Nice weather for (devil) ducks

Election day weather is, indeed, something the media likes to talk about, as Amanda has discovered. It's a nice post, although I think it's the weather map for the wrong day.

Exit polls and stuff

We kind of need to geek out a little on exit polls and on Election Night coverage. Some/most of you will have an advantage over me, because I probably won't watch any. In fact, I've almost never watched any. The Goodwin Hotel in 2000, late into the night, is my only memory, and it is a VERY foggy one. But look at the fact that McCain was a question in 2000.

Now, I somehow know that Harry will click on EVERY link in this FAQ, but I encourage the rest of you to do so as well.

This story will give you a little context about the collapse of the VNS, although I don't really understand why we should feel better about what replaced it.

You might wanna watch the interview here with Rather and Silver. I don't really know how you watch Rather's network, but somebody oughta check it out on election night.

Why does a meme spread?

Mike asked for access to this. From the point of view of memetics, it's really interesting and extremely viral. Why? Because it's funny, portable, customizable (which gives the meme-spreader the sense that he is adding something), compact, direct (although it uses misdrection).
It allows the spreader to assume the illusion of a greater level of technical, information-sharing expertise than he really has. (Anybody can do this, but it looks complicated.) It concerns something that people care about. It makes a point. It uses familiar tropes. (I'm convinced that this is one of the keys to the viability and motility of a meme -- that it introduces new content using recognizable themes and tropes.) For a meme to spread, it must invite and permit the meme-spreader to look smart or clued-in, right? That's one reason you spread something is because it makes you look sharp. Another reason is that you think people need to know it.

Welcome to the useless cesspool

Some Old Media / New Media musings.

This was a good show on that topic.

ObamaTV

So, was it worth it?
Here's someone who thinks so.
Here's some ratings info.

This is NOT an invitation to rest on your laurels

...but tonight's class made me proud. Watching you guys pick apart the pluses and minuses of Obama's media buy, watching you push off from each other's perceptions made me proud. I could drop dead and you could teach other for the rest of the semester. Which is the whole idea.

Now get back to work.

Mike this week

Mike is blogging about endorsements and negative ads.

This guy claims endorsements matter. Maybe.

A different picture here.

A very interesting marriage

of big media and small.

This is not an ad

But Rich is right. It must be watched.

The Wild Card effect

Now that ANYBODY can make an ad that might go viral, there's a risk that an actual campaign ad can be stomped into ground by an outsider's response.



To a certain degree, that may have happened to McCain's "celebrity" ad, when this came out:

See more Paris Hilton videos at Funny or Die

Courtney had better be ready

I can't think of a better fulcrum for starting our discusssion than her argument that campaign advertising really is about selling a product to consumers.
Fortunately, Guest Professor Wolfberg is a dead ringer for Don Draper.

Compare and contrast

If Harry hadn't already won the duck, he'd probably win it this week. (Particularly because blog posts such as this may my in-class job easy.)

Here he contrasts two 2008 tax ads.

Here he looks at two uses of the Oval Office as mise en scene.
(Both pretty unsuccessful, IMHO.)

Here he contrasts two approaches to a controversial Veep pick.

Caroline, Caroline, Caroline, Caroline, Caroline, Caroline, Caroline, Caroline,

I don't know you, but I got kind of excited about the very notion of a computer that doesn't take so long to turn on.

We're not as patient as we were back when this Kennedy ad (h/t Caroline) ran.

That's why a modern two-minute web ad has to stimulate us and cater to our ADD.

Who who who who?

The "who is he?" trope is not new.

Hotmessadvt.

Courtney has picked some ads to look at.

More resources

I thought this report was very germane to our 10/27 discussion.
It clued me in to the existence of these folks, who don't provide a lot of info for free, of course, but clicking on their "ïn the news" pdfs can be quite enlightening.

Pro Bono

There has been a major conflation of celebrity culture and politics. "The View" is regularly used as kind of a reality check. And now Bono is going to be a New York Times columnist.

Not that you care about this, but ...

Here's a level-headed explanation of the whole "likely voter" thing I was talking about last Monday.

Nate agrees with me

Remember how, last night, I said that each poll has a kind of personality?

The other key site

I'm not even sure Professor Wolfberg knows about this.

The Rosetta Stone for our 10/27 class

Just browse, browse, browse. Watch as many ads as you can. Blog about'em.

Pill issues

This is an example of how microtargeting is done.

More PaliSNL

I like Cheyenne's approach on this.

