Mandatory statement, I don’t agree with Andrew O’Hehir’s (overdramatized!) statements about the Obama Administration. But sometimes I’m afraid Salon‘s film critic may not be wrong that “Twitter politics are all we have left“:
… One of the effects of the newly democratized public sphere, which isn’t good or bad in itself, is the intense focus on symbolic and/or rhetorical politics. Almost no division between public and private discourse is observed, and words — as some of those feminist academics told us a generation ago — become understood as political acts. Celebrities’ poorly worded or drunken tweets become political issues. So do the clueless remarks about sex and gender made by Republican candidates, the gender pronoun attached to Chelsea Manning and the 70-year-old nickname of Washington’s football team.
I am not arguing that those things are unimportant distractions from “real politics,” or that our cultural focus on such conversations necessarily detracts from other forms of political action… In the contemporary media landscape, however, those virtual politics threaten to become the only politics. I see the intense and overheated focus on misbegotten tweets and malformed public utterances as displaced energy, reflecting the fact that the official political system is completely paralyzed and meaningful social and economic change seems unachievable.
Beltway politics are dominated by passionate and often outrageous partisan rhetoric, which cannot quite conceal the fact that Congress has become a useless, paralytic institution that can’t get anything done. Power lies elsewhere, and remains inaccessible. In a similar fashion, angry wars of words between and among self-styled progressives on the Internet do not entirely camouflage the relative powerlessness of everyone involved. Getting into a comments-thread battle or a Twitter-lather about Colbert’s bad joke or Lena Dunham’s fashion-magazine shoot or whatever other outrage du jour conveys a temporary feeling of pseudo-power, much as watching MSNBC (or Fox News) crow about the idiocy of the other side is pseudo-participation in a pseudo-democracy…
… We can’t do anything about worsening inequality or the poisoned planet or the total defeat of the labor movement or the broken immigration system or the incarceration of young black men. Our country is too “divided,” we can’t make up our minds about anything. The power to change those things, supposedly vouchsafed to us in the Constitution, has migrated somewhere else. But we can drive Gilbert Gottfried off Twitter for being such an enormous asshole. Change we can believe in.
Yeah, I realize the irony of discussing this on a blog. Don’t give me that look, some days I can barely summon the energy to change my socks, much less the world.
? Martin
This is why nobody takes ‘audiophiles’ seriously. The only conclusion you can draw is that anyone who self-identifies as such is a fucking retard. Nobody would sell 3′ USB cables for $900 if there wasn’t someone out there with more money than sense to buy it.
JCJ
Finally calming down after watching the Wisconsin – Arizona game. Go Bucky!!!!
Amir Khalid
It’s Andrew O’Hehir. And his movie-crit work isn’t all that great, either.
@? Martin:
Do you remember the Denon AKDL1, original selling price $500 for five feet of Cat-5 cable, that made comedy reviews on Amazon.com into a thing?
Jewish Steel
@? Martin: I’ve heard that the Neil Young-pod is bullshit too:
http://xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html
nellcote
Way to reinforce that voting doesn’t matter. Asshole.
amk
How very nice of andrew to point out how the progressives are killing the ‘real politik’ in the comments section. Guess wingnutz are grace & reason personified in those sections.
what an asshole.
KG
being an asshole has become the highest form of political debate – rather you’re trolling, flaming, or campaigning. unfortunately, we’re not going to convince everyone to stop being assholes, nor are we going to convince enough people to just ignore the assholes.
on the other hand, we’ve actually have managed to have some honestly good change in the last few years.
piratedan
you have to love the false equivalency application of the magical balance fairy up above… Dem’s are just as histrionic as Rep’s are because they call out the idiocy uttered out of the mouths of R representatives/spokespeople daily, reprehensible bastards that they are.
I understand folks tiring of having their outraged meters constantly pegged at 11, maybe if you could perhaps inform the folks representing those good folks of the American soil that their rights to worship Jeebus/Mammon are not in danger, no one is coming for their guns (bazookas maybe, but guns, no), the POTUS isn’t going to make them gay marry and getting affordable healthcare for people less well off than yourselves will not impact your way of life as we know it.
perhaps if you could have a calm rational discussion with the current crop of toddler politicians that supposedly represent the Right, we could perhaps move on from this deadlock but pissing and moaning about both sides when it is decidedly one side is engaging in whiny ass first world problem panaceas and making yourself incredibly unserious.
