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9 Dead, 10 Coffins Found in Fresno Home
BRIAN SKOLOFF
Associated Press March 13
FRESNO, Calif. - Police discovered nine bodies intertwined in a pile of clothes at a Fresno home and 10 coffins stacked along a wall, and were trying to determine if some ritual was involved in the slaughter.
A 57-year-old man surrendered to police after walking out of the house covered in what appeared to be blood.
The victims were seven children ranging in age from 1 to 8, a 20-year-old woman and a 17-year-old girl. All were thought to be the children of Marcus Wesson, whom police handcuffed following a brief standoff.
Authorities said Saturday that Wesson had been arrested on suspicion of killing the victims, but wouldn't comment until an afternoon news conference on what charges prosecutors might file.
The grim scene caused even veteran officers to weep.
Police Chief Jerry Dyer wiped tears from his eyes as officers carried the bodies from the home, cradling the youngest ones in their arms.
"I've been with the Fresno Police Department for 25 years, and I've never experienced anything of this nature," he said.
Dyer said the victims probably were Wesson's children. "There may have been some type of ritual involved," he said.
Officers were originally called to the scene Friday afternoon for a child custody dispute.
Ten coffins lined a wall inside the home's front room. The bodies were so entangled in a pile of clothing that it took hours for investigators to reach a final count, police said.
The police chief declined to say how the victims died, but the scene was so gruesome some of the first officers into the house were placed on administrative leave and were being counseled Friday night.
Six police chaplains were at the house throughout the evening as detectives continued to gather evidence.
Officers were called to the home Friday afternoon by two women who said a man had their children and would not release them.
The man initially ignored orders to come out, running into a back bedroom as two other women fled the house. They were unharmed.
Police believe the suspect fathered the victims with the four women. They did not identify the women or the victims.
A neighbor, Chris Tognazzini, said he heard two gunshots moments before police arrived.
Dyer said the women who called authorities told them they had given custody of their children to Wesson two years ago and now wanted them back.
The slayings shocked authorities in Fresno, a city of 440,000 about 190 miles southeast of San Francisco. Dyer said the city had seen three murders in the last 2 1/2 months, the fewest number for a 10-week period in more than three decades.
The nine deaths represent the largest mass killing in this San Joaquin Valley city since 1993, when seven people were killed in rural Fresno.
"The only thing we can do now is mourn. We mourn for the kids, we mourn for the police," said Mayor Alan Autry. "We will never be the same again."
Wesson had a strong influence on his sons, said Florian Tan, who in 2001 took over the martial arts school where three of the sons attended classes.
Each boy had to earn a black belt in aikido in order to leave home when he reached manhood, Tan said.
"They said they had to go through his program," which included martial arts training, Tan said. He added that two of the sons, now in their twenties, earned black belts and a teenage boy is still enrolled at the school.
Neighbors who milled around outside said they knew little about Wesson or the house where a large yellow bus was parked in the driveway.
"He never said 'Hi,'" said Linda Morales. "I'd drive by and he'd make a point to turn his face."
Another neighbor, Johnny Rios, said that on many nights he heard loud banging coming from the house, as though the people inside were building something.
"There was something up over there," Rios said.
Posted on Sun, Mar. 14, 2004
Man accused of killing nine may have fathered grandkids
By David E. Early and Rodney Foo
SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS
FRESNO - The gruesome scene inside a Fresno building that had been converted into a family home was so horrific that a police official, hardened by nearly three decades of work, was shaken to tears.
"I've been with the Fresno Police Department for 25 years, and I've never experienced anything of this nature," said Chief Jerry Dyer, wiping his eyes while recalling a nightmarish bedroom where stacked corpses, mostly of children, were snared in a mass of clothing.
Charged with responsibility for the worst mass slaying in the city's history was Marcus Wesson, 57. Initially investigators estimated seven bodies, but after hours of untangling the horror, it turned out to be two females, ages 24 and 17, and seven children from ages 1 to 8.
The primary question that authorities could not answer: Was there something that the first officers on the scene could have done to prevent the apparent mass killing?
"We don't know if the deaths occurred before the officers arrived or after the officers arrived," said Dyer, obviously frustrated by the confusion hanging over the incident.
The question results from reports that police were called to a family disturbance shortly after 2 p.m. and were met by two women who said their four children were being held inside by Wesson. The police knocked and spoke with Wesson, who then returned to the house and barricaded himself in a bedroom.
At least one neighbor told the Associated Press he heard two gunshots moments before police arrived, but the officers on the scene didn't hear anything.
The two women warned officers Wesson had weapons, so not wanting to "inflame" a situation where children were at risk, the officers called for a SWAT team and hostage negotiators who came immediately and set up outside the house. An hour passed and suddenly Wesson calmly walked out and surrendered.
This time, unlike the first time officers saw him, Wesson was covered in blood. Inside police found the nine bodies and another oddity: 10 caskets stacked along a wall.
When asked how the victims were killed, the chief would only say, "the cause of death is unique and consistent." Past 10 p.m. Friday, bodies were still being removed. Robert Hensel, Fresno's chief deputy coroner, said his office was having trouble identifying some of the victims "because some of them are so young, we have no fingerprints." He said confirmed identities probably won't be available until Monday.
Authorities said several Fresno-area funeral homes have offered their services free of charge.
Dyer said the investigation was in too early a stage to determine what happened in the house, when it happened and what role the two original officers on the scene could have played in the outcome.