To kick off our poll discussion

This is just a great post by Kasey about how the media uses polls, feeds off them, kind of.

The other side of SNL

Nice catch by Mike -- Lorne Michaels is a maxed-out McCain supporter.

Still, this analysis argues that Palin didn't even get the usual breaks.

Amanda has some late-breaking coverage of the actual appearance.

Who is this gaucho, Amigo?

I'm glad Rich brings up PJ O'Rourke, although Í'm not glad he found a clip that shows how unattractively I've aged.
But PJ is kind of a rara avis. There just arent'that many funny people coming at this stuff from a stricly conservative angle ...although it's also interesting that the somewhat conservative satirist C. Buckley lost one of his gigs last week, for endoring Obama.

The poll-driven media

This sums up some of the folly in how the media use polls.

Lest we forget...Tina Fey directly urged Texas and Ohio voters to "get on board" for Clinton

It was a different time.

Microtargeting

You may not have time to read this today, but I'll try to talk a little bit about it during our discussion of polls and polling. Internally, campaigns often use polling very differently from the way the media use them. Increasingly, campaigns are buying quite a bit of information from the commercial/shopping sector and running it through complex algorithms to try to figure out who they should be talking to and who's a waste of their time.

We'll come back to this on the 27th with Wolfberg.

Onion Tears

Rich reminds us not to forget about The Onion.

To which CAROLINE would add Andy Borowtiz.

Real clear polls

This is the latest from Mary on polls. What I would say, especially thinking back to 1988, is that the public relationship with polls is changing. Even as recently as '88, it was more of a top-down one-way relationship. Gallup (or somebody) did the polls, and you read about them. But today there are more polling operations and -- more importantly -- several layers of poll analysis.
In fact, this clip on Kasey's site would have represented an unthinkable about of thinking about polls for the average person on 1988.
There's a lot of averaging, as with RCP.
There's a clearer understanding, after 2000, that state polls matter more.
There's more of an attempt to find out what campaign internals say.

Kevin on copyright

Indirectly related to our topic this week and very interesting is Kevin's catch on a problem the McCain campaign is having with YouTube. (You might wantto click through the Kos and from there to Wired) Kevin thinks it reveals a lack of sophistication on that campaign's partabout new media, although the campaign probably thinks it's a kind of sabotage.

In a separate post, Kevin also has the old media clip of McCain on Letterman, if you need to get it somewhere.

It's not always TV

Lauren reminds us about the Obama New Yorker cover. Mike and Joe chime in.

Hotmesstv

Courtney has lots humor videos. She says they're full of truth. Which ones are? And why?

How to eat a poll

Mary is investigating.

SP on SNL

Perefectly timed for our comedy week.

Equal time

McCain's night of comedy.

Even the candidates have to do comedy

Polls, polls, polls I

We're going to start geeking out a little bit on polls. Here's the big poll du jour. But the other sponsoring media entity framed it different way. Here's the first reaction by a conservative blog.
Here's a mild conservative response.
Here's Mr. Hip Poll analyzer.
Somehow they know about these polls before they're even released.

So a guys tells his psychiatrist, I keep dreaming I'm a chicken and ...

A study of The Daily Show.

So a duck walks into a bar

A study of jokes from the first seven months of the campaign.

Nasty media

This week we're going to be looking at the role satire and humor have played in the race.
We're also going to geek out about polls a little.
We're going to study the explicitly conservativ media a little later in the term, but just in the flow of looking at the week's events, I think it's worth noting how extreme Limbaugh is getting, particularly in his characterizaton of blacks and black movements.

What certain women want

Rich discovered this blog. It's kind of a nice window into the world of women who think Palin is getting a version of thge bad treatment Clinton got.

Oh, let's watch that AP thing on undecided voters.

She didn't get to cry

I'll cry if I want to

Who gets to cry and when.

Is everybody required to do something about Palin? Why?

This one was dug out by Mama.

The hotness thing

Amanda has some compelling stuff this week -- especially regarding the whole question of Palin's looks. I agree that a google search tells you a lot. (If the McCain campaign is smart, though, they'd be bombing down any negative stuff. But the number here might be too big for google-bombing.)
Make sure you read "triple dog standard" AND don;t miss Chysey's very interesting comment.

Mikey Mouse

Check out Mike's blog. He has an interesting analysis of Clinton/Palin. He has a very funky cartoon. He has a post about McCain doing and not dong the right thing -- linking to Harry. You get extra points when you link to each other.

