Speaking of Bad Science

Speaking of bad science ("the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down”), sometimes something is so bad that it's good—particularly when it actually is intended as a joke.

At any rate, I always enjoy reading the Tumblr and following the Twitter account of "Fake Science," which, as it explains, is a "100% Fact-Free Alernative" "for when the facts are too confusing."

Smithsonian has a nice little profile this week.

Unfortunately, some people have no sense of humor: the Houston school system recently banned Fake Science's book version as something "not permissable [sic] for you to distribute or your students to have."

Problem is, with all the bad science and scientific ignorance surrounding us today, it's getting harder to tell the parody from the reality.

First Candidate for Jones Library Director

Jones Library (here, undergoing repairs funded by the Community Preservation Act, fall, 2010)

It was 91 degrees (about 33 C) and humid when I left the house at 6:45 on Thursday evening and still a sticky 89 when I returned around 8:30, but in between I was in the cool, air-conditioned Large Meeting Room of the Jones Library, listening to the presentation by the first of two candidates for Director, to succeed Bonnie Isman, who held the post for some 30 years until the end of 2010.

Candidates are asked, in their presentations, to respond to the following statement, developed by Terry Plum, Assistant Dean at Simmons Graduate School of Library and Information Science (GSLIS):

Some critics of libraries claim that all of the important resources are available online, and that public libraries are just community centers with public computers.

In your view, can pubic libraries do things that patrons cannot do themselves on a computer?

And what services would you say that public libraries should offer which are typically not available at community centers?

This is of course a soft pitch, right over home plate: we all know the desired answer. No competent candidate could take a swing at this one and miss, so it’s not a question of hitting the ball, and rather, of the force and finesse with which the candidate connects and then runs it out. The hitter is guaranteed to get on base, but will it be a safe and easy single, a stand-up double, or a nail-biter of a slide into third? Or will s/he just knock it out of the park?

Trustee Sarah McKee explained the process and introduced the speaker.

Greenfield Library Director Sharon Sharry began by introducing herself to the audience in the packed hall, running through the list of her positions and experience for those who might not have had occasion to read her C.V. Although she sounded a bit nervous at the start, she also clearly came across as sincere and enthusiastic (some might say: chirpy). Presaging what was to follow, she made it clear that the human interactions were among the chief pleasures of library work. The talk was accompanied by a fairly elementary PowerPoint presentation featuring quotes by distinguished librarians, full-screen photos, and bullet points and a few well-chosen statistics to illustrate her arguments.

Her affection for libraries, their staff, and their patrons was apparent. In fact, she several times began a statement with “I love.” The main theme of the coherent and competently delivered talk was the importance of human agency: the role of the library as a true reflection and builder of community, and the role of the librarian as a sort of intellectual customer service agent (after all, we live in a consumer-capitalist society). Subsidiary points involved the library as both a good value and an agent of economic growth (did I mention capitalism?), and the role of the library in a world of changing technologies. (in what follows, I rearrange the order of some of her points.)

Libraries and "Community"

Addressing the hypothetical critic’s challenge head-on, she drew a distinction between a “community center,” which might not be free or for all, and a public library, whose duty it is to serve all residents, of all generations, social classes, and so forth. Social media, she said, will never replace face-to-face activities. Sounds good at first, but if it’s true, it is so only in a trivial sense. I am very close to acquaintances that I have known for years only through email or Twitter and other social media. The intellectual or emotional closeness that I feel has nothing to do with whether I have looked into their eyes (or even know how they look). And when I go to the library, it’s not mainly in search of “community,” and instead, of a book, CD, DVD. I can find community elsewhere. I can find those cultural resources only at a library (assuming I do not purchase them myself).

In the first place, her real point involved (or should have) not so much the contrast between “real” life and social media as the role that libraries actually do play in community life. We tend to think of the contrast between an “old-fashioned” library as a repository of books characterized by a church-like reverence and quiet in contrast to the “modern” library as social center. The historian in me wants to say: wait a minute, that distinction is false. A variety of institutions in the 18th and 19th centuries, some free, some involving payment, provided patrons with a combination of shared print resources and sociability. Moreover, the Jones Library itself was originally conceived as a sort of community center (it even had a 200-seat auditorium, lost in a subsequent expansion of stack space), then a radical idea. However, as a current long-range planning document reminds us, the focus of this community center was and is to be on culture.

