No this isn't one of those random phone calls from some anonymous person who wants to ask you a series of questions on some topic or about a person... The good old "Can I ask you about this issue?" or the "What do you think of this person's decisions?" or the classic "Have you decided who you're going to vote for?"
Definitely not. Usually I don't answer the caller's questions. I simply tell them I'm not interested, it's none of their business and/or please take me off your calling list.
The polls I'm talking about here are the ones where a news outlet asks viewers or readers one specific question on a certain topic.
This can be done on the organization's Webpage or on a social media page like Facebook.
When it's an actual poll, you want the question to be fairly simple, something with a yes/no/maybe or agree/disagree/neutral sort of answer.
Something people need to remember is that polls posed by a news organization are not scientific, unless it's done in association with a research center like Pew or Gallup. Even then, I probably wouldn't count them as all that reliable.
Most news polls are not somebody wearing a lab coat gathering data from a massive sampling of the population to reach some conclusion about a medicine or an idea of how the wind is blowing with regards to a given issue.
Not at all. These kinds of polls often have a very low response rate because it is not only voluntary, but the person looking to respond must seek out the question to answer it. That means going to the news organization's Webpage or social media page in order to vote.
Thus, only the most passionate people or the ones who really feel strongly about the topic of the question will go through that effort. For a lot of such polls on smaller market station Websites, 200 responses is a lot!
So a lot of these questions are about things that get people's ire up: abortion, gay marriage, the economy, debt, etc.
News organizations want to know what local people think about a given issue, so they ask a question.
However, because of the low response rate, these kinds of things are about as reliable as a broken gyroscope.
Only those who are genuinely interested in, or very passionate about the topic, will respond and they will most likely be very much for or against a given issue, especially when dealing with ones that cause such powerful responses as gay marriage or abortion.
These "hot button" issues are called that because of the vehemence with which people respond to them. And they have very vocal sides, for and against.
Like the more scientific polls, there are limitations to what kind of information can be gathered through such questions. The wording is one of the most important factors because the question may roil people's opinions, depending on the words used to ask it.
Something simple like "Are you for or against gay marriage?" may or may not get much of a response. It's pretty straight forward with responses limited to for, against and undecided.
But if you reword the question, you might get flack for it. Even writing it "Do you support gay marriage?" can completely change the kind of response a poll can get. While the choices would be yes, no or undecided, the simple fact that it's asking if you "support" something may mean the response will be slanted.
People may read the second version of the question to mean that the organization itself supports the issue involved. That may anger people and send more to vote, but it may also backlash in that people won't vote at all. They may also call or e-mail to complain.
There are some less scrupulous pollsters out there who seem to specifically word questions to get a certain answer.
There was even a political cartoon about that a while back, when George W. Bush was still in office, showing a poll taker asking questions at a person's door. The potential answers were Bush as president or some very weird, very extreme and nasty scenario. That's an outlier as an example, but they do seem to want certain answers, which is why I rarely take polls, especially political ones.
So the questions have to be very carefully worded to aim for that journalistic ideal: objectivity. No matter how impossible that ideal is to reach.
Do you have any idea how hard it is to write these questions in such a way that they do not show any slant on the part of the news organization?
From experience... It's nuts!
Even when you spend a long time working on the wording, it's still possible people will respond to it negatively based on a presumed bias. This may not be a fault of the poll at all, but a fault of the story to which the poll to tied.
To continue with the potential poll involving gay marriage, say the story is talking about a state that has just voted to allow it. Then ask the poll. Because of the story, potential voters may assume the news organization supports gay marriage because it's asking the question with a story in support of it.
I know that sounds somewhat confusing, but some decisions made by people are confusing and not even made consciously. It just clicks somewhere in the mind. Explainable or not, people may react and vote with their guts, not their conscious minds.
Sometimes questions asked by a news organization involve how a person would handle a given situation. Think of the sometimes controversial show "What Would You Do?" That's basically what it's doing.
The show creates a situation in which people who don't know the scenario is fake must decide how to react. They can take action, do nothing, wait until they feel safe enough to do something or any other number of potential reactions.
While it may not be necessarily good to compare this show to a poll, it is in essence a poll of emotions. Will people be mad enough, brave enough, crazy enough to do something to fix a given situation?
And they often pick things that are bound to get at least a few people's gorge, such as polygamy, child abuse, drunk driving, racism and many others.
Like the unconscious connection between the news organization's question and support for a controversial issue, it all plays on the emotions of the potential voter or actor. And emotions have never been called rational.
In these kinds of situations, and especially when asking a question on social media, you will get opinions.
On occasion, a news organization will want to run some of those comments, in print or on air. However, the organization has to be careful in doing so.
It has happened when someone will actually take offense at having his or her comment used without "asking permission" first, even if the comment is positive. However, the news organization will most likely respond that the person made the comment in a public forum (on the organization's Website or Facebook page), which means it can be used without specifically contacting the commentator and asking permission.
Or perhaps a viewer posted a very long, in-depth comment that is too much for the entirety to be republished. So the news organization will use part of it. This may result in complaints of taking something out of context by the person who made the comment.
Commentators, like people who vote in the polls, tend to be very passionate about a topic, and if they feel they have been slighted in any way, they will react just as quickly to protect themselves from any "taint," even if that taint is only perceived.
All in all, when you hear about a poll and a news organization, you simply cannot take that poll to be a cross-section of the general population. Only those who feel they have to respond will do so, which will probably slant the results in one direction or another.
It all depends on the poll, the topic, the wording, the passion of the responders.
In the end, a poll is a slice of the whole. Just not a perfect slice.
Saturday, August 6, 2011
Thursday, May 19, 2011
Political Screaming... AKA Whining and Fear Mongering - Part 1 - Coin Toss
The race for the White House has already begun again even though the election isn't until November 2012. And soon it will be flooding the airwaves and newspapers with oft-repeated, tired refrains and money.
Believe me, there are quite a few smaller market television stations that are gleefully awaiting that money because campaigns rupture cash into markets across the country.
I get the image in my mind of a greedy little gnome anxiously, or perhaps hungrily, rubbing his hands together and cackling in anticipation...
But you know what? It doesn't matter who's in office, which party that person represents, what color they are, what orientation, gender, etc...
There will always be people screaming, hollering out that who ever's in power is to blame for absolutely everything that's wrong in the world, in society, in culture and so forth today. Seems it's always the same people who are screaming, or at least the same rants being expressed.
However, everything is built on top of something else, much like how ancient cities have been found beneath modern ones in countries like Italy. It's a progression. No one thing is completely separate from everything else and everything that came before.
If the problems are coming to a head now, then they began to build sometime in the past, most likely before the last election. Probably even earlier than that.
On top of that, problems that are beginning to grow now will come to a head sometime in the future... Possibly after the next presidential election or even later.
But like the political cartoon in 2008 that showed Hillary Clinton, John Edwards and Barack Obama all wearing bulging diapers and shouting, "Change!" or like Robin Williams' character in "Man of the Year," Tom Dobbs, who jokes, "Politicians are a lot like diapers. They should be changed frequently, and for the same reason." (quoting Benjamin Franklin), there will always be a call for something different.
The old saying, "The grass is always greener..."
Well, guess what? It's not. It's the same stuff, just in a different spot, or a different rhetoric. And the same goes for pretty much all politicians as far as I have seen.
They boast and prance, pose and declare, but when it comes down to it, no matter what promises they made while campaigning, they will have to work with what ever currently exists. So a bad budget will continue to be a bad budget no matter who's trying to balance it.
People are going to respond to what's happening. Some of the commentary I have seen is outright hate-filled, outrageous and even completely ignorant.
Take, for example, the people who rant against one person now, and who will also rant against that person's successor in the future, saying almost the exact same things. Such is the case I have often seen when people get into political arguments.
"We're better, they're not." "We'll do what needs to be done and they won't." Us and them, two sides ever divided, no matter how alike they really are.
