Advanced Storytelling

Less Blogging, More Tweeting

2011-11-19T10:28:00.001-06:00

FYI, I haven't been happy with how a lot of my posts are turning out, as well as the frequency with which I'm posting. Since most of the time, I just want to share a link that has an interesting take on telling its story, I'm going to dust off my Twitter account to share those and only post here if I'm really inspired. To the twelve people who read this blog, thanks.

2011-11-16T17:12:00.001-06:00

The City of Milwaukee launched this ad campaign this week (along with Serve Marketing, my new dream employer). My first reaction was that it was a striking and effective ad, but then I realized it was aimed at co-sleeping, not just putting babies to sleep on their backs. I know next to nothing about co-sleeping, but I have a feeling that there are healthy ways to co-sleep, and un-healthy ways to co-sleep. Putting a child in bed on their stomach would be one of those un-healthy ways, but so is putting them on their stomach in their cribs. I don't know that it's necessarily fair to confuse the two issues.

Plus, according to the City of Milwaukee's web page,

Between 2006 and 2009 there were 89 infant deaths related to SIDS, SUDI, or accidental suffocation. Of these 46 (51.7%) infants were sleeping in an adult bed at the time of their death.

Meaning that 48.3 percent (or 43 babies) were not co-sleeping, but presumably in their cribs. Although I loathe to say that three infant's lives are statistically insignificant, the difference is. Half of these SIDS deaths occurred in cribs--where is the campaign to eliminate cribs?

2011-11-11T10:38:00.001-06:00

First off, this isn't a post about abortion. It's about how the personhood movement is dangerous even if you take abortion out of the debate. According to my friend Liz,

More than 55% of voters in Mississippi yesterday rejected the state’s ‘personhood’ initiative—a development that certainly bodes well for reproductive rights in this country, and gives me a little more hope about our collective sanity, as well.

What interested me about this issue (aside from the fact that I possess a uterus), was the way some of the groups fighting the Mississippi amendment were approaching the issue. The group Parents against MS 26 pointed out that the personhood movement, "has far-reaching effects on infertility treatment, contraception, and women's physical health."

Jessica Valenti cites several examples in her column in the Washington Post, including this one:

In 1996, when Laura Pemberton in Florida refused a recommended C-section because she did not want surgery, the sheriff and the state’s attorney went to her house while she was in labor and took her to a hospital, where a lawyer had been appointed for her fetus. (Pemberton was not given representation.) According to Pemberton and legal documents, she was subsequently forced to undergo the C-section against her will.

Sarah Brown from the National Campaign to prevent Teen and unplanned pregnancy posed a common question: "Isn’t it clear and obvious that contraception is preferable to abortion?" I think she's giving these people too much credit. Anyone who has read up on right wing religious extremists knows that they actually do think contraception is just as bad.

Obligatory OWS Post

2011-10-19T15:11:00.002-05:00

I'll try and expand on this later, but a few links looking at the protest from marketing and demographic standpoints:

OWS Demographics or, "Duh, it's not just unemployed college dropouts"

Protest, Music and #OWS Opportunism or, "Hey, this thing ain't going away. Can we market it?"

OWS Billboard? or, "Really, you think Clear Channel will put this up?"

and the Frameworks Institute analyzes the "We are the 99%" meme.

Dear Dr. Pepper

2011-10-13T11:35:00.000-05:00

My postings have been a bit light (and yet a bit too heavy) lately, so it's time for some good old advertising sexism. Several blogs have gone over this campaign (highlights: a Facebook page that blocks female users, where guys are free to post shit like, "see its in the woman's cunty nature to btch and whine for no reason" so I won't go into too much detail about what looks like a truly lazy and cliched campaign (Bullets on the packaging? How manly and phallic!). So, in short:

Dear Dr. Pepper: I don't drink soda. No Pepsi, no Coke, no Dr. Pepper. So you probably don't care what I say. But here's the thing- maybe I'll start drinking soda next year, or five years from now, when my sweet tooth and need for caffeine finally gets the best of me. You may not have lost my business now, but you've definitely lost it then. And oh, in case you think you'll get my girly, soda-avoiding patronage with Snapple (yup, I know you own Snapple), think again.

Feministing pointed out that the company was probably taking the "any publicity is good publicity" route, and didn't want to give it any fodder (which is why I'm not linking to their post on 'Schmoctor Schmepper' directly, because I'm all experty now on SEO). It made me think twice about posting this. Maybe somewhere, some other bored media analyst will have to research and log this post for the company. I'm trying to imagine the metrics they'll be measuring it by, and I really can't think of anything good.

Update: A longer, better letter at Shakesville.
Sigh. Once I master SEO, I really have to bone up on my html formatting.

Anecdotally, I can confirm this...

2011-10-07T20:01:00.003-05:00

So I'm a little behind on this, but there was an interesting piece in the New York Times on bullying. Back when I was being bullied around in elementary school, it wasn't called "drama"- it was "goofing around," "just messing with you," etc. Same idea, different words. None of the kids who bullied me would have ever admitted to bullying--why would anyone admit to being mean? For them, it wasn't A Serious Issue That Must Be Addressed, it was just everyday joking around. I asked the lead Mean Girl a few years later if she remembered teasing me, and her response was, "I did? I don't remember. Sorry about that." She obviously meant it, so I suppressed my first urge to yell, "You what?!?! You don't remember making my life a living hell for an entire year??? You ruined my life!" Instead, I think I responded with something like, "Huh, whatever."

Would you rather...

2011-10-07T19:46:00.003-05:00

You're a woman in Liberia. You've just been raped. There's only a fifty-percent chance you can read. You don't know what to do. You see a sign for a "Sexual Gender-Based Violence Referral Pathway." Do you go?

Yeah. Didn't think so.

Found this at Social Media 4 Good, a blog I really need to start reading more often. Appealing to your audience is Marketing 101. Why is it so hard for NGOs to get this? Funders are not their only audience.

From the Frameworks Institute

2011-09-28T13:25:00.001-05:00

Framing Budgets and Taxes: Elizabeth Warren Gets It Right

Yup.

Social Engineering and "Leftist Architects"

2011-09-21T15:10:00.004-05:00

Haven shaken my fist at a fair number of right-wing billboards calling public transit and New Urbanism "social engineering" (but freeways and suburbs aren't?!?), I've got to wonder if former Milwaukee Mayor John Norquist and current head of the Congress for the New Urbanism knew exactly what he was doing when he used the phrase "leftist architects" to describe architects

like Le Corbusier, who championed glass-encased, high-rise apartment buildings set apart from cities, and Oscar Niemeyer, who designed the city of Brasília with its high-rise, above grade roads. Norquist added that the only life and culture you will find in Brasília is outside the city limits in the slums.

As much as I like his other designs, I'd add Frank Lloyd Wright to that list, simply for Broadacre City. Ugh. Now, I know from a philosophical and artistic perspective, it's an accurate description of their work (ooh, Stalinists!). But in using it in opposition to New Urbanism, I'm wondering if it's a bit of a god whistle to conservative civic leaders. Trying to trigger a little bit of Tea Party logic: "If New Urbanism is against liberals, then it must be a good thing!" Hey, if it gets a few more people to read "Twelve Anti-Transit Myths: A Conservative Critique" (I swear you'll never seeing me favorably link to anything by Paul Weyrich again) then I'm all for it.

Biting the hand that feeds you/Feeding the mouth that bites you.

2011-09-16T10:47:00.007-05:00

So I was part of a pretty spirited conversation at the Co-op the other day about Growing Power's acceptance of a $1 million grant from Wal-Mart. On one side, the sustainable businessman who referred to Wal-Mart either as the Devil or Satan, I forget, but who absolutely supported Will Allen's decision. I'm blanking on the other guy, who just stopped at Wal-Mart is the Devil, no compromises.

In the middle (literally and figuratively), was me. As in, "Thank God I wasn't asked to make that decision." My first thought on seeing that headline was, "Ooo, boy, that's gonna be controversial." Does anyone really think there wasn't some serious soul searching going on over there before they said yes? Which brings me to this post on Civil Eats this morning. For Andy Fisher of the Community Food Security Coalition, it comes down to this:

Wal-Mart’s and the “Good Food Revolution’s” interests may dovetail in bringing groceries into food deserts. However, the broader interests of these two parties are in direct opposition to each other. Wal-Mart’s operations cause larger problems to the food security of the communities in which they locate.

I had brought up many of the same points in our conversation, mainly that Wal-Mart has stated it is aiming to offer more local produce; which, as Fisher also points out, happens to fit quite closely with its PR efforts to get in to urban markets. I'm not arguing a chicken and egg situation here. I'm sure Wal-Mart's question was "How do we break into urban markets?" and local foods was one of the answers. Does that negate the benefits? Obviously, as Fisher shows, there's a strong argument to make there. Is Will Allen an idealist? Hells yes. The first tour I took of Growing Power lasted four hours, and we never even made it out of the main greenhouse, Will was so excited to show us everything. Surrounded as I am with farmer's markets and urban gardens and organic veggies for my Bi Bim Bop, it's easy to lose perspective. But I try hard to remember that a few miles away over on Silver Spring Road, most of Growing Power's target audience shops at Wal-Mart every day. Monsanto money? Easy. Refuse it. Wal-Mart money? I'd say the same...but what does that say to their audience? "Wal-Mart is bad, and I shop at Wal-Mart, so does that mean I'm bad?"

As usual, I have argued myself from one side of an argument to another and back again.

Hi, still here...

2010-12-18T22:31:00.001-06:00

Food and Sex

2009-02-27T10:03:00.003-06:00

Shorter George Will: everyone who is uptight about the first should really be uptight about the second instead. Oh, and people didn't have sex outside of marriage in the fifties.

I get paid to read this shit!

Oh, and also, I know it's a few weeks late, but PETA can kiss my vegetable-loving ass for this. For those looking for non-sexist food porn, I suggest Nigella Lawson.

This post may or may not signal a return to regular blogging.

My elevator speech

2008-11-23T12:00:00.004-06:00

My objective, with this site, with my career, is to help advocacy organizations use communications as a strategy to leverage change.

Food is...

2008-11-23T11:48:00.007-06:00

It will come as no surprise that my first post here in forever is about food. I ran across this at the Ethicurian. The Accidental Hedonist outlines her food beliefs, which match up pretty closely with my own:

1. Food is Life - This is pretty straightforward. You need to eat to live.
2. Food is Cultural - What you eat represents who you are as well as the environment in which you inhabit.
3. Food is Class - What you eat is defined by the allotment of resources available to you.
4. Food is Politics - The food choices you make within your resources give credibility to the producers and suppliers of said food.

I'd probably add "Food is Medicine" based on my own personal experiences recently, but this list pretty much saves me from having to think of my own. That and Michael Pollan's "Eat Food, Not Too Much, Mostly Plants" make up my elevator speech on the topic.

2008-01-26T09:55:00.000-06:00

"Those who do not have power over the story that dominates their lives, power to retell it, rethink it, deconstruct it, joke about it, and change it as times change, truly are powerless." -Salman Rushdie

I'll show you my danelions if you show me your industry credentials

2007-08-31T15:19:00.000-05:00

Okay, kids, we're going to talk about breast feeding versus bottle feeding again in framing class today, so no giggling (you know who you are).

I was looking over someone's shoulder on the Metro today and reading an article titled "HHS Toned Down Breast-Feeding Ads", which reads like a continuation of the administration's meddling in public health:

In an attempt to raise the nation's historically low rate of breast-feeding, federal health officials commissioned an attention-grabbing advertising campaign a few years ago to convince mothers that their babies faced real health risks if they did not breast-feed. It featured striking photos of insulin syringes and asthma inhalers topped with rubber nipples.

-snip-

The ads ran instead with more friendly images of dandelions and cherry-topped ice cream scoops, to dramatize how breast-feeding could help avert respiratory problems and obesity.

According to the article, the formula industry didn't block the ads "but helped shape their content." Um, huh? Isn't there a slight conflict of interest here? I'd say that this would be like the candy industry giving input on diabetes prevention, but baby formula isn't harmful- it's just slightly less beneficial than the real thing. As for "shaping" the content:

But the campaign HHS used did not simply drop the disputed statistics in the draft ads. The initial idea was to startle women with images starkly warning that babies could become ill. Instead, the final ads cited how breast-feeding benefits babies -- an approach that the ad company hired by HHS had advised would be ineffective. The department also pulled back on several related promotional efforts.

