Neda's Revolution, as Seen on Twitter

What a fascinating day... welcome to a brand-new CNN, completely powered by citizen journalism.

What does a network do when a foreign government forbids news coverage? You look to people on the ground to provide a view into what's happening – and the video, photos and tweets from Iran have been incredible to watch – inspiring, stunning, horrifying. CNN reporters seem to be more than a little freaked out – it's certainly not their style to report unsubstantiated news obtained through non-fact-checked channels – but they're rolling with it as best they can. Updates come from Mousavi's Facebook page, from Flickr, YouTube and Twitter updates collected on Hashtags.org. CNN just broadcast a camera-phone video of the death of Neda Soltani, reportedly (from the street, obviously) a 27-year-old philosophy student, watching the protests with her father. Her emergence as a galvanizing symbol of the protests in Tehran was instantaneous and global – a user-generated version of the news footage of the lone man before a tank in Tiananmen Square in 1989.

Yes, technology has revolutionized politics in the U.S. The next great frontier: how it revolutionizes... revolution. Truly, for the first time, the whole world is watching.

13 Million Friends Can't Be Wrong

You know how marketers are always looking to collect email addresses from their loyal customers, in order to communicate with them in some more personal, relevant way – and get them to buy more stuff? I was recently reading a post-mortem on the digital aspects of President Obama's presidential campaign, and was dumbfounded to discover that there are over 13 million people on his email list. (Additionally, he collected over 5 million "friends" across 15 social networking sites – including 3 million on Facebook alone – and more than 3 million mobile phone numbers in response to the campaign's text messaging program.)

13 million email addresses.

What do you do with all that connectivity? How do you harness those digital masses that, having sworn their allegiance, await the activation bat-signal?

The group Organizing for America, which is overseen by the Democratic National Committee, put that email list to work last week. David Plouffe, Obama's campaign manager and the man credited with its brilliant use of digital channels, wrote in a March 13 message to The List: "In the next few weeks we'll be asking you to do some of the same things we asked of you during the campaign." Namely, to mobilize within their communities on behalf of the president's agenda.

We saw what that fan club did to power Obama to the presidency. It will be fascinating to see what they can do when pointed at such complex and polarizing policy issues as the budget, the bailout or the deficit. Are we a nation who responds better to paternalistic distribution of our national policy – or to peer pressure? Another example of participatory government at its most interesting. (Note: I had to edit this, like, a hundred times to get most the words starting with "p" out of the last paragraph. Another example of alliteration at its most coincidental.)

Stewart v. Cramer: That's Entertainment!

A friend recently forwarded the 8-minute clip of Jon Stewart's "interview" with CNBC's Jim Cramer on The Daily Show. Although Viacom has since yanked the clip from YouTube distribution, you can view it in its entirety on The Huffington Post. Stewart assumed the role of the outraged American public, while Cramer sat as surrogate for the shamed financial industry.

Stewart's rage is absolutely justified, obviously. We The People continue to bear the brunt of Wall Street misdeeds. But the part I found interesting (beyond the question of why Jim Cramer rolls his shirt sleeves up... so... high) is Stewart's attack on the journalistic integrity of CNBC, and specifically, Jim Cramer himself. The implication was that the financial news network was "in bed" with Wall Street, and therefore its views were tainted and self-serving. That Cramer was an insider, expressing opinions that – while perhaps not benefiting him personally – demonstrated a vested interest in protecting the status quo of Wall Street.

Stewart seemed to take particular umbrage at Cramer's style of delivery on his show, "Mad Money": "I know you want to be entertaining. But it's not a fucking game."

There's an amusing irony here. Consider the following observation on the Stewart-Cramer bout, posted by Daniel Sinker, Journalism faculty member at Columbia College in Chicago on March 13, 2009 on The Huffington Post:
"You see, Stewart's real critique wasn't about Cramer, it was also only marginally about CNBC. Instead, Stewart's real rage comes from the role the modern media has created for itself: the role of cheerleader instead of watchdog, of favoring surface over depth, of respecting authority instead of questioning it."

Rightly so. And thinking back to the days before the election, and the considerable role entertainers and pundits (and sometimes comedians posing as journalists) had in shaping public opinion on candidates and issues, one might also note that political parody in the name of entertainment is no game, either. I know they want to "be entertaining" and all, but...

Those who live in glass houses may reconsider their own role in the collapse of trust in "modern media" before casting the first stone.

Read the Small Print

After kvetching about the deafening silence of citizen journalists on the stimulus plan, I was forwarded an interesting link, under the subject line "Hooray for our first Digital President" (thanks, Ruby).

Recovery.gov offers a "totally transparent" view into the distribution of tax dollars toward economic growth. The data purports to allow the taxpayer to track our government's progress every step of the way, and invites feedback on what is, and isn't, working in terms of how the Recovery Act is affecting we-the-people.

