Second Debate: Trump's advantage, trimming the field, history mangled

Three observations about Wednesday's marathon GOP debate:

Trump wins again on his ‘Home Field’

In true celebrity style Donald Trump lives by pictures. His split persona is made to order for the split screen.

Someone playing it straight, like Jeb Bush, is inevitably undercut by Trump with his simultaneously shown grimaces, flailing arms, frowns, fake sincerity and winking dismissals.

And so while we are vaguely listening to one (Bush), we are entranced by the other (Trump).

What message gets through? The indelible ones, Trump’s visual reactions. Who today can remember anything that Bush said last Wednesday? Something about Casinos in Florida….

Looks deceive, and Trump is nothing if not a deceiver. He maintains that what he says isn’t what he means. So which are we supposed to believe? He wants us to believe both although they are diametrical opposites. So we end up believing what we want to.

Trump is relying on a whole demographic steeped in media of the rapid, thoughtless, often rude, responses. They are the same group that listens to and admires the smarmy attacks of Rush Limbaugh.

Even Bernie Sanders, with his hashtag comments throughout the so-called Republican debate has bought into it, until, with a half hour of the “debate” remaining, he gave up and went to bed.  He realized that he had joined a fool’s game.

I often yearn to resurrect the late media guru Marshall McLuhan to get his take on Trump and the current level of political discourse. McLuhan pried apart the Nixon-Kennedy debates by describing Nixon as a “hot” politician trying to use a “cool” medium, television. Kennedy had mastered TV cool.

Now the terms “hot” and “cool” have taken on entirely new layers of meaning, but at the time, McLuhan hit the mark.

Trump is beyond hot and cool and has been successful because the dominant medium today is neither hot nor cool. It is fragmented, insincere, spontaneous, and unfair.

Those are characteristics that exactly define Trump.

Trump’s opponents are simply no match for him on the playing field he has mastered so well.

Time for GOP candidates to self-cull their herd

If those in the Republican presidential field are worried about the skyrocketing candidacy of Donald Trump, why don’t all but two or three of the 15 simply get out of the race and quit dicing up Republican voters into candidacies with minuscule support?

One thing about Trump, he’s a polarizing figure. You are either vehemently for him or repulsed by him. The repulsed need one or two candidates they can rally around.

This isn’t to say that the anti-Trump candidates are in complete agreement on the issues as was evident in Wednesday’s “debate.” But it does mean that they have common ground in realizing that Donald Trump would be a disaster for their party, to say nothing of the nation.

A grateful party and nation would salute those candidates with the wisdom to withdrawn in order to save Republicans and the Republic.

The problem is that the candidates are in the race to affirm their egos, rise to their level of their incompetence, and seize power for their own special interests…or all three.

If they could see beyond those motives, they would realize that any remaining, dominant candidate other than Trump would certainly share the spoils of victory, should he or she attain it.

One way or the other they will benefit.

Rest assured that Trump will not share the spoils of victory with his competition. Even if he did, who would want to work for the likes of him?

When History is the victim so are we

It is said that history is what we make it. But there is more truth in the statement that history is what we make OF it.

The Republican candidates at Wednesday’s debate mangled history. Is the Iran of today the product of the Iranian Revolution? Did that revolution emerge out of thin air, with no involvement by our own CIA with the Shah’s regime and the overthrow of Iran’s democratically elected government? Apparently.

Did George W. Bush protect this nation by toppling Saddam Hussein in order to retaliate for 9/11, an event in which Hussein and Iraq had no role? Could our dependence on and ownership of oil in Iraq have had something to do with our “salvation”?

Did the rise of Al Qaeda happen for no reason? Were training camps in Afghanistan there simply by chance? Or could the US support of anti-Soviet “Freedom Fighters” in Afghanistan, including the leadership of Al Qaeda, have had something to do with the history that followed?

Does anyone remember Republican President Dwight Eisenhower’s warning about this nation’s “Military-industrial Complex” as candidates on Wednesday called for more and more defense spending. Would someone please remind this nation that America spends nearly as much on defense as all other nations combined?

