Dr. Who's Reading Room

Speculations abound concerning the deeper effects of screen technologies on a thoughtful inner life, and it is too soon to mourn the death of reading altogether. People love their e-books. The disappearance of the public book shelf, though, is not unrelated to the blatant new illiteracy that shows itself, at one end, in the shrinking number of published book reviews, and, at the other, in today’s shallow political discourse. Junk opinion replaces the astute analysis that only careful and well-edited authorship provides. The business of Borders might be replaced online, but the web that matters most is intangibly of the spirit, and Borders was one of its master weavers. This is the death to mourn - and take warning from.

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James Carroll (via azspot)

This is a thoughtful epitaph to the demise of Borders, which reverberates quietly through our shared intellectual life. I understand that to some, this will smack of digital dualism. Therefore, I think it is incumbent upon those who embrace both the public and the digital to inhabit social media haunts thoughtfully, and in ways that provoke discussion of idea,s and promote public discourse.

Daily Kos: Palin's fans rewrite wiki history of Paul Revere »

Palin’s “gaffe” matters because debate and discourse—not fixing the facts around the candidate—matter in a democracy.

I really believe that the biggest problem in this country is willful ignorance, particularly on the right. At this site, you can see debate — between those who support Obama and the Congressional Democrats and those who feel neither is doing the best job.

But on the right — if a politician’s statements don’t fit reality, well, then, reality must be wrong.

Palin — who proclaimed that what that led her to her Paul Revere idiocy was a gotcha question — cannot admit error, and instead has doubled down, saying she is right. So, since Palin says she’s right, her legions of followers have determined she is, and are rewriting source material to match what she said.

This has set off a debate between the wiki editors and the loons about what is appropriate. The wiki editors are saying, “you can’t just add stuff in that has no support in sourcing.” And the loons are saying “a prominent politician said it, and a TV station said it too, so it has to be included.”

Of course the “TV station” cited was simply running a report on Palin’s idiocy, but these folks have decided that amounts to support of her argument.

So, how to deal with it when all the sources say one things, and Caribou Barbie says another? You say exactly what they say about evolution versus creationism: you teach the controversy.

That’s right — Palin’s fans are now arguing that the facts of what happened with Paul Revere are now in dispute, since historians say one thing and bubblehead said another.

It is quite astonishing to me. Rather than simply say “uh, Sarah…sorry, but you misspoke there,” the real world has to be changed in the minds of these people. This is what happens when you have people who are encouraged to believe that education is suspect (scientists don’t know what they’re talking about — they’re just libruls, so ignore what they say about climate change and evolution), that anyone with advanced schooling is an elitist ( I don’t, but wish I had that kind of education) and that schools should be teaching all God all the time.

What’s at stake here, in other words, is whether we’re going to have an open national discourse in which scholars feel free to go wherever the evidence takes them, and to contribute to public understanding. Republicans, in Wisconsin and elsewhere, are trying to shut that kind of discourse down. It’s up to the rest of us to see that they don’t succeed.

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—	Paul Krugman “William Cronon and the American Thought Police” - NYTimes.com 3/28/11 Die Gedanken Sind Frei!

FAIR Blog » Blog Archive » Time's Civility Panel--Featuring Glenn Beck »

Inviting Glenn Beck to weigh in on civility is like asking Bull Connor to weigh in on racial tolerance, free speech, and peaceable assembly.

01/14/2011 by Peter Hart
Earlier this week (1/10/11) I wrote, given how short corporate media’s memories are, “Let’s hope that when someone convenes a civility in media discussion in 2020, they don’t ask Glenn Beck to weigh in.”

No need to wait that long. Time magazine has convened a panel to talk about civility in our public discourse. And the first contribution is from…well, take a look:

Now in fairness, the list is alphabetical. But seriously— was Michael Savage too busy?

Taken as a whole, [Jeffrey] Feldman argues persuasively that the right wing’s use of violent language and imagery over the past 30 years has gravely, deeply—perhaps even mortally—wounded the American body politic. As social theorists from John Dewey to Miss Manners have pointed out—and as my Canadian neighbors seem to understand as the central fact of their civic existence—civility is the necessary ingredient that allows democracies to function. Without it, there is no common good, no mutual respect, no reason to have faith in our ability to govern together wisely and well. When these basic agreements fail, so does our ability to self-govern. Reading this book from my peaceable perch on a mountainside in western Canada, the destruction of America’s civic order, as Feldman describes it, looks utter and complete.

Somehow, we need to find our way back to each other. And, as simple as it sounds, it may start with a determined resolution that we are going to be civil to each other. Always. Even to your obnoxious Dittohead neighbor. Even to your annoying fundamentalist sister-in-law. Even to that jerk with the faded W’04 bumper sticker who stole your parking space. Even to the whinging concern troll in the comments thread. Catharsis feels like a birthright in our I-want-it-now society; but it’s a luxury that progressives can no longer afford. Every time we give into it, the culture splits a little wider, and our odds of ever healing again it grow a bit more remote. It’s time for progressives to step up and show the rest of the country how grownups behave. We’ve got an example to set, and a hundred million people to educate.

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Sara Robinson “Outright Barbarism vs. The Civil Society” | OurFuture.org Campaign for America’s Future, 5/6/08

I have been struggling with some characterizations of Christine O’Donnell, and by chance happened upon this piece I had saved for some future use. The time for its use appears to be now. Robinson calls for nothing less than for progressives to engage in the culture change necessary for the basic operation of a civic order.