Case-Notes from the Artsy Asylum

Can Barack Obama Fix Twitter?

   

The blogosphere loves Barack Obama. But apparently in America at least, blog readers and writers and commenters and flamers aren't always totally reflective of everyone.

In fact Carol Marin wrote in The Chicago Sun-Times that "The Lanky One is like an Alice Waters organic chicken — 'sleek, elegant, beautifully prepared. Too cool' — when what many working-class women are craving is mac and cheese."

But I'm a meat and potatoes kind of woman. I want a guy who will put steak and baked potato on the grill and throw together a salad after he walks the dog and harvests a nice melon he grew in our organic garden. But fearing no candidate will be all things to all people, I still keep hearing Obama say "Yes we can" every day.

And now the smart people in the land of web 2.0 where I've been known to I hang out give me web pages that claim OBAMA can do all this and more.

They've put together a fun website that jabs kindly - but with a hint of truth behind it - both poking fun at the candidate and the electorate who want our leaders to be able to play hardball with dictators, Mother Theresa to the underprivledged, and understanding friend to the folks who put him in office while being a good spouse and tweeting from his blackberry while importing oil without making deals we wouldn't approve of.

What each candidate brings to the table, like each of us, are strengths and weaknesses of a lifetime. We have to ask ourselves what exactly do we want? Is it someone who is so driven that they can do everything include, no doubt, win "dancing with the Stars"?

Maureen Dowd note insightfully in the New York Times that although many women say they will not vote for him:

"The odd thing is that Obama bears a distinct resemblance to the most cherished hero in chick-lit history. The senator is a modern incarnation of the clever, haughty, reserved and fastidious Mr. Darcy."

"Like the leading man of Jane Austen and Bridget Jones, Obama can, as Austen wrote, draw “the attention of the room by his fine, tall person, handsome features, noble mien. ...he was looked at with great admiration for about half the evening, till his manners gave a disgust which turned the tide of his popularity; for he was discovered to be proud, to be above his company, and above being pleased.”

Ouch. That hurts. Hero of chick-lit or not.

But maybe there's a way around this. For example if Obama can solve Twitter's problems, I don't care if he's haughty. If the Twitter magic happens before November and the tweet guys give him a shoutout for the help, I'm so there pulling the Obama lever, no matter how 'way too cool' he is.

And I'm trying to remember what a help for my offspring it would be since  . .

Randy Pausch's Death and Our Own Last Lecture

Randy Pausch, the Carnegie Mellon professor whose "last lecture" made him famous died today, almost a year after he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer,

When he gave this Carnegie Mellon commencement address in May, he had lived three months longer than the three to six months doctors had predicted, leading a friend to say he was “beating the Reaper.”

“We don’t beat the Reaper by living longer,” Pausch said. “We beat the Reaper by living well.”

It's difficult - at least for me - to see people with cancer deteriorate and die - even those I do not know. Randy looked good in the video above, in contrast with Tony Snow's last appearance before he died earlier this month of colon cancer that had spread to first his liver and then elsewhere. Tony was gaunt and had aged twenty years in my eyes. Even NPR's always insightful and frank Leroy Seivers now considers the pros and cons of hospice, and has a home health aide four times a week.

But Randy was upbeat and seemed unfazed by what the rest of us are overwhelmed by. And that gives us all something to consider.

My message in reflection: Please love others and live well while you can. Give generously of yourself and your spirit. Adopt a cause or two. Be present to what's happening around you and not distracted by the latest shiny thing of the blogosphere.

It's easy to be engaged by internet popularity, blog stats, being included in lists and invited to functions. Things are nice to own. But will that really matter when you face the end of the road?

Like Randy Paush who was only 47, or others we know who were suddenly stricken and died much earlier, we never know when an unexpected diagnosis - or a bus - will mark the end of our time here.

Let's make today even - simply this day - one that we'd be proud to call our last.

And then tomorrow.

Who's More Egotistic Than A Blogger?

It's the political season and I'll try to stay mainly quiet this time around but one thing you should know about are my issues with media.

Oh I'm not talking about bloggers. We already know that we of the bloggosphere are legends in our own minds.

But somebody has to explain the popularity of people like Bill O'Reilly, Nancy Grace and Keith Olberman who thousands - OK millions - tune in to watch spout off in exchange for million dollar salaries.

I don't get why we don't all turn off the TV en masse. So in The Political Scene: One Angry Man: Reporting & Essays: The New Yorker Peter Boyer tries to explain it to me.

"Olbermann’s success, like O’Reilly’s, is evidence of viewer cocooning—the inclination to seek out programming that reinforces one’s own firmly held political views."

“People want to identify,” Peter Griffin who sees himself as Olberman's handler says. “They want the shortcut. ‘Wow, that guy’s smart. I get him.’ In this crazy world of so much information, you look for places where you identify, or you see where you fit into the spectrum, because you get all this information all day long.”

My problem with that no matter how much I want to identify, I don't need to do it with a talking head with an ego problem.

These people are blowhards. No matter how right or wrong they are I'll still run screaming from a broadcaster - or anyone else for that matter - who is rude, sees things black and white, interrupts, talks down, throws out pithy one liners for shock effect and is generally condescending in their nicest moments.

I'm Not Amused

I may not be the average viewer who Griffin is talking about because I think a lot of the rest of us see Olberman like a Joe Buck run amok and given the keys to primetime; continually patted on the back for tirades.

To me Olberman will always be an annoying "sports guy" who is himself annoyed at the world because of a brain out of sync with the rest of the kiddies in his childhood or who is just too self-absorbed to know he shoult stuff a sock in it.  I see him as a guy who used to be mildly amusing when he stuck to sports. But it's clear that he thinks he knows more than the rest of us about everything else as well. That he has taken his schtick to MSNBC to cover alleged news- and done WELL there - just reinforces my view that the mainstream media is misguided at best and has an agenda at worst.

Is this news? Not many of us would argue that it is. Is he educating us? Encouraging us to think? Making us a better informed populace? Let's call a spade a spade.

Who Cares Who's Right

Like your kid who throws a temper tantrum in the middle of the Piggly Wiggly, it's not about what O'Reilly or Grace or Olberman are railing about or whether they have a point. It's that they've got a bully pulpit and we're rewarding them for not bringing us news but assailing us with condescending, harranguing point of view, over and over and over again.

Personality - even eccentricity is one thing. Class is another altogether. So as for me, I'll take reading a big-ego blogger any day over being lectured at by a big-headed alleged newsperson.

On the other hand, I'd love to see Olberman arm wrestle Robert Scoble.