Les said, the better II

In another example, some of Rush Limbaugh’s distortions surrounding the Iraq prison abuse scandal clearly rise to the level of bullshit. Frankfurt writes:

Bullshit is unavoidable whenever circumstances require someone to talk without knowing what he is talking about. Thus the production of bullshit is stimulated whenever a person’s obligations or opportunities to speak about some topic exceed his knowledge of the facts that are relevant to that topic. This discrepancy is common in public life, where people are frequently impelled . . . to speak extensively on matters of which they are to some degree ignorant. (P 63)

Therefore, any circumstance where someone claimed authority on a topic that he or she had not adequately researched, would constitute bullshit. Limbaugh, by virtue of his position as a radio commentator, implicitly claims authority on matters he addresses. He often explicitly claims authority as well. On one of the many occasions he addresses the torture scandal, he claimed authority while making an assertion that was not factually correct, saying

Even this latest picture of a dog and a nude Iraqi . . . the picture caption “Dog attacks Iraqi.” No, the dog isn’t attacking anyone, the dog’s on a leash. The dog is scaring an Iraqi prisoner. . .. The dog didn’t attack anybody. The dog’s not attacking anybody. The dog’s on a leash. Both of them are. I’ve seen the pictures. …
(http://mediamatters.org/items/200405110002)

He claims authority with his statement, “I’ve seen the pictures.” However, his assertion that the dogs did not attack is incorrect and he was forced to withdraw it later in the program.

Apparently, ladies and gentleman, I need to offer a modification . . .. apparently uh, well, there’s another picture later where . . . he’s writhing on the floor with a pool of blood. Apparently, the dog did bite his leg, but there’s no picture of that. I have just been, uh, informed of this. (Ibid)

If he had really seen all the pictures, he would have known that a subsequent picture in the same series showed that the dogs did indeed attack. He claimed authority without actually doing adequate research. Because the refuting picture was in the same set of photos, he could not claim that the prisoner was actually unhurt and lie (or bluff, or bullshit) his way through. His ignorance of this indicates that he was bluffing his way through the entire segment. When he was informed that he would not be able to get away with his bluff, he was forced to retract it. This bluffing is clearly bullshit.
I would go further to claim that it is not an isolated incident. In Rush Limbaugh’s case, the sheer number of hours he is on the air every day would almost make it impossible for him to avoid bullshit. Having a call-in radio show for five hours a day would be virtually impossible to adequately prepare for unless the conversation were limited to a very specific topic, and even then, it would be a Herculean task to come up with so many hours of insightful and factually correct commentary. Rush Limbaugh’s pattern of bullshit, especially surrounding the prison abuse scandal, is addressed in more detail in a subsequent chapter.

I feel happier about this now. And I want to not write about it so much. For x’s sake! This is fucking bullshit. (the irony of this chapter is not lost on me)
I went to Dave Ruder’s thesis concert a couple of weeks back and he sung a song which repeated the lyrics over and over again of “This is fucking bullshit. There’s a werewolf in the flower bed.” It’s been stuck in head since, especially as I write about bullshit. He must give me a tape! I’m trying to get it out of my head by listening to my iPod on random. Strangely ecclectic experience. The content is about the percentage of “i’m a composer” as i would have expected. Plus some pop music that I really like. Plus totally generic but still pleasing bland pop like Oasis. Sorry if you really like them. They’re very much examples of their genre, which is to say generic.
UPDATE: Hey, with some work, I could automatically generate my thesis! But seriously, this code could be hella useful for fake punditry or real poetry/ text sound/ cut-up applications.
Tags: Celesteh, Bullshit

