greenpass

Loss and busyness and creativity

The past few days I've been running around like crazy, and when I combine this with a severe lack of a laptop, the computer access has been short (but sweet). I've been going to and holding auditions for a number of different things, attending recruiting events (anyone want to hire me to do something interesting?), planning for the opera, and doing homework. And my very best friend in the world left for England on Monday, prompting me into a flurry of activity and enterprise to prevent myself thinking about and missing someone who has been such an important part of my life for the past few years.

One hopes that something useful will come out of all this activity. Certainly Greenpass has taken a hit in terms of posting frequency. But if I manage to exit this year with a job, an opera well-directed, four years of serious music-making and a degree in statistics, I think I will consider my job here well done. We'll see how that goes.

In other news, my gov class had an (anonymous) survey at the beginning of the last class, in which only 64.5% of students said they were voting for Kerry - all others went Bush, not a SINGLE person for Nader. And how many said they intended to vote? 100%. Two conclusions: 1) it's too bad that in a "likely voter" poll, the whole room would have automatically been excluded because of a lack of voting history, and 2) we can take that whole "liberal university" thing and bury it deep in a dank dark hole. There are a lot of very, very, VERY conservative people here, and unlike the liberals they're well funded and well connected.

Finally

Finally done with auditions for L'Orfeo (the opera I'm directing), and callbacks are today - this will hopefully explain the long hiatus from blogging, since I've been in auditions continuously until midnight every night the past week and a half (only a very very slight exaggeration).

And yeah, there seem to be some problems with typepad. I'll see about that. New visitors, this site is usually a very pretty shade of green with a nice three column layout, blogroll, links, archives, and all that jazz.

And yeah, the New York Times article? Since I've definitely never worn a tube top in my life, methinks I've been confused for Ezra Klein's lovely and intelligent girlfriend - a woman I'm honored to have been mistaken for, but unfortunately not me. And although Jesse is a wonderful and extremely sweet guy, I'm not dating him (or even practically dating him), since at the moment my life is wedded to a certain Monteverdi opera.

Ah well...now I have first hand evidence that you shouldn't believe everything you read in the Times.

UPDATE: Problems fixed - yay!

UPDATE UPDATE: I finally managed to read the article. Didn't get all the way through it before I had to bang my head against a wall - it's like hearing your own voice on tape, seeing the way other people see you. At least it's the first time I've been described as a "cute woman" rather than a "cute girl" or (worse) "cute coed". Eugh.

How to become a feminine robot

My roommate Nicole and I had a good laugh over a book called "Find a Husband after 35 (Using what I learned at Harvard Business School)". Forget the fact that HBS should NEVER have agreed to allow its name to be used on the cover of this utterly embarassing book. Forget the fact that the cover is pink and purple with soft photos of gold wedding bands. This book is proof that the feminist movement has most positively crawled off into a hole somewhere and died in squalor.

Some sample advice:

"Please don't shoot me as the messenger, but the feminine look that most men tell me they like is longer hair, flowing skirts, soft fabrics, an ever-so-slightly revealing neckline, small-scale jewelery, and manicured fingernails and toenails."

Sounds like a hippy with a manicure.

"I'm going to make one tiny exception and bend the femininity rules just once for post-35 women. Because there are fewer single men around for you now, I think it's okay to make one initial, low-key contact with a man you'd like to date but who has not shown interest in you yet....The important thing is not to break the femininity rules twice."

That's the one exception to being a Stepford wife. Great.

After reading this book (and all the rave reviews it got from Oprah and Fortune magazines), and thinking back to what I said about it being more acceptable in today's society for women to admit intimidation and fear, I don't think I seem like a traitor to my sex or Republican-lite any more. If this book is in print and popular, then we have many MANY more underlying problems to solve before more women start making their voices heard in the political or internet sphere. I'm starting to believe that the balkanization of the feminist movement has made it more possible for dangerous crap like this to get seriously marketed and sold.

