Category Archives: Arts & culture

Leaving for General Assembly

Tomorrow I have to get up at four in the morning so I can catch my train. I’m headed off to General Assembly, the annual denominational meeting. Every year I ask myself: Why do I do this? As I get ready to leave (that means right now), I realize that I hate packing my bags, I hate the thought that I’ve forgotten something (and I always, always do forget something). Once I leave, I hate traveling long distances, I hate crowds of people, I hate staying in hotels and eating lousy restaurant food. And on top of that, I hate denominational politics. Yet every year I head off to General Assembly, like some kind of perverse swallow flying to San Juan Capistrano or whatever that place is that swallows fly to. Well, I know why I go:– I go so I can volunteer for the denominational Web staff; the Web staff is made up of fun, talented people that I enjoy spending time with, and I always learn something from them. That pretty much makes up for the miseries of traveling.

Anyway, this blog will be dominated by General Assembly for the next week….

Again this year, I will be video-blogging General Assembly, and I plan to post a short video to this blog every day. I’ll also try to micro-blog via Twitter — if Twitter posts are not visible in the sidebar, go here for my Twitter feed. I’ll be on the train for the next two days, and will post from the train via Twitter.

If you’re blogging from General Assembly, or if you’re blogging about General Assembly, don’t forget to tag your posts with “uuaga08” so it’s easy to find all General Assembly posts. And if you’re following from home, don’t hesitate to use the comments to communicate with me — if you want me to video-blog something, I’ll try to oblige!

Not me

I don’t like to eat kidneys for breakfast. I don’t like the way James Joyce makes it hard to read what he’s written. I don’t feel much empathy with Leo Bloom; he’s just not a character in whom I can take much interest.

Call me a Philistine, but I do not celebrate Bloomsday.

However, I am disappointed that the North American Barbara Pym Society is not holding a conference this year.

Anti-intellectualism in the U.S.

In this blog post, Julius Lester articulates something I’ve been thinking about recently. Lester says:

There are many who wonder if a black man can be elected president. That is not my fear. I wonder if someone who as intelligent as he is can be elected president.
Emphasis mine.

The United States is an anti-intellectual country these days. Where the prejudice against intellectuals comes from I don’t know; but I know it’s there. I have many quarrels with Obama (especially his repudiation of his liberal church), but I acknowledge that he is a politician who does not feel compelled to break things down into 30 second sound bites devoid of all nuance. He does not pander to the lowest common denominator. He is willing to be intelligent in public. An intellectual politician? — this is almost inbelievable.

Julius Lester believes that Obama will get elected “if the young vote in unprecedented numbers”; otherwise, older voters who “resent his intelligence” could keep him from getting elected. Certainly, the young adults I know are more open to nuance than older generations. Certainly, United States generation who are just a little bit older than I have been notable since the 1960s for letting rigid ideology trump intelligence (as is true of George W. Bush), or worse yet for having no deeply-felt idealism to guide their intelligence (as seemed true of Bill Clinton).

But, cynic that I am, I doubt that the anti-intellectual climate of the United States is moderating in the younger generations. But what do you think? Do you sense more toleration for intellectuals in your part of the United States these days — or less?

Rise up singing at GA?…

My father and I were just talking about singing groups. His church has a monthly singing group that uses the book Rise Up Singing, and some of us from the choir at my church recently started our own monthly singing group here in New Bedford, which we’re calling Singing Out!

I asked Dad which songs his Rise Up Singing group likes to sing, and he gave me lots of good ideas for our New Bedford Rise Up Singing group. Then Dad had a question. Like me, he is going to the Unitarian Universalist General Assembly (GA), the annual denominational meeting, and he asked if anyone was going to do a Rise Up Singing session at the denominational meeting. Well, near as I can tell, there will be no such singing session at our denominational meeting — but there should be. Elsewhere, I’ve shown how Rise Up Singing could serve as a liberal religious hymnal — so why not sing from Rise Up Singing at GA?

If you’re going to GA this year, and have any interest in doing something like this, leave a note in the comments section. Maybe we can get find a time, and a space in the convention center, and do some singing at GA.

