Politics working against the people

Tonight I’m going to talk about a website that I found through a Facebook (www.facebook.com) group that I belong to.  The focus of tonight’s posting is www.freepauljacob.com.

 FreePaulJacob.com is a political website which is fitting considering Paul Jacob’s history.  Quite frankly, Paul Jacob is an activist.  I don’t agree with all of his views but I do believe he has a right to free speech that is often, as an activist, hard to express without fear of retribution.  In the 1980’s he resisted draft registration and was put in jail for violation of the Selective Service Act.  He served five and a half months.  In recent years, Jacob has been active in the Libertarian Party and has been a vocal advocate for legislative term limits.   Jacob also founded Citizens in Charge, in 2001.  Citizens in Charge is a group focused on the voter initiative process (see Wikipedia: Initiative and referendum).  In 2007, Jacob, with two others, was indicted and sent to prison in Oklahoma on charges of conspiracy to intentionally defraud the state of Oklahoma with regard to the use of out-of-state petitioners. (info source: Wikipedia: Paul Jacob)

So this brings us to the website.  www.freepauljacob.com is a website set up by a group of Paul’s supporters in order to raise awareness of his situation and foster citizen activism in response to what they believe is an unjust and politically motivated imprisonment.  I’ll state my bias now: I agree that Paul Jacob and the other two members of the “Oklahoma 3″ do not deserve to be in prison or face charges of any kind in this matter.  The main story here is that Paul and his associates were working in Oklahoma to gather petition signatures in favor of Oklahoma’s version of the Taxpayer Bill of Rights (TaBOR).  Basically, if passed, the initiative would cap state government spending and require a popular vote to allow spending beyond the cap.  In response to the petition effort, the state government, big business, and other opponents to the TaBOR initiative used heavy-handed tactics to scare petition gatherers away and prevent citizens from signing petitions.  In response to these anti-petition efforts, the Oklahoma 3 examined Oklahoma’s law requiring petition gatherers to be Oklahoma residents.  They sought legal precedent in the matter and found that the resident requirement only required that someone have the intention to be a resident of Oklahoma.  They hired and moved people to Oklahoma, had them declare residency (which one can do immediately in Oklahoma) and begin their new job of collecting signatures.  

I have a unique perspective on this because of my job in the Relocation department of a large company.  Looking at their actions form a purely business perspective (without any politics), the petition gathering company hired people to gather signatures with the employment offer contingent upon the new employee’s becoming a resident of the State of Oklahoma.  This is what the new employees did and, in doing so, they satisfied Oklahoma’s requirement that the people gathering signatures be residents of Oklahoma.  Thus, rather than conspiring to defraud the State of Oklahoma, the Oklahoma 3 were actually conspiring to operate within state law.

The information on the website is distributed mostly as text and uses a format similar to that used by news organizations.  There are offshoot groups like the one on Facebook that keep supporters of the Oklahoma 3 updated on new developments.  The website is mainly targeted toward people who are interested in politics and government corruption.  The site is of interest to Libertarians and people who wish to limit government spending.  Most of the visitors to the site are supporters of the cause and visit to learn more about what is happening and how they can help.  Other site visitors would be people opposed to the cause who wish to keep abreast of what the supporters are doing and who are looking for quotes to use on their attacks against the Oklahoma 3.

FreePaulJacob.com contains links to many other sites of interest to the supporters of Paul, the other Oklahoma 3, and the political causes Paul was supporting that ultimately led to his imprisonment.   I’ll list some of the links below.

Blue Collar Muse 

Sam Adams Alliance: Common Sense

Forbes Editorial: Has North Korea Annexed Oklahoma?

FreetheOk3.com

 

 

The Onion that will make you laugh till you cry

This entry will focus on The Onion.  The Onion is a parody newspaper that was started in 1988 in Madison, Wisconsin.  In 1996, the paper added online distribution and in 2007 the Onion News Network was launched, also on the web.  In 2001, the paper relocated it’s offices to New York City.

The Onion is designed to be a parody of the real news.  It is presented in paper form with eye catching headlines and incongruous images.  The web version maintains the unusual headlines and introduced more outrageous images.  The parody TV news provided by the Onion News Network is also presented with attention grabbing headlines.