Good song for this - "Both Sides of the Coin" from "The Mystery of Edwin Drood" by Charles Dickens. Part of the duet:
"For is it I or is it me?
"And if I'm him and if I'm he/each on of us might not/Agree on what to do.
"And if I take opposing sides within myself,/Then who divides up what is right or wrong?
"I'll go along with you.
"Ha'penny, one penny, tupenny, thrupenny/Twelve to a shilling, twice that to a florin/To find the same face on both sides of the coin?/Bob is your uncle from pennies to guineas,/The two-sided mint is the rule, not exception,/And would you not quite feel quite the fool of deception/To find the same face on both sides of the coin?"
To hear the song - click here.
If you don't recognize the currency, those are old English coins. Nor am I either Rosencrantz or Guildenstern who find a coin on the side of the road that keeps coming up heads.
Politicians and their supporters sling mud back and forth, trying to dirty the other side, no matter which side of that proverbial coin happens to be facing up. But guess what? The person throwing the mud will still be spattered by the spray and will have a filthy hand in the meantime.
Even though I am not a Christian, did not Jesus say that he who is without sin can be the first to throw a stone? According to the Bible, since all people are born "tainted" with the so-called Original Sin of Eve, even if it is supposedly absolved by baptism, doesn't that indicate there is no one who is without sin?
Thus we end up with hate-filled ads on television or in the newspaper. For what else was the whole rigamarole with the Swiftboat Veterans or any of the other similar ads that come out with every single election for just about every single race, large and small?
They will attack. Sometimes they go after a specific thing a person has done, like how John Kerry supposedly kept harping on his Purple Hearts. Sometimes they go after an issue, such as current President Barack Obama's vote on the debt ceiling while holding a seat in the Senate.
Among the people screaming the loudest are those who protest what has already happened.
In this particular instance, I'm talking about an issue that was abolished more than 100 years ago: slavery and the Civil War (which actually began over state rights, not slavery). And all the angst that continues to broil to this day.
We're currently "celebrating" 150 years since the beginning of that war, an event most people agree occurred on April 12, 1861 at Fort Sumter in South Carolina. I have seen a reference to an earlier skirmish that took place in Florida in January 1861, but I haven't seen that much information on it, so I'm going to go with the April origin.
To this day, certain groups continue to wave the slavery flag, saying the descendents of the slaves are owed something. To be blunt, when was the last time they picked cotton or lived in a commune with no shoes, running water, dirt floors, etc. or were sold as chattel? It's in the past, so leave it there.
Of course, most people forget who the original slaves were: the American Indian tribes. Unfortunately, vast numbers of those people were wiped out by diseases brought over from Europe like small pox, typhus, measles, various sexually transmitted nasties, among others. Doesn't do the land owner any good to have a work force that drops dead, now does it?
So the land owners turned to another source of labor: the various African tribes that were constantly fighting amongst themselves in a region where enslaving the losers was traditional. So here we are with certain people still screaming over what was done in the past.
However! Those same groups keep throwing fits over references to that past. For instance, reprinting Mark Twain's "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" to remove all references to the "hated" n-word. Can't be that hated since it's used all the time in a certain style of music that began with the very culture that claims to hate it...
Of course, the people screaming over this one are forgetting one very simple fact: This book was written for its time period. That WAS a time when people of darker skin were sold as chattel with no name but their use (thus all the Smiths and Bakers and other such common surnames) or the name of their owner. So read it for its historical and cultural reference, but changing it now is a moot point!
Or in another example, the teacher trying to help students understand what a human auction was like by holding a mock one in her class (this happened in Virginia, a state that was a part of the Confederacy and where slavery was a common practice, including by such notable figures as Thomas Jefferson and George Washington). I will admit, this may not have been in the best of taste, but because slavery is a part of our history, we can't forget it.
We are not Stalinists who would rewrite the history of our country to make of it what we would wish and to eliminate that which is distasteful, unfortunate and uncomfortable.
I have been mocked for "going off" on certain topics and this is one of them. I am not Aunt Polly and I don't need my fence whitewashed. (That's a literary reference in case you would like to look it up.)
Teach me the history as it was, in as unvarnished a way as possible. (And in as objective a way as possible since all history books are written by the victors, which automatically means such texts are already biased.) What is important, what is significant behind the dates our children try to memorize in school?
Why? There's another saying that's very fitting here - Those who do not learn history (or forget it or ignore it) are doomed to repeat it.
Whitewashing the unpleasantness, covering it up, doesn't eliminate the fact that it existed.
My view - Ignorance breeds fear. Fear breeds prejudice. Prejudice breeds hate. Hate breeds destruction. And that in turn breeds deeper ignorance.
Political Screaming... AKA Whining and Fear Mongering - Part 2 - Playing on Fear
Believe me, there are quite a few smaller market television stations that are gleefully awaiting that money because campaigns rupture cash into markets across the country.
I get the image in my mind of a greedy little gnome anxiously, or perhaps hungrily, rubbing his hands together and cackling in anticipation...
But you know what? It doesn't matter who's in office, which party that person represents, what color they are, what orientation, gender, etc...
There will always be people screaming, hollering out that who ever's in power is to blame for absolutely everything that's wrong in the world, in society, in culture and so forth today. Seems it's always the same people who are screaming, or at least the same rants being expressed.
However, everything is built on top of something else, much like how ancient cities have been found beneath modern ones in countries like Italy. It's a progression. No one thing is completely separate from everything else and everything that came before.
If the problems are coming to a head now, then they began to build sometime in the past, most likely before the last election. Probably even earlier than that.
On top of that, problems that are beginning to grow now will come to a head sometime in the future... Possibly after the next presidential election or even later.
But like the political cartoon in 2008 that showed Hillary Clinton, John Edwards and Barack Obama all wearing bulging diapers and shouting, "Change!" or like Robin Williams' character in "Man of the Year," Tom Dobbs, who jokes, "Politicians are a lot like diapers. They should be changed frequently, and for the same reason." (quoting Benjamin Franklin), there will always be a call for something different.
The old saying, "The grass is always greener..."
Well, guess what? It's not. It's the same stuff, just in a different spot, or a different rhetoric. And the same goes for pretty much all politicians as far as I have seen.
They boast and prance, pose and declare, but when it comes down to it, no matter what promises they made while campaigning, they will have to work with what ever currently exists. So a bad budget will continue to be a bad budget no matter who's trying to balance it.
People are going to respond to what's happening. Some of the commentary I have seen is outright hate-filled, outrageous and even completely ignorant.
Take, for example, the people who rant against one person now, and who will also rant against that person's successor in the future, saying almost the exact same things. Such is the case I have often seen when people get into political arguments.
"We're better, they're not." "We'll do what needs to be done and they won't." Us and them, two sides ever divided, no matter how alike they really are.
Good song for this - "Both Sides of the Coin" from "The Mystery of Edwin Drood" by Charles Dickens. Part of the duet:
"For is it I or is it me?
"And if I'm him and if I'm he/each on of us might not/Agree on what to do.
"And if I take opposing sides within myself,/Then who divides up what is right or wrong?
"I'll go along with you.
"Ha'penny, one penny, tupenny, thrupenny/Twelve to a shilling, twice that to a florin/To find the same face on both sides of the coin?/Bob is your uncle from pennies to guineas,/The two-sided mint is the rule, not exception,/And would you not quite feel quite the fool of deception/To find the same face on both sides of the coin?"
To hear the song - click here.
If you don't recognize the currency, those are old English coins. Nor am I either Rosencrantz or Guildenstern who find a coin on the side of the road that keeps coming up heads.
Politicians and their supporters sling mud back and forth, trying to dirty the other side, no matter which side of that proverbial coin happens to be facing up. But guess what? The person throwing the mud will still be spattered by the spray and will have a filthy hand in the meantime.