I heard the news today, oh boy

This I do not understand:

European countries tend to have much better developed right and left-wing presses than we do, which I generally take as a sign of a lack of dialogue.

One would think that having well-developed partisan outlets at all points of the spectrum, as well as centrist ones (but no true "impartial" ones), would be a much better sign of dialogue than a number of outlets, all of whom seem to be saying the same thing but refusing to call a spade a spade for fear of being labeled "partisan". If a society can support many different points of view in the mainstream press without resorting to embarassing tit-for-tat regurgitation, I take that as a sign of health, rather than a sign of blinkered noise machines. The difference is that in Europe I find that often people consume news from more than one (partisan) source, and there are outlets like the BBC which are publicly funded and publically accountable. Compare this to the Republican delegate overheard at the RNC saying "If my hotel room doesn't have Fox, I'm switching hotels."

The only true impartial news sources come from business outlets, where there is an economic incentive to not buy into spin. If the New York Times or the Guardian spins something, then too bad for its readers - they were uninformed, but it probably didn't hurt enough to stop them reading the paper. But if the Wall Street Journal or the Economist spins the news and they're wrong, and their readers have made economic or investment decisions based on the information they got from that news outlet, they're toast. Thus business news sources have an economic, market incentive not to buy into the news spin, which explains the relative sanity of the WSJ's news pages compared to its frightening editorials.

Blog shadowing

I arrived here at Kirkland House last night, all set to move into Matt Yglesias' old room with Matt Yglesias' lovely ex-girlfriend. Then, thankfully before I actually became Matt Yglesias, some silly people decided to trade us their incredible room in B-entry for Matt's slanted-roof five story walkup room.

My computer is completely broken and has been for a week or so, but now that I'm back at school I can rejoin the modern world. Many thoughts on peer group dynamics coming up after I give myself a hernia or two carrying about 10,000 books up many flights of stairs.

Manners (or, how can I make people like me?)

One thing that I was lucky enough never to be saddled with growing up was the relegation to the peer group – the literal and metaphorical “kid’s table” that can be so detrimental to the development of a young person’s manners, let alone their conversational skills or knowledge.

After a while, and especially if you attend certain types of schools, one learns what are called “manners” in Europe but don’t seem to have an equivalent here – the code of interaction and conversational methods that are intended to bring minds together but to maintain a safety barrier or buffer zone of personal information (hence not asking personal questions, not talking about salaries etc.) Discretion is highly valued.

In diplomatic circles this is taken a step further by codification, and they call it “protocol” – a blueprint to maintaining good relations and efficiently smoothing over any untoward or unwelcome social wrinkles. The buffer zone maintained by protocol is even larger than the one maintained by manners, and hopefully guarantees diplomatic niceties by preserving an aloof detachment from local problems (all the while evincing a deep and compassionate interest).

It couldn’t have been clearer than at the RNC that many Americans today don’t possess the attribute of “manners” in the European sense. There was very little honest discussion of policy (although there was discussion of tactical problems), but lots and lots and lots of personalization of the GOP. The manners that were lacking were not in the vein in which many Southerners criticize Yankees – the lack of honourifics, the unbroachable topics of religion or politics, the presents and the thoughtful gifts. American manners (and its more casual cousin “politeness”) are a different sort of social interaction that is aimed at ingratiating, at ensuring that people like you (or at least feel obligated to like you).

European manners, because they presume the maintenance of a certain level of personal detachment, are aimed at maintaining the interaction and the flow of exchange of ideas, but the idea of wanting people to like you doesn’t enter into the equation. Americans approach from exactly the opposite end of the spectrum. Far too often this degenerates into the cliché of the American tourist who pours out his own life and story to complete strangers at the drop of a hat. “Wanting people to like you” gets translated into “making a personal connection” which then becomes, perversely, “exchanging a lot of personal information”. As a result, Europeans often laugh at Americans for naively telling their life story to everyone who comes by, and Americans feel hurt by Europeans who seem so cold and unfriendly all the time because they refuse to engage in the personal information exchange (hence the perception of Gallic rudeness, Teutonic aloofness, British reserve, and the garrulous American).