Sharry noted that she had advocated a café at the Sunderland library when that idea was still relatively novel—and that it had proven to be a great success. The list of tie-ins and collaborations that she had either already created in her present post or envisioned for Amherst was long and varied. In Greenfield, these included not just Harry Potter parties, but also “knit-lit programs” (patrons knit and read together), animé clubs, and “technology petting zoos,” in which patrons could try out hardware or software before deciding whether to purchase it for themselves. For Amherst, she imagined not just collaborations with the Hampshire Shakespeare Company or the Ko summer theater festival, but, more creatively, a Bogart party at Cherry Hill Golf Course to benefit the Amherst Cinema: apparently on the grounds that Bogie loved golf. (Not so sure about the logic of that one. But hell, Faulkner liked to drink, so I suppose we could hold an event at Amherst Brewing Company.)

In the second place, what was missing was the prime emphasis on knowledge and texts. To adapt ancient wisdom: If a library is not about books, what will be about books? But if a library nowadays is only about books, what will become of it? To be sure, that point came later. It’s just that I would have made it the main one. Not everyone will join the knitting crew or the adolescent animé club, but (almost) everyone will want to use the print or electronic resources. Otherwise, the library could really become just a free “community center.” The mission of providing knowledge remains the same, but its nature and the means and setting of its delivery will change.


Libraries and the Digital Age

Addressing the argument that anyone could now supposedly obtain any text or information online, she rightly pointed out that one cannot just sit down and type a term into a search engine. Instead, one needs to understand how search engines work, why algorithms bring certain sites to the top of the result list, and how site owners know how to influence those results. If one is not savvy or just not paying attention, the outcome can range from useless to embarrassing to disastrous. She cited a number of examples. Exhibit #1: Anne Curry, who, delivering a commencement address at Wheaton College in Massachusetts, claimed among its graduates those who had in fact attended Wheaton College in Illinois. Oops. Lesson learned (as Ms. Curry put it): Never Google Drunk. (not sure how that compares with Michelle Bachmann’s announcing her presidential campaign in Waterloo, IA and claiming it as the birthplace of actor John Wayne when it is was instead there that mass murderer John Wayne Gacy first saw the light of day. But I digress.) She also said, to widespread laughter, “please, do not ever google a medical question.” You’ll die, she warned. (hate to say it but: actually, the equivalent of that one also goes back to the 18th century. Plus ça change). She also noted that the library, whether in the realm of interlibrary loan or safe and tested sites for children, provided a certain measure of quality for consumers. And it also promises to protect your privacy and civil rights, sharing your borrowing and internet history neither with corporations nor with government agencies.

Sharry was correct on all counts, although, as a historian of the book, I would have made the points in combination, and more simply (as, for example, James O’Donnell did over a decade ago): in pre-modern times, there was a deficit of knowledge and texts, and libraries and teachers were the repositories of this precious resource. In the modern or postmodern age, there is a glut of knowledge and information, readily accessible to anyone. Accordingly, the role of the librarian and teacher is less that of repository of knowledge or gatekeeper and, increasingly, that of the mentor who teaches information literacy and guides patrons in becoming informed navigators on the rising sea of digital data.

Books and Bucks

Moving from the role of the library to its social consequences, Sharry repeated the oft-made Amherst argument that the Library is good for local business: people come to the Jones, pay for parking (what’s that going to net the Town: 50 cents?), go to coffee shops and restaurants, shop at stores. Though some of my local friends and colleagues are among the major proponents of that argument, it has always struck me as at best vaguely plausible but strained and utterly unsupported. And remember that they at the same time tout libraries as a key resource for the poor, who presumably are not purchasing our lattés, sushi, or cashmere sweaters (you can’t buy cheap clothes or a bag of groceries downtown). Can both be true? Perhaps. But no one has proven the former in the case of Amherst, and no one can prove it, absent a scientific survey. (And locals differ from out-of-town cultural tourists, whose spending habits are better documented.) In any case, this is a weak argument aimed at the wrong target. We need libraries for the intrinsic cultural good they do. Period. If there’s an economic multiplier effect, so much the better. If not, we’re certainly not going to cut their funds or close their doors.