Even though I am not a Christian, did not Jesus say that he who is without sin can be the first to throw a stone? According to the Bible, since all people are born "tainted" with the so-called Original Sin of Eve, even if it is supposedly absolved by baptism, doesn't that indicate there is no one who is without sin?
Thus we end up with hate-filled ads on television or in the newspaper. For what else was the whole rigamarole with the Swiftboat Veterans or any of the other similar ads that come out with every single election for just about every single race, large and small?
They will attack. Sometimes they go after a specific thing a person has done, like how John Kerry supposedly kept harping on his Purple Hearts. Sometimes they go after an issue, such as current President Barack Obama's vote on the debt ceiling while holding a seat in the Senate.
Among the people screaming the loudest are those who protest what has already happened.
In this particular instance, I'm talking about an issue that was abolished more than 100 years ago: slavery and the Civil War (which actually began over state rights, not slavery). And all the angst that continues to broil to this day.
We're currently "celebrating" 150 years since the beginning of that war, an event most people agree occurred on April 12, 1861 at Fort Sumter in South Carolina. I have seen a reference to an earlier skirmish that took place in Florida in January 1861, but I haven't seen that much information on it, so I'm going to go with the April origin.
To this day, certain groups continue to wave the slavery flag, saying the descendents of the slaves are owed something. To be blunt, when was the last time they picked cotton or lived in a commune with no shoes, running water, dirt floors, etc. or were sold as chattel? It's in the past, so leave it there.
Of course, most people forget who the original slaves were: the American Indian tribes. Unfortunately, vast numbers of those people were wiped out by diseases brought over from Europe like small pox, typhus, measles, various sexually transmitted nasties, among others. Doesn't do the land owner any good to have a work force that drops dead, now does it?
So the land owners turned to another source of labor: the various African tribes that were constantly fighting amongst themselves in a region where enslaving the losers was traditional. So here we are with certain people still screaming over what was done in the past.
However! Those same groups keep throwing fits over references to that past. For instance, reprinting Mark Twain's "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" to remove all references to the "hated" n-word. Can't be that hated since it's used all the time in a certain style of music that began with the very culture that claims to hate it...
Of course, the people screaming over this one are forgetting one very simple fact: This book was written for its time period. That WAS a time when people of darker skin were sold as chattel with no name but their use (thus all the Smiths and Bakers and other such common surnames) or the name of their owner. So read it for its historical and cultural reference, but changing it now is a moot point!
Or in another example, the teacher trying to help students understand what a human auction was like by holding a mock one in her class (this happened in Virginia, a state that was a part of the Confederacy and where slavery was a common practice, including by such notable figures as Thomas Jefferson and George Washington). I will admit, this may not have been in the best of taste, but because slavery is a part of our history, we can't forget it.
We are not Stalinists who would rewrite the history of our country to make of it what we would wish and to eliminate that which is distasteful, unfortunate and uncomfortable.
I have been mocked for "going off" on certain topics and this is one of them. I am not Aunt Polly and I don't need my fence whitewashed. (That's a literary reference in case you would like to look it up.)
Teach me the history as it was, in as unvarnished a way as possible. (And in as objective a way as possible since all history books are written by the victors, which automatically means such texts are already biased.) What is important, what is significant behind the dates our children try to memorize in school?
Why? There's another saying that's very fitting here - Those who do not learn history (or forget it or ignore it) are doomed to repeat it.
Whitewashing the unpleasantness, covering it up, doesn't eliminate the fact that it existed.
My view - Ignorance breeds fear. Fear breeds prejudice. Prejudice breeds hate. Hate breeds destruction. And that in turn breeds deeper ignorance.
Political Screaming... AKA Whining and Fear Mongering - Part 2 - Playing on Fear
Political Screaming... AKA Whining and Fear Mongering - Part 2 - Playing on Fear
Like I said above, we can't forget what happened. Still, we really shouldn't dwell on it either.
Remember it, learn from it and move on.
In recent years, numerous states have issued "apologies" for slavery (though how truly sincere those "apologies" were I rather question since they are politically driven) or had to change state flags to remove Confederate emblems or students have been ordered to remove Confederate flags from their vehicles so as not to intimidate classmates and community members.
It's the whole racism versus cultural/historical pride argument. Plus those "apologies" are never addressed to the first slaves, only to the loudest.
And I'm no white supremacist. I hold that no one group is better than any other just because of skin tone, eye color or hair color, let alone faith or beliefs. I feel that all people of all creeds are worthy of respect and fair treatment. As a person who is different based on my beliefs, if not my olivine-skinned appearance, I understand far better than I think many realize what it is to be judged based on one aspect of who and what I am.
On more than one occasion, people have asked me what my background is, based on my appearance. I've been asked if I was Muslim or Jewish. I've even been asked which country I'm from, including Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Greece, Italy and India among others. In essence, it's not a good thing to judge a person based on their looks alone or to separate people based on appearance, beliefs (religious or political) or any other "us-or-them" tactic.
Indeed, I think such isolationist views will and have done far more harm than ever they did any good. And the symbols associated with them need to again be considered in their cultural and historical context.
For example, take the swastika. Adolph Hitler, a very superstitious man who had a great interest in the occult, took an ancient emblem and "twisted" it to his own ends. Thus, a symbol that had existed for thousands of years as one of eternity and the cycle of life became instead a symbol of death and hate.
The rolling logs, as the original symbol is often called, has been found in cultures all over the world, from the American Indian to the Hindu. Few people remember that now because all we hear are the people who continue to use this symbol to intimidate those who are different. They scream their hate and torment those who don't agree. What else would a burning cross in a yard or a noose hung in somebody's locker represent?
Unfortunately, it is human nature to destroy that which is not understood or unknown and is thus feared. And in the end, some media outlets play on this fear by broadcasting or printing extremist opinions and pundits... Not going to name any names there as I'm sure you can think of a few for yourself, perhaps even different ones from the ones I'm thinking of based on your view.
Even in such pieces, we don't hear or see the whole story. Only one aspect of it because of the editing, the video clips, and the time or space limitations.
Thinking about it, this is along the same lines as the religious "tensions" that exist, whether between the differing sects of one religion or between differing religions entirely.
Plenty of blood has been spilt in the name of a god with both sides screaming that whichever god is on its side! Thus we had the Crusades, of which there were several over a span of about two centuries, all fought over who controlled what is known in all three major, monotheistic faiths currently in existence as the Holy Land. These bloody campaigns were sanctioned by faith! And politics. Unfortunately, thousands lost their lives to them, on both sides and from all of the faiths involved. These "wars of faith" were extremely bloody and brutal, set as they were in a brutal time.
So much lost in the name of religion and politics, from lives to history to culture and more.
Basically all this, in the political and religious fields, boils back down to one thing: Fear.
Fear of change, fear of losing control, fear of what might be, fear of letting go, equals fear of difference.
As President Andrew Shepherd (played by Michael Douglas in "The American President) says, "And whatever your particular problem is, I promise you that Bob Rumson is not the least bit interested in solving it. He is interested in two things and two things only: Making you afraid of it and telling you who's to blame for it. That, ladies and gentlemen, is how you win elections."
Politicians will take any advantage they can, including attacking the past of their opponent or of someone close to that opponent.
For example, Shepherd's speech continues, "You gather a group of middle-aged, middle class, middle-income voters who remember with longing an easier time. You talk to them about family and American values and character. Then you wave an old photo of the president's girlfriend and you scream about patriotism and you tell them she's to blame for their lot in life and you go on television and you call her a whore..."
Another example of this could be the questions asked over where Obama was really born, and those who demanded to see the original documents, the "birthers," who then refused to believe in the validity of the documents when both versions were produced.
Being afraid of something doesn't mean you have to tear it down. Face it and make your self stronger by understanding it. Don't scream your fear and rant against the people in power. That just makes you look like a fool.
From Frank Herbert's "Dune" -
"I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain."
(There are also variants to this that says "I shall not fear" or "And when it has gone past me I will turn to see fear's path." Depends on which you prefer.)
