Art: An Afternoon at the Museum

Oldest son looks at exhibit in Cedar Rapids Art Gallery. My two sons, a daughter-in-law, my wife and I visited the museum Dec. 26.

As a communication/journalism professor, I’m in love with the word. I worked as a reporter and editor, and I still do a fair amount of writing in my day job. Plus I write an occasional column for “The Corridor Business Journal” on media.

As part of my journalism career, I did take photographs, and am an amateur photographer now. And that’s about all of my creative endeavors. If it involves a keyboard or a shutter button, I may be OK a the task. If it requires using human opposable thumbs with other tools, you’re not asking the right person.

But, media aren’t just words and pictures. There’s video, of course. And music. Also, art.

Print of Tolstoy. Tolstoy is also reflected in the print.

I like many of my images, but I would not call my photography “art.” I tend to use images as a fairly literal story telling tool.

But, just I enjoy the work of those who can sing or play a musical instrument. I also enjoy the work of visual artists who can create provocative objects and images. I am not particularly skilled in either music or art, nor educated in them. So art, to me, is a little like pornography is to the Supreme Court—I can’t articulate very well what it is, but I sort of think I recognize it when I see it.

The day after Christmas 2017, during a very intense cold snap, a daughter-in-law who lives in California and was visiting us along with our son, suggested an outing to the local art museum, The Cedar Rapids Museum of Art.

In Greene Square Park looking towards CR Museum of Art. Picture from my bike blog taken in May 2016.

It was close to 2 when we arrived, which meant we would have about 2 hours in the museum. That is about right for this museum, I think—long enough to wander around at a leisurely pace and read many of the placards, not so long that you feel you’re running low on things to look at.

Detail of "Elephant Hunter."

I enjoyed all of the exhibits: The Grant Wood art, the prints, the Roman art, the human figures and the others. I liked the whimsical bench Grant Wood made for transgressors at a local school. I think the Hoffman exhibit of sculpted faces from around the world was particularly interesting, although I also enjoyed the prints, which features many repeated images with subtle changes, such as a whole series of Tolstoys.

I like the building itself, too. The art museum’s entrance lobby, which we entered from the “back side” by the parking lot rather than from the side facing Greene Square Park, is an interesting area, particularly as you climb the steps and cross the bridges to get to the second floor galleries.

Sculpture of French woman peeking into CR Art Gallery.

When we visit other cities, we often like to tour their art galleries. I think we skipped them in San Francisco because museums there are so pricey, but I’ve wandered around art museums in New Orleans, Kansas City, Des Moines, Omaha, Davenport, Muscatine, St. Louis, Minneapolis, Chicago and Washington, D.C. I don’t always understand everything I see—I’m sure I am not alone in wondering why some modern artistic expressions are even considered “art.” While I like some abstract works, I do like some literal communication and some sense of craft, too.

So, I don’t “get” all art. Which is fine. I’m sure not everyone gets all of my writing. I hope you enjoy some of it on this blog, and find it diverting, just as I like art.

Art is a mode of communication, but not always as direct as words, I think. Which is one of its pleasures. To be honest, I think even a writer loses control over their creation once it’s published, anyway—readers always interpret things based on their points of view and experience. A story belongs to the audience. But the writing can still create some sense of shared humanity and experience. As can art.

Thanks for the suggestion, Nalena. Going to the art museum over Christmas break was a great idea. After that, we went home, cooked a warm supper and had apple crisp and ice cream. Our day was made complete by the various works of human hands.

Enjoying Kayla Briet's Smoke That Travels (2016)

I was looking for a TED talk to use in a speech final and stumbled upon this--a very touching, short film made by an 18-year-old young woman about her Native American heritage. She is the same age as my students, which is pretty mind blowing. The film doesn't have that many views and her YouTube channel does not have that many subscribers, but I think it bears watching.


Click to watch her TED talk. Then search her on YouTube--I enjoyed one of her songs, but particularly her short film about her father.


See what you think of her film:

Notes from Cedar Rapids Mayor Candidate Forum

Photo from thegazette.com, CR mayoral candidates Brad Hart and Monica Vernon.

When it really didn’t matter, Monica Vernon, candidate for mayor of Cedar Rapids, could not come up with an answer.

The question came during the rather lengthy introductory phase of a “Mayoral Forum” sponsored by The Gazette and CBS-2/Fox-28. Matt Hammill of 2/28 asked 20-minutes worth of rather fluffly personal questions, such as “What was your first job?” or “How did you meet your spouse?” I suppose I didn’t hate the one-on-one interviews, but honestly I was not a fan either.

After questioning Brad Hart, Hammill asked Vernon what Disney song she would most like to sing. She didn’t come up with an answer until she mentioned some old song from Snow White. Me, I think the appropriate Disney song for the evening would be this:

“I Wan’na Be Like You” because it was amazing how similar Brad Hart and Monica Vernon were and how much they both want to follow closely the path established by the current mayor. They had mostly identical answers—their placards almost completely agreeing during a Gazette-asked “lighting round” where they held up “yes” or “no” answers. The biggest disagreement was whether 2nd Avenue should have been closed—Hart was a yes, Vernon a no.

Me, I’m thinking it’s like a cow’s opinion. It’s pretty much a Moo point (extra credit if you get the “Friends” joke).

They both love, love, love outgoing Mayor Ron Corbett, which seems like another reference to the Disney song. If he were in the race for re-election, neither would challenge him.

On balance, I had several reactions to the forum. First and foremost, way to go, Todd Dormann and Lynda Waddington. The two Gazette opinion writers asked substantial and interesting questions. Score: Newspaper journalists 10, TV journalists 0.

I’m not even bummed that the question I submitted—how the candidates react to the sexual harassment issued and #metoo movement—wasn’t asked. The questions that were posed were more local and more relevant. Maybe my question will be part of the follow-up The Gazette hinted it might do with unused query.

My second reaction is that I’m not too worried about the outcome of this election. Both Vernon and Hart are establishment candidates. In choosing these two as the top vote getters, it seems to me that the body politic in Cedar Rapids wasn’t too upset with local leadership. That’s kind of where I stand, too.

I went into the night leaning towards Monica Vernon, but open-minded. Brad Hart did impress me as intelligent and capable, but, even if she didn’t name the Tessa Violet rendition of a Disney classic as her favorite song—as well she should—I would say my plan to vote for Vernon was strengthened by the candidates’ demeanor and answers at tonight’s forum. Although, to be fair, I also think if the chips fall the other way, Hart is not a poor choice for mayor.

