100 Views of Mt. Fuji

jfn:

Dear friends,

As you may know, right-wing talk show hosts have been bringing race-based fear mongering into the mainstream, but FOX’s Glenn Beck just took it to another level. On Tuesday, Beck said:

“This president has exposed himself as a guy over and over and over again who has a deep-seated hatred for white people… this guy is, I believe, a racist.”
Glenn Becks Disgusting Statement on YouTube

It’s part of a larger argument Beck has been making: that President Obama wants to serve the needs of Black communities at White people’s expense. This kind of talk stirs up fear, hate, and it can lead to violence.

I’ve joined ColorOfChange.org’s effort to stop Glenn Beck. ColorOfChange is already putting calls into Beck’s advertisers, asking them if they want to be associated with this kind of racist hate and fear-mongering. When the advertisers see that tens of thousands of us are behind that question, I believe they’ll move their advertising dollars elsewhere, and his show and platform will be history.

Will you take a stand and be counted, and invite your friends and family to do the same?  It takes just a moment:

http://colorofchange.org/beck/?id=1901-513015

Glenn Beck is appealing to the worst in America. Of course, some Americans refuse to accept the fact that our president is Black or the idea that he could truly serve all Americans. But the only way these views fade away is if they’re not reinforced by mainstream society.  Instead, folks like Glenn Beck, Lou Dobbs, and Rush Limbaugh are
exploiting racism and race-based fear to bump their ratings, stirring up racial discord in the process.

The dangers of these tactics are real. We saw the same dynamic during the presidential race: By the end, the McCain/Palin campaign was unable to control the violent energy whipped up by their race-baiting. It resulted in an unprecedented number of threats on Obama’s life, a rise in the number of hate groups, and an increase in the number of threats and crimes against immigrants and Black people.

FOX has a horrible track record on pushing racist propaganda, but Glenn Beck appears to be taking the network to an even lower standard. He’s trying to divide and distract America when we should be coming together and talking about issues that really matter—like health care and the economy.

The good news is that we have the power to stop this. All major media is funded by advertising.  And advertisers care more than anything what consumers think. If we want to change what’s happening and put an end to folks like Glenn Beck having a platform, we can do it.

It’s up to us, and it can start now. Please join me:

http://colorofchange.org/beck/?id=1901-513015

Wish I could, but I’m not American so it would seem out of line.

It should be better. It could be better.

I hate the slimy-face-name-dropping-scum-face-troop-endangering-wretch that is Piers Morgan. I am glad I am not the only one who despises this populist former Daily Mirror editor.

From the Guardian’s Cricket e-mail The Spin.

The Spin was nearing the end of a very enjoyable weekend in Norfolk - where it can heartily recommend the Rose & Crown in Snettisham - when it took a deep breath, opened a copy of the Mail on Sunday, and came upon one of those spoof columns with Piers Morgan’s name on it. You know the sort of thing: full of ridiculous name-dropping, deliberate over-writing, hilarious indiscretions! Anyway, this one was about Andrew Flintoff, everyone’s favourite cricketer once more - and, needless to say, a close friend of the ever-assiduous Piers.

Then it clicked. Morgan’s diary of the Lord’s Test was so overblown not even a satirist would have risked his or her reputation by being associated with it. Fred, it seems, spent so much of the game texting Piers it’s a wonder he actually had time to slay the Aussies as well!
In one such exchange, Flintoff reportedly asks his mate whether he’ll be attending the Test on the fourth day. But Piers can’t: “I’ve got lunch with the Prime Minister at Chequers,” he boasts.

Moving swiftly through anecdotes in which Flintoff texts Morgan to tell him he’s a “t**t” and Gordon Brown’s younger son, Fraser, tells him to his face “I don’t like you,” Morgan pens his entry for Pseud’s Corner when he describes the moment Flintoff falls to his knees after bowling Peter “The Unbowlable” Siddle. “He resembled the great British military commanders returning from triumphant battle centuries ago - bloodied, exhausted, prostrating themselves for their delighted Monarch in front of their troops.”

Now the Spin was as delighted as the next sceptic when Flintoff wrapped up the Lord’s Test. But it suspects the “great British military commanders” did rather more to earn their spurs than claim the wickets of Brad Haddin, Nathan Hauritz and Siddle in a 10-over, Monday-morning stint. Mercifully, it’s Flintoff who emerges from Morgan’s tale with his dignity intact. “Just don’t know what all that kneeling was about,” he admits. “I must have looked a right idiot.
Just seemed the right thing to do at the time.” Unlike, perhaps, certain newspaper columns …

tomewing:

Sharing content is often seen as a subset of consuming it - i.e. of the people who consumer content, a certain amount will share it.

This ignores people who pass the content on unconsumed, because they’re sure of its quality and just want to get the word out quick (the charitable explanation) or because they want to increase their cred or ‘social capital’ or whatever by passing the content on as fast as possible.

(I think most people do this sometimes - I just linked to the new Adam Curtis film on Twitter because I was so excited to see it was up. But I’m going to make myself finish some work before I actually watch it.)

It also ignores the way the habit of sharing becomes an impetus to the consumption of content. When I ran NYLPM back in the day, I used to read the music blogosphere every day in order to see if there was anything worth linking to myself. As the excitement and novelty of running my own blog died off, so too did my impulse to read other peoples’.

There are also wider qns - too wide for this note - about what counts as “consuming” content anyhow. Is a particular level of engagement neccessary?

Or sharing #iranElection tweets.

`What do “we” do about beliefs “we” do not share?’ We dismiss them as mistakes or delusions, or giggle at them as objects of amusment. We should try to see how such beliefs arose and adapted in their changing historical context, which needs they met and functions they served, which basic emotional, spiritual and political quandaries and paradoxes they evoked and addresses [questioned]. - LRB p. 33 9 July 2009.