I think it's obvious why this pissed me off. I was all ready to slam the ad changes themselves, from a framing standpoint, until I went back and looked at gain/loss framing theory, which basically says that loss-framed messages ("If you don't do this your child will get sick") work best for screening behaviors, but if you want people to take preventatives steps, gain messages work better ("If you do this, your child will stay healthy"). Breast feeding is a preventative measure, so positive messages make sense, and the new ads should have worked better, right? But apparently they were entirely ineffective: "The milder campaign HHS eventually used had no discernible impact on the nation's breast-feeding rate, which lags behind the rate in many European countries."

The more I look at the revised ad, the cleverer it gets. But it's so subtle, no wonder it didn't work. If I were paging through a magazine, even a parenting magazine, I would have glossed right over it, thinking it could be an ad for fabric softner or something.

I heart George Lakoff

2007-08-24T09:28:00.000-05:00

With Elyzabethe over at YellowIsTheColor writing all about The Political Brain so much lately, I thought it might be a good time to blog about the Rockridge Institute, which I've recently re-discovered. Anyone who talks to me for more than two minutes about communications or policy knows my affection for George Lakoff. Rockridge is a think thank founded on his work on cognitive linguistics and progressive policy. It's goal is the same as Drew Westen's: reframe the public debate.

The Rockridge Fellows put out some great essays on all sorts of topics, but what really got me drooling was their interactive Rockridge Nation. Framing examples galore! What I especially liked, because it's an issue near and dear to my heart, is the ongoing dicussion about the fallacy of a left/right linear political spectrum, and why moving towards the "center" isn't a good political strategy:

In reality, there are basic progressive and conservative worldviews, and many people have both but apply them to different issue areas. The people "in the middle" actually have many different combinations of progressive and conservative thought. There is no ideology of the middle, no unified worldview that everyone in the "center" agrees on, and no linear ordering of the issues. Something much more interesting is going on.

Another post that might be of interest to those of you throwing around sterotypes about right wing nutjobs and leftist radicals is this one, Too Far Left to be Progressive?"

Who says liberals don't have a sense of humor?

2007-08-06T20:34:00.000-05:00

How many global warming videos start with "In 1975, two boxes of wine were consumed, one condom broke, and nine months later, a legend was born..."

It's a short film (in five YouTube sized acts) calling for increased fuel efficiency standards. Unfortunately, it kind of falls flat on the call to action part--
I don't see why it needed to be a half hour. I think it works better as an inspirational video for environmentalists trying to get out their message across, since it basically just follows one guy trying to make what, in the end, is your typical celebrity-faces-the-camera-and-tells-us-to-call-congress PSA. I needed to get people's attention, so I...made a PSA? It started out so promising in Episode 1, with Ben Affleck running around in a corn suit and Joshua Jackson threatening to break a baby's arm if Congress doesn't listen...

I agree with this guy that all the celebrities are unnecessary. It would have been funny anyway, and it doesn't help combat the environmentalists-as-liberal-blue-state-Hollywood-elites frame. So I guess my point is, if you've got five minutes, watch the first clip. If you've got fifteen, watch this. I have gots to get myself to a TED conference someday. It makes the thought of going to work tomorrow insanely boring.

Busy signal...

2007-07-27T15:42:00.000-05:00

Today I joined not one, but two social networking sites--Pownce and Ravelry. I'm geeking out, even though I'm on dial-up, and am probably going to end up spending the entire weekend adding my knitting projects to Ravelry. Oh, I didn't mention is was a knitting network? Yeah, I meant it when I said I was geeking out. But not before I finish Harry Potter...

I didn't want to read this...but I did.

2007-07-20T10:03:00.000-05:00

Hillary Clinton's Tentative Dip Into New Neckline Territory

Okay, it was appropriately filed under "fashion" but is was on the front of the WaPo website. I cringed. Then I clicked on it:

There was cleavage on display Wednesday afternoon on C-SPAN2. It belonged to Sen. Hillary Clinton.

She was talking on the Senate floor about the burdensome cost of higher education. She was wearing a rose-colored blazer over a black top. The neckline sat low on her chest and had a subtle V-shape. The cleavage registered after only a quick glance. No scrunch-faced scrutiny was necessary. There wasn't an unseemly amount of cleavage showing, but there it was. Undeniable.

The article goes on to talk about how sartorially conservative and masculine the Hill is, and Hilary's uncomfortable relationship with fashion as the First Lady, and her adoption of the black pantsuit as her uniform. Until now, apparently. There was the requisite "really, this isn't just about women, we swear" observation:

It's tempting to say that the cleavage stirs the same kind of discomfort that might be churned up after spotting Rudy Giuliani with his shirt unbuttoned just a smidge too far. No one wants to see that. But really, it was more like catching a man with his fly unzipped. Just look away!

And the requisite "oh, America, we're so prudish" observation:

Not so long ago, Jacqui Smith, the new British home secretary, spoke before the House of Commons showing far more cleavage than Clinton. If Clinton's was a teasing display, then Smith's was a full-fledged come-on. But somehow it wasn't as unnerving. Perhaps that's because Smith's cleavage seemed to be presented so forthrightly. Smith's fitted jacket and her dramatic necklace combined to draw the eye directly to her bosom. There they were . . . all part of a bold, confident style package.

And then ends with:

With Clinton, there was the sense that you were catching a surreptitious glimpse at something private. You were intruding -- being a voyeur. Showing cleavage is a request to be engaged in a particular way. It doesn't necessarily mean that a woman is asking to be objectified, but it does suggest a certain confidence and physical ease. It means that a woman is content being perceived as a sexual person in addition to being seen as someone who is intelligent, authoritative, witty and whatever else might define her personality. It also means that she feels that all those other characteristics are so apparent and undeniable, that they will not be overshadowed.

To display cleavage in a setting that does not involve cocktails and hors d'oeuvres is a provocation. It requires that a woman be utterly at ease in her skin, coolly confident about her appearance, unflinching about her sense of style. Any hint of ambivalence makes everyone uncomfortable. And in matters of style, Clinton is as noncommittal as ever.

Huh? Cleavage equals confidence? Cleavage equal provocation? Confidence equals provocation? I don't really know what to take from this. I mean, I like the part about being confident that sexuality will not overshadow her intelligence, etc. We can bring up the Edwards $400 haircut here, but remember, Hillary had her own overpriced haircut scandal back when she was in the White House. And those articles focus on the price, not what Edward's haircut says about him. Obviously, Hillary shouldn't have to dress like a nun to be president. But this author seems to be setting up a damned-if-you-do, dammed-if-you-don't dichotomy for her: show too much cleavage, we're going to be uncomfortable; show too little cleavage, we're going to think she's not confident enough to lead.

Excuse me while I go Google "Margaret Thatcher" and "cleavage."

Mad Men

2007-07-18T21:34:00.000-05:00

Any of you other comm geeks going to watch this? Hell, I'll watch it just for the costumes, but maybe we should start a drinking game--take a shot every time someone mentions Edward Bernays or Ivy Lee? No?

"If you use a frying pan to hit someone over the head, you don't call that cooking."

2007-07-12T14:33:00.000-05:00

I don't know how this hasn't made the evening news. Then again, I had to hear about it from the Yarn Harlot, so maybe it has been. I'll let Stephanie explain:

Tory Bowen says that she was raped. Actually, Tory Bowen, was pre-law at college when she had a drink at a bar that was the last thing she remembers until she woke up in a strangers bed, with a stranger, who was doing something she hadn't consented to. (That would be the rape.) She went to the emergency room, was treated and had a rape kit done and called the police. The police charged her attacker with 1st degree sexual assault and a trial was set. That's where things got weird.

The judge decided that many words around this issue were too inflammatory. That they made the defendant sound guilty, and that they implied a crime...."Rape" is a legal conclusion- he thought. We cannot call it rape until a jury says it's rape. (Hear that women? You can't know something is rape until there's a vote. I suppose being there doesn't grant you any special insight.) So he banned some words. Nobody in his courtroom may use these words, when it comes to this trial:

Rape.
Sexual Assault.
Victim.
Attacker.
Assailant.
Forced.

No one can say that the hospital did a "Rape Kit" and they can't say that at the hospital she was treated by the "Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner." In fact, inside the courtroom no one can even say that the defendant is charged with 1st Degree Sexual Assault.

So what, if anything, was allowed?

Ms. Bowen is allowed to say that she and the defendant had "sex" or "intercourse", which she complains (and very rightly so) implies the exact opposite to a jury, that the acts were consensual and non-traumatic.

The whole thing got laid out from a legal perspective by Dahlia Lithwick in a June 20 article in Slate:

Nebraska law offers judges broad discretion to ban evidence or language that present the danger of "unfair prejudice, confusion of the issues or misleading the jury." And it's not unheard-of for judges to keep certain words out of a courtroom. Words like victim have been increasingly kept out of trials, since they tend to imply that a crime was committed. And as Safi's lawyer, Clarence Mock, explains, the word rape is just as loaded. "It's a legal conclusion for a witness to say, 'I was raped' or 'sexually assaulted.' … That's for a jury to decide." His concern is that the word rape so inflames jurors that they decide a case emotionally and not rationally.

The real question for Judge Cheuvront, then, is whether embedded in the word sex is another "legal conclusion"—that the intercourse was consensual. And it's hard to conclude otherwise. Go ahead, use the word sex in a sentence. Asking a complaining witness to scrub the word rape or assault from her testimony is one thing. Asking that she imply that she agreed to what her alleged assailant was doing to her is something else entirely. To put it another way: If the complaining witness in a rape trial has to describe herself as having had "intercourse" with the defendant, should the complaining witness in a mugging be forced to testify that he was merely giving his attacker a loan?

Since the jury wasn't told particular words words were banned, the first trial, unsurprisingly, ended in a mistrial. Stephanie again:

Can you imagine being a juror at a trial where a man is accused of not even sexual assault, but just sex? A trial where the victim (oh, crap. Forgot we can't call her that.) the "complainant" can't say she was forced? A trial where the victim never accuses her attacker of rape? If you were a juror, how seriously would you take a woman who testified about what happened to her for 13 hours without ever using a single word that implied that she thought what had happened to her was a crime?

Before the second trial, and to prove a point, Tory's lawyer tried to get "sex" and "intercourse" banned from the court as well. To which I say: heh. Dahlia did too:

The judge denied that motion, evidently on the theory that there would be no words left to describe the sex act at all. The result is that the defense and the prosecution are both left to use the same word—sex—to describe either forcible sexual assault, or benign consensual intercourse. As for the jurors, they'll just have to read the witnesses' eyebrows to sort out the difference.

Apparently, the second trial has been declared a mistrial by the judge, becaues he fears all the media attention will get in the way of jurors unbiased opinions. Seriously.

A reader of Stephanie's posts in the comments about a psychiatrist in Canda who studying how language events, especially those implying violence against women aren't just semantics, but create reality, a

"real-live reality where perpetrators don't go to jail for crimes they've committed because the language that's used has consent embedded in it. This is absolutely the most egregious example of this that I've heard...One of the examples Allan Wade gives is the problem in calling something 'sexual' that isn't 'sexual' at all. He says, 'If you use a frying pan to hit someone over the head, you don't call that cooking.'"

Okay, ladies of the blogosphere, let that be our rallying cry. Let's let out a collective "WTF??" loud enough for everyone to hear.

Markets are conversations and...

2007-07-11T14:28:00.001-05:00

Okay, by now you know the Cluetrain Manifesto: Markets are conversations.

Today at work I stumbled across a great definition of marketing, courtesy of Seth Godin: "Marketing is an act that starts a conversation."

Real Food, Fake Entertainment, and Framing a Movement

2007-07-10T21:35:00.000-05:00

The Ethicurean's Dairy Queen had a post today titled Truthiness and Real Food: Hellman's, get your paws off our framing! The title alone referenced, Steven Colbert, food and framing, so I had to read it. Turns out it touches on a lot more of the issues we've been covering this year in class. Hellman's Mayonnaise is starting a "real food" web campaign, and was trying to get bloggers to join in. I can't quite figure out what it all entailed, but apparently Unilever attempted to pitch an integrated marketing show (ie, "infotainment") to the Food Network, which turned them down, so they've now developed a "In Search of Real Food" website on Yahoo where people can share recipes and thoughts on "real", local, and fresh foods--and Hellman's mayonnaise.

