Blog Bias?

I’m being asked to write for blogs as a PR activity. Well… it’s good money and I’m a good little prostitute… so off I go. But I think that blogs are turning some PR practitioners and marketers into tech junkies and making them lazy (especially a particular unnamed firm). Blogs still cannot compete with good-old fashioned ink (or video). People still turn to traditional news sources for their facts.

Yet, blogs do serve a purpose and I disagree with the growing suspicion (of some cynics) that blogs may threaten critical thinking of the public-at-large. They also worry that over saturation from blog-debates could harm the credibility of traditional news sources and – God forbid – taint public discussion with erroneous speculation (oh, you mean like Rush Limburger, Ann “blowhard” Coulter, et al?).

Blogs have made nitwits like Limbaugh and Coulter irrelevant by extending public debate to anybody with some bandwidth and a server. Of course there is some junking up to deal with, but now the selection is so diverse and the scope so deep that just about every opinion and point of view under the sun is fully represented and broadly explored. It reminds me of the gaggles of soapbox orators that once adorned the entrances of county fairs across the nation, spouting rhetoric and reason to gawking crowds. But oh what a selection of soapboxes – pro and con ad nauseum – all at one time, 24/7/365 and no shooting. The emerging “blog-slog” is as a healthy byproduct of democracy and our growing lust for ‘watchdog’ transparency? And we could use a whole heck of a lot more transparency at all levels of governance these days.

PIC_sharp_edges_21.jpgAt any rate, blogging is a far less insulting demonstration of the 1st Amendment than the talkshow hacks of the previous media age – ala Limbaugh and Coulter whom I think presented a far dire threat to civic debate. If anything, blogs encourage critical thinking and they help enlarge our constitutional entitlement for free speech. And you know what? If any one of those blog-nabobs becomes the least bit myopic or irrelevant there will always be plenty more soapboxes to gawk at.

Nazi Sneetches

Anderson Cooper (CNN) recently reported on the apparent rise of American NAZIs – white supremacists; vulgar little Sneetches all of them.

My experience is that American racial supremacists are mere social malcontents (superbole whoo-ya) who don’t fit anywhere else in society, so they have a club where they can blame their troubles on other cultures and races. How easy it is to use hate as a motive for satisfying underlying discontent! How tragic that people would use race (or religion) to rationalize their overarching purpose – to destroy everything that they don’t understand and that they cannot control.

But our proud American Nazis are not alone. No siree! With so few examples of racial, cultural, or religious purity left on this planet; certainly none of them exists anymore in the American melting pot; that people feel compelled to go off and invent their own brand! Mutts all around the world are inventing their own concept of nationalistic supremacism. The bowel movement is so easily found in nearly every culture, country and society that one must conclude that Sneetchism is really a lingering vestige of tribalism that is so pernicious that it pulls us back from the brink of realizing global humanism (peace in our time, where the only war is between idea-makers and their words). Yeah. That’s all we need now is a bunch of little ‘Hitlers’ running around to turn this whole planet into a living hell.

“Oh, but Cliff, I’m not a little Hitler,” say you? Okay. Let’s see if you pass this test: when people hear my intellectual masturbations about religious intolerance they get pretty ticked off because I often include Christian inflexibility over homosexuality (as one example). “Hey, we’re just doing God’s work,” they say. Yeah, but where did God say, ‘persecute the sinful’? Who among us – mere human sinners – are equipped to judge? So tell me – oh righteous one – what urge motivates ‘purists’ to vanguard social isolation and legislative fiat against those who do not live as you say they should? Ah yes, my weary little Sneetch, supremacism is hard at work right here in good old gentrified Americana-suburbia – just ask Ann Coulter who toils every day with supreme supremacist fervor.Sneetch

The Wiki definition of Supremacism(just so that you know that I’m not making this up) is the belief that a particular race, religion, gender, belief system or culture is superior to others and entitles those who identify with it to dominate, control or rule those who do not. Examples include supremacism based on ethnic or anthropological origins (white supremacy, black supremacy, ethnocentrism) and gender or sexuality (male supremacy, female supremacy, straight supremacism). Therefore, a supremacist is any individual or group that vouches for the isolation and restriction (via terrorism or legislation) of another individual or group just because they don’t (or do) have “stars on thars.”

