How do you heal yourself?

broke

 

There are many ways to heal the human soul.  Some ways are healthier than others and only those that are HEALthy actually lead to healing.  The difference between coping and healing is that in coping we find ways to “put up with” what is troubling us until we are ready to experience the pain and commit to the healing process.  In recent news, a social worker from California uses Hip-Hop, an already controversial subculture of music, to heal at-risk youth.  While many may turn their nose up at this form of healing, it is one of many ways we can engage in the process toward living a healthy and process life.  Other notable ways people heal themselves include art therapy, seeking professionals, and even writing.  Head Off & Split contains poems that have inspired me to enter a healing process regarding recent pain that has been suppressed because I’ve been “too busy” to deal with it.  Regardless of the content of the poems, Ms. Finney is able to illuminate an acute pain that exists within all of us, and leads us on a journey toward resolve.  Whether we are struggling with identity, sexual preference, racism or equality, the healing begins with the truth, which can be difficult to face, as illustrated in her poems, “Left” and “The Aureole” to name a few.  Which poem from the book is the impetus for your own personal healing?  Which poem has forced you to think about something that is uncomfortable for you?  Have you allowed yourself to experience this ambiguity?  If so, respond with what it was like for you to acknowledge this; if not, what will it take for you to stop shirking the issue and confront it?

Mistaken belief in privacy and security of email brings scandal to Washington

Washington is once again engulfed in scandal as an F.B.I. investigation lead to the resignation of the director of the C.I.A. The cloud continues to grow as the top general in Afghanistan and a powerful socialite in Tampa have been drawn into the fray. The case once again brings issues of internet privacy and security to the forefront.

The public is frequently reminded about such issues in the relatively new area of social networking. But unlike social networking, where information is intended for a wider audience of friends, family, or acquaintances this case involves communication intended to be totally private.

An email chain between the former general and director of the C.I.A. David Petraeus and his one-time biographer-turned-lover Paula Broadwell revealed the extramarital affair that forced Petraeus to resign. The F.B.I. investigation began after anonymous, threatening emails were sent to Jill Kelley, the Tampa socialite and friend of Petraeus. She referred the emails to the F.B.I., which found they originating from a Gmail account used by Petraeus.

The spy and the writer used several, ultimately ineffective strategies, to conceal their communications. They used anonymous accounts, not tied to their names. The F.B.I. spent weeks matching the IP addresses that were used to send the emails with physical locations and cross referencing those with Paula Broadwell’s known travels. From there, investigators were able to obtain a probable-cause warrant, which they used to actively monitor her email accounts.

Petraeus and Broadwell exchanged some messages by leaving unsent drafts in Gmail to avoid leaving a communications trail. Once investigators gained access to Broadwell’s email account, however, they apparently uncovered the ruse.

The American Civil Liberties Union believes the government overstepped. “There should be an investigation not of the personal behavior of General Petraeus and General Allen but of what surveillance powers the F.B.I. used to look into their private lives,” its executive director, Anthony Romero, told the New York Times. “This is a textbook example of the blurring of lines between the private and the public.”

The Electronic Communications Privacy Act gives the F.B.I. a lot of authority. The 1986 law says emails in transit to the recipient, or unopened messages, are highly protected. But law enforcement can get opened messages and emails older than six months with a subpoena or an order that requires only that they be relevant to an ongoing criminal investigation.

A bill under consideration by the Senate Judiciary Committee would amend the 1986 law to require the F.B.I. to obtain a search warrant, showing probable cause to a judge, before agents get email contents from an Internet service provider. The legislation sponsored by Sen. Patrick Leahy,(D-Vt.) would also force the F.B.I. to provide more detailed notice to the person whose email account is being reviewed.

The Debates: Round Two, Biden vs. Ryan

With three weeks to go until election day, we find ourselves squarely in the middle of debate season. Last Thursday the Vice Presidential candidates met in Danville, Kentucky and on Tuesday the Presidential candidates will once again share a stage in Hempstead, New York. While many commentators were pointing out the historical unimportance of Vice Presidential debates the candidates entered the ring ready to spar, and spar they did. It was everything the first Presidential debate was not, lively and energetic. The true winner of the night was the moderator, Martha Raddatz, the ABC News senior foreign affairs correspondent. She kept the candidates on time and on target.