By contrast, a related point that she made earlier was superficially more compelling. She led with the assertion “Knowledge is the one true source of wealth.” It wasn’t developed, i.e. it was neither the old socialist argument that “Knowledge is Power” nor a more modern argument about the “information economy.” What she meant, rather, was that in the current context of both high technology and economic difficulty, residents rely more and more on the computers that the library provides, for job searches, printing, email, and the like. (It has also become fashionable to show how libraries contribute to the success of entrepreneurship.) Again, not a completely compelling argument, on the merits: one could set up those terminals in Town Hall or the Bangs Community Center, to equal effect.) I would have kept the focus on information literacy and mentoring.

Finally, Sharry reminded us that libraries are a good value in another sense. Employing a now commonly used approach (e.g. 1, 2) she cited statistics demonstrating increasing library usage (numbers of visits, items borrowed, program activity, internet services, and so forth) across the Commonwealth. Focusing on Amherst, she enumerated the more than 180,000 items borrowed, the some 5500 participants in adult programs, and so forth, and their supposed monetary value. Bottom line: the Town spends approximately $ 2 million in appropriations, and users get approximately $ 7.9 million in goods and services: “that’s quite the return on your investment,” she beamed. Again, a bit of a stretch, though valid in context. It’s sad but a sign of the culture and economic conditions that libraries need to justify their existence by resorting to contorted calculations of the market value of their goods and services. (value of a typical reference question in Vermont: $ 8.74. Who knew?)

The more compelling point that she made was one that lay behind Andrew Carnegie’s funding of public libraries back in the olden days: by pooling resources, libraries provide far more than the individual patron could reasonably obtain by him- or herself. As she put it in the language of consumerism (and rhyme), “your library is your superstore—and so much more.” (Ironically, perhaps, this reminds us that all those highly-touted "savings" to the patron come at a cost: the library, no less than the superstore, potentially takes revenue away from the small local independent bookseller.)


Closing Thoughts and Looking to the Future

A PowerPoint slide offered a quote from Librarian of Congress James Billington: “If we didn’t have libraries, they’d have to be invented. . . .” This signaled the transition to discussion of technology and the nature of the book, which was what interested me most. She painted a portrait of a world in flux: “libraries are permanent” even though technology, media formats, and economic conditions will change. Less room will be needed for material, but more in order to fit the needs of people using technology. (No argument there.) “Every room will be wired, and every room will be wireless.” There will be “quiet spaces as well as noisy rooms,” The Library will need to offer new services, stay on top of emerging technology, and the needs of patrons. The Library will not have a “dirty” oil furnace, and instead “clean geothermal.”

In her peroration, she declared, “a room full of computers is not a community, any more than a building full of books is a library,” and praised the library as a site dedicated to the cause of truth.

* * *

Trustee Austin Sarat moderated the Question and Answer Session

This did not add much in the way of substance to Sharry’s systematic presentation, and it probably told us more about the questioners than the respondent, but it was a chance for her to converse with residents: to satisfy their curiosity and put concerns at ease.