The chief said early indications are that Wesson carried on a maze of complex and unorthodox physical relationships with his family. Dyer said Wesson may have fathered two grandchildren with his daughters -- two of the 1-year-old victims. Police intend to perform myriad DNA tests to clarify such questions, and they will interrogate 10 to 12 relatives and others who might have been at the house before police were summoned. As for the caskets, Dyer said they didn't seem to play any role in the incident and that the officers, whose names were not released, have been put under the care of a police chaplain and psychologist.
Meanwhile, Wesson is expected to be charged with nine counts of first-degree murder. Dyer said that in one night Fresno's homicide rate quadrupled from three to 12.
"We have not ruled out any other suspects in this case," the chief said. "We haven't determined if this is a cult, a sect or a different belief system."
According to neighbors, Wesson lived at 761 Hammond Ave. for about eight months. He was described as aloof, tall and bulky. He wore thick cords of graying dreadlocks so long they dangled below his waist.
"He's a type who could see right through your skin, your body, clothes," said a shaken neighbor, Barbara Alec, 61, about Wesson, who has lived in Fresno, police say, for about three years. Alec said Wesson and his large family, at least twice a week, would burn items in the yard behind the home that would produce an indescribable stench.
"What are they burning?" she wondered all those days.
But on Friday night, she knew exactly why she felt so upset.
"Now I'm very scared," she said. "It's very spooky and weird knowing it was right at my back yard."
Dyer described Wesson as "intelligent, very articulate, very well-spoken." He said Wesson, who has no visible source of income, was calm and cooperative during questioning. The four adult women who live in the house were all employed and gave their money to Wesson to manage. The chief would not comment on what jobs the women held.
Records indicate Wesson was married in 1974 in Santa Clara County. His bride, Elizabeth Solorio, was 15 years old at the time. Wesson lived in East San Jose in the mid-1990s. Neighbors indicated that the house was a Victory Outreach drug and alcohol recovery facility around the same time.
Marcus and Elizabeth Wesson at one point also lived in Watsonville, according to records.
Parked close to the front door of the Wesson home in Fresno is a school bus that had its rear ceiling cut away to resemble a porch.
Neighbors said Wesson and his common-law wife and their two young adult daughters often could be heard at 1 or 2 a.m. drilling, hammering and sawing as they added chrome striping to the bus. The women were always seen wearing large black blouses, long black dresses or loose-fitting slacks.
"He never said 'Hi,'" said Linda Morales, another neighbor. "I'd drive by and he'd make a point to turn his face."
Same Story as Above -- Dated March 14 but saved several days later
Fresno massacre's grisly puzzle
EX-S.J. RESIDENT HELD IN DEATHS FATHERED ALL NINE VICTIMS
By David E. Early and Rodney Foo
Mercury News
FRESNO - Marcus Wesson, the Fresno man and former San Jose resident who allegedly slaughtered nine people, including seven children, fathered all of the victims, two of them perhaps with two of his daughters.
Police on Saturday were furiously trying to unravel what appears to be a maze of incest and polygamy. Fresno Police Chief Jerry Dyer said two 1-year-old victims may be Wesson's sons -- and grandsons.
Myriad DNA tests are planned, and police intend to interrogate 10 to 12 relatives and others who might have been at the Fresno house where stacked corpses, mostly children, were found Friday snared in a mass of clothing.
Investigators say the victims are two females ages 24 and 17 and seven children from ages 1 to 8. And charged with responsibility for the worst mass slaying in the city's history is 57-year-old Wesson.
The primary question that authorities could not answer: Was there something that the first officers on the scene could have done to prevent the killings?
``We don't know if the deaths occurred before the officers arrived or after,'' said Dyer, frustrated by the confusion hanging over the incident.
The question results from reports that police were called to a family disturbance shortly after 2 p.m. and were met by two women who said their four children were being held inside by Wesson. The police knocked and spoke with Wesson, who then returned to the house and barricaded himself in a bedroom.
At least one neighbor told the Associated Press he heard two gunshots moments before police arrived, but the officers on the scene didn't hear anything.
Waited for SWAT team
The two women warned officers Wesson had weapons, so not wanting to ``inflame'' a situation where children were at risk, the officers called for a SWAT team and hostage negotiators who came immediately and set up outside the house. An hour passed and suddenly Wesson calmly walked out and surrendered.
This time, unlike the first time officers saw him, Wesson was covered in blood. Inside police found the nine bodies and another oddity: 10 caskets stacked along a wall.
When asked how the victims were killed, Dyer would only say, ``the cause of death is unique and consistent.'' Past 10 p.m. Friday, bodies were still being removed. Robert Hensel, Fresno's chief deputy coroner, said his office was having trouble identifying some of the victims ``because some of them are so young, we have no fingerprints.'' He said confirmed identities probably won't be available until Monday.
One of Wesson's sons said he didn't believe his father was responsible for the killings.
``He was a good father. He wasn't abusive at all,'' said Dorian Wesson, 29, who lives in Santa Cruz. ``He was born in Kansas, lived in San Jose and moved to Fresno to buy and sell houses. He belongs to the Seventh-day Adventists and writes books, too.''
Authorities said several Fresno-area mortuaries have offered their services free of charge.
Dyer said the investigation was in too early a stage to determine what happened in the house, when it happened and what role the two original officers on the scene could have played in the outcome.
Dyer said the caskets didn't seem to play any role in the incident and that the officers, whose names were not released, are under the care of a police chaplain and psychologist.
Wesson, who is being held at the Fresno County Jail, is expected to be charged with nine counts of first-degree murder. Dyer said that in one night Fresno's homicide rate quadrupled from three to 12.
``We have not ruled out any other suspects in this case,'' the chief said. ``We haven't determined if this is a cult, a sect or a different belief system.''
