Category: media-general

By Posted on Posted in Consumer Issues, Democracy, Ethics in Government, Ethics: General, language, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Media Ethics, media-general, Mindset, Politics, propaganda, Psychology Tagged with , , , , , ,

Yes, it’s true. Thursday’s “debate” was a debacle, an atrocity. And yes, Democrats have a right to indulge in some panic. But a more helpful response is to demand that the mainstream media start covering the real issue in this campaign: That American democracy is under threat by Donald Trump, who was the worst president in history according to experts and who has devolved into a raving lunatic who has openly talked about the totalitarian regime he would impose this time.

For months, much of the mainstream media has consistently painted Biden in a poor light while for the most part refusing to set the same standard in evaluating Trump. A particularly horrific example was the time one of the Washington Post’s newsletters made a chart that compared how old Biden would be at the END of a second term with how old Trump would be at the BEGINNING of a second term. They are only 3-1/2 years apart.

Yet, while the New York Times and Washington Post were going on about the need for Biden to step aside, the Philadelphia Inquirer was one of the few voices in the mainstream press saying that Trump, not Biden, is the one who should leave the race. Their reasons are not just the 30+ lies he confidently uttered during the event (you can’t really call it a debate). It’s everything he’s done in the last several years. The man is a felon, a self-admitted sexual predator, an inciter of a treasonous riot, an open bigot, a thuggish bully, and a narcissistic example of Id running amok with no Superego to rein it in. Trump is known for confidently putting out total bullshit—kind of like some AI tools that tell us to eat a rock every day. Trump wanted us to drink chlorine bleach during the pandemic, after all.

While under both the insurrection and incompetence clauses of the Constitution Trump shouldn’t have even been allowed on the ballot, he’s there. And if he leaves, we may not like the results. If, say, Nikki Haley were to replace him as the Republican candidate, she could actually win on the basis that she wouldn’t be as bad as Trump. And she wouldn’t–but she might very likely be as bad as or worse than the second-worst president, George W. Bush.

Meanwhile, as Lawrence O’Donnell points out, the Dems have no viable candidate in reserve. When LBJ left the race much earlier in the cycle, in March, 1968, Humphrey didn’t have enough time to gather accolades or dollars. He also notes that there was pressure on Bill Clinton to withdraw in 1992 and on Trump to do so in 2016, yet both men won. AND he faults the debate moderators for failing to ask important questions like what the heck Trump was doing during those three hours of silence on January 6, 2021, or to probe deeper on Trump’s nonsensical answers and outright lies, including his obvious lack of understanding of what a tariff is.

Seth Abramson says that getting Biden to exit would grant Trump’s deepest wish and wonders why nobody’s asking if this is a good idea, considering how much Trump and his henchmen are talking it up—and he doesn’t see any path to a victory by any other Democrat.

The Dems would start by attacking each other in a “circular firing squad” that only helps the Republicans. Any convention result will leave a wide swath of disaffected voters.  It just doesn’t make sense.

Mind, I’m no fan of Biden. There’s a long list of betrayals of progressives that I’m not at all happy with. But I believe that this race is much less about who we want to be president than whether we want democracy or fascism, and what the Supreme Court will look like. It’s also about who progressives would rather be pressuring, and there’s no question that we’d secure more wins under Biden than Trump.

And Heather Cox Richardson says Trump steamrolled Biden with a technique called the “Gish Gallop”:

It’s a rhetorical technique in which someone throws out a fast string of lies, non-sequiturs, and specious arguments, so many that it is impossible to fact-check or rebut them in the amount of time it took to say them. Trying to figure out how to respond makes the opponent look confused, because they don’t know where to start grappling with the flood that has just hit them.

It is a form of gaslighting, and it is especially effective on someone with a stutter, as Biden has. It is similar to what Trump did to Biden during a debate in 2020. In that case, though, the lack of muting on the mics left Biden simply saying: “Will you shut up, man?” a comment that resonated with the audience. Giving Biden the enforced space to answer by killing the mic of the person not speaking tonight actually made the technique more effective.

So instead of trying to dump Biden, let’s demand that the media:

  1. Point out every lie either candidate utters
  2. Give some space to Trump’s crazy “word salad” campaign speeches that make absolutely no sense
  3. Examine the consequences of each of his fascist-inspired policy proposals
  4. Fact-check the next debate in REAL TIME.

