We already know that historically speaking whites in general and black elites want blacks to be damn near perfect in order to get the RIGHT of citizenship. We saw this here also with at least one black blogger (who shall remain linkless because I don’t want to embarass him) making some of the same claims about how perhaps the 6 should have just taken consistent beat downs, threats, and symbolic terrorist harassment, in order to make a much better claim.
We also know that significant components of the white progressive blogosphere has been focused on the bush administration in general and on Iraq.
But what I haven’t seen is a discussion about the political-economy of blogging. There are bureaucratic, economic, and ideological determinants of story choice in the media. The media focuses on urban poverty in large part because the victims are black and easily tagged as irresponsible (ideological), but also because they don’t have to spend much money to send reporters to cover urban poverty as opposed to rural poverty (economic).
Check out this quote written about MoveOn:
MoveOn’s management team — led by Eli Pariser, a 25-year-old Internet whiz — runs a sophisticated political operation, and its main preoccupation, beyond ending the Iraq war, is to keep growing. To do that, MoveOn is always looking for what Mr. Pariser and his team call “the message object” — the controversy of the month that will viscerally attract more liberals to sign up and write checks.
An attack on MoveOn from the Bush White House is, of course, the mother of all message objects. Six months after Mr. Bush’s re-election, when opposition to the Iraq war suddenly seemed to be breaking out like a rash around the country, Karl Rove publicly accused MoveOn and its liberal sympathizers of offering “therapy and understanding for our attackers,” and membership soared. That probably explains why MoveOn was eager to run the provocative Petraeus ad in the first place.
In a sense, MoveOn is shrewdly gaming liberal politics in the way the National Rifle Association has long gamed conservative politics; the more controversy, the more members it attracts, and the more power it has to leverage on their behalf.
How much money is MoveOn likely to garner by focusing on Jena 6? On Shaquanda Cotton? Moving from MoveOn which to be fair isn’t a blog, TO blogs….how many more trackbacks and visitors is blogger X likely to garner by focusing on an issue that makes their readers feel uncomfortable? The blindspot they’ve got then isn’t only the function of their own decisions about what is important and what isn’t, what they’d need to see to prove racism and what we’d need to see…it’s also about their assumptions about their readers and the community of bloggers they want to speak to.
What I found kind of alarming about one of my favourite (White) progressive blogs over this Jena 6 situation (after I got over the shock of it only discovering this story basically a week ago) was this new and sharp move toward “objectivity” when it’s not a concern for the usual pet issues. Someone other than Mike Fisher got any ideas re how to deal with that?
what’s fisher’s response?
I resemble that remark, Charles. My excuse, if I need one, is that I’m feeling my way into advocacy via a fellowship in sociology focusing my research on the area of disparities in justice administration and prison reform, and my work product on advocacy in that arena. I want to do right by my sponsor and the institution so I’m doing my best to construct an objective framework.
I’m white, so I’m feeling my way into the conversation with a sharp eye on the wisdom that Bruce A. Jacobs shares in his book “Race Manners for the 21st Century.” If I wailed about the Jena Six like I do about post-modernism or the University of Chicago, Ronald Reagan and the return to a new age of robber barons, I’d isolate myself early in the game. While I’ve aimed for objectivity, I’ve blatantly moderated comments from the white supremacists, so my “objectivity” doesn’t include giving everybody a platform.
Would you believe this is the first I’ve learned of Shaquanda Cotton? Besides being a person who has been ill served by disparities in justice administration, Ms. Cotton also appears to be way relevant to the work I’m undertaking. But don’t hassle me as I come up to speed, please Charles. Just keep giving me these pointers.
“how many more trackbacks and visitors is blogger X likely to garner by focusing on an issue that makes their readers feel uncomfortable?”
I know this is a rhetorical question, but I’d like to write a little about something that’s probably obvious to most Blacksmythe readers.
Most blog readers don’t invest much time or money in things that make them feel uncomfortable or ashamed. Instead, most of them seek out things that extol and validate their cultures, their moral views, their political views, their economic choices, their tastes, etc. Most of them seek out stuff that would help them persuade themselves that their actions or inactions place them among the righteous people, not among the enablers of pain or ignorance or injustice. And most of them probably seek out this same type of validation and comfort in the blog market.
Smart, honest, and just U.S. citizens should probably feel uncomfortable with our nation’s culture and political economic systems daily, with or without a blogger’s help. Indeed, those who don’t feel some daily discomfort probably suffer from the same type of blindness that’s used as a trope in Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex and Shakespeare’s Othello. Both tragic figures, King Oedipus and Othello, refused to accept the facts that THEY were the problems until it was too late. And it was a painful reckoning for both of them. So, an ambitious political blogger, if he or she seeks popularity or profit, probably shouldn’t attempt to play the role of Tiresias or Cassio for his or her readers.
In order to make money or to gain popularity as a political blogger, the blogger needs to publish 250-words-or-fewer pieces that would be witty or informative enough to avoid appearing uninterestingly banal to readers, yet agreeably banal enough to avoid making his or her readers very uncomfortable. It’s a balancing act, but many political bloggers do it quite well. They find their zone, their sweet-spot, and stay in it. Even so, the most popular political bloggers surely realize that most of their blog readers don’t read their easy 250-words-or-fewer blog posts because they want to expand their consciousnesses or brood honestly and inwardly over how well they’ve played their parts in our political, economic, or cultural games. Surely the most popular political bloggers realize most of their readers keep coming back for that sweet-tasting low-hanging fruit that’s easy to pick, easy to chew, and easy to swallow.
