Month: October 2009

Meghan and Her Girls: Oh Lord, Please Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood

Trish

meghans-girls What you guys, what? I always hang around the house in full makeup and black fingernail polish taking pix of myself with my puppies pushed together and my hair all flowy. I mean, what’s the big deal? Who knew anyone would find a pic like this…suggestive, or whatever you fellow Republicans who follow me on Twitter are saying? I mean, “slutty?” Really? Don’t you think you’re being just a little small-minded and judgmental and conservative and family values oriented? What? That’s what being a Republican means? For real? Daddy! You never told me about this part. Um, well like, never mind.

Verbatim

Buck Banks

Watching Beck, who sometimes resembles a snake-oil salesman’s dim-witted assistant accidentally promoted to the top job, makes a foreigner wonder just what’s happening to American conservatism … I don’t want to seem forward or rude, but one can’t help but ask: Have you people lost your minds?

— Alex Massie, Scottish journalist, writing about Glenn Beck’s introduction to the United Kingdom for The Daily Beast.

Trying to Grok ‘Nowism’

Buck Banks

In the most recent edition of TrendWatching, the editors introduce the concept of “nowism” to explain the transitory and hyper-current currency of our high-speed, now-focused lives. While I am adverse to making up cute names for passing fancies, there is something about nowism that seems to ring pretty true.

In an age where one’s life can be parsed into a series of 140-character tweets or posted on a page where all the world can see your friends, hobbies and pet peeves, where scanning headlines has replaced reading the newspaper and we only watch or listen to TV or radio programs that support our world view, it’s difficult to argue against the existence and power of nowism.

Here’s the definition:

NOWISM: Consumers’ ingrained* lust for instant gratification is being satisfied by a host of novel, important (offline and online) real-time products, services and experiences. Consumers are also feverishly contributing to the real-time content avalanche that’s building as we speak. As a result, expect your brand and company to have no choice but to finally mirror and join the “now,” in all its splendid chaos, realness and excitement.

*In the end, just like all our other trends, NOWISM represents a case of consumers jumping on something the moment they actually can. So the need is never new, the new ways to fulfill it are.

Well, they certainly have the instant gratification angle covered, but is there something deeper than that at work here? Trendwatching’s editors direct the reader to the writings of Zygmunt Bauman, a Polish sociologist, who posited the effects of what he calls “liquid modernity”:

“Liquid Modernity” is Bauman’s term for the present condition of the world as contrasted with the “solid” modernity that preceded it. According to Bauman, the passage from “solid” to “liquid” modernity has created a new and unprecedented setting for individual life pursuits, confronting individuals with a series of challenges never before encountered. Social forms and institutions no longer have enough time to solidify and cannot serve as frames of reference for human actions and long-term life plans, so individuals have to find other ways to organize their lives.

Individuals have to splice together an unending series of short-term projects and episodes that don’t add up to the kind of sequence to which concepts like “career” and “progress” could be meaningfully applied.

Such fragmented lives require individuals to be flexible and adaptable — to be constantly ready and willing to change tactics at short notice, to abandon commitments and loyalties without regret and to pursue opportunities according to their current availability. In liquid modernity the individual must act, plan actions and calculate the likely gains and losses of acting (or failing to act) under conditions of endemic uncertainty.

“Nowism” actually sounds a lot less scary than Bauman’s “liquid modernity” with its reduction of life to an episodic, unpredictable and essentially meaningless sequence of events. Man, it sounds like 1940-1950s existentialism all over again, except accelerated by Twitter and Facebook and smartphones and DVRs ….

With all this liquid modernity, I need a drink.

Florida Rep. Robert Wexler to Resign

Trish

wexler-book

Wexler plans to meet with reporters Wednesday morning in Boca Raton to detail his next move. A Democratic source with knowledge of Wexler’s plans said the seven-term congressman is likely to take a public policy job that deals with the Middle East. The job does not involve working for the Obama administration and does not involve lobbying.

Although Palm Beach County, which makes up a lot of Wexler’s district, is fairly safely Democrat, it’s a bad time to be down one fire-breathing liberal in Congress. His leadership will be missed, as until Rep. Alan Grayson came along with his “Don’t get sick and if you get sick, die quickly” summation of Republican health care reform, Wexler was one of the straightest-talking elected officials Florida had. Inside his state, he is credited as the man, along with Sen. Bill Nelson (D), who gave Florida back its paper ballots, as well as shredding former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales in questioning before the House Judiciary Committee.

