Month: November 2006

First we have this from TPM Cafe:
Gingrich In New Hampshire: Let’s Re-examine Free Speech In Age Of Terror:

Newt Gingrich is hard at work trying to out-hawk John McCain by suggesting that our new prescription for success in Iraq should be “victory or death.” Now Gingrich has done it again: He’s told an audience of power brokers in the key primary state of New Hampshire that we should be re-examining free speech in the age of terrorism, lest we “lose a city” to the terror threat. From the Manchester Union Leader:

Gingrich, speaking at a Manchester awards banquet, said a “different set of rules” may be needed to reduce terrorists’ ability to use the Internet and free speech to recruit and get out their message.

“We need to get ahead of the curve before we actually lose a city, which I think could happen in the next decade,” said Gingrich, a Republican who helped engineer the GOP’s takeover of Congress in 1994.

Then we have this from stand-up comedy’s SHECKY magazine:

At a press conference yesterday (summarized in this AP article), attended by Jesse Jackson, Paul Mooney and Maxine Waters, Laugh Factory owner Jamie Masada said “the comedy club will ban comedians from using all “hateful words” including the “n-word.”

Masada also said “We want to be the first place in the world to ask all of the comedians if they go on stage and use the ‘n-word,’ (it) comes out of their paycheck.”

In this matter, there has been a suspicious lack of any talk of a slippery slope, a deafening silence from the usual defenders of free speech. This is not about the “n-word.” It’s about free expression in general. When Masada broadens his proscription to include “hateful words,” he goes down a road that no one should go down. It is easy to imagine that the language and the work of comedians at the Factory might come under the scope of what amounts to a speech code. His blanket banning of a word (or ill-defined set of words) doesn’t consider context, and it opens up every comedian who might work there to intense scrutiny. It quite possibly might have the effect of shutting them down. And then there is the matter of making them vulnerable to lawsuits or monetary extortion. (Masada himself has gone so far as to lead the charge when it comes to punishing comics who work his room and violate his speech code. What assurances does any comic who works there have that Masada would not throw him or her under the bus should a patron take offense to say, the use of the word “cunt?” Or maybe an attack on Christianity? Or a percieved slight of gay people?) By broadening the ban, Masada has declared open season on the “A-word,” the “B-word”… you get the idea.

If Jesse Jackson can stand next to Masada and declare that the “n-word” is “unprotected” (his exact word!), then who is next in line? Will Andrea Dworkin exert sufficient pressure on Masada so that the “c-word” is banned (along with any comic who might dare to construct a joke using it)? Will Ralph Reed be sending registered letters to Masada in order to pressure him to ban comics who might offend the sensibilities of evangelicals? Let’s take it to a far-fetched but perfectly logical extreme– Will comics who ply the boards at the Factory be instructed not to say how much they hate cats lest PETA come down too hard on Masada? (If you think that’s implausible note that PETA is trying to banish the term “pet” from the lexicon and replace it with “animal companion.” In effect paving the way for legislation against any/all “animal ownership.”) It seems like only yesterday that there were police detectives in Philadelphia and San Francisco taking notes during Lenny Bruce’s shows. We can easily see a return to such an oppressive atmosphere.

I always worry when there’s something that simply can’t/shouldn’t/mustn’t be talked about, and I’m always suspicious of those who say you can’t talk about any topic.

I’m sitting in a convention room in Columbus, Ohio watching Mark Evanier interview Al Feldstein, and lo and behold, I’m actually getting a signal. So I’m taking a few moments and liveblogging it.

Al is talking about his editorial regime at Mad Magazine, and how it escaped the comics code– followed by how EC might have really got killed, that their distributor (Leader News) went belly-up. They had been publishing rip-offs of EC titles and got clocked by the Code, and the only thing that survived was Mad Magazine. Which ties in with the secret surprises of publishing, and how much stuff lives and dies on secret stuff that most people never ever see or suspect.

Now Mark’s bringing up why Wally Wood chose working with Al Feldstein over Harvey Kurtzman– and it was because Harvey would take forever to send scripts and send checks. Al would always send scripts regularly, and he’d pay people that day. Another useful lesson.

