My “Critically Reading Current Events” Blogging Homework 10/22/2008

• Barry Levinson: The Future of Televised Debates – Annotated

  Change the word DEBATE to EDUCATION in this post, and you have a….

  “How-NOT-to Use TECHNOLOGY in the CLASSROOM” post.

  Very worth a read in that context.

  But I’ll leave that softball for somebody else to clobber. It’s pretty obvious to me.

  tags: education, technology, elections08

  • This was a hyper-version of a TV debate. Turbo-charged. The screen, in addition to the actual debate participants, is filled with information. On the left and right sides of the screen they have boxes where various talking heads can cast points as the debate is in progress, and at the bottom of the screen there is a graph responding to a specially selected group of “undecided” voters — the up and down movements of the chart, resembling some kind of EKG, show their feelings to every sentence that is spoken. One color for Male. One color for Female. Obama says something and points register on the screen. Paul Begala liked the comment. William Bennett was unmoved. And so the debate went on. At one point I realized I was no longer listening to what was being said by the candidates. All the bells and whistles had my attention.
    • Really – read the whole thing, and think about its lesson to tech-drunk teachers.

      Don’t get me wrong: I know there’s a place for edtech. But there’s also a TOO MUCH of it. – post by cburell

  • Television has never found an idea it can’t exploit. It doesn’t matter what it is. Anything that can be made more lively, is more lively. Tweak it, make it more fun, and we will watch. And we will like it. And we will justify it.

    Some say we are in the early days of the American version of the fall of the Roman Empire. Therefore, is television the electronic version of the Roman Circus? The events at the Coliseum might be cruel and inhumane, but those leaving the arena sure had a good time. Taste and consequence be damned. “That Christian sure was fast, best I’ve seen in weeks! Let’s go to the baths.”

  • But the CNN debate innovations are just the beginning I think. Maybe the real debate event will adopt some of those CNN bells and whistles. Include them in the process to enhance the drama. Maybe even add a truth panel that rings a buzzer when a candidate says something false. Depending on the degree of misinformation, that will determine the point deductions. Buzzers going off have always added fun to quiz shows in the past and refs have used them for dramatic effect during sporting events. There are so many possible improvements that can be made. Content? Forget it. There’s too much fun to be had in flashy presentation. After all, the band played on while the Titanic sank.

• Shelly Palmer: Obama Would Create Cabinet Level Technology Officer

  One for the edtech groupies

  tags: technology, education, politics, elections08, obama

  • If elected President, Barack Obama would create the first-ever Cabinet level Chief Technology Officer. Obama thinks that the US is not doing nearly enough to create jobs in the tech sector and believes an executive position would better the situation. Google CEO Eric Schmidt must agree, as he is endorsing Obama.

• Keli Goff: Thank You Rush Limbaugh (and Pat Buchanan)

  Really interesting conclusion on this one. Are the likes of Limbaugh and Buchanan finally being left behind by an America that’s outgrown them? Let’s hope so.

  tags: racism, elections08, culture, history, usa

  • Conservatives Rush Limbaugh and Pat Buchanan both sought to tie Powell’s endorsement to his race.

  • Instead of diminishing Powell’s reputation at all, Limbaugh and Buchanan’s words have so far, only further diminished theirs. Watching clips of their comments I actually felt a great deal of compassion for both men. Clearly their frustration and fear at realizing that our country is no longer what it was in 1968 — and never will be again — or even what it was in 1998 when it was paralyzed by partisanship, has rendered both men lost; as though a time machine accidentally stranded them, in some strange, multi-cultural, forward-thinking universe, and they as relics from the past feel increasingly, irrelevant, outnumbered and out of place.

    But I believe that I am not the only one who feels sorry for them. There are plenty of Americans, even those who may not agree with Obama’s politics, or Powell’s endorsement, who heard the sad rhetoric of these men and thought to themselves, “That does not represent me or the America that I believe in.”

    And for sparking that revelation, I want to say to Rush Limbaugh and Pat Buchanan, THANK YOU.

• Service: Online Only: The New Yorker

  A photo that should become iconic. Read the tombstone closely, including its symbol.

  tags: iraq, terrorism, bush, racism, 911, islam, usa

  • 

• Bob Ostertag: Colin Powell, Barack Obama, Specialist Khan, and You – Annotated

  tags: no_tag

  • The fact that it was, finally, an African American Republican Army general who finally stood up and denounced Republican Muslim-baiting as un-American is not surprising. Rather, it highlights the ambiguous role of the US military, which has so often been a tool of oppression beyond our borders, yet was one of the first major American institutions to racially integrate domestically, long before schools (not to mention churches which remain highly segregated to this day).
    • That point about churches is really interesting. It’s easy to understand neighborhood churches being segregated, but people now drive long distances to go to mega-churches and whatnot. So I wonder what stories people have about segragation attempts in their churches?