What’s keeping me up so late with annoyance is the insidious way that Hellman’s/Best Foods is trying to co-opt the idea of real food by velcro-ing their manufactured "foodlike product" to it in this smarmy marketing campaign. It’s factory food: sterile, shelf-stable, and the "natural flavors" it mostly tastes like come from another factory, one that makes chemical compounds that mimic real food.

To emphasize her point, she posts the ingredients list for Hellman's. The fifth ingredient is high fructose corn syrup, and it gets worse from there. Now, I'm no snob. I think there's a place for Hellman's mayo, and I'm pretty sure one of those places is in my refrigerator. But "real" is never going to be an adjective I'm going to use to describe mayonnaise. Just like no one has ever described McDonald's and "good food." I've heard it described as many things--fast, convenient, addictive--but no one's ever going to confuse it with home cooking. It's a stand-in for when we're too tired/busy/poor for the real thing.

I refuse to link to the actual site, but I think it's worth a laugh to look at the original press release on PR Newswire.

You know you've made it when your frame is being co-oped by Unilever. I think "real food" is a good frame--the folks over at Farm Aid call it The Good Food Movement. Simple and effective. I've been struggling with framing this issue for a few months now-"organic" and "local" don't encompass it all; "slow food" is elitist. And although "sustainable" works as a concept, it's not a word that works with the public. I never even bothered with epicurean or agrarian...

And now for something completely different.

2007-07-10T09:08:00.000-05:00

I'll admit the new Disney cartoon Ratatouille looked cute, but with the combination of being broke and still feeling well enough to look at food, I figured I'd pass on it for awhile. But according to Eating Liberally, I really should go see this movie. Its message?

Yes, even a lowly rodent can learn to cook, but just like the rest of us, his culinary endeavors will succeed or fail depending on the quality and freshness of his ingredients. Am I the only one who finds this message pretty radical
for an animated film supposedly aimed at kids? And it seems all the more astonishing when you contrast it to Pixar parent Disney’s Shrek the Third, with its endless tie-ins to processed foods that target toddlers’ taste buds.

Apparently the villain in the movie sells junk food. How awesome is that?

Now, I'm not naive enough to believe kids are going to trade in their popcorn for carrot sticks at the movie theater, especially after the Associated Press recently reviewed 57 programs aimed at encouraging kids to eat healthier, and found that all but four of them were complete failures. Apparently, one program flat-out bribed kids to eat healthy. To absolutely no one's suprise but the idiot who thought up that program, the kids stopped eating healthy when they stopped getting rewarded for it. I'd be willing to put money down that at least one of the four that didn't fail were grounded in some strong social marketing research.

I'm 28, for the record.

2007-07-05T12:01:00.001-05:00

I had forgotten until today that I had posted my picture on The Age Project, in order to prove my suspicion that most people think I look younger than I am. Well, I was disproven. The average guess was 27, which is close enough. For those friends curious enough, the photo I posted is the same one I'm using for my Facebook profile.

Framing food

2007-06-30T08:04:00.000-05:00

I came across two great posts this week that brought together food, feminism, and healthy choices. Freelance writer Jennifer Jeffrey wrote a pair of posts entitled The Feminist In My Kitchen. The question: is the sustainable food movement women-friendly?

I wonder if our little blogsphere sits here debating the provenance of our nectarines while the larger community of women – most of whom have no time for surfing blogs, let alone writing one – head out to work feeling more guilty than ever before, as the mountain of expectations and unattainable standards grows ever higher.

Can we call ourselves feminists (simply defined here as people who desire the equality of all women, everywhere) and still suggest that an ideal dinner consists of handmade ravioli and slow-simmered marinara from vine-ripened, hand-picked tomatoes and a salad composed of vegetables that (let’s be honest) are Not Available at Safeway?

By pointing out that convenience has been a friend to the working women, she could have easily turned this into one of the many 'local food is elitist' essays that seem to have sprung up lately. But she doesn't. In a second post:

The System is Broken. It’s not the fault of the farmer’s market that I feel overstressed. Rather, the game itself is rigged. The workforce rewards people who are willing to put in ridiculous hours and disregard personal health and long-term wellbeing. It does not reward self-nourishment or play or rest.

Over on the Cleaner Plate Club, a post titled "You Shouldn't Have to Be A Hero to Eat Well" picks up the conversation. Points out that personal health and diet matters are always framed as ones of individual responsibility, despite the fact that the prime factor in what people buy is what's available. She wonders why we force people to go to extraordinary lengths to eat healthy, why it isn't the default choice? Why isn't healthy convenient?

Think about what people say when someone’s lost weight: “how did you DO it???” Think about how people frame their relationships with food: like doing battle with the enemy. Think about how people talk about someone who’s actually able to be healthy in this world: “She’s my hero." (or worse: they say “I hate her,” because she’s accomplished the seemingly impossible).

It shouldn’t take heroic efforts to the things that every doctor recommends — to eat right, and move more. If it does take heroic efforts, then something is really, really f%$@ed."

She points out examples of people trying to make healthy convenient--starting a farmers market at a hospital campus, fighting to change the farm bill and changing school lunches:

Whenever people talk about trying to make people healthier, trying to create healthier environments, they get accused of taking away choices. Or lifting all of the responsibility from parents and individuals. They get accused of…I don’t know. A kind of negativity and blame that doesn’t fly with most Americans.

They’re not trying to remove people’s choices. Rather, they’re trying to increase people’s choices — by improving people’s access to nutrient-rich options, where they might otherwise be greeted by only a fast-food world. They’re actually creating a better, richer, more colorful world, while they’re at it.

Inspiration

2007-06-27T22:04:00.000-05:00

So I ran across a tribute to Paul Simon by the Library of Congress on PBS tonight. Now, I've finally gotten over my theater-degree habit of dissecting theatrical production values, but I think my pr/marketing/communications training has taken over. Let me explain.

First off, the whole concert consisted of beautiful interpretations of Paul Simon's songs, illustrating exactly why he was recieving the Gershwin Award for Popular Song. Yes, there were big name artists performing (The Muppets doing Feelin’ Groovy? Awesome!), but many of them weren't so famous--like Allison Krause singing Graceland. So the show was really well curated. But then they handed it off to an event coordinator to run the show. I respect event coordinators, but they are not directors. It was obvious the show was produced in DC, not in LA. Instead of a host, there was a disembodied voice-over. Then Bob Costas (huh?) introducing a video that is obviously destined for a Library of Congress museum exhibit on the Library's archives narrated (badly) by Tom Brokaw. Artists were unceremoniously shuffled on and off stage with no transitions and the backstage crew swarming around (Seriously--they almost pushed Paul over once). There were no reaction shots of Paul, so I didn’t even know he was there until they introduced him. There was, of course, Ladysmith Black Mambazo. (Oh, and Art Garfunkel) (Good. I was starting to feel sorry for him.) (Though its pretty obvious why Paul’s the famous one.) (Yes, they sang Bridge over Troubled Water).

The whole thing couldn't help but remind me a tribute to Ella Fitzgerald that was on PBS a few weeks ago. Like the Paul Simon tribute, the music was spectacular. Unlike the Paul Simon tribute, the whole production was impressive, interspersing musical performances with videos of Ella, reminisces from people like Qunicey Jones. The first part was a kind of chronology of Ella's career, starting with Little Yellow Basket, of course. Then there was a section that seemed to cover all the different facets of Ella’s voice. It was a tribute to her that they needed so many people’s voices to cover her range- the young ingénue, scatting with a jazz band, show tunes, the grande dame of popular song, etc. Anyhoo, my point was it was a well-designed show, not just a well-sung one.

Maybe I’ve been lingering on the arts specials so much lately because working in an office has set it in such stark relief. I'm secretly wondering, if I'm ever going to get to be creative again? I’ve always felt an affinity with artists--artisans, really--the ones who work long hours and only rarely get famous. Whose job it is to be creative. Even though I’m no longer passionate about theater like I was when I was younger, one of my fondest memories is still the feeling of being backstage. Someday I want to do it again, amateur-style. I do, however, still want to Write the Great American Novel. It’s gonna happen one day- but not yet. If I tried to go off and Be A Writer, I would fail miserably, every time I’ve tried to Be A Writer. I want it to grow out of my work, out of my life. Which really, blogging is good for. Hmm.

This post was a whole long longer and more emotional an hour ago...

2007-06-20T18:59:00.002-05:00

First off: It's sad that I get better wireless reception in my backyard than in my apartment, right?

Sigh. I normally try to stay out of the quagmire that is the abortion debate, but as usually, elyzabethe wrote something insightful about feminist issues that I had to comment on. Actually, I had to comment on the framing war that was going on in the comments section between elyzabethe and another friend. Then I ended up emailing back and forth with her for awhile. Then someone at work mentioned how the "choice" frame is starting to lose ground, even though advocates don't want to admit it. I started scribbling notes, sighed, and thought, "well, I'm gonna have to blog about this."

Elyzabeth rants often against anti-choice organizations and legislation, as is her wont as a libertarian feminist. She’s particularly good at teasing out how anti-choice (A, if you’re reading this, bear with me, I’m referring to ‘anti-choice’ as more than just the abortion issue) rhetoric consciously or unconsciously portrays women as too ignorant or too flippant to make their own informed decisions, which is what this particular post was about. A friend on the other side of the political spectrum called her out on disrespectfully using "anti-choice" instead of "pro-life," and numerous points were made:

1. She wasn't trying to be disrespectful of anti-abortion advocates, but of anti-abortion advocates that show disrespect for feminist choices in general.
2. Using "anti-choice" instead of "pro-life" is an attempt to re-frame the debate, however much an uphill battle that may be, and thus was not disrespectful, per se.
3. "Framing just a strategic form of name-calling." That deserves to be on a t-shirt.

This led to me ranting over email to elyzabethe about framing. Yeah, in a way framing IS just strategic name-calling. But not if it's done well. And there is no such thing as an issue not being framed: if it's an issue, it's being framed. It's a common mistake for advocates: their terminology is neutral, while anything else is clearly wrong/misguided/mean.

Then, about two hours later, it led to me ranting over email to elyzabethe about abortion. My big pet peeve? Pro-life advocates' impression that we pro-choice people want women to have abortions. THAT'S ABSURD. WHY would anyone WANT women to go through such a difficult thing? It reminds me of the whole GLBT joke, "just one more and I get a toaster." Planned Parenthood doesn't earn points for every abortion it performs.

The framing problem for pro-choice advocates is that "choice" instead of implying "more than one option" has been positioned by the opposition as synonym for "selfish or uninformed." We're partly to blame for that, but that's neither here nor there. The question is now, can we take back our definition of the frame? Or do we have to take on the hard task of re-framing the debate again?

2007-06-20T18:43:00.000-05:00

Up until now, I haven’t really paid much attention to the (Red) campaign. I mean, I think it’s a great thing, but it just seemed a little close to charity/white man saving Africa. But this week I got a hold of the Vanity Fair issue on Africa (guest edited by Bono!), and I came across a (Red) ad that just said “Meaning is the New Luxury” in black on a background of, wait for it, red. For any student of advertising and PR, this was basically like saying “Hi, blog about me.”

Because it’s true: we don’t buy products and services anymore because they work, we buy them because it makes us feel good about ourselves, our lifestyle. See: Persuaders, The. We know this. I just had never seen it spelled out so blatantly. It was kind of refreshing--no, really refreshing--after an entire magazine of tastefully-designed celebrity-endorsed socially-responsible product ads, including Kimora Lee Simmons for her own jewelry line, Natalie Maines and Terrance Howard for Gap(Red), David Beckham for Motorola(Red), and Eve for Mac Cosmetics... Totally unrelated, how did Jennifer Anniston’s people let her non-charity-related ad for bottled water appear in a magazine filthy with pictures of Brad Pitt talking politics with Archbishop Desmond Tutu in full Deep, Concerned Celebrity mode? Awkward.

Anyhoo. The next page declared “Be a good-looking Samaritan.” The page after that featured the (Red) manifesto, which I was all ready to read by this point:
Maybe this caught my eye because I spent most of yesterday afternoon researching social entrepreneurs: “(Red) is not a charity. It is simply a business model.” And now it hits me: it all goes back to transparency. Will I buy their products? Depends. I don’t like being a walking billboard for anything, so no to the Gap t-shirts. I would have bought a (Red) cellphone, though, if they’d been around when I renewed my contract.

As for the magazine itself, I was all ready to be critical about it, but it’s actually a really well-edited issue. I’d write more, but I’ve read Binyavanga Wainaina’s essay How to Write About Africa and it was so damn funny I’ll just demand you go read that instead.