Reminiscing about Mort Drucker, to illustrate old Bob and Ray scripts– which is where Al found Tom Koch, who sent him all sorts of other artists– he had never done caricature work before, and then went on from there to become one of America’s leading caricature artists.

Brief digression from how Mad was sold to Premiere, a textile company, then Lionel, and then eventually DC (which I think at the time was NPP), and how Al got a small chunk of the company, which led to Bill Gaines calling him the highest paid editor in the world.

—

Ah, the inevitable Sergio Aragones discussions… whoops, another digression, this time how Al traced Walter Mingo’s famous painting of Alfred E. Neuman to create a black and white piece of clip art that was needed quickly, and the art is still being used today.

UPDATE 12:12: Mark mentions that when he wrote his book Mad Art (I’ll link it later) he was looking for dirt, and that the worst they could find about Al was that he was a bit antisocial. Al said of course, he was busy editing the damn magazine.

UPDATE 12:16: Antonio Prohias, a Cuban political cartoonist in exile (who didn’t speak English and didn’t speak Spanish well either) came in with Spy Vs. Spy and was simply brilliant. Prohias was the second-to-last artist Feldstein hired for a decade (with the exception of Paul Coker Jr. in 1962) until Angelo Torres in 1970. Explains why he called them “the usual gang of idiots”, doesn’t it?

Closing up, now heading off to have lunch with Mark and Mike Gold. I’ll update this with links later.

Final update: Welcome, News From Me readers! Tell Mark I said Howdy.

I felt sorry for this town that Aaron Sorkin poked fun at in Studio 60, making them out as a bunch of backwater hicks, etc. Then I read this. Now? Screw ’em. They deserve whatever bad PR they get.

I think I’ve said before that Thanksgiving has become my favorite holiday– a reason to be thankful for all the things we have that we want, and all the things that we don’t have that we don’t want.

For me, it’s spending time with friends and family, and thinking good thoughts for all the ones who weren’t as lucky. This is something that’s easy to forget, when we hustle for that extra few bucks, we skip over the fact that we’re making more money than 99.81% of the planet’s population. We are surrounded by wealth.

And yet, with all that, there are people who feel entitled to more… and only they and theirs are entitled, no one else.

David Byrne– yes, the guy in the funny white suit from the Talking Heads– made an interesting reference to this in a post-election day post:

I sense that the balance of power in the house and senate and the rollback of the neocon agenda is only part of the job ahead, as the country has been inundated with bully culture, the culture of greed, for at least a dozen years. For many young professionals, that’s all they know in their working lives — the attitude of winner takes all, bigger smashes smaller and do it if you can get away with it. It might take a while to allow another more humane culture of getting along and nurturing each other and benefiting from each other’s skills and knowledge to rise from the ashes. At present ashes are pretty much all there is. Social animals know better than this — they seem to instinctively know that there are limits to what the bosses and the alpha males can get away with, and that cooperation within the group is how the group survives. Checks and balances — something that’s been missing for a while.

I sense this culture every day, on the streets and in the media. Every time a cop car from my local precinct runs a red light or speeds down a one way street the wrong way (just because they can, no other reason) and every time an SUV with darkened windows muscles other cars, bikers, old ladies and kids out of way — sometimes narrowly missing pedestrians as they run a red light — well, it’s all been sanctioned by Bush and Cheney and the senators and congressmen who allied themselves with these bastards. They reflect and encourage one another. Push in line, build your building right in front of someone else’s, destroy a neighborhood, be a winner, a survivor.

See if you spot it this weekend while you’re driving. You’ll recognize it easily enough, it’ll be the idiot driving on the shoulder or over the median to get past the traffic tie-up or get out of the parking lot. Because he feels he’s entitled to get somewhere quicker than you.

It’s that sense of entitlement that gets me. The people who were born on third base and think they hit triples, and then think that they deserve to lord it over others who weren’t as fortunate, gifted, or just plain lucky. But there’s a special circle of hell reserved for those people who teach and preach that it’s okay to be selfish, to not care about other folks, to think that your good place in the grand scheme of things is because you’re special. That the rules, customs, and laws for everyone else don’t apply to you. That’s the behavior of a spoiled brat. Quoting John Kenneth Galbraith: “The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.” (Driftglass explains it much better than I did here.)