My view of debate. Sadly, a friend from MMU said there were empty seats in the auditorium. Wish I could have been in one.

Finally, being the attendee who worked hardest to get there didn’t do me any good. Despite riding a bicycle in the cold dark, I was put in the overflow room, which was a bit irritating as the audio didn’t work at first, and there were some rude “stage whisperers” in behind me helpfully making it harder to hear. As it turned out, the audio was improved shortly after the forum began, and all I missed was Zach Kucharski’s introduction of the forum and Matt Hammill.

So, on balance, thanks Gazette  and 2/28 for putting this event on, and  CR Library for hosting. Also thanks to Tessa Violet for being Tessa Violet.

About 9:30 p.m., I pass the Rockwell-Collins pond on C Avenue. Both candidates would go to Connecticut to make the case to new Rockwell-Collins owners to keep jobs in Cedar Rapids.

Two Interesting War Fables

Like River in "Firefly," this is one lady not to trifle with. Warner Brothers publicity photo.

Recently, in the past two weeks, my wife and I have attended two movies at the local second-run theater: “Dunkirk” and “Wonder Woman.”

I think we both enjoyed them both, and it was a bit more of a stretch for her, given she is not a fan of war movies. I don’t like all war movies—I am squeamish and don’t care too much for graphic violence, and I prefer movies that at least seem to attempt to be consistent with history as well as telling a compelling story—but I do like a lot of them.

So, for example, one of my favorite movies is “Eye of the Needle,” which is clearly fanciful, but nonetheless captures the spirit of intrigue during WWII and is a good, tense thriller. Other favorites include “Saving Private Ryan” and the HBO series (not really a movie, but cinematic) “Band of Brothers.”

I don’t insist on accuracy down to the rivets, just, please, nothing wild and impossible. Like “Pearl Harbor.” Sure, they did great filming the attack itself, but the whole Doolittle Raid ending felt false and silly. They didn’t use fighter pilots to fly bombers on that raid, and the idea that the Army Air Corps would seek “pilots who can fly bombers like fighters” is ridiculous on the face of it—“we’re seeking long-haul truckers who can ride bicycles like trucks.” It makes as much sense.

Anyway, there is a whole genre of movies around World War II, which ranks as the great mythic good and evil struggle of the movie era. World War I, while a smaller war, was arguably more important as a historic event, but it’s not seen as often in the movies.

Back to the two recent movies—one set in World War I, the other in World War II. One had the feel of reality even if parts of the story were compressed and reshaped for cinematic purposes—still, I found “Dunkirk” compelling partly because there was so little artifice in the story telling. The other movie featured an incredibly sexy actress in a miniskirt and armored corset battling in a mythical World War I. And yet, I forgive “Wonder Woman” if it plays havoc with the actual historic event—because, after all, it’s a movie that features Zeus and immortal Amazons and a hidden magic island and a shield that can stop machine gun bullets—it’s pretty clear we’re not watching a documentary. Still, even as fanciful as it is, “Wonder Woman” does capture something of the feeling of the hopeless, violent carnage that was World War I, so it has some value in showing a modern audience what trench warfare meant.

On the beach, looking for home. Another Warner Bros. photo--as are the rest in this post.

One film, “Dunkirk,” is almost exclusively male. The other, “Wonder Woman,” has a largely male supporting cast, but does include the aforementioned Amazons, an evil female scientist named Dr. Poison, and an entertaining secretary character.

Despite their clear differences, I did find some similarities between the two movies. One is that both are aided by compelling sound work—musical scores, for instance, that do well in setting the mood.

Both are slightly “dark” in a literal sense—the day scenes are often washed out and foggy, and, especially in “Wonder Woman,” the second half portrays both the front and London as rather dingy places. Some key scenes in “Dunkirk” are below deck in ships, and this movie more than most I’ve seen makes those dark, claustrophobic places seem dark and claustrophobic. Although the mythical Amazon island in “Wonder Woman” is a sun-bathed paradise, I appreciated the sparing use of light in the later part of the movie, and the whole muted look of “Dunkirk.”

Both have implicit anti-war themes. When Wonder Woman stabs who she thinks is the evil god she is chasing—and it turns out not to be—she is shocked that men still wage war. In part, this female-driven movie is rumination on the violence of mankind, in a literal sense. You can’t trust the boys. They make war. And I hasten to add that I consider that not very sexist. In mammals, much pointless aggression is fueled by testosterone, and we all know which human gender that impacts most.

Amazon warrior and stock Hollywood bad person--German solider.

“Dunkirk” is a heroic tale of the British living on to fight another day, but I can’t help seeing the random senselessness of the violence—which I think is fair to the reality of actual war—as carrying an anti-war message.

In both, one of Hollywood’s stock stereotypes of villains is used—Germans don’t exactly get a good name in either film. “Dunkirk” is told exclusively from an allied point of view, so Germans are distant and dangerous and shooting at us—and that doesn’t treat them unfairly according that movie’s premise, even if it’s not great PR. “Wonder Woman’s” use of proto-Nazis is a bit more troubling. It’s one of the weaknesses of the whole Indiana Jones set of movies that Nazis are almost cartoonish bad guys, and “Wonder Woman” comes close to that portrayal. German soldiers exist to be speared, stabbed, knocked out of buildings, etc. They aren’t exactly seen as three-dimensional humans.

Neither movie is anti-German—“Wonder Woman” doesn’t suggest Germans are more evil than any other set of humans, but the evil characters in that film are mostly German (except, of course, for the main bad guy).

Well, I don’t think “Wonder Woman” will fuel any anti-German hysteria—no travel ban is being suggested for October beer drinkers. I just thought the portrayal of evil doers was a bit disappointingly shallow in that tale. Beyond importing Indiana Jones Nazis in a world several decades before they existed, the movie has some other odd mojo going on—what the heck was the deal with the gas that the German general was snorting? An implied anti-drug message?—don’t snort drugs, kids, or an Amazon goddess will pin you to the roof with her sharp thingie?

Meh, I’ve lapsed into complaining about “Wonder Woman.” I really liked the movie despite its flaws.

On the dock. Was that a plane I heard? God, I hope it was not a plane ...