E.C. has struck the nail on its head. I agree totally. The easiest thing for a blogger to do is to repeat narratives currently being played on mainstream print and television media. The funny thing is that the most intelligent black bloggers are not to be found on DailyKos or Huffington Post.
I also agree with Dr. Spence’s observation that cultural critics would require blacks to possess an unattainable degree of moral rectitude in order to be treated as citizens. If these guys had been around during the era of lyching they would have been skeptical about the backgrounds of the black victims rather than being outraged by the sheer injustice of the activity.
Right now we have a war on Muslim terrorists but I can remember when the IRA was lionized in Hollywood movies and popular music groups.
C’mon, doc, you know what Fish would have to say about it…Frank, I wasn’t naming names, but if ze blog fits? I like you, Frank, really. I like your writing style, the subject matter, your “aura.” Your blog is a window into a sphere I don’t generally consider myself a part of even tho I like to amuse myself splashing around in the shallow end of the pool from time to time.
When I asked before about this objectivity business, you gave a response having largely to do with your lack of expertise in the matter. I bit my tongue, for once, with the thought that you’re not actually an expert on 90% of the topics you cover on your blog, yet you offer a clear opinion on most of them anyway. Lack of expertise, as you know, is hardly a show-stopper for blogging, in fact it’s usually a requirement. It certainly doesn’t prevent you from posting a very pointed pro-feminist piece, for example. If you’d given this explanation earlier it would have rankled far less. Mebbe I didn’t put it all together earlier, but, ok, I get it now.
I suppose in the end it comes down to expectations. It’s disappointing having to lower them to half-mast for a spell, but a person a person as sharp and well-meaning/intentioned as you will in short order force a re-raising of stock.
I didn’t realize you’re following my pointers and looka-heres now (and my stars, there’s plenty better out there than my lil pad o’ referrals, but fine, i s’pose you could do worse) so I’ll have a care.
E.C., Sub, as always, on point.
Look, MoveOn and DailyKos are nothing but BUSINESSES to me. Trying to see what part of the money pie is theirs so they can make decisions to benefit them and their shareholders and so that they can be the ones in POWER. I don’t follow ANYBODY just because they call themselves my friend or a liberal (but I don’t follow RepubliKKKans or conservatives either since I did inherit six senses from my ancestors).
Furthermore, you should never assume that you naturally have an alliance with them just because they call themselves “liberals”. I constantly ask white people to define what they mean by “moderate” or “liberal”. The answers may surprise you(not me)and remind you that they may not be talking about the same thing as YOU nor have YOU in mind at all.
Peace.
It’s a mixed bag. The huge range of choices of blogs and other media means that you can choose to read stuff you often don’t agree with, stuff that’s outside your normal experience or worldview. Often that includes stuff that just flat wasn’t available 15 years ago, at least outside big cities. But it also means you can get all your news and commentary from the same point of view you already have, and never see an inconvenient fact.
The truly creepy part of this is that it lets next door neighbors live in completely different worlds, with complete pictures of reality that have very little in common, but for which they’re never shown any contradictory evidence. You can sometimes see this in conversations, where you feel like you’re talking with someone who lives in a different reality than you.
I’m not sure what that does to politics. What does the world look like when most people don’t share much of a common worldview about anything, even the basic facts? (Is global warming really a problem? Is Iran a major threat to the world?)
Albatross, you make a good point. But, I would add that the more intelligent blogs usually have a mix of commenters providing alternative views and contradictory opinions and facts. Craig Nulan and Dr. Spence,for example,often give superlative and challenging responses to consrvative bloggers. So unless the comments are filtered or edited I almost invariably encounter folks from the other side who provide links to factors that I never considered.
There is a situation in Chicago dealing with both gentrification and police brutality. It deals with the residents of the Harold Ickes Home (Projects). Police have been doing some less than human things to residents. There is a tape (I have not seen) that implicates some of these issues. Now, I wonder if there will be any “PROGRESSIVE” or “LIBERAL” bloggers or news media (print or video) that will take up this issue for more than a week.
Rev. Jesse Jackson and some other ministers plan to spend a night in the place (the Ickes). I find this a too late as a caller to WVON-1690AM alluded to this morning. Racist cops and bad actors clash all the time, but I don’t think that should give the cops a “right” to treat some of the bad actors or alleged bad actors with no human dignity. Of course, we have the underlying tone that these residents are holding up progress. Hey, isn’t that the root word of “progressive”?
Maybe someone will look back on the city of Chicago, Liberally and see how Progressive is has become under the right leadership of the Conservative Democrat and King of Chicago – Richard M. Daley. I’ve tried reading MoveOn and Huffington, but some of the posters leave a lot to be desired. Maybe I’ll bounce over there again to see if there’s anything worth reading. Anyway, I love your blog Dr. Spence. I guess you have to regulate some of knuckle-head posters as well.
From the Archives: A Few more things about that white progressive blogosphere http://t.co/cGtOHBpI
From the Archives: A Few more things about that white progressive blogosphere http://t.co/cGtKa1gy
Excellent point/post. RT @LesterSpence From the Archives: A Few more things about that white progressive blogosphere http://t.co/yRSAfI3h