The Palin Effect

You kind of have to get past the headline -- which was not used in the print version -- but this piece in today's Courant is nicely balanced and nuanced and detailed. The writer seems to have made a real effort to collect a lot of different points of view.

We know what you think -- before you do.

We talked once before about those TV subtitles that kind of summarize what has been said.
Here's a piece about the way TV may -- in real time -- alter your reactions.

Trinity Bloggers. Can they be trusted? Are they terrorists?

When we're not talking 'bout gender this week, one of the themes/memes we'll be following is the McCain campaign throttling back and forth on the aggressive rhetoric. Harry kept an eye on this one. So did Caroline.

Courtney has not let the duck go to her head

You should read her Yikes round-up, but I want to call you attention also to her post on Michelle Obama.

Let's watch this in class and discuss

I love this CNN video (top one) that Mary found laying out the Palin/Clinton differences, as voters process them.

The often overlooked Cindy McCain

The toughest person to discuss -- in this framework -- is Cindy McCain. I don't think the mass media quite know what to say about her. You can go from here to an interesting New York Times piece about her that does attempt to "frame her narrative." And we are told that her husband is not always nice to her. But what role does she REALLY play in the gender disputes that have characterized this campaign? And what happens when, as Gail Collins notes, she tries to change her profile?

I miss the old Cindy McCain. The one who used to go to rallies and sit
huddled in the corner looking as if she thought the audience had a communicable
disease. Now, she’s right up there on stage, standing behind her husband and
making disgusted faces when he rails on about the opposition. And she’s started
railing herself. (The family that rants together ...) Obama is waging “the
dirtiest campaign in American history.” His votes on Iraq were votes “not to
fund my son when he was serving.”
Remember when the McCains wouldn’t talk
about the fact that their son was in Iraq? Oh well.
Maybe Cindy is trying to
hold her own against Sarah, who is with John almost as much as she is. I miss
the old guy-guy McCain who had so many male pals around he looked like a walking
fraternity reunion. Now, he’s starting to resemble an ambulatory patient
accompanied by female attendants on an outing.
Palin has been pressing the
line that people don’t really know “the real Barack Obama,” and who could make
the argument better than a woman who we’ve already known for almost six weeks?
Really, she’s like one of the family.
We’ve gotten so close we’ve already
learned that she didn’t actually sell the plane on eBay, didn’t actually visit
the troops in Iraq and didn’t really have a talk with the British ambassador. As
soon as we get the Trooper thing and Alaska Independence Party thing and the tax
thing figured out, she’ll be an open book.

Other players

Dujring the Clinton nomination fight, it seemed as though lots of different women, from Nancy Pelosi to Maureen Dowd, became players in the arguments.

During the Palin period, it was Couric and Kathleen Parker.

Interestingly, Parker got quite a taste of the invective that some of us get pretty regularly from readers on the right.

Words that go together well

Lauren has an interesting post on Michelle Obama right at this moment.

It seems like she's come a long way from the early, crude, clumsy attempts to discredit her as kind of an Angela Davis figure.

Of course, she's had to play a certain game, right? What is that game?

One of the guys?

One of the things we'll discuss this week has to do with sexism and feminism within the ranks of the mass media. How are journalists discussed? How is Katie Couric discussed? Some critics saw the rise of Rachel Maddow as kind of a game changer.

Couric (a Kevin post) herself has become, I think, one of really interesting gender stories in this election year.

SNL asks the questions

I happened to watch the Fey/Poehler sketch again, and it struck me that it framed a lot of the issues we'll be talking about tomorrow night.

And then look at this Politico article which examined the Clinton / Palin duality as it unfolded.

Sorry

I had to take a few days off to focus on the Supreme Court Kerrigan case and on some performances I'm doing with the Symphony this week.

But I'd like to get you focused back on the issues of sex and sexism with this look-back.

Press and Gender

Start with Andy here, and then click to the Cohen column. A different set of points about Clinton and Palin.

Hurricane Camille

If we are going to talk sex and gender, we must read the often outrageous Camille Paglia, who kind of gets off on Palin.

This is what she was thinking ten months ago.

Even Starbucks Cups are battlegrounds

Make sure you read all the way to tne end of this. Albright makes a certain kind of gender aregument.

More video stuff

When you jump on McCain's website these days you're greeted by Guess Who?

But I can't find any way to rip and embed his ads. Am I being dense? If not, then it says something about the web cultures, respectively of the two sites.

Meanwhile, today Obama releases this epic Keating 5 video:

Random Ads and videos.