I did find “Dunkirk” to be the superior movie, more underplayed. “Wonder Woman” was a bit uneven to me—the early part where our hero grows up and is trained was a bit slow. But the movie picked up when the Germans landed on the beach. And I did appreciate the playfulness of Wonder Woman trying to make sense of 1918 Europe—the customs, the clothes, the odd meaning of it all. She was, in many ways, the “alien” who comments on life—sort of like Spike from “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” only less evil and more lively.

And, despite some flaws, I think I liked “Wonder Woman” on a sort of Buffy level—Buffy was so entertaining because it turned so many horror movie conventions on their heads. The blonde headed down the alley where there were monsters, and the monsters ended up dead. In “Wonder Woman,” the pretty exotic curvy woman in the teeny skirt and tight armor ended up in the trenches, and the Germans all died.

“Frozen” took the movie world by storm, partly because it’s portrayal of a strong female lead character was off the beaten track and resonated with girls (and male feminists like me). “Wonder Woman” has become a feminist icon, too.

More strong women characters in movies, please. And if a story must be male centric (Dunkirk made sense as a boy movie due to its time and place) then at least have it be thoughtful and relatively accurate in its portrayal of history. The anomalies in “Dunkirk,” having the German plane painted wrong, for instance, are mostly minor details and useful from the story telling point of view without really misrepresenting the events.

So thumbs up for both recent movies, different and similar as they are.

The President of Fake News

MMU series logo

During a press conference this week, the embattled president answered a query from a CNN reporter by asserting: “You’re fake news.”

Fake news—it’s not a term The Donald invented. According to a dictionary reference cited by the Huffington Post, the term fake news became popular late in the 19th century—which is not exactly a shock. That was a time of yellow journalism, of sensationalism in the news media, and some writers  then decried the trend and hoped the public would grow weary of the hype—of the false narratives, of the fake news.

The Telegraph, a national newspaper in Great Britain, posted an interesting analysis of the roots of the term fake news and its use by Donald Trump. I’m exploring the term “fake news,” its modern use and origins, as part of a presentation I’ll do in early September at Mount Mercy University. This year’s Fall Faculty Series is about our current era of divided politics. Entitled “Divided We Fall: Finding Common Ground in a Fractured Age,” the whole series seems suddenly more relevant.

The idea of a fall series itself is relatively young—the first one took place in fall 2014 and covered the 100th anniversary of the start of World War I. Since then, each fall the faculty at MMU has presented a series of public lectures by MMU professors and guest speakers on various big topics. We covered the legacy of the Vietnam War in 2015 and the debate over immigration in 2016.

I coordinated those first three series. Now, the series is under the leadership of Dr. Joy Ochs, professor of English and immediate past chair of the faculty. So this year, I get to watch rather than getting caught up in all of the details of putting on the series. That’s good news, not fake news, to me

On Sept. 7, I am taking on the topic “Fake News and the Free Press,” a rumination that will cover the president’s use of that pejorative term vs the traditional role of the press as a vital part of our democracy.

I am looking forward to this fall’s faculty series. I hope you’ll come hear me try to illuminate and explore the idea of fake news and what it means, and that you’ll also come to our many other speakers. We’re covering important topics that need to be talked about in our country now.

No faking.

Make Me A Robot—Amelia 2.0 is Compelling Movie

Art used on movie poster, from Facebook page for the movie.

“Make me a robot, take, take my soul.” Tessa Violet.

I had hoped to go to the premiere of the movie “Amelia 2.0” at Collins Road Theater, but did not make it. But I did see the film Aug. 10, when my wife and I attended the 4:50 p.m. show.

At the showing, there was a fairly small audience, and that seems a bit of a shame. “Amelia 2.0” is a well done, compelling movie the raises life and death questions. From a play produced in Cedar Rapids called “The Summerland Project,” “Amelia 2.0” tells the story of Amelia Summerland, a woman who dies of a brain aneurysm. But as she slips away in a coma, a high tech corporation, with HQ in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, makes Amelia’s husband an offer.

Sign a nondisclosure form and medical release, and we’ll scan your wife’s brain into a robot.

That’s the vehicle for the movie to explore basic questions. What does it mean to be human? If thoughts of a human brain could be mechanically reproduced, would the machine have a soul? If you could preserve the consciousness of a loved one in a robot, would you?

The answers are neither simple nor straightforward, and different characters in the movie are allowed to react in different ways. For example, there is a conservative senator from Iowa who leads a crusade against the project—but he’s not an evil character at all. He has decent motivations, and his own mortality is an important plot point. One of the scientists working on the project basically falls in love with Amelia, even though he helped create her as a robot. Her husband ends up not being to accept that she’s human, while one of her creators develops feelings for her as if she were.

And maybe she is. The movie steers away from presenting a final answer. It’s the same question posed by Robert Heinlein in what I think of as his best book, “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.” If a machine can think and feel emotions, is there a point where it’s no longer a machine?

Given the nature of the “Amelia 2.0” story, it seemed inevitable to me that the project would go wrong. Frankenstein didn’t exactly have a happy ending. This movie is a tragedy in a classic Shakespearean sense.

Anyway, if you haven’t seen it, I urge you to do so. And I hope the popularity of the movie will spread. I hope future showings at Collins Road will be packed. You’ll see some familiar faces—the movie stars some actors that have been in major films—and it’s nice that local actor Angela Billman moved from the play “The Sutherland Project” to play Amelia is “Amelia 2.0.” The Gazette reviewer enjoyed this film, too.

It was also fun to Cedar Rapids on the big screen. There was a movie of that title (“Cedar Rapids”) several years ago that was cringe worthy, and seeing the city in a movie of more depth was nice. The cameo by Mercy Medical Center and the Cedar Rapids Public Library as key locations was fun to watch. And I did like the embedded plug for TCR.

But I would have liked the movie, I think, if it had been filmed in Madison, Wisconsin, or Austin, Texas. As a narrative, it holds together well and provokes many reactions. Don’t go thinking that you’ll see a light comedy. Do go, expecting to see a compelling story.

Thanks for the family memories, Harry Potter

Image from Wikipedia.

I am a little late to the party, but here’s to 20 years of Harry Potter.