Political Screaming... AKA Whining and Fear Mongering - Part 3 - End Game
Remember it, learn from it and move on.
In recent years, numerous states have issued "apologies" for slavery (though how truly sincere those "apologies" were I rather question since they are politically driven) or had to change state flags to remove Confederate emblems or students have been ordered to remove Confederate flags from their vehicles so as not to intimidate classmates and community members.
It's the whole racism versus cultural/historical pride argument. Plus those "apologies" are never addressed to the first slaves, only to the loudest.
And I'm no white supremacist. I hold that no one group is better than any other just because of skin tone, eye color or hair color, let alone faith or beliefs. I feel that all people of all creeds are worthy of respect and fair treatment. As a person who is different based on my beliefs, if not my olivine-skinned appearance, I understand far better than I think many realize what it is to be judged based on one aspect of who and what I am.
On more than one occasion, people have asked me what my background is, based on my appearance. I've been asked if I was Muslim or Jewish. I've even been asked which country I'm from, including Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Greece, Italy and India among others. In essence, it's not a good thing to judge a person based on their looks alone or to separate people based on appearance, beliefs (religious or political) or any other "us-or-them" tactic.
Indeed, I think such isolationist views will and have done far more harm than ever they did any good. And the symbols associated with them need to again be considered in their cultural and historical context.
For example, take the swastika. Adolph Hitler, a very superstitious man who had a great interest in the occult, took an ancient emblem and "twisted" it to his own ends. Thus, a symbol that had existed for thousands of years as one of eternity and the cycle of life became instead a symbol of death and hate.
The rolling logs, as the original symbol is often called, has been found in cultures all over the world, from the American Indian to the Hindu. Few people remember that now because all we hear are the people who continue to use this symbol to intimidate those who are different. They scream their hate and torment those who don't agree. What else would a burning cross in a yard or a noose hung in somebody's locker represent?
Unfortunately, it is human nature to destroy that which is not understood or unknown and is thus feared. And in the end, some media outlets play on this fear by broadcasting or printing extremist opinions and pundits... Not going to name any names there as I'm sure you can think of a few for yourself, perhaps even different ones from the ones I'm thinking of based on your view.
Even in such pieces, we don't hear or see the whole story. Only one aspect of it because of the editing, the video clips, and the time or space limitations.
Thinking about it, this is along the same lines as the religious "tensions" that exist, whether between the differing sects of one religion or between differing religions entirely.
Plenty of blood has been spilt in the name of a god with both sides screaming that whichever god is on its side! Thus we had the Crusades, of which there were several over a span of about two centuries, all fought over who controlled what is known in all three major, monotheistic faiths currently in existence as the Holy Land. These bloody campaigns were sanctioned by faith! And politics. Unfortunately, thousands lost their lives to them, on both sides and from all of the faiths involved. These "wars of faith" were extremely bloody and brutal, set as they were in a brutal time.
So much lost in the name of religion and politics, from lives to history to culture and more.
Basically all this, in the political and religious fields, boils back down to one thing: Fear.
Fear of change, fear of losing control, fear of what might be, fear of letting go, equals fear of difference.
As President Andrew Shepherd (played by Michael Douglas in "The American President) says, "And whatever your particular problem is, I promise you that Bob Rumson is not the least bit interested in solving it. He is interested in two things and two things only: Making you afraid of it and telling you who's to blame for it. That, ladies and gentlemen, is how you win elections."
Politicians will take any advantage they can, including attacking the past of their opponent or of someone close to that opponent.
For example, Shepherd's speech continues, "You gather a group of middle-aged, middle class, middle-income voters who remember with longing an easier time. You talk to them about family and American values and character. Then you wave an old photo of the president's girlfriend and you scream about patriotism and you tell them she's to blame for their lot in life and you go on television and you call her a whore..."
Another example of this could be the questions asked over where Obama was really born, and those who demanded to see the original documents, the "birthers," who then refused to believe in the validity of the documents when both versions were produced.
Being afraid of something doesn't mean you have to tear it down. Face it and make your self stronger by understanding it. Don't scream your fear and rant against the people in power. That just makes you look like a fool.
From Frank Herbert's "Dune" -
"I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain."
(There are also variants to this that says "I shall not fear" or "And when it has gone past me I will turn to see fear's path." Depends on which you prefer.)
Political Screaming... AKA Whining and Fear Mongering - Part 3 - End Game
Political Screaming... AKA Whining and Fear Mongering - Part 3 - End Game
To live is to change. There is no point in fearing it and we can't know until it has already happened whether the change has improved our lives and situations or whether it made matters worse.
Charles Darwin is known for observing such a series of events or instances when he reached the Galapagos Islands all those decades ago. He found similar, yet different, species on each island that had adapted to their specific climes in order to survive. He postulated, and proved, that these animals had to evolve, thus change, to live.
You can even see a similar progression in the formation of zygote which grows into an embryo which grows into a fetus within the human womb. At first, it is tiny and may even resemble a tadpole, with gills and a tail. As it grows, it changes, eventually becoming the oh so familiar image of a human infant. And from that bald, squalling infant comes a man or woman who grows, and changes, over the years until that person reaches the grizzled, hump-backed (and possibly bald) time of old age.
Indeed, old age will happen no matter how much you try to fight it. So all the Botox, the tucks and other tricks, all they will do is hide your age, not reverse it. So what if I have some silver in my hair that really stands out against my dark auburn locks? I'm not a spring chicken, and I have had some silver mixed in for close to ten years already, even though I am still some distance from middle age.
Like one of my favorite bumper stickers says, "Growing old is mandatory, Growing up is optional."
It's rather interesting watching the so-called "career politicians" who get into office when they are fairly young and then serve into their dotage. Some, like Robert Byrd of West Virginia, have even died in office after serving for several decades.
Too bad the politicians can't see that their old, tired refrains are losing the audience's interest. For as the bard (William Shakespeare) once wrote in "As You Like It,"
"All the world's a stage,/And all the men and women merely players;/They have their exits and their entrances;/And one man in his time plays many parts,/His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,/Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms;/And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel/And shining morning face, creeping like snail/Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,/Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad/Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,/Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard,/Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,/Seeking the bubble reputation/Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice,/In fair round belly with good capon lin'd,/With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,/Full of wise saws and modern instances;/And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts/Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon,/With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;/His youthful hose, well sav'd, a world too wide/For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,/Turning again toward childish treble, pipes/And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,/That ends this strange eventful history,/Is second childishness and mere oblivion;/Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything."
They are the players with the thicker script book, though how well they stick to their lines might be questionable.
In some productions, most notably melodramas like "Edwin Drood," the actors want the audience to participate. Of course, actors and any performers on stage would love to get that coveted "Standing O" at the end of every performance.
I personally have never been to a political rally, but my sister and her husband have gone to one and I have watched clips from rallies on television and online.
Candidates will do all in their power to entice the voters. They rev the people, their audience, into a frenzy with passionate declarations for change. They adapt their phrases and phraseology to whatever they think the people want to hear the most in order to lure them to that person's "side," to that person's line on the ballot.
And despite the promises and passion of the campaign trail, once any politician is vested in his or her office, these politicians become trapped in the web that has become our government. And thus does the audience begin to boo, for the promises are left in the dust of reality's truth.
All the people that praised the candidate for candor or promise or vision, they are the first that cry foul when that candor is muddled, that promise is broken and that vision grows dim.
In quoting Edmund Burke, a member of the British Parliament, Dr. Lyman Hall, a colonial congressman from Georgia (played by Jonathan Moore in the movie version of "1776"), says, "And in trying to resolve my dilemma, I remembered something I once read. 'That a representative owes the people not only his industry but his judgment and he betrays them if he sacrifices it to their opinion.'"
Heck, opinions can be altered by numbers. And the very numbers upon which those opinions are based, the statistics behind the polls, can be manipulated by many factors including the wording of questions, the attitude of the questioner, the passion of the responder and more. These are but a few examples out of the myriad ways numbers can be massaged to seem to say one thing even if they actually show another.