"Good Food is Elitist" Frame Must Die

2007-06-20T13:34:00.000-05:00

Time has a great special report on its website, called The Food Chains That Link Us All. I've only scanned it so far, but so far it's drool-worthy for a geek like me. The beginning of Mark Kurlansky's opening essay was awesome:

C.L.R James, the great Trinidadian essayist, once wrote of his favorite sport,"What do they know of cricket, who only cricket know?" The same question
should be asked of food. To write about food only as food misses the point, or
the many points, about the great universal human experience between birth and
death. Food is not just what we eat. It charts the ebbs and flows of economies,
reflects the changing patterns of trade and geopolitical alliances, and defines
our values,status and health—for better and worse. The famous dictum of the
early 19th century French gastronome Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, "Tell me
what you eat and I will tell you who you are," should be expanded. Tell me
what you eat and I will tell you who you are, where you live, where you stand on political issues, who your neighbors are, how your economy functions, your country's history and foreign relations, and the state of the environment. By looking at food, the age we live in is better understood.

I was all set to stuff this in the overflowing "What I wish my thesis would have been" file, but then he got all patronizing...

Originally a movement to take control back from corporate industrial agriculture, these markets, serviced by local farmers trucking in their goods,are a most fascinating collusion of small-scale farming and wealthy consumers. There is almost no limit to the price such farmers can ask for their produce...

Okay...not once have a read an interview with a small farmer who didn't voluntarily limit the price they put on their heirloom tomatoes to make them relatively affordable. But then again, most of these farmers weren't selling in New York City (faux news trend alert: something happening in NYC does not a national trend make).

The wealthy, of course, reject industrial farming, which was always intended to mass produce for the poor (and yet has failed in its greatest goal: to end world hunger). To see just how much resistance to industrial agriculture there isamong the rich, travel to rural areas where wealthy urbanites have their vacation homes and watch them pay fees for the privilege of stooping in the field to harvest a crop.

"..of course..."? "...pay fees for the privilige of stooping in the field..."? Not that I disagree with the first sentence in that paragraph- I think it's a good point. But does he think the proponents of industrial agriculture are working class stiffs being put down by the man, that the rich aren't the people making money off industrial agriculture? Obviously, he hasn't seen the Environmental Working Group's Farm Subsidies Database.

And yet, industrial food is out of fashion. Today there is a global market for organic fruits and vegetables, free-range birds, oysters from microbeds.
Technology is in. Genetically modified food offers many opportunities, not the
least of which is crops that are so insect repellent they need no pesticides.
But—to the fury of some farmers—some of the same people who reject pesticides
and call for organic food are now calling for a ban on genetically modified
food. The argument, though a bit murky, is powerful. While there is no solid
proof of the evils of such food, why trust hi-tech food from the same
corporations that brought us industrial food?

Yeah, that's right. The whole food reform movement is just about "fashion." Not health, or the saftey of the next generation. How bourgeosie of us to reject industrial pesticides and fertilizers AND genetically modified crops. Seriously people, why is the precautionary principle so distained in this country? Perfectly acceptable in other modern countries (e.g., Canada), but lest people in California want to ban a chemical from children's toys until it can be proven safe, it's overreacting. "No solid proof of the evils"? How about no solid proof of the good?

Obviously, I get really passionate about this. On the whole, it's a good essay. It's just the tone that makes the caring about food so flippant, so unimportant. He should know better, considering he's made a career of writing good books about the impact of food on civilization. Because "to write about food only as food misses the point, or the many points, about the great universal human experience between birth and death"? Brilliant.

"Cows rise up!" Spokecow proclaims.

2007-06-13T11:55:00.000-05:00

At noon on Monday, the Environmental Working Group launched a new farm subsidies database profiling the 358,070 people who've gotten over $34.75 billion in federal subsidies.
Twenty-four hours later, the database was already getting 7,000 hits per hour on the new database. Two days later, the website still took five minutes to load. Why all the interest? Well, why did Microsoft's Paul Allen get $30,687 in farm subsidies between 2003-2005?
Right here would be a great place for a pun about something smelling like manure, but I don't want to offend any cows, especially since they're organizing.

Frame: Revenge of the Industrial Food System...

2007-06-07T22:41:00.000-05:00

DairyQueen has a hilarious post on The Ethicurean about the latest E. coli outbreak, which I hadn't heard of. She picked up on one of the frames I discussed in my thesis, the modernization frame:

Another day, another recall of ground beef possible tainted with E. coli 0157:H7, aka Revenge of the Industrial Food System. Actually, this is just an expanded recall, voluntary of course, because the USDA has no power to force the companies it regulates to recall their products. Kind of like being the parents of rebellious teenagers. You just hope you raised them right … so they don’t go out and kill people.

In outbreaks like this the modernization frame--aka Revenge of the Industrial Food System--works against reform for two reasons. Either they're proof of the need for even more industrialization:

As usual, this latest E. coli recall has brought out the proponents of irradiation. Those would be the parents that, having raised rotten teenagers, are fine with packing them off to adult jail once they go on their inevitable killing spree. Tough love, people.

or they are the lamentable, but unavoidable side effects of what's needed (supposedly) to feed the masses. Consult your doctor if you experience dizziness, nausea, a lack of appetite...

The really hilarious part of the post, however, is the transcript of DairyQueen's 'conversation' with the FDA's automated food safety question avatar, 'Karen'. I have to quote the whole damn thing:

Hi Karen. Is American beef safe to eat?

All beef is inspected for wholesomeness. Beef found in retail stores is either USDA inspected or inspected by state systems that have standards equal to the Federal government. Each steer and its internal organs are inspected for signs of disease. The Passed and Inspected by USDA seal insures the beef is wholesome and free from disease.

Then why is beef getting recalled for E. coli?

E. coli is short for Escherichia coli. It is a type of bacteria that normally live in the intestines of animals and humans. There are hundres of different kinds, or strains, of E. coli, some of which are harmful, but most of which are not. One strain, E. coli 0157:H7, produces a potent toxin, or poison, and can cause severe illness, kidney failure and even death.

Why is there shit in our meat?

This is a U.S. Government Web site. Our site is here to address the serious topic of food safety and to answer your food safety questions. Please type in a food safety question or exit this site.

Where did E. coli 0157:H7 come from?

E. coli is short for Escherichia coli. It is a type of bacteria that normally live in the intestines of animals and humans. There are hundres of different kinds, or strains, of E. coli, some of which are harmful, but most of which are not. One strain, E. coli 0157:H7, produces a potent toxin, or poison, and can cause severe illness, kidney failure and even death.

What is the USDA’s role in recalls?

A Virtual Representative (vRep) is an automated information source designed to display answers for questions you type about food safety, food inspection, food storage and preparation, food recalls, and many other topics. Please type a question.

Why can’t the USDA tell me where the recalled beef is being sold?

Beef is meat from cattle about 2 years old. A live steer weighs about 1,000 pounds and yields about 450 pounds of edible meat. There are at least 50 breeds of beef cattle, but fewer than 10 make up most cattle produced. Some major breeds are Angus, Hereford, Charolais, and Brahman.

Why is beef with E. coli only being recalled a month after it was sold?

E. coli is short for Escherichia coli. It is a type of bacteria that normally live in the intestines of animals and humans. There are hundres of different kinds, or strains, of E. coli, some of which are harmful, but most of which are not. One strain, E. coli 0157:H7, produces a potent toxin, or poison, and can cause severe illness, kidney failure and even death.

You’re not very helpful. Who created you?

We call our automated information source “Ask Karen”. This FSIS Virtual Representative can answer food safety questions.

Why am I surprised that the USDA is touting a totally useless, toothless automaton as its answer service?

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s mission is to provide leadership on food, agriculture, natural resources, and related issues based on sound public policy, the best available science, and efficient management. To learn more about USDA, go to www.usda.gov.

Damn, I bet 'Karen' gets lots of dates in Second Life.

The Op-Out Myth

2007-05-29T09:34:00.001-05:00

I stumbled across the Columbia Journalism Review yesterday, and there's a lot of good stuff in the latest issue. An article titled The Op-Out Myth discusses the real trend of articles covering the faux trend of professional women turning their backs on the working world to become stay-at-home moms. The author makes a point that always seemed obvious to me when I read these "mommy war" articles: the women profiled are always upper-middle-class women with money in the bank and a well-paid spouse. How many moms does that actual describe?

The moms-go-home story keeps coming back, in part, because it’s based on some kernels of truth. Women do feel forced to choose between work and family. Women do face a sharp conflict between cultural expectations and economic realities. The workplace is still demonstrably more hostile to mothers than to fathers. Faced with the “choice” of feeling that they’ve failed to be either good mothers or good workers, many women wish they could—or worry that they should—abandon the struggle and stay home with the kids.

The problem is that the moms-go-home storyline presents all those issues as personal rather than public—and does so in misleading ways. The stories’ statistics are selective, their anecdotes about upper-echelon white women are misleading, and their “counterintuitive” narrative line parrots conventional ideas about gender roles. Thus they erase most American families’ real experiences and the resulting social policy needs from view.

Here’s why that matters: if journalism repeatedly frames the wrong problem, then the folks who make public policy may very well deliver the wrong solution. If women are happily choosing to stay home with their babies, that’s a private decision. But it’s a public policy issue if most women (and men) need to work to support their families, and if the economy needs women’s skills to remain competitive. It’s a public policy issue if schools, jobs, and other American institutions are structured in ways that make it frustratingly difficult, and sometimes impossible, for parents to manage both their jobs and family responsibilities.

The article goes on for four more pages, which I admit I haven't read, but the above paragraphs sum up the important parts for me. A classic case of news media framing an issue as episodic rather than systemic.

New Food Writing

2007-05-29T09:30:00.000-05:00

I meant to post on this about two weeks ago, but I got really sick, and am only now getting my appetite back. The Columbia Journalism Review featured an essay a few weeks ago on the new food writing:

In the past few years a raft of reporters and writers have stepped forward with him to answer those twinned queries in all their anthropologically thick complexity. Their work draws together issues of taste, ethics, and politics, bridging the gap between James Beard and Rachel Carson. Much of their writing has an activist tone: last September, The Nation brought together several environmentally conscious writers under the umbrella of a “Food Issue.” But mainstream newspapers, too, now know that their readers expect them to report on the political and ethical implications of food–and to track trends generated, in part, by the new food writers.

I had a lot more notes on this, but that pretty much sums it up. If I have anything to say about it, this kind of writing will take over, but it'll be interesting to see what the backlash is. I plan on looking up that Nation edition. The author of the essay mentions an article in The Economist critical of the local food movement, arguing that the switch to organic "would require several times as much land as currently cultivated. There wouldn't be must room left for the rain forest." There are so many things wrong with that statement, I can't even start. If asked, I will rant.

The essay makes a great overall point that the local food movement can't just be treated like "a trend that can just be tacked on to the American way of life, Kobe beef or a low-carb diet or, for that matter, food grown without pesticide. In fact, it's a radical reimaging of that way of life."

The Guardian UK's food section logo. I like it.

Foodies vs. Libertarians, Round Two

2007-05-19T12:48:00.000-05:00

Round One wasn't really a fight, but whatever. Caught your attention, right? Elyzabethe posted about Montgomery County's trans fat ban, which inspired my post last week on the Guerrilla Nutrition Labels, which inspired her response.

Well, over on my new favorite website, Culinate, there is a review of a --I guess you could call it a debate--between food and agriculture writer Michael Pollen, and Whole Foods CEO John Mackey. Apparently, Mackey impressed the Berkeley crowd with his commitment to reforming the food system. I have no doubt he's genuine, either, but this article points out some of the facts he left out of his (seriously) PowerPoint presentation. What got me especially (no surprise to anyone who heard me ramble on about Spinach and e.coli last semester) was his classification of Earthbound Farm as a group of small organic farms banding together under one brand name, allowing him to say that 78% of Whole Foods produce comes from small farms. I call bullshit. I respect Earthbound, especially considering how they handled the unwarranted attention they got from the outbreak, and yes, if you look hard on its website, you find that

Earthbound Farm certified organic produce is grown on more than 34,000 acres by about 150 dedicated farmers, who use the same organic farming methods on the smallest farm (about 5 acres) as on the largest (about 680 acres).