We were living in a tiny town in western Iowa when the novels started coming out. I am not sure how or why we heard of the series, and my wife says she bought the first and second books at the same time, but the novels quickly became a family affair. My wife and I and our kids all read them—indeed, the first few were read aloud to children too young to read them for themselves (or, perhaps, just wanting to hear them read even if they had already read them).

And we bought into the whole hoopla that started to spring up when new installments were published. While we never stayed up overnight in a book line, it always was a bit of a saga to locate the latest installment as soon as possible.

For one of the books, my wife was working second shift as a hospital nurse, and stopped at an all-night grocery store after work. The store was already stocking for the next day—release day—and put out a display of the new Harry Potter book, which my wife purchased two copies of.

The next morning, the kids were very excited that we already had the book.

There developed a bit of a family system for Harry Potter. My oldest daughter and son were “first readers” because they read relatively quickly. My son sometimes would stay up all night and devour a HP book in one massive read fest.

I was always at the back of the line—I am a writer and a reader, but I read like I ride a bicycle. I enjoy it and do it a lot, but I do it slowly.

The series was to our family what baseball was to the father and son in “Field of Dreams.” It was something that united us across generations, a shared cultural experience that was exciting to all of us.

I respect the series on several levels. For one thing, an enduring theme of the Harry Potter universe is that it’s not usually your nature that makes you good or evil, but rather it’s the choices that you make.

The series is responsible for many happy memories for me and my family. Cuddling up together in the evening as a family to hear JK Rowling’s stories is one. There was also the sharing and discussion of the latest book—and the thrill of secret conversations that have to be carefully gauged until, finally, dad read the darn thing.

During one Freedom Fest in Cedar Rapids, my youngest son and I (we must have been at the end of the line) were photographed by “The Gazette” as we awaited a fireworks display at Kirkwood Community College. We were reclining together on a blanket, reading one of later installments of the series.

Harry Potter! To me, you are always first and foremost a book series. It would be sad to know you only via the movies, and I’m glad you were there as I was raising a family of readers. For almost a decade, the hoopla around your books helped make reading cool. That wasn’t so important to my bookish brood, who enjoyed many other books, too—but still.

You were the boy who lived in our imaginations, on the pages we read and as part of our family experience.

So thank you, JK. This muggle is glad that you shared your imaginary world with us. Twenty years—hard to imagine it has been that long.

July 4 addition: After I posted this, my youngest daughter found a copy of the photo from the Gazette. I was (based on the book I was reading) published in 2003:

The son in the foreground is now in his mid-20s and getting a PhD at ISU. Three of my other children are also in the image. The son in the picture looks like an older version of his youngest nephew (and also his oldest nephew). Come to think of it, a bit like older versions of his other nephews, too.

And Another Reporter "Badgers" A Politician

I don’t know what will happen to assault charges against Greg Gianforte, who was elected to the U.S. House in a special vote Thursday despite body slamming reporter Ben Jacobs of “The Guardian” on Wednesday, but the case is yet another sign of the sorry state of democracy in America today.

We like to think we’re a free people in a free country. Sadly, today, we’re wrong.

Violent thugs are attacking journalists merely for being journalists. A conservative Republican in Montana body slams a reporter for asking about the impact of a Republican health care plan This week, I wrote my media column for The Corridor Business Journal on a related topic—taking my House Rep., Rod Blum, to task for walking out on a TV reporter, after claiming that the reporter was “just going to sit there and badger me.”

And the badger language came back in Montana. If a reporter asks a question, then they “badger,” and, apparently, it’s OK to physically attack badgers.

This is not a reporter. And reporters are not this.
From: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Badger(UO).jpg

This new violent ugliness is dangerous to democracy in its basic sense. It represents a particular and troubling attempt by the right wing of American politics to strong arm the news media.

Now, I don’t think all Republicans are ready to resort to the kind of thuggish behavior exhibited by Greg Gianforte. Frankly, even Greg Gianforte doesn’t want that behavior. While his campaign regrettably tried to attack the reporter’s version of the story, even though it had been supported by others who were there, Gianforte himself at least had the class to apologize directly to the reporter in his victory speech.

His victory speech—that’s right, in America today you can attack a journalists and win an election in Montana.

Watch the video of Gianforte’s apology. The scary part is that even as Gianforte apologizes, his supporters are riled up and seem ready for a rematch. There’s a real “go punch another reporter” spirit in the air.

The reporter, Ben Jacobs, doesn’t go along with those who blame President Trump for this climate—he notes in a video posted by the Guardian that he covered the Trump campaign for 18 months and was never threatened by the candidate. But Trump’s clear labeling of journalists as “enemies of the people” has real consequences that we are seeing unfold.

Now, if you’re on the right, you might note that conservatives haven’t always had it easy, either. University thugs have refused to allow conservative speakers on some campuses—mostly notable, Ann Coulter recently at UC Berkeley. And I would agree that what happened at UC Berkeley should not have happened. Ann Coulter is a pretty loathsome human being and has said some pretty near fascist things—but her voice should not be silenced.

There are some key differences between these cases, however. It’s one thing for a conservative pundit to be prevented from speaking by unruly college students or community activists. It’s quite another for a middle-aged adult who is just about to be elected to Congress to body slam a reporter.

I don’t like the threats that keep Coulter away from UC Berkley, and I do see them as part of the thread of cultural intolerance that bedevils both the political left and political right in this country.

Loud and clear: I want the freedom to say what I want to say. You should be able to, too, even if you’re in visceral and total disagreement with what I say. But we should agree together that we should both be free to disagree.

I say enough of the shoving and shouting. Let us each have our say.

But most of all, Mr. President and others on the right: No more rhetorical or physical threats of violence on reporters, please. That’s authoritarian thuggery. That’s getting to Brown Shirt levels of discourse.

If you run for public office—at any level—in this democracy, you should expect, and respond to, questions from all kinds of reporters. It’s a basic obligation you have to talk with people and with the media. Communicating without violence is the least we can expect from our public servants.

The First Amendment exists not to protect politicians from questions, it exists more to protect the questioners. The scary crowd at Greg Gianforte’s victory party is deeply anti-American.

Not a Republican flag. Nor a Democratic one. It's for us all, as is First Amendment freedoms.
Image I shot on my front porch. Someone flies a flag there.

The new slogan of “The Washington Post” is “democracy dies in darkness.” Sadly, in America today, it’s us, our people, who are throwing shade by threatening, and going beyond threats, to attack journalists.