Oh, and while we are at it, it’s time to officially and repeatedly “out” Israel as possessing nuclear weapons. Iran’s nuclear policy might be seen differently if we added that fact to the mind-bogglingly complex situation in the Middle East.

History will show that ALL the great religions of the world have at one time or another produced brutal terrorists. If ours is a Judeo-Christian nation, as candidate Mike Huckabee maintains (pointedly excluding Islam), what are we doing torturing people? What are we doing killing defenseless citizens in drone attacks? Why are we allowing “law enforcement” in this country to terrorize citizens based on their skin color and their religious beliefs?

I recommend to Huckabee and any other self-proclaimed Christian the book “Constantine’s Sword,” written by a Catholic journalist James Carroll. War and atrocities (including those of war) seem hard-wired into all religions — the teachings of their sages not-withstanding.

Finally, we are developing a history with Global Warming (it started with the Industrial Age) and we can see where we are headed. Addressing the Climate Change issue will not be a job killer as Marco Rubio maintained. If anything, it will create entirely new industries. In fact, under the do nothing scenario, plenty of jobs will be created, but they won’t be the ones that we want. The jobs will require massive government spending as a huge work force builds the dikes needed to hold back rising waters in order to save coastal cities. Whole new communities for climate refugee will need to be built. And on and on it goes.

The old line about those ignoring history being destined to relive it needs amending. Those who distort or “cherry pick” history’s lessons are delusional and destined to fail.

Lives of the Cell Phone

In my community college class this week, I asked the 22 students how many had cell phones with them at that very moment.

Twenty hands went up.

The two without cell phones were obviously different, but just how different?

I had some idea because I’d left my phone at home, as I often do.

But unlike me, the two non-cell phone students had made a decision not to have pocket communication at all. I suggested that in doing so, they were not alone, at least historically speaking. They were like virtually all human beings pre-1980. For starters, think of Plato, the Buddha, Jesus, Jane Austin, Thomas Jefferson, Helen Keller and Martin Luther King, Jr.

Nary a cell phone among them.

But if cell phone users are absent in history, they certainly aren’t in the present; nor, if humanity manages to survive, will they be in the future.

I suggested to the class that having a cell phone, or not having one, helps define who we are as human beings. It defines how we feel about our relationship to the world, to time, to space, to privacy and to our fellow human beings. Indeed, as phones become “smart phones” (mini-computer terminals), they define what we do with much of our time — how we spend out lives.

With much else to talk about in the class, we didn’t explore the ideas further, but the topic certainly has an allure.

Marshall McLuhan wrote that each major communication invention creates a new “extension of man.” The printing press, the telegraph, the photograph, the telephone, the radio, the television, the computer, the cell phone all change us and how we relate to each other and our environment.

In ways, the innovations make us more aware; in other ways they make us less aware.

McLuhan’s observation nestles neatly into the fascinating field of “media effects.”

In the class I touched on the subject of media effects by asking how we might go about measuring them.

One of the two non-cell phone students, Shelby, raised her hand. “Study what happens to people when they are deprived of a particular media device.”

Good idea. We could, in fact, study her. How was she different in her cell-less state?

I suggested that we might further, as an experiment, ask our horde of cell phone users to give up their phones for a week and then study them.

“Over my dead body,” snarled one student in mock defiance. I might as well have been suggesting that he stuff his ears with cotton or tie his hands behind his back.

He and the majority of the class, were clearly different — very different in some ways— from the technologically self-deprived minority.

But how?

Misspelling snags "specs" visitors

Here’s the latest on the strange ways of search engines and Sarah Palin’s glasses.

Here and here, I’ve noted how hundreds of visitors came to the Red Electric after I wrote about Sarah’s specs.

I would have thought that, like Sarah herself, the novelty would have worn off by now.

Strangely I’m still getting a few dozen daily visitors seemingly fascinated by the governor’s rims.

Suspicious that something might be amiss in cyberspace, I checked my site meter’s source references. The listing tells me what’s bringing visitors to the Red Electric. In the past few days most of visits have resulted from a search of “Palen” (note the misspelling) and “glasses.”

