Because I’d said that one story asked more questions

(expanded from the 1/25 recap)

Seems that The New York Times’ “The War at Home” series really upset some veterans and military bloggers for what they claim is its de-contextualization of the stories of 121 Iraqi war veterans who have committed–or been accussed of committing–murder since returning home. Part of the problem seems to be that the piece doesn’t compare that number with the number of well-adjusted vets–one guy said 700,000, but I can’t, off the top of my head, verify that.

I do find that kind of distressing. What’s more newsworthy about 121 vets out of 700,000? That the crimes happened, or that the percentage is actually kind of low? (If I’m doing my math correctly, and given my English major, I probably am not, it’s something on the order of 0.017% of Iraq war vets who have committed or have been accused of murder. )

There’s another wrinkle to this logic. The guy who was really upset wasn’t taking into account lesser crimes committed by recently returned soldiers–theft, embezzlement, pulling their pieces out on the lanes like some latter-day Walter Sobchek.

But I think the real issue here is, in fact, the lingering spectre of both John Rambo and Walter Sobcheck–the mentally unstable returned vet who can never quite recover from the war, who can never quite realize that not everything can be related back to or blamed on Vietnam.

By pointing out problems that some soldiers have upon returning, the public becomes able to subconsciously participate in this metonymy–conflating the part with the whole. As much as I love the New York Times, NPR, and news coverage in general (except maybe anything involving Chris Matthews), I think this is a problem with any coverage of the war and its effects.

I think that what the Times’ piece–and I haven’t read it yet, so could have this completely wrong, because my understanding is completely drawn from On the Media–has been trying to do is to separate the individual from the whole, to prove the metonymy false by placing these 121 murders and accused murderers in the context of their individual lives.

The effect is something similar to what happens when people try to humanize Hitler. One group believes that to do so diminishes the horror of what he did; another group–to which I belong–finds it more terrifying that a normal person could suddenly turn tyrant. Here, one group feels that the coverage of these murders plays into the stereotype; another group feels that the coverage of the accused and convicted individuals humanizes their situations and asks more questions about the causes of their crimes than it ever tries to answer.

I don’t really want to take sides here; I haven’t completed reading “The War at Home,” and so I feel completely inadequate to speak to the piece. I can only speak about the controversy as spoken of on On the Media. I think it’s fair only to say that it raises more questions for me than it answers.

Filed under: Commentary, On the Media, Real News

So Rambo, Sarcozy, and Britney Spears walk into a bar. Bobby Fischer says “I hate America.”

Seriously. How much Rambo can one society take? A friend of mine is really–I mean really–pulling for the new movie to be just one explosion, lasting for two hours. I’ve seen the trailer, and I don’t know how to break it to Joey, but it’s not just one constantly combusting gasoline fire. However, Sylvester Stallone totally chops some dude’s head off–for Jesus. I’m not kidding. For Jesus. While someone in the background is reciting the Sinner’s Prayer.

Have you seen the trailer? It’s intense. And fairly offensive to my sensibilities.

So why start On the Media with Rambo? Because, obviously, Rambo is a Vietnam vet. And Vietnam vets are crazy, according to the stereotype. Did they start this way because stereotypes in movies are a part of the media worth talking about?

Actually, they began with Rambo because, according to Brooke, “some veterans fear that the Hollywood depiction of the depressed or deranged vet could reassert itself. It’s that fear that may underlie the rage generated in some precincts of the military blogosphere by a piece in The New York Times earlier this month.”

Right. Today’s episode will not be one hour-long explosion disguised as media commentary. Sorry Joey.

Seems that The New York Times series “The War at Home” really upset some veterans and milbloggers for what they claim is its de-contextualization of the stories of 121 Iraqi war veterans who have committed–or been accussed of committing–murder since returning home. Part of the problem seems to be that the piece doesn’t compare that number–121–with the number of well-adjusted vets–one guy said 700,000, but I can’t, off the top of my head, verify that.

This story raises more question than it asks.

The biggest question raised for me however, is why they transition out of this story with Elliot Smith’s “Southern Belle.” I mean, the narrator of the song commands the listener to “kill the southern belle.” Bad taste? Or is the song too good to allow that to matter?

Doesn’t matter. Talk about what comes next on the program. Bob wants to announce that French President Nicolas Sarcozy is in love with a model–while hiding his own love. Brooke says that he’s in love with the media and should get a room. I think she meant Sarcozy.

Next, we get to cover Bob’s coverage of the coverage of the death of Heath Ledger. How the news cycle creates a vacuum of information, and the voyeuristic attitudes of human nature abhor a vacuum.

This informational osmosis explains how minor details (prescription drugs, rolled up 20 dollar bill) led to wild speculation as to the causes of death, what happened in the days preceeding, and members of his inner circle revealing the details of his private life in British tabloids. Ledger hasn’t even been dead a week.

But the thing is, as Bob points out, the AP already has over 1000 obits prepared and ready to go, because in a world where the news cycle is increasingly measured in minutes more than hours, every second lost in the race to be the first to announce the news has a monetary cost.