RareSanity
@? Martin:
In just about any “interest” there will be people that will gladly pay exorbitant prices to appear as though they are knowledgeable about it. In order to serve those people, there are other people that will gladly separate those fools from their money.
If you think audio is somehow unique, I would point you in the direction of photography, wine, fashion, computers, cars, or any other product that can support a “premium” tier.
AxelFoley
So who the fuck is this asshole again?
? Martin
@RareSanity: A premium car at least has some marginal or distinctive value, even if the value is aesthetic or its scarcity. A USB has none of those things. It transmits a digital signal which cannot be improved upon. It either transmits that signal or it does not. The cable may have an aesthetic value, but considering that even the most ostentatious stereo system usually seeks to hide the USB cables (or hide the fact that it uses USB at all), I question that. It has no scarcity either.
Wine, fashion, photography all have premium markets, but they all also have some marginal value for that extra cost. Computer do as well. USB is a commodity in every sense of the word.
aangus
Damn, no Caligula tonight.
: (
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qd2AHZ22SJ8&feature=related
aangus
My Grand Dad worked the shipyards in Glasgow.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrdl4ijru8o
Ruckus
@? Martin:
How many things that really are commodities have snob appeal? Toilet paper at whole paycheck. Do people really think that whole foods has their own paper plants? Or canning facilities for their house brand?
It is asinine though to pay even $45 for a USB cable, let alone 20 times that. But no more asinine than a 500+ hp Merc station wagon or a gold plated toilet seat to warm up before using a $5 roll of tp.
xenos
Today’s Dinosaur comics have a good assessment of the value of twitter:
Applejinx
@Jewish Steel: Because turning to a salesman of alternate lossy encoding to mp3s is clearly the right place to go when asking whether you need really good lossless ;P
Follow the money, of course that guy’s going to argue until he’s blue in the face that the whole Pono thing is garbage. It will reveal the failings of Ogg Vorbis in a way that a generic iPod with earbuds never could: and the Apple stuff is actually among the better hardware, for mass-market audio players.
Higgs Boson's Mate
@Applejinx:
If I understood the article correctly, the author was stating that increasing the sample rate and the bit depth may actually open the door to distortion. While it seems intuitive that raising the bit depth and sampling rate should produce recordings with less loss the Nyquist–Shannon sampling theorem will absolutely induce aliasing if the bandlimit is too high.
But, what do I know? I spent some years in audiophile hell, building my own tube preamps and amps and spending the price of a good used car on a turntable while always knowing that there was something better out there somewhere. Now I just listen to the music.
NotMax
Shorter version: Why bother?
dmsilev
@? Martin: I’ve seen a lot of hilarious audiophile gear advertised. My favorites were:
* A wooden knob as an optional upgrade for a preamp that promised to “reduce microvibrations”. Cost was a few hundred dollars, not including the option of a special varnish coating which would further reduce these evil vibrations.
* A cable that was actually a flexible tube filled with mercury. Pitch was “Noise in metals is caused by grain boundaries. A liquid doesn’t have grain boundaries, and so has less noise”. Cost was in the tens of thousands of dollars for a pair.
If I weren’t cursed with ethics, I’d be selling superconducting cables to the audiophile set. “No resistance: no noise!”. Never mind that compressor clanking away in the background keeping the thing at 80 Kelvin…
(very very low noise electric measurements is something I know a lot about. Coax cable with pretty much anything as a shield (even steel), proper grounding techniques, and shielded enclosures will put you at the noise limit for any reasonable audio amplifier)
NotMax
Bad link in #18.
Shorter version: Why bother?
Baud
Somehow, the comments about Andrew O’Hehir and the comments about overpriced USB cables work well together.
Cervantes
Speech acts have always been political. If it took anyone a generation to understand this, after it was explained in plain English, I can celebrate their finally understanding it (but I’ll need proof).
Cervantes
@dmsilev: Hilarious!
Cervantes
@Applejinx: A fool and his money are soon parted.
Lurking Canadian
@Higgs Boson’s Mate: lncreasing the sampling rate isn’t going to cause aliasing that wasn’t already present at the lower sampling rate. Either you were above the Nyquist frequency before, so you still are; or you were below the Nyquist frequency before, but are above it now.
linda
@nellcote: Patrticipating in the system–by voting and others activity–works if you keep working it. But it takes a long time, and we are sadly beset vy a population that is surprised that the ruling elite didn’t just curl up and surrender when Obama got elected. So they sit on the internets and snipe.