`Right through your skin'
According to neighbors, Wesson lived at 761 Hammond Ave. for about eight months. He was described as aloof, tall and bulky. He wore thick cords of graying dreadlocks so long they dangled below his waist.
``He's a type who could see right through your skin, your body, clothes,'' said a shaken neighbor, Barbara Alec, 61, about Wesson, who has lived in Fresno, police say, for about three years. Alec said Wesson and his large family, at least twice a week, would burn items in the yard behind the home that would produce an indescribable stench.
``What are they burning?'' she wondered all those days. But Friday night, she knew exactly why she felt so upset. ``Now I'm very scared,'' she said. ``It's very spooky and weird knowing it was right at my back yard.''
Dyer described Wesson as ``intelligent, very articulate, very well-spoken.'' He said Wesson, who has no visible source of income, was calm and cooperative during questioning. The four adult women living in the house were employed and gave their money to Wesson to manage. The chief would not comment on their jobs.
Records indicate Wesson, three days from his 28th birthday, was married in 1974 in Santa Clara County. His bride, Elizabeth Solorio, was 15 years old at the time. Wesson lived in East San Jose in the mid-1990s. Neighbors indicated that the house was a Victory Outreach drug and alcohol recovery facility around the same time.
Marcus and Elizabeth Wesson at one point also lived in Watsonville, according to records.
Parked close to the front door of the Wesson home in Fresno is a school bus that had its rear ceiling cut away to resemble a porch.
Neighbors said Wesson and his common-law wife and their two young adult daughters often could be heard at 1 or 2 a.m. drilling, hammering and sawing as they added chrome striping to the bus. The women were always seen wearing large black blouses, long black dresses or loose-fitting slacks.
One cable company to rule them all
Comcast's bid to buy Disney raises a specter even scarier than the witch in Snow White: A Mickey Mouse Internet.
Editor's note: Ninth in a series on the consolidation of power and ownership in the media landscape.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Farhad Manjoo
March 17, 2004 | If you're looking for a perfect example of the limitless possibility of the Internet, the true, world-shrinking power of a fast, always-on network, you might find it at George's house. George is a British expat who lives in Philadelphia with his wife and kids and father. (We'll call him George, because, for reasons that will be explained, he doesn't want his real name published.) George loves America, but he also can't shake the feeling that he's not fully at home here; something about the place just doesn't click with him.
"Very few Brits ever get totally assimilated into the American culture," he says. So at George's house, the Internet functions as a portal to a world left behind. George and his family watch the BBC News on the Web three times a day. George, who spent two decades in the British film industry, makes digital movies of his family, and he sends the movies over the Internet to the extended family back home; they, in turn, send films of the mother country. "We use the Net as a lifeline," George says. "For anybody for whom this isn't their native country, you'd understand."
But Comcast, the company that provides George's high-speed Internet service, didn't understand. Last August, the company sent him a letter telling him to quit it -- he was using the Internet too much. The firm said he was violating Comcast's "acceptable use" policy, that he was somehow abusing his service. This surprised George, because as far as he knew he wasn't doing anything illegal or unseemly online -- "We're not using porn sites," he says -- and his contract with the firm didn't spell out any limits on his Internet use. When he called the company, it gave him the "runaround" -- nobody would tell George specifically what he should do to bring his use back in line with Comcast's policies, other than that, as a general matter, he ought to consider using the Internet much, much less.
George is not alone. Since the summer, Comcast has warned hundreds, possibly thousands, of customers of potential service termination due to high Internet use. The customers who receive these letters, people who'd always been told that their Internet service was "unlimited," find themselves in a Kafkaesque comedy of errors: The customers say that Comcast tells them they're using the service too much, but it won't give them any meaningful measure of how much is too much.
Philadelphia is Comcast's hometown, and the company is a powerful local force, so George had no choice but to accede to the company's demands. DSL isn't available in his neighborhood, and he can't do without a high-speed connection. (That's why George wants anonymity; he fears Comcast might cut him off for speaking to the press.) To keep a lifeline to the home country, his family has dramatically cut down its time online -- they now send their home movies by mail. His "quality of life" has consequently diminished, George says.
Comcast is the largest cable television operator in the United States, a firm whose lines reach more than 21 million homes, almost twice as many as its closest rival. With more than 5 million high-speed Internet customers, it is also the nation's largest broadband service. If it succeeds in its attempt to buy Disney, it would be the largest media company in the world. Comcast also spends millions of dollars a year on a sophisticated lobbying operation in Washington. According to news reports, Comcast recently hired, among others, Victoria Clarke, Donald Rumsfeld's former spokeswoman, and Lorine D. Card, the sister-in-law of Andrew Card, George W. Bush's chief of staff. Comcast is already one of the most powerful telecommunications companies in the United States, and its ambitions appear limitless.
To George and several other customers who have been caught up in the company's Byzantine policies, this power makes the company something to be feared. And the customers worry that if Comcast is successful in its hostile bid for Disney, a deal that would make it the largest media firm in the world, Comcast will become even less responsive to customers. Consumer groups are bracing for the possibility; they suggest that if Comcast gets Disney, the media -- especially the Internet -- will never be the same again.
