armchair pundit

Some kind of silly excuse for a Golden Globe Awards ceremony took place last night, with no speeches, performances or jokes – just winners announced by unknown non-celebrities who had the look of Star Search contestants in the “spokesmodel” category.

The impact of the writers’ strike on the event and activities surrounding it reportedly cost the Los Angeles economy anywhere from 75 to 100 million dollars. If the Oscars suffer the same fate – which looks likely – the blow will be much bigger.

The producers who are the target of the strike represent only a slice of that pie, but even if you consider the whole thing, $100 million is small potatoes compared to the amount the producers would give up by submitting to the writers’ demands, so a couple of missed awards shows probably won’t cause them to blink an eye.

The other problem for the writers is that the strike hasn’t had the expected crippling effect on the quality or quantity of television available to viewers like me. Sure I miss a couple of shows, but I was watching too many anyway. Now, with the writers’ strike going on, I can still watch my favorite reality shows (lately, Kitchen Nightmares, The Dog Whisperer, Survivorman, No Reservations and Top Chef), and I can watch other shows in reruns that I didn’t make room for before. With my favorite scripted shows on hold for a while, I’m enjoying my chance to give my second choices – shows like Friday Night Lights, The Office and Lost – their due.

The only show I was really painfully missing was The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, but that’s back on now. Woohoo!

The bottom line is, I’m not sure how much pain the strike is delivering to the wallets of the producers, which is why no one expects it to end anytime soon. There’s simply too much good TV left on the air for the strike to make much of a financial impact.

Even if this was not true, or even if the writers hold out long enough to dent the supply of good television, they still might not hit the producers where it hurts, because, as a product, television follows a demand curve much like that of a controlled substance. With television, as with cocaine or cigarettes, a reduction in supply has little effect on demand. Watching television is the default leisure activity for Americans. We do it out of habit. We’ll keep doing it whether or not there’s anything worth watching.

The thing is, the writers are in the right. They deserve a piece of the web revenues, and the producers are greedy bastards for not allowing that. Maybe the force of public opinion will ultimately be enough to sway the producers. Maybe the strike will hurt their moral sensibilities, and that will be enough.

Or maybe there are enough good people in Hollywood to eventually force a bottom-up victory. Maybe the string of isolated side deals already happening between shows and their respective writers will reach a critical mass and lead to an industry-wide agreement.

It has happened before.

File this under “random.” I’m not sure what to make of this, but as I was listening to the speeches of the various candidates after the caucus results were in, it occurred to me to count the number of times they used various pronouns.

Incidentally, I found no evidence that Fred Thompson actually spoke at all after his third place finish, so I substituted McCain – who was virtually tied with Thompson anyway.

Some things to note: I omitted instances of “you” in the numerous thank yous that started most of the speeches. McCain’s and Romney’s speeches were especially short – less than four minutes each. I believe Obama’s was the longest, although I didn’t time it. The applause he drew throughout certainly made it even longer. His 22 utterances of the second person pronoun was double Romney’s and nearly triple any of the other candidates. Clinton, perhaps not surprisingly, referred to herself quite a bit – using the first person singular more than any other candidate. Edwards – who also gave a long speech – referred to “we” and “us” more than the other candidates. It’s also worth noting that he devoted a significant part of his speech to stories about particular people (using third person pronouns for them).

For that matter, all the candidates used the third person numerous times to refer to family members and associates, to the other candidates and often in abstract references to “Americans” in general, as well as particular groups of American citizens. Initially, I was counting all the third person pronouns too, but the candidates used “they” to refer to such a wide variety of concepts that it became too muddy for my simple analysis.

Anyway, here are some key quotes from the evening:

Obama: “You said the time has come to move beyond the bitterness and pettiness and anger that’s consumed Washington.”

Edwards: “It’s our responsibility to ensure that we leave America better than we found it; that we give our children a better life than we’ve had.”

Clinton: “I am so ready for the rest of this campaign, and I am so ready to lead.”

Huckabee: “Ladies and gentlemen, I recognize that running for office, it’s not hating those who are in front of us. It’s loving those who are behind us.”

Romney: “We love you. We’re going to miss you for a few months, but we’re coming back. We’ll never forget what you’ve done for us. We love Iowa.”

McCain: “We can feel the momentum that — the same kind of momentum we felt in 2000. I’m very confident with a strong positive finish here that we’re going to win here in New Hampshire.”

A couple of years ago, I worked on a project that had me flying to LA on a weekly basis. I flew Southwest Airlines, and I had it down to a science: I would check in online exactly 24 hours before my flight (securing a spot in the coveted “A” group), then I would drive to the Oakland airport the next day, go through security and show up at the gate – usually – no more than five minutes before boarding.

One day, however, the website rejected my attempt to check in, and so did the kiosk at the airport. I had to go to an agent at the counter, who informed me that I was flagged because “someone with a similar name” was on the terrorist watch list. Noting my raised eyebrows, she helpfully added, “Don’t worry, it’s just your last name.”

For those who don’t know, my last name is Smith. To this day I believe that this itself was the act of terrorism – inconveniencing every Smith attempting to travel.

