Chris Boese's Weblog

Satire

Just a little English teacher humor from Andy Borowitz

And how utterly hilarious it is! I have to pull out some of my favorite quotations for posterity, because I want to remember them always, just like this.

Link: HuffPo: Andy Borowitz: Obama's Use of Complete Sentences Stirs Controversy.

Obama's Use of Complete Sentences Stirs Controversy

In the first two weeks since the election, President-elect Barack Obama has broken with a tradition established over the past eight years through his controversial use of complete sentences, political observers say.

Millions of Americans who watched Mr. Obama's appearance on CBS's 60 Minutes on Sunday witnessed the president-elect's unorthodox verbal tick, which had Mr. Obama employing grammatically correct sentences virtually every time he opened his mouth.

But Mr. Obama's decision to use complete sentences in his public pronouncements carries with it certain risks, since after the last eight years many Americans may find his odd speaking style jarring.

[...]

"Every time Obama opens his mouth, his subjects and verbs are in agreement," says Mr. Logsdon. "If he keeps it up, he is running the risk of sounding like an elitist."

[...]

[Oooh, he said subject and verb agreement! Just like I just to mark it on first-year composition papers! Am I feeling nostalgic for grading? HELL NO!]

The president-elect's stubborn insistence on using complete sentences has already attracted a rebuke from one of his harshest critics, Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska.

"Talking with complete sentences there and also too talking in a way that ordinary Americans like Joe the Plumber and Tito the Builder can't really do there, I think needing to do that isn't tapping into what Americans are needing also," she said.

Andy Borowitz is a comedian and writer whose work appears in The New Yorker and The New York Times, and at his award-winning humor site, BorowitzReport.com.

Rachel Maddow: Another silly fan gushing, but what great stuff to gush about!

Great New York magazine profile of Rachel Maddow, officially out tomorrow, I guess, but so many good lines and pithy observations that I just had to pull out my favorite bits here, so you will be certain not to miss them.

(FWIW: I also gushed previously, with pictures, when MSNBC first launched Maddow's new show)

I didn't write any of this, but am excerpting from Jessica Pressler's great story, and maybe adding my own snarky comments.

Link: The Secret to Rachel Maddow's Success -- New York Magazine.

The Dr. Maddow Show

The secret to the success of a wonky lesbian pundit with no TV experience? A Ph.D. from Oxford, a dry sense of humor, and the ability to be nice to Pat Buchanan.

By Jessica Pressler Published Nov  2, 2008

Ever heard of something called Dada?”

Rachel Maddow is trying to make an analogy. It’s mid-October, two weeks before the election, and the MSNBC host is comparing the McCain campaign’s recent fixation on “Joe the Plumber” to the anti-bourgeois cultural movement of the early-twentieth century. But this is prime time, and Maddow first has to define Dadaism in as colloquial a way as possible. This is something of a challenge considering she only has about twelve seconds.

“Deliberately being irrational, rejecting standard assumptions about beauty or organization or logic,” she begins. “It’s an anti-aesthetic statement about the lameness of the status quo … kind of?” She twists her face into a cartoon grimace that morphs into a wide smile. “Why am I trying to explain Dadaism on a cable news show thirteen days from this big, giant, historic, crazy, important election that we’re about to have?” she asks with a self-deprecating laugh, as she recognizes the Dadaishness of her own quest. “Because that’s what I found myself Googling today, in search of a way to make sense of the latest McCain-Palin campaign ad!”

It’s hard to imagine many other cable news hosts going down that particular rabbit hole. (Can you picture Glenn Beck referring to the existentialists to make a point?)

[Yeah, but Glenn Beck is finally and fully OFF CNN's Headline News, and good riddance! That racist creephead was easily my biggest source of embarrassment while I was working there (although the Natalie Holloway non-story comes in a close second). But meanwhile, Beck goeth happily to Fox News, and gets replaced by... wait for it, wait for it! Another out-lesbian celebrity-crime broadcaster! What programming genius!]

But then again, Rachel Maddow is not like other cable news hosts. A self-described butch lesbian with short hair and black-rimmed glasses, off-camera she resembles a young Ira Glass more than the helmet-headed anchoresses and Fox fembots who populate television news. Doing the press rounds when MSNBC first announced her show in August, she’d show up to interviews looking like, she says, “a 14-year-old boy” in puffy Samantha Ronson sneakers with iPod headphones dangling from her ears—but then she’d easily segue into an informed foreign- policy or economic discussion that ended with a Daily Show–worthy punch line. Her résumé is similarly unexpected: A Rhodes scholar and an Oxford Ph.D., she’s done stints as an AIDS activist, barista, landscaper, Air America host, and mascot in an inflatable calculator suit. She’s a civics geek who reads comic books, goes to monster-truck rallies, likes to fish, calls herself an “amateur mixologist” of classic cocktails, and even Twitters.

[And I am now following those Tweets, most written by her producer Will, I suspect. Doesn't make me a stalker. Doesn't. Everybody on Twitter does it. So there!]

There’s something about the mix of personal details that is—to a young, educated, left-leaning, cosmopolitan audience—instantly recognizable. As one New York acolyte told me, “She is more like one of my friends than anyone else on television.” And her ratings have been astounding, especially in the coveted 25-to-54-year-old demographic. Maddow averaged a higher rating with that group than Larry King Live for thirteen of the first 25 nights she was on the air, enabling the network to out-rate CNN in that time slot for the first time. It’s an impressive feat, even given the fact that the show started two months before the election when political interest was at a fever pitch.     

“You come out of the gate as fast as she came out, it gives me incredible excitement,” thunders MSNBC president Phil Griffin. “We are stronger than we’ve been in twelve years. We have more swagger today than we have ever had. It’s because of Rachel. And trust me. The other guys see it. They are watching. And they are scared.”

[Hmm. I don't know how scared they are. More like relieved, cuz this breed of TV exec isn't usually known for his or her programming courage, so when one of them, oddly, sticks a neck out and takes a risk, the others can celebrate, cuz no TV exec ever lost a job for crassly imitating or copying a successful risk taken by someone else.

But the most interesting thing here to me is that Rachel defies imitation, because she is able to communicate actual SMARTS. And TV execs can try to bottle or imitate that until the cows come home, as legions of consultants rush out and prescribe all kinds of new formulas for new "smart" ways to deliver cable current events (can we still call it "news"?) content and water cooler conversation, but the "smart" has been so fully purged from this industry that you can only still find it in beleagered newsroom old timers, stubbornly holding on as young chippies promising 18-35 demo chippi-ness get promoted over them, over and over again.

So hey, Rachel, good on ya for showing that smart can be chic, and can pull ratings. What is bizarre is that you are doing it in a world where that very thought is considered a DEEPLY radical idea.

I mean, only in cable news (and I've personally witnessed this) can a writer be openly dressed down for taking a set of facts and writing a lead for a story, and by pure chance, accidentally use the same details and language in the same order as an NPR All Things Considered lead on the same story-- THE GREATEST SIN! If NPR did it a certain way, it is the sign of the devil, and we must write that same story differently, as a matter of principle, lest ANYONE remotely suspect any NPR-pointy-headed-wannabees were hired by accident.

Cable news likes to cast itself as the anti-NPR, and usually lives up to it, in much the same way teenagers think they are so independent when they rebel against their parents, without realizing that their behavior is still being utterly controlled by what the parents value, in the shallow opposition. It takes a good bit of time for a kid to grow up enough to develop real independence, and even then, some never grow out of holding views that are merely the anti- version of their parents' views.

That that kind of shallow reasoning had infected the management of a cable news channel at the time almost made me snort out loud, but I caught myself just in time, when I realized they were very serious.

That someone with Rachel Maddow's brains was even allowed into that world is remarkable in and of itself.

Yeah, but Maddow is my kind of pointy-head. Meaning the kind that can appreciate a fart joke! See the bold bit below.]