(in what follows, I identify by name only current or recent town officials whose office is pertinent)

People and (vs.?) Books; Paper and Digital Books

Q: Former Library Trustee Molly Turner: it is nice that you like to be surrounded by staff, but how do you feel about being surrounded by books?
A: "l love books and reading. I would love to tell you that paper will last forever." “I don’t mean to break hearts,” but the traditional paper book will eventually disappear. Although she thinks it will not happen in her daughter’s or granddaughter’s time, the disappearance of the paper book will be part of “the normal progression of things.”
Still, she doesn’t want us to think that the first thing that she would do would be to start getting rid of books. “I have a tablet but I don’t read my Daniele Steele on that—Oh, I probably shouldn’t have said that.” (the mock embarrassment pertained, of course, to the content rather than the technology)

Even if the answer was not terribly sophisticated, it was correct in the essentials, and it was refreshing not to hear another mindless defense of paper. However, it would have been interesting to hear some deeper reflections. This was actually one of the smartest and most pointed questions, which deserved a far better answer, the more so as the subject is at the heart of the topic assigned to the candidates.

I am just back from a conference on book history and science at the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian Institution. We spent a great deal of time there—in the panels, in the hallways, and in restaurants and watering holes—discussing the implications of digitization and the digital humanities. A host of questions are being passionately and continually debated. They involve, among other things, the relation between the form and the content of print and digital books, the changing nature of the reading experience, intellectual property and fairness (HarperCollins recently caused an uproar when it proposed to cap ebook circulation), changing business models, and much more. It’s fine to talk about the library changing in every regard, but then one needs to talk about the way that this affects budgets, books, and readers. The changes coming will involve a hell of a lot more than the addition of still more couches and wireless routers.

BTW: speaking of technology, at least one attendee turned around and gave me the hairy eyeball for daring to profane the sanctity of the library atmosphere by: typing. I was of course tempted to respond by saying: “Wait just a moment while I check my calendar to see what century it is.” (I had moreover deliberately chosen an isolated chair at the back of the room, beyond the last formally arranged row of seats.) This is apparently becoming something of an issue nowadays. It also featured at our conference, where we had sponsored a Twitter contest that generated some 2000 tweets, mostly by younger participants. There, too, the typing occasioned some raised eyebrows among older folks, and at the closing session, our Vice President felt compelled to tell members that they needed to adjust to a changing world. Indeed. The library is supposed to be a "community" center buzzing with activity and human interaction, but I can't type gently on my laptop?  You see the challenge we face.


The Cost of Going Green

Q: Library Trustee Carol Gray (just back from a stint in Egypt) picked up on the energy question.
Geothermal is great, but costs a lot, she noted. “How would you fund that?”
A: It’s a process and it requires funding.

Weak answer. Context: A few years ago, Ms. Gray proposed a geothermal system for the library, to the tune of approximately $ 1.8 million, if I recall correctly. The Joint Capital Planning Committee, struggling with slashed budgets in every department, did not even take the idea seriously (remember that, this year, it declined to budget one-tenth that amount for War Memorial Pool). The total Library budget, as Sharry had just noted, is about $ 2 million.


More on Books and Bucks; Philanthropy

Q: How do you view the replenishing of the endowment from private sources?
A: I need to know more: can you provide details?
Q: Does she know individuals in Greenfield who would give if asked?
A: Oh, yes: the more they feel ownership, the more they participate.

Q: Another question about funding.
A: It’s always about collaborators.
Q: Who?
A: Government: fire, police, everyone; think outside the box.


BFFs?

Q: Louis Greenbaum (former Library Trustee): How well do friends and trustees in Greenfield get along? (a very pointed allusion to the months of chaos and gridlock that made the Trustees a subject of controversy and eventually led to the retirement of then-Director Bonnie Isman).
A: Very well. She gives great credit to them for so generously giving of their time. “I send out a lot of emails, so I’m always keeping them in the loop.” Someone from one group always attends the meeting of the other: “It’s all about communication.”

Q: What about the presence of the 26-story UMass Library and the Frost Library at Amherst College: Should there be a relation?
A: Absolutely, it would be crazy not to take advantage of them. However, their missions and constituencies are distinct: “public libraries are totally different from academic libraries—ok, not totally. They have one specific mission, and we are serving everybody.”


Patrons and Policies

Q: Hwei-Ling Greeney (former Select Board member; Chair, Committee on Homelessness) asked how a public library might treat the homeless (our homeless shelter has become the subject of some current controversy).
A: When Sharry began working in the library as a college student at 18, her duties included closing the building at 9 pm, and making the homeless leave. As she told it, the experience broke her heart, so that she would go home in tears. It was one reason that she ended up studying political science at the University of Massachusetts first, and only later returned to the library as a career option.

