Semiotics

This is just so unbelievable it feels like I am in an episode of the Twilight Zone's rendition of Lord Of The Flies.

The fact that the accusation has been published in a few newspaper blogs makes it even worse : LA Times and Chicago Tribune are both alleging that Obama flipped the middle finger to Clinton during the course of a speech in North Carolina.

This.
Insanity.
Has To.
STOP!

You know, because he can't have that much class. Obama could have never scratched his face just because. Especially when it is in the middle of one of the snarkiest and wittiest dressings-down of the media and political elite by any presidential candidate in recent memory.

Yes, you read that right. Some idiot over at both the Chicago Tribune, LA Times took the spweage of several pro-Clinton and Republican blogs and ran with it. They actually took the time to slow down the footage to show how Obama's scratching his face is somehow akin to flipping the bird.

It's just ... OMFG ... this is just outrageous!

A brother cannot have class at all. That's basically what these people are saying. How can he take it and throw it back at them with the class, intelligence and snark they only attribute to their own whiteness? How can this negro be a thug without being a nigger? How can he brush it off and still look damn fucking good doing it.

I believe the measure of a leader is in their ability to inspire their supporters creatively.

Will.I.Am said of his remix of Obama's New Hampshire speech :

"It made me reflect on the freedoms I have, going to school where I went to school, and the people that came before Obama like Martin Luther King, presidents like Abraham Lincoln that paved the way for me to be sitting here on ABCNews and making a song from Obama's speech," will.i.am said.

"The speech was inspiring about making change in America and I believe what it says and I hope everybody votes," Dylan said.

I believe the measure of a leader is in their choice to engage supporters as collaborators in the building of a social and political future. The difference between a campaign and a movement is in how people take the political moment as a call to action, regardless of whether the powers that be are there to reward them :

This is a special treat for all the linguists and language philosopher in da houze. It is time to compare and contrast the rhetorical styles of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

Lady's First :

Highlight of the speech it's right there at the beginning :
I come tonight with a very full and I want especially to thank New Hampshire. Over the last week, I listened to you and in the process I found my own voice.

John Edwards is next :

Highlight from the last third of the speech:
I want to be clear to the 99% of Americans who have not yet had the chance to have their voices heard that I am in this race to the condition, that I intend to be the nominee of my party and I am in this race until we have actually restored the American Dream and strengthened and restored the middle class of America.

So I ask all of you here and all of you who can hear the sound of my voice that 99% whose voices have not been heard in this democracy to join us in this grassroots campaign to create the kind of America that all of us believe in.

I can't believe it but Barack Obama has made me cry with his "Yes We Can" speech. I wish I were recording this.

"Yes we can to opportunity and prosperity."
"Yes we can heal this nation."
"Yes we can change this world."

"We will remember there is something happening in America."
"That we are not as divided as we think."
"That we are one people."

I'm in love.

This is not a concession speech.

This is a battle cry.

Shakespeare and King would have been proud.

Whitehouse.gov photo of Ford's casket at the White House Rotunda

I wish I could get a screen-cap of what I just saw now on CNN --and I have been switching channels to see if I can get a better look at the seating arrangement on the left-hand side of the aisle.

Almost all of the Bush family is sitting in the front of the left-hand side aisle. Jimmy Carter and his wife are in the front row along with Nancy Reagan and Laura Bush. Condoleezza Rice is on the third row behind Bush I, his wife and one of their daughters.

Oh! I saw the Clintons.

As Bush is walking down the aisle with Ford's widow, I caught a glimpse of the Clintons. They are sitting to the left of one of the Bush daughters. Off-center and almost off-camera.

Also interesting ... they put Betty Ford with her immediate family on the right, away from the politically charged seating that was arranged on the left side.

The seating on those 3 front rows on the left side say way too much of the effed-up politics of United States. Talk about nepotism and The South controlling politics in the post-Civil Rights Movement Unites States.

ps : Did I just saw Dick Cheney express an emotion? He actually looked sad!

Today's big stink is centered around a 4 minute piece on The Today Show, produced by Matt Lauer. Take a look :

In many of my presentations about blogging I have made the point that right now we are in the middle of a semantic warfare and that Google and blogs are the tools of semantic guerrilla warriors like me.

Here's the deal : Big Media was the tool of the powerful. When people talk about "Top-Down Politics" or hierarchical politics, it really doesn't start in Washington DC. Top-Down politics starts in New York City addresses like One Rockefeller Plaza and 229 West 43rd Street.

The magazines, TV shows and advertisments produced over at Madison Avenue, 6th Avenue (or Avenue of the Americas) and 10th and 11th Avenues have only one purpose : To influence "the demographics". It isn't a coincidence that politicos and advertisers use the same term to describe "the people" who end up shopping with their votes and voting with their wallets. The delusion is that Power in the United States is purveyed only by those who have control over what "the demographics" read, listen, wear, eat, like.

If you control desire/information/knowledge, the maxim used to go, then you control Power. So how are we to understand Matt Lauer's move?

Howard Kurtz on the linguistic missile :

I'm still working on the part where NBC gets more power if the conflict is viewed as a civil war. Because the network would be seen as galvanizing support for a pullout? All because of the use of the C-word? Is American support for the war so shaky that a single network's phraseology can cause that support to crumble?

[...]

I have no problem in using the phrase. But I don't think every news outlet needs to have an edict from on high.

I continue to believe that the day-to-day coverage of the carnage in Iraq is more important in terms of swaying public opinion than the label that the MSM chooses to slap on the conflict. Did most people think this wasn't a civil war before Lauer et al made the switch? I don't think so.