So check your bellies. Counting time is a-comin. Oh, and sorry about all the superlatives and hyperbole – just couldn’t help myself.

Glacier Stories

Source: Wikipedia
Source: Wikipedia

I have been collecting ‘glacier’ stories for more than 20 years and it’s pretty evident: change is on the way. Change, as in sudden pivotal change in a Crichton novel where the inevitable disaster is spelled out for us in gut-wrenching detail.

For years, the conservative-biased news media has rattled on about how their counterparts (the liberal-biased news media) exaggerates stories about global warming for political fodder. Ah, but have you ever noticed how some events defy the need for superlative and hyperbole? Oh sure, you can embellish anything, but sometimes the facts stand on their own. A snip or two from recent news:

  1. Greenland’s glaciers are melting into the sea twice as fast as previously believed.
  2. A warming trend has increased which has obliterated previous predictions.
  3. Earth’s oceans will rise over the next century, the question is how much and how fast.

So, the ‘oh-shit’ problem we thought was bad, is worse than we thought and now has risen to an ‘oh-shit-shit-shit’ problem. And that’s just the lede. It gets better…

New data from satellite imagery has alarmed climatologists who worry about the role of human activity in global warming. The Greenland data mirrors findings from Bolivia to the Himalayas, scientists said, noting that rising sea levels threaten widespread flooding and severe storm damage in low-lying areas worldwide.

Okay… one could argue that a few of the adjectives are a tad overly descriptive but not so much that they overstate the underlying facts. It’s still a problem that begs our attention and we should be concerned because it could end up roosting in our backyards pretty soon. Need I mention New Orleans?

Scientists now say that they do not yet understand the precise mechanism causing glaciers to flow and melt more rapidly, but they said the changes in Greenland were unambiguous — and accelerating. By comparison, in 1996, the amount of water produced by melting ice in Greenland was about 90 times the amount consumed by Los Angeles in a year. Last year, the melted ice amounted to 225 times the volume of water that city uses annually.

Damn… 225 times the volume of water that LA uses annually? That’s a lot of water.

Scary and super-real as it is, the lack of superbole strengthens authority and believability. It is the kind of story that makes you pause and think – unless of course you are biased.

Elevation ChangeI have attached a little graphic to illustrate another point. Also devoid of superbole, this bit of artistry plots the elevation changes of Greenland’s glaciers. The blue areas have drawn the most attention for two reasons: they are places where the glaciers are most vulnerable to change AND they have seen the largest increase in change during recent years. About 10 years ago the areas of stable or increasing snow/ice pack (yellow and grey) were so large that the blue areas (decreasing elevation) were mere slivers. Click the graphic to see a larger version of this graphic.

If you still believe that there’s no such thing as global warming, then consider this – the climate is changing, glaciers are melting, and we’re all in for a world of hurt.

 

Introducing…

I write superbole for a living; forever slogging superlative and hyperbole for a buck; hyper-extending the English language and warping truth for the cause of the almighty consumer dollar. Superbole is not mere fake or lie, it’s a cleverly disguised truth, a witty morphism of reality that is designed to induce market need and convert idle interest into an irresistible urge to buy. It challenges our sense of well-being and subverts our common sense by leading us to believe that we need more than what is necessary to sustain our lives and nourish our minds.

Superbole is everywhere. And I’ve had this gig of peddling it for what feels like a lifetime but in geological terms is a mere eyeblink. So maybe there’s hope. Yet, for my own sake, I’m afraid that when it comes time to punch in the great timeclock in the sky my life will be summed up by a pile of three-panel brochures and a list unique selling propositions that were out of date the day they ran off the press.

I could change my life, stop writing this crap, but then how would I pay the rent? Maybe this is really a prison of my own design – my own hyped-up belief that I need to do this work. Well, at least I have lots of company. As for this blog, I wouldn’t expect much. I’m really just experimenting and probing around to see if blogging is right for me. Moreover, I’m wondering if there is more to my life than banal exaggeration and overstatement. We shall see…