Libraries do have to have policies that enforce order and safety, she observed. “Every once in a while,” she explained, “you do get a stinker of a patron” or someone in a bad mood, etc. 98% are good, though. Her main desire, she said, using pop management/psychology lingo, is ”to get to yes” with every patron. Some need more attention than others, and she sees no injustice in devoting more time and energy to those who require more assistance or greater understanding. It was a sensible, humane answer.

Q. Carol Gray: “What if you had some very enthusiastic teens in library,” “so enthusiastic,” in fact, that they got too “boisterous” for some?
[This was a clear reference to newspaper stories, in the last year, to the effect that teens were causing a disruption in the Library.]
A: Upon reading those reports last year, her first reaction was: “I’m jealous.” “You’ve got them coming in the door, so let’s get them involved. Can we put them to work?” “Do they want to be on an advisory committee?” Give them a task, “and suddenly they’ve got ownership.” and “there’s a lot of space in this building for a teen place.” “Love that they’re here [there’s that “love” thing again], because there are a lot worse things that they could be doing.”

Maybe, but according to the press reports, they were not only “coming in the door,” but once inside, “running, yelling, eating and throwing pizza and engaging in inappropriate sexual activity” (I leave that latter to the reader’s imagination)

* * *

All the evidence indicates that Sharry was popular with the Amherst audience (no mean trick, as we can be a tough crowd), so that sets a certain standard for Westfield Athenaeum Director Christopher Lindquist. He speaks—same time, same place—on the 26th.

Stay tuned.

Amherst Media is posting full videos within about a day after the presentation. (You get the raw information there; you get some sifting and interpretation here.) Here is the recording of Sharry's presentation.

What do you think?

The trustees will take up the issue on 2 August, and the candidate could begin the job on 1 September.

Residents can submit feedback on the candidates through 28 July online here.




[updated text, link for presentation prompt]

Restoration of Abel Gance's Napoleon to Run Next Year

Just in time for Bastille Day, the San Francisco Silent Film Festival announces that it will sponsor a full-scale production of Kevin Brownlow's restoration of Abel Gance's legenary Napoleon biography. The 1927 film is in fact but the first of a projected six installments, and covers Bonparte's iife only up to the Italian Campaign of 1797.

As originally conceived, the film was to be shown on a triple screen, to the accompaniment of a live orchestra. The re-release of the film more than a generation ago was a revelation and a sensation, but because of the complexity of the undertaking, repeat performances have been rare.

In a prepared statement, Stacey Wisnia, Executive Director of the San Francisco Silent Film Festival commented, "This will be 'the cinema event of a lifetime' and for once that's not just hype, considering that we may never have another chance to see Napoleon presented on this scale, and with Carl Davis' magnificent score. But we're also referring to the lifetime of passion that Kevin Brownlow has devoted to bringing Abel Gance's original vision back to life."

Because of logistics and the enormous expense involved in such a production, there no plans to repeat the event in any other American city. (read the rest)

Abel Gance's Napoleon (HD) from San Francisco Silent Film Festiv on Vimeo.

Telling the Truth Slant: Making Poetry Relevant Again

The tongue-in-cheek homage to Joyce and Beckett reminds me that I had meant to post another video having to do with literature. And in the meantime—just today, in fact—another one came my way.

One often wonders about the fate of poetry in the modern (western) world. In some countries and cultures, poetry is part and parcel of the national identity. The United States may be one in which that least holds true. We do not (or no longer) have a strong habit of identifying poetry with the nation and national history (just compare us with, say, Poland, Italy, or Russia).