But it never portrays itself as a collective of small, independent farms. At 680 acres, you have to be using industrial methods, albeit organic ones. It's Earthbound Farm, singular, not Farms, plural, a common mistake that even Culinate makes in its coverage. And Earthbound Farm is only one brand sold by Natural Selection Foods, "North America's leading supplier of specialty salads."

You say tomato, I say locally-grown heirloom variety tomato. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm getting hungry.

Feel free to abandon me...

2007-05-19T00:34:00.000-05:00

It's 1:30 am, it's Friday night, and for some reason I come home from a party and I get online looking for social marketing sites. Am I in withdrawal from class? Whatever. I've discovered Deborah Schultz, a friend of Hugh's, and she's coined the term I've been looking for in all my digging on transparency, the long tail: "relationship marketing". She also started a del.icio.us account of related links, which I'll have to spend a good many hours exploring. Although her social networking map had one glaring error in that it is missing Facecrack. So on the issue of Web 2.0, I really don't know why I bother writing about it, since the five people reading this blog know more about it than I do. Besides, I need to get back to talking about framing, which is what this blog was supposed to be about.

Why yes, I was trying to get as many links as possible into this entry. I think I'm just giddy from having been able to finally hand out some business cards. Geektastic.

Who is Howard Dean's media trainer?

2007-05-17T11:53:00.000-05:00

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Because that person deserves a pat on the back. Dean nailed his appearance on The Colbert Report last night. Okay, it wasn't Face the Nation, but I would argue that makes it even more impressive--it would have been so easy for Dean to just take the lines Colbert was feeding him, but he actually turned them around into key messages. I particularly liked when Colbert asked Dean if he thought the midterm elections were a referendum on the administration--Dean said yes, then Colbert asked if he thought the 2008 elections would be a referendum on the administration. The rhythm of the questions was exactly the same, basically set up for Dean to say "Yes" to the second question--easy answer, easy laugh--but instead Dean said the 2008 elections would show Democrats to have the better candidates. Small point, but hey, that's the major message pitfall of Democrats and Unitarians: defining ourselves as "not the other guy". Is it sad I got so excited about this? Considering studies show that Daily Show and Colbert Report viewers are more informed than Fox News viewers, I think not.

p.s. What is sad is that every time I tried typing "Colbert Report" I typed "Colber Repor" instead. This is what happens to your brain when it crashes after finishing a 45 page thesis.

Guerilla Nutrition

2007-05-17T11:48:00.000-05:00

Considering Montgomery County’s recent passing of a trans fat ban I thought this post would be timely. I would have liked to see more education and debate before the ban, since we all have to take responsibility for our own choices about what to buy at the grocery store.

Guerrilla Nutrition Labels are part of a guerrilla art campaign by a Hunter College media arts student designed to raise awareness about what goes into processed foods. For those who want to join in, you’re invited to download and print off the labels yourself and do some culture jamming at your local supermarket.

Cross-posted from Provisions.

"You don't have to be a perfect parent..."

2007-05-01T10:18:00.000-05:00

My new favorite commercials are the Ad Council's PSA for adoption. They're hilarious. I'm a huge proponent of adoption, partly because I have a couple of adopted cousins who have basically settled the 'nature or nuture' debate for me. They lack my dysfunctional DNA, but they've got the family sense of humor perfected.

Basically, the ads show parents being inept parents, with the tag line "You don't have to be a perfect parent...There are lots of kids who would love to put up with you." The one that's getting a lot of airplay right now is 'Phone', and I think the kid in that one is pitch-perfect. The first one in this series they launched was 'Gift', which I think was good-you get right away that the kids are adopted, but the situation is so "That's my family!" which is the point. The latest one is 'Hamster':

Building big things out of many small things...

2007-04-30T11:23:00.000-05:00

I went to a really fascinating presentation last Friday by the Beehive Design Collective. I was a little wary at first that it would be an all white, Latin American studies crowd, especially since in the ten minutes preceding the presentation I had to listen to some teenage self-described anarchists debate for ten minutes over whether police are just workers following orders, or if force against them is justified because they are the enforcement arm of the fascist state. I’m sorry: you do not qualify as an anarchist if you’re enrolled in a four-year liberal arts college. Luckily, the words ‘proletariat’ or ‘bourgeoisie’ did not make an appearance, otherwise I would have had to leave. But I digress.

The Beehive describes their ‘visual lectures’ as giant comic book posters, but that doesn’t do them justice. Imagine the picture left blown up to about 6 feet wide by probably 25 feet tall, spanning 500 years, and you’ve got a rough idea. The symbolism and detail in their work reminded me of what stained glass windows must have represented in medieval churches. They were storytelling maps, which for someone majoring in advanced storytelling, was reaaaally cool.

The Beehive members giving the presentation (yes, they were all Caucasian) impressed me with their dedication to getting the facts right and not speaking for the people whose story their work portrays. They acknowledged that their job is to educate Americans about the effects our economic and international policies have on Latin America, not save Latin Americans. Besides emphasizing the environmental impact of these issues, this is the other reason why they use insects, not humans, as characters in their stories. Plus, it makes for some kickass visual metaphors.

The content in the pictures comes from traveling to Latin American and getting stories directly to people in Latin America. Scarily enough, this is why one scene in Plan Colombia shows military contractors attacking a village using chain saws, instead of the machine guns they had originally envisioned. The same collective attitude they brought to their work came through in their presentation. They had a very Socratic method style of asking the audience what they thought various pictures meant before telling us what was behind the symbolism. I also really appreciated that as much reverence as they (and I) have for old forms of knowledge, they also realize the possibilities of technology for networking and global activism.

More GapingVoid Wisdom

2007-04-29T16:05:00.000-05:00

"Blogging is just the tip of the Cluetrain iceberg. And it wasn't the tip that sunk the Titanic."

I could have written The Omnivore's Dilemna, too.

2007-04-23T11:15:00.000-05:00

Author Michael Pollen had an excellent article in yesterday's New York Times Magazine, on why we should all be paying attention to the Farm Bill being reauthorized by Congress this year. Basically, he wrote the introduction to my thesis much more eloquently than I did. The whole article is worth reading, but these two paragraphs sum up the issue well:

And then there are the eaters, people like you and me, increasingly concerned, if not restive, about the quality of the food on offer in America. A grass-roots social movement is gathering around food issues today, and while it is still somewhat inchoate, the manifestations are everywhere: in local efforts to get vending machines out of the schools and to improve school lunch; in local campaigns to fight feedlots and to force food companies to better the lives of animals in agriculture; in the spectacular growth of the market for organic food and the revival of local food systems. In great and growing numbers, people are voting with their forks for a different sort of food system. But as powerful as the food consumer is — it was that consumer, after all, who built a $15 billion organic-food industry and more than doubled the number of farmer’s markets in the last few years — voting with our forks can advance reform only so far. It can’t, for example, change the fact that the system is rigged to make the most unhealthful calories in the marketplace the only ones the poor can afford. To change that, people will have to vote with their votes as well — which is to say, they will have to wade into the muddy political waters of agricultural policy.
Doing so starts with the recognition that the “farm bill” is a misnomer; in truth, it is a food bill and so needs to be rewritten with the interests of eaters placed first. Yes, there are eaters who think it in their interest that food just be as cheap as possible, no matter how poor the quality. But there are many more who recognize the real cost of artificially cheap food — to their health, to the land, to the animals, to the public purse. At a minimum, these eaters want a bill that aligns agricultural policy with our public-health and environmental values, one with incentives to produce food cleanly, sustainably and humanely. Eaters want a bill that makes the most healthful calories in the supermarket competitive with the least healthful ones. Eaters want a bill that feeds schoolchildren fresh food from local farms rather than processed surplus commodities from far away. Enlightened eaters also recognize their dependence on farmers, which is why they would support a bill that guarantees the people who raise our food not subsidies but fair prices. Why? Because they prefer to live in a country that can still produce its own food and doesn’t hurt the world’s farmers by dumping its surplus crops on their markets.

Capitalism 3.0

2007-04-22T14:49:00.000-05:00

I’ve just finished reading Capitalism 3.0(PDF), by Peter Barnes, founder of Working Assets. It’s a quick, easy read for anyone interested in anything from media reform to wilderness protection to fighting poverty. Barnes is arguing for a way to moderate capitalism’s distorting effect on democracy. Instead of calling for more regulation (since those, as we’ve all seen with current media, environmental, and economic regulations are too often watered down by corporate influence) Barnes envisions is an economic model that balances the corporate market with the common wealth:

Much of what we label private wealth is taken from, or co-produced with, the commons. However, these takings from the commons are far from equal. To put it bluntly, the rich are rich because (through corporations) they get the lion’s share of common wealth; the poor are poor because they get very little.

He describes a shift from the “shortage” capitalism of the 18th and 19th centuries, to the “surplus” capitalism we’re in today: where markets used to meet consumer needs, they now create consumer wants. The problem is the market is now eating up the earth’s natural capital--the commons--and risks leaving nothing for the future.

Barnes is counting on there being a window of time in which the public sector can set up trusts independent of the government to manage the public commons—air, water, healthcare—and then leave the responsibility for those things with the commons sector. That way, corporations won’t be able to buy influence, and politicians won’t be pressured to water down regulations, since they won’t have any influence:

Instead of having only one engine—that is, the corporate-dominated private sector—our improved economic system would run on two: one geared to maximizing private profit, the other to preserving and enhancing common wealth.

Aside from basically ignoring the existing non-profit sector, I find his argument compelling. Basically, he’s arguing for endowments instead of charity to protect the commons, like the American Farmland Trust and the Nature Conservancy.

Capitalism 3.0 isn’t the first, and probably won’t be the last, to suggest how to reform capitalism. Natural Capitalism, and For the Common Good are just two of the others. It is one of the more accessible ones, though (not only because it’s a free download).

I'm a real blogger now!

2007-04-22T14:39:00.000-05:00

I've been given the chance to write for Provisions Library's blog Signalfire, on agriculture and food issues, my other passion in addition to framing. I thought for awhile I'd cross-post here as well. Provisions is a social change activism resource library located in DC. First post:

Spring will have sprung any moment now, and with that the opening of local farmers markets. In addition to Eastern Market, Fresh Farm runs a number of markets around the city, and the Twin Springs Fruit Farm of Pennsylvania has stands at a number of markets in Bethesda, DC and Arlington. Wherever you live, Local Harvest keeps an extensive directory of farmers markets, local farms, and CSAs across the country.

End-of-Semester Procrastination

2007-04-22T14:13:00.000-05:00

If you are a single man between the ages of 25-35 living in the DC area, and you identify with what Henry Rollins is talking about in this clip, call me. Tattoos not required.

Connecting when things fall apart

2007-04-17T11:02:00.000-05:00

I really have nothing to say about Virgina Tech- many are already saying it more eloquently than I, and in the end, it's something you really can't put into words.

There was an interesting article in the Post today called "Students Make Connections at a Time of Total Disconnect" about how during all the chaos yesterday, students were able to keep in touch by IM and cellphone and Facebook. So many other stories about that generation and digital media are negative- how they/we don't know how to write in full sentences, how we're IM-ing instead of paying attention in class, how we're disconnected from community. But we're not-we're just connected differently. Like right now, as I write this, I'm simultaneously IM-ing a friend trying to make a major life decision, someone who I haven't seen in months and lives hundreds of miles away. But she reached out, and hey, once that IM pings, you've got to connect...

I'm not responsible for this, but I'll take some credit.

2007-04-12T14:18:00.000-05:00

Big Green Purse gets some awesome press from my favorite newspaper. My press-release-writing skills get some recognition. If and when you hear about this site on the radio, I'll take all the credit. Ha.

I've been hyperlinked to death...

2007-04-11T11:07:00.000-05:00

I just invented that saying after an afternoon of researching research methods (speaking of meta) via the web. I clicked through so many sites and downloaded so many documents I got completely lost.

Something's been bothering me

2007-04-10T12:11:00.000-05:00

...since my post last week about the anti-Rove protest on campus. A bit of an identity crisis. Here I am, someone who has had major life-altering experiences (drug-free, thank you) at a May Day protest years ago, putting down activists I agree with. Have I become cold and heartless?

Well, no. I realized early on that protests and radical actions were not my thing. But they work for some people, and I was assigned an article for a class that reminded me that even if they don't directly affect change, radical actions do have reasons:

Activist organizations use disruptive image events, which are highly charged protests that involve visuals such as people being buried up to their necks in roads and grandparents chaining themselves to trees (DeLuca, 1999). Such events rarely put an immediate stop to the things activist organizations protest; however, according to a Greenpeace campaigner, success is judged by the protestors’ abilities to reduce complex issues to symbols that disrupt people’s comfort with the status quo.