So on this Thursday– the 43rd anniversary of the death of the man who said, “For of those to whom much is given, much is required” and “To those people in the huts and villages of half the globe struggling to break the bonds of mass misery, we pledge our best efforts to help them help themselves, for whatever period is required — not because the communists may be doing it, not because we seek their votes, but because it is right. If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich”– remember all those who weren’t as lucky, and give thanks to everyone who ever made your life a little bit better.

As for me, I’m heading off Friday to Mid-Ohio Con to cause trouble in the halls. If you’re there, feel free to come up to me and say hi.

Here at PhilCon as a panelist on “Sam Will Kill Him If He Tries Anything: Blogging and SF” with Charles Stross, Hugh Casey, Shadesong, Nathan Lilly, and Dusti Lewars.

Still not moderator.

Moderator joke gets big laugh from audience.

Nathan developed the Philcon Website. Hugh pimps for him some more. Nathan feigns humility.

Charlie Stross gripes about having three back-to-back panels on Sunday AM. Has been on the web since 93, blogging since 2000.

Shadesong speaks about her 900+ friends list, still a bit of a shock to her.

Dusti blogs as Elionwyr. This blogging panel stuff was all her idea, so she ends up on it.

I blather about myself, and find myself unable to blather and blog at the same time. I can blab verbally or textually, but not both simultaneously.

Hugh gives his intro, ex-Philcon chair, blogs on livejournal as hughcasey. New pick-up line: You look just like your icon!

What got us into blogging? Shadesong got here during a move, and started using to keep in contact with friends, and a way to keep busy during work. For me, it was all Peter David’s fault, but now it’s grown to the point where I have groupies. On cue, two of my groupies come into the hall and hand me a token of their affec– all right, they hand me back my car keys.

End up explaining my Jesus at Philcon story to the crowd to counter Hugh’s “WWHCD?” buttons.

Charles got on as an escape from Usenet, to publish some of his short stories, and then started adding pages. He now has 670 readers on his LJ. Minor digression about Warren Ellis outing his LJ account. Charles blames it on Warren accidentally ingesting inorganic monkey glands.

I explain why I blog, minor digression on why I don’t like LJ. Commentary on LJ regional accents, including those who come from IM systems and uses of abbreviations.

Dusti uses LJ as a quick way to keep all her friends notifying on her upcoming and doings on her business. Hugh comments on how one person talks about having a bad day, leading to 500 people posting *huuuuuuuuuuugs!* and how it all gets a bit silly.

Audience Q: Why does everybody (except me) use LJ? Charlie talks about network externals and friends lists, so everybody else joins in. Nathan dislikes using it because he doesn’t like the loss of control of his content.

11:40. Having trouble keeping up with discussion and keeping focus on myself. Still not moderator.

Audience provides lots of helpful discussions on how to work with LJ.

I ask stupid question, and get heckled from audience, and even more stupidly blog about it. Audience asks about panel title, which leads to explanation of The Very Secret Diaries. Shadesong says she doesn’t like LOTR, crowd turns v. nasty.

Getting back to blogging and SF, I mention that blogging is becoming SF– influencing elections, showing effects of Katrina, etc. Now passing laptop to Shadesong, who’s looking over my shoulder– she declines to write anything, saving it for her own traffic.

Nathan notes: “In the future, we’ll all be famous for 15 megabytes.” Comment from the audience, “In the future, we’ll all be famous to 15 people.” Wondering who my fifteen are…

Audience member pledges to write Firefox extension to append real names to LJ handles, in response to Kathryn Cramer’s complaint, echoed by many, that most can’t keep track of LJ names vs. real names. Lordy, I hope so.

End of panel. Can’t find decent hotspot to send file in between panels, then have to get on the road. Posting when I get home, giving me time to put links in. Hope that Charles hasn’t beaten me to posting. Of course, he could be posting on LJ, where I’d never see it. Damn youuuuuuu…!

