By Tim Rosenkranz, June 14th, 2012 
The playoffs are almost over, the road to the finals was long, there were upsets and defining moments, but in the end the two favorites came through. They just had the most resources and the best game-plans. The two finalists will now battle it out. Many experts expect a tight series, which will probably go down to the wire. There will be a winner and a loser, there will be euphoria and disappointment. In the end the winner will take home the trophy, the loser will regroup, switch players, adjust tactics and get ready for the next season – there is always another season.
Unfortunately, I am here neither talking about the NBA nor the NFL, neither basketball glory nor football fortunes – I am describing the US-Presidential elections that will be decided in November between President Obama and challenger Mitt Romney, between the Democrats and Republicans, the Red and Blue teams. Whatever form of media we choose today, the inflationary use of sport rhetoric in the coverage of politics has become hard to ignore. It is quite fascinating how similar politics and sports have become in the 24-hour news-cycle: Analysts speak of the “endgame” or “gameplan,” compare debate schedules to seasons or playoff-series, or they announce “win-or-go-home” states in Republican primaries. Exemplifying this overlap: In Martin Bashir’s show on MSNBC, analysts were discussing the ‘bracketology’ of March Madness in the Republican Primary.
One might argue that this stylistic closeness in coverage is only logical, since both, sports and electoral politics, are competitions. So what is the problem in mixing rhetoric? The problem is that we might lose the essential function of politics if we talk about it like sports, because sports are a specific form of competitive activity. In sports the competition is the end in itself, while in politics it should just be the means. The cultural critiques of the early Frankfurt School, especially Theodor Adorno in his analysis of the “Culture Industry,” already singled out sports as stylized forms . . .
Read more: Sports in Politics?
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, June 4th, 2012 
The jobs report on Friday was bad, as David Howell analyzed here. This immediately was interpreted across the board as good news for Mitt Romney and his party, bad news for President Obama and his. It’s the economy stupid, and bad news about employment means that Obama’s chance for reelection has declined precipitously. And things are worse then that. It’s now or never. It is in the summer that the public’s perception of the economy is locked in for Election Day. Even if things improve in the fall, there won’t be enough lead-time to change the public’s perception.
I know that this is based on solid evidence. Considerable scholarly research has demonstrated the strong correlation between the state of the economy and election results. But the way this research has been directly applied in daily political commentary is troubling, especially because it can become a political factor itself. As the “Thomas Theorem” posits: If people define situations as real, they are real in their consequences. I add, especially when they are doing the defining on television.
This concerns me as a scholar and as a partisan. As a scholar, I worry about the philosophic anthropology of this. The voting public is being depicted as simpletons, not capable of critical thought, of the most basic examination of the facts. There is a kind of economic determinism involved and the determinism is quite mechanical. People vote their pocketbooks and they don’t think critically about it. They don’t wonder about the causes of their economic woes and just vote the bums out. It amazes me how in the same broadcasts talking heads suggest both that the job numbers are a result of long-term trends beyond the control of the President and that Obama’s chances of victory have greatly diminished because of the state of the economy as indicated by the latest job report. They propose a simple Pavlovian stimulus and response vision of voters, . . .
Read more: It’s More Than the Economy, Stupid
Last week, while observing the nationwide strike on May Day, and also the performance of a sociology student from The New School on Fox News a couple of days later, I wondered about the possibilities and obstacles of reinventing political culture. I was impressed that there was a significant attempt to bring May Day home, and also impressed by powerful media resistance to significant change in our political life.
May Day is celebrated around the world as Labor Day, everywhere, that is, except where it all began, the United States. The holiday commemorates the 1886 Haymarket Affair in Chicago and the struggle for decent working conditions and the eight-hour workday. It is an official holiday in over eighty countries, recognized in even more. Yet, until this year, it has been all but ignored in the U.S., except by those far to the left of the political mainstream. Thus, the calls by people associated with Occupy Wall Street for a nationwide general strike was notable, and it was quite striking that there were nationwide demonstrations including many in New York, capped by a large a mass demonstration at Union Square Park, right near my office. Not only leftists were there. Mainstream labor unions were as well. In many ways, I found the gathering to be as impressive as the ones I saw in Zuccotti Park last fall. Yet, it did not attract serious mass media attention.