And let’s remind everyone we know that this election is not about choosing a saint but choosing the better opponent who will enable the most positive change.

 

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By Posted on Posted in Ethics in Government, Ethics: General, General Commentary, language, Media Ethics, media-general, Mindset, Politics, privacy, Psychology, Sexuality and Gender, Shel's Personal Life Tagged with , , , , , ,

Trigger Warning: This post discusses my history as a survivor of separate instances of rape and sexual coercion.

 

Did Trump cheat on his wife with Stormy Daniels? Yes. Was it an affair? No. Does this matter? Absolutely, and I’ll explain why.

My venerable paper copy of the Random House Dictionary of the English Language, Unabridged defines affair in this context as “an intense amorous relationship, usually of short duration.” Dictionary.com copies all the Random House definitions verbatim (it’s definition #6). Microsoft Word’s dictionary calls it “a sexual relationship between two people, one or both of whom are married to or in a long-term relationship with someone else.” The Cambridge Dictionary defines it as “a sexual relationship, especially a secret one.”

Note that all three definitions include “relationship” and the first says it has to be “intense” and “amorous.”

Daniels’ evening with Trump was not a relationship, and the amorousness went in only one direction. They had met casually and he’d asked her to have dinner with him. She says she accepted because her PR agent said it might be career-building and she did not have sex on her mind. Neither did he appear to at first, until she came back from the bathroom and found him on the bed, down to his undies. At best, it was a first date. At worst, it could be considered sexually harassing behavior.

It was not rape. Unlike the myriad of his other accusers, she never claimed that she didn’t consent. She consistently says that she was reluctant, was not enthusiastic, and felt so ashamed afterward that she was shaking as she got dressed again.

I would consider this interaction a coercive sexual encounter, if for no other reason than because of the power dynamics. One party is a rich and famous man in his late 50s, of towering (and intimidating) physical stature, with a bodyguard on the other side of the door. The other, a woman in her 20s and not overly familiar with the centers of power, is known only in a socially marginalized (though extremely popular) industry that has low credibility with mainstream media and mainstream morality.

He has all the power. And if she still has any illusions that he might help her career, she’s going to get on that bed even if she doesn’t really want to. For her, it was transactional; for him, it may have been notching a conquest or some kind of boost to his fragile ego. I can only speculate on his reasons, because despite the massive evidence, he denies the incident ever took place. 

I survived a rape, grabbed off the street by a stranger and dragged to a stairwell at age 10 or 11 (yes, it happens to boys—more of us than you probably think). I also survived a coercive sexual encounter at age 18 with a creepy 53-year-old man who’d made no secret of his desire to get into my pants. Like Stormy’s encounter with Trump, it was not rape because I was not in a position to withhold consent. And like that notorious encounter, it made me feel like total crap.

I had also, at that point, had a months-long actual affair with a man ten years older than me and several consensual one-nighters.

It’s not hard to tell the difference among these four types of encounters. The affair was mutual. It was delightful. It was a relationship. The consensual one-nighters were fun but did not lead to an ongoing relationship. For some of them, I wished it had continued—but that wasn’t the other person’s agenda.

The coerced encounter was not fun. It was unpleasant but in that moment I saw it as unavoidable. I have far more resources and communication skills these days and would handle it differently now, almost forty years later. While it was disgusting, it didn’t create long-term trauma. But the rape was traumatic, with consequences that lasted many decades and are not completely done yet. I couldn’t even bring myself to tell anyone for several years, and I never told my parents. It remains, after more than 50 years, the worst day of my life.

Neither being raped nor being coerced into sex is anything I would ever characterize as an affair. There is no relationship. There is not even any mutuality.

With this lens, with this history, you can understand why it has upset me since Daniels first went public that so many people who should know better, including many journalists, use the wrong term. Just the first results page from an Ecosia.org (tree-planting search engine) search for “stormy daniels affair” brought hits from the New York Times, BBC, NPR, NBC’s Chicago affiliate, and CNN. Now, with the trial verdict, it’s back in the news and I’m finally ready to call out these journalists. They are making it sound like love was involved, that these were two people who cared about it each other. But they didn’t.