There’s not much of a dividing line between the material that gets slated for the TV show and what winds up on the radio. The second hour of the Air America show now features repackaged material from MSNBC, and even the original content is quite similar, with pet issues like national security and veterans’ rights taking the lead, plumped up with quirkier topics like comic books and News of the World–type oddities. “They’re both built around Rachel,” says Silverton-Peel. “Whatever interests Rachel every day.”

Maddow is reveling in the attention. “The most highly staffed show I worked at in the past had three people,” she says later. “Now there’s like all these people every day who are waiting to hear what I’m interested in, so we can turn that into the show.”

[...]

Insofar as there has been a plan. No one in Rachel Maddow’s life thought she would end up hosting a national cable news show. Her longtime friends and family members stress their pride, but they are clearly surprised at the path she’s taken. “Rachel, as I knew her, has always been about making a contribution,” says Cory Booker, the mayor of Newark, New Jersey, who was friends with Maddow at Stanford and Oxford. “She wasn’t just about giving commentary; she was an activist. She wanted to change the world.”

Maddow likes to joke that her admission to Stanford was a “mistake,” but her professors remember the Castro Valley, California, native as a serious scholar from the beginning. “She was a brilliant student,” says Roger Noll, former director of the Public Policy Program at Stanford, “one of those that only come around every few years or so.” When she graduated in 1994, her undergraduate thesis—which explored the shift in the perception of AIDS patients from “the other” to “one of us”—won a medal for excellence. “I still send students to that thesis as a model,” says another professor, Debra Satz.

[...]

But at Oxford, Maddow felt restless and out of place. A few months into the program, she put her doctorate on hold, traded her Oxford apartment for a London squat, and became the general manager of a fledging organization called the AIDS Treatment Project. “Rachel took me to a public-housing project,” says Booker. “That was where she was hanging out, in this London version of a tough neighborhood. It wasn’t like it was a sociology project. Most Oxford kids wouldn’t have even known that neighborhood existed.”       

Eventually she ran out of money and moved back to the United States to finish her dissertation, settling in Massachusetts, since it was far away from home and relatively free of distractions. “I wanted to live somewhere where I would be forced to do what I had to do,” she says. She crashed with friends and took up a number of odd jobs to support herself.

She was scrubbing out coffee barrels at a friend’s coffee shop in Northampton one morning when the local rock station announced it was holding an open audition for a “sidekick” for “Dave in the Morning,” known for its wacky parodies of popular songs. Maddow liked the idea of “a new, odder job,” she says. “And anyway I had to support myself. I wasn’t like a trust-fund kid.”

[...]

The job mostly consisted of reading the headlines of the day and setting up punch lines for Morning Dave. “She was one of the wittiest, smartest people I’ve ever met,” says Brinnel, but not too smart for morning-show humor. “One day, we got into a discussion about farts,” he says. “And I just remember her stopping and going, ‘Wait a minute: There is nothing funnier than a fart.’ ”

But it soon became clear to her co-workers that “Dave in the Morning” was not going to be her last job in broadcast. “Not in an obnoxious way,” says Bruce Stebbins, a former co-owner of the station. He remembers trying to engage Maddow in a political conversation back in the late nineties. “I realized immediately that I was just like way out of my league,” he says. “She just had such a powerful intellect. I remember thinking, ‘What is she doing here?’ ”

[...]

“I do worry if being a pundit is a worthwhile thing to be,” she says. “Yeah, I’m the unlikely cable news host. But before that I was the unlikely Rhodes scholar. And before that I was the unlikely kid who got into Stanford. And then I was the unlikely lifeguard. You can always cast yourself as unlikely when you’re fundamentally alienated in your worldview. It’s a healthy approach for a commentator.”

[...]

Maddow first came on MSNBC’s radar in 2005, when she auditioned as a foil for the conservative Tucker Carlson’s show. Bill Wolff, Carlson’s producer at the time, was immediately smitten. “She was unbelievably prepared,” he said. “And she just killed him.”

[I will happily give Tucker Carlson the most credit for getting Rachel Maddow on the teevee, but despite his good judgment in that area, I have to say, it wouldn't take much logic to shred his political positions, as he usually only has two: repeating GOP talking points, or feigning outrage that someone taking a political position with more logical force and support than his would "stoop to that level" he deems as conveniently beyond the pale.

Now, shredding Tucker Carlson with charisma and grace when the cameras are rolling, that is a true skill to be admired. But most of my past freshman comp students could out-argue Carlson on a bad day, and about any grad student who has ever defended a thesis could run circles around his absurd non-logic. I'm not just slamming Tucker. I was forced to watch CNN's Crossfire daily for at least 2 years as part of my job. I can go into imitations of him on cue.]     

She bobbed around as a guest commentator for three years, appearing as a regular guest on Carlson’s show, but also on Paula Zahn’s and Larry King’s. At one point, she filmed a pilot for a weekend political show with CNN. “She seemed really constrained there,” says a person involved in the program. “It was like they didn’t know what to do with her.” The pilot never went anywhere. CNN president Jon Klein says it was because having an “obviously liberal” host didn’t fit with the mission of the network: “It’s like, you wouldn’t put The Sopranos on Comedy Central.”

[OK, the irony here is killing me. I'm vaguely aware of the time frame when this decision was made, and what we got instead from those rounds of "screen tests" at Headline News (the unspeakably awful Glenn Beck). Just think, back at that time, in an alternative universe, I could have found myself proudly working for the network that launched Rachel Maddow. I could have applied for staff jobs on her show. I'd probably be still working there to this day, if that had been the case. Life could have been completely and inalterably different. Don't pinch me. I might wake up!]

Still, she kept at it. “I think deep down, Rachel knows that this is something she has to do,” says her former radio co-host Chuck D. “She kind of looks at the television and thinks, I know that’s something I have to do well. Sometimes it’s not up to you.”

Her break came when Carlson’s show was canceled last year and Olbermann asked her to appear more frequently on Countdown. He admired the way Maddow had excoriated Carlson on his own turf, punctuating her arguments with a friendly laugh, like an athlete offering her hand to the loser after a winning game. “We were friends from the start,” says Olbermann. “Our worldviews overlap.”

[...]

Most people would obsess over the competition—Olbermann’s fixation with Bill O’Reilly ignited his career. But Maddow says she doesn’t want to absorb any “homogenizing influences.” She recognizes that part of her on-air charm comes from being unschooled enough to take risks: to explain Dada, or spend 22 seconds reading from John Hodgman’s book, or lavish airtime on Zimbabwe’s new $10 trillion bill. She gets her information mostly from the Internet, then picks what she thinks is interesting.

[I'm really being silly here, but I can't help noticing similarities. Besides my own love of fart jokes (and of putting fart jokes in inappropriate places), this is also what I loved doing when I was at CNN, working on the headline ticker at Headline News. While the salary there cost me thousands of dollars in student loan deferment interest, I loved having a job that allowed me to do precisely what Rachel has leveraged above: to cast an idiosyncratic eye across the landscape of the planet, and pull out those nuggets that grab your sensibility with a sense of "what the... ?" My job on the ticker could be described thusly: read everything in the world, and pull headlines out of it. Unlike the CNN "crawl," they even let me put jokes in there. Even, when nobody was looking, fart jokes.]

This is not to say that Maddow doesn’t have opinions about cable news. For starters, she loathes the format that casts the host as a referee between squabbling guests and has vowed to have only one speaking guest at a time, because, she’s says, it’s more respectful. “You’re essentially watching for the kinetic activity of the fight rather than listening to what anybody says about the issue,” she says. “And I think what people end up cheering for is winning, you know, rather than getting something out of it. I think there’s more intelligent ways to entertain people.”