The traditional reasons to worry about a Comcast-Disney merger -- it may raise your cable bill, and it could give Disney's content an advantage in your lineup of channels -- are compelling enough. But tech-savvy media critics these days are talking about a more theoretical, even scarier, proposition: If Comcast buys Disney, they wonder, will we get a Mickey Mouse Internet? Comcast has already demonstrated a willingness to circumscribe what customers do online. It has not only attacked high-use customers but, in the past, has also curbed virtual private networks (a popular way for corporations to integrate telecommuters into the company intranet) and, according to some customers, has limited traffic on Usenet, the oldest (and most unregulated) of all the Net's discussion forums. The company's terms of service also prohibit users from running file-sharing applications (among other things), and it has a less-than-clear policy on whether running a Wi-Fi network in your house is OK.
Such restrictions have prompted people to wonder what the company might do when it owns a vast stash of content. Will Disney's content -- its Web sites, its streaming movies and music and TV shows -- get pushed through at quicker rates to Comcast's broadband customers? Will other content, whether from a rival media giant or from your friends and family, get pushed through at all? And will the underlying architecture of the Internet subtly shift, over time, to accommodate the kinds of applications that media giants like Comcast want us to use, rather than the ones that come from the bubbling innovation of the Internet itself -- like the Web, or e-mail, or peer-to-peer file trading?
At the moment, these concerns are somewhat fuzzy because the merger is not a certainty and because Comcast vehemently denies any intention of messing with the Net. Comcast claims that its critics are simply making much ado about very little. But the critics say they're only looking at the logical outcome of a marriage between Comcast and Disney. "If Comcast thinks the merger is going to pay off because there's a natural synergy between content and distribution, the only way for them to make it pay is by using their distribution platform to give an unfair advantage to the content," says Dave Burstein, the editor of DSL Prime, an influential broadband industry newsletter. "Comcast will have incredible incentive to keep content that's not from Disney away from the consumer."
Currently, there are no federal regulations prohibiting Comcast from doing something like that, which is why Comcast's critics are demanding such restrictions. Unless the Federal Communications Commission imposes rules to prevent distribution companies like Comcast from favoring the content of one media firm over others', says Lawrence Lessig, a professor at Stanford Law School, "if Comcast and Disney are together, the incentive to play the game will be irresistible."
Will the FCC crack down? Considering Comcast's history with regulators, that appears unlikely.
Comcast Corp. is a modern marvel of Washington's deregulatory ways. The company, which has expanded through shrewd acquisitions since its founding -- in Tupelo, Miss., in 1963 -- is a direct beneficiary of the last few decades' loosening telecom rules. Comcast's last purchase, the 2002 buyout of AT&T's massive cable system, might not even have been possible if it hadn't been for the business-friendly ways of the Bush administration's FCC appointees, who had let languish an old rule that prevented one cable firm from owning too many of the nation's cable lines. Now, the company is counting on those commissioners to give it a green light on Disney.
To illustrate Comcast's closeness with regulators, Jeffrey Chester, the director of the Center for Digital Democracy, a Washington group that favors stringent communications regulations, tells the story of the firm's maneuverings in 2002, during its takeover of AT&T's cable lines.
At the time, consumer advocates were agitating against the purchase; they worried that if Comcast bought AT&T, the combined firm would increase cable television rates and perhaps even limit how customers could use their broadband Internet connections. To mollify those critics, Comcast entered into several deals with rival Internet service providers, granting those ISPs the right to sell their services over Comcast's lines; Comcast hoped that its moves would show regulators that it would play fair on its broadband lines.
The problem was, some of those deals were secret, and Comcast's rivals wondered if the contracts contained terms that were extremely favorable to Comcast. Cable-industry trade newspapers reported, for instance, that Comcast allowed America Online to sell high-speed Internet service over Comcast's lines only after AOL agreed not to offer streaming video subscription plans that directly competed with Comcast's cable TV shows. EarthLink and consumer advocates chafed at the thought of such restrictions -- they seemed to prove that Comcast intended to wield enormous influence over what customers could do online. The critics demanded that the FCC command Comcast to fully disclose its secret deals with ISPs.
That's when Brian Roberts, Comcast's CEO, placed a telephone call to Michael Powell, the chairman of the FCC. According to documents Comcast submitted to regulators, Roberts told the chairman that all of his company's deals with other firms should be kept private; the FCC had no right to look at those deals as part of the merger. Roberts must have been persuasive, because two weeks after his telephone chat with Powell, despite the outcry of consumer groups, the FCC chairman granted the CEO's request. Powell and his two fellow Republicans on the commission approved the merger.
Roberts' interaction with the FCC chairman provides a good guide to what might happen when the firm embarks on its attempt to swallow up Disney. Comcast is a firm accustomed to getting what it wants. Disney has rejected Comcast's takeover bid, but many analysts say Disney's current management troubles leave Comcast well positioned to pursue the merger and eventually become the world's largest media conglomerate. And when the merger comes to the FCC for approval, it looks as though Powell -- and probably the other Republicans on the commission -- would side with the cable giant once again.
In a speech given Feb. 8 at the University of Colorado School of Law, in Boulder, Powell characterized the broadband industry as a growing and robust business, one that would do best without "unnecessary regulation that might distort or slow its growth." While he criticized broadband providers for imposing some restrictions on Wi-Fi and other applications -- singling out Comcast in particular for refusing to provide customers with "enough guidance regarding the bandwidth limits of their service plans," the problem that tripped up George -- Powell said that based on what he knows now, there's no need to impose rules preventing firms like Comcast from giving preference to some content on the Internet over others.
Powell seemed to be coming down against a proposed regulatory scheme known as "network neutrality," which Lessig and others have favored as a way to make sure that large broadband companies don't wield unfair influence in the development of new online applications and content. Comcast has been the leading opponent of such an idea. The firm maintains there is no evidence that cable firms wield too much power in deciding what's online, that customers are generally free to do what they want on Comcast's broadband Internet service, its terms of service notwithstanding.