Betty Cracker
Whatever valid points O’Hehir makes about the twit-war-ization of modern politics (and I would argue that it’s always been this dumb and petty; only the platform has changed), he undermines by dipping wingnut talking point-turds into a delicious caramel lefty coating. Por exemplo:
It’s the same fucking message. Also, O’Hehir isn’t wrong to point out that Congress is useless and that big money is undermining democracy, but there’s a “pox on both their houses” vibe to his piece that is worthy of David Broder.
In fact, he seems to blame Obama more than a Republican Party that has gone crazier than a sprayed roach. That makes it hard to take anything he says seriously.
Sondra
“Yeah, I realize the irony of discussing this on a blog. Don’t give me that look, some days I can barely summon the energy to change my socks, much less the world.”
Amen sister.
Frankensteinbeck
Kind of echoing @Betty Cracker here, this guy kinda sorta has a point. The problem is, he’s completely omitted the largest current effect on American politics – Republicans going batshit insane, presumably driven by racism, when Obama was elected. If you do not face that fact, any discussion of current politics is warped into uselessness.
@Amir Khalid:
I think this is the guy who described Ponyo On The Cliff By the Sea as too much about children. Definitely the most ‘What are you smoking?’ review I’ve ever read. Can’t seem to find it on Google.
sparrow
I’m surprised how many people are calling this guy an “asshole”… I’m not seeing it. I think he’s mostly right, though maybe we don’t want to hear it. My boyfriend is European, and he patiently listens to me when I get into a diatribe about the Hobby Lobby case, or the ridiculous everyday racism in this country… but usually his opinion is that he can’t believe what passes for “political debate” in this country.
The real power IS elsewhere. We have a strong class system that is hard to break out of and no one wants to admit that. No one wants to admit there is no American dream and that money is everything.
Sigh. I’m just a bit depressed after reading “Paying for the Party”… which I highly recommend to everyone, by the way.
Tripod
My understanding is that top of the line, in a multi tiered product line, exists to move the duffers up to the next price point.
IowaOldLady
We were just buying a new battery for Mr IOL’s car and heard Matt Kibbe being interviewed. OMG, the fool thinks all the power is concentrated in the government.
Baud
@IowaOldLady:
As opposed to where?
IowaOldLady
@Baud: People with money to buy and sell laws, congress, the rest of us.
Baud
@IowaOldLady:
If those are the choices, I hope he’s right that government has all the power.
IowaOldLady
@Baud: My thought exactly. The govt needs enough power to protect the rest of us from being run over.
Chris
@IowaOldLady:
This is a ludicrously widespread delusion even outside the right – that the problem begins and ends with “the government.” Give the 1% their due, they’ve been very good at spreading the meme that the only institutions that can help protect us are actually the problem. (Also too, unions).
Betty Cracker
@sparrow: Here’s where O’Hehir lost me:
As I pointed out above, the first sentence is a restatement of the wingnut talking point about liberals only voting for Obama because he’s black. That’s a wingnut lie no liberal should endorse.
The rest of it holds Obama and the Democrats as culpable for the NSA, GWOT, bankster prefidy, etc., as Dick Cheney & Co., which is wildly misguided. I think we’re right as liberals to agitate for surveillance policy change, call for more wide-ranging financial reform and prosecution of guilty parties, rollback of post-9/11 foreign meddling, etc.
But to pretend there’s not a dime’s worth of difference between the two parties — to ignore the pullout from Iraq and Afghanistan, establishment of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and to reduce the historic advances of gay rights the Obama administration LED to “oh, he has gay friends” — that is Naderism. And we know how that movie ends.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
I didn’t bother to read the piece. I see that was the right decision.
Amir Khalid
@dmsilev:
My own favourite audiophile con-job was a set of Oreo-sized hardwood discs that you put on top of your gear to — you guessed it, kill vibrations. They came in a fancy wooden box, and were sold under the “Korean” brand name Shun Mook.
IowaOldLady
@Betty Cracker: I’m shocked by how fast people forget how bad the Bush administration was. And you have to have forgotten to do the not-a-dime’s-worth-of-difference dance.
My SIL lives in Florida. She and her husband are more or less Democrats but every time politics comes up, they say how disappointed they are in Obama. They take for granted or maybe haven’t heard about what he’s accomplished and only notice that we still have troops in Afghanistan and are still arguing about fracking.