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By Posted on Posted in Advertising, Consumer Issues, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Marketing Trends/News, Media Ethics, media-general, propaganda, Psychology, Shel's Personal Life Tagged with , , , , ,
Simulation of TV newscast. By Original photograph by Sylvain Pedneault. Derivative work by Mike Liao. - Self-made. (Modified from Image:FirePhotography.jpg, under Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 license., CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4500164

Remember some of those unflattering names for TV in the 1960s and 70s? “Boob tube.” Idiot box.” I think these names are rooted in the neurological changes TV works on our brains, combined with the inherently passive nature of watching–AND with the low content quality that too often marks this powerful and addictive medium.

TV too often incites violence and racism. And I don’t choose to play in that sandbox. For every Mr. Rogers or Sesame Street inculcating positive values, for every National Geographic or Discovery Channel special that broadens our sense of what is possible, there are dozens of shoot-em-up adventure shows and newscasts to focus our attention on the worst parts of our society. And it’s all tied together with ads designed to make us feel inadequate because we don’t buy certain brands. As Mick Jagger sang, “He can’t be a man ’cause he doesn’t smoke/the same cigarettes as me.“

The original promise of cable TV was no ads in return for the monthly payment (1970s). But that original promise didn’t last very long! I grew up in NYC, which had seven stations on the VHF band, plus what must have been another 20 on UHF for those who had sets that could pull them in. Moving to places that had only two or three channels on the broadcast spectrum, I could see the appeal, at least for those who love TV.

TV is not an active part of my life.

We moved when I was 10 and left the big clunky ancient black-and-white TV behind. We didn’t get another one for two years–just in time to watch All In The Family. That was pretty much the only show I watched through high school. Through much of my early adult life, we didn’t even own a TV.

And when we got one, it was mostly as a video monitor, with some PBS kid shows on the side. We thought it was healthier to let our kids watch up to an hour a day of content-supervised TV than to ban it altogether and have it become alluring forbidden fruit.

A few years ago, when regular old broadcast TV was discontinued, our cable company gave us a converter box free for the first two years. We never even got it to work properly, and when the two years were up, we returned the box and eventually convinced them that we shouldn’t be paying the $10 month for a service we weren’t using. They acted deeply shocked but eventually lowered our bill. They supply both our landline phone and our broadband Internet.

A few times a year, we go to a friend’s house or a public place to watch a presidential debate, World Series game, or other special broadcast. I think TV news is the worst kind of mind pollution and get my news from other sources–that’s been true for decades, even when I had a working set. I still read my local daily newspaper, which has great coverage of my own region and at least some coverage of the wider world. I read a ton of e-newsletters that keep me informed within my various niches, and click to interesting links on social media (which has its own positives and negatives)–yes, including some TV clips. I’ll listen to radio news and public affairs programs such as All Things Considered (NPR) and Democracy Now (Pacifica). And yes, I spend some time daily on social media.

In fact, I deeply resent being forced to watch TV news with all its shallowness and violence when I ride elevators, wait for planes or buses or trains, or use a hotel fitness room. If there’s a great skit on Saturday Night Live or a new Randy Rainbow parody, or shocking testimony implicating high government officials, I will hear about it on Facebook and watch online. I worry about the people who spend so much time watching violence disguised as news, especially if they do it right before bed, leaving the whole night for the subconscious to absorb the message that this is normal.

It’s not.

There’s plenty of good in the world. People doing amazing things: harnessing technology to solve problems like hunger, poverty, war, and catastrophic climate change…finding new ways to empower others…joining with neighbors or colleagues to do something too big for any one person or company–but the media is trained to focus on what’s wrong: “If it bleeds, it leads.” There are some nice exceptions, like Yes Magazine, Positive News, and Good News Network (among many others), that consciously focus on positive news–and even some mainstream outlets join this happy chorus. Also, because I’m in the green business world, I read publications like GreenBiz, Eco-Business, and Triple Pundit that are tremendously tilted toward highlighting positive innovation but don’t shy away from negative stories that need to be told.

While I don’t duck from the unpleasant things happening, I don’t steep myself in them. I surround myself with enough positive news (through those and many other channels) to insulate me from the bad effects of soaking in negativtiy. I recommend doing that as much as possible.

What strategies do YOU use to stay focused on the change you can make rather than letting the problems paralyze you? I’d love to see your comments, below.

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By Posted on Posted in language, media-general, Politics, propaganda, Psychology, Social and Economic Justice, Uncategorized Tagged with ,

Seth Godin. Photo by Jill Greenberg. Courtesy of Seth Godin.
Seth Godin. Photo by Jill Greenberg. Courtesy of Seth Godin.