      Experience in international schools has shown me that self-segregation seems a common instinct among people as well (or is that just too much time in Korea lately?). – post by cburell

  • one reader wrote “call me a bigot but as a solider I feel gay don’t belong in the army, but u wouldn’t understand unless u served,” which resulted in this shockingly eloquent response:

    I am an American.
    I am an Army veteran.
    I am a gay man.

    I have heard all too often that “good Americans” (meaning people not like me) have served and died in order for people like me to lead a life that people like you might describe as being other than truly American. The fact is, people like ME — good, decent Americans — have served and died so that people like YOU can imagine living in a world of intolerance and discrimination. People like ME have served alongside people like YOU.

    This country belongs to ALL OF US !

    • Powerful statement. I never knew anybody (openly) gay in the South, where I grew up. Moving to L.A. opened my eyes to what has continued to be true in my experience over the subsequent 25 years: gay men have always been far friendlier and compassionate than the Bible-belt Southrerners that surrounded me in my childhood.

      It’s good to hear this gay veteran set the record gaily forward. – post by cburell

• Karen Heller: Obama’s forte: Cool competence | Philadelphia Inquirer | 10/21/2008 – Annotated

  I love how the 24/7, everything is recorded and archived and easily retrievable media is shaping up to be a FORCE THAT KEEPS POLITICIANS HONEST. (Or at least more careful.)

  Check out this journalist’s use of McCain in December versus McCain in September.

  It’s one of a million examples of how ridiculous candidates can make themselves look if they veer too far from their historical record.

  Anybody have the video on these interviews? A simple splicing of the raw footage into a 30-second clip would be a sure viral hit.

  tags: elections08, media, youtube, mccain, palin, obama

  • But economics is not McCain’s, you know, thing.

    “The issue of economics is not something I’ve understood as well as I should,” he said in December. A month earlier he mentioned that, with a vice presidential candidate, “you also look for people who maybe have talents you don’t, or experience or knowledge you don’t, as well.” He said he’d look for “somebody who’s really well grounded in economics.”

    Oops. Palin’s talent is energy.

    • If anybody mixes a video of these two interviews ending with the announcement of Palin as running mate, let me know. – post by cburell
  • Barack Obama remains calm in the most heated moments, a tremendous palliative for an anxious electorate. And he’s learned about the economy, which makes McCain’s resistance to do so appear arrogant and foolish.
    • EDUCATORS should love this insight: Obama HAS shown himself to be a “life-long learner” on this front. He really does seem to do job-related homework – which is probably why it’s so easy for him to stick to the issues high-road: he studies them, and can talk about what he’s learning.

      After the proud “I DON’T READ” (or worse, “I READ CAMUS’ EXISTENTIAL NOVELS”) Bush/Cheney years, an intellectual (and a writer) for president seems somehow fantastical. That’s how bad America has become. – post by cburell

  • The more Palin talks, the more it’s clear that governing her state is inadequate experience for the vice presidency. That’s because Alaska is rich in resources, flush in capital and scarce in residents, the absolute inverse of the nation.

    The McCain campaign’s talk about grassroots organizers, domestic terrorists and socialists is suspect. If you are a cynical person, you might say that such chatter stokes racial anxieties without mentioning race. If you’re an optimist, you might believe that most Americans are better than that.

    • This woman’s journalism is so lean and compressed. She’s an analytic laser-beam. – post by cburell

• McCain’s Davis Raps Obama’s “Secret” $300 Million – Marc Ambinder

  tags: no_tag

  • A day after Barack Obama announced his record $150,000,000 September fundraising kitty, McCain campaign manager Rick Davis said that if Obama didn’t make his small donor database public, he’d be violating the standards of transparency his campaign has set.

• Barack Obama turns rivals’ words on them in Florida – Los Angeles Times

  McCain was, by his own definition these days, a “socialist” himself when he opposed Bush’s “Republican socialism” for the wealthy in ’01 and ’03, before flip-flopping to support it in ’06.

  tags: elections08, mccain

  • Soon after, the Democrat used McCain’s words to turn back his criticism of Obama’s tax plan. The Arizona senator has said his rival would cripple the economy with a massive tax hike; Obama said his plan would cut taxes for 95% of working families, raising them only for the richest Americans.

