Month: October 2010

Jeff Jarvis reveals how Katie Couric manipulated an interview in order to spin the tragic suicide of Tyler Clementi as partially the fault of new technologies:

I wouldn’t agree that technology makes the essence of this story and its sin different. The lesson is the same as it has always been: the Golden Rule. The sin could have been committed with a Kodak camera or a telephone or a letter, for that matter.

… I tried to tell Couric that media too often look at technology and change and see only danger.

This is how the invention of the Kodak camera was treated in the 1890s. More than 500 million people choose to share on Facebook because they see benefit in it and more do so on Twitter and in blogs and YouTube…. Media constantly looks at the edge, the dark edge, jumping on a story such as this to seek out the perils technology brings. Couric protested that they do lots of stories about good things in technology. Every time Steve Jobs does anything, we cover it, she said. But that’s not understanding its value, I argued. I urged her to do a story in which young people who use and understand Facebook explain it to their elders.

Phoebe Maltz has a suggestion for the fashion industry: accomodate the fact that weight fluctuations are a normal part of life:

If fashion is to blame for waste, blame the industry's insistance, season after season, of making us buy clothing with a particular fit, such that any gain or loss of five pounds makes much of a wardrobe unwearable. A more eco- and wallet-friendly approach would be outfits that allow for changes in shape. Leggings and sweatpants, saris and togas, wrap dresses and t-shirt dresses, turtleneck dresses and pants held up by a belt that comes with the pants… need I go on? Some such options might be either too revealing or too casual, but it's possible to find appropriate outfits for just about any setting that do not cause severe discomfort if weight is gained or turn into tents if any is lost.

This seems like the kind of thing that has to be consumer driven more than industry driven.

Jennifer Lawinski reports on the 18 winning designs that will graze your future Chiquita bananas. Money quote about the contest which would not allow:

"'I've read some of your writings while you've been out of government'. 'Don't ever use the words CIA and torture in the same paragraph again…. Torture is a felony, Leon. Say you don't like it. Say it offends you. I don't care. But just don't say it's torture. It's a felony.' The Justice Department had approved what the CIA did in long, detailed memos, so — legally — the CIA had not tortured anyone," – outgoing CIA head, Michael Hayden to his successor, Leon Panetta, according to Bob Woodward.

Legally, in utter bad faith or massive incompetence or worse-than-shoddy scholarship, they created a golden shield for the top brass, while scapegoating a few at the bottom obeying orders. But in truth, where the law means what it clearly says, legally, empirically, morally, constitutionally – Hayden, Bush, Cheney, Addington, Yoo, Bybee, Rumsfeld et al are all war criminals. Not rhetorically.

As a matter of fact. When will they be arrested and put on trial?

Mark Sinclair points to the photography of Peter Dazeley, who has set out to document London's Battersea Power Station, now on the "buildings at risk" register:

"It seems so sad that such a magnificent building has ended up in its present state," says Dazeley, "and this series of photographs give a taste of its former splendour." While photographing the site, Dazeley also realised that it has now become a sanctuary for all sorts of wildlife: pigeons, foxes, and peregrine falcons have all set up home there.

Nonetheless, great headline. Sometimes – with Onion stories too – we try and keep a straight face.

This story in the NYT this morning obviously speaks for itself. The plight of gay teens and youths, despite so much advances in the culture, for so many remain an unimaginable nightmare. The truth is not, I suspect, that there is a sudden new wave of this; the truth is that we have not been so aware of it before, or that shame on the part of victims, has kept some of this from the light of day. The five well-publicized suicides of the last month do not represent a rise, which is why I've tried before on this blog to mention The Trevor Project, an organization devoted to helping to save suicidal gay teens and children. The head of the Trevor Project, Charles Robbins tells Metroweekly this week that

he wouldn't call this rash of tragic suicides any new trend among LGBT youth, adding that 34,000 people complete suicide each year. ''It's not indicative that this hasn't happened throughout the year,'' he says. ''There were certainly other LGBT completions during the summer and during the spring. It's just that these seemed to have received national media attention.''

"Completion" is the slightly chilling and clinical word for attempted suicides that actual result in death. The number of attempts is far, far higher. The Bronx torture session is a reminder of the real danger many face, especially in minority communities. Black and Hispanic gay youth, like white gay rural youth, are very vulnerable. That's why Dan Savage's "It Gets Better" project is so inspired and necessary. That's why the churches in the African-American and Hispanic communities need to do much more, whatever their doctrines, to insist on the dignity and humanity of all God's children, including gay, bi and transgender ones.

I don't believe in hate crimes laws, but I passionately believe in prosecuting these kinds of attacks to the fullest extent of the law. I also want to ask, plead, and beg those who have sincere and principled arguments against, say, marriage equality or openly gay military service, to be mindful of the impact of their words.

I have no doubt that the overwhelming majority of those on the other side of the debate are as horrified by these events as I am. I am not in any way saying otherwise, or in any way suggesting indirect responsibility for horrors such as these.

What I am saying is that in making these arguments, people need to take care to ensure that they also insist that gay people are always described as human beings, as worthy of respect and dignity as anyone else, that the case for keeping us out of core civil institutions must be made without inflammatory generalizations about gay people, generalizations that have an impact, especially on those only waiting for an excuse from authority to act, or those deeply confused and afraid of who they find themselves to be in adolescence.

For too long, gay people have been described by too many on the right as a threat to the family, society and decency. Those words have consequences. This is especially true of religious leaders. When even the Pope describes us as "intrinsically disordered" and directed to an "objective moral evil", when Republicans call us a threat to family life, when NOM runs ads of a "storm coming", I hope they understand what these words do to the psyches and souls of the young and impressionable, and to those who need a mere signal to take up arms and attack us.

When you do these things to the least of my brethren, you do them to me, said Jesus. I pray that those who say they follow him would sometimes remember those words when it comes to the rhetoric that gay children and teens cannot help but hear.

If you want to help, the best organization to donate to is The Trevor Project, for whom I held a fundraiser at my apartment earlier this year. I know and can vouch for this group. They do amazing work. If you save one kid from killing himself, you have, as the Jewish tradition has it, saved the world.

If you want to do anything to mark or celebrate the tenth anniversary of this blog, please donate to this group.

Christine Rosen examines how we spend and count our time:

The shift from organic time to clock time was seismic. We are now in the early stages of another seismic shift: from clock time to the hyper-artificial measurement of digital time. Digital time has obliterated the last vestiges of organic time and seriously undermined the tenets of clock time. Digital time and the technologies that support it — such as the Internet, the cell phone and the personal computer — make us available Always, Anytime and Anywhere.

Although we still tell time by the clock, we live and think in digital time. And digital time is curiously oriented in the present — even the display of a digital clock does not show us what time has passed or what time lies ahead. It is always simply the time it is: 8:39 p.m., or 6:57 a.m.