Commentary Update for October 7, 2003
1. This Week's Show: This week's Commentary features interviews with Bob Poeschl, Iryna Depenchuk, and Angela LeNoble. All three are members of the UW Oshkosh Student Environmental Action Coalition and all three have been active in organizing the annual Earth Charter Community Summit that will be held from October 11 - 17 on the campus. The event will feature some outstanding programs and speakers, all of whom can found in the program: http://www.uwosh.edu/earthcharter/summit2003.php I will personally chair a Wednesday, October 15th panel ( 6 - 7:30 p.m. Reeve Union 227C) featuring Commentary favorites Jay Heck , Mike McCabe, and Melanie Fonder.
2. RIP Neil Postman: One of the most influential figures in the history of media studies, Neil Postman (b. 1931), passed away this weekend. When I was a younger professor, he once approached me after a presentation I gave at a conference and told me how impressed he was with what I had to say and how I said it. At the time, I was flabbergasted that an internationally known scholar could take an interest in a little twerp like me. Later on I realized that like me, Neil was an irreverent yet at heart very old-fashioned and conservative (lower case conservative) Brooklynite somewhat out of place in academia; a subculture that has a way of locating its members in a crowd. I've heard that Vietnam Vets locate each other in a similar way. Here's an obituary by Professor Lance Strate of NYU posted earlier today on the Media Ecology Discussion List:
. . . Neil was our mentor, as he was the mentor of hundreds, in fact thousands of graduate students, and so the loss is personal as well as professional. We will miss him as a friend, colleague, teacher, and father. Neil was an extraordinarily charming individual, with a terrific sense of humor, a gifted writer, public speaker, and conversationalist. Neil loved people, and loved to meet new people and get to know them. He found great joy in kibbutzing with other people, with making them happy and making them laugh, and he was equally at home doing it with the President of the United States (as I once observed him doing with Clinton on C-SPAN) and with waiters, bus drivers, and janitors. He was truly a man of the people, and he never lost sight of what really mattered to him, which was teaching and interacting with his students.
As an educator, Neil was never interested in promulgating a doctrine, let alone forcing it down his students throats and expecting them to bring it back up. His goal was always to set up a good discussion, and get his students to think for themselves in new and interesting ways. He taught us that questions are more important than answers (another way of saying that the medium is the message), and he encouraged his students to engage in open-minded and original inquiry. He never cared whether we cited him or not in our publications, or whether we agreed with him or not in our arguments. He just asked that we express ourselves clearly and logically, and humanely.
Neil formally introduced the term "media ecology," and institutionalized it as a graduate program at New York University. To him it was a curriculum first, but without him, there would be no field of media ecology, let alone a Media Ecology Association. Neil served on the MEA's first Board of Directors, on the Editorial Board of Explorations in Media Ecology, and he gave the Keynote Address at the first MEA convention in 2000 (which can be found on our website, www.media-ecology.org).
His scholarly career was extraordinary. As a doctoral student at Columbia University's Teachers College, he published his first book, Television and the Teaching of English, in 1961. What is remarkable is that a year before the publication of the Gutenberg Galaxy, Neil was already explaining McLuhan's ideas and what would eventually be known as media ecology. This first book reflects his original training in English Education. He then took on Charles Weingartner as a co-author for a series of books, including Linguistics (an excellent summary of the field up to the early 60s), Teaching as a Subversive Activity (a very popular book that became part of the wave of education reform of the 60s & early 70s), The Soft Revolution (a hodgepodge that includes the proposal for the media ecology program), The School Book (more on the reform movement), and the short book How to Recognize a Good School. He also co-edited Language in America, and went solo for Crazy Talk, Stupid Talk, a book that was very popular for its combination of general semantics and interpersonal communication (esp. relational theory, systems theory, and symbolic interaction). He served as editor of the journal of the International Society for General Semantics, ETC., while shifting his focus to television for his trilogy, Teaching as a Conserving Activity (a reversal of Subversive Activity in some ways, but in others an updating), The Disappearance of Childhood (his most tightly reasoned work, often overshadowed by Amusing), and Amusing Ourselves to Death (his most popular book). He followed with a collection of short pieces, Conscientious Objections, and then Technopoly which was based on the technology studies of Mumford, Giedion, Beniger, and especially Ellul. Neil also published a couple of later collaborations, including the report Myths, Men, and Beer published by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety which he co-authored with Christine Nystrom, myself, and Charlie Weingartner, and How to Watch TV News, which he co-authored with Steve Powers. His last two books were The End of Education (returning to his original field), and Building a Bridge to the 18th Century (his final plea for humanism and enlightenment).
But beyond all this, Neil was a consummate New Yorker, a son of Brooklyn, and a product of the same Jewish neighborhoods that Woody Allen (who went to the same elementary school as Neil) celebrates in movies like Radio Days. It is fitting that he left us on the holiest day of the Jewish calendar.
In the end, it was truly God's grace that led us to plan a 5th birthday party for the MEA, and then take the occasion to honor Neil. It gave a great many of us one last chance to see him, and cheer him, and he had a great time that night. And it was a comfort to him to know that so many of us were dedicated to carrying on his work, his legacy, and that silly little "media ecology" thing that he started.
Neil was a great man, and we will miss him dearly. But we will also celebrate his life and accomplishments, and carry on for him. I hope others will add their reflections to mine here in the days to come.
Lance
3. Simile of the Week: The Nation's Katha Pollitt, writing about the sexual harassment accusations against Arnold for the New York Times: "At a campaign stop just after the story broke, Lt. Gov. Cruz M. Bustamante did point out that touching someone's private parts against his or her will is a crime of misdemeanor sexual battery. Unfortunately, he sounded about as animated as a traffic cop handing out a ticket. Republican women, so appalled by Mr. Clinton's infidelities, have rallied around their man. Even Susan Estrich, the Democratic feminist commentator, says The Los Angeles Times has gone overboard."
Pollitt is one of the critics of Arnold's boorish behavior who defended Clinton against similar charges in 1998 because the comeback kid's dalliance with Monica was "consensual," Paula Jones was part of the right wing conspiracy, Gennifer Flowers was a pathological liar seeking to cash in, Juanita Broadrick (who claimed Clinton raped her) wasn't credible, airline attendants who came forward wanted 15 minutes of fame, any others were no one's business but Bill and Hillary's, and yada yada yada. It's extremely entertaining listen to the explanations as to why there's no double standard at work.
4. Lautenschlager the Telemarketer: It took about 3 years, but Oshkosh Northwestern Executive Editor Stew Rieckman finally produced a witty and insightful column about something political. Last Sunday he demonstrated how elected officials flooding newsrooms with faxed fluff pieces is in its own way as annoying and wrong as the telemarketer solicitation the government takes pride in rescuing us from. Hopefully we won't have to wait until October of 2006 for another quality Rieckman piece.
5. Wisconsin the 8th Smartest State: That's according to the Morgan Quitno Press, which has produced such rankings for several years. The rankings are based on 21 factors. Massachusetts comes out the smartest, which is incredible for a state that actually roots for the Red Sox (go Yankees!!).
6. Misperceptions About Iraq War. Knight Ridder recently conducted a major study of Americans' knowledge of Iraq. They concluded that, "A majority of Americans have held at least one of three mistaken impressions about the U.S.-led war in Iraq, according to a new study released Thursday, and those misperceptions contributed to much of the popular support for the war.
The three common mistaken impressions are that:
The full study can be found here: http://www.pipa.org/
Meanwhile, an American journalist was able to secure an Interview with an Iraqi guerrilla, as reported in the Los Angeles Times.
Best,
-Tony