Frankfurt does not provide a formula for clearly identifying bullshit, seeming instead to rely on an implied “I know it when I see it” approach. He does identify sources of bullshit. “The realms of advertising and of public relations and the nowadays closely related realm of politics, are replete with instances of bullshit so unmitigated that they can serve among the most indisputable and classic paradigm of the concept.” (P 22) When he was interviewed on The Daily Show, he was asked if political “spin” constituted bullshit and he replied that it was a type of bullshit.
The job of pundits is to create spin, so it seems fair to label them as bullshitters. The anti-Clinton fairy tales reported by Brock were so divorced from reality such that they could correctly be called bullshit. (Clinton murdered Vince Foster, is one such claim, the “evidence” was that he murdered hundreds of people in Arkansas and Hillary Clinton’s affair with Vince Foster. Lies built upon falsehood, built upon imagination.) In another example, as we shall see in a subsequent chapter, the level of distortion created by Rush Limbaugh surrounding the Iraqi prison abuse scandal is so complete that I would characterize it as bullshit and would go further to claim that it is not an isolated incident. In Rush Limbaugh’s case, the sheer number of hours he is on the air every day would almost make it impossible for him to avoid bullshit. Frankfurt explains:

Bullshit is unavoidable whenever circumstances require someone to talk without knowing what he is talking about. Thus the production of bullshit is stimulated whenever a person’s obligations or opportunities to speak about some topic exceed his knowledge of the facts that are relevant to that topic. This discrepancy is common in public life, where people are frequently impelled . . . to speak extensively on matters of which they are to some degree ignorant. (P 63)

Having a call-in radio show for five hours a day would be virtually impossible to adequately prepare for unless the conversation were limited to a very specific topic, and even then, it would be a Herculean task to come up with so many hours of insightful and factually correct commentary.
In another example, in the movie Outfoxed, Al Franken recounted a conversation he had with his lawyer about suing Bill O’Reilly for libel. His lawyer advised him that O’Reilly lied so habitually about everything that it would actually be more difficult to prove a slander suit because O’Reilly had created a lower standard of truth for himself that would protect him in a court case. This certainly implies a lack of concern for the truth. Frankfurt warns of one danger of habitual bullshitting, “Through excessive indulgence . . . a person’s normal habit of attending to the way things are may become attenuated or lost.” (P 60)
Those who trust Limbaugh and O’Reilly must necessarily distrust media outlets that report conflicting truths. This creates a lack of confidence in the media.

Edit: Yeah, this is a fucking music thesis. what the fuck? suddenly, i’m in philosophical discussions about bullshit, but you know, this is kind of linked to William S Burroughs tape cut-up pieces:

William S Burroughs influenced Kahn, like many cut-up artists. “My sense of Wm Burroughs’ cut-ups is that they were parlor entertainments if not, at times, magical devices. The two are not mutually exclusive, and neither parlor nor entertainment should be taken in a derogatory manner.” (http://www.tate.org.uk/contact/forums/onlineevents/thread.jsp?forum=43&thread=2471&tstart=0&trange=15) Burroughs has two pieces out in the newly re-released Ou archives. Valentines Day Reading is Burroughs reading phrases that seem to come from the news. Phrases are read in between short, screechy, alarm-like sounds. No effort is made to change the meaning of the news. It seems as if the purpose is to obscure the meaning rather than reframe it in any way. In his book The Ticket that Exploded, Burroughs talked about tape cut up as a way to replace and ultimately destroy discourse.

Nobody has to be there at all – So why ask questions and why answer? – Why give orders and why make speeches? – Why not leave your take with her and dispense with sexual contact? – And then? – Since no one is there to listen, why keep running the tape? — Why not shut the whole machine off and go home? (P 168)

He enthusiastically supported such an idea, especially how it pertained to political discourse. “Splice yourself in with newscasters, prime ministers, presidents. Why stop there? Why stop anywhere? Everybody splice himself in with everybody else. Communication must be total. only way to stop it.” (P 167-8) This idea of total information remixing, with everyone speaking interspersed with and on top of everyone else, as being the absence of information could be as much an analysis of “cross talk” as it could be an idea for art destroying media. This method of non-communication has become the norm in televised political discourse. It is one of many ways that communication is halted through punditry.

Tags: Celesteh, Pundits, Spin, Bullshit

I’m thinking of “Political Voices and Just” as the title. I think I want the cover art to be glitch art of Ann Coulter or Rush Limbaugh. If you know of Creative Commons licensed photos of those folks that allow commercial use and derivative works, please let me know. Less good, I could use a picture of Bush or even less good a US flag, but either of those would be ok for the back cover.