Truthfully, it seems to me that it's nothing more than a farce these days. Especially because the changes simply can't happen overnight, no matter how many brave promises are sworn on a campaign trail.
Used to be that when a person broke a promise, broke an oath, that person would become besmirched. That person's reputation would be ruined and he or she would be shunned as untrustworthy, an oath-breaker. Some cultures would even kill such people.
How far we have come from those days of true integrity to now. Promises are broken left and right, on both sides of the aisle and in both chambers of Congress. Doesn't matter which party made the oath.
Still, the populace continues to cling to the shred of hope left within Pandora's Box. Without hope, there can be no thought of a future with happiness and safety. Thus, the people keep turning on the television, making campaign contributions, attending rousing rallies and even wending their way to the polling booth on Election Day, all for hope.
They hope the promises will be kept, that change will be made. That dreams will come true.
Though when you walk into the polling place and the only thought in your mind is, "Which of these would be the lesser evil?" Is this anyway to make such an important choice?
However, all things, especially reaching any goals, any change, take time.
Now I'm not saying that all change is progress. And progress for the sake of progress isn't always a good thing. Sometimes it's nice to keep things simple. And sometimes the change is actually a step backwards instead of one forward.
As Andrew Shepherd said in the same speech quoted above, "America is advanced citizenship. You've got to want it bad because it's going to put up a fight. It's going to say, 'You want free speech? Let's see you acknowledge a man whose words make your blood boil, who's standing center stage and advocating at the top of his lungs that which you would spend a lifetime opposing at the top of yours. You want to claim this land is the land of the free? Then the symbol of your country cannot just be a flag. The symbol also has to be one of its citizens exercising his right to burn that flag in protest. Now show me that, defend that, celebrate that in your classrooms. Then you can standup and sing about the land of the free."
Freedom could be considered a two-edged sword according to that description. But the sword can be turned to good, can take the head of the hydra that has become politics in this country.
However, hydras are notorious for one major thing: take one head and the neck will split into two, thus actually creating a worse situation than what already existed. That is unless you burn the stump of the neck, which prevents it from splitting.
The same could be said of the killing of Osama bim Laden for he is now a martyr and his people will hold him up as an example, thus demonizing the SEAL team and the Americans cheering them on for their actions.
So in the end, these fights based on politics, or religion, will be futile. As the computer Joshua said in the movie "WarGames," "A strange game. The only winning move is not to play."
Charles Darwin is known for observing such a series of events or instances when he reached the Galapagos Islands all those decades ago. He found similar, yet different, species on each island that had adapted to their specific climes in order to survive. He postulated, and proved, that these animals had to evolve, thus change, to live.
You can even see a similar progression in the formation of zygote which grows into an embryo which grows into a fetus within the human womb. At first, it is tiny and may even resemble a tadpole, with gills and a tail. As it grows, it changes, eventually becoming the oh so familiar image of a human infant. And from that bald, squalling infant comes a man or woman who grows, and changes, over the years until that person reaches the grizzled, hump-backed (and possibly bald) time of old age.
Indeed, old age will happen no matter how much you try to fight it. So all the Botox, the tucks and other tricks, all they will do is hide your age, not reverse it. So what if I have some silver in my hair that really stands out against my dark auburn locks? I'm not a spring chicken, and I have had some silver mixed in for close to ten years already, even though I am still some distance from middle age.
Like one of my favorite bumper stickers says, "Growing old is mandatory, Growing up is optional."
It's rather interesting watching the so-called "career politicians" who get into office when they are fairly young and then serve into their dotage. Some, like Robert Byrd of West Virginia, have even died in office after serving for several decades.
Too bad the politicians can't see that their old, tired refrains are losing the audience's interest. For as the bard (William Shakespeare) once wrote in "As You Like It,"
"All the world's a stage,/And all the men and women merely players;/They have their exits and their entrances;/And one man in his time plays many parts,/His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,/Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms;/And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel/And shining morning face, creeping like snail/Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,/Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad/Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,/Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard,/Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,/Seeking the bubble reputation/Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice,/In fair round belly with good capon lin'd,/With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,/Full of wise saws and modern instances;/And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts/Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon,/With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;/His youthful hose, well sav'd, a world too wide/For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,/Turning again toward childish treble, pipes/And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,/That ends this strange eventful history,/Is second childishness and mere oblivion;/Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything."
They are the players with the thicker script book, though how well they stick to their lines might be questionable.
In some productions, most notably melodramas like "Edwin Drood," the actors want the audience to participate. Of course, actors and any performers on stage would love to get that coveted "Standing O" at the end of every performance.
I personally have never been to a political rally, but my sister and her husband have gone to one and I have watched clips from rallies on television and online.
Candidates will do all in their power to entice the voters. They rev the people, their audience, into a frenzy with passionate declarations for change. They adapt their phrases and phraseology to whatever they think the people want to hear the most in order to lure them to that person's "side," to that person's line on the ballot.
And despite the promises and passion of the campaign trail, once any politician is vested in his or her office, these politicians become trapped in the web that has become our government. And thus does the audience begin to boo, for the promises are left in the dust of reality's truth.
All the people that praised the candidate for candor or promise or vision, they are the first that cry foul when that candor is muddled, that promise is broken and that vision grows dim.
In quoting Edmund Burke, a member of the British Parliament, Dr. Lyman Hall, a colonial congressman from Georgia (played by Jonathan Moore in the movie version of "1776"), says, "And in trying to resolve my dilemma, I remembered something I once read. 'That a representative owes the people not only his industry but his judgment and he betrays them if he sacrifices it to their opinion.'"
Heck, opinions can be altered by numbers. And the very numbers upon which those opinions are based, the statistics behind the polls, can be manipulated by many factors including the wording of questions, the attitude of the questioner, the passion of the responder and more. These are but a few examples out of the myriad ways numbers can be massaged to seem to say one thing even if they actually show another.
Truthfully, it seems to me that it's nothing more than a farce these days. Especially because the changes simply can't happen overnight, no matter how many brave promises are sworn on a campaign trail.
Used to be that when a person broke a promise, broke an oath, that person would become besmirched. That person's reputation would be ruined and he or she would be shunned as untrustworthy, an oath-breaker. Some cultures would even kill such people.
How far we have come from those days of true integrity to now. Promises are broken left and right, on both sides of the aisle and in both chambers of Congress. Doesn't matter which party made the oath.
Still, the populace continues to cling to the shred of hope left within Pandora's Box. Without hope, there can be no thought of a future with happiness and safety. Thus, the people keep turning on the television, making campaign contributions, attending rousing rallies and even wending their way to the polling booth on Election Day, all for hope.
They hope the promises will be kept, that change will be made. That dreams will come true.
Though when you walk into the polling place and the only thought in your mind is, "Which of these would be the lesser evil?" Is this anyway to make such an important choice?
However, all things, especially reaching any goals, any change, take time.
Now I'm not saying that all change is progress. And progress for the sake of progress isn't always a good thing. Sometimes it's nice to keep things simple. And sometimes the change is actually a step backwards instead of one forward.
As Andrew Shepherd said in the same speech quoted above, "America is advanced citizenship. You've got to want it bad because it's going to put up a fight. It's going to say, 'You want free speech? Let's see you acknowledge a man whose words make your blood boil, who's standing center stage and advocating at the top of his lungs that which you would spend a lifetime opposing at the top of yours. You want to claim this land is the land of the free? Then the symbol of your country cannot just be a flag. The symbol also has to be one of its citizens exercising his right to burn that flag in protest. Now show me that, defend that, celebrate that in your classrooms. Then you can standup and sing about the land of the free."
Freedom could be considered a two-edged sword according to that description. But the sword can be turned to good, can take the head of the hydra that has become politics in this country.
