Talk Hard

One of my longtime favorite web comics, R.K. Milholland's excellent Somthing Positive did a great strip today about the greatest piece of Nerd American exploitation ever witnessed since New Line Cinema greenlighted Peter Jackson's childhood dreams. Witness:

Ask The Tech Girl

This new service is seeking open minded female techies to provide tech support with a more personal touch... a more sensual approach... a more 10 minutes / $2.95 per minute kind of service. I glanced around the site a bit, and thought that this was the best profile for a techie on call at the moment:

Tina-

Call me up and ask about Adobe GoLive, Adobe PageMaker, Macromedia Flash, Macromedia Director 7, Macromedia Fireworks, HTML, DHTML & JavaScript,PowerPoint, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, CorelDraw & Corel Photopaint.

Aside from tech, I'm also an accomplished woodworker and fitness trainer.

Call me and let's talk about everything from design concepts to muscle training & nutrition and everything in between!

Call me now! :-)

Tina

Jeez... How am I supposed to compete with that in today's job market?

The Flag Waver

One of my favorite online strips is PVP, written by Texan Scott Kurtz, a self described republican. He recently posted an experience he had with his current favorite video game addiction, the MMORPG City of Heroes:

"When Captain America throws his mighty shield....
Posted on Thursday, June 24, 2004

Last night, after the day started to wind down I logged into my favorite virtual world for some escape time. The City of Heroes game has been my online diversion of choice as of late. I really enjoy the game a lot.

I've tried just about every character type and I'm settling on my favorites. Last night, for fun, I decided to make myself a Captain America type hero...You know, go the whole patriotic route.

So I logged onto the Guardian server and created myself a Science origin Tanker with Invulerability and Super Strength. I dressed him in red, white and blue, adorned him and named him FLAG WAVER.

Once I got to a populated area, other people in the game started reacting to my character, but not in the way I expected.

"Ugh. I hate our country."
"How can you wave a flag of a country that kills other countries for oil we already have."
"Bush is an idiot."

I inquired if these people were from another country that maybe didn't look too kindly on the US. They all stated that they were Americans, but they just didn't really like America.

I have to say that I was flabbergasted. No. I was disgusted. I really didn't know what to say back to these other players. I certainly didn't log into the game to get into a political debate. If anything, I logged in to escape that stuff.

Rather than be daunted, I created a list of handy macros that I could pull out to difuse any potential jerk coming up to me in game to piss on my American pride. Now, if anyone decides to make me feel bad about playing a patriotic hero, I can just pull out any one of these handy responses.

"I hope you're registered to vote."
"You're grandfather called. He's very dissapointed in you."
"I wouldn't know about that. I've been cryogenically frozen for the last sixty years."
"Look, are you going to point me towards the wehrmacht or not?"
"The country is only as good as you kids make it."
"I defeated Hitler's reanimated body to defend your freedom to say that."


It's kind of a sad day when playing Captain America starts to offend so many people."

I thought this was such an interesting episode for so many reasons. Much like Scott, I found it odd that even a tongue-in-cheek patriotic superhero would draw such a strong reaction from some people. I mean, C'mon... "The Flagwaver"? It's a beautifully clever satire of Captain America. It's the sort of character concept that you'd see in The Tick. So it seems a little odd that people would take it seriously enough to be turned off. It's not like patriotism is an unknown theme in superhero lore. Superman, one of the best known superheros to the general population, is simply an uber-American from outer space! However, as someone once said, the most dangerous thing to commit in public is irony. Scott knew what he meant with both the character and the name, I do too, since I read his side of it, but someone else might not have.

On the other end of the spectrum is Scott's emotional reaction. I understand why he felt picked on, after all he went to the electronic playground for some fun, not for an argument. Still, at the end of the day, I don't understand why people get so bent out of shape about how patriotic this person or that person might be. So, some random person doesn't like his country. Hell, maybe he doesn't like YOUR country... What's so disgusting (or even suprising at this point)? Someone always disagrees with the actions that this nation takes in the name of its collective citizenry. When they vehemently disagree with those actions (which is predictable in a time of war) it makes them ashamed to be associated with what's happening and discouraged that they can't prevent it. I think that's a perfectly human reaction, and it doesn't make the people who have it evil or bad.

I don't share his dismay, but I LOVE Scott's reopens to the situation. He didn't get rid of "The Flagwaver", nor did he get confrontational. He simply used humor to defuse the issue for himself. He created automated responses that he could hotkey, which removed the problem of having to process every little comment he encountered. On top of that, they are hilarious! My favorites are "I defeated Hitler's reanimated body to defend your freedom to say that." and "I hope you're registered to vote." (It's easy to complain, but are you doing something about it?) At the end of the day, I think that this is more of what this country needs in it's popular political debate. Screaming doesn't win you any friends and vilifying people doesn't bring them over to your way of thinking. Using your head and keeping things in perspective will help you get your point across, and it just might help you live longer, too.

Well done, Scott. Long live The Flagwaver!

I'd like a word with the conservatives, please.

