Suffering and Twinkies

November 19, 2012

First off, I would like to announce that one of my predictions from last week has come true, or at least started to come true. Imagery and memes relating to the Pertraeus Scandal have become widely circulated. Most of these have involved photoshopping or captioning photos of Pertaues and Broadwell to make sexual puns or commentary, and SNL took a crack at the affair as well, but I think the image that best illustrates this whole debacle is a flowchart from Gawker detailing all of the key characters of what continues to be a more confusing narrative the more we find out. It makes clear just how ridiculous this whole thing is, as it grows to something much more than just an affair between a general and his biographer.

Whether or not these images have peaked or if we've only witnessing the beginnings of a military-affair-image explosion will remains to be seen. A lot of it may depend on how much more information is released.

Another event that has started to reach wide circulation is the conflict between the Israel and Hama in the Gaza Strip. As Hamas continues to fire rockets at Israel, and Israel has begun to conduct devastating air strikes on Gaza as part of its Pillar of Defense, powerful, tragic images have been released. Many of these being put out by Palestinian sympathizers show the disparity between the damage caused by Palestinian and Israeli attacks, but regardless, images from both sides are painful. Perhaps the most talked about image was featured on the front page of the Washington Post. one of Jihad Misharawi, a BBC Arabic journalist living in Gaza, holding his dead 11-month old son, who was killed by an Israeli air-strike.

As these images related to the conflict continue to come out, I will keep track of them here on the blog. And though doing this will probably mostly have to do with the implications of images of tragedy, I am sure that images of this magnitude will eventual have political significance.

On to my final (and more light hearted) group of images. They have to do with the announced bankruptcy of Hostess, makers of Ding Dongs, Wonder Bread, and most importantly, Twinkies. This was not a surprise to many in the media, as Hostess has had financial troubles in the past, as people start to turn to healthier snacking alternatives. But a labor dispute and strike with the Bakers Union has seemingly put the colossus of sugary treats under. 

As Hostess snacks, especially Twinkies, have been a mainstay of American culture for decades, famed for (speculative) deliciousness and seemingly unending, post-apocalypitc shelf life, it is unsurprising that there was an internet outcry about the bankruptcy. Most of these revolved around the theory that the world will end in 2012, drawing from either Mayan Calendar references...

or references to the zombie apocalypse, especailly due to the movie Zombieland, in which Woody Harrelson's character is obsessed with finding the last Twinkie on earth.

There have even been political implication from this meme (sort of), as Gov. Chris Christie (R-NJ), who many believe to be a front runner for the Republican candidate for President in 2016, was questioned about the bankruptcy at a question and answer session at a New Jersey school, which he perceived to be a loaded question due to his weight. 

I think he handled it well, as far as maintaining his image is concerned. He's definitely got that roll-with-the-punches, I-won't-take-your-shit, yet good humored New Jersey thing going for him.

Yet, it can't be ignored that the whole thing has seemed to turn our attention away from real political issues, an effect that we have found to be characteristic  of almost every "political" meme here on Post It Politics. This is touched upon by the following web comic.

Interesting to see two of our major themes from this week collide. 
Will touch base next week, reporting on any new developments in image culture. For now, Happy Thanksgiving everybody.

@Post_It_2012

Predictions

November 12, 2012

On campus, I continue to be on the look out for political things to post on. There is still quite a bit, most of it leftover from the November 6th election. However, I am not terribly optimistic about new stuff being put up soon, or perhaps even for a while. On campus (and I'm sure in schools, workplaces and homes across the country) people are on the whole just happy to be done with the election, happy to move on and stop concentrating on politics. So I doubt many people will have much motivation to put new stuff up around campus, or at least not stuff directly related with election politics. And even for stuff that is up, I question the political motivation for people to post themselves or do anything to things that I post (other than perhaps take them down in a "OMG i'm so done with politics" kind of way). However, I will continue to check in here for the blog on a week by week basis in case anything significant happens.