I’m not 100% certain on my two channel mix of my bush piece. What do you think? Scitilopolitics? Or is State of Disunion a better piece?
Update: Why is there no glitch tool in GIMP?
Tag: Celesteh

My thesis defense is two weeks from yesterday. So what to do? Procrastinate!
First of all, I love my family. We were a standardly dysfunctional American family, which meant that during my teenage years, there was much friction.
When I was a child, I used to complain that we never went anywhere. This was actually true. We lived an hour from Santa Cruz. I didn’t go to the beach until I was 8. I didn’t experience snow until I was in college. I didn’t go to Yosemite until this very year. We didn’t get out much. When I was in my youth and I did travel with my parents, it was sometimes stressful. Being in confined places, like cars, with people you get along best with at a distance is something of a problem. Also, the homebody tendency often meant that we sort of got stuck in and around the hotel. We should have gone on a cruise together. It would have been perfect. Traveling without really going anywhere and lots of space.

I was almost never left home alone as a kid. My parents didn’t trust me. During the big earthquake in 1989, my mom was actually gone running errands and that didn’t seem to be unusual, so I think the lack of trust came later. Maybe it was the time neighbor kids (enticed by my “little” brother) broke in and started setting off firecrackers in the hallway and that I responded by attempting to shoo them off by grabbing the biggest kitchen knife I could find and waving it around. Or maybe it was the time that I, enraged at my brother, emptied his sock drawer onto his floor and he responded by smashing my bass guitar case (the guitar was still in it, but mercifully unhurt) and smashing my backpack into the ground repeatedly until all the pens broke and quite a few of the book bindings too. Ah, the foibles of teenagers. Anyway, I was never left alone. So I tried to stay away as often as possible. I did 723691246 extra curricular activities and took evening classes and summer school.
It’s not to say we didn’t have our moments of togetherness. My brother and I both took German in highschool and my dad, apparently inspired, took German at adult school at some point. I love my dad. He can look at any math problem I’ve ever seen and find an answer within moments. I almost published a math paper in highschool (another story), but it was my dad who found the formula. He is brilliant at math and engineering. His language skills are not as good, though. He tried out some of his German on me, “My douche is fruit bar.” he said. “I beg your pardon?” I said. Finally I realized he was trying to say Mein Deutsch is fructbar. which appropriately enough means “my German is terrible.” I laughed until I cried, while still trying to be encouraging. My dad didn’t take any more German after that. Alas. My brother hated school and hated German, as far as I can tell, because it was part of school. We never spoke German together. We probably would have killed each other if either of us could have come up with a way to do it and avoid punishment. So (this is ALL still buildup to the main story, so I can procrastinate in style), I liked speaking German and had taken more of it than the rest of my family. My dad was embarrassingly terrible at it and my brother sullenly refused to speak it. Speaking of embarrassing parents . . . well, no, never-mind, you were a teenager once. You know everything I would say. My parents were loud though. We all shouted at each other all the time, just to talk. Sometimes we would shout at each other about the neighbors. I was certain they could hear us. Augh, the psychic pain!
Ok, so one summer, my dad had the completely uncharacteristic idea that we should all go to Germany. We bought a book on Europe at $45 / day. We all got passport photos taken. He kept bugging me to find out when my summer classes ended. I didn’t know. I never know deadlines or when things end. I advised him to check the course catalog and told him which course I was taking. I was not a helpful teen. Finally, he bought tickets and made all the hotel reservations. I looked at the ticket dates and my final exam schedule and said “this is in the midst of my finals. I can’t go.” I noticed this maybe two weeks before we were supposed to go. The tickets, iirc, were non-refundable.
My parents did not make me drop the class as some might have done. It was Pascal or C or something at the local junior college. They did not just leave me behind, as I desperately hoped they would do. The just didn’t go. They never even talked about it again. The date came that we would have left and we just went on as if nothing had happened. My dad went to work. I went to school. We didn’t go to Germany. Oh, but we paid to go to Germany. The tickets, the hotel, everything.
I recall feeling some guilt over this. But mostly relief. I knew they weren’t going to let me go off on my own at all. I would be stuck in a confined space with my brother and two people who were so embarrassing that . . . well, you were a teenager once. And I would have been the designated speaker. They would have shouted at each other in english making all sorts of observations and then my dad would have tried out his incomprehensible loudly-using-the-closest-sounding-english-word-to-the -german-word-he-meant speaking and then I would have had to translate.
I, being highly self-centered and having a seriously defective memory, quickly forgot about everything. I probably wondered why everybody was being kind of sullen at me. But I think my brother felt relief too. It might have been a rare bonding moment. Maybe my parents did too. It’s not like they couldn’t have made me drop the class or left me behind.
And that is how my family didn’t go to Germany, even though they paid for it, because of me. And I feel guilt about it now even though I don’t think I felt much then. The end
Tag: Celesteh