The article, "Radical activist tactics: Overturning public relations conceptualizations" from Public Relations Review (Vol. 31 2005), goes on to talk about how militant tactics give energy to a lagging movement and diminishes the middle ground, making people pick sides on an issue:

By making demands that powerholders are unlikely to accept, radical activist organizations stay faithful to their vision and redefine what people consider moderate by moving the ends of the spectrum. By arguing for much more radical demands than mainstream activist organizations request, they increase the reasonableness of mainstream activist organizations’ demands. According to a Sierra Club representative, “It makes us look moderate. We can ask for so many acres and look reasonable.”

Okay, I've been a good Freirian here, combining theory and praxis: can I have my street cred back?

Life is like a Box of Chocolates, Pitching a Proposal is like a Game of Poker

2007-04-08T11:06:00.000-05:00

Admittedly, not my best frame, but I haven't been sleeping lately. I have, however, been a creative genius lately. Unfortunately, this creative genius has all come at 3 am and consists of a marketing campaign for Tanquery Gin (no, I have not been drinking), a public relations initiative for Facebook, and not my homework.

Okay, not exactly true. Some of this extra brainpower has been useful for the client proposal I'm working on. Problem is, a proposal isn't supposed to be a campaign. Part of the assignment is to know how much to give away, and how much to hold back, so that you don't risk losing the client AND your ideas to another firm.

On the bright side, I might be heading towards a stellar career in my chosen field, if I can move halfway around the world so that my ideas come during the business day. What, you don't think that will work? Honestly, as much as the whole insomnia thing sucks, I am kind of reassured about my abilities. Nothing brings on self-doubt like impending graduation.

What the Easter Bunny Hath Wrought

2007-04-06T11:07:00.000-05:00

I love the idea of gay families crashing the White House Easter Egg Hunt. I also love alternatives to mainstream anything. But this? I don't know if I can get on board with kids hunting for fake cluster bombs, just to make a 'statement'. It's like giving your kid coal for Christmas because the President's been a bad boy this year. The organizer says this is primarily supposed to be funny, but if I were a kid, finding an Easter egg with no candy and the theoretical ability to kill me, I wouldn't be laughing. I'd probably end up scared of rabbits for the rest of my life, too.

However, I do find some of the other aspects of this event laugh-out-loud awesome:

The event, which runs from 8 a.m. until 2 p.m., the same hours as the White House Easter Egg Roll, will include a search for weapons of mass destruction for the adults. "They'll all come back looking confused five minutes later, saying they couldn't find anything," Hennessey said.
Another search, for Osama bin Laden, will turn up only photographs of Saddam Hussein, he said.

Extra! Extra! Read all about it (online)!

2007-04-05T20:58:00.000-05:00

I was at a dinner party tonight where I talked to a Washington Post reporter who told me that the Post gathered all its employees together to tell them that its going to be placing more of its resources in its online edition. Which, really, should come as no surprise to anyone who has payed any attention to the media landscape in the last five years. But hey, it's a scoop. Also, they're planning to eventually offer the online content formatted like the paper edition, meaning you'll be able to 'page through' the paper like you would a traditional newspaper. The younger people in the room didn't find this as exciting as the older generation, seeing as we're already used to 'browsing' hypertext.

I'll file this under "warm and fuzzy issue advocacy"

2007-03-26T20:51:00.000-05:00

I had a whole big post here about grassroots organizing and the web, using knitters as an example, but dude:

One Yarn Harlot post = Hundreds of knitters invading Manhattan.

Knitters on the Today Show.

Do not mock us.

If the EPIC 2014 video scared the shit out of you...

2007-03-24T09:45:00.000-05:00

I've been giving myself a little Web 2.0 tutorial this morning, and ran across this video. Pretty cool, both content-wise and aesthetically. Not earth-shattering, but it did kinda make me go "yes! we are the web! we can change the world!" Kinda.

Marketing 101 Reimagined

2007-03-22T10:19:00.000-05:00

The Cluetrain Manifesto

Maybe I'm just a sucker for anything that calls itself a 'manifesto,' but I can see myself having some really interesting conversations with some of my friends on this. I haven't read it all, but from the introduction:

What if the real attraction of the Internet is not its cutting-edge bells and whistles, its jazzy interface or any of the advanced technology that underlies its pipes and wires? What if, instead, the attraction is an atavistic throwback to the prehistoric human fascination with telling tales? Five thousand years ago, the marketplace was the hub of civilization, a place to which traders returned from remote lands with exotic spices, silks, monkeys, parrots, jewels -- and fabulous stories.
In many ways, the Internet more resembles an ancient bazaar than it fits the business models companies try to impose upon it. Millions have flocked to the Net in an incredibly short time, not because it was user-friendly -- it wasn’t -- but because it seemed to offer some intangible quality long missing in action from modern life. In sharp contrast to the alienation wrought by homogenized broadcast media, sterilized mass "culture," and the enforced anonymity of bureaucratic organizations, the Internet connected people to each other and provided a space in which the human voice would be rapidly rediscovered.

Though corporations insist on seeing it as one, the new marketplace is not necessarily a market at all. To its inhabitants, it is primarily a place in which all participants are audience to each other. The entertainment is not packaged; it is intrinsic. Unlike the lockstep conformity imposed by television, advertising, and corporate propaganda, the Net has given new legitimacy -- and free rein -- to play. Many of those drawn into this world find themselves exploring a freedom never before imagined: to indulge their curiosity, to debate, to disagree, to laugh at themselves, to compare visions, to learn, to create new art, new knowledge.

Yeah, you guessed it, they had me at "stories."

Istanbul Grand Bazaar

Update, 10 minutes later: And now, from someone who has obviously not read Cluetrain, and excerpt from a speech I had to read for class, by Bill Marks, VP-PR, Coca-Cola:

Good evening! Thank you Rita for your warm introduction. LA! To those of us from the east, this is ..."the left coast!" The film capital of the world. The place where truth is frequently stranger than fiction!... I guess most of us folks from back East believe LA is not the "Real" world. By the way, those in the pool to bet how long it would take the Coke guy to insert the word "real" in his speech? You can now divvy up the money....As I hope most of you know, my company recently announced a new marketing platform for brand Coca-Cola. Our new marketing platform reflects genuine, authentic moments in life and the natural role brand Coca-Cola plays in those moments. The platform, "Coca-Cola? Real" will be integrated across all of the brand's marketing initiatives and properties.The integrated platform launch includes a new ad campaign, strong music and digital components, promotions, properties, one-to-one marketing initiatives, and new packaging and graphics.

You get the idea. If you have to keep plugging the words 'real', 'genuine' and 'authentic,' then there's a pretty good chance you're not. But what do I know? He heads up one of the most powerful brands in the world.

Blogs and marketing

2007-03-21T14:03:00.000-05:00

This post is kind of a continuation on yesterdays's post, a meditation on the intersection between philosophy and business.

Blogs and marketing

Another Gaping Void blog entry that seems perfectly suited for me and the other PC students. A little late for our 'corporate blog' assignment, but god, does it make me want to get out there in the real world. Basically, I want to figure out what job I have to get so that I can hang out with people like Hugh MacLeod but not have to make pitch calls. Making pitch calls is the third circle of hell. The fifth through seventh circles? Again, I refer to Hugh:

Meditations on Corporate Whoredom

2007-03-20T16:30:00.000-05:00

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, we've reached the flustered-and-idealistic-grad-student-comes-face-to-face-with-impending-graduation-
and-the-real-world phase of the year. I found this entry, A Corporate Whole in Philadelphia, a few weeks ago on Daily Kos. It reminded me of two things.

The first was a Halloween party my senior year of college where a recent graduate came dressed entirely in white and red (including striped socks), and whenever someone approached her, pulled a Target job application out of her pocket and announced cheerily, "Hi! I'm a Corporate Whore! Would you like to work for Target?" It turns out that this formerly radical lesbian, though still a lesbian, was not so radical anymore, and was actually loving her job as a computer tech at Target headquarters. She'd come to terms with it, and could laugh at it. Still the best Halloween costume I've seen in awhile.

The second was in a planning meeting for the annual May Day Parade in Minneapolis. The room was full of the usual South Minneapolis hippie types, trying to come up with a theme for the 2002 parade. The topic of corporate greed came up, and someone brought up the idea of a businessman in a coffin, surrounded by money. Various supportive leftist sentiments were brought up, until one guy in a Grateful Dead (or Peace Corps, or Sierra Club) t-shirt spoke up and reminded the group that he worked in an office, for a company, and that 'businessman' does not equal 'evil.' Very apt, considering this was, after all, a parade run by the In the Heart of the Beast Theatre Company. Running away to a commune is not going to change the world, as much as I'd like to.

Until I got here, every single friend I knew worked for a nonprofit or government. It never occurred to me that I would ever work for a for-profit company. Where am I going with this... I had an interview yesterday with a defense industry technology company that is way to excited about hiring me. The job doesn't fit what I want to do, so I'm not really debating whether or not to take it, but it's a really, really interesting opportunity that could lead to some high-power jobs. I'm pretty sure I'll be able to balance by values and finding a job, whether for- or non-profit. My point is that yesterday was one of those fork-in-the-road moments, where I saw how large the disconnect there is between an organizing meeting at In the Heart of the Beast, and a lobbying meeting on Capitol Hill. I could end up in either.

I'm still here.

2007-03-10T10:53:00.000-06:00

I feel like my last few posts have gotten a bit off-topic--I intend for this blog to be mainly about communicating, not just about myself. Anyhoo...

For my marketing friends (I still don't know if I include myself here) I've been meaning to mention the Gaping Void blog for awhile. It's the blog of a London-based marketing guy. It's worth checking out just for his business-card cartoons, but he also links to a lot of cutting-edge web-based marketing people.

And I think it's about time for my inevitable monthly link to Framing Science. I think I actually shouted out loud when I saw the Sports Illustrated cover on global warming. Awesome. If there's one communications thing that bothers me, it's preaching to the choir about music, and this most certainly is not. In any sense of that awkward metaphor.

I found (a new) religion

2007-02-25T11:11:00.001-06:00

Actually, after reading this catchism on Comedism, posted on Daily Kos, I realized that my family has been pretty evangelical Comedists my entire life:

The basic beliefs of Comedism are not that different from other religions. Life is fleeting and a test for the hereafter. Like the Buddhists, we believe that on Earth you strive for a state of bodilessness. You can foresee this nirvana in the sort of full out belly laugh that you get from a really good joke. When you laugh so hard that your spirit is ultimately joyful, but your sides ache, you can't breathe, you roll around on the floor unable to stand, you realize that it is the humorous soul and not the things of the body that are important.

We believe that the key to acting well is understanding the nature of the joke. Jokes have two parts, a set up in which a normal situation you think you understand is sketched...and then the punchline that forces you radically rethink how you understood the world of the set up...The humor exists in that moment when your brain is split, trying unsuccessfully to resolve the tension between the two incompatible interpretations. The very possibility of a joke presupposes that reality may always be looked at in more than one way. We must see life as a great joke -- there are always perspectives other than our own and we must strive to get the joke by adopting other people's perspectives.

I'm not too proud to say this:

2007-02-25T09:26:00.000-06:00

I'm actually starting to respect Frank Luntz. Grover Nordquist (kumquat!) is still another matter. But Luntz actually has some good advice in his WaPo editorial today:

Be bold, return to basics, stop telling, start asking, focus on results, abolish "earmarks" and embrace a permanent balanced budget.

As a pollster, I rarely hear voters call for smaller government. They tell me that they want more efficient and more effective government.

He's talking to Republicans, but any politician with a brain should be listening. I was particularly interested in what Florida Republicans had done:

Florida House Speaker Marco Rubio challenged his colleagues to create an agenda for the future with "100 Innovative Ideas" from ordinary people around the state. Instead of fundraisers, they held "idea raisers." Republicans, Democrats and independents were all welcome -- any idea that advanced the principles of good government and political accountability was considered.

It wasn't a political ploy. They released their "100 Innovative Ideas for Florida's Future" after the election. And Republican legislators got back in touch with constituents.

