Blog: July 2005

My friend and IPac and CopyNight co-founder Ren Bucholz married Laura Levin in Toronto, at a lovely Art Deco theatre-turned-banquet-hall in honor of their mutual love for movies and Laura's chosen profession of theatre.

If I wrote a book called 100 People Who Are Screwing Up the People Who Are Screwing Up America, Jon Stewart would be prominently featured on it. The Daily Show, more than any other television program, exposes the hypocrisy of the people in power and, through comedy, does it in a way that is very accessible to a wide audience.

Would Jon Stewart disagree with me about whether he should be on the list?

Last Wednesday Stewart interviewed Bernard Goldberg, the author of right-wing hack book Bias and now 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America. Jon Stewart took him to task for focusing on bad words people say on TV while ignoring a lack of openness and accountability in Washington. Goldberg criticizes Chevy Chase for calling W a "dumb fuck," and Stewart replies, "Once upon a time Thomas Jefferson fucked slaves." It's a good point that some people's nostalgia for the past ignores bigger gains that far overshadow an increase of mere vulgarity.

But Stewart also argues that the media figures Goldberg criticizes are "powerless," and I don't agree. Goldberg asks, "Don't you think culture is an important force," and Stewart replies, "Not nearly as much as government." In the short run, absolutely, but culture has a profoundly transforming long-term effect.

Religious conservatives have been frantically trying to transform culture for years, and now they control government, but our cultural norms continue to evolve toward greater tolerance despite their best efforts. Last week on Fresh Air, gay director Don Roos was talking about the child he and his partner adopted. He asked the birth mother if she was okay with a gay couple adopting the child, and her response was that the gay men on Queer Eye seem like responsible people who would make good fathers. It's culture, not politics, that can transform the fundamental boundaries of what we consider right and wrong.

Government can certainly do a lot of damage, or a lot of good, on economic issues, on foreign policy, and in many other areas, but when it comes to personal behavior, culture blows it out of the water. And I can kind of see Goldberg's point. Ending slavery is certainly more important than Chevy Chase saying a bad word, and the bad words don't bother me, but they do bother a lot of people, and more importantly it's not ridiculous to be concerned with the general livability of the world in which we live, culture included. Progressive leaders need to be sensitive to that.

But it's true that there's a lot more dangerous screwing up of America going on than just by a few potty-mouthed actors.

The Northeast's waterfront resort towns, like Martha's Vineyard and the Hamptons, are bustling in the summer. For me, that meant a weekend with new friends, a mother's birthday, a pancake breakfast, and a fundraiser for a U.S. Senator.

The Economist, sensibly:

In America, the length of copyright protection has increased enormously over the past century, from around 28 years to as much as 95 years. The same trend can be seen in other countries. In June Britain signalled that it may extend its copyright term from 50 years to around 90 years.

This makes no sense. Copyright was originally intended to encourage publication by granting publishers a temporary monopoly on works so they could earn a return on their investment. But the internet and new digital technologies have made the publication and distribution of works much easier and cheaper. Publishers should therefore need fewer, not more, property rights to protect their investment. Technology has tipped the balance in favour of the public domain.

A first, useful step would be a drastic reduction of copyright back to its original terms—14 years, renewable once. This should provide media firms plenty of chance to earn profits, and consumers plenty of opportunity to rip, mix, burn their back catalogues without breaking the law. The Supreme Court has somewhat reluctantly clipped the wings of copyright pirates; it is time for Congress to do the same to the copyright incumbents.

Seven progressive organizations formed four softball teams Saturday and went head to head in the Liberall Leage softball tournament, organized by Sharif Corinaldi of Swing the State. Swinging Liberally, a team from Drinking Liberally, Music for America, and a group of Wal-Mart opposers came out on top after two great games, the last against the very talented Billionaires for Bush and their very creative cheering squad.

One woman on our team confessed that she actually does shop at Wal-Mart, but just likes playing softball, and some friends were coming to the game so she joined in.
That's a great example of how social events like this, or meeting at a bar, bring existing activists together but are also great ways to draw in new people. Formerly a left-leaning but politically unengaged Wal-Mart shopper, she won't be converted into a crusader overnight, but now she has more friends who are liberals and who are activists, and maybe when her friends go do phone banking or petitioning, she's more likely to join in after having caught a few fly balls with a group of cool folks.

Cheers to Duncan Black of Atrios, who not only gave Drinking Liberally its first big break by linking to it a year ago, but who was continued to tell liberals across America all about it since.

Jeers (just mild jeers) to Sex and the City, which I started watching in reruns around the last or second-to-last season, and loved; but now that TBS has wrapped around to the first season, I think it's stupid and shallow. What that says about me, you decide. I'll have to keep watching though just in the hope that it goes back to being good sooner rather than later.

Cheers to cygwin, which I just installed for the first time, and wow, it's amazing! Now I can ssh remotely into my desktop from my laptop! If you don't know what cygwin is, you probably wouldn't care, anyway.

Jeers to New Jersey Transit, which seems to always have about four ticket windows open at the Port Authority Bus Terminal, each with ten to twenty or more people waiting at each to buy tickets. With such a large operation, is it really that cost prohibitive have enough ticket sellers for the customers? I want to convert my TransitCheck to bus tickets but I have to find a time I'm willing to wait in line half an hour. Update: 1 pm Saturday, still 4 windows and 10 people per line... 8 pm Saturday, still only four windows open, but short lines! Woo hoo!

And speaking of cheers, two New England Patriots cheerleaders visited Google New York last night, brought in by Tim, our head of sales, as the upshot of a bet he made with another sales guy, but though Tim, actually won, the other guy (Dan) didn't pay up in a timely way, and... I didn't understand it either. Bottom line, there were girls in skimpy American flag outfits in the office taking pictures and signing autographs.

Happy Fourth of July.