I have never wanted to marry a goat. And when i say I love my dog, i don’t mean that i love my dog.

also: fuck! fuck you! shut up! fuck you you fucking asshole! you’re fucking bullshit fucking fuckitty fuck you godfucking damnit you piece of shit go to fucking hell you goddamn fucking asshole. fuck you fuck you fuck you
Yes, I’m still very sorry for all the damage I’ve caused as a homosexual.
Tag: Celesteh

auuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh aaaaiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee yarg bah bah damn damn damnGRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

On an unrelated note it would be really great if my advisor would send me the edits on my thesis which is supposed to be due tomorrow. [Edit: stupid mail sever. ]
Half of Connecticut’s Episcopal churches are ready to split off because of encroachments by icky gay people. What’s so terrible about me that people would destroy their church rather than give me rights? I really don’t get it. It’s very dismaying.
Tag: Celesteh

William Donohue, president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, asserted that “[t]he gay community has yet to apologize to straight people for all the damage that they have done” and denounced gays for “asking for more rights” while allegedly “acting so morally delinquent.”

I’m very sorry. I’m sorry I flirted with you in line at the grocery store, causing a backup in line and financial loss to the store. I’m sorry that my college shaved head did not provide jobs to beauticians. I’m sorry for any adverse financial consequences that I’ve inflicted on the cosmetics industry. I’m sorry for causing sexual insecurity in straight boys through the knowledge that lesbians are often much more skilled at certain tasks. I’m sorry for the brief popularization of flannel in the late 1990s. I’m sorry about the financial consequences of my decision to buy men’s clothes rather than more expensive and poorly made women’s clothes.
I really just want to come clean and get this all off my chest. All this damage I’ve caused by existing has been terrible for straight people. I feel your pain. I promise to never again ask for equal rights until everyone is totally comfortable with it.
I think to be fair, other minority groups should also apologize for any discomfort, loss, or harm inflicted upon the dominant group. Women must apologize to men (sorry for taking away so many of your rights, like spousal abuse). Blacks must apologize to whites. Jews must apologize to Christians. Let’s all get started on this so that healing can begin.
Tags: Celesteh, Queer, Catholic, Gay

I just signed up for 10 weeks of intensive french at UC berkeley, which will probably eat 45 hours a week. 50 if you count bike commuting time. So no summer job for me, it seems.

I’ve been thinking about what my first year at Wesleyan would have been like without Xena. Disaster! Woe! Despair! And my second year? Lonelier, but with more trips to New York. I haven’t been since Thanksgiving. Alas. Maybe it would have been the same, I don’t know. She is sleeping at my feet right now. I love my dog. I don’t know if taking her to Paris would be best for her or for me. It’s a selfish love. What would best for Xena would be sending her to live on Angela’s parents farm, where she has ducks to chase and dogs to play with and a pond to swim in, but I’m not going to do that because then she would no longer be my dog. I think that the best plan is probably, alas, to board her with Cola’s parents for the year. If, for some reason, I’m in Europe for longer, I can get her shipped out. A school year is kind of a long time. It’s 6 dog years. Will she even remember me when I return? Will I remember her? About half way through my 90 day excursion to Europe in 2001, I told Christi that I wanted to get a dog when we got back. She said, “we have a dog.” I said “really?” So we went to an internet cafe and looked at online pictures of my dog. “She’s cute.” I said, my memory stirring. When we returned, the dog was so excited to see me that she accidentally peed on my foot. (She’s never done that before or since, thank goodness.) So I guess it’s my memory that I worry about. The trip would be very strenuous. My living quarters are likely to be tiny (especially if they contain a tuba and a tuba shipping case too). The best thing to do might be to leave her behind. Alas and woe.
What happens if you get caught in France without a valid visa? Under what circumstances does anyone ask to see your visa?
Tag: Celesteh

