From L to R, Abbi, Matt, Ross, Terence, and Phillip
Just got back from an interesting panel about the impact of new media on the election, sponsored by the Perley Isaac Reed School of Journalism at WVU as part of Journalism Week and the recurring Festival of Ideas. The only reason I mention this is because you might know some of the participants, who included Abbi Tatton from CNN, Big Media Matt and Ross Douthat from the Atlantic, Terrence Samuel from the WaPo’s theRoot.com, Phillip de Vellis (the guy who created the 1984/Hillary youtube video), and moderated by Michael Tomasky, who turns out to be a WVU grad. Ana Marie Cox was supposed to be there and was a no-show, as she was allegedly covering the McCain Biography tour. Personally, I think she was guttered at a bar downtown, because as anyone in Morgantown can tell you, Thursday is the big party night.
I won’t bore you with all the gory details, and a lot of it was clearly inside baseball that was over the heads of many of the students who were in the crowd, but I will go quickly through some of my thoughts:
1.) Abbi Tatton is very, very tiny, and desperately in need of a sandwich (although I can report that her ass was a topic of much discussion for several of the male students seated behind me). Her accent appears much more pronounced in person, and she is as pleasant in person as she is on camera.
2.) Big Media Matt looks exactly like he does in his profile, and exactly like he does on bloggingheadstv. He clearly was enjoying himself, and appears to really get along well with Ross Douthat.
3.) Ross reminded me less of a conservative writer than he did a sociology teacher who sleeps with his students. Think Donald Sutherland in Animal House. He really is quite interesting, and was the fastest with a quip and really seemed to “get” the topic at hand.
4.) Terence Samuel started off shaky, and at first didn’t seem to have much to offer on this topic as he really was, until recently a traditional journalist. Once he became more comfortable with the format, he had some interesting things to say.
5.) Phillip was the “coolest” one on the lot, and clearly was less of an academic/reporter than the others and someone you would expect to run into at work. I don’t mean that in a negative way, he just reminded me of my buddies in the Business school or guys who would go into advertising.
Overall, there was a great deal of discussion that will be really hard to summarize, but I will promise to link to it later once WVU has it prepared for digital media. One thing that was really interesting was the back to back display of the Yes, We Can Obama video and the John, He Is. The student body got hysterical, and Matt made a really interesting point. Both he and Phillip agreed that their first thoughts when they saw the yes, We Can video was “Great. Just what the Democrats need, to get all cozy with Hollywood.” But Matt then pointed out that this is such a self-selecting, bifurcated audience that the people who would be repulsed by the coziness with Hollywood figures probably won’t see the video anyway, because they don’t use the internet (somethign Ross reiterated later when he noted that “McCain appears to be going after the ‘crotchety people who don’t use the internet vote.'”).
At any rate, it was a lot of fun, and I wish I had had a chance to meet Matt, but I was chasing someone down to find out if the presentation would be put online, and when I finally got an answer and made my way back to the ballroom, they had left the stage. Oh, well.
As a side note, I became very self-conscious about my age as the presentation started to wind down. All of the students were murmuring (all the teachers out there know what I am talking about, when a large lecture class begins to collectively decide it is time for class to end), I could hear whispers about Red Bull and Vodka and “Ladies Night,” and it occurred to me that I may have been the only one in my area of the seating who was upset about it winding down, and that my exciting plans for the night were to go home and blog about blogging before watching BSG.
br
God, I couldn’t stop laughing at that caption.
Terence and Phillip.
Sorry.
matt
Your impression of Ross killed me.
Sounds like it was a lot of fun!
The Other Steve
Sniff, nothing fun like that ever happens here.
Creature
my exciting plans for the night were to go home and blog about blogging before watching BSG.
Sounds like a plan to me.
incontrolados
It’s ok John. Your readers, especially Jen, have made sport of me and I have made only a small effort to respond. Those of us who actually have professions will always get poked fun of.
I read your post and hope you write more about what happened.
Walker
So as a (political) blogger associated with WVU why weren’t you involved in this? Glennzilla gives you enough links that you aren’t unknown.
binky
So as a (political) blogger associated with WVU why weren’t you involved in this?
My thought exactly.
Did you at least get into any discussion (says the Morgantown blogger who clearly didn’t make it to the event)?
John Cole
I really try to keep my association with WVU pretty low profile.
Plus, I say fuck a lot in my posts.
eponymous
Ah, Sunnyside – memories, memories…
Punchy
Which one is you? Are you at the table?
Seitz
That’s especially obvious every time they play a football or basketball game.
rec
br, whoever’s in charge of the panel seating is a genius.
