Category: comment

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Comment: Watch the Packaging

We have never lived in a more duplicitous age of mass-communication.
Partisan propaganda is becoming more insidious and sublime than
ever before.

Here’s the classic setup:

1) First, the delivery: matter-of-fact, neighbourly, and gently
authoritative.

2) Second, the offence: more than just choosing a random offender,
but an offender who acts as a subtle metaphor for a greater (more
dire) concern. For example, rather than choosing someone who (let’s
say for naive reasons) refuses to honour fallen WWII soldiers,
choose someone who is also a university student. Student council would be
perfect: corruption at the root of education. Suddenly (seamlessly) your target
becomes indicative of a classic hate-mongering cliche: the
ungrateful and radical liberal post-secondary environment. This is
the classic stereotype – worked great in Cambodia.

3) Third, compound the offence with a black and white conflict:
heroes and villains. Follow the naive student’s debacle with an
earnest recapitulation involving inarguable tales of those who
bravely fought for our freedom from fascism. Talk about how evil
lurks at every corner and does not care about the democratic rights
of civilians, and how the only tonic for this insidious evil is a
militarised environment: soldiers, police, guards, controllers.
Slowly draw this together with the events proceeding September 11th
2001 and proudly unfurl the [place country here] flag.

4) Fourth, summarize. Condemn the naivety of post-secondary
environments – portray them as liberal oases for myopic elites, while
our downtrodden guardians fight without asking for thanks, against
an all-pervasive evil which is thankful for student dissent.

5) Conclude with a question for the general public: who’s side are you
on?

This is the overarching style indicative of news media formats
today: rhetorical, manipulative, and hate-mongering. It’s all in the
packaging, not the individual stories themselves. Who wouldn’t
believe the student is a naive idiot? Who wouldn’t believe that
soldiers put their lives on the line everyday? Put the two together
and you have cause to be suspicious about what goes on in
post-secondary environments – about the students, teachers, and
those who defend their rights.

It’s similar to documentary filmmaking: there’s no such thing as
objective. The minute you edit footage you are making an intentional
move to direct the discussion in a particular way/format. Words like
‘fair’, ‘balanced’, and ‘objective’ have been twisted like toffee in
the last five years. The end result is: you’re on your own.

Utilize critical thinking at all times. Ask yourself if you’re being
shown the big picture or simply baited. Ask yourself if there is a
perspective that isn’t being allowed into the picture. Ask yourself
if the questions asked are not actually questions, but assumptions
(ie. How long until Quebec separates?).

When you turn on the news, you have no friends.

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Remembering Michael Cahill

I don’t normally talk about “me”, because there are more than enough blogs out there that do a much better job at that sort of thing. However, it would be strange if I didn’t post an excerpt from an article that was published today in the Austin American-Statesman by Denise Gamino. It concerns the murder of my uncle in 1979, which has since gone into the territory of unsolved or ‘cold’ cases.

—

Link: A calendar book, a guitar and a very cold case

Excerpt:

Michael Cahill chased his musical dream down the street, around his apartment and through the backyard.

It was the last thing he ever did.

Seconds later, he was shot to death in his driveway, a single bullet through the middle of his forehead.

Cahill was running after his beloved guitar. It disappeared into the darkness in the hands of the very odd burglar whom Cahill startled, and then raced after.

Mike Cahill died in Austin on April 13, 1979.

He was 28.

His murder is still unsolved.

His guitar is still missing.

And his family and friends still mourn a young troubadour whose poetic recordings are preserved on an obscure album pressed posthumously by friends as a memorial.

Cahill’s murder case has been cold now for 27 years, almost as many years as he lived.

It is an old Austin murder forgotten by most. Perhaps it seemed nothing more than an unfortunate, random killing of a University of Texas dropout in love with making music back when Austin overflowed with career-free hippie types marching to their own casual rhythms.

But those touched by the inexplicable killing in the Bouldin Creek neighborhood of South Austin think of it differently.

To them, it will always be the haunting “Book of Days” murder.

Read On

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It’s not my intention (or preference) to speak about family or personal matters here, but Michael’s story deserves attention. This is the least that I can do for him and his memory.

#####

UPDATE (April 2020): http://imagitude.com/michael-cahill/michael-cahill-coda/

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Article/Review: The Man Who Said No To Wal-Mart

I caught a great review on Slashdot for Charles (Fast Company magazine) Fishman’s book The Man Who Said No To Wal-Mart. Although it seems a little lame to link to someone else’s review, I thought the review itself was very well written (kudos to Hemos). The subject matter itself is quite fascinating as it profiles a philosophy of doing business that seems…well…old-fashioned in the best possible way: doing what’s best for everyone from a long-term perspective. When was the last time you encountered that?

Excerpt:

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Review – The Man Who Said No To Wal-Mart

Charles Fishman, senior writer for Fast Company magazine has recently published a book entitled The Man Who Said No To Wal-mart. It’s an excellent book (Yes, I’ve read it) that talks about the intersection of making good stuff, the commodization of products, and the changing world that we work in; not exactly high tech, but tech nonetheless.

Every year, thousands of executives venture to Bentonville, Arkansas, hoping to get their products onto the shelves of the world’s biggest retailer. But Jim Wier wanted Wal-Mart to stop selling his Snapper mowers.What struck Jim Wier first, as he entered the Wal-Mart vice president’s office, was the seating area for visitors. “It was just some lawn chairs that some other peddler had left behind as samples.” The vice president’s office was furnished with a folding lawn chair and a chaise lounge.

And so Wier, the CEO of lawn-equipment maker Simplicity, dressed in a suit, took a seat on the chaise lounge. “I sat forward, of course, with my legs off to the side. If you’ve ever sat in a lawn chair, well, they are lower than regular chairs. And I was on the chaise. It was a bit intimidating. It was uncomfortable, and it was going to be an uncomfortable meeting.”

It was a Wal-Mart moment that couldn’t be scripted, or perhaps even imagined. A vice president responsible for billions of dollars’ worth of business in the largest company in history has his visitors sit in mismatched, cast-off lawn chairs that Wal-Mart quite likely never had to pay for.

The vice president had a bigger surprise for Wier, though. Wal-Mart not only wanted to keep selling his lawn mowers, it wanted to sell lots more of them. Wal-Mart wanted to sell mowers nose-to-nose against Home Depot and Lowe’s.

“Usually,” says Wier, “I don’t perspire easily.” But perched on the edge of his chaise, “I felt my arms getting drippy.”

Wier took a breath and said, “Let me tell you why it doesn’t work.”

Read On…

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Not the usual Slashdot fare, but it’s certainly nice to see.

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