Bob thinks that the AP is merely ‘glomming onto’ the thrill of watching young celebrities self-destruct, but, as AP Entertainment Editor Jesse Washington points out, the AP doesn’t ‘glom.’

Brooke, the erstwhile Jane Birkin to Bob’s Serge Gainsbourg, picks up the next story, about French President Nicolas Sarkozy and his very public, steamy love affair with the model Carla Bruni.

Brooke, along with the opinion editor of Lebanon’s Daily Star, speaks very highly of Sarkozy’s ability to manipulate the media to his advantage. It is as though the love affair is less with Bruni and more with the media.

Meanwhile, Bob is enamored with the fact that FBI’s most wanted is now a multi-media campaign, even if it makes it harder for him to Photoshop up a “Bob’s 10 Most Wanted” poster, consisting of the following criminals:

1. Brooke.
2. Brooke.
3. Brooke.
4. Brooke.
5. Michele Norris.
6. Brooke.
7. Brooke.
8. Bjork.
9. Brooke.
10. Brooke.

Next story — Here’s something more interesting: As a personal note, I keep my iTunes library, and backed up movies, on an external hard drive. I keep my computer backed up fairly regularly, because I type up my homework and class notes whereever possible. I’m no lifeblogger, but my hard drive? DEFINITELY an extension of my brain. (A much more organized extension of my brain, at that.)

The thing is, if it’s an encrypted hard drive, which you have to hand over a password to… courts are deciding that it’s akin to the combination to a combination lock–because it’s a combination stored in the brain, rather than a physical key you can hand over–and therefore, you don’t have to hand it over! This is fantastic! They need some serious just cause to make you do it, because not only do the contents constitute the “persons, houses, papers, and effects” that the Fourth Amendment protects, but having a password to access those contents grants you you Fifth Amendment protection, owing to the fact that you could be incriminating yourself.

We began the episode with Rambo, and we wrap it up with Bobby Fischer, the John Rambo of chess club geeks everywhere. He’s a complex character, and this is a pretty interesting story, but, uh, I can’t be bothered to recap this, because chess is the kind of game I can be taught and re-taught (usually eight-year olds who proceed to cream me), but never retain. It is personal bias, and personal bias alone, that keeps me from going more in depth.

“Radio Sweethearts” is brought to you each week by Matthew and Kerry, the “Radio Sweethearts” team. This week’s recap written by Matthew and edited, well, pretty much just by–lonely sigh–me. Until now. Because she’s holding the Stylebook.

Filed under: National Public Radio, On the Media, Recaps , Amendment, Britney Spears, Constitution, French President, Rambo

A Moment Not Worth Life Logging.

Welcome to 2008, everybody. I’m not sure how your year began, but ours started with an inaugural dance party in the sleet. 

Bob and Brooke are welcoming us to the new year with a clip of Chris Matthews freaking out about the results of the Iowa caucus. Which is not newsworthy. Chris Matthews is always freaking out about something. The whole epsiode is similarly bland and uneventful.

Apparently, in the new year, there’s more to freak out about than the presidential election. As we find out later in the episode, we eat like crap and there may be no new TV, indefinitely. 

But even more terrifying than the prospect of never seeing my beloved “Mad Men” again is the thought of Life Logging.

After a brief porn music interlude, Brooke introduces Gordon Bell, a software developer for Microsoft who is in the process of developing something called life logging. It’s the practice of keeping every tiny detail of one’s personal life stored on a hard drive. Dude is keeping track of every coffee cup and receipt, even going so far as to wear a camera around his neck that snaps a picture every minute. 

He takes all of these things and stores them on a hard drive, which serves as kind of a second brain. The logic is that a perfect memory preserved on a hard drive can supplement the imperfect memory of a real brain. Bell admits that he depends on his system, but he can quit. He can quit any time he wants. 

Though there are benefits (think of the way it could help amnesia patients), life logging is kinda creepy.

I don’t think I could ever do it – there are days that I want to forget, and there are definitely things in my past that I don’t ever want to think about again. Also, I kinda don’t want to see anyone else’s life log.

It seems like the quest to try to remember everything would get in the way of actually living. It seems like it would be an incredible distraction. Also, as the software developer notes, if one’s hard drive were to crash, it could be entirely psychologically devastating. 

In other news, Bob seems to be on his best behavior this week. I wonder if something happened over  the holiday that he’d rather forget. Or, maybe I was wrong about his raging crush. It could have just been a general sense of holiday goodwill towards everyone (especially Brooke). 

Posted by Kerry, edited by Matthew. 

Filed under: National Public Radio, On the Media, Recaps

The Christmas Special

Merry Christmas, public radio lovers!

Don’t you kind of wish you were at the NPR Christmas party? Take a second to imagine that – Carl Castle in a burgundy smoking jacket and slippers, padding around with a hotty toddy making sure everyone is having a good time, Ira Glass pretending he doesn’t notice that Terry Gross is totally trying to engage him in a flirtatious verbal sparring match. Brooke is totally standing by the punch, giggling with Renee Montagne and Michele Norris while Bob sulks over by the aluminum tree, trying to work up the nerve to give Brooke the mix tape that Bob Boilen helped him make.