Despite a strong moderator both Vice President Joe Biden and Congressman Paul Ryan played fast and loose with the facts. FactCheck.org provided the following summary:

  • Ryan said Obama’s proposal to let tax rates rise for high-income individuals would “tax about 53 percent of small-business income.” Wrong. Ryan is counting giant hedge funds and thousands of other multimillion-dollar enterprises as “small” businesses.
  • Biden exaggerated when he said House Republicans cut funding for embassy security by $300 million. The amount approved for fiscal year 2012 was $264 million less than requested, and covers construction and maintenance, not just security.
  • Ryan was wrong when he said a rise in the jobless rate in Biden’s hometown was “how it’s going all around America.” The rate nationally has sunk back to where it was when Obama took office. And in Ryan’s hometown, it’s more than 4 percentage points lower that it was at the start of Obama’s term.
  • Biden seemed to question Ryan’s assertion that administration officials called Syrian President Bashar Assad “a reformer” even when he was killing his own civilian countrymen. Ryan was right. Early in the bloody Syrian uprising Hillary Clinton called Assad a “different leader” who many in Congress believe is “a reformer.”
  • Ryan claimed the Obama administration spent stimulus money on “electric cars in Finland.” Not true. Although the cars have been assembled in Finland, the money went for work in the United States.
  • Biden quoted Romney as saying that he would not “move heaven and earth” to get Osama bin Laden. What Romney said was that he’d go after other terrorists as well.
  • Ryan misquoted a Medicare official as saying “one out of six hospitals and nursing homes are going to go out of business” as a result of the Affordable Care Act. Not quite. The official said that many could become “unprofitable,” and the situation could be monitored to head off bad outcomes.
  • Ryan claimed that the ACA contains “taxpayer funding” of abortion. In fact the law provides no direct funding of abortion except in cases of rape or incest or to save the mother’s life. And it’s a matter of interpretation whether subsidized private insurance would amount to indirect federal support for abortion.
  • Ryan was off base when he said of a cost-saving panel created by the Affordable Care Act, “not one of them even has to have medical training.” Actually, the board must include physicians and other health care professionals among its members.
  • Ryan at one point ground out a collection of shopworn misstatements about the health care law that we’ve had to rebut time and again, claiming “20 million people … are projected to lose their health insurance” (not true), that premiums have gone up $3,000 (no, they haven’t) and that 7.4 million seniors “are going to lose” Medicare Advantage plans (maybe, but they’d still be covered by traditional Medicare).
  • And both Biden and Ryan continued to twist the facts about Romney’s tax plan. Biden again misrepresented the findings of the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, and Ryan repeated a misleading claim that “six studies have verified” that the plan is mathematically possible.

 

According to television audience measurement company Nielsen, 51.4 million people watched the VP debate. While that may seem like a lot, it is almost 20 million fewer than turned in for the 2008 debate between then-Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin and Joe Biden. National Public Radio commentator Bob Mondello as an interesting theory on the overall popularity of the televised debates. He believes the last decade of television shows like American Idol where contestants battle it out on camera and their fates are determined by audience votes have primed the viewing audience to expect fireworks.

In case you missed it, here is the full 90 minute debate.


If you are looking for a humorous and abbreviated version, check out Saturday Night Live’s cold open parody.

A Resource Guide for the First 2012 Presidential Debate

TThe first presidential debate of the 2012 campaign is Wednesday, October 3, from 9:00pm-10:30pm ET. All of the major broadcasters will carry the debate live from Denver, Colo. as President Obama and Governor Romney share the same stage for the first time. YouTube will be live-streaming the event and Univision will provide live Spanish translation. While both sides have been lowering expectations, here is a look back so you can look forward.

Lets begin with some historical context. The Museum of Broadcast Communications has full video from the presidential and vice-presidential debates from the last two election cycles. The MBC also has an interactive history of televised presidential debates that traces the phenomenon back to the very first televised debate between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon in 1960. You can read a transcript of the debate, but wouldn’t you rather watch the video? Kennedy’s performance, and Nixon’s famous scowl and 5 o’clock shadow, are often credited as a signficant part of Kennedy winning the debate and the election.

Televised presidential debates are now woven it the election cycle, but this position was not always certain. The first debate was an exception to Federal Communication commission rule 315, the provision of the Communications Act of 1934 that requires “equal time.” In 1960 the networks and candidates asked congress for a waiver to the rule in order to hold the debate. The next televised debate would not be for 16 years. This was for legal and sociological reasons. In 1975 the FCC created a permanent exemption to the “equal time” provision for presidential debates; minor parties were not required to be included and could not sue if they were not included. Since there had been only one round of presidential debates in 1960, they weren’t as difficult to forego.

