Experience the Flash

Tonight, I watched a short podcast from a website called Alive in Baghdad named “Challenges at a girls’ school in Baghdad” from May 21, 2007. (http://aliveinbaghdad.org/2007/05/21/challenges-at-a-girls-school-in-baghdad/ ) The episode describes Al-Safina Middle School, a school that caters to girls and the problems that they, as other schools, are facing. The school looks as if it could be any American school, with the tree spilling over with leaves in the front and the girls out at recess in the back.  Jinin Jamal Mahmoud, the director of the school who spoke to us with passion and anger in her voice, realizes the problems with the education system the way it is today in Iraq. There is a lot of violence in Iraq as a country, which makes it hard for teachers and students to get to the school every day. Sometimes, she says, school can be canceled for up to ten days at a time while the Americans search the area. When interviewed, one girl tells us, no, she doesn’t have problems getting to school. Yes, sometimes there are roadblocks and checkpoints, but that is normal! It is wonderful to hear the teachers and the students have such hope for the future, as they do in this podcast.

Baghdad Burning is a view of the Iraq War from the account of someone we don’t hear often, an Iraqi. Anytime you want, you can turn on the news and see what Americans think about the war or even what a soldier thinks of the war. Why do we need to be there? What’s going on? But Baghdad Burning is different. Through the eyes of a woman who goes by the pseudonym Riverbend, we have a blog-turned-book criticizing Bush, his administration and the war in general. You can hear her frustration when she talks about being run by people who don’t understand the citizens they are representing. She speaks of things we cannot even imagine “It feels like I’ve been struggling in my sleep… struggling with nightmares, struggling with tears… struggling to listen for gunshots or tanks.”(7) It is amazing that one small voice can rise up through the noise and the commotion of this war torn country to reach the eyes of millions of readers around the world.

Riverbend. (2005). Baghdad Burning. New York: The Feminist Press.

The blaring headline on the front page of the Boston Globe reads “Red Sox Ticking Down to Tokyo Season Opener”. Without even opening the article, it is already patriarchal. The world of sports is without question ruled by men. The sports section is filled with tales of the NFL, NBA, NHL, and MLB. None of those organizations have ever had a woman in it. And the sports that are more or less “ruled” by women such as softball, gymnastics, field hockey, synchronized swimming and figure skating are sent to the third or fourth page of major newspapers, if they get in at all. A Room of One’s Own proves that England is a patriarchy when she starts pointing out all the differences between men and women. “Why is one sex so prosperous and the other so poor?” (25) she asks. Woolf begins to point out the problems with her society that may not have been asked without her spotlight shining on them.

As if I needed another reason not to like Hillary Clinton, she’s now lying about where her daughter was on 9/11. According to Wonkette in the post titled “Throw Chelsea Under The Bus: Hillary Makes Up Chelsea’s Whereabouts on 9/11” (http://wonkette.com/372630/hillary-makes-up-chelseas-whereabouts-on-911) Hillary was playing the roll of frightened mother as well as concerned citizen and active politician on when the planes hit the towers on that infamous day. According to her, Chelsea was out jogging (I wonder if there was a carrot dangling in front of her face? But I digress.) in the area of the World Trade Center when the she ducked into a coffee shop. That is when the first plane hit the towers. But wait, why don’t we ask Chelsea how she felt about being so close to the tragedy? Well, Talk magazine asked her about it and according to Chelsea, straight from the horse’s mouth (pun intended), she was four miles away from the towers at a friend’s apartment. Now, Hillary. That’s just not necessary. With your daughter being in New York, you had reason to be concerned. Hell, my mother was concerned about me when someone got shot in the butt, and I wasn’t even a student yet! We understand. You don’t need to stretch the situation to make yourself look more like a model mother. When people find out, you’re just going to look like “that person” who has called into work with the 7th death in the family in 6 months. It’s just in poor taste and everyone knows you’re lying.

While reading Drezner and Farrell’s “Web of Influence”, we come across a paragraph that touches on the way media uses blogs to keep updated on details that they are not equipped with, staff wise, to cover. For example, there was a lot of discussion in 2003 about the Iraq War’s destruction of priceless antiques and treasures. Incidentally, Iraq was the location of ancient civilization Mesopotamia, it has a rich heritage and therefore, many artifacts. When the numbers came out that 170,000 of these artifacts and treasures were ruined, people were outraged. However, David Nishimura, art historian and author of the blog Cronaca, noticed many inconsistencies in media reports and learned that the 170,000 number was a complete fabrication. More importantly, while American soldiers were being blamed for much of the looting, many of it was done by museum officials. This changed the face of the problem completely. Large media generally do not have art historians on staff. However, by keeping tabs on Nishimura’s blog, they were able to correct their information.