That was curious so I searched “Palen” and "glasses” and found myself staring
at a Red Electric post’s headline “Palen (sic) glasses hunters swarm to web site" (see above).

I had inadvertently misspelled Palin’s name. Google searchers had too. One misspelling deserves another. If you search “Palen” and “glasses,” the Red Electric is at the top of the listing. For reader-hungry bloggers (I’m not one of them) that’s like being on top of the mountain.

I’ve fixed the headline now. My guess is that the visits will drop off significantly. But then with cyberspace you can never be sure. Besides, because this post is about “Palen,” I’ll tag it that way.

If you end up here by fluke, you might be interested in the post that started it all. It makes for interesting reading, if I do say so. Where else can you see the names "Dorothy Parker," "Marshall McLuhan" and "Sarah Palin" in the same paragraph?

Palin glasses hunters swarm to web site

My site meter went ballistic last night after I posted my little ditty about Sarah Palin’s glasses.

The Red Electric lopes along with between 40 and 50 visitors each day. The count consists of 30 of my nearest and dearest friends and relatives as well as a pack of search robots sniffing out tags (“McLuhan,” “glasses,” “Sarah Palin”) and product mentions.

At first I thought the ‘bots were out in force last night (and today) or somebody spotted something they thought worth linking to a better-read site than Red.

Since the post 23 hours ago, I’ve received 650 visits.

I should have known something was up when, oddly, no one has posted a comment. Not a single one.

Then it was brought to my attention that the site meter has a “references” section. What we have is nothing more than good old American consumerism run amok. Folks are gaga over Sarah’s frames and are searching “Palin” and “glasses” in droves. (Gee, what would have happened if I’d tagged the post “sex” and “Palin”? I've tried it with this one as an experiment. What happens if ANY post is tagged “sex”? Whole industries are built on the answer to the question.)

Frequent Red Electric reader Steve Brannon was the first to raise the possibility of the consumer connection and even pointed out press documentation of the consumer craze for Palin’s specs.

The good news that while the large majority visited the site to read about where to find Sarah’s glasses, more than 100 nosed around here and looked at other posts.

So, for those of you in the hunt for the Palin-look, look around. You aren’t likely to find what you were looking for, but you may like what you find.

If you actually are here for more thoughts about “cool” and the campaign, here’s one more observation grounded in McLuhan. I also should credit George Lakoff, who rightly takes metaphors seriously — very seriously. (He also writes a lot about frames — political, not optical, ones.)

The political metaphors for the past three decades have all been unabashedly about war. “Hot” war” not “cold war.” So we have “Attack ads,” “War rooms,” “Frontal attacks,” “Counter attacks,” “Air wars,” “War chests” etc.

If he were around, McLuhan (he died in 1980) might argue on behalf of a “cool war.” It would be absorbing and coolly nonconfrontational. It would certainly entertain and not take itself too seriously. Sure, it would take the issues seriously but never lose sight of both the sublime and the absurd.

John F. Kennedy was the first to master “cool.” His press conferences managed enlighten, inspire and, most importantly, engage. He was comfortable with his topic, with himself and with us.

Sarah Palin is no John Kennedy. But she does seem to bring to the podium some of these same qualities. For one thing, she is comfortable enough with herself to wear those marmish glasses. And she may just know that they draw us in to her persona and ultimately into what she is saying.

Whether we agree with her or not, she, unlike her running mate, old what’s-his-name, gets our attention.

Barack Obama shares a few of these qualities. For starters, he too is comfortable with who he is. He, at least, seems to have transcended race, something most of us, if we are honest, have not done but would like too.

How does he do it? And how does Palin get away with wearing those glasses? Of course in her case, she can simply take them off. That she doesn’t seems contrived yet curious.

Obama, with no choice about his skin color, has reached acceptance and moved on.

Would that we all could. This election may tell us if we can.

Understanding Sarah Palin's glasses

Advertising Age has polled its market-savvy readers about which of the two campaigns is doing the better job of marketing its candidates.

No idle question, that. Marketing is what presidential campaigns are all about. Like soap, deodorant, video games and the Iraq War.