Meanwhile, on the national scene, political memes have slowed down quite a bit, mostly, if I had to guess, due to the same relief that the election is over that I mentioned above. Indeed, now that all of the elections have passed, it seems that the only political things I see on social media are people talking about how happy they are not to see politics online anymore.

That being said, I would like to bring your attention to three narratives that have emerged from the election or have followed the election. Though these have perhaps, in the least, only started to emerge in imagery, I wonder if we will start to see more of them, especially as they start to get distributed more by the news and late-night talks shows.

1. Nate Silver. The young statistician has become something of a Generation Y folk hero, à la Mark Zuckerburg, after he and his FiveThirtyEight blog accurately predicted the outcome of all 50 states in the 2012 election, and maintained that Obama would win fairly handily despite many polls calling for a closer race. He's seen as something of a legend amongst many, especially those of the internet age who believe that data from computer savvy whiz-kids never lie and are likely to question the numbers being fed to them by the older (usually more conservative) media sources that supply most polling data. So, like any good phenomenon, Silver started to get worked over online. There was the infamous #drunknatesilver, on Twitter, in which people went online and falsely reported incidents about Nate drunkly walking around and predicting things about everyday people like when they'll die. Then there was also the hilarious isnatesilverawitch.com, which finally came to conclusion that he must be endowed with supernatural powers to be so accurate.
All of this is coupled with the fact that Silver makes conservatives uncomfortable. Many were quick to criticize him and his model in the weeks leading up to the election, drawing from a seemingly never ending list of claims of things that the 538 didn't take into account. And since the election has passed, many have reflected on his predictions while wondering how Republicans will have to choose their approach to future elections due to changing demographics.
Twitter celeb that makes Democrats happy and conservatives nervous? Sounds like a formula for a future images to me! My guess is that liberals start to use him and his graph more to try claim that their party will dominate future elections, making the trend seem inevitable and logical.

One of Nate Silver's famous graphs. I believe they will start to become an even stronger symbol of reason in political projections in future election, regardless of these elections outcomes.

2. Karl Rove. The Republican strategist and SuperPAC power player has come under fire after the elction from the right and left. First, for spending so much money and guaranteeing a Republican victory to so many people in what ended up being a failed campaign. And second, for the awkward situation he created on Fox News during their election coverage, after he neglected to accept their prognosis that Obama had won Ohio and therefore the election, which went so far that Megyn Kelly, on air questioned him about his analysis, asking "Is this just math that you do as a Republican to make yourself feel better? Or is this real?" In this way, Rove seems to portray the opposite of Nate Silver, in that he is beginning to represent the faulty mindset of those who ignore reliable polling while forecasting and trying to sway elections. I believe that 2012 was a watershed year for PAC spending and those associated with them, and there failure could lead to a change in political dialogue. I believe that Rove's image and the way he organized during the 2012 campaign will be a large part of that dialogue.

3. The General Petraeus and Paula Broadwell Affair. I'ma put this up here. Call it a gut feeling. A story this bizarre and out of the blue, where all the perceptions of the CIA, military, and journalism ethics break down...the media storm has only just begun. For one thing, I think we're just beginning to experience questions about the timing of this announcement. All of this being announced right after the election? A coincidence? Not everyone is going to agree with that. People are going to politicize this, and the lure of a (steamy?) high-profile affair is just too good for this not to hit the internet full force. Images like this one are going start to get traction

I mean, c'mon, the book Broadwell wrote is called "All In." This stuff is just going to be too easy. 

Some other stuff that has hit the web, but probably doesn't have specific political implications:

One of the more comical things that emerged since November 6th was the belief that Diane Sawyer was drunk during ABC's election coverage. Check that out here.

And something that has a little more meaning behind it, disappearingromney.com. This is a real-time graph of Mitt Romney's "likes" on Facebook decreasing. Though not to scale by any means, it is a telling indication of the fleeting meaning of social media and politics, or at least the suspicion that we are over-exagertating its importance. (Or maybe it's just saying that people on Facebook didn't actually like Mitt Romney. Take it as you will).

@Post_It_2012