[POPTECH] Kling on PopTech Bobos
Arnold Kling feels that the PopTechians are a smug bunch o’ angry, liberal white guys. He was particularly bothered by Larry Lessig’s showing a clip of Bush and Blair video-manipulated into singing a love duet. Arnold felt that the political bias was unnecessary; had it made fun of Hillary, we would have reacted differently, he says.
Well, yes, there is a general ethos at PopTech, but maybe not as uniform as Arnold thinks. For one thing, Bob Metcalfe is one of the organizers and he’s not shy about his support of the Bush administration. Nevertheless, if you randomly tell someone that you’re supporting Howard Dean, you are far more likely to get an expression of support than a denunciation. I don’t actually see a problem with conferences having personalities and political tendencies.
Second, showing a clever re-mixed video that lampoons sitting leaders is a good way to emphasize the social good of allowing sampling and mixing. It’s certainly seems plausible to me that if three years ago, Lessig had shown a re-mixed video of Bill Clinton rapping about not having sex with that woman, people would have responded favorably also.
Arnold, it’s good to have you here.
Great to see you again, also.
I just keep imagining how if I went to a conference of conservative Republicans (interesting that I’ve never done that) and they were hooting in derision at a video of, say, Jesse Jackson and Hillary Clinton, I would want to crawl under the table–or, better yet–tell them that by degrading people who disagree with you that you degrade yourself.
I expected the political leaning in Camden. What surprised me was the Lord of the Flies level to which Lessig took the crowd. I felt like he could have shouted “Kill the pig! Spill its blood!” and gotten a whole chorus to join in.
I feel like the Poptech crowd has a lot to offer national politics. But bile and anger are not the best contribution.
And, in case any of your readers are wondering, yes I have expressed my concerns about political hate speech to conservatives also. I am not popular among some conservative writers who I singled out (not by name, but they knew who I meant) for criticism, but so be it. My tendency is to view hate speech as a sign of intellectual weakness.
I read the crowd considerably differently. The video was a pretty innocuous piece lampooning two political leaders and only about their unlikely alliance. If you think that that’s close to shouting “Kill the pig,” I hate to think how you’d react to political satire that has real teeth to it. Or do you think all political satire is necessarily hate speech, Arnold?
“do you think all political satire is necessarily hate speech, Arnold?”
I think that satire can be an excellent way to express political beliefs. However, my instinct, for reasons I can only partly articulate, is that Lessig showed this video in an attempt–which was successful–to whip people into a mob frenzy, rather than to provide them with new insights.
I believe that the left and the right both need to be involved in the conversation about technology and the future. Instead, as the conference progressed, I kept finding myself in little groups of people where I was afraid to articulate my views–it was as if a ticket for admission to the conversation had to be purchased by expressing contempt for Bush.
Compared with three years ago, I thought that the quality of the overall conversation at Poptech went downhill. But rather than go on, I’ll blog my views on that.
Let me try one more way of articulating it.
If you’re a Jew who finds yourself in a group that is overwhelmingly Christian, that is not uncomfortable. But if you find yourself in a group that is overwhelmingly Christian talking about how much they hate Jews, it’s another story. Poptech 2000 felt to me like the first case. Poptech 2003 felt to me like the second (substituting “conservative or libertarian” for “Jew” of course).
I won’t argue the Christian/Jew analogy because, as one of the “Christians” at the conference, I was unaware of how it felt to you as a “Jew.” But I still think you’re misrepresenting Lessig’s presentation. He showed the video (IMO) because it was so damn clever; the point he was making explicitly was that we want to preserve the right to make videos as clever as that. (“Preserve” is the wrong word since the video likely violated copyright.) He didn’t express any political views about W before or after the video, so “whipping up” seems to me to be a serious overstatement.
I think your sensitivity to this issue, rubbed raw by the insensitivity of us “Christians,” is bringing you to overstate Lessig’s expressed partisanship. The video could not have been much milder as a spoof.
David, I think we’re converging on agreement here. I agree that the video was a mild spoof, and I would have been less sensitive about it in other contexts.
I do think that one can find plenty of outstanding examples of content re-use. I won’t speculate on Lessig’s motives for choosing this particular example, but one consequence is that it made me feel like someone he didn’t particularly care to have on his side. I also felt that the level of enthusiasm for the video at the conference had a *lot* to do with the derision of Bush as opposed to how well it made the point about fair use.
For further reading, I recommend Doug Rushkoff’s book “Coercion,” notably the chapter on the use of spectacle and mass events.
Arnold and David. Interesting to read now that POPTech is a “couple weeks old” memory, with reflective hindsight and added perspective.
IMO, satire can be two things: 1) entertainment, and 2) a way of expressing feelings creatively. Both spur open conversation, a marvelous manifestation of our freedom and democracy. And remember, the latter is what Lessig was espousing as values *for us to reflect upon*.
Now, a by-product of that was likely an (intentional or unintentional) sparking of a political discussion by spoofing Bushblair. Again, I have no problem with that either. Another by-product of our freedoms. I would hope that these catalysts don’t result in our demand to shut down expression. When it does, I am always curious to observe that the satire etc has sparked powerful emotions on the part of the person expressing such objection, or in extreme case, “outrage”.
Good to have you, engaging in the conversation. Conversation is good. Let us be observant of what’s going on *inside us* as it’s happening. It tells a story.
Long Live POPTech…
Michael