She also does not abide impoliteness: In March, when Pat Buchanan told Democratic strategist Kelli Goff to “shut up” on Dan Abrams’s show, on which Maddow was also a guest, she leaped in to administer such a deft, polite scolding—“Pat! I have never heard you tell anyone to shut up like that before!”—that the former Nixon speechwriter looked genuinely chastened. Buchanan, whose 1992 culture-war speech was a pivotal moment for 19-year-old lesbian Maddow, now frequently appears on The Rachel Maddow Show to provide conservative counterpoint under the rubric “It’s Pat,” which he most likely doesn’t know is a reference to the old Saturday Night Live skit about a gender-neutral character. “Thank you so much for coming on, Pat. Always a pleasure,” she says warmly when he totters off after their sparring matches.

“Even though I can be harsh in my criticism and I can be strong in my beliefs, I try not to be mean,” she says. “And I don’t have a very high tolerance for other people who are cruel or personally insulting in a way that I think is meant to humiliate people.”

[...]

Maddow counts Countdown, the only cable news she really watches, as an influence. “The thing that I think he doesn’t get enough credit for is how much information is in it,” she says. “That show is produced to within a half-second of its life.” As she talks about it, she becomes more animated. “Put a lot of information out there. People can handle it. It’s okay to use big words. You don’t need to dumb stuff down! You don’t need to make stuff simple and repetitive for people. If you assume that your audience is as interested in what you are talking about as you are, you’re going to connect with your audience in a much better way.” She might not be saving the world, but she is intent on making it a little smarter.

[...]

You know, Rachel, I think that last quotation is destined to go into my random quotation hall of fame, up in the banner of this blog.

But what I like best about it, besides that it says such an important thing, is that the statement is being made from inside the cable news channel hothouse where the very idea of NOT dumbing everything down is not just massively radical, it also challenges the basic article of faith in that media genre.

Can I just give that a big ol' WHOOO HOOOO!!!!!!!!!??

Teach your children well...

Link: Our Boob Jobs, Ourselves: My Beautiful Mommy Teaches Kids Why Mommy's Face Is Suddenly "Prettier".

File this one under "How we raise kids today..."

Or under the "Child-bearing as disease" model of pregnancy.

Or just under "Neo-Gilded Age people still can't find enough to do with their excess wealth."

I love the headline the Jezebel site put on it, tho, and so I must quote it. I love how they invoke the feminist women's health classic, Our Bodies, Our Selves (I wish I still had that early edition of it. I wonder if it will ever be reprinted, for posterity? If the Boston Women's Health Collective is listening, please take note!)

Our Boob Jobs, Ourselves

, plastic surgery, top, tummy tucks, boob jobs, mommy makeover, nose jobs

My Beautiful Mommy Teaches Kids Why Mommy's Face Is Suddenly "Prettier"

Here's the perfect Mother's Day gift for your favorite surgically-enhanced breeder: My Beautiful Mommy, a picture book explaining plastic surgery to the under-8 set. Mommy is by Dr. Michael Salzhauer, a Florida plastic surgeon who tells Newsweek he was inspired to write the book when he saw parents coming into his office with their kids, who would become confused and upset when they saw their mothers in bandages. "Parents generally tend to go into this denial thing. They just try to ignore the kids' questions completely...With the tummy tucks, [the mothers] can't lift anything. They're in bed. The kids have questions." The hero of the book is named "Dr. Michael" and he looks like the dad in the Incredibles, all solid muscle and square jaw.

[...]

Newsweek ... gives stats about plastic surgery, including the fact that, last year, 348,000 women had boob jobs and 148,000 had tummy tucks, but what I'm wondering is who are these people?

There are so many articles about plastic surgery — women dying from Botox,  women getting boob jobs for their weddings — but I barely know anyone who's had surgery at all. Sure, a smattering of post-grad nose jobs have occurred, but it doesn't seem to be this all-out country-wide body reconstruction/ self-loathing that the sheer amount of press makes it seem like. Is it because celebrities get so much surgery that it makes it seem like the norm? Or do I live in a fantasy land where women spend their money on new books, not new breasts?

Mommy 2.0 [Newsweek]
My Beautiful Mommy

You know marketers are confused about Earth Day when...

This takes the cake. I happened to catch a page from the NY Post while in the subway today. An ad for Bloomingdale's department store in NYC caught my eye.

A sexy-looking guy is featured in some green-ish hued jeans and a blue t-shirt with the word "PEACE."

The promotion is for an Earth Day event at Bloomingdale's, called "Dress for the Planet."

OK, so what's wrong with this picture? The store wants to support Earth Day, is running a promotion, with a supposedly low-energy free concert, and is collecting old, "gently worn" clothing, which it will exchange for a pass to buy at a discount some NEW machine-ripped and gently fake-worn clothing!

No, it isn't even that reasonable. This is USING Earth Day as an opportunity for a SALE, like on President's Day or Labor Day. Sales exist to drive consumption, expressly, to INCREASE consumption (go to Bloomies and hack up a lung, you think that might make 'em happy?).

Bloomingdale's marketers are saying, "Oh, Ye Wonderful Earth-conscious People, come to our store and support the planet by BUYING more stuff that kills the planet!"

George Orwell would have been proud. This is truly doublespeak at its finest.

What does it mean (as Martin Luther might say) if those responsible for fueling the engine that drives the industrial consumption of the planet (not to mention the low-wage slavery of most of its people) not only to claim to be on the side of NOT DOING the very thing that is their highest goal as a corporation (increasing share-holder value), but also encourage us to follow the same contradictory purpose and HONOR THE EARTH by coming out to Bloomingdale's for a great sale for a good cause, you know, DESTROYING THE EARTH?

And the PEACE the sexy model's T-Shirt proclaims? Consumption, and the energy its engines require are precisely what fuels our current imperialist oil WARS, not to mention reinforcing energy-rich totalitarian states that big multi-nationals and super-powers keep in place, despite the violences and suppression (the opposite of PEACE) enacted against those peoples.

Yes, yes, we can all join in! Sing along in our anthem, follow the bouncing sale price label! Let us all celebrate Earth Day in the properly capitalist interpretation of its meaning, by CONSUMING THE EARTH MORE!

Increased consumption is, or can be made to be, after all, the answer to EVERY question. The Bloomingdale's sale proves it.

"A Nude Horse is a Rude Horse"

I have most recently become very concerned about indecency, a very particular kind of indecency: naked animals waving their private parts all around who knows where, sometimes freely copulating in front of polite society.

As a result, I'm urging all my friends to join S.I.N.A, or Society for Indecency to Naked Animals. Its tireless mission is to clothe all naked animals for the sake of decency, to put "bermuda shorts on horses, jumpsuits on cats, mu-mus on cows..." with the idea that "A Nude Horse is a Rude Horse."

This clothing mandate would cover all animals that are "other domestic animals that stand higher than 4 inches or are longer than 6 inches." That means ferrets too!

Here's a bit from the group's press release. We should all encourage our friends to join and take up the cause!

The Society for Indecency to Naked Animals (S.I.N.A.)

By Alan Abel

Last week in St. Louis I met G. Clifford Prout Jr., leader of an unusual organization called the Society for Indecency to Naked Animals, or S.I.N.A. for short. It is Mr. Prout's belief that all domestic animals should wear clothing for the sake of decency. He points out that we human beings, who are biologically animals, share our food, our love and our homes with our pets. Then we should also share our decency with them.

The S.I.N.A. philosophy for clothing all animals was initially prescribed by Mr. Prout Sr., who passed away last year leaving a will estimated at $400,000 to his son. There was a provision in that will that the inheritance was to be spent solely for promoting decency and morality through S.I.N.A.. Otherwise all the money would go to the Missouri State Department of Highways for the widening of roads and improvement of toll booths.

Since his father's passing, Cilfford Jr. has been diligently spending vast sums of this money for his dedicated cause, traveling all over the world, lecturing, and forming new S.I.N.A. chapters.

According to Prout, children habitually dress their dogs and cats because of a socially learned stimulus to look decent. Little Johnny sees his parents clothed. He looks at himself and he is clothed, but Rover the dog is stark naked! Unable to ignore the sight of Rover's immodesty, the child puts doll clothes on him. But how do his parents react? They rip off the clothes, calling Johnny a sissy. He cries and trouble begins as a double standard is permanently fixed in his little but impressionable mind.