Editor’s Note from Shel Horowitz: this was originally published on Seth’s blog under the title, Where Will the Media Take Us Next? I am a long-time reader and fan of author and teacher Seth’s daily blog (and thrilled that he gave me a terrific endorsement for my 10th book, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World). I have often linked to his blog posts on Facebook, and sometimes corresponded with him. This one struck me as one I wanted to share on my own website. Used with his permission. And now, here’s Seth.

Where Will the Media Take Us, by Seth Godin

Since the first story was carved on a rock, media pundits have explained that they have simply given people what they want, reporting the best they can on what’s happening.
Cause (the culture, human activity, people’s desires) leads to effect (front page news).

In fact, it’s becoming ever more clear that the attention-seeking, profit-driven media industrial complex drives our culture even more than it reports on it.

Thoughtful people regularly bemoan our loss of civility, the rise of trolling and bullying and most of all, divisive behavior designed to rip people apart instead of moving us productively forward.

And at the very same time, reality TV gets ever better ratings. So much so that the news has become the longest-running, cheapest to produce and most corrosive TV show in history. Increase that exponentially by adding in the peer-to-peer reality show that is social media, and you can see what’s happening.

Imagine two classrooms, each filled with second graders.
In the first classroom, the teacher shines a spotlight on the bullies, the troublemakers and the fighters, going so far as to arrange all the chairs so that the students are watching them and cheering them on all day.

In the second classroom, the teacher establishes standards, acts as a damper on selfish outliers and celebrates the generous and productive kids in the classroom…

How will the classrooms diverge? Which one would you rather have your child enrolled in?

We’re not in elementary school anymore, and the media isn’t our teacher or our nanny. But the attention we pay to the electronic channels we click on consumes more of our day than we ever spent with Miss Binder in second grade. And that attention is corrosive. To us and to those around us.

The producers of reality TV know this. And they seek out more of it. When they can’t find it easily, they search harder. Because that’s their job.

It’s their job to amp up the reality show that is our culture.
But it’s not our job to buy into it. More than anything, profit-driven media needs our active participation in order to pay their bills.

It’s an asymmetrical game, with tons of behavioral research working against each of us–the uncoordinated but disaffected masses. Perhaps we can find the resolve to seek out the others, to connect and to organize in a direction that actually works.

The first step is to stop taking the bait. The second step is to say, “follow me.”

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By Posted on Posted in Activism, Democracy, Demographics/Psychographics, language, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Marketing Trends/News, Media Ethics, media-general, Politics, propaganda, Psychology Tagged with
Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts
Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts

I’m a big fan of Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren. She’s been my Senator for more than six years, and I was aware of her consumer advocacy for several years before that. In the crowded field of Democrats seeking the presidency, she’s my top choice.

BUT I still think she made a big mistake turning down a chance to broadcast a Town Hall meeting on Fox news.

I’ve been puzzling about this for almost two weeks, looking for something fresh to say that hasn’t been said before, as in this article by Megan Day:

In Warren’s scenario, Fox News’s politics will be defeated by a few principled liberal politicians engaging in a media blackout. In [Bernie] Sanders’s, Fox News’s politics will be defeated when the Left convinces a significant portion of the Right’s working-class base that they’ve been duped, and that the pro-worker left best represents their political interests...

By refusing to go on Fox News, Warren has demonstrated that she doesn’t take this task as seriously as she ought to. As Sanders has plainly stated, the power of the capitalist class is so formidable that it will take a huge movement of millions of united workers to actually overcome it in reality. Warren’s policy ideas are frequently excellent, but without a fundamental orientation toward the very people who stand to benefit from them, they stand little chance of materializing.

I agree with  Day. Warren’s better policy initiatives are not enough if she’s going to rely on the liberal elite to make them a reality.

And she should know this. She’s a born organizer, and her speeches are very approachable. Like that guy in the White House, she understands how to talk to ordinary people with in some cases limited education, to make them feel excited by (and ownership of) her ideas.

Yes, Fox is toxic. But when people have swallowed poison, you go in and pump their stomachs. The argument she makes that she doesn’t want to enrich the network or legitimize it seems spurious. After all, Bernie Sanders attacked Fox during the Town Hall they gave him and televised.

And then it hit me that my own start in journalism was very relevant.