Pundits point out the incumbent has little incentive to participate in a debate that places the president and challenger side-by-side, thus giving the challenger an image of parity with the sitting president. Lyndon Johnson was not a strong public speaker, and because he was favored to win in 1964, he saw no reason to give Harry Goldwater additional exposure. Nixon, the Republican candidate in 2 of the 3 “debate-less” elections, thought that his loss in 1960 was at least partly due to his less “telegenic” appearance when compared to Kennedy. Understandably he had no desire to repeat the experience. As LBJ declined to seek reelection in 1968, Nixon no doubt thought he could win against a fractious and weakened Democratic Party without debates. The same logic held for 1972 as Nixon beat the Democrat George McGovern in a landslide.

There was no incumbent in 1960, which gave both men incentive to accept. The same could, in a way, be said of 1976. Uniquely in American history, Ford had not been elected to either the vice presidency or the presidency. He was the incumbent, but felt he had to prove he could “take the heat” to win election in his own right. Carter, as the challenger, had every reason to agree to debate Ford. These debates are actually a cautionary tale for incumbents, as a couple of gaffes by Ford put Carter in front in a close election.  Reagan, with decades of camera experience and public speaking behind him, made the most of his opportunity. He had no qualms about his chances against Mondale in 1984, so the debates went on. By the time of the 1988 election came, there had been three successive contests with debates, and they were now almost expected. Refusing to debate would be seen as weakness.

Sixteen years after the first debate, in 1976 Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter faced off in front of the cameras. In this second debate, technical issues shut down the audio transmission and the candidates stood silent and still for 27 minutes while ABC newsman Harry Reasoner assured viewers at their set had not frozen. Media scholar, philosopher, and author of The Medium is the Message Marshall McLuhan spoke to the TODAY showthe next day and famously exclaimed “the glorious moment was the rebellion of the medium against the bloody message…with the breakdown in the technology the audience finally got into the act.”

GGaffes and zingers often stick in our minds more than the content of the debates. Here are some of the better known:
[quote align=”center” color=”#999999″]There you go again.[/quote] Republican challenger Ronald Reagan used this barb in a 1980 debate against Democratic President Jimmy Carter. It came after Carter charged that Reagan had begun his political career by campaigning against Medicare. Reagan used the line to suggest that Carter made a habit of targeting him with untrue accusations.
[quote align=”center” color=”#999999″]Are you better off than you were four years ago?[/quote] Perhaps the most famous one-liner in recent years, it was used by Reagan in his 1980 debate with Carter to remind Americans that they were worse-off under the incumbent.
[quote align=”center” color=”#999999″]I am paying for this microphone, Mr. Green.[/quote] Reagan used this stern warning in a February 1980 debate with his Republican primary opponents after the moderator tried to quiet him. The moderator’s name was actually Breen.
[quote align=”center” color=”#999999″]I served with Jack Kennedy. I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy.[/quote] In 1988, Democratic vice-presidential nominee Lloyd Bentsen mocked Republican opponent Dan Quayle’s claim that his political experience was comparable to JFK’s. Quayle was left steaming and looking dazed, like a deer in the headlights.
[quote align=”center” color=”#999999″]Where’s the beef?[/quote] Democratic presidential candidate Walter Mondale used this against Sen. Gary Hart during the 1984 primaries when Hart suggested in a debate that he had lots of new ideas. Mondale’s put-down reprised a famous line from a TV commercial for Wendy’s in which an elderly woman repeatedly wondered about the content of her hamburger.
[quote align=”center” color=”#999999″]I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit for political purposes my opponent’s youth and inexperience.[/quote]Reagan, clearly a master of the one-liner, deployed this riff in 1984 against Mondale and anyone who suggested that at 73 he was too old to be an effective president.

EEnough history, let’s look at what you can expect when Obama and Romney step on stage at the University of Denver. The debate will focus on domestic policy and be divided into six time segments of approximately 15 minutes each on topics to be selected by the moderator and announced several weeks before the debate. The moderator will open each segment with a question, after which each candidate will have two minutes to respond. The moderator will use the balance of the time in the segment for a discussion of the topic.

  • Expect to see Romney on the offense while Obama is on defense. Only six weeks remain until election day and most polls show Obama leading Romney. Like a football team, Obama is looking to protect his lead and avoid costly errors. Romney, on the other hand, will play more aggressively trying to force an error or turnover.
  • As Nixon learned the hard way decades ago, the visuals matter in a televised debate. Democratic Vice President Al Gore’s repeated sighs in a 2000 debate with George W. Bush turned voters off, while Bush drew negative attention in 2004 when he scowled while his Democratic opponent John Kerry spoke. Bush’s father, President George H.W. Bush, looked at his watch in a 1992 debate, a move that many interpreted as impatient and aloof. Obama and Romney want to avoid missteps like these.
  • Will facts matter? There has been much discussion of the loose use of factual, and often blatantly untrue, information by both campaigns. Will both candidates continue in this vein or hold to higher factual standards. You can check the “truthiness” of the debate by following the links on our Facts in the Age of Spin page.