Mr. Trump, it wasn’t a “great victory” in Montana. Not for democracy.

It feels more like the start of a whimpering end to the American democratic experiment.

Sad.

Bill: Sorry I’m Not Sorry

Photo credit: By Justin Hoch, CC BY 2.0,
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=16673668

Bill O’Reilly is gone from Fox, but probably not gone from our public discourse. My reaction is summed up by the title of my favorite Tessa Violet song: “Sorry I’m Not Sorry.”

O’Reilly was accused by multiple women of sexual harassment at the locker room men’s network known as Fox News. And advertisers didn’t like being associated with a tainted Papa Bear, so they pulled the plug.

I am not sorry to see him go. But, with a multi-million-dollar severance payment and plenty of access to the internet, I don’t think he’s really gone. And I think the O’Reilly case has multiple levels to it.

It was simply a business decision for Fox. His firing wasn’t for any of his misconduct, but because advertisers didn’t want to be on his show—and there is a problem there. O’Reilly worked for the cable news network that was founded with an ideological mission. It was part of an alternative media system that isn’t based on reporting news, but rather on promoting a particular world view.

YouTube Thumbnail.

As Hank the Vlog brother says, it’s cheaper to have nattering heads paid to have different points of view than to engage in serious journalism, and O’Reilly’s huge cable audience was symptomatic of a public shift away from rational, fact-based journalism.

O’Reilly may be gone from Fox. But the alt-right media universe that Fox helped create and that O’Reilly was a star of has morphed into something dangerous, and his being fired doesn’t really change that.

Two commentators that I like and read in my local paper, Leonard Pitts of the Miami Herald and Mary Sanchez of the Kansas City Star had interesting columns on O’Reilly’s Fox departure. They have different reactions, although I find myself agreeing with both. Sanchez, I think, makes an important point: the male sense of entitlement that helped create the O’Reilly affair is not gone.

Kudos to Emily Steele of the “New York Times,” whose stories helped bring Bill down. She was threatened by Papa Bear back in 2015 but kept going. We owe her a debt because she didn’t back down.

And we ought to thank her because she is part of the old school news media that actually tries to report the news. Unlike Fox.

Horray and Boo: Iowa Wins a Pulitzer

From Pulitzer.org--the prize.

Well, it’s a great day to be a journalism professor in Iowa. It’s not every day someone wins a Pulitzer Prize and I get to say: “Hey, I know that guy.”

I lived in Early Iowa, a small town 15 miles south of Storm Lake, in the 1990s. I can’t honestly say I subscribed to The Storm Lake Times for all of those years—but for much of my residency there, I was a Times reader.

And now Art Cullen, the Iowa newspaper editor most likely to be mistaken for Mark Twain, has won the Pulitzer Prize for journalism for editorial writing. Bravo.

A journalist's mission to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. Cullen wrote his prize-winning editorials about the lawsuit between the Des Moines Water Works and agricultural counties, including Buena Vista in northwest Iowa, that pollute the Des Moines River, the source of drinking water for Iowa’s largest urban area, due to the county's agricultural runoff.

Cullen spoke with the Sioux City Journal about the importance of small-town journalism in a video report that I hope you will watch.

The Des Moines Register made a video of its own, too—but despite being flashier, it lacks something without Art speaking in it.

From the Iowa Center for Public Affairs Journalism, Art or Mark.
Photo by Allison Bradley for IowaWatch.org.

I stated before that Art Cullen looks a little like Mark Twain. He’s like Twain in a bit more than looks. Twain was, in his time, an acerbic critic of social norms. Recall the prayer he wrote in 1905 ("The War Prayer") that was a harsh satire of war prayers in general. We sometimes make the mistake of thinking of Twain as a warm, fuzzy storyteller—when in fact he was a clear-eyed curmudgeon, and could be sarcastic.

Cullen doesn’t mince words, either. See his editorials. As he noted, anybody with a nose knows there’s something wrong with water in Iowa. And Cullen is a fierce progressive voice in the extreme conservative King country of western Iowa.

The Storm Lake Times is a family business. In news accounts of the Pulitzer Prize, Art Cullen credits his son Tom Cullen as a co-winner of the prize because the son’s reporting fueled the father's editorials. Art Cullen also says his brother John Cullen, who founded the Times, taught Art Cullen to write.

Well, congratulations Art Cullen. You proved that good, clear, strong writing can come from a newspaper of any size, and you did something that should make Iowans proud.

But even as we celebrate, we need to recall hard realities.

The Iowa legislature is controlled by a virulently conservative Republican party. Terry Branstad is still governor, soon to be replaced by his GOP Lt. Gov. Kim Reynolds. Donald Trump recenlty appointed an EPA chief who in the past has sued the EPA, and Trump's administration shows no taste for environmental regulation.

The only power that can change the rules to stop the pollution that caused the dust up that led to a Pulitzer Prize is government—and right now, government doesn’t seem to care much about pollution.

Yes, I know, Governor Branstad made a halfhearted try last year to fund an inadequate plan to reduce water pollution, but it was killed by his own party. Rights now, Republicans at the state and federal level are in no mood to tackle any pollution, whether the result is dirty water or global warming.

The big story that the Cullens have been telling is not that a Des Moines water utility sued Buena Vista County. Nor even who paid for the county to defend itself.

After all, that lawsuit has already been dismissed.

No, the big story is that nitrates are still today leaking into Iowa water, poisoning not just Des Moines but also small towns. And a dead zone grows in the Gulf of Mexico as chemicals from Iowa farm fields make their way downstream.

In recent decades, farming as an industry has changed in ways that are not sustainable nor compatible with our collective health and well-being. And, while we can wag our fingers at farmers, they are, for the most part, just a part of a giant system whose rules they don’t set and whose trends push them to this style of fertilizer-intense farming. And farmers are facing tough economic times. Farm incomes have been hit hard as commodity prices fall—and as nitrogen is pumped into the soil, as the waters grow poisoned, and as Iowa slowly turns foul and unhealthy.

As Cullen noted, anybody with eyes and a nose knows.

That’s a big story. It’s not a pleasant one. We need brave journalists like Art Cullen to continue to tell it, even when we don’t want to hear it.

Congratulations to the Cullen clan on being recognized for their good journalism. And please get back to work.

What Makes a Good Photo?

