Well yeah okay I even would've agreed with you in the 80s about the 'going to the store' analogy (for me it was: If I ask someone to pass the salt I usually do get salt). However, the Rashomon-style trip is only exhausting if you're constantly trying to nail down the truth. If you accept that more than one thing can be 'true' at a time, then you are left with choices, politics and strategies. Which might frequently amount to propaganda (especially in the eye of your opponent).
I think the bit that got my attention here was not so much your invocation of "truth" as this: "I still strongly disagree with Mark that propaganda is a value-neutral word like "weather" and that the left must use it because the Bushies do." I guess I hold a third position: that propaganda is anything but value-neutral, it's value-laden, constructed, myth-button-pushing, easy-to-swallow experience. But that shouldn't make it off limits to the left. I know I sound like a fuddy-duddy here, but I do think there's potential power-for-good in knowing your tools. As someone who is saddled with an overabundance of nerdy ernest-ness myself, I get the value of employing what showmanship skills you have to make a point effectively, occasionally spoon-feeding difficult ideas to an unititiated audience, sugar-coating scary change with fun and momentum. Picking sides, taking a stand, putting on a show. It's all potentially propaganda, but it's still inline with what I believe to be right and wrong. I think the homestyle, hand-held video of Dean's speech is just that. It's the style of the people--youngsters who hold technology in their hands and post crappy quicktime.There's a lot of media saavy involved in the presentation--canny, yes, but still very fine indeed.
I'm not sure what you mean by "the presentation"--the handheld video trying to keep Dean in the frame in a noisy jostling crowd? More of that would be good, sure, in an ad to counter the War Party's shotgun-miking of the Yawp. It's too late now, though. The instant creativity of the quicktimers and the garagebanders (making Dean-joke media files) tended to support the Kerry/Bush bullet point that Dean (and by extension anyone who opposed the war early on) is an angry nut.
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I think the bit that got my attention here was not so much your invocation of "truth" as this: "I still strongly disagree with Mark that propaganda is a value-neutral word like "weather" and that the left must use it because the Bushies do." I guess I hold a third position: that propaganda is anything but value-neutral, it's value-laden, constructed, myth-button-pushing, easy-to-swallow experience. But that shouldn't make it off limits to the left. I know I sound like a fuddy-duddy here, but I do think there's potential power-for-good in knowing your tools. As someone who is saddled with an overabundance of nerdy ernest-ness myself, I get the value of employing what showmanship skills you have to make a point effectively, occasionally spoon-feeding difficult ideas to an unititiated audience, sugar-coating scary change with fun and momentum. Picking sides, taking a stand, putting on a show. It's all potentially propaganda, but it's still inline with what I believe to be right and wrong. I think the homestyle, hand-held video of Dean's speech is just that. It's the style of the people--youngsters who hold technology in their hands and post crappy quicktime.There's a lot of media saavy involved in the presentation--canny, yes, but still very fine indeed.
- sally mckay 1-27-2004 8:11 am
I'm not sure what you mean by "the presentation"--the handheld video trying to keep Dean in the frame in a noisy jostling crowd? More of that would be good, sure, in an ad to counter the War Party's shotgun-miking of the Yawp. It's too late now, though. The instant creativity of the quicktimers and the garagebanders (making Dean-joke media files) tended to support the Kerry/Bush bullet point that Dean (and by extension anyone who opposed the war early on) is an angry nut.
- tom moody 1-27-2004 7:39 pm [add a comment]