Below is an Obama ad that somehow tries to wreck all the good Palin feelings.



And then there are indy ads ads like this one put out by Brave New Films.



And this one:

How to destroy one of your best memes through overuse

We're on

See some of you tomorrow nigt.

monday

It's starting to look like guys' night, but I'm ready to do something. Maybe a shorter class -- 6:30 to 7:30 or 8? We can meet in the classroom, go over some stuff, and adjourn for a beer at the Firebox, if you feel like it.

Droppin' the G

Kasey has a nice round-up of debate coverage.

Yóu Have Mail

I don't know where this fits in, but Joe rightly warns us about the stuff that spreds by email.

Say Anything

I don't know if I have emphasized this enough, but, in the spreading of a meme, familiarity and recognizability are vital traits. Lauren thought she saw something familiar as Palin debated:

Palin spit out a lot of facts and made a whole lot more sense than ever
before, but as I listened to her answers, I got the distinct impression that
she
was making a mental check-list of things to say and trying to work them
into the
questions. This reminds me of many many college exams I took, where
I would
decide there wasn't enough time to actually learn the information,
but if I
memorized a few BIG facts, I could somehow make them work for any
essay
question. Was anyone out there keeping track of how many times Palin
explained
why she wouldn't be answering the question and then went on to say
whatever she
felt like? This actually really bothered me. While Biden did
some of the same, I
got the feeling that he was explaining information he
understood, even if he got
a little off-topic, while Palin was simply
regurgitating, regardless of whether
or not it was related

.

I happen to be of kind of addicted to The New York Times letters. Guess
what? Lauren's not the only one:

As someone who teaches history, I often give essay exams, and inevitably there
are students who arrive ill prepared to take the exam. These students typically
adopt one of two strategies: they either construct an essay that is a torrent of
words, hoping that by filling up the space I will not notice that they don’t
know anything (Sarah Palin’s performance in the Katie Couric interviews); or
they ignore the question I’ve asked, and answer something else they do know a
little about (Ms. Palin’s performance in the vice-presidential debate).
Both
strategies earn an F, since neither indicates that they can tackle a crucial
issue in the course.
Many of us watching the vice-presidential debate wanted
to know how well Governor Palin could tackle a crucial issue facing the nation.
Mr. Brooks informs us that Republicans were relieved that Sarah Palin adopted
what amounts to Strategy No. 2 in the debate, and therefore avoided seeming as
clueless as she did in the Couric interviews, but let me assure him (and them)
that it was no more helpful in establishing her ability to be an effective vice
president than Strategy No. 1.
Barbara Weinstein

See, when things are very recognizable, they have a better chance of spreading as memes.

Gail and Sarah

As we get ready to talk in terms of gender, Gail Collins sees the whole Palin episode in very conflicted terms.

This is all a terrible shame. For us, mainly. But also for Palin, whose intelligence and toughness may wind up buried under the legend of her verb-deprived ramblings.
Palin is, in many ways, a genuine heir to the women’s liberation movement of the 1970s, which tried to make sure that future generations of American women would grow up feeling they had every right to compete with men for all the best rewards and adventures the world had to offer. She never seems to have had a single doubt that she could accomplish whatever she set her mind to. When she got involved in politics, she used the time-honored male route of cultivating powerful mentors, then pushing them out of the way at the first possible opportunity. When she was governor, she did what very few female politicians do, and ignored all the subsidiary issues in order to put all her bets on one big policy payoff in the form of a new state energy policy.
Then, somehow, she concluded that her success in clawing her way to the top of Alaska’s modest political heap meant she was capable of running the United States.
This entire election season has been a long-running saga about the rise of women in American politics. On Thursday, it all went sour. The people boosting Palin’s triumph were not celebrating because she demonstrated that she is qualified to be president if something ever happened to John McCain. They were cheering her success in covering up her lack of knowledge about the things she would have to deal with if she wound up running the country

A question about Monday

At least one of your classmates would like to meet on Trinity Day -- perhaps in abbreviated form -- to talk blogs and blogging. Embedding video. Stuff like that.
My technical expertise will be used up in the first 20 minutes, but even so, I'd be willing to do it if we can get a minyan. Comment or email me if you're game.

Pollster Smackdown!!!

This won't come up for a few weeks, but I wanted to note it.

Keep blogging! Stupid Trinity Days or not!

Do you think Gwen Ifill has a conflict of interest?

Do you think she should withdraw from tomorrow night's debate?

She could use her broken ankle as an excuse. Say it hurts more than she thought.