My favorites of my photos in the contest--San Francisco Public Library stairs (above), mural in Haight-Ashbury neighborhood, below.

The contest is now closed, and the winner is Audrey Sheller.

When my wife and I visited San Francisco over spring break, she, our oldest son and I decided to have a little fun with photos. We would each pick 10 pictures shot during the week, which would be anonymously posted in the same gallery on Facebook.

Then, we would invite our family and friends to “vote” via Facebook reactions (2 points for love, 1 for any other reaction, 1 for any mention in a comment). You can look and like all you want now, although the voting for the contest is over.

We would have two winners: The one who shot the best overall picture, and the one whose set of 10 scored the highest.

Audrey Sheller won them both. In fact, she had the two first place photos (a tie between a Waldo Street sign and a door with googly eyes) and the next place image, a rainbow flag.

The winners--door with eyes (above) and Waldo Street (below).

The winners earned 10 points, the next place (second or third—two images finished higher, but it had the second-highest score) had 9 points.

Two of my son’s images scored 7 points each.  My highest score was a 6.

The overall point race winner is not a huge surprise. Audrey Sheller was first with 59, next came Jon Sheller with 46 and finally, me with 35.

A crowd favorite, 9 point winner. Rainbow flag from Castro District.

I don’t feel terrible at the results. The “jury” was not professional photographers, and it’s clear emotion played a part in the voting. The top images both feature whimsy. I do think my library stair shot is way more of a made image, but humor counts in this poll.

Here is a list of the photos in the order they appear in the gallery (they were randomly sorted before being posted), who took each, and their scores:

Tree and city hall, Joe, 6.
Clarion Alley images, Audrey, 2.
Waldo Street sign, Audrey, 10.
Golden Gate Bridge, Audrey, 4.
Googly Eye Door, Audrey, 10.
Stars, Jon, 7.
Flower, sky, building, Joe, 6.
Painted ladies full view, Audrey, 6.
Canoe in museum, Joe, 1.
Cable Car museum, Joe, 2.
Lanterns in Chinatown, Audrey, 7.
Pushing cable car, Joe, 4.
Goblen Gate Bridge from levy, Jon, 5.
Park trail, Audrey, 2.
Lombard Street, Jon, 5.
Listen to wall, Jon, 7.
White flower, Jon, 5.
Church in distance, Jon, 4.
Castro, Jon, 5.
Flowers in her hair, Joe, 5.
Sun Dial, Audrey, 2.
Blue hair on garage door, Joe, 1.
Rainbow flag, Audrey, 9.
Haight Ashbury street sign, Jon, 1.
Park stairs, Audrey, 7.
Library stairs, Joe, 6.
Duck, Jon, 3.
Painted ladies skyline closer, Joe, 3.
Cable Car machines, Joe, 1.
Downtown skyline, Jon, 4.

I stopped the count Friday and didn’t include one accidental “like” from Audrey for her own photo (it happened on an iPad, and I understand how clumsy that device is with Facebook and that an accidental like is just an errant finger tap). If a photo was specifically referenced in an overall gallery comment, that comment was awarded to that photo, by the way.

Two images by Jon--yes, the one flower image in the contest was not by me. Flower from Botanical Garden (above) and Lombard Street (below).

Here are other pictures I shot during the week we were in San Francisco. It was a fun contest. It shows, I think, how important subject choice is for photos. We did know when we were shooting that week, at least by mid-week, that the contest was going on, so I can’t fault Audrey for picking the wittiest images.

And yet, Jon and I are the ones who teach photography. Go figure.

Some under-rated images, in my opinion. I just thought the image above felt like a nature shot, even though it is the giant engines that run the cable car system.

San Francisco City Hall and a trimmed tree from plaza by City Hall.

Oh come on, world. It's got sky, flower and building. Winner!

Even our champion was a bit stumped by some of the voting. I think we all agreed this was a cool image Audrey shot in Chinatown, but it did not score very high in the contest.

YouTube: From Buffy to Tessa

I am thinking about YouTube, which has been around for a bit more than decade.

I wrote my latest Corridor Business Journal column about a local news show, “Ethical Perspectives on the News.” It’s a show recorded by and aired on KCRG-Channel 9 in Cedar Rapids, but because the show was recently moved to 5:30 a.m. on Sundays, I find it easier to catch the show on YouTube.

The show, sponsored by the Inter Religious Council of Linn County, is posted after its first airing. As I write this, today’s show is already on line.

Anyway, I was a bit proud of my March CBJ column simply because it represented two cool realities: 1) It was a last-minute rush job before I flew out to San Francisco for spring break, and as such, I am glad it came together, and 2) I managed to work in “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.” I’ve seen a lot of YouTube highlights from Buffy lately, tied to the show’s 20th anniversary. There are some good highlights reels out there, but one genre is the fan video where Buffy scenes are used to illustrate some popular song. Like this one.

Crop of screen shot from video linked above--final seconds of final Buffy episode. As she thinks about the end of her life as a slayer, Butty is about to break into a series-ending grin.

It got me thinking of online video as a new medium. Of course, like “Ethical Perspectives,” YouTube can represent simply posting material from some other medium.

Then again, there is original content. I follow a number of channels on YouTube—some associated with programs I like but don’t have time to watch. I see highlights of Steven Colbert’s CBS program, for example.

I also follow the Vlog Brothers, one of whom is also active on the channel SciShow, which I also follow.

Besides those, I’ve been listening to a fair number of frothy pop songs from a young lady named Tessa Violet, who first came to YouTube fame by lip synching other people’s songs and vlogging about her life, and now has moved on to writing and performing her own songs in YouTube music videos.

YouTube thumbnail for Tessa Violet's "Sorry I'm not Sorry" video. I also used "Baby I'm Not Over You" on my bike blog.

I am particularly fond of “Sorry I’m not Sorry,” a song about a woman who refuses to stay in a bad relationship. I kind of like that message, and it’s a catchy song.

So I’m on a bit of a personal mission to make Tessa Violet a star beyond YouTube. We'll see if this blog post gets the ball rolling. That’s a joke, of course. Unlike Tessa’s fan base—she has 1 million YouTube followers—my blog audience is small

Still, I am interested in what the online video medium means.

In particular, who in Iowa or the Cedar Rapids area is creating interesting, original videos that are shared via YouTube or some other online video service?

Readers, do you have any suggestions?