On the one hand, we are told, poetry is more popular than ever: from production of new poetry, to slams.  On the other hand, few Americans are acquainted with their native poetic tradition. The formerly canonical poets of the nineteenth century are rarely studied, and less often read.  I think back to the "Authors" card game that I had as a child (1, 2). In retrospect, it was a great way to begin to become acquainted with English and American literature. But who reads Longfellow today? (Well, one of my Tweeps certainly does, but he stands out precisely as the exception.) I doubt one in 50 Americans could identify the author of the "Song of Hiawatha" (full text here), much less, quote a single line from it (exceptions: Minnesota residents, especially if they attend the Pipestone Pageant or similar festivities).

There are certainly ways to make the familiar—or the dusty once-canonical but forgotten—come alive.  Harvard historian Jill Lepore, who just completed a stint as writer in residence at the University of Massachusetts (more on that in a separate post) just published such a piece on—of all people—Longfellow. There she shows that his "Paul Revere's Ride"—arguably the poem for which he is best, if imperfectly, known today—was at the time of its publication "read as a bold statement of his opposition to slavery."

However, there have also been attempts that transcend the academic or purely textual-contextual.

One was this multiple-prize-winning Polish rendition of (or meditation on) Emily Dickinson's "Much madness is divinest sense." (not for the faint of heart, as they say)




Dickinson can appear deceptively simple and inviting (perhaps for that reason it was so easy for her early editors to prettify her works as well as her picture, assigning them titles and banal and uplifting themes).Yet as soon as one begins to enter any one of her poems, the perceptive reader realizes that s/he is in a labyrinth.

Sandburg, who seems so popular and uncomplicatedly "accessible," is difficult in another way. The general sense of the individual verse or phrase is simpler (though every once in a while, an unusual formulation, like a speed bump, jolts us out of our complacency: "flinging magnetic curses"), but he, too, asks us to interrogate ourselves, our values, our world.

More tame in style than the Dickinson video but no less innovative in its way is this treatment of his great "Chicago." Graphic artist Bud Rodecker's determination to make one piece of art each day ("RicharDaily") eventually led to his "typographic 'Chicago,'" part of an "Ode To Carl" series. As he explained to the Chicagoist, cited here by the Poetry Foundation, “Chicago has those amazing, short phrases that are so iconic,” so he sought an ever more pared-down visual, geometric language, which could do both justice to the literary text and awaken jaded Chicagoans to its vitality.


Ode to Carl - Kickstarter Promo Video from Bud Rodecker on Vimeo.

Well, I am glad that I have at least begun to talk again of books.  On to buildings.

* * *

Further reading:

Gregg Mosson, "Ars Poetica: A Case for American Political Poetry," Potomac, Summer 2009.

(which mentions both the Dickinson and Sandburg poems treated here)

Tongue-Tied

Writing about the great journalist Egon Erwin Kisch in passing a few days ago brought up this anecdote:

Kisch's visit to Australia as a delegate to an anti-fascist conference in 1934 was later chronicled in his book Australian Landfall (1937). The right-wing Australian government repeatedly refused Kisch entry because of his previous exclusion from the UK. Under the Immigration Restriction Act 1901, visitors could be refused entry if they failed a dictation test in any European language. This law was used to enforce the White Australia policy by ensuring that potential Asian immigrants were given an impossibly hard test. Kisch was one of the very few Europeans to be given the test; he passed the test in various languages but finally failed when he was tested in Scottish Gaelic. The officer who tested him had grown up in northern Scotland, and did not have a particularly good grasp of Scottish Gaelic himself. Kisch then took matters into his own hands. He jumped five meters from the deck of his ship onto the quayside at Melbourne, breaking his leg in the process. This dramatic action mobilised the Australian left in support of Kisch. In the High Court case of R v Wilson; ex parte Kisch the court found that Scottish Gaelic was not within the fair meaning of the Act, and overturned Kisch's convictions for being an illegal immigrant.

And we think we have problems with our immigration law.

"What does the death of newspapers mean for historians?"

My latest blog post for the Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities. The topic assigned me was, "What does the death of newspapers mean for historians?" though Mass Humanities gave it the online title, "The Checkered Past of Newspapers":

When people ask me what the death of the newspaper means to historians, I respond, what do you mean by death? or newspaper? I’d say, first, reports of its death are greatly exaggerated because (unlike Mark Twain) it can exist simultaneously in multiple forms and locations. The decline of the traditional newspaper is largely a phenomenon of western consumer society.