However, hydras are notorious for one major thing: take one head and the neck will split into two, thus actually creating a worse situation than what already existed. That is unless you burn the stump of the neck, which prevents it from splitting.
The same could be said of the killing of Osama bim Laden for he is now a martyr and his people will hold him up as an example, thus demonizing the SEAL team and the Americans cheering them on for their actions.
So in the end, these fights based on politics, or religion, will be futile. As the computer Joshua said in the movie "WarGames," "A strange game. The only winning move is not to play."
Monday, March 14, 2011
Weathering the Weather
I've heard it more times than I care to count - Viewers are most interested in the weather, so even though the homepage of a given site will be the first to come up, many will click immediately on the weather tab.
So one of the main functions of a person like me is to help viewers get the information they need as quickly as possible when it comes to weather alerts.
I've seen it happen that on a day when there is severe weather, views on a news Website will skyrocket.
Where I currently work, one of our busiest online days involved a very nasty winter storm that dumped a huge amount of snow on the area. We hit more than 200,000 views on that day alone.
And the weather has been very freaky these last couple of years. From the record-breaking snowfall amounts in my part of Virginia in 2009/2010 to the kind of nasty, super humid heat you don't normally see this far inland. Now we're got the kind of biting cold I haven't felt since I moved out of New Jersey more than a decade ago.
The effects of this crazy weather will be felt on all levels of society from the outdoorsy who like to hunt but won't have as large an opportunity to do so because of falling wildlife populations, to people looking at supplies in the grocery stores where prices are climbing, to people born under that wandering star who want to get away but can't afford it because gas has gotten so high...
So I understand that people want to know what the weather's going to do. Then there are the calls from people asking, "Is it gonna storm tomorra?" Well, when they start giving you their exact address and expect you to give them a weather forecast for that location, it's just a tad ridiculous.
I think my biggest beef with weather complaints comes when I get yelled at by a viewer because the station is cutting in every 15 minutes for a weather alert, say a tornado warning, and the person couldn't watch one of his or her favorite shows. The complaint being that the warning didn't cover that specific person's area, so why was the station interrupting his or her entertainment?
Take a Severe Thunderstorm Warning for example. Or that Tornado Warning. Or a Winter Weather Warning. First off, the National Weather Service is NOT going to issue one of these alerts just on a whim!
Like people who scream "global warming" (though the newer "global climate change" may be more applicable) is a myth, that it's just a fantasy, but fail to consider that scientists must use the Scientific Method to reach conclusions and that method requires data to be replicable... There is science behind what the NWS predicts.
Predictions may not be all that good days out, but within a couple of hours or even minutes, they're usually pretty accurate. There is no such thing as a "guaranteed forecast," because that's an oxymoron!
So we've got a warning out there. Even if it's a hyper-local one, say for just one town, there is still a need to get that information out to all. Such weather developments, when they occur, can be quite fast moving, which means they may affect more than just the initial place under the issued warning.
This is especially true for tornadoes, to which anyone who has lived in "Tornado Alley" will attest as they have seen such storms tear across the landscape at breakneck speeds, wreaking havoc and destruction in their wake.
Sometimes warnings only cover one part of an area, say the eastern section of a given county. And then a second one can crop up that covers a different portion of the same county for a different time frame... So more people affected!
The sheer numbers are what matter here. Television stations want to keep people safe, so even if your favorite show is being cut off by the weather alerts, it's still a heads up, especially in smaller markets that cover a "small" area. Why? Because of the size of the area, you're more likely to be affected by the same situation.
And in truth, the Shenandoah Valley is not that big.
In order to get the relevant information out in a timely fashion, news outlets are using numerous resources ranging from cut-ins on air to text alerts to statuses on Facebook.
For the text messages, a person can sometimes sign up to get alerts for just a specific place, say the county in which that person lives. But for the on-air and online stuff, they can't be that specific.
So if I put up a marquee on the Website, a Desktop Alert crawl or a status on Facebook announcing a weather alert, everyone is going to see the same message no matter where they are. I can't assign such a thing to only show itself to people living in a certain area or using a certain IP address.
On top of that, weather situations sometimes change so quickly, no one person can keep up. On those kinds of days, I will often put up a message saying, "Tune in for information as it becomes available" rather than try to update a marquee or status with every change...
Even I know seeing a ton of similar messages gets irritating, so I try and keep such messages to a minimum if I can... Though I've gotten in trouble for both sending out too many and sending out too few... If that makes any sense.
One the one hand, some people appreciate it and the higher-ups encourage frequent messages to the viewers. Then you have the people that find it annoying and say they are going to stop watching/reading because of it...
Caught between the viewers/readers and the boss. Never a fun position in which to find yourself. And so the fulcrum continues its endless dance to find balance...
The weather is always changing, as any meteorologist will tell you. You don't like the weather right now? Out in Columbia, Missouri, people say just wait a few minutes because it'll change.
And news people like me can only try to keep up. I'm no Data! Nor am I Watson. (Not even Sherlock's companion...) So I'm along for the ride just as much as anyone else in the community.
We want to help people know what's coming and how they can protect themselves from a potentially dangerous situation. And we will use every resource at our disposal to do so.
So keep a sailor's weather eye to the sky and an emergency TV or radio nearby!
So one of the main functions of a person like me is to help viewers get the information they need as quickly as possible when it comes to weather alerts.
I've seen it happen that on a day when there is severe weather, views on a news Website will skyrocket.
Where I currently work, one of our busiest online days involved a very nasty winter storm that dumped a huge amount of snow on the area. We hit more than 200,000 views on that day alone.
And the weather has been very freaky these last couple of years. From the record-breaking snowfall amounts in my part of Virginia in 2009/2010 to the kind of nasty, super humid heat you don't normally see this far inland. Now we're got the kind of biting cold I haven't felt since I moved out of New Jersey more than a decade ago.
The effects of this crazy weather will be felt on all levels of society from the outdoorsy who like to hunt but won't have as large an opportunity to do so because of falling wildlife populations, to people looking at supplies in the grocery stores where prices are climbing, to people born under that wandering star who want to get away but can't afford it because gas has gotten so high...
So I understand that people want to know what the weather's going to do. Then there are the calls from people asking, "Is it gonna storm tomorra?" Well, when they start giving you their exact address and expect you to give them a weather forecast for that location, it's just a tad ridiculous.
I think my biggest beef with weather complaints comes when I get yelled at by a viewer because the station is cutting in every 15 minutes for a weather alert, say a tornado warning, and the person couldn't watch one of his or her favorite shows. The complaint being that the warning didn't cover that specific person's area, so why was the station interrupting his or her entertainment?
Take a Severe Thunderstorm Warning for example. Or that Tornado Warning. Or a Winter Weather Warning. First off, the National Weather Service is NOT going to issue one of these alerts just on a whim!
Like people who scream "global warming" (though the newer "global climate change" may be more applicable) is a myth, that it's just a fantasy, but fail to consider that scientists must use the Scientific Method to reach conclusions and that method requires data to be replicable... There is science behind what the NWS predicts.
Predictions may not be all that good days out, but within a couple of hours or even minutes, they're usually pretty accurate. There is no such thing as a "guaranteed forecast," because that's an oxymoron!
So we've got a warning out there. Even if it's a hyper-local one, say for just one town, there is still a need to get that information out to all. Such weather developments, when they occur, can be quite fast moving, which means they may affect more than just the initial place under the issued warning.
This is especially true for tornadoes, to which anyone who has lived in "Tornado Alley" will attest as they have seen such storms tear across the landscape at breakneck speeds, wreaking havoc and destruction in their wake.
Sometimes warnings only cover one part of an area, say the eastern section of a given county. And then a second one can crop up that covers a different portion of the same county for a different time frame... So more people affected!
The sheer numbers are what matter here. Television stations want to keep people safe, so even if your favorite show is being cut off by the weather alerts, it's still a heads up, especially in smaller markets that cover a "small" area. Why? Because of the size of the area, you're more likely to be affected by the same situation.