When In Doubt, Shout It Out

Trump advisers meet to talk media strategy.
OK, Wikimedia commons Pinnochios.

Or, are we just a chump for Trump?

The Russia-Trump investigation, as far as I can tell, doesn’t yet lead to a Watergate-style constitutional crisis. Yet. But the current POTUS seems to be trying to push it there with all his might.

A thoughtless pugilist by nature, an apparent bully who only knows to punch back without much regard for nuance, rules or facts—Donald Trump’s way of operating is to deny and dissemble. It’s a characteristic of his inner circle—think of every Kellyanne Conway media interview you’ve ever seen. Ask yourself: When has she given a straight answer to a hard question?

Instead, she diverts by changing the topic. “Why isn’t the media talking about the terrible banana blight and the future of American breakfasts” she replies to some question on the budget or Russia or travel bans or anything of substance.

I totally just made that up. Or did I? Maybe I just learned it’s true. You see, I read it on the internet. Right after I typed it.

The Tweet. And who are the more than 150,000 who "liked?"

Trump uses Twitter the same way Conway uses a media interview—not to reveal, but to obscure. He’s the octopus of Twitter, squirting noxious ink. See what he did Saturday: Are federal investigators getting a bit too close to your inner circle for comfort? Well, that Obama. You know what he did? He put a tapp on me, so hard I had to use two P’s. He’s a tappper. A bad hombre. Congress: If you’re investigating—you must investigate him. Obama and the Trump Tower caper—it’s the biggest hot mess since Pompeii.

Except, it’ isn’t. There’s no “there” there. Cue the fact checkers: Politifact. Factcheck. Washington Post. OK, to be fair, Politifact was debunking the White House defense of Trump's crazy remark—I can only assume they considered the original Tweet too crazy to warrant a fact check.

Trump seems to have “learned” he had been wire tapped the way he learns about everything—not from credible sources, but from his own bizarre right-wing echo chamber. The temptation is to laugh and move on.

White House image of Trump last week talking to Congress.
We trust the Higher Power. We don't trust the Trump.

And yet, there is method to Trump’s deeply disturbing madness.

Trump is doing it again. A travel ban 2.0 came out today. Much of the good work of environmental regulation and global warming research at the federal level is in danger of drying up like Nebraska in a drought. There’s so much going on, so much that is tragic or scary or just plain wrong—and yet we’re tied up in knots over Trump Tower wiretaps that didn’t exist.

Way to go, DJT, master media octopus, you put more ink into the water.

Still, in my heart, I think the country is growing a bit weary and wary of this. If all you do is lie and divert, then eventually you just look small, petty and pointless.

Trump’s Dangerous Attack on “Fake” News

CNN home page Feb. 25--after CNN was excluded from White House briefing.

Shouts of adulation greeted President Trump’s strange CPAC speech Friday, a speech that chillingly included his continued assault on what he calls “fake” news.

And then, the same day, the White House excluded certain news outlets from a daily briefing. The excluded outlets included The New York Times, CNN, the Los Angeles Times, the BBC and POLITICO.

In his Friday speech, Trump in one breath mocked the media for worrying about the fate of the First Amendment—which he said nobody loves more than himself—and then says use of anonymous sources should “not be allowed.”

Trump can’t seem to understand himself. It’s true that many past presidents awarded favorable news coverage with media access, and excluded unfavorable outlets. It’s also true that the Obama administration had a bad reputation for secrecy and pursuing leaks. But Trump’s call for specific practices to be “not allowed” or calling some of the most mainstream news sources “enemies” goes beyond anything I’ve seen before.

It’s chilling. It’s un-American, to quote CNN's Jake Tapper  (although he was talking about the White House exclusion and not the CPAC speech--but I think the same thinking applies). It’s dangerous to democracy.

And it comes from a President who himself can’t tell fact from fiction. Fact check sites lit up like Christmas trees trying to chase after the strange falsehoods in the Friday speech of the President who decries “fake” news.

Among the fake lines in President Trump’s speech:

• He claimed the media dropped the word “fake” from reports about his tweet attack last week, in which he said “The FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @NBC, @ABC, @CNN) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American people.” News reports in all of those outlets quoted the President’s bizarre rant in its entirety, so the supposed exclusion of “fake” was itself fake.

• He claimed he got “many” votes from Bernie Sanders supporters. Well, I supposed that depends on how you define “many,” there certainly were Sanders supporters who voted for Trump, but The New York Times reported that number appeared to range from 3 percent to 13 percent (the variance is because the only data on this point comes from polls, and those with third party candidates included had dramatically different results). It’s a stretch to call that “many.” And since Trump doesn’t believe polls and polls are the only data on this point—where can his information possibly come from?

• He claimed the polls all got the election wrong. In fact, Hillary Clinton won the popular vote, as polls predicted. Three key states swung Trump’s way and gave him a narrow Electoral College victory, but that hardly de-legitimizes all polls. And Trump has continued to lie about the elections results, falsely blaming his vote loss on cheating, and staking claim to some grand Electoral College mandate that doesn’t exist outside of his imagination.

• He said the Affordable Care Act took healthcare away from people. Most estimates are that about 20 million Americans gained coverage due to the ACA. Some people did lose their previous plans, but the number of insured American grew dramatically—the uninsured rate dropped to a historic low under the law.

I checked PolitiFact.com, the Washington Post’s fact check site and the New York Times fact check story on Trump’s speech. All had similar long lists of Trump lies. The list of lies above comes mostly from the Times.

You could ignore the list because you think it comes from the “fake” news media. But that means that you’re buying into a delusional and false world view represented by the current liar-in-chief.

Look, I would not claim there is not bias in the media. Certainly, as a group, people who work at large metropolitan media outlets are more liberal than the country as a whole—but that has a lot to do with an education bias. More educated people, as a group, are more liberal than the population as a whole. And journalism as a profession, for various cultural reasons, has always attracted many people with a liberal bent.

But political bias isn’t not the same as “fake.” Unlike Trump, the New York Times takes great effort to verify the facts it reports.

I think it’s OK to worry about political bias in the media, but to me, the greater problem is fact bias among the public. Too many tune out because they're convinced the media lie, especially when that's the consistent message from the Trump camp.

But, Trump—most of us know you lie. Pretty much whenever your lips are moving. And you’ve embarked on a dangerous path—a road that doesn’t lead to democracy, but that is tinged with authoritarianism. The “fake” media are free under the First Amendment, because the founders believed an independent press was necessary for a democracy.