But the next two paragraphs are what really got me:

But what did national Republicans do as the new Congress convened and Democrats began pushing through their "Six for '06" proposals in the first 100 hours? They called a news conference not to present counter-proposals to guide the minority over the next two years, but to complain that the Democrats were treating them unfairly. They objected that the committee process was being skirted and members were denied opportunities to offer amendments.

Were Republicans standing up for retirement security, control over health-care decisions or economic freedom? No. They were upset over who was or was not allowed to offer amendments on the floor. (Note to Republicans: Americans don't care.)

"Note to Republicans:..." Hah. Yes, make me laugh, and my respect for you goes up.

There are no "do-overs" in war

2007-02-23T14:43:00.000-06:00

Enough bloggers have already commented on the Democratic attempt to build a time machine back to 2002.

In both chambers, Democratic lawmakers are eager to take up binding legislation that would impose clear limits on U.S. involvement in Iraq after nearly four years of war. But Democrats remain divided over how to proceed. Some want to avoid the funding debate altogether, fearing it would invite Republican charges that the party is not supporting the troops. Others take a more aggressive view, believing the most effective way to confront President Bush's war policy is through a $100 billion war-spending bill that the president ultimately must sign to keep the war effort on track.

My two cents? Doesn't this continue to make the Democrats in Congress look like exasperating children who just want it both ways? Then again, comparing Congress to children isn't exactly an original observation.
God help me, I managed to spend one uninterrupted hour working on my thesis. Having a blog does not to anything to quell my ability to procrastinate.

Random Post

2007-02-22T16:42:00.000-06:00

Okay, I'm really behind on schoolwork, but this cartoon made me chuckle, so I thought I'd share. Huh, I definitely am turning into the "ag girl" of the SOC. (Cartoon by David Horsey, The Seattle Post-Intelligencer)

My new addiction

2007-02-18T19:58:00.001-06:00

This has nothing to do with strategic communication. I've gotten nothing done this weekend due to this blog. I may have grown up in a snobby suburban neighborhood, but it was Mayberry compared to this place.

Comp Exam Procrastination with a Message

2007-02-11T11:29:00.000-06:00

Okay, time for the requisite SOC student "I'm avoiding writing my comps" blog entry for the weekend. Found this column by Ellen Goodman of the Boston Globe about re-framing the global warming debate (yes, found in a link from Framing Science), which is apt, since I was lying in bed last night arguing with the imaginary neocon in my head, "Fine! Even if you don't want to believe global warming isn't caused by humans, that it's part of a 'natural cycle', don't you still want to I dunno, do something to make sure this 'natural cycle' doesn't put Wall Street literally underwater?" As someone with anxiety issues, yes, framing it as imminent death versus something we can effect does have the effect of shutting people down.

Cartoon by Nick Anderson of the Houston Chronicle, Daryl Cagle's Cartoonists Index.

Insert Requisite Mary Magdalene Reference Here.

2007-02-05T14:12:00.000-06:00

I've changed my pull quote on the sidebar, as you may notice, from a Bible verse to a Mark Twain quote. I've got no problems with people expressing their religious beliefs as motivating factors for their work- in fact, I think it's a good thing as long as people aren't prostelyzing. But I just thought I should make it clear that my work isn't motivated by a Christian perspective, which the Bible quote may have suggested. I am motivated to reclaim religious language from the fundamentalist right, though. But anyway... what actually motivated me was a trip to the mall, specifically Forever 21. I was kind of disgusted as I walked in at how much their close infantilize women. Not that this--and the obvious sweatshop-quality workmanship--kept me from buying stuff (It was on sale! For $10!). The off-kilter feeling continued, however, when I got home and found "John 3:16" printed on the bottom of the Forever 21 bag. As evangelizing goes, pretty subtle, so I can't argue with that. Just a disturbing juxtaposition, cheap slutty clothes and a New Testament Verse.

I know my procrastination has reached new heights when...

2007-02-04T13:59:00.000-06:00

Anyone who's had more than a passing conversation with me knows that two things I really don't care about are football and cars. So what sent me Googleing this afternoon for a Chevy Super Bowl ad website?

Apparently, Chevy ran a contest for college students to design their Super Bowl ad- four of the five final teams were advertising and marketing majors from design programs. The winner? A freshman English major from the University of Milwaukee, who happens to know my sister. The kicker? She has absolutely no desire to go into advertising, even though she's been offered an internship with the biggest ad company in New York. Seasoned professionals would kill to have an ad of theirs run during the Super Bowl, and she's transferring to UW-Stevens Point, which, for those of you not familiar with the upper midwest, is pretty much in the middle of nowhere. Its where you go if you want to be an English teacher.

Having read The Tipping Point, Blink, and Freakonmics in the last four days, I'm not surprised one bit. It does, however, make me wonder what the point of studying is.

I'll be doing my yearly Super Bowl ritual of muting the TV during the game (there was about five seconds during high school gym class where I understood the stupid game), and then turning the volume up for the commercials. At least this year, I can honestly say that watching the ads is part of my education.

UPDATE: No need to turn on the tv at all.

Across the pond...

2007-01-26T09:09:00.000-06:00

So Tesco supermarkets in the UK are going to label foods with their "carbon footprints." Or at least try. Which is more than you can say about any US food companies. What cracks me up most about this article from The Guardian is the tagline "We all know about food miles..." Ha. If only that appplied in this country. But then I wouldn't have a thesis to write.

How not to do it

2007-01-26T08:42:00.000-06:00

WaPo has an interesting article this morning about the testimony of Cheney's communication's director at Libby's trial. Pretty much confirms what anyone in communications already guessed.

Also, there was an article a few days ago on electronic campaigning that might interest you new media folks. Not me. I want my candidates giving speeches off the backs of train cars. Yes, that was sarcasm in my voice. I'm just so excited about 21 more months of this.

Okay, I've got a research project for someone

2007-01-09T15:26:00.000-06:00

Good God, this was the best photo WaPo could get of Nancy Pelosi today? There wasn't one like, a second later, when she didn't look like she was about to sneeze? The article wasn't even about her specifically: it accompanied an article about new House legislation based on the 9/11 Report- hardly controversial stuff to the average American.

So, my research question, open to any interested parties: start now (or November, your pick) and review photos of Nancy Pelosi in the media. I'm wondering if you'd find a "hysterical woman" theme. For the record, a quick Google Image search brought up what seemed to be the default Hastert look, "frumpy resignation":

A Comm Grad Student Goes to the Bookstore

2007-01-06T17:58:00.000-06:00

Treked up to the Apple Store in Bethesda this afternoon. They couldn't help me with my broken power plug, but the shiny stores were alluring, so I wandered into Barnes and Noble. I found a plethora of interesting things:

First, for my digital marketing friends, I found the book Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything by Don Tapscott.

Over in the magazine section, I picked up Seed Magazine and found a cute little piece on their Science Blogs project. Check out our favorite framing professor in the top row between the phrenology head and the skeleton.

My continuing interest in integrated marketing was then piqued by the Mother Jones Magazine Ad Nauseum piece on the evolution of product placement.

And finally, I found another entry for the Someone-Beat-Me-To-It Column (or perhaps, better titled the Somethings-In-The-Water Column), an Earth Island Journal intern wrote an abridged version of my theory paper in an article called "Killer Spinach" in the Winter 07 issue. So glad I'm not going to academics- I would suck at publish or perish.

User-created Content

2006-12-25T21:57:00.000-06:00

Read this recent article in the NY Times and thought I was back in Comm Principles class (in a good way):2006, Brought to You by You

now that christmas is over...

2006-12-02T11:21:00.000-06:00

Every year, I intend to "buy" gifts from Heifer International, but I'm always too broke to do it. However, I was on one of my favorite blogs, A Dress A Day, when I saw this: easy blogger fundraising. Eventually. I promise. But then again, I'll probably end up giving to Project Harvest Hope, since I've been to the Homorod Valley and seen the cows (and goats) come home.

Meta-advertising on a meta-show

2006-11-20T22:08:00.000-06:00

Studio 60
Show-within-a-show was looking for ways to increase advertising revenues, and come up with an ingenious and not annoying way to incorporate product placement. Since their stage set is the Sunset Strip, use a street scene, complete with (actual) billboards, as their main set.

I'm an independent consultant!

2006-10-26T21:07:00.000-05:00

I'm realizing my dream. Sigh.

I got another job assignment, writing a report on a membership survey for the Independent Public Relations Society of America. Not interesting in itself, but I get to use a web app called Survey Monkey. You can't be unhappy when you're working with a Survey Monkey. Unless your initials are P.H.

Um... so life is boring right now. I've been sucked into Facebook and Second Life, both of which I haven't quite found the potential in so far. There's a little bit of a Second Life "tipping point" frenzy going on here at SOC. I kinda feel left out around here, not giving a crap about internet advocacy.

2006-10-01T19:05:00.000-05:00

"The message is only as good as the policies behind it."
-Daniel Schulman, "Mind Games"
in the May/June 2006 Columbia Journalism Review

He leaves "apropos" in the dust.

2006-09-21T20:14:00.000-05:00

All the H.U. graduates in the audience (hello? anyone?) know to which theater professor I'm referring to above. I've now found a man that puts his verbal stutter to shame. I now have a professor that says "okayyy?" at the end of EVERY SENTENCE. In an unspecified Eastern European accent.

Also? "Relatability" does NOT mean "related to." Someone tell the class. (Yes, I am being a bad student and emailing during class. Ahh, wireless campus.)

Alive, and thinking.

2006-09-15T12:16:00.000-05:00

But still without internet access, so my nights at home are spent watching cable tv instead of communicating with the outside world.

I've just finished reading an article by Hugh Rank, a professor who's developed a cool little tool for teaching people how to analyze media. Just the schema "Intensify/Downplay." Ask yourself, what is the ad/speech/article hyping up? What is it omitting? His website's got a lot of other tools on it, especially to help kids understand advertising. Oddly enough, reading this I thought of two things: Pedagogy of the Opressed and D.A.R.E. Say what you will about D.A.R.E.- I went through it (and won a teddy bear in a D.A.R.E. t-shirt for an essay I wrote), and the one thing I took out of it was what they taught us about ways of persuasion. I remember posters with cartoons depicting "get on the bandwagon" and "sex appeal" and the others. Now that I think about it, it was probably a pretty formative moment. As for Pedagogy, I think anyone in grassroots organizing and policy should read this (I'm thinking of you in particular, M.R.)

Another Linguist

2006-08-23T12:33:00.000-05:00

Last night I was sitting in my cave, watching The Colbert Report (which I like much more than I thought I would), and the guest was "a linguist who..." I was about to shout "George!" (Funny how comfortable I feel refering to George Lakoff as "George." He's like a big, progressive grandpa teddy bear), but no, it was a guy named Geoffrey Numberg. He's written a book called
Talking RIght. I just bought it, along with Lakoff's new book, and Mary Pipher's Writing to Change the World. If I can managed to get to any of them, I'll post what I think about them. Right now I'm deep into week three of grad school.

I live in a big city

2006-08-17T17:24:00.000-05:00

You want to know how I know this? I'm calling this photo "Dinner Parties Are Not An Option":

This contraption is a stove/sink/fridge combo. Yes, my stove is also my sink is also my fridge. This is the luxury for which I pay $1000 a month. Doesn't it just scream "efficiency basement apartment"? No? How about this:

This is my bathroom. Or my laundry room. I don't really know what to call it. I took this picture standing in the kitchen (which, by the way, also has a very big table and pantry). Yes, that's my shower. The green door is the toilet. The sink? Is the laundry basin. Brushing my teeth in the morning is quite interesting. Stay tuned for the day I accidentally reach for the laundry detergent instead of my soap.

Actually, in some ways this apartment kinda rocks. On a temporary basis.

What are you "Waiting" for?

2006-07-29T19:18:00.000-05:00

I read diaries like this and their comments on DailyKos, and it gets frustrating. It's another post among many, trying to articulate, for once and for all, The Democratic Values. As if someday soon, we'll suddenly have the right wording (the clouds will part, the sun will shine, and angels will sing), and our elected officials will start talking perfectly articulated values. We HAVE values and vision-stop trying to get it perfect and start talking.

Somewhere out there, Frank Luntz (KUMQUAAAAATTTTT!) is laughing. Every time we write or complain about not having a message, one of his right-wing pundit gets his (or her) wings. Don't get me wrong: this work is important- I'm dedicating my life to it- but the more time we spend brainstorming new lists of values over and over, instead of getting out there, the more time he has to just sit back and relax. Everytime someone can point to a diary like this and say, "see, even the Democrats don't think they have anything to say," we're doing his minions jobs for them by convincing the public (and ourselves) that we don't have a vision. Which just isn't true.