And in truth, the Shenandoah Valley is not that big.
In order to get the relevant information out in a timely fashion, news outlets are using numerous resources ranging from cut-ins on air to text alerts to statuses on Facebook.
For the text messages, a person can sometimes sign up to get alerts for just a specific place, say the county in which that person lives. But for the on-air and online stuff, they can't be that specific.
So if I put up a marquee on the Website, a Desktop Alert crawl or a status on Facebook announcing a weather alert, everyone is going to see the same message no matter where they are. I can't assign such a thing to only show itself to people living in a certain area or using a certain IP address.
On top of that, weather situations sometimes change so quickly, no one person can keep up. On those kinds of days, I will often put up a message saying, "Tune in for information as it becomes available" rather than try to update a marquee or status with every change...
Even I know seeing a ton of similar messages gets irritating, so I try and keep such messages to a minimum if I can... Though I've gotten in trouble for both sending out too many and sending out too few... If that makes any sense.
One the one hand, some people appreciate it and the higher-ups encourage frequent messages to the viewers. Then you have the people that find it annoying and say they are going to stop watching/reading because of it...
Caught between the viewers/readers and the boss. Never a fun position in which to find yourself. And so the fulcrum continues its endless dance to find balance...
The weather is always changing, as any meteorologist will tell you. You don't like the weather right now? Out in Columbia, Missouri, people say just wait a few minutes because it'll change.
And news people like me can only try to keep up. I'm no Data! Nor am I Watson. (Not even Sherlock's companion...) So I'm along for the ride just as much as anyone else in the community.
We want to help people know what's coming and how they can protect themselves from a potentially dangerous situation. And we will use every resource at our disposal to do so.
So keep a sailor's weather eye to the sky and an emergency TV or radio nearby!
Saturday, February 19, 2011
Oh the Marvelous, Myriad Morass of Malaprops!
Sometimes they are funny, sometimes they are just dumbfounding. But these mistakes, if you catch them, might just strike one of those chords.
And no, I'm not pulling a V with that title. (By the way, I'm also not referencing the weird TV series about the aliens with this comment. It's from a comic that was made into a movie in 2006.)
But first, you might be wondering what exactly a malapropism is. Well, there are two ways to find out. You can go read the play "The Rivals" by Richard Sheridan and intuit it from the text, or you can just look it up, which isn't as much fun.
In the end, a malapropism happens when a person says or writes a word correctly but uses it in the wrong context. My copy of the "Webster Contemporary Dictionary" says a malapropism is "an absurd misuse of words that sound somewhat alike."
One of my favorites from the play will always be the "allegory on the banks of the Nile." Though being a "progeny of learning" is something else entirely, and you had better watch out for those "contagious countries" in Europe.
By the way, "The Rivals" isn't a new play by any means. It was written in the 18th century. I believe it was first performed in the mid-1770s.
On a personal note, I had the pleasure of playing this role in high school, in 1999.*
In an earlier post, I mentioned President "Back" Obama and all the things we take for "granite."
One word: Oops.
So if the number of traffic "fatties" is going down, someone is graduating with a "bachelorette" degree, a teenager has been arrested and charged with "passion" of a controlled substance, or you ask for forgiveness saying you will go "flatulate" yourself... Well I think those speak for themselves.
And before you accuse me of making any of those up, I have to say no, I'm not. Every single one of those is a malapropism I have seen or heard. And they are only a few, choice picks, of the mass of such mistakes I have seen.
These may seem like fairly obvious mistakes, but, as I stated in that aforementioned earlier post, you won't catch them unless you proofread. And even then, some might get through.
Still, even in a potentially serious situation, you can find a moment of hilarity. For instance, near the beginning of the H1N1 influenza pandemic, my mother and I accompanied my father to the emergency room after he had fallen one night. While there, I noticed a sign posted on one of the cabinets about hand washing when entering and "existing" a room.
I would certainly hope a person would be existing when entering such a place. And remaining that way upon exiting would be a plus.
Especially for all those drug "attics" who just have to get their fix, ranging from oxycodone to "plackebos." I couldn't figure out any other way to write that one to show how the person mispronounced it...
Enough with the examples for while.
Even though these mistakes can be funny, just like bad writing and grammar, they reduce the credibility of the writer. That is if a reader even notices the mistake.
What makes malapropisms so very tricky is the simple fact that the word IS similar even though it's incorrect. Take the "bachelorette" degree for example. The correct word would be baccalaureate or maybe bachelor's. But if you weren't sure how to spell the correct word, you might take a guess and then use spell check. That might bring up the other, like the horror story I was once heard about a graduate student writing his thesis on Madame "Ovary."
I've mentioned before that sometimes my brain will simply not a register a mistake because to me, it looks correct. But then fresh eyes find problems.
For example, in my post about the spelling and grammar problems in text language, I accidentally wrote something was "detonating" rather than denoting. My sister caught that one, so I'm just as likely to make these mistakes as anyone else.
I have never claimed that I don't make mistakes when it comes to my writing, but that's why, in my proofreading post, I talked about having fresh eyes look at something I write to make sure it's correct.
In the same way, other people may be reading so quickly, they will simply breeze over a mistake like a malapropism and their brain will read it the way it's supposed to be.
Just like this line a co-worker sent to me once - "Too bee, ore naught (knot) two bee." All those words are spelled correctly and the line still reads correctly, but if you've ever read "Hamlet," you'll know it's wrong. Heck, even if you haven't read "Hamlet," just about everybody knows that line and would recognize it (even in Klingon).
In the end though, it all comes back to looking over the words on the paper or on the screen.
Probably the biggest problem with malapropisms is the simple fact that, for many, spell check won't catch them.
So back to proofreading.
Please, I don't want to be "scent" to jail for pointing out these glitches, but still, nothing, ABSOLUTELY nothing replaces proofreading as a way to prevent them.
* Funny story related to my playing Mrs. Malaprop... I was out visiting a university in Arizona, auditioning for music and theater. On the flight back to Virginia, my mother was helping me rehearse my lines. She had the script and was giving me my cues. After the plane landed and we were preparing to disembark, I was surprised to get a Standing O from the other passengers, some of whom told us they spent the whole flight listening.
In the end, I didn't attend that university. I got a better offer from the University of Missouri. I happen to be the sixth member of my family to attend Mizzou, and the fourth to graduate.
And no, I'm not pulling a V with that title. (By the way, I'm also not referencing the weird TV series about the aliens with this comment. It's from a comic that was made into a movie in 2006.)
But first, you might be wondering what exactly a malapropism is. Well, there are two ways to find out. You can go read the play "The Rivals" by Richard Sheridan and intuit it from the text, or you can just look it up, which isn't as much fun.
In the end, a malapropism happens when a person says or writes a word correctly but uses it in the wrong context. My copy of the "Webster Contemporary Dictionary" says a malapropism is "an absurd misuse of words that sound somewhat alike."
One of my favorites from the play will always be the "allegory on the banks of the Nile." Though being a "progeny of learning" is something else entirely, and you had better watch out for those "contagious countries" in Europe.
By the way, "The Rivals" isn't a new play by any means. It was written in the 18th century. I believe it was first performed in the mid-1770s.
On a personal note, I had the pleasure of playing this role in high school, in 1999.*
In an earlier post, I mentioned President "Back" Obama and all the things we take for "granite."
One word: Oops.
So if the number of traffic "fatties" is going down, someone is graduating with a "bachelorette" degree, a teenager has been arrested and charged with "passion" of a controlled substance, or you ask for forgiveness saying you will go "flatulate" yourself... Well I think those speak for themselves.
And before you accuse me of making any of those up, I have to say no, I'm not. Every single one of those is a malapropism I have seen or heard. And they are only a few, choice picks, of the mass of such mistakes I have seen.
These may seem like fairly obvious mistakes, but, as I stated in that aforementioned earlier post, you won't catch them unless you proofread. And even then, some might get through.