It's come to my attention that the self described "conservatives" out there have done a fairly effective job of hijacking the word "liberal". On the surface this seems like a good thing for them because, after all, if you take away the label that your opponents uses to describe themselves, it makes it hard for them to symbolically rally support to their cause. However, I think that this is already having a side-effect that will backlash against the tighty-righties the way the popular support for the Christian Coalition evaporated in the early nineties.

The side-effect is something common to all forms of low-rent hatred. The word-object of ridicule ceases to refer to the person or group it was originally attributed to in any meaningful way and becomes an all-purpose stand-in for everything that's wrong with the world. Righties are starting to describe the "liberal" media the way certain 1930s germans talked about the "jewish" conspiracy to control the price of gold. Neo-Cons see "liberals" everywhere the same way Joe McCarthy saw "commies" under every rock and in anyone who criticized him.

Merriam Webster shows the following definition for the term "Liberal":

Main Entry: 1lib·er·al
Pronunciation: 'li-b(&-)r&l
Function: adjective
Etymology: Middle English, from Middle French, from Latin liberalis suitable for a freeman, generous, from liber free; perhaps akin to Old English lEodan to grow, Greek eleutheros free
1 a : of, relating to, or based on the liberal arts (liberal education) b archaic : of or befitting a man of free birth
2 a : marked by generosity : OPENHANDED (a liberal giver) b : given or provided in a generous and openhanded way (a liberal meal) c : AMPLE, FULL
3 obsolete : lacking moral restraint : LICENTIOUS
4 : not literal or strict : LOOSE (a liberal translation)
5 : BROAD-MINDED; especially : not bound by authoritarianism, orthodoxy, or traditional forms
6 a : of, favoring, or based upon the principles of liberalism b capitalized : of or constituting a political party advocating or associated with the principles of political liberalism; especially : of or constituting a political party in the United Kingdom associated with ideals of individual especially economic freedom, greater individual participation in government, and constitutional, political, and administrative reforms designed to secure these objectives

What self described christian (as many conservatives fancy themselves) wouldn't want to be known as generous? What patriotic American wouldn't subscribe to the ideas of economic freedom and paricipation in government? However, we've just been through two decades of twisting Reagan's ideas about smaller government beauracracy into "anything that costs me a nickel in taxes is evil". The far right has now taken the name of the political spectrum that gave us every bit of social progress in the sixties and early seventies and completely redefined it. "Liberal" now means unpatriotic. "Liberal" now means un-American. "Liberal" now means godless. I could go on... It is defined purely in its opposition to something, with context supplying the specific meaning. Basically, the way it is now defined by the right, it means "person who doesn't agree with me and is therefore not simply incorrect but bad".

As I wrote in my piece on swearing, words that are repeated ad nauseum simply become repetitive sounds. I think that both "liberal", as a whipping boy, and, therefore by extension, "conservative" are in danger of becoming meaningless terms. This could happen any number of ways:

1) Implying that anyone who doesn't agree with a certain political platform is a godless, unpatriotic sympathizer of our enemies is going to get real old, real fast. Ain't but so much gas in that car, period. Sure it makes the faithful feel superior (as it's meant to), but it's a lousy way to win converts.

2) As I'm fond of reminding myself to stay sane, no one group of people has a monopoly on success or failure. No group has a monopoly on good or evil, either. Democrats, Reformers, Greens, etc. are also perfectly capable of successfully reinventing themselves and their opponents. (Let us not forget that their success in the nineties was part of what paved the way for the right-wing backlash we're living through at the moment.) If the term "liberal" becomes untenable, then there's no reason that the term "progressive" can't catch on with the right cultural hook. (For starters, who'd want to be known as a "regressive"? Maybe a new "progressive" movement will take a page from the neo-con playbook and just start branding its opponents with such a negative self-defined term.)

3) The two party system is not going to last forever. As convenient as it is to think of yourself and your opponent in terms of black and white or good and evil, Republican and Democrat ultimately fall as far from each other on the moral compass as do Coke and Pepsi. They are merely two multi-million dollar brands that are treated with the same marketing and image management that any large corporate brand is. We've seen decades of advertising and billions of marketing dollars thrown at us to get us to pick one brand of soda or the other. Now both Coke and Pepsi sell bottled water. While it's true that many alienated citizens don't vote anymore, many of us have left the party squabbles behind but not the political system.

4) Just like any other trend, our current climate and issues will blow over. Blustering about "liberal" this and "conservative" that will get you only so far with the Americans who don't need "liberals", "niggers", "honkies", "faggots", "breeders", "fundies", "catholics" or any other group of "them" in order to motivate their political action. Defining yourself only in opposition to something means that 1) you essentially stand for nothing and 2) you are dependant on the very thing you oppose. If this is how conservatives define themselves then they will (if they haven't already) become joined at the hip with the need to have liberals around to complain about.

So, in conclusion, I think that abusing the term "liberal" might have short term benefits, but in the long run, it will only create a cartoon that no one will either fear or loathe. After all who complains about "damn hippies" anymore?