The interesting thing about my theory here is that it’s backed up with hard cognitive statistical data – a corpus of information that has been built up to better design surveys for the national census and other information gathering tools like focus groups. It’s a fact that the vast majority of the time, you can ask Europeans about religion, political views, and especially salary and how much they’re making, and they’ll answer very candidly and truthfully. However, any question about their sex lives and the interviewer often has to resort to underhanded framing questions or cues to get them to answer at all.

Americans do the exact opposite – they’re extraordinarily candid about their sex lives (the researchers often noted dryly that more information was volunteered than was necessary for the purposes of the survey) and will answer political and religious questions cautiously, if at all. It’s the financial questions that people balk at, either because they’re ashamed of making too little or have social anxiety about making too much. Making too much or too little money than someone else often seems like an excellent way to get someone to dislike you, in the same way that Harvard grads often say “I went to school in…Boston” because of the immediate and negative judgment often passed on them. As a result there are a number of techniques that have been developed to get people to answer financial questions.*

This is why Europeans can talk about religion and politics without the vitriol and the anger. They don’t see manners as having a dimension of personal connection, and therefore are far less likely to take it personally if someone starts talking about a contentious issue that people will disagree with. Americans often take an attack on their ideas as an attack on them personally, which can be a huge disadvantage as it precludes a sober examination of how those ideas are constructed and where they originate from. More than one Republican has told me that their beliefs stem from their family background (the “It’s my culture/way of life” argument) rather than from any intellectual cogitation.

I worry that until Americans are able to incorporate some of the European detachment, at least where politics is concerned, that they won’t be able to successfully get anything done (on both sides of the aisle). One of Rumsfeld’s famous rules once admonished readers not to get too caught up in partisanship – to get up and keep on doing your job and keep communicating, because the other side is also just doing its job. This (and a reading now of many of Rumsfeld’s rules) seems to me to be a rare blast of European-style political manners that has since been lost. The personal politics that took its place are a natural offshoot of what I think is many American’s rather wrong-headed conception of the correct way to interact and exchange ideas.

*For example, one national government survey hands people a sealed booklet that says on the outside “Supplement #(####)” with no mention of salary. The interviewer says, “You have a unique booklet there, with no identifying markings on it for me except its unique numerical ID. It’s never been opened and it will be resealed after you look at it. Inside there’s a list of numbers of yearly income, followed by a letter. Look down the list and without showing me, tell me which letter represents what you earn.” Inside the booklet, another technique that’s often used is to make $0-1,000 (a), $1,000-2,000 (b), etc, so that by the time you get to your $32,000 or whatever you make, you’re way over at (ff) which doesn’t look too bad, so people don’t worry about saying, “I’m an ff” or “I’m a q”. Yet another technique is to leave the question for the very last minute of a half hour or one hour interview, and then to say “I’m going to ask you one last question and if you don’t answer then I’m afraid we’re going to have to discard the entire survey. What is your annual income?” If they still say they won’t answer, the interviewer then says “Well, just tell me if it’s above or below $30,000,” and then continues to push for some sort of metric.

Conversations

This convention I've been doing a whole lot less writing and having a whole lot more interesting conversations. Hopefully this means that although maybe this site hasn't been as interesting as Pandagon or Kos or Atrios for speech coverage and immediate posting, hopefully there will be more to talk about in the immediate future.

Yesterday I ran around town like crazy - I went to the Garden to check out press releases (I got excerpts of Zell Miller and Mitt Romney's remarks but on paper it was pointless - make sure you watch a video of Zell especially if you happened to miss it). Then lunch with a dear friend from school, and again with Jesse, Ezra and Kate of Pandagon. Back at the Tank, Kate and I discussed women voters and the various ways that they are discouraged from speaking up and making their voices heard - more on this below, and coming soon.