    “It’s true that I want to roll back the Bush tax cuts,” Obama said. “John McCain calls that socialism. What he forgets, conveniently, is that just a few years ago, he himself said those Bush tax cuts were irresponsible. He said he couldn’t ‘in good conscience’ support a tax [cut] where the benefits went to the wealthy at the expense of ‘middle-class Americans who most need tax relief.’ That’s his quote. Well, he was right then, and I am right now.“

    McCain voted against Bush’s tax cuts in 2001 and 2003 but supported their renewal in 2006, saying business and investors needed “a stable and predictable tax policy” to sustain economic growth.

• Republican socialism — baltimoresun.com

  Great title. McCain wants to extend Bush’s “Republican (NOT “conservative”) Socialism” for the wealthy.

  It’s argued clearly below.

  tags: elections08, mccain

  • It’s hard to understand the logic of Sen. John McCain‘s charge that his Democratic opponent’s proposal to cut taxes for Americans earning less than $250,000 a year is socialism. Sen. Barack Obama wants to redistribute the wealth by taxing the rich and giving to the poor, Mr. McCain complains. But a look at recent tax and income statistics tell a different tale. It is the rich who have been earning more and paying a smaller share of their income in taxes in recent years while middle-class and poor families have struggled with stagnant income and an unrelenting tax burden.

    Truth be told, it’s mostly wealthy investors who are enjoying the benefits of socialism these days in the form of hundreds of billions of dollars in government loans and investments designed to rescue banks and other financial institutions and avert a catastrophic failure. The U.S. government hasn’t nationalized banks, but it has come close with its interventions and guarantees for eight big lenders.

• McCain: Obama a job-killing socialist – INQUIRER.net, Philippine News for Filipinos

  Remember how Bush beat Kerry by seizing on Kerry’s use of the word “global” in the last debate? And how he distorted Kerry’s use of the word – he meant it in the sense of “systematic” or “nuanced” – by claiming Kerry meant he wouldn’t lead against the will of “global” opinion?

  I remember how aghast I was to see this obvious distortion grow legs in the last weeks of the election, when anybody with a vocabulary and the ability to read Kerry’s sentence including the word could see that wasn’t his meaning. And I remember how disappointed I was that the media didn’t correct this obvious ploy at all.

  Below, we see McCain doing the same thing with Obama’s comment that he wants to “spread the wealth around” by increasing taxes on the over a quarter million dollars a year set, so the other roughly 95 percent of us wouldn’t carry as much of the tax burden.

  McCain and ex-Bush campaigner Rick Davis (JM’s manager) have seized on it in a full-court press to label Obama a “Socialist.”

  It’s silly, and would be laughable, if only it weren’t being repeated in headlines that don’t laugh with us. Here we go again.

  tags: elections08, mccain, rhetoric, media

  • “After months of campaign trail eloquence… we finally learned what Senator Obama’s economic goal is. As he told Joe, he wants to ‘spread the wealth around,” McCain told a boisterous crowd gathered on a high school football field in Belton, Missouri.

    “If I’m elected president, I won’t raise taxes on anyone, especially small businesses. Senator Obama will and that will force them to cut jobs.”

• Palin Breaks With McCain On Gay Marriage Ban – From The Road – Annotated

  “Palindrone: a sentence that makes no more sense read forward than it does when read backwards.” — LA Times last month.

  Here’s another zinger:

  tags: elections08, rhetoric, palin, humor, mccain

  • “I am, in my own, state, I have voted along with the vast majority of Alaskans who had the opportunity to vote to amend our Constitution defining marriage as between one man and one woman. I wish on a federal level that that’s where we would go because I don’t support gay marriage,” Palin said.

    “I’m not going to be out there judging individuals, sitting in a seat of judgment telling what they can and can’t do, should and should not do, but I certainly can express my own opinion here and take actions that I believe would be best for traditional marriage and that’s casting my votes and speaking up for traditional marriage that, that instrument that it’s the foundation of our society is that strong family and that’s based on that traditional definition of marriage, so I do support that.”

  • When the federal marriage amendment was being debated in 2004, John McCain broke from his party’s leadership and took to the Senate floor to denounce it in notably stark language.

    “The constitutional amendment we’re debating today strikes me as antithetical in every way to the core philosophy of Republicans,” McCain said. “It usurps from the states a fundamental authority they have always possessed and imposes a federal remedy for a problem that most states do not believe confronts them.”

    • McCain’s syntax, if nothing else, remains respectable. – post by cburell

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

1. Daily Current Events Reads 10/20/2008
2. Politics and Culture Reads around the Web 10/29/2008
3. Edublog Suspended: Politics Around the Web 10/18/2008
4. Politics and Culture Reads around the Web 10/26/2008

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