So how will you know who “won” the debate? Part of that is up to you. Did one candidate convince you to vote for him? You can also watch social media for instant reaction and stay tuned after the debate as the TV camera’s move to “spin alley” where campaign spokespeople will try to spin the debate in their favor.

The University of Maryland will be hosting an interactive debate watch this Wednesday, October 3 in the Colony Ballroom on Campus.  There is space for up to 500 participants, and pizza and drinks will be served.

Hosted by Public Policy Dean Don Kettl, the debate watch will feature the announcement of a new Terrapin Electronic Registration System. It will allow anyone with a university ID to electronically register to vote using a secure system. For students, this means they can securely register to vote either in-state or their hometown.

There will also be the opportunity for participants to use a new kind of real-time polling (using a web-based tool for mobile devices) to get moment-by-moment reactions as the debate unfolds. The technology – from React Labs – was developed by UMD Professor Philip Resnik. We’ll have two screens available – one with the debate, one with the real-time polling results of Maryland and other participants around the nation. There will be a short discussion about the results and a Q and A afterwards.

The schedule:

7:30 p.m. : Colony Ballroom Doors Open
8:30 p.m. : Dean Kettl hosts pre-debate discussion with TerpsVote and ReactLabs.
9:00 p.m – 10:30 p.m. : Watch the Presidential Debate from the University of Maryland.
10:30 p.m. – 11:00 p.m.: Dean Kettl will host a Q and A and brief analysis session.
11:00 p.m. – Program concludes.

 

Movie screening: “The War You Don’t See”

Join the Beyond the Classroom Living & Learning Program on Monday, October 8, 2012 from 7:00-9:00 pm in the Seminar Room of 1102 of South Campus Commons, Building 1, for a presentation and discussion of the award-winning documentary The War You Don’t See.

John Pilger’s new film, The War You Don’t See, is a powerful and timely investigation into the media’s role in war. The film traces the history of ‘embedded’ and independent reporting from the carnage of World War I to the destruction of Hiroshima, and from the invasion of Vietnam to the current war in Afghanistan. As weapons and propaganda are ever more sophisticated, the very nature of war has developed into an ‘electronic battlefield.’ But who is the real enemy today?

[quote align=”center” color=”#999999″]This film confirms Pilger’s credentials as one of the few remaining independent investigative journalists operating in the highly promiscuous environment of ‘embedded’ war correspondents and spin doctors… In order not to forget the dirty tricks and outright lies produced by our rulers in the name of freedom and democracy, The War You Don’t See should be required viewing for history and journalism students, if not everybody who is concerned in today’s complex world.[/quote]

– Dr. Jan Servaes, Professor of Communication, University of Massachusetts-Amherst.

[quote align=”center” color=”#999999″]A masterful job of laying out the often willing collusion of the journalists with the government’s ever-expanding spin empires in an era of seemingly permanent war. It is a useful documentary to shake the complacent and generate much-needed discussion.[/quote]

– Dr. John Jenks, Professor, Dominican University.

 

The Best Graphic Novels

Last week Boing Boing asked contributors to submit reviews of their favorite graphic novels. The list continues to grow and ranges in topic from memories of a World War Two foot soldier to elfin fantasy to a graphic (no pun intended!) retelling the Jack the Ripper. Check out Boing Boing’s list and add your own favorites in the comments.

 

Bonus: Watch Emmanuel Guibert, illustrator of Alan’s War, draw with water. Stick through the whole video for a big pay off at the end!

150 Years Ago the Battle of Antietam Changed How the Public Saw War

Today, September 17, marks 150 years since the single bloodiest day on US soil. In the corn fields, wagon roads, and stream beds near Sharpsburg, Md. The Union forces stopped a Confederate advance into northern territory at the Battle of Antietam. After 12 hours of intense combat over 23,000 men lay dead or wounded. During one particularly bloody hour a man died every second. While neither side won a decisive victory, the following day Southern commander Robert E. Lee took his army back across the Potomac, leaving the Union to claim victory. As one of the first significant Northern victories after a year and a half of war, it gave President Lincoln and opening and four days later he issued the Emancipation Proclamation, changing the course of the war and US history.

Antietam changed the country in another way as well. Photographs of the grizzly aftermath went on display in New York City, giving many the first view of the carnage of battle. At the time of the battle, photography was less than thirty years old. It would be many years before actual battle scenes were captured; this is primarily attributed to the slow and cumbersome photographic equipment which was better suited for the static, unmoving post-battle.