The New York Times was typical. It had a careful article on May Day in Moscow, but reported the American actions as a local story, focused on minor violence, arrests and traffic disruptions.
The events’ significance did not reach beyond those who immediately were involved or who were already committed to its purpose through social media. Where OWS broke through to a broad public in its initial demonstrations downtown in the Fall, it failed to do so on May Day in demonstrations that were both large and inventive. Beyond the violence of the fringe of those involved in the movement and the provocative . . .
Read more: Media Conspiracy? May Day, The New York Times and Fox
By Luis Tsukayama Cisneros, April 23rd, 2012 
An image is a powerful thing that transcends words and rationalization, and elicits thoughts, ideas and connections that we make consciously and unconsciously. In Camera Lucida, Roland Barthes defined two characteristics that give photography this ideas-eliciting nature: “studium” is that which the observer recognizes consciously about a photograph that raises his/her interests (be it because of culture, a personal exposure to what is depicted in a photo or any other sort of conscious connection to it); and “punctum” as that which “wounds” the observer by appealing mainly to the subconscious.
What do we see in this picture? Can we speak of a cultural subconscious in contemporary consumption society? A few months ago, I showed this picture to some of my friends. They almost unanimously told me it looked like a piece of United Colors of Benetton advertisement from the early 1990s. That is, the punctum of the observers. They referred back not only to a fact of materialistic consumption, but rather to a rhetoric of multiculturality as an expression of freedom (in terms of race, ideals and culture) made popular in the aftermath of the apparent end of history and the “victory” of liberal democracy.
Interestingly, though, I took this photograph not in the midst of the confusion of the early 1990s about what exactly constituted “ideology,” but during a general march by students and workers in New York City in support of the Occupy Wall Street movement, in October 2011. To me, in my studium, this is an image of the people that I saw in that march. Not revolutionaries, not hard-core left-wingers, but normal people who have been affected by the economic crisis and were angry at the fact that Wall Street institutions continued to win in spite of the so-called “99%”.
That being said, this image is not only what I intended. I intended to portray a discourse of “normality,” but what most people saw in it was a long-lasting rhetoric of diversity. This makes me wonder about the connections between the rhetoric of civil society (which . . .
Read more: OWS and the Power of a Photo
By Michael Corey, April 4th, 2012 
BBC America recently broadcast Jamie’s American Road Trip. Jamie Oliver is not an academic, nor is he an ethnographer. Yet, he is an educator. His stature as a British celebrity chef, television personality, and food activist has given him a platform to explore important issues. Through his active engagement and his charitable foundation, he has helped find ways to give needed skills and jobs to unemployed young people, improve food services in schools in England, and help turn attention to the problems of obesity. He has tried to do similar things in the United States with less success. But his American road trip, nonetheless, presents a vivid portrait of American society through the special perspective of what and how we eat and prepare to eat.
Jamie’s American Road Trip began production in America shortly after Barack Obama became President in 2009. Through food and culture related to it, Oliver traveled as a stranger, and an outsider. He observed and asked this question in a companion cookbook, “We’ve all heard about the American dream … but what is the American dream?” Oliver locates this question within what he describes as a “kick-ass” recession and the election of America’s first black president. Oliver’s road trip to the United States is a backstage look at cultural issues in transition: the tough areas of East Los Angeles; a working cattle ranch and rodeo in Wyoming/Montana; the underground and immigrant areas of New York City; hard hit areas of New Orleans and rural Louisiana; a diagonal slice of the deep South in Georgia ranging from trailer park life to a lady’s tea social; and a small community on a Navajo reservation where a local chapter president is trying to preserve and revive tribal food and culture. Oliver helps us use small things to help us reflect on larger issues.
During six episodes, viewers encounter issues relating to: immigrant communities, gang violence, drugs, the hardships of rural life, homelessness, racism, economic hardships, the underground economy, problems with the health care system in . . .
Read more: A Portrait of America: Jamie’s (Food) Road Trip
By Gary Alan Fine, April 2nd, 2012 
During two weeks under Morocco’s sheltering skies, one loses a granulated sense of current American civil discourse. Sipping mint tea in the souks of Marrakesh, the world filtered through the International Herald Tribune, it appeared that Iranian nuclear policy, gas prices, and the health care challenge were sucking up American discursive oxygen. I was vaguely aware that a teenager had been shot in a small town in Florida, but across the ocean that seemed like a routine tragedy in a nation awash in firearms. Teens are often shot and often shooters.