In 1972, as a 15-year-old junior at Bronx High School of Science, I got my first article bylines–covering peace demonstrations and other progressive events. I didn’t get them in the official school newspaper; writing for Science Survey was only an option for the students in the honors journalism English class.

I got them in one of the school’s underground papers. A paper called Insight, published by a small group of right-wingers who identified as libertarians. They ran my stuff with disclaimers: “the following article does not reflect the views of the management,” etc.

But they ran my stuff! I was able to share my viewpoint, encourage the peace and environmental agendas of groups I was involved with, and build a publication portfolio that led to a 45-year writing career and the authorship of 10 books and thousands of articles.

And even at the time, I felt that maybe the best part was that they put me in front of an audience that was skeptical of my views. They gave me a forum to reach people who disagreed with me. I have no idea if I changed anyone’s mind, but I was given that chance.

Elizabeth should have taken that chance, too.

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By Posted on Posted in Advertising, Consumer Issues, Environment, media-general, propaganda, Psychology, Shel's Personal Life, Transparency vs. Secrecy Tagged with , , , , , ,

Do you have seven minutes to watch a sweet film about a dolphin rescuing a dog who is swept off a boat in shark territory? (If you don’t, you can skip some great dolphin footage and start 2 minutes, 20 seconds in, as the dog goes over the stern, and cut off at 4:45, after the animals have made their sweet farewells. Surely, you have 2 minutes and 25 seconds you can spare. And feel free to turn off the sound. It’s just music, and repetitious music at that.) Makes you feel warm and fuzzy all over, right? Personally, I love videos about interspecies friendship, and I’ve seen a bunch of them over many years.

Screenshot from the video of a dolphin rescuing a dog.
Screenshot from the video of a dolphin rescuing a dog.

Now: do you think this is an actual event, a recreated actual event, or fiction? Why? Please share your thoughts in the comments before reading further. Then scroll down and continue to see my answer–and my reasons.

 

 

Now read my take on it:

I’m pretty sure it’s fiction. And I’m concerned that there’s no text with this film, and no credits at the end–in other words, no accountability. I have no objection to filming heartwarming works of fiction. I love that sort of thing, from Frank Capra’s “You Can’t Take it With You” to “Fried Green Tomatoes” to “Life Is Beautiful” and “Jude”. But all of these are clearly marketed as story, not fact.

In my opinion, this film is specifically designed to make most viewers believe this was a real event.

And I have trouble with that. I feel its “story-ness” should be disclosed, and we should also know who produced the film. I’ll tell you why in a moment, but first, here’s how I reached my conclusion.

Why You Can’t Necessarily Trust Your Eyes

Because I’m trained in journalism and have worked for decades in marketing, I ask hard questions about what is and isn’t real, what people’s motivations or agendas are, and how to filter information based on what’s really going on versus what the speaker or writer or photographer or filmmaker is trying to get you to think is going on.

If you watch any crime movies from the 1930s through 1950s, there’s a pretty good chance that the detective will turn to the suspect and shout, “photos don’t lie!” But here’s the thing: THAT is a lie. Photos can lie in what they choose to include or not. A famous example: the close-ups of a statue of Saddam Hussein being felled by a jubilant (and apparently huge) Baghdad crowd were discredited by wide-angle shots showing only a couple of hundred people, many of them US soldiers rather than locals. The close-ups were propaganda, not truth, even though the photos themselves were real and unretouched. And even in the 1950s–for that matter, even in the 1850s–there was a whole industry around photo alteration. This was true in film as well; ever hear the expression “left on the cutting room floor”? The technologies of photo editing and film editing go back to the earliest days of photography and filmmaking.

In today’s digital world, tools like Photoshop and video editors have transformed those doable but difficult tasks into something incredibly easy, and only an expert will be able to tell. So in this era, we can never trust that a picture or a movie is accurate unless we were there when it was shot. Thus, unfortunately, we need to bring a certain amount of critical analysis when we view any video, any photograph.

And through this lens (pun intended, I confess), when I watch this video, I immediately discard any idea that we’re watching real-time true-story footage.

Why?