I doubt if they were able to recreate the brilliance of their last panel though.
jake
This is a problem because … why?
Sounds like the whole thing was a blast. I don’t suppose there was an event featuring a Jake Tapper pinata?
Oh well. Looking forward to the post-mortem.
ithaqua
I notice that, for some reason, even though you talk about the actual performance of the four male panelists, all you can manage regarding Ms. Tatton is to sneer at her weight and talk about her ass. But she has a nice personality! I’m sure she would be delighted to know that you approve, even though you couldn’t, apparently, be bothered to actually listen to what a woman had to say.
But perhaps pointing that out makes me one of the ‘Jane Hamshers of the left’ or a member of the ‘sanctimonious women’s studies set’. Ah well.
ithaqua
Addendum: and not one word about the male panelists’ asses? Come on, throw us a bone here :P
Zuzu
Ooh, I think you just drove up your Blog-O-Cuss Meter rating up from 0% to 0.0001%.
Created by OnePlusYou
Phoebe
Yeah that was kind of… sigh. Even if she had nothing of interest to say, you could have said so.
Zuzu
Hey, where’d the link go?
Trying again:
The Blog-O-Cuss Meter – Do you cuss a lot in your blog or website?”>
John Cole
Hunh?
Read the post again:
Christ. I discussed the physical aspects of everyone of them. And for the record, it was not me discussing Abbi’s ass, it was the jackasses behind me who never shut up the entire presentation. As a side note, this is the first time I have ever, ever been chastised for noting I thought someone needed to put on weight.
John Cole
What do you think this meant:
She comes across as a nice friendly person on camera, and she comes across that way in person. How is that sexist to note that?
As to her commentary, it really wasn’t that interesting to me because this was a panel on blogging, and she was there to discuss how she discusses bloggers, and it was sort of meta and dull. Matt and Ross were actually discussing blogging. Terence and Phillip were interesting, but not really bloggers (Terence is a msm denizen with a WaPo “blog,” Philip is a hired gun).
You guys are really going out of your way to be offended about this.
John Cole
None of the guys behind me mentioned it, oddly enough. I did however learn there is a drink special at a bar named the “lizard” and that one of their geography classes “sucked hard.”
ithaqua
To expand on my midnightish feminist rant:
Abbi Tatton. The bit about the sandwich stuck with me, because it so typifies the misogynist male tendency to shame women for their eating habits – look at the tabloids and gossip rags, where half the covers are taken up with photos of various female celebrities and criticisms for being ‘too fat’ or ‘too thin’, and the epidemic of eating disorders among women, especially young women… argh. Getting past that, though, you only talk about Ms. Tatton as an object, only mentioning her passive qualities – her appearance, her personality, her accent – rather than anything she actually did at the conference. She could have been a hostess serving drinks for all we could tell from you.
On the other hand, for the other four you talk about active qualities and their active contributions to the panel: Ross and Terence had ‘interesting’ things to say, Ross gets the topic right off, Mat, Phillip and Ross made some good points about the Obama and McCain ads… it’s like you were actually listening to those guys, whereas when Abbi opened her mouth you started thinking about how sexy her accent was or something similarly dismissive and cavemanesque.
J. Michael Neal
Skipping the rest of it . . . business school? I had really hoped all this time that you were teaching a serious academic discipline. Maybe my view is skewed since I’m now taking accounting classes and my fellow students would have been eaten alive in any of my math department classes, but, . . .
Business school?
I have three serious problems with business school classes. Keep in mind that I’m at the University of Minnesota, and the Carlson School of Management is considered one of the top 30 business schools in the country. In ascending order:
1) The business school pisses me off, because they make it difficult for anyone who isn’t registered as a business school student to register for their classes. Never mind that they have any number of graduation requirements that are classes from other schools. When it suits them, they prefer to pretend that there isn’t any other parts of the university.
2) Maybe it’s just because I was raised in an academic household (LS&A, University of Michigan), but I’m appalled by selling the naming rights to everything that’s nailed down and half of the overhead projectors. A university isn’t a business. It should maintain more independence and distance than by making me go to class in the 3M Industries Classrooom, L-118.
3) Christ, it’s a top 30 business school. I shouldn’t be able to get by on 15 minutes of study per hour in class per week. Business schools have bought far too heavily into the idea of students as customers. Of course, there’s no way to please your customers like giving them good grades for very little work.
My professor in Soviet Politics and Government (and the title alone should give you an idea of how long ago I’m talking about) said that students are the ultimate proof that economists are wrong about what consumers want, since they want the least education possible for their tuition dollars.
