Vol. 5 No. 6 October 2006
The Newsletter of the
Commonweal Institute
http://www.commonwealinstitute.org/
“It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority
keen to set brush fires in people’s minds.”
– Samuel Adams
CONTENTS
Election
Notice: Tips and cautions
Talking Points: Mother and child, and NBC
Wit
and Wisdom: Jerry Bruckheimer’s
Eye on the Right: Exposing the Intercollegiate Studies Institute
Featured Article: “Shop Class as Soulcraft”
Happenings: Monthly round-up
Endorsements: Peter Coyote
Get Involved: Spread the word; become a contributor
The upcoming election promises to be an exciting, and will possibly provide an important check on conservative power, but it also being widely described as an impending “train wreck.” (See the Oct. 27 story “US warned of ballot box chaos as elections near” in the London Guardian at http://www.guardian.co.uk/midterms2006/story/0,,1932655,00.html). As you look forward to voting, here are some important points to remember:
Here are the hotline numbers where you can report anything strange or worrisome that occurs during the election:
Be as thorough and diligent as possible in documenting flaws, malfunctions, possible election fraud, and disenfranchisement or voter harassment.
Here is the standard incident reporting system (EIRS) that most hotlines are connected to: https://voteprotect.org/index.php?display=EIRMapNation&tab=ALL.
There is a new website set up nationwide for citizen video documentation -- this is apparently more attractive to the media and more convincing to the voters than a standard "incident report". Check it out: http://www.networkofcitizens.org/election/index.htm.
Finally, sign up for a phone or text message alert if immediate action is needed to protect the election: http://www.workingassets.com/election_protection.cfm. The Working Assets Immediate Response Network will contact you on election day if there is an urgent issue where your participation -- such as a phone call or a carefully-targeted local action -- can make a big difference.
Like
some kind of strange avatar of controversy, the pop singer Madonna from time to
time bursts back into the national conversation, through carefully transgressive
acts that can seem at once silly and yet revealing of our cultural
preoccupations. This month has witnessed
a double-header. Most visibly, her
fast-tracked adoption of an infant from
In her current “Confessions” concert tour, Madonna performs her 1986 song “Live to Tell” and at one point appears suspended from a giant crucifix made of mirrors, wearing a crown of thorns. Not a big deal for a single concert hall, perhaps – but the concert is scheduled for broadcast by NBC on November 22. In September, religious conservatives got wind of the plan, deemed it an outrage, and started applying pressure against NBC in the form of a coordinated email campaign aimed at its affiliates and advertisers. Prominent among the organizers were the Parents Television Council and the American Family Association, the Rev. Donald Wildmon’s outfit. The network resisted the pressure for a while but has now agreed to excise the offending scene from its broadcast, no doubt mindful that this year’s November ratings directly influence next year’s advertising rates. Madonna, unhappily, has relented. So the show, ingloriously neutered, goes on.
From one perspective, this kerfuffle seems just another skirmish in the culture wars, one in which the religious conservatives have prevailed. And they prevailed in the time-honored American fashion, exercising their right in a democratic society to make their views known, to enter the rough-and-tumble of the public sphere, to exert influence through economic means rather than violence. Moreover, there might not seem much point in getting worked up over what happens to Madonna, especially since the whole thing has the undeniable odor of a publicity stunt.
But the culture wars in America are merging with an increasingly globalized struggle between the values of secularity and those of fundamentalism, and the middle – that place where tolerance, faith, reason, and humor can and should all comfortably coexist – is getting squeezed. From this perspective, the scrap involving Madonna’s performance takes on somewhat darker overtones.
The natural analogue is last year’s worldwide spasm over the Danish newspaper cartoons that offended Muslims by caricaturing the prophet Mohammed. Of course no one here is rioting or threatening anything illegal. But whatever the means of protest, the effect is the same: the cancellation of an essentially harmless form of expression. It does matter, a great deal, that people have the right to protest and that they do so legally. But it also matters that our culture has been deprived of a form of expression that has value precisely because it is challenging.
The scriptural prohibitions – in both Christianity and Islam – against icons or graven images are about not endowing mere symbols or material artifacts with more power than they deserve. But that is exactly what happens when accusations of blasphemy or sacrilege get bandied about too freely. Both the Danish cartoon simoom and the “Live to Tell” imbroglio demonstrate how a fixation on the surface issues can obscure the deeper meaning of any particular form of expression – and that deeper meaning might not be as irreverent or irreligious as everyone assumed.