7 Reasons Why I Think It’s a Fake

  1. It’s waaaay too slick. This is professionally shot and carefully edited, by a skilled camera operator using high-resolution equipment, tripods, and lighting to produce footage as good technically as anything coming out of Hollywood. In real life, this would have been shot on a cell phone, held in a hand that shook at least a little. It’s on a moving boat, after all.
  2. Much of the footage is underwater or behind the boat the dog was riding, yet no other boats are visible.
  3. When the dog slips off the deck into the water, no people are around. If anyone were filming an actual event, we’d see some kind of rescue attempt, and we certainly would not see the boat blithely continuing away, stranding the pet. At least the crew of the videography boat would get involved.
  4. It’s just too convenient that cameras happened to focus on all the key places. And yes, that’s a plural. There was one camera focused on the boat deck and later on the swimming dog, and at least one other one focused underwater at the dolphin and shark.
  5. If the shark were really close enough to attack the dog, it would have gone after the dolphin too. Giant sharks don’t care much about “collateral damage.”
  6. It strains credulity that the boat would be waiting, unmoving, in still water, just when the dolphin deposits the dog on the tailgate, considering there are plenty of waves in the dolphin-carries-dog footage.
  7. I’m suspicious of the site it’s on, something called TopBuzz, which I’ve never heard of. I didn’t notice at first when I clicked the link from a Facebook message that it had a monstrously complex tracking URL, too. Uh-oh! I’ve stripped those tracking codes out of the URL as here. To its credit, it doesn’t try to get me to watch all sorts of salacious videos, and a search for complaints brought up only questions about its relationships with content creators, not viewers. And I checked for viruses after having the page open for several hours while writing this, and it came up clean.

I’m also skeptical that this is a later recreation of a true event, although I’d grant that maybe a 10 percent chance. Why? Because much of the footage “documented” events with no witnesses. Unless one of the human crew is fluent in either dog or dolphin language, neither party could have told the story. And the dog might not even know about the shark threat. Certainly the humans in the boat that drove away would have no idea. Since we don’t know who produced this or how to get in touch with them, we have no way of knowing.

In Part 2 of this post, I talk about the deeper reasons why this matters, the implications for our democracy, and some guidance on protecting yourself against being hooked by false messages.  Click this paragraph to read it.

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By Posted on Posted in Activism, General Commentary, Marketing Trends/News, media-general, People Helping People, Politics, Protests and Crackdowns, Psychology, Shel's Personal Life, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , , , , , , , , ,

I posted a petition on Facebook, and someone commented, “Like this would make a difference?”

But here’s the thing: You never know what makes a difference. It was a pleasant shock to discover years later that Nixon was actually paying attention to the peace protests. I think the protests after the first Muslim ban and over the tearing of children from parents seeking asylum certainly made a difference. Amnesty International has made a demonstrable difference in the lives of thousands of political prisoners around the world. And I know that my participation in certain other actions, especially the Seabrook occupation of 1977, made a difference.

Nonviolent occupiers approach the construction site of the Seabrook nuclear plant, April 30, 1977. Unattributed photo found at https://josna.wordpress.com/tag/anti-nuclear-movement/
Nonviolent occupiers approach the construction site of the Seabrook nuclear plant, April 30, 1977. Unattributed photo found at https://josna.wordpress.com/tag/anti-nuclear-movement/

So we keep working and maybe sometimes we have far, far more impact than we thought we would. Who would have predicted how much traction the Arab Spring, or Tiannanmen Square, or Occupy would have gained, how much impact they had?

Who could have imagined in 1948 that all the Jim Crow segregation laws would come tumbling down, not only in the US but even in South Africa and Zimbabwe (then called Rhodesia)? Who could have predicted as recently as 2000 that same-sex marriage would be a legal right in all 50 US states and many other countries around the world? All of these victories are anchored in activism, sometimes decades of activism.

Who would have guessed that the incredible kids who survived the Parkland shooting on Valentine’s Day 2018 (toddlers when Massachusetts became the first state with marriage equality) would channel their angst into a movement that brought millions into the streets, tens of thousands to their voter registrars to register for the first time? Who knows which ones will grow up to be world leaders, and which long-time elected officials will be displaced by a wave of change?

In recent months, we’ve seen the cycle of impact quicken. Movements and memes that had been kicking around for years suddenly reach critical mass. Who would have expected the flowering of older and dormant movements such as #MeToo and #BlackLivesMatter?

As an activist for more than 48 years, I remain optimistic, even in the face of so many defeats—because I also see these and many other victories. I see hope in so many people’s movements in the US, and in the complete change within two generations from a Europe ruled by power-mad fear-mongering dictators to one whose purpose actually seems to create a better world for the planet and its residents.