After messing around at the Tank and finding a screwdriver to fix my computer, I listened in to a training session run by one of the progressive grassroots organizations that were using the Tank for a staging ground and training centre. The topic was how a progressive activist could effectively get their message across if they happen to talk to a member of the press, a volunteer they need to recruit, a voter they need to register, or a member of an opposition group. The attendees were fascinating, many of them wearing old Dean for America shirts, and mostly either very young and hip looking or seniors, evidently retired. One by one they went around the circle, stood up, and said why they wanted to defeat Bush, citing reasons as diverse as legalizing marijuana and the draft coming back. The attendees were not bad, although the older members of the group seemed oddly a lot more energetic and proactive than the younger people.

The problem with the session was the moderator who was supposed to be helping these people to be more effective speakers. Note to self - never trust anyone who makes you feel good about yourself after one of these kinds of things. Sample criticisms that I wrote down in my notebook:

"You're such a beautiful person." -- to an older woman with a deep gravelly voice
"You're really aligned, it's incredible. Just so aligned." -- to a young protestor with a red band with a yellow star tied around his forehead
"Have you ever thought about going into acting?" -- to a painfully shy girl with glasses and a Dean shirt down to her knees
"I love your togetherness. Just bring it all together and boom. Just great, great." -- to an older woman wearing a shirt that said "Bush Knew" under a picture of the Twin Towers

I know that positive reinforcement is a good thing. And it always feels nice to be complimented. But I couldn't help feeling that every person who sat down, gratified but no better at communication than before, was a waste of time, money and energy. What I've realized being here compared to the DNC is that when it comes to tactics, the Republican party is extraordinarily good at self-criticism. No strategy is ever good enough. They'll identify and publicly admit that they've failed to target single women, black men, Hispanic transvestites, whatever, if it means that they can be more effective next time. The culture of PC liberal non-criticism and understanding ("everyone has different strengths, we can't be discouraging, we need to be positive") is self-defeating and frustrating. These people who have been "trained" in public communication will be no better at getting out their incredibly important messages to the people that need to hear it, although maybe they'll feel more confident about it.

I talked to Joe Trippi for a while. There was a Dean Meetup happening at the theatre attached to the tank, and he was sitting around, looking frighteningly like Larry Summers and even drinking a Diet Coke to further heighten the comparison. We talked about his addition to the Hardball lineup from midnight to 2am and how MSNBC had an opportunity to step into the breach left by CNN's abhorrent coverage. Deaniacs kept coming up and interrupting though so finally I left and went to dinner.

Across from me was Josh Bearman of the LA Weekly, who had some fascinating stories about the Dean press buses during the primaries and Al Gore teaching at Columbia. In Gore's first class, he presented a case study of an air pollution story, and questioned the conventional wisdom that the journalism students were being taught that they just observed, read some expert opinions, and then put it all down on the page. He said that the automatic filtre of a journalist made for immediate bias, and that since one is picking and choosing in the first place you have to be aware and take responsibility for what you yourself have written - it's not just that you observe and write down and you are merely a conduit. And as a result the class hated him. More thoughts on the journalists on the Dean bus and the ones I've met here later.

Back at the Tank, Zell Miller was speaking and looking shockingly like Ralph Nader - spit flying everywhere, red faced and almost apoplectic with anger. The crowd packing the Tank sneered and booed, and I wondered if this was going to be the high water mark of anger at the convention, driving home the point that Republicans are positive and there's something inherently bad and evil and negative about Democrats. I was wrong though - Cheney was more subtle but much, much worse.