Lessig and other advocates of network neutrality disagree. They point to restrictions like Comcast's as the first step in a possible slew of new restrictions to come, and they warn that if Comcast merges with Disney, things could get much worse. That's because, Lessig notes, Disney has been one of the leading advocates of network neutrality. "Disney has been the best silent ally we've had in this battle for the last five years," Lessig says -- and if Comcast buys Disney, proponents of a "neutral" network will see that silent ally become a vocal foe.
In a speech delivered last October, Michael Copps, one of the two Democratic commissioners on the FCC and a leading opponent of media concentration, worried that the freewheeling Internet that we've come to love "may be dying" because "entrenched interests are positioning themselves to control the Internet's choke-points, and they are lobbying the FCC to aid and abet them."
Comcast is the main example of such an entrenched interest. In an interview, Copps declined to comment specifically on Comcast and Disney, but he seemed cool to the idea of a merger, noting that the "marriage between distribution and content" has troubled him in the past. Copps called for the FCC to study whether a network neutrality regime might be in order "to keep bad things from happening. I think we need to be studying this in a sustained way and committing some resources to this at the commission."
To free marketers, such ideas are silly. Adam Thierer, the director of telecommunications studies at the Cato Institute, explains it this way: "The way to frame this issue is as the battle between dumb pipes and smart pipes," he says. People like Copps and Lessig want broadband Internet consumers to use dumb pipes, "a high-speed, flexible pipe that anybody can use for any purpose, transmit anything they want on it, no restrictions at all."
Companies like Comcast might want a smart pipe, "where you turn on your broadband connection and you get a welcome screen that could provide a launching pad to that company's Web site. It might suggest you use a certain service. It might even say that as a condition of the deal you can only use certain products." Comcast's smart pipe might even be really smart, perhaps cunning -- it could allow Disney's movies to stream to your house at a hugely increased rate, while movies from Time Warner come in at a slower clip.
So what's better -- a smart pipe or a dumb pipe? It's completely up to the customer, Thierer says. Many people will want a restriction-free dumb pipe. But "my poor mother, when she gets online she's utterly helpless. Some people need integrated intelligence. When they sign a contract they're going to expect a little more than a new big fast pipe." So if some people want dumb pipes and some people want smart pipes, why not let the market choose?
Comcast offers a variation on this position. It should be free, it says, to favor some content on its network over other content -- but whether it does so or not will be circumscribed by market forces, and in the end consumers won't be harmed.
Asked about the specific possibility that Comcast might stream Disney movies at a preferred speed, David Cohen, Comcast's executive vice president, said, "There's no doubt we could do that -- whether we would want to do it or not, I don't know." Cohen said he saw nothing wrong with that practice: "What's the difference between that and what Yahoo and Google and MSN do today in terms of the order of the results on search engines?" he asked. If Google is allowed to make money by selling Barnes & Noble a "sponsored link" for the keyword "books," why can't Comcast make money by having a kind of "sponsored," high-speed content on its network? But then, Cohen added, if Comcast gave Disney's content pride of place on its broadband network, "Time Warner would go to Verizon, and they would try and cut a similar deal. And they would market the hell out of their product -- which is why we probably wouldn't want to do that." In Comcast's view, then, everything would work out fine in the end, since the free market would curtail bad behavior on the network.
In practice, there's reason to believe that things won't work out so cleanly. The first problem is that the broadband market isn't currently as competitive as Cohen envisions it. Remember George, the Philly resident who can't get DSL? There are millions of others like him, people stuck with service from Comcast because DSL isn't available in their area. And even if DSL is available, it's still hard to conclude that the broadband market is extremely competitive. Two competitors don't usually make for a price war; they tend to divide up the available business and play nice. And then you have the problem that DSL is slower than cable. So, yes, Verizon could sign a deal with Time Warner and market the hell out of its Time Warner movies service, as Cohen suggests. But Disney movies on Comcast would still have an unfair advantage, since they would enjoy a faster overall speed. And wouldn't Comcast market the hell out of that?
Tim Wu, a professor at the University of Virginia School of Law who has written extensively on broadband policy, compares the market that might come about in a world without regulation to today's software industry. "Have you ever noticed that Microsoft applications just seem to work better [than other companies' software] on Windows?" he asks. Sure there's heated competition -- "but for some reason Microsoft programs like Word or Excel always kind of have a slight advantage." That's what might happen in the broadband world. Disney movies might just somehow always have the edge on Comcast's network.
But that's not what worries Wu the most. If Disney movies received a slight bump in speed, that would be troubling -- but what if Comcast, seeing that it was making a lot of money from streaming films online, decided to rejigger the network to favor movies over all other network traffic? What if it optimized the network for downloads over uploads (which, in fact, most companies do today), or it gave movie content preference over streaming audio content, or it limited file-sharing programs to make sure that its movies weren't being pirated online? What if, in short, Comcast-Disney created, as Wu fears, a "bias toward a certain design" of the network, a bias that fit well with the company's content business but that stifled the growth of whole new uses of the Internet?
"The most important engine of economic growth is applications development," Wu says. "It's when someone invents something like e-mail or the World Wide Web. But economic rationality and business plans aren't always the same thing. They may decide that the way the Internet will make money is by delivering content. But if you optimize the network for that purpose only, you eventually lose the power of the network as a development platform."