Anecdotes and one-liners

The Coalition Against Poverty and the Coalition for Social Justice held their annual awards dinner tonight. I was asked to do the invocation, and I stayed to see the awards, and to hear the keynote speaker, Rep. Barney Frank.

Frank was introduced by a singer-sognwriter named Bill Harley, who committed the usual sin of playing and singing way too loudly, but who did the unusual and (mercifully) only played three songs. In introducing Frank, Harley told a story about going to perform somewhere in Alabama. There he wound up talking to someone who, upon learning Harley was from Massachusetts, started berating him for being from the state that elected Ted Kennedy as senator. “Stop it,” said Harley, “Ted Kennedy is the only senator who stands up for the poor.” Great anecdote — not sure what it had to do with Barney Frank.

Barney Frank went on to give an extemporaneous talk, marked by his trademark wit and intelligence. Unfortunately, his talk didn’t really hold together, but he got off some good anecdotes and one-liners, of which I noted down three:

Frank, who is gay, mentioned that he has been accused by right wingers of pushing a “radical homosexual agenda.” But, he said, his main gay rights issues are to allow GLBTQ people to “join the military, get married, and hold down a job.” That’s not a radical agenda, he said, “that’s about as bourgeois as it gets.”

While saying he supported capitalism, he said that he supported capitalism with significant government regulation. He noted that poverty has increased during the Bush administration. Frank reminded us that the Republicans claimed that a “rising tide floats all boats,” i.e., that any improvement in the economy will help all persons. In reply to this he said, “Yes, a rising tide floats all boats, but some poor people don’t have boats, and they’re standing on tiptoes now, and the tide’s going to go over their heads.”

In a long meandering digression, he talked about the importance of community colleges and state universities, because these institutions give wide access to higher education. This led to a comment about nursing programs in Massachusetts state colleges — although there’s a desparate need for nurses, and although there are plenty of young people who want to become nurses, there aren’t enough slots in nursing programs to meet either demand. One local nursing college, according to Frank, has only 42 slots for nursing students, but demand is three times that. If we’d fund community colleges better, said Frank, we’d have more nurses, all of whom could easily find jobs. “These are good jobs,” said Frank. “They’re not going anywhere. You can’t outsource them because somebody can’t stick a needle in your ass from Mumbai.”

Not one of Franks’ better talks overall, but the witty bits were delightfully caustic.

More of Frank’s wit in this New York Slime profile.

Generation gap

I’ve been interested in the generational wars that we have seen in the presidential primaries. Hillary Clinton, like George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, is a product of the 1960s; culturally she is a Baby Boomer. Barack Obama, although demographically a member of the post-war “baby boom,” is a product of the 1970s and 1980s; culturally he is a Gen-Xer. A big part of Obama’s political strategy has been to cast Clinton as the out-of-touch Baby Boomer who doesn’t understand a post-racial, post-protest, post-New-Left, postmodern world.

I will be curious to see if Obama follows the same strategy with John McCain, who is not a Baby Boomer. McCain is a product of the late 1940s and 1950s; culturally, he is a member of the generation who dressed in gray flannel suits. I’d be tempted to call McCain a member of the Older Generation. How will Obama deal with the older generation? The Baby Boomer strategy of dealing with elders involved open warfare and ad hominem attacks. But I expect Obama to deal with McCain the same way he dealt with Jeremiah Wright: dismiss him as out of touch and out-dated, and be vaguely patronizing.

I’m willing to bet that other Gen-Xers will copy this strategy in their own lives. For example, in churches I expect that Gen-Xers will start being dismissive of the Baby Boomers who run most churches these days. I expect them to look pityingly at the Boomers, but not engage in direct conflict with the Boomer power structure. I expect them to start talking about what it might mean to be a post-racial church and a post-protest church. I expect all this will drive the Boomers crazy. Indeed, some of this is happening now.

