On the first level, the 'dumb babbies can understand this level' level, you have: "The picture is saying that peaceful protests a mile long will be ignored by the media because they want to film the one guy smashing a car for no reason." à la:

and its uncropped friend:

But let's look further! The cartoon contrasts the large mass of protesters - who are peaceful and are protesting in the traditional way - with a single, masked violent protester. The single protester is the one getting all the attention. Now, I guess you could interpret this in two ways. You could say that this image only wants to say that it's unfair that the violent protesters get all the attention, while they get none. But considering the framing, the way the violent protester is depicted and the general narrative around violent protests, it seems fairly obvious that this picture is distancing the peaceful protesters from the violent protesters and is condemning them. In fact, merely the act of distancing themselves and putting the two types of protest in such clear contrast is playing into a narrative they should be objecting to. They're trying to depict themselves as 'the good ones', worthy of your sympathy. They're not one of those ruffians! They're essentially conforming to the 'proper, accepted' form of protesting. Queue up, get a permit, sign the petition and achieve nothing. You can't protest the system if you're going to explicitly conform to its rules and reject any other methods a priori. Then there's the other part. A core part of the cartoon objects that the media - depicted by all the dudes with cameras - focus only on the violent protesters but ignore the mass behind them. This operates on the assumption that it's possible for the situation to be reversed, with the mass getting all the attention and the minority being ignored. This is a mistake. The media is mainly liberal (In the classical sense of the word, what with them being capitalist entities themselves. This is especially true in Italy, where I assume this cartoon originates) and will thus rarely - if ever - support non-liberal causes. This isn't always a conscious choice, there's a lot at work here (read Flat Earth News to find out why), but when presented with the option 'violent vs non-violent protest', they'll always give their attention to the violent one. If there's only a peaceful protest, they'll still do whatever they can to discredit or minimise the movement (by smearing the participants, by giving more airtime to government officials, by enforcing the middle road, etc.) This cartoon wants this ever-hostile media to be fair to these protesters, but this is a lost cause and any effort spent in pursuit of this goal could have been spent in finding alternative ways of getting attention/spreading their message. Thus, a cartoon that seems fine superficially, turns out to be weak-kneed, handwringing liberalism at its finest. I thought this was pretty clear from my earlier post, but it seems like you thought I just didn't 'get' the cartoon? Don't worry, friend, I get it - I just think it's making a bad point.

patriarchal bargain

Lisa Wade
A patriarchal bargain is a decision to accept gender rules that disadvantage women in exchange for whatever power one can wrest from the system. It is an individual strategy designed to manipulate the system to one’s best advantage, but one that leaves the system itself intact. Don’t be too quick to judge; nearly 100% of women do this to some degree. But once women appear to have acquiesced to the idea that their bodies are public property, their bodies are treated as public property. Others, then, feel that they have the right to comment on, evaluate, and even control their bodies. This is why the bargain is patriarchal.

randites

There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.

-Paul Krugman

School Mascots

I just had a thought that's worth looking into. Probably more suited to Twitter, since I haven't done any research yet, but failwhale means I say it here.

I was at the university, whose mascot is the Bull. I wondered if there are any schools whose mascot is the Cow. Then, I wondered if there are any schools whose mascot is the female of any species.

Worth thinking about, I'll maybe look into it more if I can muster the effort.

Commenting on MW2

I spend so much time reading and posting online, that you'd think I would find time to update a blog regularly. Anyway, I said some stuff about Call of Duty to some people criticizing it (and FPS games in general) on Sociological Images, so what the heck, post it here in lieue of something else I have gotten worked up over lately.

Call of Duty 2, 4, and MW2 are all quite decent games as far as storytelling goes. The Modern Warfare games are Tom Clancy-ish and therefore not particularly deep, but they get the job done. In MW2, the mission immediately following the controversial airport mission – where you play a deep-cover CIA operative gunning down civilians as a member of a Russian nationalist terrorist group (yeah, I know) – is set in Arlington, VA and you end up moving through suburbia before defending your command post in a TGI Friday’s from Russian infantry who have set up positions within a neighboring gas station and Taco Bell. I felt, and still feel, that this mission (which leads to fighting set in the DC Mall area) is brilliant largely because it brings the combat to American soil.

We shouldn’t rail against the game industry for setting everything in a generic Middle Eastern nation and at the same time criticize one game for trying to remind players of the horrors of violence and war by actually putting them in the shoes of terrorists and making the violence more ‘real’ by putting it into a more familiar context. Not to mention the fact that the United States does not come off very well at all from its portrayal in MW2, when it’s revealed late in the game that the horrific terrorist attack that sparked WW3 was conceived of and executed by elements of the United States military.

Demonstrators pour oil and feathers outside the entrance to the Tate Britain gallery, in London, which is hosting the Tate Britain summer party, as part of a protest against BP sponsorship of the arts on Monday. (AP Photo / Dominic Lipinski,pa)

The above image, which I saw on the All Eyes blog of the St. Pete Times a few days ago, struck me as a little off, but I couldn't really figure out why until today.

It feels like astroturfing from BP. Googling the name of the protest group, The Good Crude Britannia, I feel more like it's astroturfed by BP. The way I figure it is this: BP's public relations firm realizes that they cannot start a straight-up PR campaign to boost BP's image right now, because there's no way they can take attention away from the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

How then, to bring some good press coverage to BP? Stage a mock protest against non-profits that receive BP sponsorship and charitable donations. News agencies will pick it up because it's a new twist on public outrage with BP, but people who hear about the story will really only come away with the impression of "Hmm, I did not know that BP donated money to the Tate Museum." More careful readers will learn that the protest is aimed at a party the museum is holding to celebrate two decades of BP sponsorship.

I can't prove it, but I'm fairly sure.

In my dreams

I write like
Arthur C. Clarke

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

To be fair, I got Kurt Vonnegut first when I put in a few papers, but then I copy pasted into the analyzer every single paper I've ever written in my college career.