Wu's idea of the perfect network, one that's completely neutral as a development platform, is the electricity grid. "It's a wonderful, wonderful platform for innovation on a number of electric devices -- toasters, cellphones, computers." The secret of the network, Wu says, is something he terms "disinterested carriers," by which he means that the companies that run the electricity grid are divorced from the ones that make electric devices. You can imagine the trouble we might have if powerful appliance makers merged with the largest power firms: You'd get hair dryers working in some outlets and radios working in others, and consumers always wondering whether this appliance was compatible with that power company.
Thankfully, the Internet is not like that, yet. But the Comcast-Disney merger wouldn't help; the most troubling thing about Comcast becoming the world's largest media firm is that it would have constant interest in policing the network, an ever-present incentive to subtly, or not so subtly, favor one use of its pipes over another.
The company's bandwidth limits on traffic can be seen as an early sign of this policy. According to Burstein, of DSL Prime, Comcast's monthly download limit -- which he's been able to glean, approximately, from online discussion groups -- is just about what a person might use if he watched a high-quality video stream for an hour every day. In other words, Burstein says, Comcast is "protecting their HBO assets." With pay services like Movielink, or free news and sports channels available all over the Internet these days, it's possible to get a lot of very good video via the Net. Comcast, a firm that makes most of its money from selling cable TV, can't be too happy with this new source of video coming into people's homes -- and limiting bandwidth is an easy way to make sure such a thing can't get out of hand.
The company denies these charges. Cohen said that the company has cut off a very small number of its customers for exceeding bandwidth limits, and they were all people who "were obviously using our residential service for commercial purposes." He added that "if you're streaming video 24 hours a day, you would not get cut off from our service."
But Cohen's assurances are hard to square with what four Comcast customers told Salon. They were all warned about exceeding traffic limits. All, including George, denied using Comcast's lines to run a commercial service; all said they thought it was streaming video and audio that got them in trouble. To these customers, Comcast's actions seemed totally arbitrary. They said they had no idea how the firm determined whom to warn and whom to ignore. And when asked, the company would give them no explanation of its actions.
It's certainly doesn't sound like a good template for the future of the Internet. "But they're used to being a monopoly -- that's how they behave," said Jaime Todaro, a former Comcast customer who lives in Maryland. "They really have a basic 'Take it or leave it' attitude."
Notes on Renewed Appropriationisms
Curated by Lauri Firstenberg
Including the work of Siemon Allen, Wade Guyton, Ellen Harvey, Seth Price, Anton Vidokle and Kelley Walker
With Projects by Ruben Ochoa and Michael Queenland
The Project LA March 13 - April 24
Opening Reception Saturday March 13, from 6 – 8 pm
Exhibtion Press Release
This exhibition offers a few reflections on a young generation of artists whose disparate engagements with the operations of appropriation suggest that it remains an incessant and viable strategy. The show examines some of the turns and tendencies of recent appropriationisms that are personal, political, formal, popular, historical, technical and self-critical. We see appropriation take a variety of forms, from a direct lifting of cultural artifacts to a more veiled resuscitation of the vernacular. What once pertained to solely the act of collecting and cutting is now the domain of sampling and hacking. These young neo-appropriationists have a craftiness to their work, through slight or masked mediation. Their production often is invested in the resignification of personal, political or historical memory, entering the terrain of the critical-nostalgic. Both formal and socio-political questions are addressed in such casual gestures of looking, remembering and re-appropriating to provide infinite possibilities and potential for representation.
Our era of digital reproduction and the excess of accessible and inescapable visual information at super-speed, perhaps prompts a need to isolate images, return to representation in a deliberate, exhaustive manner, to dwell on signification, circulation, translation, recontextualization and reconfiguration of visual languages. New York based multi-media artist Kelley Walker’s digitally montaged poster takes on the propandist logic and language of advertising, summoning its audience to “Reappropriate.” Walker’s poster presents the work as a secondary graphic output - a token of the actual work itself-a CD rom, that includes directions for the potential alteration, replication and dispersal of the piece. The image of a Californian backyard, devastated by an earthquake, is decorated with vividly toned amorphous abstractions characteristic of digital painting. Culled from a book, the page crease in the image spread remains. The action of lifting is made apparent. This is a game of contradictions played out within the logic of the computer. With a click, what could camouflage the act of co-option is not put into service. Rather, the neurosis of the Internet is evoked, providing an a-temporal, frenzied informational moment. Decorative patterning meets disaster – the results of a search engine gone wrong.
Art and Obsolescence
Emblematic of a generational drift towards a new brand of appropriationism, the lexicon that is often reclaimed by this young generation of practitioners is that of the television, the internet, and the video game. Historic time is the 1980’s. Pre-Play Station II psychology fuels a kind of memorializing gesture on the part of New York based artist Seth Price. His nostalgia for vestiges of a not-so-distant past includes a chronicle of popular images and personal memories – Capri Sun, Fruit Roll-Ups, Yoplait, Sony Walk-Mans, Apple II and Atari. This adolescent memorabilia serves as the basis for a kind of archiving of the detritus of the digital age. In Global Taste, A Meal in 3 Courses, Price steals an element from Martha Rosler’s eighties classic. Interested in Rosler’s recontextualization of popular cultural iconography, particularly, her montage of commercials from the 1980’s, from Hot Pockets, to Granola Dips, to Dennys, Price isolates and reanimates one aspect of her original tri-partite video installation. Price’s further decontextualization of Rosler’s media-critique, signals a perfect performance to actualize Price’s "retro-fixation" via Rosler’s recuperation of a particular moment in the media-imaginary of a lost Michael Jackson and E.T. loving America. In this way, the work primarily speaks to the artist’s fascination with advertising as an archaic cultural relic.