There's an amusing chart that shows the breakdown (in billions) of the distributed funds. The general categories of investment are Tax Relief ($228B), State and Local Fiscal Relief ($144B), Infrastructure and Science ($111B), Protecting the Vulnerable ($81B), Health Care ($59B), Education and Training ($53B) and Energy ($43B). And there's a rounding error of $8B dedicated toward something called "Other."

Funny thing is the footnote. I'll paste it here, resisting the urge to make it reallllly tiny:
* Tax Relief - includes $15 B for Infrastructure and Science, $61 B for Protecting the Vulnerable, $25 B for Education and Training and $22 B for Energy, so total funds are $126 B for Infrastructure and Science, $142 B for Protecting the Vulnerable, $78 B for Education and Training, and $65 B for Energy.

So technically, that's only $105B in Tax Relief, which seems mainly to be a category loaded with funds better categorized in other categories.

At least the footnotes are transparent, if not the headlines.

Oh, and issues with clarity aside, Recovery.com a pretty amazing tool for citizens to observe the working of their government. Just be careful what you wish for.

Government "By the People"

It took a while to recover from the election. And then there was that pregnant period between election and inauguration. All the focus on fashion, exhausting.

So here we are back in real life. The economy has tanked, thanks to a perfect storm of greed, irresponsibility, and well... because shit happens. Our new government has prepared and is in the midst of approving a recovery and reinvestment plan designed to stimulate the economy, ostensibly loaded with projects designed to create millions of jobs and loads o' commerce.

But because no opportunity to move a personal agenda forward can go unseized, we have instead a bill loaded with programs and projects which will have no immediate (and possibly no ever) effect on the economy. What causes stimulation? Adrenaline. A shock to the system. Yes, you can invest in grammar school education, and yes, it may improve the quality of the workforce in twenty years. But does it cause the market to reverse its slide? Companies to begin investing in growth and hiring? Consumers to begin consuming again?

This past election cycle brought a revolution in participatory government. Candidates were dissected, platforms compared point-by-point. The People asked questions of the government-to-be in thousands of digital forums – and the government had no choice but to answer. We saw a true "election by the people" – WE decided on the issues that politicians needed to talk about. WE created cultural movements to which they were compelled to respond. WE finally had a platform through which every one of us could engage in the process of shaping our future.

Now here we are, in government as usual. And the voices that shaped the election are silent.

Digital America, where did you go?

On Forgiving Hollywood

I don't know about you, but I've always been irrationally irritated by celebrities telling me... well, really, anything. Anything that wasn't scripted, and directed. And edited. I'm not interested in the out-takes.

I've written about the relationship between celebrity culture and politics in the past. It's certainly a powerful thing. Will.i.am's lovely and moving ode to Barack Obama, "Yes, We Can" is celebuganda (that sounded better in my head than it looks in writing) at its finest.

So I was ready to hate on the "Don't Vote" video making the rounds on social networks this week. Another 2 minutes of preachy, uniformed, judgmental, arrogant SEAN PENNs, for god's sake.

Well, for starters, it was WAY over 2 minutes. And it was... compelling. And not preachy. And sort of... sincere. And funny. And if I weren't already registered to vote, I would have done so. Because I hate keeping Leo waiting.

Art & Understanding

Our friend Glenn Sanders has created a cool blog in celebration of political art. Called "Political Poster: The Art of the Campaign," Glenn's collecting images related to the current presidential election, posters for-and-against both tickets.

I touched on the subject of political art in a prior post, but in light of the rapidly expanding body of work related to the 2008 campaign, wanted to offer some additional thoughts on the subject.

Politically-themed art is designed to provoke; to offer ideas and stimulate thinking. To agitate on behalf of a person or position. It uses a simple visual language to communicate vast notions. It reflects culture's zeitgeist. But it also, obviously, intends to shape it.

In the excellent blog "Running Yellow Lights," its author discusses the weaknesses inherent in political art:

"Art runs into problems when it stops trying to answer questions of what values we should hold and instead answers how we should get there. Art can tell us it’s a bad thing people are poor; it cannot tell us whether the government can fix it. Art can tell us to consider divinity; it cannot tell us to support churches with the state.

"Believing art can have any impact on whether we should end a specific war or support free market capitalism misses this point entirely... Art cannot reasonably answer political questions. It can sway political questions as to the values one should fight for, such as the what and the why. Through more effective means we can answer the questions of the whether, the how, and the how much... The communicative role of art is essential and important in the way we may form values, but it should never grasp pretensions of being better than empirics and logic in defining the feasibility of the means that may emerge from the values."

A gorgeous way of saying: do not rely on the simplistic idealization of issues to form your opinions. Posters just frame the question; your actual political views should not fit on a t-shirt. The road to change is not a slogan: it requires the hard work of understanding.