Did I mention that I’m going to be at Philcon this weekend? I’m going to be at Philcon this weekend. My panels:

Fri 8:00 PM in Logans 2 (1 hour)
JOSS WHEDON: KING OF ALL MEDIA! (90)

Sat 12:00 PM in Parlor B (1 hour)
GRAPHIC TALES: COMICS, GRAPHIC NOVELS, AND SF (106)

Sat 3:00 PM in Seminar A (1 hour)
EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS IN VIRTUAL WORLDS (292)

Sat 8:00 PM in Seminar A (1 hour)
COMPUTER GAMING AS A SOCIAL TOOL (273)

Sun 11:00 AM in Freedom Ballroom (1 hour)
SAM WILL KILL HIM IF HE TRIES ANYTHING: BLOGGING AND SF (86)

Sun 2:00 PM in Parlor B (1 hour)
WON’T THE REAL SUPERHERO PLEASE STAND UP? (100)

Feel free to come up and say hi. Just don’t tug on my robes, okay? It’s been done.

A great victory. Not for the Democrats, mind you, and certainly not for the Republicans, but for me. I won money on the election. A certain ex-college roommate turned science fiction author let his natural pessimism flare up again and he swore up and down that the Dems wouldn’t flip one house of Congress.

He really should learn not to bet with me. Remind me to tell you about the bet he made regarding the premiere of his DS9 episode.

As far as for who else this election is a victory, it’s the Internet.

A decade ago, Declan McCullagh and I were bringing a book proposal around to various publishers entitled “Digital Nation: How The Online Community Became The Most Powerful Political Force In America… And Why” where we spoke about the birth of the new social paradigm and how it was showing up in legal venues, etc. It centered around the ACLU v. Reno lawsuit to outlaw the Communications Decency Act, but touched on the various cultural and social battles that sprang up around it, from Marty Rimm to 24 hours in Cyberspace. Taking a piece from our proposal:

…this is a book about the digital revolution– not the one everybody “predicted” where everybody would have a computer on their desk linked to a pager on their hip, but an old-style political revolution where old governments were overthrown, subverted, or simply made irrelevant to the new age. This is the story of how the online community became the most powerful political force in America.

The online community is the largest voluntary organization in the world. Bar none. Currently estimated at 40 million users worldwide, it crosses national, ethnic, gender, age, and ideological lines. And it is growing at an exponential rate– it is accepted as a general rule of thumb that the user base doubles every ten to twelve months. In the United States alone, current users outnumber the population of New England. By the time this book is published, they will outnumber New England and New York.

I predicted at the beginning of the year that 1996 would be the year of the Net as a political force, on a par with the Black or gay vote– and the Net is now very angry. And if you don’t believe the Net as a whole has power and influence when it gets angry, ask Intel about what happened to them when they said “So the Pentium makes a few math errors. Big deal! Who’s going to care? Nobody listens to those geeks on the Internet!” The Pentium disaster ended up costing them over a billion dollars.

For the most part, Net users were content just to be left alone, and we wouldn’t get in anybody’s way– we’d just sit in front of our monitors developing vision disorders and carpal tunnel syndrome. But instead, we’ve been told to shut up. We’ve been told that others know better, and we get orders that come from outside the borders of cyberspace. And I don’t want to think what’ll happen when some legislature tries to tax our transactions… the roar will be deafening.

Think about this: If the Internet ages in dog years, it was settled 182 years ago. It began to get heavily settled in the last 50. It is now having laws imposed on it from outside sovereigns, willy-nilly and without representation. It responded to this with a revolt that darkened whole sections of the Net.

The Jamestown colony was settled in 1607. The Revolutionary War started 158 years later.

Now, a decade later (seventy years in Internet time) we have entire national elections that turn on what happens on the Internet.

The First YouTube Election, and Not the Last:

RUMS FELLED

You gotta love the New York Post.

Thus today’s headline reports Rummy’s demise, encapsulating in two words the entire changing of the guard now under way in Washington after Tuesday’s game-changer elections.

And we owe it all not to the mainstream press, which, as far as I can recall did not break a single investigative piece of news that mattered to the voters on Tuesday.