Framing the News

2006-07-25T19:40:00.000-05:00

This article, Two Views of the Same News Find Opposite Biases, by Shankar Vedantam was in the Washington Post Online this week. I'm often frustrated by the constant complaining about the "liberal" or "conservative" media. For the record, I think that media consolidation can only harm, that mainstream media is biased, not so much to the left or right (except for, of course, Fox News), but toward the status quo, and that mainstream media depends too much on an episodic, rather than systematic, frame for the stories it cover. But that's not the point of this post. I'm not the first, nor will I be the last to rant about these issues on the web.

This article described a study that showed that partisans on either side of an issue, when shown the exact same media clips, each find bias in favor of the other side. Kind of a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation they call the "hostile media effect." The most interesting part for me:

"...The best-informed partisans were the most likely to see bias against their side... [because they]... often feel the news lacks context. Instead of just showing a missile killing civilians, in other words, partisans on both sides want the news to explain the history of events that prompted -- and could have justified -- the missile. The more knowledgeable people are, the more context they find missing."

I didn't see the conclusions as depressing. Okay, they're depressing, but I finished the article thinking, "Well, this is only knowledge that can help." Yup, I guess I really am ready to dive in. My first day of school is in exactly a month.

Seriously Funny

2006-07-25T19:15:00.000-05:00

Anyone who knows me, knows I am practically addicted to editorial cartoons. On the left is a link to Cagle's Daily Cartoon Index, which I check at least a few times a week. One of my favorite cartoons featured there is Jen Sorensen's Slowpoke Comics. She rocks. I mean, what strategic communications geek wouldn't a cartoon titled "Framing Funnies?"

Or one that takes on Grover Nordquist, and has inspired me to yell "Kumquat!" at the televion whenever I sense his influence?

And shows the power of words through pictures? Really funny pictures?

Sigh. I only hope to have this much influence in the future.

From Peter Elbow's Writing with Power

2006-07-06T19:18:00.000-05:00

A selection from pages 201-204, which seemed particularly important to my 'mission':

What concerns me in this chapter, however, are tricky audience situations and, in this case, I am thinking about the many times when you are trying to persuade someone in a straightforward way but actually you are wasting your time...

If your readers have a stake in what you are arguing against, you cannot talk straightforward persuasion as your goal. You must resist your impulse to change their beliefs. You have to set your sights much lower. The best you can hope for--and it is hoping for a great deal--is to get your readers to understand your point of view even while not changing theirs in the slightest. If you can get readers actually to entertain to experience your position for just a moment, you have done a wonder, and your best chance of getting them to do so is not by asking them to believe or adopt your point at all.

In short, stop trying to persuade the enemy and settle for planting a seed. If you think about the way people do change their beliefs--which is rarely--it is usually a gradual process and depends on a seed lying dormant for awhile. Something has to get them to a position where they might say, "Imagine that. He actually believes this stuff and he's not crazy... Of course they are all wrong deeply misguided arguments, but now I can see why they appeal. It's interesting to know what it's like for a person to actually see things that way."

If you can get a reader to take your point of view for just that one conditional moment--to inflate your words with his breath--then future events will occasionally remind him of the experience. Contrary views are inherently intriguing. And if your position has any merit, your reader will begin--very gradually, of course--to notice things that actually support it... A seed is the best you can hope for.

So how do you plant a seed? You do it by getting the person actually to see through your eyes. There are many ways of doing this, but I think they all depend on one essential inner act by you: seeing through his eyes. And it's not enough to just do it as an act of shrewd strategic analysis: "Let's see what actually passes for thinking in the minds of those rednecks." For them to experience your point of view even for a moment, they must let down their guard. You can't get them to do so unless you let yours down, too: actually experience their point of view from the inside, not just analyze it. Though persuading can employ the doubting game, planting a seed calls for the believing game.

What does this mean in practice? If you relinquish your effort to make readers change their beliefs and settle instead of trying to get them merely to entertain yours for a moment, and if you start with an honest attempt to see thing through their eyes, you will find a whole range of specific skills to write your letter, article, or report--depending on your skills and temperament. You can trust your instinct once you understand your goal: somehow to persuade readers to work with you rather than against you in the job of breathing life into your words. For example, if I were writing a short article or leaflet to readers with a stake in what I'm trying to refute, I wouldn't say, "Here's why you should believe nuclear power is bad." How I can get them to invest themselves in words which translate "Here's why you've been bad or stupid"? I would take an approach which said, "Here are reasons and experiences that have made me believe nuclear power is bad. Please try to understand them for a moment."

Good Frame Alert

2006-07-06T19:08:00.000-05:00

I came across this feature by Crocker Stephenson in the July 4th edition of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. It's the second of two parts on woman named Rhea Estelle Lathan

Stephenson writes:

"She was a drug addict. A high school dropout. Her son and daughter lived with their fathers' families. She was banned from any contact with her daughter. She had been convicted of forging checks. She was divorced and had alienated her family. She slept with men for drugs and money....Near the end of that year, Rhea was caught stealing from her employer, a downtown hotel. She was given a choice: Go to jail, or enroll in a residential treatment program through an agency now called Wisconsin Community Services."

Now if you guessed this was yet another dramatic life-turnaround story, you'd be right. What caught my eye were the last lines of the article:

"Rhea Estelle Lathan, PhD, will begin teaching this summer at Michigan State University, where she will be a tenure-tracked assistant professor of writing, rhetoric and American culture."

"So. What do we make of Rhea's story?

"Do we say: Here is proof that people who work hard enough can liberate themselves from even poverty and addiction?

"Or do we say: Here is proof that, with the right programs and services, we can liberate people from the worst social afflictions?

"Or perhaps we listen to Rhea's story and say: Liberation requires both willingness and opportunity. Both."

That's some nice framing there. Nothing very groundbreaking, but it adds a little kick to what could have been just a fluff piece, and leaves readers on both sides of the individual responsibility/community responsibility unable to dismiss the conclusion. Now, since I've spent all this time on this post, what I really should do is email Stephenson this feedback, right?

Going to the Summerfest with my Mommy:

2006-07-05T23:36:00.000-05:00

1. She holds your purse while you stand on the table to get a better view of Andrew Bird.
2. She gives you her shawl to wear, because it really is "cooler by the lake."
3. She says, "They're good. I like them" right after Wilco does a song full of feedback you thought would bother her.
4. She calls Jeff Tweedy "Dylan-esque," which makes you smile.
5. She buys you tiramisu. She buys herself tiramisu.
6. She points out that she is not the oldest person at the Flogging Molly stage.
7. She dances to Mike Doughty, even though she doesn't have to.
8. Dude, I have a mom that likes Wilco, Andrew Bird, and Mike Doughty. How cool is that?

My sister had to work, Beth had a kickball game, my cousin Flannery didn't return my phone call, Peter is out of town (out of the country?), so I asked my mom if she would go to Summerfest wth me. I may punk out of most things, but had I given the chance to see a bunch of really good bands FOR FREE, I would have had to turn in whatver hipster cred I may have built up. So I went with my Mom, and I'm PROUD OF IT.

Andrew Bird was awesome. Except for the brief tiramisu run, we saw the whole set. We stayed for about half the Wilco set. Jeff Tweedy looked like Billy Corrigan with a scruffy Jesus hairdo, and that kind of weirded me out, but they were excellent. We walked over to listen (couldn't see them) to Flogging Molly for a few songs, so I feel I can now miss Irish Fest without guilt. Then I made her go all the way to the other end of the park to watch Mike Doughty for twenty minutes. He was really good (he said he was "feeling the mystical power of cheese" due to eating some cheese curds), and since it was a small stage, had a really good dialogue going with the audience.

Welcome to Pompeii

2006-07-03T22:27:00.000-05:00

Sarah, these aren't the fireworks. I had wanted to get a picture of a cherubic little girl in a patriotic t-shirt holding a sparkler, but this is the closest thing I got. The batteries in my camera died before they started. We biked down to the lake with half a million of our neighbors, finding a spot right next to a group who had their generator powering a giant stereo system blaring The Who. I'd been in a bad mood all day, what with relatives staying with us, and I'm not a fan of crowds. So I plugged in my iPod and zoned out to Bach's Cello Suites (Side note to Elaine: it's been six months since New Years'! Indeed, Best Year Ever.) while waiting for the fireworks to start. Always works.

My dad, to pass the time, decided to do some push-ups. Actually, my 17-year-old cousin decided to do some push-ups, and my dad followed suit. I used the last of my camera batteries to take this picture of him and a very eager soldier just out of basic training who jumped in to join him. During the fireworks, this same, very drunk, private started yelling things like "Incoming indirect fire! Cover! Cover! Incoming!" which, as one would expect, got him in a fight with the guy behind him. Lovely. He'll make a us a great nation-builder. I tried not to pay too much attention, since we were sitting so close to the fireworks we were getting rained on by ash, hence my mom's commenting opening this entry. Here's where I would have put a picture of the two-inch square of singed cardboard that landed on my head. I ended up using a beach towel as a burqa to protect myself. In the words of the other drunk soldier on the other side of us, "You know what this smells like? It smells like victory!!"

The fireworks themselves were pretty cool. They would have looked pretty awesome from the roof of the house, too.

2006-06-26T13:15:00.000-05:00

Downer Avenue comes to an end at the Lake. You think you can see Michigan in the distance, but you really can’t. It’s that big. Makes Lake Harriet look like a puddle. But it smells like dead fish on the beach, which is why I took this photo from on top of the bluff.

Continuing along the bike trail along the lake, we hit downtown. For you arts people, this building is the art museum. Which building, you ask? The ugly one or the pretty one? Both, actually. They stuck a graceful, award-winning building onto the side of that brown monstrosity. Like transplanting a swan’s head onto a trout. I guess the front view’s not so bad, but the view from the lake is just a wall of brown.

Now downtown, we find ourselves at one of the city’s hottest after-work happy hours- Flannery’s, named after my cousin. If my uncle hadn’t admitted his drug habit and gone into rehab, he’d still own it. Of course, he probably would have spent all the profits on drugs and overdose, so I guess it’s better this way. Flannery still eats for free there.

Our last stop downtown is the Pabst Theatre, where Mason Jennings played the other day. This is also where we put on my high school musicals. Yeah, you heard that right. This is where I got to do my high school musicals. I guess there was an upside to not having an auditorium.

I looked in vain for a Tyme machine, but apparently, they’ve all been replaced by regular ATMs. I also did not take photos of Anodyne, Caribou Coffee, Nomad World Pub, or beer, because this is a tour of what makes Milwaukee different from Minneapolis. Last, but not least, this is the page from the Summerfest schedule showing Andrew Bird, Wilco, Flogging Molly, and Mike Doughty all playing on the same night, practically for free.

2006-06-25T18:11:00.000-05:00

So, first off, what we have here is the Milwaukee skyline as seen from my roof off Oakland Avenue. Yes, my roof. I climb up on my roof. Because I can.

Next, we bike down Oakland to UWM. Here’s your definitive proof that I’m in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. When I was a kid and my mom was getting her masters, I would sit in on the computer science classes she TA’d and take notes. Apparently, I took better notes that some of the students.

Turning down Downer Avenue, we have the iconic green Milwaukee trashcan. This is a classic specimen, reading “Keep Milwaukee Clean” on one side, and “Drugs Are Trash” on another.

Continuing down the street, we enter Sendik’s Grocery, where I sneakily took a few photos of alcohol in a grocery store to highlight the differences between Wisconsin and Minnesota. I much rather would have gone into the liquor store across the street, where the cute guys work, but I was on assignment.

Across the street is Gil’s café, site of my first real date. I was madly in love with the guy, but he pretty much ignored me, and I’m pretty sure he stopped calling me because he wasn’t getting any. Ahh, first love.

On the corner is Lixx’s Custard, where my sister works. She HATES it when people smush their faces up against the window to read the menu inside, so that is what I am doing in this picture. I don’t know if she was working this afternoon, but if she was, I guarantee she was saying, “What the??? God, my sister is such a dork. What the $*% is she doing?” Next door is my favorite bookstore, Schwartz’.

This? This is a bubbler.
Not a water fountain.

2006-03-22T13:06:00.000-06:00

Rockridge Institute - The Value of Values

2006-03-22T10:39:00.000-06:00

This is my first post.