Mr. Prout added that when children are denied the healthy habit of dressing their pets, they rebel against their parents, school and community, in that order.

"Try and explain to a three-year-old girl why her cat must remain in the nude," he said. "You can't. She becomes frustrated over the prevailing hypocrisy and joins a gang engaged in street fighting, muggings and robberies. School dropout, unwed mothers and other forms of antisocial behavior called juvenile delinquency are these youngsters' expressions of their contempt for the adult world they will inherit. So, the sooner we clothe these naked animals the better our chances are that we'll bring up young people to become decent citizens.²

There are now over 25,000 honorary members of S.I.N.A. who have taken the pledge to clothe all animals, including those of neighbors and any strays prowling backyards. These determined moralists carry emergency animal clothing in their cars, can spot a naked animal at fifty feet, and then clothe him in twelve seconds flat! (Mr. Prout himself holds the present world record for catching and dressing a dog in nine and-a-half seconds).

Those people who wish to organize S.I.N.A. chapters in their own communities must take an oral and written emotional stability test to determine their general mental fitness, attitude and leadership potential. Mr. Prout said he devised the test himself and it helps weed out the crackpots, thrill seekers and other undesirables who would attempt to infiltrate S.I.N.A., possibly undermining the cause.

"Decency Today Means Morality Tomorrow" is the motto composed by Mr. Prout that is prominently displayed in every member's home, framed on walls, carved above fireplaces, embroidered on pillow cases, or chiseled into front sidewalks.

Mr. Prout drove me back to my motel and urged me to write the truth about S.I.N.A.; that he wasn't spending his father's fortune unwisely, contrary to some vicious and slanderous articles written about him. I listened as he spoke with a quiet air of confidence and determination usually reserved for men of importance. I was impressed. This bespectacled man in his early thirties with the tweed jacket and baggy pants suggested the appearance of a visiting professor in the humanities.

As we shook hands goodbye, Mr. Prout's parting words were memorable: "Don't ever forget; a nude horse is a rude horse."

Link: Alan Abel.

This is the work of a true master, Alan Abel, and the group has been active since the 1960s. Be sure to check out a documentary about him Abel Raises Cain. I understand S.I.N.A did have some important early support from another prominent public figure, Buck Henry.

For instance, here is an account of a famous protest they conducted outside the Kennedy White House, a protest that was eventually covered by Walter Cronkite at CBS News.

...President Kennedy had openly welcomed protest groups to picket the White House. I accepted this offer with my wife and the doorman to our New York apartment, Bill Moran. He was supportive of our activities, had never been to Washington and eagerly accepted a free train ride with us on his day off.

We arrived at our nation's capitol carrying placards and pamphlets explaining our campaign. One sign read: "Please, Mrs. Kennedy, clothe Caroline's horse Macaroni for the sake of decency!" It was high noon as we three, dressed purposely in shabby clothing, paraded back and forth in front of the magnificent White House. A Secret Service agent took photographs and requested a handful of leaflets before disappearing. A few years later, when I shared an airplane seat to Cleveland with Jackie Kennedy's half-brother, Jim Auchencloss, he explode with laughter.

"I remember that day," he said excitedly. I was an intern. Uncle Jack watched you guys through binoculars, laughing hysterically. My sister sat there, arms folded, and was incensed. It made the President's day because he was so stressed out over the Cuban missile crisis."

As we continued our picketing and passed out literature for an hour, only one reporter asked me for an interview. Bob Goralsky with CBS News could hardly contain his professional decorum in front of the camera.

"Sir, are you some kind of nut?" he asked.

"No," I replied adamantly. "Nor am I perverted. Naked animals are everywhere and must be clothed to protect our children from the sight of indecent nudity. You tell a clothed dog to get off the couch and he will. Naked cows grazing are actually hanging their heads in shame because they are forced to be nudists in a clothed society. How can you deny that? Remember, decency today means morality tomorrow!"

Is Amazon trying to monopolize the empowering "citizen media" Publish-On-Demand market?

UPDATE 3/30/08: A commenter below (A.F. Stewart) has left a link for an online petition against Amazon's new policy, and I wanted to make it live and promote it also up here at the top of the post:

Buy buttons have now been disabled, (PublishAmerica and Whiskey Press) and Amazon's policy is to do it to all who don't fall into line.

Voice your protest, sign the petition.

http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/protectPOD

Thanks for the link, A.F.!

Link: Amazon.com Telling POD Publishers - Let BookSurge Print Your Books, or Else....

http://writersweekly.com/the_latest_from_angelahoycom/004597_03272008.html

I am republishing this courageous post from Writer's Weekly in its entirety, in order to help spread the word. That Amazon.com (normally quite supportive of key aspects of the Citizen Media Movement and its most democratizing elements) would attempt such a thing just leaves me speechless.

I hope I'm wrong, and I hope that the negative PR from such a heavy-handed move by a key gatekeeper rebounds badly and forces Amazon to allow the POD books the same rights and privileges as ANY published book with its own ISBN number.

Could you imagine Amazon dictating such a policy to any small university or literary press? What about selected political publishing houses devoted to giving voice to the Thomas Paines of our day?

Amazon made its name by becoming an online equivalent of our Library of Record. Google has now entered that arena, and the competition was necessary, but we can't expect the Barnes & Noble to take up that mantle, and I don't think it could; its interface is too weak and its devoted user base too also-ran. Many of the affected writers are turning to B&N as an alternative, and that could be a good move, if for nothing else, it could help B&N become a better true competitor to Amazon, but B&N has a long way to go.

Could it really be that Amazon is trying to bite the Long Tail that feeds it?

The Internet can be a truly open space only so long as our searches remain honest. Both Amazon and Google have an obligation to citizens of cyberculture not to go all border collie on us and use their power as gate-keepers at their leveraged choke-points of power as oppressive agents of social control against more democratizing forces online.

I hope to follow this issue more in the future, as I learn more about what's happening here, and Amazon's reaction to a public backlash. I should note that key groups particularly affected by this development are FANWRITERS, a massive constituency of fan fiction writers online who develop their skills and corpus of works in specific fandom communities. I have analyzed this social citizen media phenomena in my dissertation, and in the years since, have followed the careers of many successful writers who have "graduated" from fandom audiences to POD, often bringing their own quite sizable audience of fans with them. The effects of this move by Amazon below on the vast worlds of specific fandoms is just chilling.

The good news, which Amazon may not have realized, is that online fandoms are not simply intensely-focused affinity groups. As I also found in my dissertation, they are highly-organized activist organizations. While charities (on the positive side) cable television production houses and networks (on both the positive and negative side) are most often the targets of their organized activism (other sectors of politics and business should take note!), these fandom groups can easily turn on a dime and activate their bases against any target.

If Amazon should step back from this oppressive policy and I somehow miss it, please let me know, so I can also note the change here, when it happens. I have no interest in sharing this outrage in error, nor do I want to lose my faith in Amazon.

Say it ain't so! Please!

Link: Amazon.com Telling POD Publishers - Let BookSurge Print Your Books, or Else....

http://writersweekly.com/the_latest_from_angelahoycom/004597_03272008.html

March 27, 2008

Amazon.com Telling POD Publishers - Let BookSurge Print Your Books, or Else...

BREAKING DEVELOPMENT: We were notified by a PublishAmerica author that her book was available for purchase through Amazon on Tuesday but today the "buy" button for her book on Amazon is gone. We researched some other PublishAmerica books and it appears the "buy" button on Amazon has indeed been removed from the vast majority of their book pages.