With Advertising Age’s spot-on query and Sarah Palin in mind, I was reminded of one of Marshall McLuhan’s barrage of disconnected observations in his classic “Understanding Media.”

But before moving on to McLuhan, let it be noted that of the four candidates on the two tickets, Palin is different in one obvious respect: she wears glasses.

Oh, and she is a woman.

Wrote McLuhan in his chapter “Media Hot and Cold,” “The principle that distinguishes hot and cold media is perfectly embodied in the folk wisdom: ‘Men seldom make passes at girls who wear glasses.’ (The quote is also attributed to Dorothy Parker.) Glasses intensify the outward-going vision, and fill in the feminine image exceedingly, Marion the Librarian notwithstanding. Dark glasses, on the other hand, create the inscrutable and inaccessible image that invites a great deal of participation and completion (by the viewer).”

Before we get carried away with off-target connotations of “hot,” (as in “hotty”), we need to be reminded that, in McLuhan’s words, “A hot medium is one that extends one single sense in ‘high definition.’ High definition is the state of being well filled with data. A photograph is, visually, ‘high definition.’ A cartoon is ‘low definition,’ simply because very little visual information is provided….”

There’s more, of course. With McLuhan there was always more — a LOT more. And a lot of it was contradictory or sheer bunk. For instance, in recent years, we’ve seen plenty of high-definition cartoons and low-definition photographs.

Back to vice presidential candidate Palin, who is being marketed to a demographic that worships “cool.” With her glasses, Sarah, according to McLuhan is unfashionably hot and “exceedingly” well defined, at least until she replaces her specs with shades, at which point she becomes “cool” and compelling.

Sadly, I have to disagree. Palin has the appearance of models you see in the designer “eye apparel” ads. She is clearly so good-looking that not even glasses can detract from her looks. And you immediately wonder how that could be. In an instant you are trying to figure out what she would look like without glasses on. She is, in short, visually undefined and involving — the very essence of McLuhan’s “cool.”

Remember, this is all about marketing, getting your attention, attracting your interest, stimulating desire (I find myself mentally wanting to see her without her glasses on — and yes, with her hair down) and to commit to her personally (never mind that she doesn’t believe in global warming, evolution or sex education.)

From a marketing perspective (is there any other?) my fear is that Palin’s appearance has transported hordes of cool-crazed voters down the road to buy-in.

And Joe Biden (and John McCain, ne “dead man campaigning”)?

You’ve got to be kidding.

And Barack Obama?

Stay tuned.

Leaving knowledge to the Internet

Marshall McLuhan, as I’ve noted before, wrote about how technology creates what he called “extensions of man.” The car is an extension of the foot, the telephone is an extension of the voice, the radio is an extension of the ear.

The internet is turning out to be an extension of the collective memory. That’s good and bad. We have come to rely on the Web as a ready source of information, but it has also become a reason not to retain knowledge personally. If some fact is a click or two away, why do we have to remember it?

I sense that I am experiencing this approach to knowledge with my students. They assimilate less and less because they know that it is readily available to them on-line. The result is that if you ask them a question and they don’t have ready access to their Internet “memory chips,” they draw a blank. Carried to its extreme, they are prevented from thinking on their own without the aid of their computers.

Mark Bauerlein, in his book “The Dumbest Generation, (How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future)” concludes, “The Dumbest Generation cares little for history books, civic principles, foreign affairs, comparative religions, and serious media and art, and it knows less.”

I disagree that the “Millennial Generation,” as it has been called, “cares little” about the above. They DO care, sometimes passionately, but because of their reliance on the Internet, they haven’t absorbed knowledge about their concerns, and so can’t and don’t converse readily about them.

In a sense they are literally “dumb.” They can’t speak for their lack of assimilated knowledge.

Have we been run over by our search engines?

An article in the current issue of The Atlantic posits the idea that the internet is remolding the way we read — and ultimately the way we think. See “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” by Nicolas Carr.

The speculation shouldn’t surprise us. All major technological changes in the way we communicate reshape us in some way.

The inventions of the written word, the printing press, the telegraph, the television and now the internet all changed how we think.