Within hours of touching down at JFK, I learned that the killing (or, some insist, the murder) of Trayvon Martin in Deland, Florida, constituted that now-common spark that creates a blaze in the public sphere. As is so common when the insistent force of the image outruns mundane evidence, people were making forceful pronouncements, selectively parsing the facts of the incident. Trayvon was transformed from a Skittles-eating kid to a talking point. Anytime an adolescent dies, we should weep, but should we pounce?
As many have noted, from Attorney General Eric Holder on down, Americans have great difficulty – perhaps cowardice – in discussing the pathologies and the possibilities of racial contact. Even our president is palpably anxious behind his bully pulpit. So rather than discussing the broad structural challenges of race relations we often rely on idiosyncratic moments, often tragic ones: Bernard Goetz, the subway vigilante; the dragging death of James Byrd; the wilding attack on the Central Park jogger; and, of course, OJ. Now we discuss the shooting death of young African-American Trayvon Martin in a suburban gated community. Each of these instances is a rare and atypical moment, but they are magnified to reveal pervasive racial animosities and resentments. And frequently what we believe is at some remove from how the events evolved.
The jury is still out on Trayvon’s shooting, or perhaps with more accuracy the jury hasn’t yet been called in. But on that evening of February 26th, 17-year-old Trayvon, wearing a hoodie, was returning to his father’s home in a gated . . .
Read more: Hoodie Nights: Trayvon Martin and the Racial Politics of Small Things
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, March 13th, 2012 
 6 lectures, 4 days, 3 countries, 1 collaborative consultation, weekending with my grandson and his parents: my schedule for last ten days. I spoke with colleagues and students in Berlin at Humboldt University and the European College of the Liberal Arts, in Poland, as the Wroclaw Visiting Professor, and worked with my friend and colleague, Daniel Dayan, in Paris about a book we are planning on writing together. As a children’s classic I gave to my grandson summarizes: Busy Day, Busy People.
In Germany, the primary focus of discussion was my newest book, Reinventing Political Culture. In Wroclaw, the focus was on my previous book, The Politics of Small Things. I was there for the book launch of its Polish translation and to discuss with a group of students and colleagues the key theoretical chapter in it, “Theorizing the Kitchen Table and Beyond.” I spoke about the chapter in light of the uprisings, occupations, flash mobs and demonstrations in the past couple of years. In Paris, I talked with Daniel about our prospective new book, which would be a development of the themes I raised in my Wroclaw lecture.
Our major thesis will be: the politics of small things + the media = political transformation. One possible transformation is the reinvention of political culture: changing the way people relate power and culture, challenging the bases of power, moving culture from inheritance to creativity, rewriting the story people tell themselves about themselves.
Daniel and I want to explain how the interactions between people, face to face, but especially virtual, mediated interactions, yield the possibility of large-scale social, political and cultural change. We will link his work as a student of semiotics and media, with mine as a student of micro-politics and political culture.
In Wroclaw I shared an outline of a part our project, in a very preliminary form. I reviewed my idea about the power of the politics of small things, the power of people meeting with shared principles, speaking and acting in each other’s presence, working in concert. . . .
Read more: Mid-Atlantic Reflections: On the Road, The Politics of Small Things and Media
 Yesterday, once again, Vladimir Putin was “elected” President of Russia. Citizens could choose from among Putin, the current premier, and a group of weak opposition candidates, including well known faces such as Gennady Zyuganov and Vladimir Zhirinovsky who always run but never win, along with newer faces such as Mikhail Prokhorov or Putin’s old friend Sergei Mironov, who in addition to their doubtful independence from the Kremlin, did not offer much of a campaign or new political ideas. And while the voting took place, and Putin and his supporters started celebrating right away, social media like Facebook and Twitter bubbled over with photos and accounts of election fraud. The critical social response is every bit as important as the election results.