my program is telling me that i don’t need a visa. considering that automatic tourist visas only last for 3 months and this program is 8 months, that seems a little sketch. also, a few days ago taking dog seemed like a reasonable plan. right now, not so much. on the one hand, french folks love dogs and there’s not much red tape getting her in. on the other hand, long flight, probably tiny apartment, desire to do weekend trips. I really like her, but I don’t think you can actually bring dogs in supermarkets and cafes, can you? Also, Cola’s parents could put her up. She’d have an acre to run (vs studio apt) and three other dogs. but . . . but . . . but . . . oy, i really like having a dog.

Tag: Celesteh

The people who listen to pundits such as Limbaugh are their choir. A recent study by The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found that, “Rush Limbaugh’s radio show attracts a disproportionately conservative audience: 77% of Limbaugh’s regular listeners describe themselves as conservative.” (http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?PageID=834) Similarly, the most popular TV news commentator draws an equally biased audience, “On television, the O’Reilly Factor draws a similar audience: 72% of O’Reilly’s regular viewers are self-described conservatives.” (Ibid.) As Media Matters has extensively documented, the “facts” reported by these two individuals are often incorrect. Limbaugh and O’Reilly mislead their own base.
Many people, such as Al Franken, accuse right wing pundits of lying. However, something more insidious may be at work. Professor Frankfurt notes in his essay On Bullshit that liars presume to know the truth but choose to misrepresent it. By contrast, bullshitters have “a lack of connection to a concern with truth.” (p 33) He constructs a binary opposition, not between truth and lies, which he sees as having a concern for the truth in common, but between liars and bullshitters.

The liar is inescapably concerned with truth-values. In order to invent a lie at all, he must think he knows what is true. And in order to invent an effective falsehood me must design his falsehood under the guidance of that truth.
On the other hand, a person who undertakes to bullshit his way through has much more freedom. His focus is panoramic rather than particular. He does not limit himself to inserting a certain falsehood at a specific point, and thus he is not constrained by the truths surrounding that point or intersecting it. He is prepared, so far as required, to fake the context as well. (p 51-2)

The fog of distortion surrounding pundits such as Limbaugh and O’Reilly is so thick that it seems more correct to label them as bullshitters rather than liars.
Those who trust Limbaugh and O’Reilly must necessarily distrust media outlets that report conflicting truths. This creates a lack of confidence in the media. Sometimes there exists a lack of confidence in reality itself. Ron Suskind of the New York Times reported in October 2004 on a conversation he had with an unnamed Bush aide,

The aide said that guys like me were “in what we call the reality-based community,” which he defined as people who “believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.” . . . “That’s not the way the world really works anymore,’” he continued.
(“Without a Doubt” emphasis added)

Reality itself is imperiled by bullshit. Frankfurter notes that “’antirealist’ doctorines undermine the confidence in the value of disinterested efforts to determine what is true and . . . false and even in the intelligibility of the notion of objective inquiry.” (p 65) In other words, the right wing spin machine, backed by the White House, is destroying the very notion of news gathering and reporting. Frankfurt discusses the consequences of this state. “One response to this loss of confidence has been a retreat from the discipline required by dedication to the idea of correctness to a quite different sort of discipline, which is imposed by pursuit of an alternative ideal of sincerity.” (Ibid. Emphasis in original.) To members of the reality-based community, the substitution of sincerity for reason is alarming. Bill Clinton famously remarked that Democrats win when people think. Bullshit in the form of right wing political discourse seeks to counter this by ridding the world of rational thought. This cannot be good public policy.

Tags: Celesteh, Pundits, Bullshit