 Aug 2007 12:00:00 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2003/09/16/093049.php Andrew ClineLast week on Rhetorica I rather peevishly wished that popular publishers would emulate the standards of academic peer review. That's unreasonable for many good reasons, not the least of which is that we already have many fine academic presses publishing books by academics on the same topics covered by authors such as Ann Coulter and Al Franken.Ann Franken won't tell it like it is because it has no clue how it is. And, even if it did, its purpose is ideological struggle not enlightenment. So, if your purpose is something more than having your own ideology validated, Ann Franken et. al. cannot satisfy your needs.Want to read a good book about the press and politics? I suggest The Press Effect by Kathleen Hall Jamieson (Oxford University Press, 2003). Professor Jamieson knows far more about this intersection that Ann Franken will ever know. She won't make you laugh with sick jokes at the expense of civil discourse. She won't talk down to you. She won't pander to your ideology. She won't grind any axes. And she will get her facts straight.The book is about, among other things, the narrative bias of journalism, although Jamieson does not use that term. Instead, she approaches her subject with the lens and frame metaphors. She demonstrates how and why politics is covered in the way it is and what that means. Because this book isn't as popular as those by Ann Franken, you can pick up a new or used copy cheap. It will be money well spent. Books8409@blogcritics.org Tue, 16 Sep 2003 09:30:49 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2003/05/20/141604.php Andrew ClineJared Diamond's Pulitzer Prize winning book, Guns, Germs, and Steel (1997), adds some perspective to the current situation in the Middle East. The book explains how and why civilizations developed at varying rates. Diamond begins with a race metaphor placing the starting line at 11,000 B.C.E. The Middle East jumped out in front early, and their abilities to farm, domesticate animals, and write, lead them to cultural success. Their influence and technology helped lift Europe from the Stone age. Interesting reading. Andrew R. Cline, Ph.D. The Rhetorica Network Books5456@blogcritics.org Tue, 20 May 2003 14:16:04 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2003/03/05/181845.php Andrew ClineAs we approach war and, perhaps, further tax cuts, it seems like good time to revisit a book that got little attention when it was first published in 1999. The Cost of Rights, by Stephen Holmes and Cass R. Sunstein, argues that rights are not inalienable, but rather are made possible only by a government funded well enough to protect them. There's plenty in their argument to cause steam to shoot from the ears of liberals and conservatives alike--one of the signs they are on to something. Books3620@blogcritics.org Wed, 5 Mar 2003 18:18:45 EST http://blogcritics.org/archives/2003/01/18/115719.php Andrew ClineBrendan Nyhan, at SpinSanity, chastises the Democrats for manufacturing opponents to "civil rights." His argument hinges on the definition of "civil rights." Like most political arguments, the definition of terms is usually the foundation of the issue because definitions are our attempts to cement reality. And differences in the perceptions of reality create issues.Conflict over issues creates one of the justifications for government. And for an excellent look at the creation of conflict, its role in legitimizing government, I would suggest reading Prof. Murray Edelman's book Constructing the Political Spectacle. Warning: This book will raise the blood pressure of committed objective idealists.From: Rhetorica: Press-Politics Journal Books2685@blogcritics.org Sat, 18 Jan 2003 11:57:19 EST http://blogcritics.org/archives/2003/01/10/132353.php Andrew ClineA recent survey by Gallup says that 22 percent of Americans get their news from talk radio. That has some media watchers worried because such programs do not follow standard journalistic procedures to "objectively" gather and present news.Talk radio is a decidedly conservative phenomenon. Twenty-nine percent of Republicans say they get their news from talk radio as opposed to 15 percent of Democrats.Do these listeners know what they're getting? Proponents (conscious or not) of strong-media theory argue that the audience is a dupe of the media. As I have argued, this is a largely discredited theory. I believe, as political scientist Anthony Downs did, that citizens find partisan information more politically useful.Downs wrote Economic Theory of Democracy (1957) and maintained that people participate in politics and acquire information about politics because such participation and acquisition are "intrinsic" values. In other words, this is normal human behavior and not necessarily culturally-driven behavior. But to participate and acquire information takes effort, and citizens will only spend as much effort as necessary to get what they want. If the "costs" are too high, citizens won't participate or acquire. Downs demonstrated that people reduce the costs of acquiring political information by seeking out sources that fit their own way of thinking (ideology) and/or promote their party of identification (partisanship). By reducing the "costs" of acquiring political information, partisan sources are more politically useful, i.e. you don't have to work hard to get what you want. It doesn't seem to matter to the citizen seeking such information that the partisan source may not contribute to serious political debate.I would add that the medium of radio helps reduce the costs of acquiring information. Newspapers and television require certain kinds of attention (different for each) that draws attention away from other tasks. Radio, however, can operate in the background as we drive or work.Considering Downs' economic theory and the ease of use of radio, I'm frankly surprised the figure is as low as 22 percent. For more information, see: Calvert R. C. 1985. "The Value of Biased Information: A Rational Choice Model of Political Advice." Journal of Politics. 