Now, apparently, the US Terrorist Watch List has grown to nearly a million names, which either means we’re all goin’ to Gitmo, or the list is almost completely useless.

There is an upside. The hysteria responsible for inflating the list is something the average person can exploit to address problems they might be having with friends or loved ones, like this guy did.

Seriously though, the super-sized list and shenanigans like that Swedish dude’s can’t be making things easy for the folks at Homeland Security. So how, you might ask, are they cutting through all the noise and nonsense?

Falafel. That’s right. Those clever FBI agents figure that if you follow the falafel trail, you’ll find the terrorists.

Brilliant! I feel safer already.

As I mentioned recently, I attended my 20-year high school reunion last month, and I enjoyed myself. I haven’t been very good about keeping in touch with people, and it was good to see friends I was once very close to.

One of my good friends from high school was (very) pregnant during the reunion weekend, and the other day I received the news that she gave birth to her fourth child, and first daughter. Four kids. A surprising number of my classmates are now parents of three or four kids. One of my classmates has six!

I have to admit I struggled with what to say to my friend with the new baby. On one hand, she is an amazing person, meaning there’s a good possibility that her kids will be amazing people. Probably already are. On the other hand, I’ve become acutely aware lately, for some reason, of overpopulation and the stress that humans are putting on this planet’s resources.

The world’s population is at 6.6 billion right now and rising by 1 million every four days. Whether or not you believe humans are causing – or at least exacerbating – global warming, or think it’s a problem, here are some other frightening factoids that have little to do with climate change:

The number of large fish in the world’s oceans is estimated to be just 10% of what it was in 1950, mostly due to over-fishing but also polluting of the oceans and rising water temperatures. That’s 90% depletion in just over 50 years, and scientists project a near total annihilation by the year 2050 without some radical intervention.

There is a swirling stew of plastic twice the size of Texas floating between California and Hawaii that didn’t exist in 1945, and it’s growing tenfold every decade.

The US has the resources to sustain less than half of its current population of 300 million. If all 6 billion people were to share the world’s resources equally, Americans would have to reduce consumption by 80%.

By 2040, we will need to triple the global food supply in order to meet the basic food needs of the 9 to 11 billion people who are expected to be alive. But doing so would require a 1,000 percent increase in the total energy expended in food production. Meanwhile, food production is expected to have decreased by then because of a variety of factors (water shortages, land shortages, energy shortages).

Even if projections like these are off by 15 to 20%, which is highly unlikely, it’s clear that much of the planet is screwed if we keep cranking out babies. And kids being born today are entering a world that won’t be able to support them.

Is there any one of us who doesn’t see with our own eyes how the nature we enjoyed as kids has diminished during our lifetime and given way to sprawling suburbs and industry?

By the year 2050, the earth simply will not be able to support an acceptable standard of living for hundreds of millions of the 9 billion people who will be using it. And you can be certain that when water and food become truly scarce, the privileged and wealthy of the world will go to great lengths to keep what’s left for themselves. The gap between the haves and the have-nots will become wider than you can imagine. Luckily, I suppose, we are among the haves.

I want to congratulate my classmates on their fertility, but the bottom line is if you have more than two children, you are part of the problem.

Simple as that.

The Republican party is a shambles, and a Democrat will win the presidency in 2008. So say the pundits. In fact, they don’t even say it anymore. They don’t need to because everyone knows it is a fact.

But I’m not so sure. And I’m worried.

I donated some money to Barack Obama’s campaign a few months ago, and now I get emails nearly every day requesting more. The most recent of these was entitled “Inevitable?” and highlighted the fact that Hillary Clinton’s campaign is a couple million dollars ahead of his.

Inevitable? It’s true that many voices in the media are already talking like Hillary’s nomination is a foregone conclusion, but does anyone remember Howard Dean in 2004? Here’s a snippet from an article in the New York Times, dated December 22, 2004, just before the Iowa and New Hampshire primaries:

One recent New Hampshire survey has [Kerry] 25 percentage points behind Dr. Dean, another has him 29 points back and a third has him 30 points down.

We all know what happened after that. Nothing is inevitable.

Incidentally, don’t take my donation to Obama’s campaign to mean he’s my choice for president. I don’t know whether he is or isn’t. I want to help keep this thing competitive for a while, and I like what he adds to the field.

But I’m getting off my main point, which is the money. I question the need for more money from someone who is only a couple million behind the very deep-pocketed Ms. Clinton.

I’d like to see the candidates spend smarter, not harder. This is the Internet age. We live in a connected world, and there are lots of ways to make yourself heard on a limited budget. There are lots of ways to stand out from the crowd – and there does seem to be quite a crowd clamoring for the oval office – without breaking the bank.

These people do not understand marketing… at all. They don’t know how to boil a message down to its essence.

The always colorful [Democratic campaign strategist] James Carville once told a New York Times political columnist, “If you want reporters to write about hamburger, you give them hamburger. You don’t give them French fries and ice cream.”