By now it’s fairly obvious that I like Wonkette as a website. It is informative in the way that it opens up stories in an entertaining way and then leaves the serious research up to the reader. It’s a kind of “well, this is our biased, witty opinion, go figure the rest out for yourself.” That’s a wonderful way to run a blog. However, to really get the information to vote, you can’t depend on the stories that can stimulate sarcasm and humor. That’s why I think it’s more important to look to Daily Kos for your political decisions, if you’re liberal/Democratic (the two are becoming more and more interchangeable).  I would rather read a website who informs me that the war is costing us $3,845 dollars a second then a website that writes a rant about someone pushing their camera out of their hands at a fancy DC soiree. Even in the interviews of the people involved in the sites, you can tell the Daily Kos is a more serious, informative website whereas Wonkette can get away with goofing off a little.

Wonkette is a fairly famous and popular blog. It’s sarcastic approach to politics makes it fun to read and therefore more interesting. If a blog doesn’t follow the rules set down in Scoble’s Weblog Manifesto, then it probably will not succeed. Wonkette has succeeded enough for us to realize it has followed most of the rules. One that really stands out is number 3 “Use a human voice.” You can tell that this straight from a passionate person who cares about what’s going on in the world around them. They would not be saying what they say in such a judgmental way if they were not human. That helps readers to connect to their message. Where I think Wonkette could improve is the first rule. “Tell the truth”. While I don’t think Wonkette is lying, part of this rule is “the whole truth. Nothing but the truth.” One thing I like about this particular blog is that they are fairly liberal. Sure, they pick on Democrats sometimes, but for the most part, they’re liberal. That’s not exactly looking at the story from both sides, as Scoble suggests. While this is something I enjoy, who says Wonkette wouldn’t get more readers if they weren’t so biased?

Naturally, as someone who is so against corporations taking over blogs, as I read Joi Ito’s interview, I thought for certain that I was going to sink my teeth into tearing apart what he sees as the future for blogging. However, after reading on, there is a message of hope in his words. In fact, he talks about how now, more then ever, it is important for bloggers to speak up with their own voice against their government or against the corporations who are trying to silence them by buying out websites. To put it another way, what Joi Ito thinks will happen is, Microsoft will buy out all the blog companies then put a disclaimer in front of every non-Microsoft owned webpage saying if you go to that page, your warrantee doesn’t hold up anymore. Consequently, people will be almost forced to go to only websites that are considered safe by Microsoft, the websites they can make money off of. Nevertheless, there are endless words of encouragement from Joi Ito about speaking your mind and not letting ourselves be bought.

If any person reads my blog, they know my stance on corporate blogs. I think they’re an unnecessary evil. We’re all affected by corporations. That can’t be avoided in today’s America. All day long we’re bombarded with “wear this” “drink that” “buy this” “do that” when we watch TV, go to the store, read a magazine, listen to the radio, go on the computer and even simply walk down the street. It’s so very rare, aside from word of mouth, to get an honest to goodness opinion. Sometimes, buried in the letters to editor or a radio call in, there is an opinion that is widely available that is not twisted by money. But then there is a shining beacon in this confusion of advertisement and greed. Al Gore invents the internet! Along with the internet comes blogs. Now we can read how people sincerely feel without being afraid that they are being paid to write it. But not soon after the blogs start, the corporate sponsored blogs follow. Our breath of fresh air is once again brand-name and $1.99 per inhale. And we don’t know if we’re being told the truth or fed more lies. As Baker and Green point out:

“There’s little to stop companies from quietly buying bloggers’ support or even starting unbranded blogs of their own to promote their products – or to tar the competition.” (Baker and Green 226)

I agree that businesses are smart to start blogs. It’s an effective form of marketing. So is all the other advertising they shove down our throats. The effectiveness of the technique is not directly proportional to the morality. What we need is more honest voices. Voices saying “This is what I like and this is why” instead of “this is what you should like and this is why”. I’m not anti-corporation. I wear my American Eagle and Old Navy outfits accompanied by my Converse shoes while I sit on my Dell computer and drink my Coca-Cola. I just think that there needs to be a place in the world for the little people. I don’t need more advertising in my life.

Wonkette is a wonderful, humorous blog to get your political information. A post I particularly enjoyed was “Ron Paul Officials Make Fun of Faltering, Pathetic Obama Campaign” (http://wonkette.com/357772/ron-paul-officials-make-fun-of-faltering-pathetic-obama-campaign) In this article, they talk about how officials from the Ron Paul campaign went to George Washington University and criticized the Barack Obama campaign for, of all things, having a grassroots section on the main page of their website. Now, let me start by stating the obvious on this one. Ron Paul didn’t have a snowball chance at winning this election. Because of this, he has dropped out of the race. Let me repeat that: dropped out of the race. So, the people who are making fun of Obama’s campaign couldn’t even do a good enough job to give their candidate a shot. For those of you who live under a rock, let me remind you that the Democratic nomination is still too close to call between Clinton and, wait, who’s that other candidate? Oh yeah. Obama! How can they stand there and pass judgment on a campaign that far surpassed their own for giving credit to campaigns led by voters?