A couple of days before the election, thousands of independent ballot observers waited in long lines to receive their training and instructions. The observers – unpaid volunteers – had arrived from Moscow, from other cities and from the countryside. Russian newspaper editor Dmitri Surnin wrote that the atmosphere among the waiting crowds resembled the mood during a citizens’ mobilization on the eve of war. “And your political preferences don’t matter, if you’re a leftist, or right, green, liberal, monarchist or communist – when the Fatherland is in danger, everybody needs to stand together.”
The war to which Surnin refers is one between the people who want to play it by the rules and those who want to falsify the elections and obstruct Russia’s democratic course. He cynically observes that the first group will be convinced of their moral victory, with the law and the truth on their side, but the second group will steal the real triumph, with the courts, the police, and Vladimir Putin on theirs.
Indeed, Putin won. Now let’s talk about the moral victors. A number of originally internet-based groups managed to organize a citizens’ army of more than 80,000 volunteers, who enlisted to visit polling stations to be on the lookout for election fraud. As reporter Anna Nemtsova remarked, “They . . .
Read more: Putin Wins?
By Gary Alan Fine, February 1st, 2012 
Following developments in the Republican presidential nominating contest the instability of the race is stark. Every political contest involves flawed candidates: how could it be otherwise? But often the public develops a firm sense of the perspective of the candidates and chooses to join a team. As primary campaigns are waged on a state-by-state basis, it is expected that in some realms one candidate will do better than another, but psychiatric mood swings are something else. We saw the politics of allegiance in the competition between Barack and Hillary (and the wormy love apple: imagine our blue dress politics in an Edwards presidency!). In the states of the industrial Midwest, home to Reagan Democrats, Hillary posted strong numbers; Obama was more successful in states not so hard hit by industrial decline, states with a rainbow electorate, and those open to a new type of politics. Soon one knew the metrics of the race, even if the outcome was uncertain. But the Republican campaign upends these rules as voter preferences lurch wildly. This is a campaign year that reminds us of voters’ cultural fickleness – their political ADD. They are watching a reality television show and so are we (Jeff Goldfarb describes his pained reaction in “The Republican Reality Show”). If one is not newly tickled, one turns away. Media narratives set our politics.
We have gazed at candidates, quasi-candidates, and proto-candidates – Herman Cain, Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, Newt Gingrich, and The Donald – dance with the stars. Can parties fire their voters? Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty could have had his turn had he the internal fortitude or cockeyed optimism to recognize that to be dismissed in August might lead to be crowned a year later. If politics were based on a comparison and conflict of ideas, this would be inconceivable.
But American politics has become, as Jeffrey Goldfarb emphasizes, a reality show – adore it, dismiss it, or despise it, but depend on it. Voters demand diversion; they want bread and circuses, at least circuses. Around the scrum are kibitzers, now Sarah Palin and Donald . . .
Read more: The Florida Primary and The ADD Electorate
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, January 27th, 2012 
I have a longstanding weakness as a sociologist of media. There are often developments in media popular culture that I know are important, and to which I know I should pay close attention, but I just can’t stomach to read, listen or watch, leading me to be out of the loop. It started with the celebrity gossip in the supermarket scandal sheets. I could skim People magazine only with great difficulty. I remember my dismay when I did review (there were not enough words to say read) the celebrity treatment of Lech Walesa in which it was hard to discern why he was the subject of such close attention. I hit a severe watchers block when it came to the TV program Dallas. Then there were the worlds of Talk Radio and Reality TV. One of the biggest errors of my scholarly life was not paying close attention to the news craze about the OJ Simpson trial, when lack of patience with the silliness of “all OJ all the time” led me to overlook the importance of the racial politics of that media circus. I compensate for my low tolerance for junk by reading up, learning from scholars who reported on and analyzed what I had avoided. From the classic by Ien Ang, Watching Dallas, to Josh Gamson’s telling Freaks Talk Back.
But I am now proud of myself. I have finally followed a TV Reality Show from beginning to end, watching the Republican primary debates. All the elements are there, most apparent in the rise and fall of Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, Herman Cain and New Gingrich, each a worthy contestant, while an extremely unlikely President.
Bachmann gained limited attention playing in Iowa state fair, a local girl with a solid record of absurd assertions in and outside of the Halls of Congress, running for re-election and to be President of the United States.
Rick Perry seemed to be the charmed . . .
Read more: The Republican Reality Show: The Rise and Fall of Not Romney
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