And you don’t seem to get it.

We salute with pride the same American flag. That flag stands for freedom. Your petulant lying attacks on media that you don’t like because they report unpleasant truths about your failing administration do not promote that freedom, but run counter to it.

Sure, your lies are protected the same First Amendment, but all of us have a right to call you on them, too. In my heart, I believe that the flag waves for honest journalists who won’t be intimidated by you.

Some New Student Blog Posts Of Note

Do I have to try Tumblr now? I teach several writing courses in which I require students to maintain personal blogs.

My rationale is that someone who aspires to be a professional communicator needs to be comfortable with sharing personal insights on a regular basis—and blogging is an overt way to publicly do that and also get used to the idea of regularly performing the art of writing before the world.

Blogging exposes the young writer to the possibility of abuse, unfortunately—the internet can be a harsh place—but also the possibility of unexpected success.

In my class, most students gravitated to blogger, although one young woman set her flag into the island of Tumblr. She didn’t exactly claim it as her own, but I guess she did stake out a little territory in that new land.

I’ll be watching with interest to see what develops in the blogosphere. In the meantime, her are just a few of what I consider to be the top student posts:

• “An insight of mine” has a somewhat awkward title, but I found the post to be very engaging and interesting. I don’t know if this blogger will maintain this interesting voice of writing nonfiction like it was short story fiction, but we’ll see. The post is clearly heartfelt, and I like it because of that.
• There is a very different tone in this post. The video was indeed interesting, and the student takes on a trip with her. I encourage students to make their blogs visually interesting, and this one example.
• So is this. The rule of cocktail party etiquette is that, when making chitchat with strangers, you don’t discuss politics or religion. This post on this visually interesting blog is a two-fer—it right away violates both of the cocktail party rules. But it’s such clear and direct writing, we’ll take it.

Other students had interesting blog posts, too, and I’ll try to feature more as the semester goes on.  Keep on writing, students. I anxiously await what you come up with.

Is It Safe to be Back on the Grid?

Not sure how to use this thing. I need my 5-year-old granddaughter to visit.

 More than a year ago, we cancelled our cable TV.

The first-year price deal was gone, and the rate hikes were pretty bad. The TV provider also provided our land-line phone and internet service—and we decided that: A) Even old people don’t need land lines and B) Why are we paying that much for internet service when other providers are less expensive?

So, we bid Mediacom farewell, and, frankly, after the breakup we haven’t missed our ex at all.

But our new internet service provider changed rates for the new year, again after that first honeymoon year was over. Fortunately, they didn’t jack up the rates so badly that we were going to shop around again—and, oddly, the price change included an unexpected deal.

For X a month, you can access Facebook and WordPress and Blogger. For X plus $5 a month, you can also add DIRECTV.

Well, OK. In the past, again when the cable era was ending, we had thought about various satellite options—but we have a jungle to our south. Our yard includes mature oaks, a giant maple tree near the house and a young tulip poplar that is already rivaling it’s much older arbor competitors in height.

My wife pays the bills and texted me about the TV offer. I replied that I thought it was a good price, but I wondered if we would be able to have a dish installed given the treescape.

She said the person she spoke with at DIRECTV said it should not be a problem. I wondered if that were true, but said “OK.”

So today, the Satellite Guy showed up. “Do you have a dish?” he asked. “No,” I said. “OK,” he said, and then we wandered into the backyard. And he looked up and looked a little discouraged.

“Those are some big trees,” he said.

But then he went into the front yard and figured out that at the extreme northwestern edge of our roof, there is a tiny window of open southern sky, apparently allowing the satellite signal through. And so, DIRECTV has been installed.

Up in the sky! Neither bird nor plane. Dish.

Just in time.

What an odd media week this was. I am struggling, a bit, with what to write about for my Corridor Business Journal media column this weekend—it’s supposed to be about local media, but honestly, my thoughts and attention have been mostly national.

The week included Meryl Streep at the Golden Globes, and some of the predictable right-wing reaction that “you Hollywood leftists should entertain us and shut up about politics.” That reaction has a bit of a point, because I agree entertainers often speak out politically in ways that feel childish or trite, but Streep wasn’t talking about policy so much as she was taking Trump to task for being, publicly, an appalling communicator—in short, she was speaking in her area of expertise. And, even if she supported Clinton, on this particular subject she was spot on.

Next this week came Obama’s farewell address. It was a little weird, staged as it was in a big Chicago venue—it harkens back to the kind of rally that POTUS held in 2008 when he was first running to be elected. I think he was smart in a way to go with that kind of place because it’s where he is at his best—somehow, playing to a large crowd relaxes him and helps him break out of his often too-stiff persona. It was a powerful, thoughtful speech, and he made some important points about media. We indeed are seeing our democracy threatened by competing media walled gardens that have subdivided the marketplace of ideas.

Wow. It was only Tuesday. And the POTUS-elect hadn’t even yet had his press conference.

And then Trump did. It was awful. I’m not trying to make a political point here—but his demeanor, arrogance, the way in which the press was crowded into his lobby and berated by his own supporters—it may have been effective, it probably did inspire his insipid storm troopers, but it was truly horrible. It was authentic Trump in his repulsive splendor. It was almost heartbreaking to compare the grace and class of President Obama speaking with the petulance and bullying of President-elect Trump.

I mean, really. I felt myself ready to hurl at my computer a couple of times. Trump says he could run his business and be president, and he is the only person who could? It seems he can’t he go on for more than a few inarticulate sentences without spouting shameless nonsense.

And his defense of the obscene behavior he was alleged to have engaged in while in Moscow? That “there are cameras everywhere.” And he doesn’t like germs. His denial was weird and left me wondering how he acts when he thinks that there aren’t cameras around (yeah, I know, we’ve already had some evidence on this point). Even when Trump is correct—and I am not going to defend Buzzfeed for what they released—he can’t help but also be awful.

Well, I viewed the very Putinesque press conference online, not on TV. Streep I caught on YouTube. And the POTUS speech I watched on TV at the gym.

Now, I could watch them all at home on the big screen.

I must admit it’s a bit too easy to curb my enthusiasm. One week before Trump takes office, and I’m ready to view the new post-democracy era in America in HD TV in my own basement.

Yippee.