(read the rest)

An eclectic set of images--"World History of Newspapers"--can be found via the "Gallery" rubric, always on the top page of The Public Humanist. Here are a couple of examples from Massachusetts:

Appropriate for our Lincoln year and Lincoln-obsessed political climate: A classic newspaper from the era of partisanship. Abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison's The Liberator of 7 July 1865 celebrates the “Great Funeral” of “The Foul Spirit of Secession,” which died “of a severe attack of the Great Union Army, in convulsions the most violent,” on 3 April (Union troops took the Confederate capital of Richmond on that date), and offers a “Tribute to Abraham Lincoln. Extract from a Memorial Address . . . delivered at the Hall of the Mechanics' Institute of St. John, N.B., June 1, 1865, at the invitation of the Citizens, by Charles M. Ellis, Esq. of Boston."

The Northampton Free Press, of 1872. Here one could find a potpourri of local news, politics, literary poetry and prose, and a wealth of advertisements that are a treasure trove for genealogists and historians of local history and daily life. The colossal format--over two feet tall--also helps to explain the old stock images of people sheltering under a newspaper in a rainstorm or during a nap in the park. Harder and harder to do nowadays, with less durable paper and the trend toward smaller formats.

[cross-posting from the book blog because this concerns general historical matters, as well]

Chronicling the History of the Book as Object

From my first posting on the Public Humanist blog:

Commentators, friend and foe, have made much of Barack Obama’s calculated appropriation of the legacy of Lincoln. What most struck me, as a book historian, was his decision to take the inaugural oath on the bible that Lincoln used in 1861.

In the Senate Chamber, Jill Biden struggled with a massive family bible (in Maureen Dowd’s catty phrase, “the size of a Buick”). The small “Lincoln” Bible, by contrast, was not Lincoln’s (still in his luggage) or even American (it was published in Oxford), . . .

(read the full article)

Gaza: The Bigoted Stuff Will Hit the Fan

I'm sure that almost no one in the Middle East or elsewhere actually relishes the prospect of renewed and intensified fighting in Gaza. (Well, I'll qualify that:  the Hamas leadership evidently looks forward to killing or martyrdom or both.)

There are many historical perspectives on the conflict, but scarcely less important than the conflict itself is the way that it will be treated in the media and integrated into future historical consciousness.  Given the nature of asymmetrical warfare, and the relatively low level of military and historical understanding on the part of press and public alike, as well as the high stakes that numerous parties have in the outcome (sometimes multiple ones on the part of the same actors, depending on whether we are dealing with public comments or private sentiments), we should particularly be on the lookout for careless or wantonly distorted historical analogies, and for language inflation.

Among the high-yield epithets that we can expect to see launched against Israel (for this tendency most clearly manifests itself in one direction):  anything having to do with Nazis (individual entries sure to rank high: Warsaw Ghetto, genocide, concentration camp, holocaust [with big or small "h"]), massacre, extermination, disproportionate/disproportionality. In addition, expect a barrage of standard-issue, low-grade but serviceable platitudes, such as "cycle of violence."

Already, the Nasty Nazi Analogies are cropping up, and we'll talk about them in due course. For the moment, let's scroll back, though.

At the UN Security Council this past spring, as widely reported (here, by Al Jazeera, quite objectively), "Ibrahim Dabbashi, Libya's deputy UN ambassador, ended a long speech about the plight of the Palestinians by comparing the situation in Gaza to the concentration camps set up by Nazi Germany to exterminate Jews."  The representatives of the US, Britain, Belgium, Costa Rica, and France--led by the latter--walked out, and the South African ambassador, who was chairing, closed the meeting, saying "members 'could not agree' on the statement."

Will the press and the public now have the civil courage to--figuratively speaking--"walk out" when they hear similar abuse of language, history, and basic decency? That is:  refuse to let such abuse go unchallenged, or at least not willingly become complicit in it?