The written word allowed knowledge to be recorded, eliminating the need for it to be memorized and passed on orally, and often inaccurately.

The printing press allowed that knowledge to be widely shared and led to the need for literacy and greater knowledge.

The telegraph freed communication for the constraints of the time needed to carry messages across physical space.

Television (and film and photographs) undermined rational, sequential thinking and tapped into non-verbal emotions and the subconscious. (Question: How do you "read" a picture?)

The internet has made vast (and overwhelming) amounts of information and knowledge instantly available.

They all to various degrees resulted in "media addiction."

McLuhan was right, of course: The medium is the message. As new media are invented, the very nature of messages change. And that change changes us as we struggle to understand.

So, is Google making us stupid?

The question begs for a “yes” or “no” answer. But the real answer is somewhere between — or above, or below — those extremes. The Internet is "remaking" us. It’s up to us to figure out how, what the changes mean to us as individuals, as a culture, as a species, and what, if anything, we can do about it.

Media and Society and Me

I’ve been invited to teach “Media and Society” this summer at Portland Community College.

I haven’t taught this particular course in 35 years. Eons ago in media terms. Back then we got excited about stuff like "The Fairness Doctrine" and "Community Access Television."

I see the task of preparation and teaching "Media and Society" today as a little like wrestling an octopus. Media tentacles everywhere. Video games. Web sites. Text messaging. Facebook. Convergence. Old Media/New Media. Rupert Murdoch-Jon Stewart-Rush Limbaugh-The Simpsons-Al Jazeera. Sex. Violence. Mayhem. This American Life.

Oy!

Where is Marshall McLuhan when we need him? I know, I know — I should be careful what I wish for. Still, it takes some kind of mad (Canadian?) wizard to enter into today’s media fray.

The text that has been previously used in the PCC course is also in limbo. The book’s title is “Media Today.” But the book itself is literally unavailable today or tomorrow or the day after. The new edition is coming out in August, too late to be of use in the summer class. The old edition is out of print, and no doubt out of date.

By the way, when the book becomes available, a paperback edition goes for a jaw-dropping $85. The hardbound is a cool $150. But then, in the spirit of the subject, the book comes with — and here I quote from the publisher’s catalog — “an enclosed DVD with media examples and an interactive companion website featuring a full range of instructor and student materials including study podcasts….”

Weighing all this, I’m thinking PCC should offer a course about the course. Kind of media navel-gazing. The “text” at the very least should come with a brick-sized operating manual, which would have its own DVD and podcasts etc.

Suffice to say, I’m still thinking about whether to enter the ring with this beast.

Media inequity threatens the "global village"

Of the many ideas sprouted by the germinal mind of Marshall McLuhan, the notion that media are extensions of human beings is one of the most intriguing. If you have a telephone, you has super-ears; if you have a TV, you have super-eyes.

Perhaps. (A haunting question: Do you "hear" better or "see" better as a result?)

In recent years there can no question that those who acquire the ability to use new media have the farthest reach, the greatest extension. Those without access to new media or the skill or desire to use them are placed at a greater and greater disadvantage.

Within our own society we see chasms opening between the technologically proficient and the technologically ignorant, deprived or challenged.

Moreover, the faster the pace of technological change, the more apparent — and troubling — are the consequences of the divide.

Many of us have friends who simply can’t be troubled to keep up with the changes. To us, it is as if they have gone deaf or been struck blind.

The examples are everywhere. Suppose I have a message I want to get out to a group. I simply call up the group list on my computer and fire off the message. But suppose that someone in the group doesn’t read e-mail, or, horror of horrors, doesn’t have a computer. Will I go out of my way to phone my message? I confess it’s not likely. They are literally out of my communications loop

In my own way, I’m equally out of the loop to a young generation that text-messages. No one text messages me because they know I don’t text message. I might as well be living on Mars.

The changes are coming faster and faster and threaten to drive us farther and farther apart even as those of us who master them grow closer and closer.

Because of the uneven and inequitable media “extensions” of our human powers, the verdict is out on the “Global Village” that McLuhan predicted would result from Earth-girdling media.