Reprocessing of Form
Wade Guyton’s neo-minimalist reductive architectonic sculptures are representative of a young generation of artists gesturing to minimalism’s enmeshed traditions of sculpture, architecture and design. In Untitled Action Sculpture (chair), Guyton deconstructs a generic design object. A sinuous silver metal sculpture is composed of co-opted legs of a Breur-style chair, pulled, prodded, and reconfigured it into highly formal abstracted terms. Guyton’s most recent corpus began as black manual drawings, interventions onto found material, torn pages from design, home and sculpture publications, largely from the sixties and seventies. Obscuring and disfiguring the image with a rudimentary graphic negational gesture, primarily, an inscription of a black X cancels the found image. Guyton’s mark both obliterates and engages with the visual terms of the appropriated material. These drawings address the concerns of his sculptures – the negotiation of ornamentation versus function, the production of contingent temporary structures reduced in form to signify merely on the level of style.
The Politics of Appropriation
Born out of the artist's methodical, daily practice of collecting, Siemon Allen’s work signals a series of installations engaging the media-image of South Africa. In re-examining the presence of South Africa in pop culture and in the press, Allen challenges the viewer to encounter the entanglement of global politics, economics and culture. Allen’s series of collections – South African stamps, American newspapers, model guns, reverberate with his earlier collections of personal cultural artifacts from his white suburban middle class youth - Hardy Boys books, Doc Martens, model airplanes, Tintin comics. These relics excavate personal and cultural memory. These acts of appropriation historicize the contemporary, creating at once temporal rift, collapse, and camouflage.
Aestheticization of the Ordinary
Russian-born, New York-based artist Anton Vidokle’s project is invested in the co-option of modernist, revolutionary iconography via various techniques of abstraction, decontextualization and resignification. His work reveals the transference and translation of signs, removed from the realm of the socio-political to the space of the commercial, into the terrain of art in the guise of the popular, referential and the institutional. This made manifest in a series of stickers Popular Geometries, of faux logotypes, mainly extracted from Eastern European and Latin American companies. The multiple transpositions of early modernist language is not purely an aesthetic question for Vidokle, but a reflection of his concern with the manner in which the early utopian ideals of modernism were dissipated by the market, and depleted of their revolutionary social potential. The artist is concerned with the circuit of modernist language appropriated into corporate and popular vernacular. Nuevo, marks a public performance of painting the facade of a defunct train station in Mexico City at the Salto del Aqua metro stop red in a modular fashion. A film and photographic project is based on the facade of this modular, modernist structure turning the surface into sign.
This exhibition is based on an article of the same name (Parkett 67, 2003). Lauri Firstenberg is the newly appointed Assistant Director/Curator of the MAK Center, Los Angeles.
The exhibition continues at ART2102 with Salto del Agua - A film by Anton Vidokle and Cristian Manzutto
Opening Reception: Tuesday March 16th 6-9pm - Exhibition runs March 16th through April 24th, 2004 Gallery Hours: Fri & Sat 12-6pm or by appointment.
ART 2102 - 2101 East First Street LA CA 90033 T.323.401.3441 info@art2102.org
Oscar bombs
"The Passion of The Frodo" sweeps, and more beautiful stars bravely impersonate the genuinely homely to great success. But all the crooked teeth in New Zealand can't save a dull, dull Oscar night
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By Cintra Wilson
March 1, 2004 |
Squarer than robot-shit. All the joy and irreverence of a hotel management seminar. Strictly by-the-book, and the book was the New Zealand census, apparently, and less interesting. The fearful cadavers of the Academy laid down the law with their spotted old talons and brought down an unbearable evening of easy-to-chew television for the elderly and prim that looked and sounded like a slowed-down version of the Lawrence Welk show without all the stimulating colors. Not even the clothes were interesting, apart from Uma Thurman, who wore a Fabergé baked potato.
Janet Jackson ruined tits for everyone, so the vast majority of dresses were strictly Mormon prom. Even Elvis Costello wore a plain black jacket, for The Christ’s sake. Nobody even had interesting new plastic surgery, apart from Joan Rivers, whose face looks like it was gnawed out of marzipan by the savages of Easter Island, and Angelina’s Billy Bob-shaped laser scar.
Actually, I think the horrendous cash success of The Passion of The Mel was responsible for all possible fun being extracted from this year’s ceremony -- cranky old Oscar figured out that most of America hates sex, dancing, gay people, ethnic people, ribald or drug-related humor, and opinionated or irreverent takes on current political events, so the golden man decided to show us just how well-behaved and self-censoring he be; Hollywood fidgeted like kids in Sunday school, and us unwashed heathen out here in TV land had to resort to binge drinking.
"Movieshe are the forshe thot bindshe ush togethah. Shelebrate the mahgic," croaked the decrepit Gone Seannery, establishing the octogenarian Bisquick casserole flavor for the evening in the first five minutes. Even the ordinarily amusing Billy Crystal had crystallized into a pillar of Klonopin -- who were his writers? Who in this day and age rhymes Old Man River with "Dark as mom’s chopped liver"? That’s comedy so anciently borscht-belt it should have been in Aramaic. When he picked Julie Andrews as his designated whipping-matron, it was clear the corporate fear factor was jacked up to orange alert.