Still, even in a potentially serious situation, you can find a moment of hilarity. For instance, near the beginning of the H1N1 influenza pandemic, my mother and I accompanied my father to the emergency room after he had fallen one night. While there, I noticed a sign posted on one of the cabinets about hand washing when entering and "existing" a room.
I would certainly hope a person would be existing when entering such a place. And remaining that way upon exiting would be a plus.
Especially for all those drug "attics" who just have to get their fix, ranging from oxycodone to "plackebos." I couldn't figure out any other way to write that one to show how the person mispronounced it...
Enough with the examples for while.
Even though these mistakes can be funny, just like bad writing and grammar, they reduce the credibility of the writer. That is if a reader even notices the mistake.
What makes malapropisms so very tricky is the simple fact that the word IS similar even though it's incorrect. Take the "bachelorette" degree for example. The correct word would be baccalaureate or maybe bachelor's. But if you weren't sure how to spell the correct word, you might take a guess and then use spell check. That might bring up the other, like the horror story I was once heard about a graduate student writing his thesis on Madame "Ovary."
I've mentioned before that sometimes my brain will simply not a register a mistake because to me, it looks correct. But then fresh eyes find problems.
For example, in my post about the spelling and grammar problems in text language, I accidentally wrote something was "detonating" rather than denoting. My sister caught that one, so I'm just as likely to make these mistakes as anyone else.
I have never claimed that I don't make mistakes when it comes to my writing, but that's why, in my proofreading post, I talked about having fresh eyes look at something I write to make sure it's correct.
In the same way, other people may be reading so quickly, they will simply breeze over a mistake like a malapropism and their brain will read it the way it's supposed to be.
Just like this line a co-worker sent to me once - "Too bee, ore naught (knot) two bee." All those words are spelled correctly and the line still reads correctly, but if you've ever read "Hamlet," you'll know it's wrong. Heck, even if you haven't read "Hamlet," just about everybody knows that line and would recognize it (even in Klingon).
In the end though, it all comes back to looking over the words on the paper or on the screen.
Probably the biggest problem with malapropisms is the simple fact that, for many, spell check won't catch them.
So back to proofreading.
Please, I don't want to be "scent" to jail for pointing out these glitches, but still, nothing, ABSOLUTELY nothing replaces proofreading as a way to prevent them.
* Funny story related to my playing Mrs. Malaprop... I was out visiting a university in Arizona, auditioning for music and theater. On the flight back to Virginia, my mother was helping me rehearse my lines. She had the script and was giving me my cues. After the plane landed and we were preparing to disembark, I was surprised to get a Standing O from the other passengers, some of whom told us they spent the whole flight listening.
In the end, I didn't attend that university. I got a better offer from the University of Missouri. I happen to be the sixth member of my family to attend Mizzou, and the fourth to graduate.
Sunday, December 26, 2010
Oddities of Inspiration
I recently noticed something about my blog that somewhat displeases me.
My last three posts all say they went up November 1.
The truth is, quite simply, they didn't. Each post went up a couple of weeks apart.
However, I did create multiple posts all on the same day, November 1.
I was inspired by numerous topics on which I felt I might expound. In an attempt to not forget any of them, I created multiple posts with notes in the drafts to remind me of those topics about which I wanted to write.
I would then work on the posts as the thoughts struck me, sometimes very late at night or even hopping out of the shower and grabbing a towel in order to write something down I considered witty or well worded before it flitted from my mind, never to be written...
I have actually done this several times and am currently working on multiple posts that will eventually go up. Unfortunately, they will not truly represent the work that went into them because they will be posted by their creation dates, not their actual posting dates.
Unless someone out there knows a trick around that little problem? If you do, feel free to let me know. I would like to have my posts reflect the actual work they entailed...
As I wrote in my one post, I proofread like crazy. Very rare indeed is it that I put up a post the very day I created it because I want to make sure it reads well, is well written and doesn't contain mistakes if I can avoid them.
I will sometimes spend weeks on a single post, polishing, reworking, editing or just plain rewriting the whole thing.
As a journalist, that isn't always possible, at least not in my particular field. Each day is a new effort with new stories and more issues. You can't sit and work on a single story for days on end, unless it's for a sweeps period. Then you can sometimes work on one story for weeks, but those are not as common and you still have to work around that daily load.
For those who are not in the television field, a Sweeps Period is for the Nielsen Ratings system. Such periods occur four times a year for about a month at a time. During those periods, viewers are polled through various means to see what they are watching and when. Then the TV station gets the crunched numbers from those polls on which the station can then base its advertising fees.
Of course, this is only the most basic explanation of a Sweeps period... You would have to know more about it than I do to go even deeper...
For a news station, these periods mean reporters work on special segments, or even series, of stories that are longer, more in depth and of wider ranging topics than stories seen on the usual day.
It's a bit of a juxtaposition, but as a person of varied interests and just as varied knowledge, I'd like to include, and indulge, that knowledge and my interests in each post if I can.
I'm also a researcher, of a sort. You have to be able to do research to get any sort of post-graduate degree. What that means is I will often look up something to make sure I have it correct.
So whether I'm checking to see if I have something spelled correctly, or I'm making a correct reference to a given work, or I'm looking up a historical/scientific/literary point to support my views, I will take that time and look it up.
So, sorry about the clump posts. I do spend some time on each one. Honor the Muses for their gifts, but beware for they do strike, it seems, in sets.
My last three posts all say they went up November 1.
The truth is, quite simply, they didn't. Each post went up a couple of weeks apart.
However, I did create multiple posts all on the same day, November 1.
I was inspired by numerous topics on which I felt I might expound. In an attempt to not forget any of them, I created multiple posts with notes in the drafts to remind me of those topics about which I wanted to write.
I would then work on the posts as the thoughts struck me, sometimes very late at night or even hopping out of the shower and grabbing a towel in order to write something down I considered witty or well worded before it flitted from my mind, never to be written...
I have actually done this several times and am currently working on multiple posts that will eventually go up. Unfortunately, they will not truly represent the work that went into them because they will be posted by their creation dates, not their actual posting dates.
Unless someone out there knows a trick around that little problem? If you do, feel free to let me know. I would like to have my posts reflect the actual work they entailed...
As I wrote in my one post, I proofread like crazy. Very rare indeed is it that I put up a post the very day I created it because I want to make sure it reads well, is well written and doesn't contain mistakes if I can avoid them.
I will sometimes spend weeks on a single post, polishing, reworking, editing or just plain rewriting the whole thing.
As a journalist, that isn't always possible, at least not in my particular field. Each day is a new effort with new stories and more issues. You can't sit and work on a single story for days on end, unless it's for a sweeps period. Then you can sometimes work on one story for weeks, but those are not as common and you still have to work around that daily load.
For those who are not in the television field, a Sweeps Period is for the Nielsen Ratings system. Such periods occur four times a year for about a month at a time. During those periods, viewers are polled through various means to see what they are watching and when. Then the TV station gets the crunched numbers from those polls on which the station can then base its advertising fees.
Of course, this is only the most basic explanation of a Sweeps period... You would have to know more about it than I do to go even deeper...
For a news station, these periods mean reporters work on special segments, or even series, of stories that are longer, more in depth and of wider ranging topics than stories seen on the usual day.
It's a bit of a juxtaposition, but as a person of varied interests and just as varied knowledge, I'd like to include, and indulge, that knowledge and my interests in each post if I can.
I'm also a researcher, of a sort. You have to be able to do research to get any sort of post-graduate degree. What that means is I will often look up something to make sure I have it correct.
So whether I'm checking to see if I have something spelled correctly, or I'm making a correct reference to a given work, or I'm looking up a historical/scientific/literary point to support my views, I will take that time and look it up.
So, sorry about the clump posts. I do spend some time on each one. Honor the Muses for their gifts, but beware for they do strike, it seems, in sets.
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