PublishAmerica issued a press release today that states, "PublishAmerica will not comply with Amazon's ultimatum, and will not allow that company to dictate who will print PublishAmerica's books, and at what conditions."

~~~~~

Some Print on Demand (POD) publishers are privately screaming "Monopoly!" while others are seething with rage over startling phone conversations they're having with Amazon/BookSurge representatives. Why isn't anybody talking about it openly? Because they're afraid - very, very afraid.

Amazon.com purchased BookSurge, a small POD publisher/printer back in 2005. Amazon also lists and sells titles for the largest POD printer, Lightning Source, which is owned by Ingram (the large book distributor). According to their website, Lightning Source serves more than 4,300 publisher clients and has more than 400,000 titles in their system.

You'd think Amazon's purchase of BookSurge might have made things a bit uncomfortable between the two companies. However, they continued to work together, getting books on demand to Amazon.com's loyal customers. Things appeared to be cruising along just fine, but perhaps not anymore.

Reports have been trickling in from the POD underground that Amazon/BookSurge representatives have been approaching some Lightning Source customers, first by email introduction and then by phone (nobody at BookSurge seems to want to put anything in writing). When Lightning Source customers speak with the BookSurge representative, the reports say, they are basically told they can either have BookSurge start printing their books or the "buy" button on their Amazon.com book pages will be "turned off."

The book information would remain on Amazon, and people could still order the book from resellers (companies that list new and used books in Amazon's Marketplace section), but customers would not be able to buy the book from Amazon directly, nor qualify for the coveted "free shipping" that Amazon offers.

Don't believe it? I didn't believe it either. I am Angela Hoy, the co-owner of POD services company BookLocker.com and publisher of WritersWeekly.com. I am well-known in the industry for my activism performed through WritersWeekly Whispers and Warnings. Over the years, we have helped writers recover tens of thousands of dollars in fees from deadbeat editors and publishers, helped them negotiate better contract terms, assisted writers in obtaining payment after their copyrights have been violated, and even assisted police in collecting evidence to prosecute criminals who have preyed on writers. I am also the author of 11 non-fiction books.

Still doubting the reports could really be true, I emailed an Amazon/BookSurge representative who's been trying to get us to talk to him by phone. John Clifford of Amazon/BookSurge called me at 12:30 p.m. on Wednesday, March 26, 2008.

My first comment was to tell him we heard a rumor that POD publishers who didn't use BookSurge would have the "buy" button on their Amazon.com book pages turned off.

He said, "What? Who told you that? That's not true!"

I told him I'd heard some rumors from the "POD underground."

He said he'd previously tried to talk to my husband, Richard Hoy, the President and CEO of BookLocker. I explained that we had a very bad experience with BookSurge in the past and that he was, naturally, hesitant to do business with them again. (Google the words BookSurge complaint without any quotes to see other customers' comments about them as well.)

He claimed the people who worked for BookSurge back then are probably all gone (but that didn't explain the more recent complaints). He made his sales pitch, talking about percentages and such, and said many POD publishers are resisting their attempts to convert to BookSurge. Mr. Clifford also said BookSurge's aim was to help Amazon customers get their books faster.

What he didn't say was that Lightning Source not only packages books for Amazon customers in boxes that feature an Amazon.com return address label, but also drop-ships those orders directly to Amazon customers at Amazon's request. Hmm...

He stated several times that books not converted to BookSurge's system would be "taken down." Since that wasn't exactly what we'd heard, I asked about books that perhaps weren't selling well, that aren't good candidates for converting to BookSurge (books that would remain for sale through Lightning Source, but would never be converted to BookSurge due to the time/expense involved).

Contrary to what he stated at the very beginning of our conversation, Mr. Clifford finally admitted that books not converted to BookSurge would have the "buy" button turned off on Amazon.com, just as we'd heard from several other POD publishers who had similar conversations with Amazon/BookSurge representatives.

Mr. Clifford said authors of those books could participate in the Amazon.com Advantage Program, meaning they would have to pay Amazon $29.95 per year PLUS 55% of the list price of their book, as well as buy and then send those books to Amazon directly for them to warehouse and ship to customers.

I explained to him that we had more than 1500 books in print and that it would take quite awhile to convert all of those over to BookSurge's system. He said as long as the relationship was "moving forward" that the "buy" button would remain active on our authors' books that had not yet been switched.

Another comment Mr. Clifford made was that their eventual desire is to have no books from other POD publishers available on Amazon.com.

WHAT ARE THEY THINKING?!

I have to wonder if Jeff Bezos is even aware of what is going on within his organization. Here is Amazon's Vision Statement, taken directly from their website:

"Our vision is to be earth's most customer centric company; to build a place where people can come to find and discover anything they might want to buy online."

What it doesn't say is, "Our customers can buy any print on demand book they might want online...as long as we also get paid to print it."

Nobody likes being backed into a corner, and saying "do this or else" naturally breeds angry rejection and hostility. If we did agree to sign the contract, pulling and transferring files to Amazon/Booksurge would take an enormous amount of time and money. From the POD publishers we've talked to, and from our own experience at BookLocker, we could all be looking at a dire and immediate threat of revenue cuts if we refuse to sign the Amazon/BookSurge contract. Most importantly, there could be an outcry from and potential financial hardship on the authors, who are completely innocent in all of this.

In BookLocker's opinion, and the opinion of all the fellow Lightning Source customers we talked to, the Amazon/BookSurge proposal does not appear attractive at all (yes, we obtained the contract and the file submission specifications). Amazon/BookSurge would make money two ways on Amazon.com sales - first the fee for printing the books, and then 48% of the list price of each sale through Amazon.com. Lightning Source allows its customers to set their own discount rate for Amazon and other retail sales, and does not force POD publishers or authors to pay "48%."

Furthermore, it could take the larger POD publishers months to submit their book files to Amazon/BookSurge, at a considerable cost and number of man-hours. This makes the deal even less attractive. Finally, while the initial list of books submitted by POD publishers could be submitted to Amazon/BookSurge for free, the contract states future books would cost $50 each to process. The cost for individual authors to publish through BookSurge is considerably more, with an average publishing package cost of more than $1,000.

Since Amazon/BookSurge does not offer Ingram distribution (Ingram distribution is considered imperative in the industry for bookstore sales), any company that accepts the Amazon/BookSurge deal, who desires to keep offering Ingram distribution, may need to maintain two copies of the book files. Since the Amazon/BookSurge current specs don't match the Lightning Source specs, future book files, both interior and cover, may need to be formatted separately. So, they would have to pay double the setup fees and might have to do double the formatting work as well...or pay designers to do double the formatting work.

Likewise, self-published authors who believe they must have Ingram Distribution AND an active "buy" button on Amazon to be successful may need to pay double the setup fees (to a POD publisher AND Amazon/BookSurge), and also may need to create two separate sets of formatted files.

In the event where two versions of a book might be available, Mr. Clifford said the Amazon/BookSurge version of the POD book would trump (override) the version offered by Lightning Source on Amazon.com.

AMAZON WAS BUILT BY BOOKS....That Were Written By AUTHORS

When authors get wind of this, we believe they are going to be livid. Authors are also readers. They love books. We suspect they buy from Amazon in droves. I, myself, have been an Amazon junkie for years, not only heavily promoting Amazon.com in my non-fiction books for writers and on our very popular website, WritersWeekly.com, but also listing my own books for sale there, ordering other authors' books, DVDs and numerous other products as well. I pulled up our Amazon customer account and looked at our receipts. We've spent $1508.81 at Amazon.com in the past six months. Multiply that by the number of authors this will affect...authors who, like me, have a multitude of websites to choose from when doing their shopping online.

In addition, authors participate in the Amazon experience, via blogs on the website, by posting reviews about other books, and more, activities that help to continually make Amazon bigger and better. Authors are a loyal bunch! For years, they've been faithfully sending their readers to Amazon.com, again and again, even when they earned lower royalties for doing so.

It's not inconceivable to think that this group, if shoved against a wall like this, won't simply pledge their allegiance elsewhere. Let's face it, BarnesandNoble.com offers free shipping on orders of $25 or more, too. Authors can change the links to their book pages on their websites, in their ezines and press releases, and even in their email signatures to their book's page at BarnesandNoble.com. Authors can spend their own money elsewhere as well (as I plan to do). I imagine BarnesandNoble.com will be very happy to process the extra book sales that could result from all of this.

Amazon.com might also upset countless companies that have Amazon Affiliate bookstores on their websites (many authors have these, too!). If Amazon/BookSurge were to follow through with turning off the "buy" buttons for thousands of POD titles, customers following those links from other websites could be confused and annoyed. After clicking on a link, they would find no easy way to purchase the book directly from Amazon, and no way to obtain free shipping on that book, even if they're willing to buy more products to meet the $25 free shipping threshold. One would think Amazon must know the free shipping strategy works to upsell customers on additional products. That's why they offer it. Without it, these customers could have no incentive to buy more products because the product they surfed in to buy does not qualify.

One has to wonder if traditional publishers will be next? Will Amazon eventually require all books sold through Amazon.com to be printed by BookSurge?

Let's all hope and pray this situation is one huge, misguided idea from some mid-level management person and not corporate policy being dictated from the office of Jeff Bezos.

What can you do? Let Amazon know what you think about this "offer" by Amazon/BookSurge.

The names of their Officers and Directors are here: http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=97664&p=irol-govManage

Amazon's Investor Relations Team email address appears near the bottom of this page: http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=97664&p=irol-faq

Their address is:

Amazon.com, Inc.
P.O. Box 81226
Seattle, WA 98108-1226

Next, tell your author friends, your book buyers, your website visitors, your ezine subscribers and everyone else about this situation. Amazon.com was built on books. Books are written by authors. Unfortunately, it appears authors may ultimately be the innocent pawns in this power struggle.