There were no pleasant surprises. Tim Robbins beat out a token Asian and Djimon Hounsou, that beautiful African, for best supporting actor; I thought Hounsou deserved it more. The Wonderful Magical Black Person is now a cliché so absurdly pervasive I’m surprised there aren’t Franklin Mint collector plates of damp-eyed homeys gazing heavenward in a spiritual, Native American fashion, but Hounsou still brought a lot of heart to his role. Tim was not exactly a revelation in his dunced-out portrayal of an emotionally damaged guy, but he has been loitering purposefully around Hollywood long enough, and he must have promised to behave; usually an incorrigibly mouthy liberal, Tim’s thank-you was so safe, you knew somebody had his balls in a professional threat-sandwich.
The Road to Oscartown has always been paved with retardation and weight gain, which is why it was obviously Renee Zellweger’s turn to get best supporting actress -- fat, thin, fat, thin….she may be the greatest actress since Oprah. But lately, getting the award is all about Puttin’ On the Ugly: beautiful young Hollywood hotties playing grizzled and wizened hard-luck cases. Let’s review: It worked for Nicole Kidman and her extra nose last year, and Halle Berry’s realistically hideous sex with Billy Bob Thornton’s deflated ass-flaps in 2002. Hilary Swank got the gold when she transformed herself into young Donny Osmond, and it almost worked for Salma Hayek when she grew her mustache out.
But when I think of homely, miserable, ornery, masochistic jockeys with eating disorders, Tobey Maguire doesn’t exactly gallop to the forefront of my mind. Lizzie McGuire would probably make my short list before Tobey. Don’t try to tell me there’s no scraggly little ex-fuck-ups in Hollywood. You know what casting call might have been a stroke of casting genius for "Seabiscuit"? Corey Feldman. That kid has the face of pain. Any of Young Hollywood’s recently sober casualty-boys would have done the trick….but "Spiderman"?
Concurrently, when I’m thinking of hard, early American women barely scraping out a living, subsisting on tablespoons of dirt and weeds at the end of the Civil War, I do not think of Nicole Kidman and Renee Zellweger, the two most wildly pampered women in L.A. and possibly the world, who probably needed to have their hair strands individually mussed for hours each day they shot "Cold Mountain."
Hot-hot-hot model/ballerina/actress Charlize Theron bravely gained 30 pounds, shaved her eyebrows and spent a half an hour in the makeup chair each day getting all ragged-out and splotchy. Her genuinely terrifying performance notwithstanding, I’d have rather seen the best actress award go to an organically homely person.
"Lord of the Rings," realistically, had no competish.
"Master & Commander" was a silly male costume-drama, a moistened "Gladiator," what with Rusty Crowe and his locks of goldenest Clairol, pouncing manfully about the deck with his beefy guts of lager, minding scuppers both bow and stern. Whilst cannonballs splintered the poop-deck and wee boys arms were sawn off, me whistle was whetted for e’en finer upcoming computer graphicks dramas on the high seas, like "Troy." Nay, that film ‘twas neither sentimental enough nor was there sufficient bodice-rippage for the Oxygen demographick.
"Seabiscuit" was a stink-pony – superclean schlock from nose to bumper. Spare me the sight of quaint, depression-era crowd scenes that look like they’ve been swaddled in tweeds by J. Crew, surging in rapture to majestic life-insurance violin orchestrations. That shit was strictly for Burl Ives, Pepperidge Farm and creamy ranch dressing.
"Mystic River" – eh. Sorry, boys: Emotional Violence for Dummies. While Sean is great at bawling openly towards the sky-cam in "Why hast thou forsaken me?" fits of bathos, unrestrained Mook Feelings do not count as emotional nuance, in my book. I’ve seen more skillfully calibrated grief at Super Bowl parties. Sean Penn is unquestionably the finest actor of his generation, but his Best Actor win was strictly the Academy playing catch-up ball -- they got embarrassed that they didn’t recognize him for "Dead Man Walking" or his most naked Oscar bid, that dribbling "Sam I Am" gambit. Sean’s time was overdue, but Mystic River was just one Mexican soap-opera out of dozens he’ll flex his scenery-chewing skills on in the years to come; Bill Murray, on the other hand, may not get another shot. Sad, I say.
"Lost in Translation." OK – I’m jealous of Sophia, I admit it (knuckle-biting spleen, arrrgh, arrgh.) I haven’t seen the movie yet, but she’s clearly got great taste and gets her inspiration from smarter sources than anyone else, at the moment – still, she’s too young and the movie was too quirky to compete with the whole of Middle Earth.
I didn’t really dig the maudlin Irish sob-fest that was "In America" – it was a shamelessly heart-poking, Spielbergian emotional short-con -- basically "The Color Purple" for broke, co-dependant Catholic honkies, shot in glorious Technisqualor. Samantha Morton is the most Serious Actress going, these days, in that she tends to naturally look like she’s put on twenty extra pounds and a prosthetic nose, but that vintage Givenchy dress looked a bit like twin Edsel grills strapped to her tits, and it just wasn’t her night.
"Lord of the Rings: The Passion of The Frodo" was, for me, a great tool of conversion to Hobbitism. They got me where I lived. I was riveted to my seat for the full three hours; I cried so much that by the end I was holding a cardboard tub of polenta. A wildly ambitious and unbelievably realized monster achievement in the genre of epic filmmaking. Bully for the elves, but it’s not like this sweeping win of Peter Jackson’s was any great shocker – certainly, nobody needed to watch the dental nightmare that was the 76th Oscars all the way to the end to figure out who was going home with the big jackpot.
Shame on you, Oscar, for being such a craven corporate pussy. Shame, shame, shame. The only way you can possibly redeem yourself is to get Dave Chappelle to host in 2005 – if not, you may as well go lay down and die in some Opus Dei donation box, because the TiVo contingent will have nothing to do with you. You’ve never had genitals, but now you clearly have no spine.
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