So yes, it makes a difference. Ordinary people can make a difference. Ordinary people make a difference constantly in fact: when I give my “Impossible is a Dare” talk, I cite examples like a seamstress (Rosa Parks) and a shipyard electrician (Lech Walesa) who changed their entire society.

What are you doing currently to make a difference? Please share in the comments.

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By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, General Commentary, language, media-general, Shel's Personal Life Tagged with , , , , ,

My mom told me often that I taught myself to read at age 3 by sounding out stuff on cereal boxes, mayonnaise jars, etc. And to this day, I read packaging, ads, tracts…whatever is lying around. She also told me that I was extremely frustrated that I couldn’t get a New York Public Library (NYPL) card until I could write my name, which took another two years after I learned to read. She had to take books out for me on her card. I have no memory of either of these things. But I do remember that I was reading fluently by the beginning of first grade. At age 60, I’m still grateful to my first grade teacher, who sat me in the back of the room with a 4th grade geography textbook while she inflicted Sally, Dick, and Jane on the rest of the class (and I still love geography).

A child reading. Photo by Julia Freeman-Woolpert, freeimages.com
A child reading. Photo by Julia Freeman-Woolpert, freeimages.com

Much later, I met my wife, novelist and poet D. Dina Friedman, at a poetry reading in Greenwich Village

I was skeptical of Mom’s claims about me until we discovered when my son was 2 and some months that he could tell words like wax, fax, and max apart, visually, because my daughter had sat him down and taught him. He was not an early reader but obviously could have been if it had been a priority. He was (and still is at 25) focused on music. We started reading to our kids when they were infants. My daughter, gluten-free/vegetarian gourmet food blogger Alana Horowitz Friedman and her husband are both avid readers, too.

Mom was like that too. Once they lifted the old limit of eight books at a time, she would go to the local NYPL branch every two weeks with a SHOPPING CART, fill it with books, and wheel it the mile back to our house. She had a long commute to Manhattan via express bus and that’s where she did much of her reading.

I’m still a voracious reader. Books have opened up my mind to such incredible richness of thought and emotion. Much of my thinking on everything from nonviolent social change to green business success comes from processing and extrapolating on what I read to come up with something new. The world is a much more interesting place to me because of writers like Dave Dellinger, Gandhi, and Gene Sharp’s writings about nonviolence, and Amory Lovins, Janine Benyus, and William McDonough on the green business side.

But a few years ago, I realized that while I made time in my busy life for nonfiction, I didn’t do enough pleasure reading. I started making sure I read at least five minutes a day of a book that had nothing to do with work.

Of course, five minutes was nowhere near enough if I was into a good book. I found all sorts of nooks and crannies in my day to read. And then I decided to get a lot more exercise. Much of that is on an indoor stationary bicycle: a perfect place to read! Typically, I start my first shift of the day with a poem, then ten minutes of nonfiction and ten minutes of fiction or memoir. If I’m biking 20 minutes, that’s my whole shift. If (more typically) I’m doing 30 minutes, I often spend the remaining 10 checking Facebook from my phone, because I have to make time in my life for social media, too.

With most of it on the exercise bike, I’m actually reading more than 80 books a year!

Some vast number of people never read another book after college. They’re cheating themselves. Make time in your own life for this great pleasure!Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Consumer Issues, Customer Service as Marketing, Democracy, Diversity, Ethics in Government, General Commentary, media-general, Politics, poverty, Shel's Personal Life, Technology, Web 2.0/Social Media Tagged with , , , , , ,

So, great—Time Magazine wants public feedback on its 33 finalists for Person of the Year. I love to share my views, so of course I clicked over to participate. But I couldn’t find a way to see the list of nominees without scrolling through 33 yes-or-no votes, one at a time. Not knowing the full list, I don’t want to vote prematurely. Doesn’t look like there’s a way to go back and undo a choice.

Time Magazine's Person of the Year poll doesn't let you see the choices before voting
Time Magazine’s Person of the Year Poll Doesn’t Let You See the Choices Before Voting

I’d ask them but can’t even find a contact page except for subscriber support (and I’m not a subscriber). 

Besides, if you only want to (and are eligible to) vote for one, why would they make us go through 32 no votes? It would be very easy to have a grid of 33 captioned pictures, and you could click on the one you want to vote for. It also doesn’t say as you’re voting (or even when you’re done) whether a later yes vote invalidates the earlier one. If it doesn’t, that would justify the format, but they should explain this. If it does, it makes the situation even worse.