~~~~~

[...]

Angela Hoy is the publisher of WritersWeekly.com, which offers free job listings and paying markets for freelance writers every Wednesday. Subscribe at WritersWeekly.com. She is also the publisher at BookLocker, which offers full-service, affordable print on demand publishing and free ebook publishing.

~~PERSONAL POSTSCRIPT TO AUTHORS FROM ANGELA~~

There is no reason to panic. We are not aware of any cases yet where the "buy" button has been removed. It is possible, after recognizing everyone's concerns, that Amazon might change its mind.

If they do turn off the "buy" buttons, though, not having an active "buy" button on Amazon.com is not the end of the world.

After selling books for eight years, it has been our experience that "chance purchases" of self-published books on Amazon.com are not the norm. Authors slap books up on Amazon.com all the time, don't market them, and sell zero copies. For most self-published authors, sales are almost always author-driven, meaning the bookstore link you use in your marketing efforts is what's driving your sales, not just simply having your book listed on Amazon.com.

We know from experience that the customer is going to buy your book from where you tell them to buy your book. If you want your customers to qualify for free shipping, you can send them to BarnesandNoble.com, and tell them their order might qualify for free shipping (many people don't know BarnesandNoble.com offers free shipping!).

Most Ironic Quotation of the Day

Uh, I think we should file this under "What NOT to say while you are a CEO being convicted of back-dating stock options."

Shall we all sing-along-with Cher, then? "If I could turn back time..."

Link: First Backdating Conviction Brings Prison Term and $15 Million Fine - New York Times.

First Backdating Conviction Brings Prison Term and $15 Million Fine

Jeff Chiu/Associated Press

Gregory L. Reyes Jr., the former chief executive of Brocade Communications Systems, and his wife, Penny, on Wednesday.

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: January 17, 2008

SAN FRANCISCO (AP)  —  A former chief executive of Brocade Communications Systems was sentenced Wednesday to 21 months in prison for orchestrating a plan to tamper with the company’s records of stock option grants.

The executive, Gregory L. Reyes Jr., who led Brocade from 1998 to 2005, was also ordered to pay a $15 million fine. Judge Charles R. Breyer of Federal District Court in San Francisco said Mr. Reyes had obstructed justice in preparing for trial, which led to a stiffer sentence.

[...]

Mr. Reyes was the first executive to be tried over stock options backdating when his case went before a jury in San Francisco last June. He was convicted in August of 10 counts of securities fraud.

[...]

Mr. Reyes’s case was seen as a test of how seriously infractions of options-related securities laws would be punished. He cried while speaking to the judge before his sentencing.

“I’m sorry,” Mr. Reyes said, between sips of water and long pauses to compose himself. “There is much that I regret, and if I could turn back the clock, I would.”

[...]

DUDE! You already DID turn back the clock! That's why you're going to jail, dimwit!

And apparently the apprehension of irony is absent among subscribers to the Associated Press, including the New York Times!

Beware the coming social network wars?!

Link: Google and Friends to Gang Up on Facebook - New York Times.

What's up with this? A big "secret source" expose' on deep background? A coming onslaught?! The underdog forces of Google (ahem) and some conspiracy, some cabal, dare we say a back room deal? They are all marshalling their forces to SAVE US ALL from the utter takeover of the world by....

Facebook.  (er, Microsoft? The 1.6 percent solution?)

(full disclosure... these days I somewhat resemble that solution)

Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!

Oh no! Not the old frumious Bandersnatch!

What? You don't believe we Facebook users are in imminent peril? Well, just look at this secret-sourced NYTimes article below, and tremble with fear! Then you can say a little prayer that Google and friends are there to save us from ourselves.

Link: Google and Friends to Gang Up on Facebook - New York Times.

Google and Friends to Gang Up on Facebook

By MIGUEL HELFT and BRAD STONE

Published: October 31, 2007

SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 30  —  Google and some of the Web’s leading social networks are teaming up to bully the new kid on the block — Facebook.    

On Thursday, an alliance of companies led by Google plans to begin introducing a common set of standards to allow software developers to write programs for Google’s social network, Orkut, as well as others, including LinkedIn, hi5, Friendster and Ning, according to people briefed on the plans. Those people asked not to be named because they agreed to keep the alliance’s plans confidential.

The strategy is aimed at one-upping Facebook, which last spring opened its service to outside developers. Since then, more than 5,000 small programs have been built to run on the Facebook site, and some have been adopted by millions of the site’s users. Most of those programs tap into connections among Facebook friends and spread themselves through those connections, as well as through a “news feed” that alerts Facebook users about what their friends are doing.

“It is going to forestall Facebook’s ability to get everyone writing just for Facebook,” said a person briefed on the plans. The group’s platform, which is called Open Social, is “compatible across all the companies,” that person said.

“Facebook got the jump by announcing the Facebook platform and getting the traction they got. This is an open alternative to that,” the person also said.

[...]

[Oh, OK, I get it. It isn't Facebook itself that is an offensive smell unto the heavens, it's the closed platform. Because we all know, none of those companies ever tried to advance any closed platforms themselves before, right?

I'm sensing crocodile tears, in other words.

Now, generally I'm the first one to rant against walled gardens, most often right here in this blog. Yet for some reason, I have no interest whatsoever in MySpace, which is much more open than Facebook.

Most of my work online is outside any walled gardens, in the blogosphere. And yet.

And yet what is this REALLY all about? (Alfie?)

I don't like walled gardens, yet I DO like to keep my EMAIL private. And I patronize both Facebook and LinkedIn, which are fairly (but not perfectly) tight on keeping email spammers away by creating an Opt-In Whitelist out on the Cloud.

And THAT, folks, is the real frumious Bandersnatch in this saga.

Google and friends might SAY it is about open standards. They might SAY it is about improving the quality and interoperability of the social networking experience. Yaddah yaddah. I remember back in 2003 or so, when open source advocates were trying to set up an open FOAF standard like RSS, to be published with any page. Yeah, I tried it just to try it. Man, did it sucketh muchly.

Where were all these Great and Terrible OZ Champions of open standard social networks then, back when the interfaces were rough and clunky and only geeks would touch it? Back when the idea was just starting to take shape? Nowhere to be found.

And I bailed just about as quickly as I tried it out. The reason? Because OPEN platform with FOAF meant ANYONE could get at any social links I chose to put in that space (including spammers), and that was precisely what I didn't want. That stuff is myowndamnbusinessthankyouverymuch.

