Sandy Hook

Monday, December 17, 2012

I'll try to make this, my last blog for a while, short and sweet.

What happened in Newtown, CT, on Friday, has brought how events cause us to think about events and politics to the forefront. And I feel at a loss for words. Or at least, I don't feel that I have anything to add to the conversation. Not yet. Or perhaps I'm merely reluctant. It seems that everywhere across the country, we just want to get through this weekend. This holiday season. This year. We want to pick up the pieces. And then we want to figure out what fatal flaw is antagonizing our nation. And we'll disagree. But that's politics.

I won't include any photos or links in today's blog. I'm not seeking to put together a "Top Ten Most Depressing Pictures" album or anything like that. We've seen them. On the news. On Facebook. And if there's any topic that I mention in this blog, feel free to google it. Anyway, these pictures follow the trends we've seen. Aurora. Columbine. Even September 11th. However, there's something different about this one. Something is making the country want to talk. I don't know if it's because these kids were so young. Or because the act seems so nonsensical. Or because so many such tragedies of this scale have happened during the Obama presidency. Conversations are developing. I'll list them here.

• Our obsession with the image and identity of the murderer. Ever since Columbine, and perhaps even before that, there has been the concept of the celebrity mass shooter. The moment a shooting happens, we want to see the face of who did it. It's getting to the point that if we had our way, we'd want to know the persons name, and get a picture of their face on CNN, even before the shooting was confirmed over. After Sandy Hook, people have awakened to there being something wrong about this. This has come from two sources. First, from people confusing the murderer from his older brother after major news networks started distributing screenshots from the brother's Facebook page. And second, how we celebritize the shooter, in spite of the victims. This happened after a viral Facebook thread started circulating, which was (wrongly) attributed to Morgan Freeman. It spoke to how we need to stop looking up the murderer's name. Stop searching for a picture of his face. Don't give these murderers the attention that they expect, even crave. Still. I fully suspect that there will be that one famous image of the murderer that all the major news networks use. It's been that way for every shooting I can recall. It won't change now. We need an image of someone to blame. Otherwise we feel that we won't know who to stop next time. Even if we can't stop them.
• Guns. Guns, and images of guns, and types of guns, and gun laws, and legal guns, and illegal guns, and the meaning of guns, are once again part of the national conversation. And with that has come the even more testy topic of when is it ok to talk about gun control. After Aurora and the murder/suicide that happened in Kansas City on December 1st, there was much outcry about politicians and journalists using these tragic circumstances to try to talk about gun control laws while communities and families were still grieving. This was especially true after Bob Costas read a statement about gun control during the halftime of the Kansas City Chiefs game that followed the murder there. But what has occurred at Sandy Hook has caused an outcry, and it looks like if there's ever going to be presumably necessary gun control talks, they're going to happen now.
• This is related to the above topic, but politicizing the dead. Using the existence of dead bodies to force political conversations. Is it ethical? Is it unethical to do nothing? 
• And finally, mental health. What drives someone to do something like this; to target those who have obviously done you no harm? We've tried to try to rationalize shootings as the work of the angered, the outsider, the terrorist, or the criminal. Now it seems that the real talk is about how do mentally unstable people fit in to our nicely constructed categories. Or are all murders unstable. Or are there no categories. 

Images, from photos, to memorials, to memes, will surface around these categories, and perhaps even new categories. I will report on them, if it feels acceptable. As if any of this can ever feel acceptable.

This is my last post for the semester. Check back every once and again, especially if there seems to be a big story in the news, or an interesting political image going around. Or, you know, if you see one of my Post-it notes somewhere (cause that's still a thing). Also, later this spring, I will be presenting my Post It Politics work at the Honors Humanities symposium, and perhaps even making the scholarly side of my work public in some fashion (Does that make me a scholar? A meme scholar? How quaint). So I'll let you know about that when the time comes.

For now, please, give someone you love a hug. And have a joyous transition into the new year. May it be full of friends and family and other people that you like.

So long

(wow, this blog stopped being short and sweet a while ago...)

@Post_It_2012

Kim Jong-Un: The Creation of Image Personalities

Monday, December 10, 2012

Today I'd like to delve a little deeper into the realms of personality politics. (I know. It's surprising. Somehow in a blog primarily concerned about campaigns we haven't said everything that could possibly be said about personality politics already.) I would like to do this by focusing in on Kim Jong-un and the news that he has been making lately. Wait, except, it's not exactly him that's making the news. Alright, stay tuned. You'll see.

As most of you probably know, Kim Jong-un is the supreme leader of North Korea, succeeding his father Kim Jong-il after his death in December 2011. The internet almost immediately took a "liking" to Jong-un. Memes, cartoons, satire of every kind sprung up about the young ruler, a sampling of which (along with some background info) can be viewed here. Maybe it has to do with his chubby, boy-like demeanor, which juxtaposes so nicely with one of the most brutal, totalitarian regimes of the modern era. The carryover from Kim Jong-il and his cult of personality, and the comedy that resulted from that didn't help. I would especially like to direct your attention to kimjongillookingatthings.tumblr.com, which is exactly what it sounds like. Pictures of Kim Jong-il observing the products of his industrious (?) nation. In the words of that blogs author, "Why is it so funny? I have no idea either."

So, it should be no surprise that 4chan took an automatic, worshipful reverence to Jong-un. For those who don't know, 4chan is an online image sharing forum that has become one of the most infamous sites on the internet, not only for its ability to create memes, but also for its (rather psychotic) trolling and hacking capabilities. On regular a basis, 4chan will rise as one, accomplishing tasks such as hacking Sarah Palin's email account or tracking down animal abusers whose videos end up online. The benevolence and malevolence of 4chans actions are reputably random. For 4chan users, it's a lot less about whether or not what they do is good or bad, and more about that they can.