Up to this point, painting had often depicted heroic battle scenes, but even the most realistic were romanticized versions.There had been other pictures of the aftermath of war, famously the 1855 image by Roger Fenton from the Crimean War. But still, bodies were often excluded, or when included they were posed to give some dignity to the dead.

Photographer Alexander Gardner, working for Mathew Brady, shattered the glorious view of war with his unflinching images of Antietam’s dead. In the weeks and months after the battle, the images were put on display in Brady’s New York studio, advertised simply as “The Dead of Antietam.”

The exhibit drew large crowds, at least one attendee had also witnessed the battle. Poet Oliver Wendell Homes, Sr. expressed the sentiment of many of the photographs’ viewers when he wrote, “It is not us to bear witness to the fidelity of views which the truthful sunbeam has delineated in all their dread reality…The sight of these pictures is a commentary on civilization such as the savage might well triumph to show its missionaries.”

While, as a witness, Holmes did not believe the images truly evoked the feeling of the battle, he did acknowledge the photos had a significant impact on the viewing public. Today we live in a culture and society saturated in imagery, even war photography has become everyday. But imagine viewers who lived at a time when there was no precedence for such realistically violent imagery; the personal and cultural impact was significant.

Audiences were simultaneously entranced and repulsed; they were horrified yet could not look away.  The New York Times described the scene, “You will see hushed, reverend groups standing around these weird copies of carnage – chained by the strange spell that dwells in dead men’s eyes.”

In the years since we may have become jaded, but images of war, battle, and death still have the power to arrest an audience and elicit powerful responses. Recent exhibits, such as Total War, and WAR/PHOTOGRAPHY hark back to Gardner and Brady’s exhibit. The images produced a century and a half ago opened a new way of seeings and exposed the media-consuming public to the horrors of war.

 

Read more:

 

FYB live on NPR this Monday!

Brooke Gladstone and University of Maryland students will discuss The Influencing Machine and first year books on NPR’s Talk of the Nation on Monday, September 17. The show runs from 3-4pm with the Gladstone segment starting around 3:4opm.

Email questions for Brooke to answer on the air to talk@npr.org.

Catch the show on WYPR 88.1, on WAMU‘s 88.5 Intersection HD channel 3, or stream right here though this site.

 

What is the role of journalism in a post-fact age?

Here is an obvious fact: we are in the midst of America’s quadrennial political fight to the death: a presidential election. Every four years the electorate is called upon to choose the direction the country will take for the next four years. This is usually cast in the traditional light of Republican vs. Democrat, big government vs. small government, conservative vs liberal. The media often casts the choice between candidates as the largest and most pressing of our time.

This election cycle is no different, but there is a new challenge for the voter to sort out: facts. There is a special place for “fact” and “truth” in our culture. The common understanding is that they are unasailable, a fact proven with evidence to be true is can not be questioned. Journalism uses facts as a trump card that eliminates doubt. Truth is at the core of traditional  American journalism.

There is another tenant in journalism, give equal weight to all sides of an argument. But what happens when these two journalistic practices come into conflict? Which wins when the duty to report accurately report a source’s words conflicts with the duty to give the facts? The Sunday New York Times gives a good introduction to the issues at play.

Recent events have sent the media world into a tizzy debating the role of journlaism and the truth. This was stirred up again when a Romney campaign pollster named Neil Newsome said “we are not going to let facts dictate our campaign.” Newsome was speaking in responce to criticism of vice-presidential canidate Paul Ryan’s speach at the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Fl. at the end of September.  The speach has been widly critizied for streatching the truth and ommiting essential facts. Said another way, Newsome beleaves perception matters more than the truth.

Media scholars like Marshall McLuhan have been saying this for decades. McLuhan famously argued “The Medium is the Massage.” So if this is not a new idea, why has is caused so much controversy as of late? Because it is not longer just an intellectual  debate but is rather being put into practice by political operatives with real consequences on election outcomes.

The idea that perception is more important than substance in political theather is not new. A group known as “Swift-Boat Veterans For Truth” ran a series of political adds questioning John Kerry’s military service shortly before election day in 2004. The substance of the ads was resoundingly discredited, but the damage was done without hope of getting a counter-message out in the short time before votes were cast.

So the question is, should journalists be fair, balanced, and mindlesly report what candidates say? Or should they subject candidates’ claims the the light of truth and not report untruths?

Brooke Gladstone dives into these issues with and interview with former New Hampshire governor and former White House Chief of Staff John Sununu

Gladstone follows up with an indepth look at the role of journlaism and fact-checking

As always, give your thoughts on these issues in the comments below, your opinion matters!