So are we supposed to buy that this is somehow the sequel of that grassroots foray?

Here's what I think: Google and friends got a whiff of many chips really are on the table, the real threat Facebook poses, and got their noses bent out of joint because they were being forced to play Facebook's game to get a piece of the action

THINK: what has really been the BIGGEST killer app since the birth of the Internet?

There's only one answer to that question: email.

And how much has the basic interface of email changed or substantially been improved on since the bad old days of Pine and all that gnashing of teeth?

Email is still a reverse-chronological list with items you open and close, save or delete. Even Gmail and others out in the Cloud have not substantially altered anyone's single experience of email (other than gmail's "never delete anything" mantra, which is still ominous to me).

We are all inundated by spam now, of course, because of the frictionless direct mail and fraud space, but aside from the spam filter industry that has arisen to put up walls and have them breached and put up new walls and have them breached, what is happening to improve or change our experience of email?

I personally find the interface of the reverse-chronological email In-Box list oppressive. I'd like to delete it from my life. It hides important things I want to remember. They get pushed off the screen as other more recent, less important things arrive.

That is the nature of an interface ruled by clock time and screen boundaries instead of by values and human needs. It persists because on a basic level its utility serves better than any alternative so far, SO FAR.

The reverse-chronological list email interface rules humans and social groups, rather than humans and social groups ruling it.

People who matter to me are forgotten in the exigence of the email moment, just as TV occupies our front minds with trivia and disrupts the values most of us would consciously choose, if we were indeed conscious and controlling the interfaces that dictate our lives.

Trivial email as sonambulistic distraction on par with TV? I think it could be, yet email is probably the most important thing in my life, STILL. I blame the interface, not my quality email connections.

I'd like to put relationships in the center of my online experience, not a reverse-chronological clock.

People at Earthlink and other proactive ISPs often urge us to make liberal use of the blacklists and whitelists they enable for us, but those tools are not useful to me at all.

Blacklists are useless because spammers are a moving target.

Whitelists are useless because they are like your own personal Emily Dickinson, "A Soul Selects her own Society," shutting the door on the divine majority.

The old classmate or distant cousin can't find you if you erase yourself from online spaces in the name of protecting yourself from spam.

If you build the moat around your castle too wide and deep, no one will be able to get in.

It defeats the purpose of being online in the first place: to connect (and not to buy things endlessly trying to fill needy emotional holes in our souls, WWW=TV II, as many online ventures desperately want us to believe).

Interfaces must serve the users AND their social groups, and not the other way around. And when interfaces do not serve, social groups should be empowered to reshape fluid interfaces to fit their needs and wants. This was what I found in my doctoral research in the late 1990s, and we are apparently still learning this lesson now.

Facebook is hot right now because it has seized a middle ground, allowing us to both HIDE and CONNECT. One foot in water, one foot on land. That's a walled garden I can live with. Not invisible, but not vulnerable either, because basically the Emily Dickinson in each of us is still in charge, and can shut the door on any divine majorities she pleases.

Google and its secret superfriends who think they are going to save us from ourselves by luring us away from Facebook (uh, just like Google Video persuaded all those avid YouTube users to abandon the YouTube communities and choose Google instead?) are actually operating out of fear, the SAME FEAR that sent Bill Gates into the browser wars with Netscape.

Why did Internet Explorer seek to crush Netscape? Because Microsoft saw the browser as a primary competitor for Windows, the browser as new OS platform. From the standpoint of Microsoft, if Windows is a shell that sits on top of MS-DOS, a browser can also become a de facto shell that sits on top of Windows, potentially superseding it.

Did Microsoft buy that 1.6% stake in Facebook for this same reason, jockeying with Google? It does seem to be High Noon a lot these days between Microsoft and Google, but I have no insight into any of that competitive business activity. I'm interested in interfaces and platforms.

I think Google and friends believe Facebook is fast becoming The Platform of the Cloud, a platform that sits on top of the browser in the same way the browser sits on top of the OS.

Our primary interfaces will always be a moving target as fickle users and social groups gravitate toward the interfaces that resonate and are most useful to them.

Blog software opened web publishing to legions of non-specialists, creating new social network interfaces, a reborn and empowered public Commons through simple publishing interfaces (not discounting any of the many private, group, and intranet blogs in use out there, as publishing can be both public and private and inbetween).

Gmail is trying to get us to move the same old email interfaces into new wineskins, out on the Cloud, but Google has not substantially changed the basic function of reverse-chronological list email interfaces that have been with us since Pine.

So what do I get from Facebook? Right now, at least (until Facebook, as many tools I've tried before, changes my basic experience on the site, and I bail), I think I get what could be the successor to email-as-killer-app.

For the first time ever in my online experience, I'm not just getting another platform. I think I'm getting something that could replace email as the central interface and portal for me online.

I mean, I've been on the web since 1993, and regardless of how well the browser interface has conquered the world, it's clunky one-way "interactive" features kept it from ever upstaging email as my primary on-ramp online.

Personally, I think Facebook has the potential to edge out email as the ultimate killer app, and that raises higher stakes for all business players involved, more so than just adding another rung in the infinitely beckoning and totally temporal platform "layer" wars.

But I'm not done pointing up some things from the NYTimes article that set me off on this tangent. Here's some more juicy bits:]

The alliance includes business software makers Salesforce.com and Oracle, who are moving to let third-party programmers write applications that can be accessed by their customers.

The start of Open Social comes just a week after Google lost to Microsoft in a bid to invest in Facebook and sell advertising on the social network’s pages outside the United States. And it comes just before the expected introduction by Facebook of an advertising system next week, which some analysts believe could compete with Google’s.

[...]

For now, however, Facebook has become the preferred platform for software developers.

By teaming with others, Google hopes to create a rival platform that could have broad appeal to developers. A person briefed on the plans said that the social networks in the alliance had a combined 100 million users, more than double the size of Facebook.

[...]

[You know, that unnamed person above is waving something phallic-shaped around, but it sure ain't 100 million users. This smells like someone blowing PR spin to me. I don't care how many "registrations" they can name in articles like this, they wouldn't be shitting little gold bricks in this special competitive alliance if they thought those 100 million users wouldn't ditch them for Facebook in a heartbeat. Anyone can read trend reports and see which way the wind is blowing.

I mean, Google Video's attempts to trump YouTube also underestimated the power of the YouTube community. Google cried uncle first.]

The developers of some of the most popular Facebook applications, including iLike and RockYou, are expected to be present at a party Thursday evening when they will announce that they will tailor their programs to run on the Open Social sites.

The effort faces several hurdles. Developers may not see the advantage to writing programs that run across such remarkably different networks as, for example, LinkedIn, which caters to business professionals, and hi5, which is popular in Central America.

[...]

Google has not been able to establish itself as a force in social networking, and it clearly wants to. “One of the things to say, very clearly, is that social networks as a phenomenon are very real,” Eric E. Schmidt, Google’s chief executive, said in a recent interview. “If you are of a certain age, you sort of dismiss this as college kids or teenagers. But it is very real.”

Google said it has advertising relationships with several social networks, including a $900 million partnership to sell ads on MySpace, which the company said is performing well. Google is also making some money on Facebook, through ads that run inside applications that are used on that network.

A person familiar with Google’s efforts said that those applications have been far more effective for advertisers on social networks than users’ personal pages. “It is early, but those ads work very well, whereas the ads in overall social media platforms have shown less performance,” the person said.

[...]

[This is the New York Times and all, but I really hope the article above was not based on that single unnamed source, because that person is clearly a PR spinner releasing a trial balloon in advance of a more official announcement.

The New York Times wouldn't hinge this entire story on a single source, would it? I know it's pitiful, but there are a few things in this era of declining journalistic standards that I'd like to be able to trust, even if I do know better than to trust anything (except bloggers!).

One, two! One, two! And through and through
  The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
  He went galumphing back.

"And, has thou slain the Jabberwock?
  Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!'
  He chortled in his joy.