It’s helpful to remember the many works of art that have faced charges of “blasphemy!” at first, but that have ultimately taken their place as important contributions to our understanding of the world, of religion, of life. Movies such as Jesus Christ, Superstar or The Last Temptation of Christ; novels such as Voltaire’s Candide, Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses, or Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code; paintings such as Caravaggio’s The Groom’s Madonna or Salvador Dali’s Madonna of Port Lligat – all these, among countless others, treat religion in unconventional, exploratory, and even disturbing ways. But for that very reason they have contributed to a more robust understanding of the place of faith in human life. Part of that understanding, in American culture at least, is that no faith is strong that cannot take a little rough handling, and that religion only harms itself when it seeks to stamp out offense rather than accommodate the imagination.
And what of Madonna’s work itself? Is it really so hostile to religion? Not at all. If anything, her music over the last 20 years has tried hard to explore the meaning of religion, especially Catholicism, in a woman’s life. If it occasionally upsets people, let’s see that as healthy. Certainly it’s healthier than the experience that “Live to Tell” thoughtfully describes: The extreme difficulty of expressing one’s deepest secrets or inner feelings, and the sense of alienation this produces. What perfect irony that it is this song which has been cut from the show!
So NBC’s acquiescence to the critics of Madonna’s concert may represent a short-term victory for religious conservatives, but at a cost to the vital principle of unorthodox and unfettered expression. The point is not just to allow something disconcerting to go on the air, but to see the essential vibrancy and value in what makes it disconcerting in the first place. In protecting its bottom line by “protecting” the sensibilities of some of its viewers, NBC seems to have confirmed the verdict of the refrain of Madonna’s song “Material Girl”: We are living in a material world.
Megaproducer to Guide Nation's Transition to Disaster Film
“In a high-risk
exit strategy that surprised many in diplomatic circles, President George W.
Bush announced today that the
“The decision to
transfer sovereignty of
“But at the White
House today, a beaming President Bush said that Mr. Bruckheimer was the most
logical choice to guide
— from The Borowitz Report
“As the hobbits are going up
“I enjoy cocaine because it’s a fun thing to do....I enjoy the company of prostitutes for the following reasons: it's a fun thing to do....If you combine the two together it's probably even more fun.” — Rep. Robert Wexler (D-Fla.), during an interview with Comedy Central’s Stephen Colbert. Wexler, who’s sure to win in his upcoming uncontested election, was egged on by Colbert to say the very things that would make him lose in a competitive race.
On October 3,
KQED, an NPR radio station in the
The research results attracted widespread media attention, including that of MSNBC, the New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, USA Today, and Newsweek.
The topic was an interesting one, as civic engagement and involvement of young adults in politics are key to maintaining a thriving democracy. The results, as presented by Dr. Ratliff, left an overall impression that seniors score very poorly on the test; seniors at many schools may be less knowledgeable that freshmen; and that Ivy League and other prestigious schools are not superior to, and may be inferior to, many less-known schools. The discussion points raised by Professors Moe and Cain, not unexpectedly, addressed technical points of the study—the adequacy of the sample size on each campus, the nonrandom sampling method, the choice of colleges and universities surveyed, the relatively unimportant points that were the focus of some of the survey questions, the failure to consider the students’ fields of concentration (e.g., one would not expect electrical engineering students to spend much time on civics education), and the like.
As I listened to the tone of the discussion, I became curious about the ISI, the organization that sponsored the research about college students’ knowledge of American history and civics. I wondered whether there might be a hidden political agenda behind the research, an agenda that was not identified by the moderator or by the other guests.
Sure enough, as soon as I was able to get to a computer, my suspicions were confirmed. ISI is a strongly conservative organization with an explicit political agenda. According to a synopsis on People for the American Way’s Right Wing Watch (www.pfaw.org/pfaw/general/default.aspx?oid=16247), ‘ISI’s mission is to combat the supposed left-wing indoctrination on college campuses by organizing lectures, conferences, publication, and fellowships for students and faculty, “ISI seeks to enhance the rising generation’s knowledge of our nation’s founding principles – limited government, individual liberty, personal responsibility, the rule of law, market economy, and moral norms.”’
ISI’s chair is Edwin Feulner, who is head of the right-wing Heritage Foundation. ISI’s funders include the “usual list of suspects” that back many of the ultra-conservative movement’s organizations, among them the Scaife, Bradley, Earhart, JM, Olin, McKenna, Lambe, Castle Rock, and Carthage Foundations.
