Friday, November 21, 2008
My take is a little different. If anything, I think activists are already excessively focused on the media. People often judge the success of a demonstration primarily on how much media coverage it receives, rather than seeing demonstrations as a place to gain confidence, meet people and groups, and build the core of a long-term [...]
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
Happy Spokesmodel Selection Day to one and all. I am certainly not the first to comment on the commodification of American politics in general and this race specifically, but a little more can be said before we’re on the next distraction tomorrow. This election has been primarily a contest between the values of experience and [...]
Thursday, October 23, 2008
MIAMI — When Sarah Silverman told young Jews to get their lazy rotund rear ends to Florida to persuade their grandparents to vote for Senator Barack Obama, one question loomed: Would they go?
This weekend was the first big test, a kickoff for the so-called Great Schlep, and so far, momentum has been building with the [...]
Thursday, August 28, 2008
by Jonathan Alter
Published Aug 23, 2008
From Newsweek magazine issue dated Sep 1, 2008
It’s hard to predict what will stick. ‘It’s the economy, stupid’ was a hand-scrawled sign hung in Little Rock.
When NEWSWEEK reported earlier this summer that the McCain family owns at least seven houses, few outside the hothouse of politics noticed. Voters assume that [...]
This is a new video from 23/6.com a political-ish comedy site. The video is about a serious issue, but treats it in a comical-ish way. Which is a fine strategy if done well, but I there’s just not quite enough substance here. All you really get from the video is that there’s a terrorist watch [...]
Play is one of the earliest and most important activities of mammals; helping adolescents learn the skills they need to survive. Games take the free play of the animal kingdom and apply rules and constraints, which have the ability to teach and develop the values and beliefs of a culture. The chess queen developed as [...]
via: Time
When the culture began to change in the late 1960s — when the old one-liner comics on the Ed Sullivan Show were looking pretty tired and irrelevant to a younger generation experimenting with drugs and protesting the War in Vietnam — George Carlin was the most important stand-up comedian in America. By the time [...]
This is great speech by journalist John Pilger on the powers and dangers of corporate media. I think what’s most interesting about it is that he breaks from the Left/Right dialectic that plagues social change movements and takes liberalism to task for some of its crimes. The liberal Clinton administration increased the size of [...]
In this video from the Today Show, Alain “Spiderman” Robert talks about how he climbed the New York Times to raise awareness of Global Warming. My criticism of these kinds of things is “who is not aware of the climate crisis?” Awareness is not longer the problem. Lack of action is.
However, Robert makes some good [...]
Hans Haacke lecture
Gallatin School, New York University, April 15, 2008
Question: As a political artist, how can you know when you’ve been successful?
Haacke: I’ve been asked that question many times, and that question requires one to go around it before one really avoids it.
I believe it is a relatively new phenomenon that art works are referred [...]