John Cole
I really am not sure how to defend specific comments that are in no way sexist when you shoehorn them in to generalizations of sexist behavior. The first three people I discussed were female, male, and male, I discussed what they looked like and then their personality, and from that, I am accused of sexism. I even discussed them in the order they were seated (not that that matters. Had I changed the order and discussed her last, you would have accused me of having so little interest in her my mention of her was an afterthought. Had I sandwiched her in between the men, you would accuse me of trying to obscure her within a wall of masculinity).
Abbi is rail thin and looks much skinnier in person than she does on tv, but the guys behind me loved her. I then noted that she seemed pleasant.
Matt looks like he does in his profile (and, like me, could probably stand to lose a few pounds. Perhaps that is why the guys behind me were mum.). I then noted he seemed to be enjoying himself.
Ross looked like a sociology…
Never mind. I have a feeling this is pointless.
No, I didn’t. I didn’t mention a thing said by Terence, and I only stated that Phillip agreed with Matt. I guess that just proves that in addition to being sexist, I am also racist and biased against people with French-sounding surnames.
Additionally, I specifically DID in fact say something about Abbi’s personality- I said she comes across just like she does on television. She didn’t discuss any ideas, she merely gave a rundown of what she does, which is report what bloggers say. Hell, she was even the only one to refuse to give a prediction about the race in her closing statement (all the others, even Ross, predicted Obama would win the Presidency). I can include that in the write-up to avoid further accusations of sexism, but it seems to add little.
One last thing- nowhere did I state her accent was “sexy.” I said it was far more pronounced in person than on television.
Really, you are reaching here.
John Cole
Now I am getting slammed because when I was in grad school I had friends getting an MBA?
I quit. I am off to bed.
BP
Out of curiosity, what are you studying at the U JMN?A couple people in my program who’ve taken classes at the Carlson had the same complaints. My own prejudice against MBAs was when I realized that the golf class I took as an undergrad was three quarters business school students; they can’t have been working very hard at all.
cbear
Jesus Christ lady, get a cat or something.
Better yet, get yourself a male cat and have him neutered one snip at a time over the course of his lifetime. You’ll feel much more empowered and less like a victim.
J. Michael Neal
My apologies. I misread you, and thought you meant that you teach in the business school. I take back what I said. About you. I don’t take back anything I said about business schools in general, or the one here.
Pb
Wow, old school. If your scars from the Pie Wars over at the G.O.S. are still acting up, then that probably is what it means. Well, that and the fact that you managed to fill in so much sexism from such a paucity of information. It is similarly obvious from your handle that you are a giant, lonely snow-monster.
J. Michael Neal
Right now, I’m taking accounting. A more mindlessly simple subject is hard to imagine. I’ve also taken Finance classes. The professor I took those from admitted that he thought the guidelines he was given for the undergraduate classes were lame. That’s probably why he’s moved on to the Chicago Fed.
I should give a lot of credit to that prof, though. When a former student asked him if he had anyone in his classes who he would recommend, I’m the one he singled out. As much as I mistakenly tried to ridicule our host, my impression is that the problem with business schools isn’t the faculty so much as the administration. The Financial Accounting teacher I have now seems to be very good, though he is *exactly* what Central Casting would provide if you asked them to give you an accountant with no sense of humor.
JGabriel
John Cole:
Damn. Just when we were going to ask you your thoughts on your BSG viewing.
.
bend
God damnit, I love this sight, John!
Zuzu
ithaqua:
As one feminist to another…please, lighten up.
Tom in Texas
Ithaqua:
John wasn’t dehumanizing women.
These fucking animals were.
Your anger is misguided.
dcBill
Thursday is party night at universities everywhere. I have recently rediscovered Thursday nights as a serendipitous result of telecommuting on Fridays.
Is the Underground Railroad still open in Morgantown? I played there a few times in the ’80s with the Young Caucasians. Great dump.
merl allen
Wasn’t Ronald Reagan a Hollywood actor?
John Cole
Yes. It is called 1-2-3 Pleasant Street now.
ithaqua
Tom in Texas:
“Better than a rapist” is a pretty low bar to set for Prof. Cole, don’t you think?
John Cole
I assert I have done nothing wrong. You have done nothing but make charges and conveniently ignore any response from me.
You can kindly piss off.
And for those of you who are unaware, I am not a Professor. I go by John, and quit trying to drag my work into your bullshit. Now do you all understand why I keep myself low profile at WVU?
Mary
ithaqua, that MRA fuckwit over at Pandagon still needs his ass kicked. John doesn’t.
Or are you using good old “nope” as your role model in how to argue in very bad faith?
Fuckwitte.