Then I checked
the study results <http://www.americancivicliteracy.org/>, which are on a
separate site boldly titled The Coming Crisis in Citizenship. Looking at the 60 topics covered in
questionnaire (www.americancivicliteracy.org/report/additional_tables.html#table9),
I was struck by a couple of observations.
The difference between correct response rates of seniors compared to
freshmen was less than 3.0% for over half (31) of the items; the difference was
3.0% or greater for the rest, but of these, most (23) showed greater knowledge
among seniors than in freshmen. So
something might going on here that was not revealed by the
few summary statements on the website, “There is trivial difference between
freshmen and seniors in their knowledge of
Negative learning? Are they saying that going to college makes kids forget the lessons they had learned earlier? Not considered is the fact that seniors are at least three years older that freshman, that changes may have occurred on campuses or in society since the time the seniors were freshmen, or that seniors knew more about quite a few topics that did freshmen. In other words, there may be something valuable to be learned from the data collected by the researchers, but it’s not necessarily the conclusions presented.
These observations, plus the comments from the two academics on the panel discussion, make one suspect that the results of the study, as presented on the website and the in the mainstream media, are “directed conclusions”—findings that the study was intended to reveal, rather than neutral conclusions that might have gone either way.
There is reason to believe that the research about college students’ knowledge of American history and civics was conducted at least in part for political purposes. The research methodology, the questions asked, and the way in which the results were reported may well have been biased to lead to conclusions that the conservative sponsors wish to have advanced. The research fits into a larger campaign that the Right has been conducting against higher education for decades, since publication of the Powell Manifesto in 1971 (http://www.mediatransparency.org/story.php?storyID=22; http://www.mediatransparency.org/story.php?storyID=21).
Given the sponsors of the study, it is not surprising, then, that three colleges praised repeatedly on the website are very small schools with religious ties: Rhodes College in Memphis, TN (1731 students, formerly Masonic University of Tennessee); Calvin College in Grand Rapids, MI (4000 students, an educational institution of the Christian Reformed Church), and Grove City College in Grove City, PA (2500 students, which is described as “in the Judeo-Christian tradition,” “a Christian environment,” “politically conservative,” and requires students to attend chapel services). Nor is it surprising that two of the links on the website are to the Conservative Classics Outlet and to Christendom Press.
By now, one would think that reporters and media commentators would have learned that they are vulnerable to being used as the vehicles for politically-motivated propaganda. It is a gross disservice to the public that mainstream media would, wittingly or unwittingly, promote this type of political agenda without checking out the background of press releases and identifying them to the public. Were the other guests on the NPR show, both academics, informed of the nature of the research sponsor and its financial backing? Was the host aware of this information? How did NPR decide to provide a full hour of coverage for this topic, without informing the public of its source both at the beginning of the show and at its conclusion?
I would hope that, in the interests of being an objective source of news and commentary for the American public, NPR would henceforth perform due diligence research on its program guests and alert the public to listen with a careful ear to sources with ulterior motives from which bias might be expected.
In the meantime, if you hear or read something that sounds a bit strange, follow up on that hunch. It doesn’t take long to visit a couple of websites and ask the kinds of questions I did. You stand to get a much clearer view of the way our images of the world are constructed, and develop the ability to distinguish truth from “truthiness.”
— Katherine Forrest
The following is an excerpt from Matthew B. Crawford’s “Shop Class as Soulcraft,” which appears in the current issue of The New Atlantis: A Journal of Technology and Society.
“A decline in tool use would seem to betoken a shift in our mode of inhabiting the world: more passive and more dependent. And indeed, there are fewer occasions for the kind of spiritedness that is called forth when we take things in hand for ourselves, whether to fix them or to make them. What ordinary people once made, they buy; and what they once fixed for themselves, they replace entirely or hire an expert to repair, whose expert fix often involves installing a pre-made replacement part.
“So perhaps the time is ripe for reconsideration of an ideal that has fallen out of favor: manual competence, and the stance it entails toward the built, material world. Neither as workers nor as consumers are we much called upon to exercise such competence, most of us anyway, and merely to recommend its cultivation is to risk the scorn of those who take themselves to be the most hard-headed: the hard-headed economist will point out the opportunity costs of making what can be bought, and the hard-headed educator will say that it is irresponsible to educate the young for the trades, which are somehow identified as the jobs of the past. But we might pause to consider just how hard-headed these presumptions are, and whether they don’t, on the contrary, issue from a peculiar sort of idealism, one that insistently steers young people toward the most ghostly kinds of work.”
Read the whole article at http://www.thenewatlantis.com/archive/13/crawford.htm.
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