It was, rather, thanks to YouTube.

For it was on YouTube that Virginia Senator George Allen was shown to the world, his shirtsleeves rolled up, microphone in hand, clearly unnerved by the presence of an observer with a video camera recording his off-the-cuff remarks, attempting to turn the tables by pointing to the cameraman and saying,

“Let’s give a welcome to macaca here, welcome to America”

And it was on YouTube that Montana Senator Conrad Burns was shown to the world, eyelids flickering, elbows slipping, as he tried to stop himself from dozing off in the middle of an agricultural hearing.

His campaign slogan? “Delivering for Montana.”

Democrats complained last time around when bloggers discredited pieces of John Kerry’s self-styled Vietnam heroics and flat-out dismantled the forged document Dan Rather somberly presented as fact on National Television.

So too Republicans will complain this time around that their precious Senate majority was lost thanks to wise-guy video-tapers looking for “gotcha” moments.

But if the mainstream press isn’t going to keep things honest—and they have proven they can’t, or won’t—then why not give that power to individuals?

Which is exactly what the internet has done.

(Via Jeff Matthews Is Not Making This Up.)

There were also the inadvertent stars of YouTube, like Stephen Colbert and Keith Olbermann, whose commentaries were getting more viewers on YouTube than they were on their own network broadcasts. And of course, we have the blogs, the netroots, and on and on and on…

The country is becoming connected in ways previously unimagined, and we’re beginning to see how the other 99% lives, just over the river or through the woods. And more and more, as we all network, we’re all remembering, or relearning, or even learning for the first time– we’re all in this together. Or, as they like to put on the money, e pluribus unum. Out of many, one.

For a while, we’ve beaten back a bit of the “Fuck Everyone But Me” mentality that has pervaded this country–

Fuck international obligations, norms and laws, even where we were the ones that established them. Fuck our own history. Fuck the air. Fuck the water. Fuck science. Fuck the planet. Fuck the poor. Fuck the weak. Fuck tolerance. Fuck the Constitution. Fuck Jesus.

–or we’ve gotten smart enough to realize that it’s simply enlightened self-interest if we all make each other better. Network effects work on the social level too.

I think we’ve all had enough of Republicans trading on their dad’s famous name as a springboard to higher political office, haven’t we? And we certainly don’t need one that will enable another one.

Don’t forget to vote.

I see no reason the fifth of November (or John M. Ford) ever should be forgot:

AMERICAN GUY
(C’mon. You know the tune, whether or not you
remember all the words.)

A long, long time ago
But it should be remembered
How it fell out on November five
Some nobles and a guy named Guy
Thought they’d make their oppressors fly
And there’d be revolution, by and by . . .
The commissary must have shivered
When all those herrings were delivered
Barrels in the basement
For Parliament’s effacement
It was a bold, quixotic dream
(Though some say Salisbury’s scheme)
Explosive treason was the theme
The day the fuse went out

They started singing:
Remember, remember, the fifth of November
It was a night full of gunpowder, treason and plot
I see no reason
Why a gunpowder treason
Ever, ever should be forgot
Ever, ever should be forgot

One day with Lord Monteagle’s bacon
A note says, bangers have been laid on
Take a powder, signed, A Friend
The sort of hint that starts you thinking
With leaks like this, we’ll soon be sinking
Knot the rope that marks the end
They thought rebellion had a chance
But no one got up for the dance
Guy bent but didn’t break
Until Salisbury’s stake
The bottom line could not be plainer
A round of trials and attainder
Divide by four with no remainder
The day the fuse went out
They started singing. . . .

I met a girl who fiddled fine
And she handed me some sparkling wine
(Outside, the champagne’s always chilled)
Upon the kindling, Guy stands straight
As annually he meets his fate
The host ignites the fire, we watch it build
And in the yard we take our stations
Awaiting the illuminations
Foggy conversations
Then colored conflagrations
And the words we most admire to say
Light Blue Touchpaper, Get Away
They’ll get a workout on the day
The night we light the fuse
And we’ll be singing. . . .

— John M. Ford