4: 530-55. Books2583@blogcritics.org Fri, 10 Jan 2003 13:23:53 EST http://blogcritics.org/archives/2003/01/10/131133.php Andrew ClineThe ideal family includes two married people and their biological children. The nuclear family should be the primary source of emotionally intimate relationships. And the difficult challenges that face families today threaten to destroy the basic unit of American society. So says conventional wisdom.Thankfully, Al and Tipper Gore lay all those truisms to rest in their thought-provoking book, Joined at the Heart: The Transformation of the American Family. The work is devoted to describing families as they really are, identifying the challenges those families face, and suggesting that if there ever was a golden era of the family, this is as likely a time as any.The Gores earned the right to opine on families by organizing the annual Family Re-Union conferences forums for research about family issues for the last 11 years. In the book, they use anecdotes from interviews with several families to illustrate and support research data and theoretical work from a large group of sociologists, psychologists, economists, and other social scientists. From the outset, it is clear that they recognize their own version of "family"-they've been married forever and have four children together-is not the norm. Their interview subjects include the Fadleys (the product of two divorces and children from three sets of parents, including one child born out of wedlock); the soon-to-be Logans (two white gay men who adopted an African-American child and a Latino/African-American child and are taking on a new name-Logan-to underscore their family connection); and the two-home family of severely disabled Brett Philpott, who divides his days between three primary caregivers-his thrice-divorced dad; his mother, and her husband, who considers Brett's biological father to be his best friend.They and the other families are presented as an honest ideal of what it means to be family in America today. As the Gores say, "family is quite simply the people about whom you care the most in the world, regardless of their legal or biological relationship to you."If this definition surprises, it is because it is fairly new, and those who cast a nostalgic eye for the better families of earlier times still haven't figured it out. When, after thousands of years, the nuclear family transcended the extended family in importance, it emerged to serve as an economic unit-a group of people who worked together simply to survive from one generation to the next. It is only in the last few generations that the family has come to be seen as the locus of emotional intimacy and love, which puts rising expectations-and indeed pressure-on the quality of family relationships. This, in turn, has prompted a re-ordering of the process. Today, "emotional connection" means "family" instead of the other way around.With this background in place, the Gores spend the rest of the book laying out a vast landscape of challenges in which today's families negotiate their emotional connections. In chapters on work, play, communication and other topics, they bounce quickly from one issue to the next. For example, in "For Richer, For Poorer," we move from homelessness to poverty to the consumer culture, shopping as a leisure activity, the role of advertising in making us want things we can't afford, the role of the media in setting the "keeping up with the Joneses" bar ever higher, common misunderstandings about Social Security, the revelation that credit cards are "the cocaine of consumer debt," a lamentation about too many cars and not enough public transportation, and the disparagement of our health care system. Whew. It's a fascinating gallop-but I'm not sure what we're supposed to do with the information.In fact, where are the Gores in all this? In their concluding chapter, they give a once-over-lightly of some policy positions (reform of public education, universal public preschool, more environmental controls), take a couple swipes at Bush policy proposals, and urge families to be more involved in the political process. They occasionally draw on their own experience to illustrate a point they wish they make, with mixed results. Tipper, raised largely by her grandparents after her parents' divorce, reminds us that her mother struggled with mental illness and relates her own experience as a stepchild after her father remarried. Al's birth family is presented briefly as an iconic ideal. The anecdotes drawn from their own nuclear family are a little too flattering, and usually off point to boot.The book is devoid of any "smartest family in school" attitude, for which we should be grateful (probably to Tipper.) But I found myself wanting policy-guy Al to step up with some new ideas I could grab hold of. Instead, I learned that the Gores believe the first step our country must take to help families is to change the way we think about families-and perhaps that is the contribution this book is intended to make. If so, it accomplishes its goal. --Lola Butcher Books2582@blogcritics.org Fri, 10 Jan 2003 13:11:33 EST http://blogcritics.org/archives/2003/01/07/103204.php Andrew ClineAs Jack Nicholson has aged it seems to me he's been relying ever more on being Jack playing a particular character. He's finally transcended himself in the new movie About Schmidt. Go see it. It makes you remember why we loved Nicholson in the first place. Video2507@blogcritics.org Tue, 7 Jan 2003 10:32:04 EST