One thing that I noticed about the GOP and the Dems at the conventions is that while Democrats always talk about their parents coming from poverty or how they worked to make it in the world, Republicans almost always talk about their grandparents being in straightened circumstances. I suppose this comes from a sort of three generation cycle - the first generation makes the money, the second maintains it, and the third either loses it or uses it for things like being nominated by the GOP for something (in part because I think growing up with money either makes you into a Republican or into a liberal motivated by class anxiety and guit). But while Edwards talked about his parents the millworkers and being poor most of his life, Cheney talked about his grandparents living in a railroad car, with no mention of their politics and what his parents were like and what they did. I have a sneaking suspicion they were not Republican, probably union members and possibly card-carrying Communists.

Mary Cheney was there with her lover, as I heard via mobile from inside the Garden, but she was cut out of the TV pictures that we saw. Hopefully other networks the balls to show shots of the Cheney family without half of Mary's shoulder next to her partner out of the picture.

After that, three hours of conversation with the likes of Jay Rosen, Matt Stoller, Dave Alpert, a guy who's starting a site called 48 Bagels that warmed my heart with his immediate recognition of the Greenpass, Atrios who is normally very chill but was very angry last night about stuff, Kos, and a number of random protestors. Many interesting observations about the media, centralization, the machismo culture of the Republican bloggers, the fact that the first night of the convention was about balls, the second about women and the sheer base-stirring energy of the third might possibly obliterate the message of the first two. When everyone else drifted away I caught a cab home and passed out, so exhausted I forgot to take my contacts out. It's been a tiring week.

Social protest qualms

As you've probably seen in the morning news, there were at least 900 people arrested in NYC yesterday. I must admit, they didn't cause too much trouble, although I did see the barricades going up at the "Shut Up-athon" outside Fox News. I didn't stick around to find out what would happen, but I heard later that the police blocked off the street above and below the protest and then arrested everyone who happened to be between their barricades.

I won't comment on the effectiveness of yesterday's protests, except to reiterate my view that successful protests and civil disobedience must advocate a realistic alternative to the status quo. It's the difference between sitting at the front of the bus as a protest, which is something you want - to be able to sit where you like on a city bus, regardless of who you are - and lying in the street with a pink feather boa around your neck, a pig snout on your nose surrounded by drifts of dollar bills. That's not a feasible alternative to anything, and even the protestors themselves can't articulate themselves how they'd rather see the world working, and it's why anarchistic protests (as distinguished from clearly issue-based protests such as pro-choice march in Washington) piss off more people than they convince.

The fact that we're seeing an increasing split between independent groups that feel marginalized and disenfranchized, and the main parties that increasingly strive to stake out the political centre, is a problem that manifests itself in the incoherence of the protests we've seen in New York so far. One feels that there are so many problems that have obvious, concrete solutions - repealing the tax cuts for example, or funding educational reforms, or doing away with the embarassing faith-based welfare programs. And yet on Sunday we saw Free Mumia signs, or anti-globalization protests, or protestors yelling about Kerry at what was supposed to be an anti-Bush march. These are symptoms of bigger issues that still need some mulling over.

Internal Contradictions

This morning's NY Times has an interesting graphic with pictures and little quotes from six delegates under 30, which shows a fascinating contradiction within the Republican party and really highlights their success in being all things to all people.

I still don't understand how on the same page one delegate can say "They...stand for freedom from an overly intrusive government" and another delegate can say that the Republicans stand for safety first over civil rights and that it's ok to read her email if it "keeps us safe" (she phrases this as "civil rights versus civil liberties", one of the best examples of language framing I've ever seen).

Do these delegates not see the contradictions inherent in the claims of the GOP? From this graphic alone, and confirmed by the delegates I've talked to, they see the Republican party as a sort of Rorschach test - everyone sees what they want to see, even if it's entirely contradictory to what a fellow Republican sees. What scares me is that this doesn't seem to prompt any worry or discussion within the Party at a public level. Say what you like about the Democratic Party, but you can't say that its adherents don't bicker about positions ad nauseam in public settings. This can either be seen as a failure to stay on message, or as a sign of intellectual strength, but I don't see how much more off message the GOP can be than to be all things to all people.