United States Now World’s Most Admired Country

Buck Banks

In a survey of citizens of 20 major developed countries, the United States was chosen as the most admired nation in the world in the 2009 Anholt-GfK Roper Nation Brands Index. The U.S. came in at number seven in 2008, behind Germany, France, United Kingdom, Canada, Japan and Italy.

It’s because of Obama, of course — and this poll was completed before he got the Nobel. After that, we’re probably the most admired nation in the solar system.

From the GfK Roper press release announcement:

“What’s really remarkable is that in all my years studying national reputation, I have never seen any country experience such a dramatic change in its standing as we see for the United States in 2009,” explains Simon Anholt, NBI founder. “Despite recent economic turmoil, the U.S. actually gained significant ground. The results suggest that the new U.S. administration has been well received abroad and the American electorate’s decision to vote in President Obama has given the United States the status of the world’s most admired country.”

In response to the announcement, Republican Sen. Jim Demint of South Carolina told the Lake Secession, S.C., Argus-Penny Saver, “That just proves the Republican Party’s position on health care reform is the right one,” he said “If we can win the admiration of the world without implementing a public insurance option, and with 49 million uninsured or under-insured Americans in the population, we don’t need health care reform. We’ve already won the popularity contest!”

Editor’s note: We have been unable to establish the provenance of that last quote, but we liked it, so we ran it anyway.

Verbatim

Buck Banks

I am not the leader of the Republican Party. Don’t want to be the leader of the Republican Party. It’s silly for them to keep talking about how I’m the leader of anything, it’s just creating more curiosity about me. It’s 21 years, more popular than ever. Lord, thank you for my enemies.

— Bloviator Rush Limbaugh, quoted by CNN.

Fox Admits to CNN That It Traffics in Opinion Not News

Jon Ponder

After a brief but concerted challenge by the White House to the credibility of Fox News Channel as a legitimate news organization — including a detailed takedown by Communications Director Anita Dunn on CNN’s “Reliable Sources” on Sunday — a spokesman for Fox responded with a de facto admission that the channel is nothing more than a propaganda arm of the Republican Party and the conservative movement.

CNN described Fox’s statement this way: “In a written statement given to CNN, Fox News said its programming was comparable to the editorial page of a newspaper.”

The fact that Fox says its programming is based on opinions not facts would likely come as a shock to Fox viewers — but, of course, they’ll never know about it. Fox will protect them from this harsh reality the same way it deals with all news that makes conservatives look badly: by not covering it.

Here’s the statement by Fox to CNN:

[…]

2010 Census Will Count Gay Households

Trish

No wonder Michelle Bachman is scared. Exactly how many people live in committed gay relationships has always been a matter of opinion, and hers was as good as yours. But official record-keeping will no longer turn a blind eye on gay households. In 2010, we will have precise, objective numbers.

The sharper focus comes courtesy of a July 31 legal analysis by U.S. Commerce Department lawyers that reverses years of Bush-era policy regarding the reporting of same-sex marriage, declaring that for the first time, data on relationships must be reported, state by state, as declared by respondents. The information will be presented unedited by 2012.

…up until this summer, an earlier interpretation of the 1996 Federal Defense of Marriage Act gave our sovereign questioner the right to edit out, essentially at the touch of a button, the mere existence of gay couples. It worked quite simply: If two men identified themselves as a married couple, one would have his gender identification changed on the government form to read “female.” With lesbian couples, one of the women would instantly be recorded as a man. Just like that, thousands of gay marriages were turned straight, at the gender-bending direction of a computer algorithm dictated by political ideology.

The 2000 Census did mark some progress, permitting couples to identify themselves as same-sex partners for the first time — though only of the unmarried variety.

The Human Rights Campaign web site offers tips on how to answer Census questions, which will still not directly ask for sexual orientation (maybe in 2020?). They list ten things to know before you respond, including:

5. LGBT couples who are married should check “husband” or “wife” on the census form. Other same-sex couples should check “unmarried partner.” The person filling out the census form indicates their relationship to everyone in the house. If you are living with your married spouse then check “husband” or wife” on the census form. Other same-sex couples should check “unmarried partner.”

6. The White House is seeking ways to include same-sex marriages, unions and partnerships in 2010 Census data. The Obama administration has directed the Census Bureau to determine what changes need to be made in tabulation software to include married same-sex couples in census reports. Citing DoMA, Census officials had planned to reclassify married same-sex couples as, instead, “unmarried partners.” This approach would result in inaccurate census data and belittle the lives of LGBT families across the country. HRC and other organizations continue to work closely with the administration and Census Bureau to ensure everyone’s marriages are treated with equal dignity and respect.

Census forms will start arriving in March.