This is so lame, and I feel so disenfranchised! You’d think Time would have better user interface design. Ugh!

Oh, here’s the secret, which I discovered when I went back to grab a screen shot: There’s one little red line to click, directly beneath the huge graphic, if you want to see the results so far—and that shows the list.

Time's Person of the Year Poll—secret key to see the list
Time’s Person of the Year Poll—Secret Key to See the List

Still have to make the ridiculous 33 checkmarks and 76 unnecessary clicks, but at least you can cast an informed vote. Saudi Arabia’s power-grabbing prince is currently well in the lead. I cast my vote for the #metoo hashtag, even if the idea of a hashtag being a person is almost even stranger than the idea that corporations are people.

It’s good to see a good spectrum of cultural and political diversity in the finalists, from low-income people of color to rich white men with reactionary views. Other nominees I could have supported included San Juan (Puerto Rico) mayor Carmen Yulín, Colin Kaepernick, Pope Frances, and the Dreamer kids. Surprisingly, Standing Rock Water Protectors were not on the list.

Time Poll—First screen of the list
Time Poll—First screen of the list

For decades, I’ve felt that if I got to make the rules for life, one of them would be this: no product goes to market until its designers had lived with it for 6 to 12 months and tested it thoroughly. From a user point of view, this poll is a perfect example of why we need a rule like that.Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Activism, Democracy, Ethics in Government, language, media-general, Politics, propaganda, Psychology, Socially Responsible Investing Tagged with , , , , , , , ,
Just as Left and Right joined forces a few years ago to protect Net Neutrality (the right to an open Internet without tollbooths and bandwidth restrictions for those who are not part of big cable or news empires), so we must come together to protect our precious freedom of the press.
Someone commented on a post from one of my right-wing acquaintances that they thought DT was being humorous when he threatened CNN journalists. Here’s my response:
Making thinly veiled threats to beat up journalists is NOT humor. If you don’t see the need to protect press freedom and other First Amendment rights, you are wearing blinders. And your liberties will be trampled just as much as ours on the “other side.” Laughing off threatening behavior as “humor” is creating a culture where the behavior is permissible and excused. Put your glasses back on! We should be able to join across sides to protect First Amendment freedoms.
Another right-wing acquaintance posted on his own page,
If he can destroy the out of control reckless American MSM and force them to recalibrate their models and become honest, unbiased journalistic organizations instead of hacks (and that goes for FOX News), then he will go down as the greatest President of all time.
I responded:
If you want unbiased MSM, start by reintroducing the Fairness Doctrine. Eliminating that began a long slide away from honesty and toward bias. And despite flawed reporting, I still am thankful every day that we have a free press—sand very worried when DT attempts to create a culture where beating up journalists is OK. That’s right out of the Hitler playbook. Without primary sources in the MSM, bloggers with minimal research skills would have no platform.
No sooner had I posted these comments when I scrolled down in my feed and found a chronology of Nazi suppression of press freedom, starting with Hitler’s threats to press freedom in Mein Kampf. The parallels are disturbingly chilling. Please go read the link. I will wait.

Statue of Thomas Jefferson. Photo by Thad Zajdowicz, FreeImages.com
Statue of Thomas Jefferson. Photo by Thad Zajdowicz, FreeImages.com

Thomas Jefferson, whose politics today would be described as Libertarian-Conservative, came back to the theme of the importance of free press over and over again. Here’s a whole page of Jefferson’s quotes on press freedom. His most famous is right at the top:

The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter. But I should mean that every man should receive those papers and be capable of reading them.

Another quote on that page speaks directly to the issue of fake news, and how much of that originates in government:
The most effectual engines for [pacifying a nation] are the public papers… [A despotic] government always [keeps] a kind of standing army of newswriters who, without any regard to truth or to what should be like truth, [invent] and put into the papers whatever might serve the ministers. This suffices with the mass of the people who have no means of distinguishing the false from the true paragraphs of a newspaper.
Why am I not seeing an outcry on the right as the country takes a sharp turn toward thuggish fascism? Their news channels will be restricted and attacked just as much as ours. Look what he said and continues to say about his one-time cheerleaders at Morning Joe.
This is important, folks. Do not let this petty tyrant erode our freedoms. It CAN happen here. Don’t let it.

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