Political Narratives, Dead Cats, Lame Ducks and the Expectation Game
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Fri, 06/16/2006 - 11:23(Cross Posted at Greater Democracy.)
Columbia Journalism Review Daily Traces the Birth of a Narrative. They talk about how cable news reporters and pundits are questioning whether the tide is turning for Bush. They comment, “How are they answering themselves? It's a mixed bag. But if a question gets asked often enough in the media, the answer begins to (almost) not matter. And before long the question mark is dropped entirely and a narrative is born.”
They sum up the discussion with “And there it is, in the blink of an eye, so fast that you might have missed it: A narrative is born.”
I lived on a sailboat for several years and one thing you learn on a boat is that the tide changes four times a day.
Another phrase that people use is if Bush is experiencing a “bounce”. Here, I go back to my experiences on Wall Street. When a market has experienced a sharp decline, similar to how Bush’s approval has declined, everyone looks for any positive uptick. The question that always gets asked is if we are experiencing a market reversal, or if the uptick is merely a “dead cat bounce”.
This goes back to the old saying in investing that even a dead cat will bounce if dropped from high enough. When a market experiences a dead cat bounce, there is a brief respite from the downward trend, but the downward trend resumes before you know it.
Is Bush a dead cat? A lame duck? Perhaps the emergence of another narrative gives us a little insight into this. Staying with the Wall Street focus, today’s Wall Street Journal asks, Will 2006 Reprise 1994? This question keeps getting asked and as with the other narrative, ”the answer begins to (almost) not matter”
The narratives feed into another part of the political process, the expectations game. If Bush can claw his way back to only 40% perhaps, Republicans think, maybe they can change the other polls about a plurality of voters thinking we would be better off if Democrats controlled Congress. Of course this 40% is a low expectation compared to Clinton’s 48% approval rating in 1994.
Yet all of this still stays with the horse race narratives. We really need to be talking about narratives around how we will get back to having a government of, by, and for the people.
Like Joe is so Emo
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Thu, 06/15/2006 - 16:36(Posted over on my MySpace blog)
Okay, so, like Im 46 years old, and maybe youre wondering what Im doing here in MySpace. You know, Im kinda wondering that myself. But some friends told me about this great video call Hope is Emo. Its like so moving and everything. It about Words dying and some really heavy stuff like that. 
So, I asked my daughter, who is like REALLY smart, what Emo is. And she started talking about how people who are Emo are really whiny 
and act like theyre really self important by saying all kinds of stuff, but they dont really think theyre all that important which is why what they say is so whiny, and things like that.
And I started thinking 
to myself, is Emo just for kids, or are there older folks that are all Emo and everything. If any of you say that I am Emo I am going to be SOOOOO MADDDD!!1!! 
You know who I think really is Emo?!?!? Joe Lieberman. Like when he says I know some of you may not agree with me Cant you just see some teenage girl in her room typing that? I mean like, yeah. Or when he gets all pouty because someone is challenging him to be Senator. Sure, I know a real Emo would never get to be a Senator, but sometimes I wonder how Joe got to be Senator too, like really.
And now hes whining that if the Democrats dont think he should be Senator, hell try and find some other friends. Hes probably IMing every Republican he can right now.
So, I guess Emo is alright and all that but do you really want an Emo Senator? You should check out Ned Lamont. Hes like so together and everything.
And if you think I really suck at all this Emo stuff and MySpace and everything like that, why dont you go out and do a better job of showing how Emo Joe is? Why dont you set up a Personal Fundraising Page for everyone on MySpace to contribute to?
Maybe Ill just go and write my stuff elsewhere.
My kind of boat race
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Thu, 06/15/2006 - 10:31Today, the Personal Fundracing pages for Ned Lamont have launched. The graphic being used is of a boat… “Rock the Boat!”. You can see the current standings on the signup page.
However, since we have some fun graphics, I thought I would present a graphical depiction of the race, showing the two boats that have gotten off the starting line, as well as my own boat.
As more people get off the starting line, I’ll update the list of boats. The amounts will update automatically.
Tim
|
LamontBlog
|
Frank
|
Phil
|
Spazeboy
|
Eddie
|
Kelly
|
Me
|
Kevin
|
Beginning filming
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Tue, 06/13/2006 - 12:34A month ago I wrote about ‘Shooting our own Dream Dozen’. This was an idea I had about trying to find a replacement for West Wing, based on candidates for local office. As I worked on the Lamont campaign and saw volunteers making their own videos about Ned, it struck me that we should all be out making videos of our favorite candidates and sharing them online.
Based on this, last night, I recorded Frank Farricker as he addressed the Greenwich, CT Democracy for America group. You can see it here.
It doesn’t have the drama of West Wing, but maybe some future videos will. Meanwhile, I hope to be putting up videos of other State Legislative candidates. Hopefully, some of you will too. If you’re really interested in this, I’d encourage you to check out the Citizen Filmmaking track at the Media Giraffe Project Conference at University of Massachusetts on June 29th.
Spoon River, Connecticut
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Fri, 06/09/2006 - 20:32When I moved to New York City after college many years ago, I hung out with many young artists working on refining their craft and getting discovered. I would go to tiny black box theatres around town and view performances people would quite rightly call their work. These performances were probably more work for the audience to sit through than for the actors to perform and this probably explained why the actors frequently outnumbered the audience.
However, these tedious evenings would sometimes pay off with unexpected beauty. One such moment was when a friend performed a monologue based on Edgar Lee Masters’ Spoon River Anthology. The memory has come back to me recently in two different guises.
The actress spoke about having had a child and giving it up for adoption. She lived in the same town and spoke wrenchingly about seeing the child grow up and wanting to reach out, to tell her secret, to help the child. Now, instead of finding myself amongst tortured artists struggling with their craft, I find myself amongst tortured middle-aged men struggling with broken families and derailed careers.
One friend is struggling to get his career back on track and in his current poverty is fighting with his ex over child support and visitation issues. His daughter has just become a teenager and it has been ages since he has seen her. The other day he mentioned that he had found her ‘MySpace site’. In it, she spoke about how she missed her long walks with her father, even though she won’t currently speak with him on the phone.
The second memory is perhaps a little less obvious. Today, I received an email from Gina Coggio. I talk a lot about her class and recently went to visit them to talk about blogging. She has put up some of her students work on the web. Please, do yourself a favor and find some time to sit down and read some of the students work.
http://literatureatnha.blogspot.com
There is some beautiful writing there and I hope you stop by and comment on the students work. The blog has a little bit of a feel of the Spoon River Anthology. I believe that the actress that did the stirring monologue based on Spoon River Anthology went on to become a priest and uses her dramatic skills from the pulpit now. Whether or not any of the students will go on and become the next Edgar Lee Masters or perhaps the next Nikki Giovanni, the ability to write well is something that will be valuable to them, no matter what they end up doing.
More importantly, whether it is the performance of my friend years ago, or the writings of Gina’s students today, there is beauty in the representations of people’s struggle to bring meaning to difficult situations.
