Ummm…because I can?
You know, I might be the first person who ever digitally altered someone’s race.
I drove an early photo manipulation workstation in the mid Eighties, several years before Photoshop existed. We were doing this primitive computer simulation/game that involved lots of static head shots of various characters. It was a training thing. We had just finished, when it dawned on some clever sod that there weren’t any persons of color in it.
So, I took one of the characters — the one my boss had modeled for, as it happened — and made him a brother. It was a perfectly harmless bit of illustration. He looked handsomer in color, if I do say so myself.
Management was -=HORRIFIED=- when they saw it. They could quite put their finger on what was wrong about it, but they made me erase it on the spot and gave me to understand I’d done a Very Bad Thing and Must Never Tell Anyone.
Anyhow, a funny thing happened on the way to the national conversation on race we were supposed to be having…
So, I confess, I’m far too lazy to go listen to Part Two of the Shirley Sharrod/NAACP speech that was supposed to exonerate her and leave egg all over Breitbart’s face.
Because, frankly, I’m having a hell of a time imagining anything she could have said in Part Two that would get her off the hook for Part One. Except, maybe, “Oh my god, I was such an asshole, those things I was saying a few minutes ago…”
Did anybody listen to the whole thing?
July 21, 2010 — 10:41 pm
Comments: 24
DPlot thickens
You know how I was bitching in my last post about no longer owning any graphing software? Well, a very nice bloke took notice (he has a Google Alerts set for “graphing software”) and offered me a free license to his graphing software program DPlot.
It’s my policy never to say no to free stuff. It’s my policy now, anyway — I didn’t have to have a policy before, since nobody ever offered me any free stuff. So I downloaded DPlot, followed the simple installation instructions, and in no time at all, I was feeling severely mentally retarded.
Seriously, it’s all math and shit. I know some of you are actual engineers and science type peeps, so you should probably mosey over and check it out. I mean, he’s an awfully nice guy and he’s got testimonials from other nerds saying how great his program is. I know you poindexters don’t dare lie to each other, on account of your huge brains, so it’s probably pretty good at whatever the hell it does.
Look! I made boobies!
January 14, 2010 — 6:30 pm
Comments: 24
Just trying to be helpful
Every four years, sure as shit, the media yammers about whether the Dems should “go negative” because the Republicans always “go negative” and even though people say they don’t like it when politicians “go negative” it really does work. So sure enough the Dems “go negative” and it doesn’t work and the Republicans “go negative” and it does work and the talking heads declare that Democrats are just too doggone nice to pull off the whole “go negative” gambit.
You know, for the smartypants egghead academic party, y’all sure can be pinheads.
Lean closer; I will to tell you the secret. Shhhhh. Look at this simple two-stage flow chart. Us red state peasants pour rumors into it. If they fall out the bottom, we ignore them. If the come flying out the right side, we run with it. Simple as that.
And we apply it equally to our friends and our enemies. Most of us, for example, were persuaded that Larry Craig was tapdancing for anonymous sex in the D.C. airport bathroom (step one) and that, yes, on the whole this was unspeakably creepy and ick (step two). He flunked the flowchart; I don’t know anyone who sticks up for Larry “Widestance” Craig.
On the other hand, it’s obvious the Dems aren’t applying the same decision matrix. Take the whole Swiftboat thing. What do they say? That Kerry didn’t knock the charges down early enough, or that he didn’t knock them down hard enough — when the problem is that at least some of the accusations were factually and provably true…and materially important. How do you knock something like that down? (C’mon…you don’t have to be a student of naval history to know that three purple hearts in four months without needing a day in the infirmary can’t be right (step one) and for someone running as the Military Guy, this matters (step two).)
Or Rathergate. Dan Rather pissed his whole career down his leg trying to get to first base proving that Bush had an easier time of it in the National Guard because he was the son of a political bigshot. Dude. Duuude. Even if he had gotten past step one, this would fail step two. Of course the son of a bigshot is going to have an easier time of it; bureaucracies instinctively cover their butts that way — whether the bigshot’s son wants them to or not. (Al Gore got a journalist’s gig and, rumor has it, a full-time minder. I’m not shocked. Nor, honestly, all that disapproving).
Oh, I’m not saying every wild-ass rumor that ‘wingers latch onto is a winner. And left and right have fundamental disagreements about what passes step two. But you can bet your ass any issue that catches fire this Fall, John Q. Sixpack is going to believe it survived this flow chart first.
Exit question: if you spend a lot of your time hammering the prediction that your opponent will go negative and avoid the issues, isn’t that going negative and avoiding the issues?
Incoming! Thanks for the link, Gabe. Oh! And SarahW at the Protein Wisdom Pub (which, if you haven’t been paying attention, is where all those PW posters who are not JeffG went).
August 21, 2008 — 12:09 pm
Comments: 58