The parody news is presented as both a form of entertainment and as a way to get people to examine the regular news.  Many of the news items presented by the Onion are hard to distinguish from real news.  The humor is subtle and requires that its audience be familiar with the regular news and the bias of the mainstream news media.  The Onion is mainly aimed at an educated audience capable of relating the content to mainstream media.

The Onion is a highly accessible form of media that many people can find entertainment value in.  It is similar in content (though it covers a wider range of topics) to Comedy Central’s The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report.

I’m including a link to The Onion’s website and a teaser for one of their articles below.

 Link to The Onion

 

Novelists Strike Fails To Affect Nation Whatsoever

LOS ANGELES—The economy has seen no adverse effects, as American consumers easily adjust to the sudden cessation of any bold new sprawling works of fiction.

Metropolis

Today, for most, the name Metropolis brings to mind the story of Superman but, in some circles, Metropolis can never be anything other than Fritz Lang’s 1927 silent film masterpiece.  The basic plot for this iconic silent film outlines the social class struggle of a capitalist society.  The movie is set 100 years in the future (2026) in a society where the rich live in a privileged city in the clouds with clean air and luxuries and the workers live beneath the ground and toil in ten hour shifts to run the machines that support the rich’s luxury.  There are many dualistic reflections in the movie including the rich/poor dichotomy, the evangelist/hedonist, the prince/pauper, etc.  The movie is an early example of the science fiction genre and remains an icon to this day influencing many modern science fiction works including Superman and Batman.

The main message of the film is that the Heart must be the mediator between Head and Hands, meaning that compassion must figure in government’s rule of the people.  This message was important for 1920’s Germany because there was a lengthy economic crisis following Germany’s defeat in World War I.  The worker’s movement of the time had fought against the government and socialism was in the air.  Silent film was a popular form of entertainment at the time and, in Germany, German Expressionist film was the form du jour.  Metropolis was filmed in a German Expressionist style including dark themes of insanity and betrayal.  A new popular bourgeois art form at the time was Art Deco and the film incorporates this style for the architecture of the rich city in the sky.  This style of architecture has become the standard for futuristic science fiction settings.  The theme of non-communication between workers and upper class is highlighted in the movie by a metaphorical telling of the biblical Tower of Babel story.  The end result of the non-communication in the Tower of Babel is the destruction of the tower.  The implication is that the non-communication between the government and the German people will lead to Germany’s destruction.

The overall story arc follows a general Prince and the Pauper format with Metropolis’ leader’s son, Freder, falling in love with a working class evangelist, Maria.  Freder descends into the worker’s city to see how the workers live and takes the place of worker 11811.  Maria is replaced by a gynoid (female android) that is told to destroy her image with the workers.  The gynoid rips apart the solidarity of the upper classes by becoming an exotic dancer and setting the men against each other.  It also incites the workers to rebellion causing the destruction of the worker’s city and the machines where they work.  In the end, Freder is required to mediate, as heart, between the rich upper class (head) and the workers (hands).

The storytelling is well done and the message is conveyed clearly, if a bit bluntly, to the viewer.  The orchestral score written for the film integrates seamlessly and helps to keep the viewer involved in the story.  This movie, despite being a silent film from 80 years ago, is relevant for American society today.  Economic crisis, Governmental corruption, voter apathy, and the feeling that our leaders do not represent us, the growing economic disparity between the affluent and the poor are all present here today as they were in Germany following World War I.  The film has a presence on the Internet at http://www.kino.com/metropolis/ and the rights to the movie were recently optioned for a possible remake.  2026 is fast approaching.  Hopefully, Lang’s vision will not become reality and American society will not become the dystopia of Metropolis.

It’s the beginning of a blog . . .

So, I’m going to give Blogging a go.  Initially, this blog will be focused on work for the media literacy course I’m taking.  If I feel like it’s going well at the end of the course, I may continue.  The focus of the media literacy course has been an examination of media with specific emphasis on the intent of media messages and the form and techniques used to convey those messages.  In this blog, I will attempt to critically examine media of all types from silent film to 3d Metaverses.  I hope to provide a basic understanding of the goals and message of the media I examine and the method with which the message is delivered.  I will try to add 2 or 3 new posts to this blog per week, so check back often!!

Anthony