The culture of presidential politics tends to have influence in the wider culture. When Bill Clinton insisted that fellatio wasn’t really sex, I was doing a lot of youth ministry, and I was very aware that more and more kids got involved in fellatio at a younger and younger age. With George W. Bush’s tendency to authoritarianism, I see many young people willing to accept a large degree of authoritarianism in their lives. So where else might the Obama/Gen-X trend play out?…

For example, if Barack Obama wins the presidential election in November — if he even runs a close race — what might that mean for the 2009 election for a new president of the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA)? Right now, we have two declared candidates, both of whom are Baby Boomers, and both of whom are pretty much indistinguishable. If a Gen-X candidate were to emerge in the next few months, I’d be willing to bet that s/he could easily win the UUA election. I can think of three or four possible Gen-Xers whom I would vote for. So if you happen to know a viable Gen-X candidate for UUA president, encourage him/her to make some connections at General Assembly….

Podcamp is coming, Podcamp is coming! (online, too)

If you live in New England and are interested in new media and social media, don’t forget that Podcamp Boston 3 is coming up July 19-20. I attended last year’s Podcamp Boston, and found it incredibly helpful, so I will be attending both days this year.

If you’re someone using new media to spread the word about Unitarian Universalism, and live outside convenient commuting distance from Boston, I would be happy to offer you a place to sleep Saturday night.

And for those of you who can’t make it July 19-20, and/or if you’re new to using new media, don’t miss Podcamp’s online “Podcamp University.” The Podcamp organizers write:

We’re rolling out, in concert with premium sponsor mDialog, a preconference channel that will have a lot of the “101”, introductory level sessions that have been offered at PodCamps around the world….

http://www.mdialog.com/video/channel/9458-PodCamp-Boston-3-PreConference

The idea behind this is to let everyone enjoy the 101, introductory sessions at home or work in advance of the conference, answer a lot of the basic questions that people new to social media might have, and help make PodCamp less of a “broadcast” conference and more of an interactive discussion….

Thus you have no excuse for missing Podcamp, because you can choose either online or in person or both!

Keeping sockpuppets at bay

Linda, the secretary at the New Bedford church, read the recent article in the New Bedford Standard-Times that reported on how both the Fairhaven (Mass.) and New Bedford Unitarian Universalist churches recently each asked a certain Level 3 sex offender to not attend worship services at our churches. Linda has a child, so she is entirely sympathetic with churches who consider carefully before deciding whether a given sex offender should be part of their community.

We agreed that the article didn’t say much, but that it wasn’t terrible.

“But,” she said, “did you see what people are saying in the comments?” The Standard-Times allows anyone to comment on any article, with absolutely no moderation or editing in place, except that you can flag a comment if you feel it is “inappropriate.”

“Yeah, I did,” I said. “Do you know what sockpuppets are?” She did not, so I explained that unscrupulous Web surfers will create fake online identities for themselves, so-called sockpuppets, so they can promote a certain point of view without admitting their real identities. “Near as I can tell,” I went on, “most of those comments are made by sockpuppets of one or two people who just want to promote their point of view.”

Are they really sockpuppets? You can judge for yourself: here’s the article, and the comments.

The real point is that allowing unmoderated comments degrades a newspaper’s Web site. The Standard-Times would not allow unmoderated letters to appear on their editorial pages; it doesn’t make sense for them to allow unmoderated comments on their Web site. It looks to me as though the Standard-Times doesn’t understand the Web, and doesn’t really care about the quality of their Web site. They should try to remember that newspapers provide us with two things: decent writing, and good editing. When it comes to the Web, the editing should be most important, for while there is plenty of good writing out there on the Web, there isn’t much in the way of good editing.

Newspaper editors need to realize that their Web sites need to have the same careful editing they devote to their dead tree editions. They also have to realize that Web sites require different kinds of editing, such as comment moderation; and that comment moderators need to have a different skill set than traditional newspaper editors — comment moderators have to be able to promote online community, keep the conversation moving, not let people feed the trolls, identify and remove sockpuppets, etc. This is why I think most newspapers will fail to make the transition to the Web — they will not be willing or able to figure out how the Web works.