(Matthew wishes he could get an invitation to this just to hang out with Sarah Vowell, and possibly, maybe, if he works up the nerve, ask her over to his house to watch High Fidelity.)

Alas, someone still has to read the news. This week’s On the Media is especially light. It’s like they got a memo right before taping that said “Hurry up and be journalists and get down here! Steve Inskeep brought a flask!”

The episode opens with some talk about campaign advertising. I’m not going to elaborate, because I know I’m going to be typing that sentence repeatedly until after the election.

The talk of advertising quickly leads to a discussion of factual accuracy. Brooke interviews Craig Silverman, the genius editor behind Regret The Error (link), a Web site that collects media errors and the correction blurbs that run in their wake. Every year, Silverman and his staff give an award to the Error of the Year. The winner this year? A photo that ran in all sorts of media (including Reuters) of the Russian mission to plant a flag at the bottom of the Arctic ocean turned out to be from the movie “Titanic.” The error was corrected by a teenager in Finland who had seen Titanic way too many times.

Brooke is totally enamored with this dude. Hell, I am, too. She’s giggling and cracking jokes, and I’m really hoping that after the interview, Silverman had enough sense to ask for her number.

All things considered, 2007’s errors weren’t nearly as catastrophic as last year’s. However, following a story on media coverage of the death penalty, Bob is quick to point out that 2007 has been an especially dangerous year to be a journalist.

Making the news is a tough business. This year, 64 journalists were killed in action, and 30 of those were Iraqi nationals. But there is a bright spot – for the first time in a long time, there were no journalists killed in Colombia.

After the carnage (mangled facts, botched executions, fallen comerades) of the first half of the episode, it’s a relief to get to the second half, which is all about that warm fuzzy feeling people get around the holidays, particularly when they watch cartoons.

A segment on the revolutionary “Charlie Brown’s Christmas” turns into a reminder that in the cartoons of the 1950’s, there was a sort of acceptance of difference that we just don’t really get anymore. Talking snowmen, a Jack-in-the-Box named Charlie, Rudolph, and other imperfect creatures are all able to celebrate Christmas together, in the warm glow of a claymation fire.

These cartoons are still relevant today. They’re classic, and every year, their ratings stay high. And yeah, people aren’t that idealistic anymore, but it’s that time of year when I kind of wish that we were. I want Rudolph to be accepted. I want errant facts corralled into their proper places. I want our very own Charlie Brown, Bob Garfield, to finally get the things he wants the most.

I want public radio to continue to make an emotional mess of me for years to come.

Happy holidays from the two of us at Radio Sweethearts. We hope you and your family have a really great one.

Now where’s Carl Castle? I think I need another drink.

Posted by Kerry, edited…*longing sigh* by Matthew.

Filed under: National Public Radio, On the Media, Public Radio International, Recaps , Brooke, Bob, Pointing Fingers

Whispering Sweet Nothings Directly Into My Brain

Today’s On the Media was all about mind control.

A segment on subliminal advertising opened with Bob saying “The word sex written in Ritz Crackers. Naked women in ice cubes.” That’s not subliminal advertising. That’s what Carl Castle calls “Monday”.

Bob interviews Mark Crispin Miller, who is a professor of media ecology. Though I’m not entirely sure what that means, I kind of want to be one. Apparently, when you’re a media ecologist, you are informed enough to go on NPR.

So you can forget what your pervy college psychology teacher told you, kids. Subliminal advertising isn’t real. Bob’s Brookelust, however, has never been subliminal.

Somehow, the fact that subliminal advertising doesn’t work doesn’t deter our radio Romeo. To quote Bob, “It doesn’t matter if they were able to seduce us subliminally. They were certainly willing to try.” Bob is all about getting the maximum amount of information. He’s taking an approach that’s usually only seen on Mythbusters. Sure, it doesn’t actually work, but Bob wants to know exactly what the conditions have to be in order for it to work.

If, you know, it could.

That could be why Brooke’s follow-up story is on advertisements that can talk to you in your head. I’m going to type that out one more time, in case you didn’t notice how scary the concept is. There are people who are making advertisements that, though the miracle of wireless transmission and radio waves and the transmitting power of the human skull, can talk to you IN YOUR BRAIN.

This technology can be used so that advertisers can direct highly focused messages to specific consumers. I can understand that. Other possible uses for this technology is in law enforcement and crowd control or in search-and-rescue situations. It can also be used in a fun way – kids could talk to each other in their brains! There are a lot of ethical implications here, most importantly that one’s thoughts are intensely private and this technology is has the most brazen potential for invasion of privacy.

Brooke is interested, and she wants to know more. This could be her cat-like journalistic prowess. Or, it could be her way of trying to find an effective combat weapon for Bob’s subliminal advances.

How will the mind control battle of the sexes turn out? Will Bob’s use of something that doesn’t exist be able to best Brooke’s ability to bend completely creepy new technologies to her will? Tune in next week, for more from the Radio Sweethearts.

This post was written by Kerry, and edited…by Matthew.

Filed under: National Public Radio, On the Media