The erosion of language and the erosion of moral principle go hand in hand.  Those on all sides of the conflict owe it to themselves and everyone else--their opponents, the public, and the casualties--to choose their words carefully.

A Serious Take on Fauxtography

One of the scandals of the 2006 Lebanon War--ranking higher than Israeli mismanagement of the political-military calculus though lower than the brutal cynicism of the Hizbullah clerico-fascists--was the failure of the press to distinguish between true and patently false information.

Bad coverage resulting from a combination of gullibility and cowardice was nothing new, for it is amply documented in the case of the Lebanese Civil War of the 1970s as well as the Second Intifada. (Exhibit A in the latter case was the myth of a massacre at Jenin: Despite conspiratorial theories and wildly inflated talk of "massacres" and mass executions of anywhere between 500 and 3000 innocent victims, even Palestinian and international sources later concluded that the combined local military and civilian death toll was under 60.)

Among the novel and worrisome features of the latest Lebanon War was the blatant faking of photographic evidence--in some cases, by members of the press themselves--rather than simply the uncritical acceptance of false evidence from other parties attempting to deceive the press, whether by staging scenes or providing doctored images and untruthful accounts. (My Boston University history colleague Richard Landes, for example, has made a name for himself in this domain through his unrelenting pursuit of what he has concluded was the staging of the death of the Palestinian boy Mohammed al Durah in Gaza during the Second Intifida. The topic remains sensitive and controversial.)

I recall following the unfolding of this unexpected conflict via the internet during business travels in Europe. Somehow (I honestly forget how, at this point), I turned to the sites of several conservative blogs (not an information source that I customarily used) and was struck by their insistence that coverage of the fighting was tainted by more than what they habitually claimed was the bias of the mainstream media.

One of those sites was Little Green Footballs (LGF), run by software innovator, jazz musician, and political commentator Charles Johnson--who had hardly endeared himself to liberals by igniting what he liked to call "Rathergate" (for those of you too young to remember, even if you can appreciate the clumsy but established use of the suffix, "-gate," to denote a scandal: Dan Rather was a major figure in the reporting of the Watergate criminal conspiracy that toppled President Nixon): i.e. demonstrating that documents presented by then-News Anchor Rather on CBS--purporting to show that George W. Bush had shirked his military duties during the Vietnam War--were patently faked.

In the case of the Lebanon War, LGF began by showing that purported scenes of mass destruction in Beirut were in fact doctored photos in which someone had crudely used the PhotoShop "clone" tool to multiply plumes of smoke. Further revelations from that site and others followed.

In a recent article, as LGF proudly announces--Hey Mom, I'm Peer Reviewed"--Nikki Usher, writing in First Monday, highlighted the role of the blog in changing the discourse and drew some new conclusions about the nature of the blogosphere in general:

BLOGOSPHERE | Sat, Dec 13, 2008 at 8:24:46 pm PST

It might be the first peer-reviewed study that begins with the words, “OK, now things are getting weird.”

Reviewing Fauxtography: A blog-driven challenge to mass media power without the promises of networked publicity.

Abstract

During the Israel–Hezbollah War of 2006, bloggers caught Reuters publishing doctored images from Lebanon. Known by bloggers as Fauxtography, the scandal provides an important site to analyze the ability of blogs to challenge mainstream media. One blog in particular was almost single–handedly responsible for unearthing and for publicizing the scandal — Little Green Footballs. This paper uses the scandal as a case study to assess how Little Green Footballs was able to mount a challenge to mainstream media. Despite theorizing to the contrary about the collective promise of networked publics, Fauxtography reveals that one of the biggest challenges of late to mainstream media came from the activities of a single blogger.

(Note: Documentary filmmaker Errol Morris touched on some of these issues and others in a New York Times blog report. "Photography as a Weapon" back in August. One of the immediate inspirations then was the obvious fakery of photographs purporting to show Iranian missile tests, exposed--once again--by LGF.)