Baud
@IowaOldLady:
Sadly, Republicans aren’t the only ones who deserve the government they get.
Fort Geek
@dmsilev: The ultimate audio system–a 1,000 watt amp that looks cool as hell. Just the thing to plug one’s MP3 player into.
Betty Cracker
@IowaOldLady: Luckily, I don’t think that view is all that widespread among Democrats. People complain about lack of progress on certain issues, and I think it’s legit to agitate for change — popular demand for reform is as essential to achieving change as skilled leadership at the top, in the tradition of FDR’s “now make me do it.” But yeah, the “not a dime’s worth of difference” thing is a self-defeating lie.
James E. Powell
@? Martin:
This is why nobody takes ‘audiophiles’ seriously.
This prose is from the linked page and it is describing, not musicians, but one-meter cables that cost, as Martin says, about $900.
FlipYrWhig
@Betty Cracker: no one whose day job is “film critic” has the right to lecture anyone about what real politics or real social justice entails. It’s a whole profession devoted to representing other people’s representations. Every film critic Salon has ever used has been a ravening doucheweasel.
sparrow
@Betty Cracker: Hmm, I’ll admit I wasn’t smart enough to catch what that first line really meant — yuck.
On the other hand, the problems with drones, and especially being cozy with the bankers, is not far off from things I have said myself at times. I agree “stay home cuz both parties are the same” is the STUPIDEST possible response to the problem that the dems are really a centrist party, but let’s not be afraid to admit that it is, eh?
dmsilev
@Amir Khalid: Here’s the motherlode of Stupid: http://www.machinadynamica.com/index.html
Betty Cracker
@sparrow: I agree — agitating for a turn to port is essential for those of us who believe liberal policies serve this country better. I think people who scold other Democrats for criticizing specific Obama administration policies (on the grounds of SPEAK NO EVIL) are misguided as hell, and I wasted a good bit of time arguing that point the other day in another thread.
Heliopause
I’m still trying to figure out why Colbert’s bit reached critical mass this time when he’s shown it several times before.
Well, the comments here are rather predictable, aren’t they. O’Hehir took a shot at the impotence of the point-and-snark set and they responded by proving his point better than he ever could. Maybe the internet is destined to be good for nothing but amusements of this sort.
dww44
I’m sure by now that most readers have departed this thread, but along the lines of the meme that “both sides do it” and “there’s not a dime’s bit of difference” , David Brock of Media Matters and formerly a conservative with The American Spectatorwas on “Up” with Steve Kornacki this a.m. Brock has formed a Hillary supporting SuperPac specifically to combat the Hillary attacks that have begun long before she has even decided to run for the nomination.
Said she deserves a chance to decide for herself without contemplating all the smears from the right that will go on unabated if she does decide to run. Said that prior to 1992 American political campaigns were a bit more policy focused than beginning in 1992. In that year he was part of a cadre of conservative writers who were paid to go to Arkansas and dig up dirt on Bill Clinton. Now, I would argue that 88 and the Willie Horton thing might have been the real beginning of conservative personal attacks on Democratic presidential candidates. At least those that got absorbed into the political psyche. That the Clinton’s prevailed then is still, to my mind, a bloody miracle.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Heliopause: I know there are a few people who count posting on a blog as political activism, and even fewer who think that the BJ commentariat is some sort of legislature, or powerful DNC committee (“you people don’t get it!” posts) but I’ve never thought of blog comments as much more than a way of blowing off steam, pointing and snarking. Seems to me most of the commenters here get that, YMMV. That said, I think the internet, including blogs sometimes, has been proven as useful as a means of fund-raising and organizing.
My beef with O’Heir– I haven’t read this piece, but I’ve read other stuff of his, which is one of the reasons I won’t bother with this one– is that he belongs to that too large cohort of lefties who can’t accept the fact that Congress and the electorate actually play role in our political system, and that not everyone who voted for Obama supports one hundred percent of his positions, much less those of whatever blog community sees itself as the Voice of the People (I’m thinking of Eschaton, but I can’t imagine that group is unique).
J R in WV
@James E. Powell:
The real point here is that the cable is a digital cable. It moves bits of data from one computer to another, that’s all.
If we were talking speaker cables, you might want to have silver/gold wire, or just huge copper busses. But a USB cable is a USB cable. If it works, it works. if it doesn’t, it won’t connect the two computers successfully.
For any one meter USB cable, $5.79 is a fair profit price point. Otherwise we’re talking plain old fraud!