 

Philip K. Dick is starting to get his due

Link: Philip K. Dick: A Sage of the Future Whose Time Has Finally Come - New York Times.

I have to post this as vindication, for all my students who complained about my showing Blade Runner and making them do their first paper on it, for years in first-year composition.

I had a terrible nightmare this morning that had to have been something straight out of Dick, now that I think about it. It was just terrible, a flashback from my previous job. In the dream I sat for seemingly hours, trying to write three 15-second "stories," the details and order of which kept changing the entire time I was writing them, the whole time sitting in someone's ratty bedroom on some really uncomfortable upholstery. When I woke up, I was so sore, I could barely hobble to the bathroom.

They oughta do a study on how many people's dreams get polluted by waking up with NPR news bleed-thru into their dreams.

Anyway, I wasn't dreaming of electric sheep, but I do have a Dick novel I would option for a screenplay in a heartbeat. I'm not going to say which one it is, though. Someone else might get it first. [grin]

Link: Philip K. Dick: A Sage of the Future Whose Time Has Finally Come - New York Times.

Philip K. Dick: A Sage of the Future Whose Time Has Finally Come

By BRENT STAPLES

Published: June 8, 2007 

Philip K. Dick was still an obscure pulp novelist known mainly to teenage boys when a friend predicted that he would one day have more impact on the world than celebrated writers like William Faulkner, Norman Mailer and Kurt Vonnegut. The prediction seemed almost delusional in the 1960s, when Dick was popping pills around the clock and churning out novels in a science fiction ghetto from which he seemed destined never to escape.

He did get out, but only posthumously. And with his recent celebration as the sage of futurism, and his pervasiveness on bookshelves and in Hollywood, the early predictions about the growth of his influence have come to seem prescient.

Dick was largely unknown to the general public at the time of his death in 1982. Most of his novels and short stories were out of print and seemed destined to stay that way. Things began to change after his favorite and best written novel, “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?,” was introduced to the country in the form of the now classic movie “Blade Runner.”

[...]

The film struck a number of chords in the real world. Its vision of the polyglot, environmentally ruined Los Angeles spawned the phrase “Blade Runnerization” among urban planners who recognized it as a frighteningly likely vision of things to come. In recent years, movies based on Dick’s work —“Minority Report,” “A Scanner Darkly,” “Next” — have become a cottage industry in Hollywood. Numerous other projects, including a film based on his life, are said to be in the works.

The movie craze carried over into the book world, where publishers have pushed more than 30 of Dick’s novels and scores of his short stories back into print, this time with book covers and promotional material designed to appeal to mainstream readers. The rehabilitation hit a literary high note earlier this month, when the Library of America issued “Philip K. Dick: Four Novels of the 1960s,” which placed him in the company of Henry James, Saul Bellow, Faulkner and other heavyweights.

Dick wrote his share of bad novels, which is hardly surprising given that he wrote stoked up on drugs and suffered no end of paranoid delusions. His best books distinguish themselves from ordinary science fiction by focusing not on technology, but on the toll that technological advances often take on human values — and on the soul itself.

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Dick was fully engaged in the science of cybernetics — which supposes a similarity between machine and human functioning — and deeply alarmed about what he saw as the encroachment of programmable machinery into human life.

His writing was shaped by the legitimate worry that human beings were merging with the technology that was supposed to be serving them and becoming less human (which is to say, more machine-like) in the bargain.

Androids in much of science fiction are cast as entertaining house pets. Dick’s androids are sinister and potentially dangerous, because they lack the leavening spark of humanity.

[...]

The science fiction writer’s job is to survey the future and report back to the rest of us. Dick took this role seriously. He spent his life writing in ardent defense of the human and warning against the perils that would flow from an uncritical embrace of technology. As his work becomes more popular, readers who know him only from the movies will find it even darker and more disturbing — and quite relevant to the technologically obsessed present.

      

 

Definitive Christopher Hitchens Rant on Falwell

I have very little stomach for Christopher Hitchens anymore. While I don't mind people who piss me off, Hitchens fell into a non-reality-based sleep (or bender) for a while there, and the iconoclastic gadfly seems to wallow more incredulously in wildly irrational rants.

That said, maybe he was more sober or lucid than normal in the bit below, or not, as the case may be. Either way, it's a great epitaph for someone (Jerry Falwell) most of us will only want to remember in terms of the kind of devils we'd like to avoid in the future.

And Hitchens does skewer media culpability in the Falwell narrative so very well...

Here are some of my favorite bits, I want to preserve for posterity, until the next time Hitchens takes leave of his senses and pisses me off (I don't care that he's a darling again now, with his book out).

Link: Jerry Falwell, faith-based fraud. - By Christopher Hitchens - Slate Magazine.

fighting words: A wartime lexicon

Faith-Based Fraud

Jerry Falwell's foul rantings prove you can get away with anything if you have "Reverend" in front of your name.

By Christopher Hitchens
Posted Wednesday, May 16, 2007, at 12:46 PM ET

 The Rev. Jerry Falwell

 The discovery of the carcass of Jerry Falwell on the floor of an obscure office in Virginia has almost zero significance, except perhaps for two categories of the species labeled "credulous idiot." The first such category consists of those who expected Falwell (and themselves) to be bodily raptured out of the biosphere and assumed into the heavens, leaving pilotless planes and driverless trucks and taxis to crash with their innocent victims as collateral damage.

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The second such category is of slightly more importance, because it consists of the editors, producers, publicists, and a host of other media riffraff who allowed Falwell to prove, almost every week, that there is no vileness that cannot be freely uttered by a man whose name is prefaced with the word Reverend. Try this: Call a TV station and tell them that you know the Antichrist is already on earth and is an adult Jewish male. See how far you get. Then try the same thing and add that you are the Rev. Jim-Bob Vermin. "Why, Reverend, come right on the show!" What a fool Don Imus was. If he had paid the paltry few bucks to make himself a certified clergyman, he could be jeering and sneering to the present hour.

Falwell went much further than his mad 1999 assertion about the Jewish Antichrist. In the time immediately following the assault by religious fascism on American civil society in September 2001, he used his regular indulgence on the airwaves to commit treason. Entirely exculpating the suicide-murderers, he asserted that their acts were a divine punishment of the United States. Again, I ask you to imagine how such a person would be treated if he were not supposedly a man of faith.

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Seeking to deflect the charge of anti-Jewish prejudice, Falwell adopted the cause of the most thuggish and demented Israeli settlers, proclaiming that their occupation of the West Bank and Gaza was a holy matter and hoping that they might help to bring on Armageddon and the return of the Messiah. A detail in this ghastly narrative, as adepts of the "Left Behind" series will know, is that the return of the risen Christ will require the mass slaughter or mass conversion of all Jews. This consideration did not prevent Menachem Begin from awarding Falwell the Jabotinsky Centennial Medal in 1980 and has not inhibited other Israeli extremists from embracing him and his co-thinkers ever since. All bigots and frauds are brothers under the skin. Trying to interrupt the fiesta of piety on national television on the night of Falwell's death, I found myself waiting while Ralph Reed went all moist about the role of the departed in empowering "people of faith." Here was the hypocritical casino-based Christian who sought and received the kosher stamp from Jack Abramoff. Perfect.

Like many fanatical preachers, Falwell was especially disgusting in exuding an almost sexless personality while railing from dawn to dusk about the sex lives of others. His obsession with homosexuality was on a par with his lip-smacking evocations of hellfire.

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The evil that he did will live after him. This is not just because of the wickedness that he actually preached, but because of the hole that he made in the "wall of separation" that ought to divide religion from politics. In his dingy racist past, Falwell attacked those churchmen who mixed the two worlds of faith and politics and called for civil rights. Then he realized that two could play at this game and learned to play it himself.

[...]

It's a shame that there is no hell for Falwell to go to, and it's extraordinary that not even such a scandalous career is enough to shake our dumb addiction to the "faith-based."