One activity that 4chan often engages in is mass voting on internet polls to manipulate the results. Recently, it decided that a worthwhile activity would be voting up Kim Jong-un in the online poll for Time's Person of the Year, which Time magazine (probably) takes into account for their selection. As reported by the Huffington Post here, success is imminent.

*Also included in this article are links to a story about China's Communist Party newspaper reporting on the Onion selecting Kim Jong-un as the Sexiest Man Alive without knowing that it was satirical. Just another mystifying display of the image culture surrounding young Jung-un.

However, the never complacent 4chan, then looked to the next feat in this game of voting, aiming to not only get Kim Jong-un atop the poll, but to also make the rest of the poll spell out KJUGASCHAMBERS with the first letter of each candidates name. And apparently as of December 8th, they've succeeded. 

I think this whole event says a lot about the circulation of personalities as opposed to politics online. Increasingly, information communities have moved online and into spaces where people are concerned more with novelty than with actual political implications. Now, that's not to say that these spaces are devoid of actual political gauge or influence. There's a reason that 4chan and the internet community are drawn to the political situation in North Korea in the first place, and that 4chan decided to make the Time poll spell K(im)J(ong)U(n)GASCHAMBERS as opposed to KFCBUTTSEX (which was apparently the second choice). But lately, the staying power of these political figures has to do with how much modern audiences are willing to spread this figure (most often online). This can explain the phenomenon behind Kony 2012, and the fact that Time named it the #1 viral video of 2012. Meanwhile, other similarly terrible world leaders such as Hugo Chavez, or even Bashar al-Assad do not get the same attention. No ridiculousness? No viral videos produced by comedians or activist groups? No 4chan love.

Alright, so moving on to a little bit about this blog itself. Seeing that this is the second to last Monday of the semester here at the University of Maryland, I believe that this will be my second to last blog post, or at least for a while. I'll do a final post next week, perhaps wrapping up some loose ends and talking about whatever else might be on my mind. And then, from there on out, my maintenance of Post It Politics will be more sporadic, with me blogging about things as they come up, instead of scrounging for imagery on a weekly basis. (Is scrounging the right word? Does it seem like I'm scrounging? Maybe not. Either way). So tune in next week! Until, then, don't be too ronery.

@Post_It_2012

The Fiscal Cliff

Monday, December 3, 2012

Happy December to one and all! Let's take a look at how the country is faring, shall we?

So it seems that the phrase at the tip of every politician, reporter, analyst, and political junkie's tongue right now is "fiscal cliff." It's the newest of the doomsday scenarios that congress/our country has seemingly faced, following debt ceiling and credit-rating downgrade crisis of 2011. But what exactly...is it? All the news coverage that at least I've had access to seems to just dodge around what the "cliff" actually is, choosing instead to focus on politicians pointing fingers at the other side blaming each-other for not doing enough to avoid it...whatever it is.

Luckily, we have The Daily Show to not only walk us through difficult concepts like the "fiscal cliff."

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

Ahh The Daily Show. Seemingly every week you provide me with Post It Politics fodder. Not only explaining seemingly obscure political topics while ridiculing those who are behind said political topics, but also giving me a quality transition to discuss political imagery by satirizing the way we use arbitrary metaphors to circumvent actually making sense of political scenarios.

Today, I won't be braking down a single image or meme, but rather the whole metaphor of a "fiscal cliff." Why the need for such an ominous concept?

The term was popularized by Chairman Ben Bernanke in February of this year as he appeared before the House Financial Services Committee to describe the situation that could come into affect on January 1st if congress doesn't act. Whether or not the scenario he described is really as dire as falling off a cliff would be is hard to quantify, and is at least out of the scope of this particular blog. All that really matters is that is stuck, (probably) making it the last big legislative event of the year, not to mention this congressional session.

We love to use absolutes in political conversation, especially when there are distinct deadlines involved. We do so to attempt to legitimize our own views, while making the other sides seem inconceivable. This is why both sides have been so quick to reference the fiscal cliff, even if Bernanke never intended it to accuse either the Democrats or the Republicans. However, as the above video makes apparent, this gives us with two unviable options, focusing us to instead change our dialogue to make the situation seem less (or more) apocalyptic, as opposed to changing stances. I may differ from Stewart a bit on this method of political dialogue though. While I do find the reasons that we have to change our political metaphors and labels to be rather ridiculous, I don't find the actual act of doing so to be completely meaningless. Though the images that we use to simplify politics can cheapen our discussion, they still play an integral part in how we bring issues to the table. If the metaphor is off, by all means, change it.

Yet, this is not where the apocalypse imagery ends when it comes to congressional budgeting. Last week, Obama released a video, urging middle class Americans to contact their Representatives and tell them what a $2000 tax hike from inaction would do to them, and suggested that they do so by using #my2k, a reference to the feared digital catastrophe that the year 2000 would bring. Many did follow the president's advice, and #my2k trended on Twitter for a good long while. However, this may be due to the fact that many conservatives hijacked the hashtag and used it to call out the president and his tax plan.

And so it goes. As of now, it looks like we've got Thelma and Louise in the congressional driver's seat. Wait, no. Scratch that. There's no way that congress could ever come to a conclusion to do anything quite so easily as Thelma and Louise.

@Post_It_2012