The Democrats these days give you not only the fries and ice cream, they offer a salad bar, barbecue, tortillas and a dim sum cart. It’s impossible to know what the party stands for – or against. The Republicans might serve a terrible hamburger, but no one’s confused about what’s on the menu.

If you ask a die-hard Republican to explain why he or she sides with the G.O.P. you’ll hear some very clear and concise reasons. Many of them don’t make sense if you dig even a little, but that’s further testament to the G.O.P.’s success in marketing itself. Karl Rove and other very shrewd and savvy people have managed an astonishing level of control over the discourse by avoiding impromptu performances in favor of staged ones and avoiding any substantial discussion of “the issues” in favor of strategic repetition of a handful of soundbites.

Smart people on the left see right through this and point it out all the time, which almost always backfires. They end up looking like whiners and snobs and paradoxically reinforce the image they are trying to refute.

Someone by the name of Nathan Piazza wrote a smart essay after the 2004 election that looks at how the Republicans have controlled the discourse so effectively. It’s well worth the read.

The trouble is, since the smart people on the left have keen noses for bad hamburger, they don’t tolerate it from anyone – including members of their own party. We don’t let our candidates get away with staged appearances and repeated soundbites, and this is a huge challenge for them. We want substantive ideas, but ideas don’t spread like soundbites. They don’t lend themselves to the kinds of simple narratives the media depends on, so the media is left to its own devices, and we end up hearing about the Edwards haircut and the Hillary cackle over and over over again. In 2004, it was the Gore sigh because he was not able to hand the media something better. It didn’t matter that Bush came off as an idiot.

So what should the Democrats do?

Lately I’ve been thinking about Ross Perot who, running as an Independent, managed to grab nearly 20% of the popular vote in the 1992 presidential election. I remember his half-hour long television spots during the campaign months, where he would dive into an issue and explain in great detail what was currently broken and lay out his plan to fix it. He would flash through a series of infographics and illustrations and pepper his lecture – that’s what it was – with quirky Texas truisms. The thing is, it worked. People like pictures. Lightbulbs went on. People got it. It was a little dense perhaps, but it was 100% bullshit free.

The lesson here is that it’s possible to communicate substantive ideas in ways that people digest, remember and spread. And the Internet provides an incredibly cost-effective platform for reaching millions of voters.

Unfortunately, the Democratic candidates keep trying to walk an impossible middle ground between soundbites and substance.

Doesn’t it seem a bit strange that the places in this country most likely to be attacked by terrorists – New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles – are also the least supportive of the war, and least likely to send sons and daughters into battle? Meanwhile, places with virtually no chance of being attacked, are the ones who zealously support the war and send their loved ones off to the meat grinder.

Of course, the war’s supporters say this simply goes to prove that the liberal elite are weak-kneed cowards who don’t deserve the sacrifices of so many young men and women.

The anti-war crowd, on the other hand, bemoan the fact that so many well-meaning people have been duped by the Bush administration into believing that the war was justified and is making us safer, when in fact it has done (and continues to do) a lot more harm than good.

I don’t see this gridlock resolving itself anytime soon.

William Drenttel posted his support for a Gore ticket at Design Observer today. I like Al Gore. I think he’d make a great president. I agree with William on all counts, but I was dismayed to see his post.

If the Bush presidency has done one good thing, it was to light a fire in the hearts of Americans. We were prosperous and apathetic before. Now we’re prosperous and passionate. We were asleep. Now we’re awake. Many of us are angry. It’s about time.

Still, I’m not sure the kind of firestorm the Design Observer post touched off (surely they knew it would come) has a place there. Politics is a taboo topic in certain environments (the workplace) for good reason.

We are aware that people disagree with our views, yet we persist in the fool’s errand that we can change people’s minds. Surely, one fantasizes, if I make a reasonable argument, then all reasonable people will be powerless against it.

But it never works that way. People interpret evidence differently. They dismiss the authorities and institutions we stand on. Shouting ensues. We end up resenting them for their intransigence. They resent us for our sanctimony.

Online, there is much less civility as the argument goes back and forth and sometimes wildly astray.

The polarity in this country right now is frightening. I don’t like seeing it here.

I understand where William is coming from, but I like Design Observer better when it provides respite from the kind of noise that has become almost unavoidable everywhere else.

Just in time for Halloween, the scariest costumes for 2004. So wrong it hurts. Thanks Rebecca!

Ralph Nader
Put the fear of God in John Kerry and his Democratic supporters with this easy approximation of Green Party leader/Democratic ticket spoiler Ralph Nader. With just hand-me-down Sunday-best clothes and Grandma’s old cocktail wig, you’ve got yourself a real live Ralph Nader.

Total cost: Free!
Total time: Under 15 minutes.

A group calling themselves gravity monkey has gone mobile with FundRace‘s geo-coded FEC data. They’ve created a Java app called red | blue (pronounced “red or blue”) that can tell you whether or not you’re standing in enemy territory.

Someone named Taylor Donahue, vice president of production at Timely Studios, wrote this memo to his boss. It’s pretty funny, but not nearly as funny as the pitch for the film itself.