Crusty Dem
seriously, Ithaqua, get a fucking life. You’re a twit. And comparing yourself to Jane Hamsher? Bitch, please. More like the stereotypical fifty year old women’s studies prof.
And I bet you suck at math.
See, that’s sexist.
John Cole
Hey- Let’s all calm down here. There is no need for a pile on. She thought I had said something sexist, I vigorously defended myself.
There is no need to turn this into something really nasty and ugly.
ithaqua
John, thanks for the support. I apologize for ‘dragging your work into it’ – I actually did think you were a professor, for some reason, and so thought it was the appropriate mode of address. I stand corrected (on that, at least, heh heh).
To clarify the “better than a rapist” snark: conservatives have been saying for years and years that liberals shouldn’t critize the war in Iraq, because Saddam was worse; that feminists need to shut up about misogyny at home (and support the war) because Muslim women have it worse, that American blacks should be grateful for slavery because blacks in Africa have it so much worse… the “hey, look over there” argument is annoying and irrelevant and I wish liberals wouldn’t use it either.
For what it’s worth, I don’t think anyone on this threat – including you – is being deliberately anti-woman. In American society, male thought is inherently, instinctively misogynist – for example, a forceful male speaker is seen as authoritative and commanding, a forceful female speaker is seen as bitchy (exhibit A: Hillary Clinton) – and I think it’s important to point out places where this unconscious misogyny is devaluing and objectifying women, even if the poster (you) isn’t doing it deliberately and is in fact offended by the very idea.
I imagine that, for a while, you’ll make a conscious effort to mention women where you’d have ignored them before (as in your follow-up post to this one) just to head off complaints from people like me. Which is fine. Maybe it’ll become a habit :)
And no, you don’t get to tell women how they should eat – would you have looked at a man her size and thought ‘that guy needs a sammich’? The idea that men have the right to pass judgment on women’s bodies is just another symptom of this inescapable misogynist taint.
Also, I’m a guy, in case you were wondering :)
Walker
That is one of those inside-baseball distinctions. Those of us in academia know that students call every single instructor “professor” out of habit. The P-title distinction is something that typically only matters in the department.
Plus don’t you all have a instructor advancement track? One of the things that irked me about the Obama professor flap is that he wasn’t just an instructor, he was a Senior Lecturer. In many places, that officially counts as faculty and not staff. Hell, in my department, Senior Lecturers can sit on departmental tenure discussions. The only difference between a Senior Lecturer and P-title is how their job is evaluated (e.g. teaching vs. research).
Crusty Dem
My apologies John, the “better than a rapist” line was way too much for me to hold back. FWIW, that was a heavily edited post. I think the original wouldve broken the blog-O-cuss meter.
HyperIon
IMO Communications majors are as lame as B schoolers.
So you might want to reconsider the apology.
yeah, before the consumer model of education drove me out of the field, i got really tired of students basically saying: “i need to get a piece of paper so i can get a job.” i always countered with: “why don’t you LEARN something and then demonstrate competence? that approach worked for me.”
but i think using the word “work” scared them off.
John Cole
I have noticed a lot of people in my field are insufferable pricks. It appears many of them are over-compensating because they feel inadequate about their chosen field- a bastard step-child to both English and Psychology.
And if you really want to see horribly awkward and incompetent communication, go to our national conference (NCA). It really drives home the fact that those who can’t, teach.
HyperIon
my criticism is around brain-power, not personality.
Krista
Hey, that’s not nice!
/hurt voice
pseudonymous in nc
Probably because she’s extra-careful to moderate it when there’s a camera pointing at her. Most English regional accents are rarely-heard in US media; more than a few times, I’ve seen English people with broad northern accents subtitled on American TV.
Phoebe
Don’t freak, John, I’m not calling for your head on a platter, and I don’t think the original complainer was, either. I understand if the largest impression she made on you was her physical appearance, and that:
“As to her commentary, it really wasn’t that interesting to me because this was a panel on blogging, and she was there to discuss how she discusses bloggers, and it was sort of meta and dull.”
But if you’d weighed in on the content of her contribution like that in the original post [seeming pleasant is not sufficient], there would be no hands raised, I think it’s safe to say. Certainly speaking for myself anyway.
Again – not calling for your head on a platter or pike – it would just be nice if you talked about what the chick said, as long as you’re talking about what the others said. Even if what the chick said was boring.
AND I know that I wouldn’t care if you’d singled out a male panelist to overlook in this manner. But when it’s just the one chick, that gets the rest of us chix’ feathers in a wee ruffle because – it happens all the time. Really. And it’s depressing. Just fyi and all.