By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, February 18th, 2011 
I am old enough to still be amazed by modern media; young and open enough to not be beguiled.
This morning I had an exchange with DC contributor Andras Bozoki. Yesterday, I had sent him, along with other DC contributors, an email message, asking for a brief bio and a photo for our enhanced and updated contributors’ page. He responded to me from China, where, unbeknownst to me, he is giving a few lectures in Hong Kong, and visiting other major cities. We took care of our mundane business. He’ll get back to me with the bio and photo upon his return home to Budapest. I invited him to write something about what he is seeing in China. He told me that he is quite busy these days, and not sure he will have the time to write, but he will contribute to DC if he writes anything about the very interesting things he is seeing on his trip. Let’s hope he finds the time.
Every Saturday or Sunday, my wife, Naomi, and I in New York have a Skype visit with our daughter, Brina, and her family, husband, Michel, and son, Ludovic, in Paris. Two weeks ago, we saw Ludo taking his first hesitant steps. Last week, walking had already become his primary means of locomotion, moving fluidly around their study, picking up his toys, now with two hands, finding more problematic materials (his daddy is an artist), more easily getting into trouble. This Sunday we will celebrate Ludovic’s first birthday. They will open the present we sent via snail mail. We will sing Happy Birthday, knowing that next year he will actually understand and look forward to the festivities. One of the great pleasures I had as a father was reading the good night book. I figure around that next birthday that may become a regular ritual between Ludo and me, as it was between me and my children.
When I explain to people about DC, trying to recruit . . .
Read more: The More Things Change the More They Stay the Same
By Daniel Dayan, February 4th, 2011 
This is Daniel Dayan’s second in a series of posts written in response to the WikiLeaks dump. It analyzes how leadership is practiced in a changing media world, moving from “investigative’ to “ordeal” journalism. I think it provides theoretical clarification of yesterday’s post on “The Politics of Gesture in Peru,” and I think it also can be used to illuminate the discussion of how leaders, particularly President Obama, have responded to the dramatic events in Cairo, which I will address in my next post. -Jeff
From Flower Wreaths to Live Behabitives
Presidential gestures are often boring. Presidents must carry flower wreaths, listen to anthems, hoist flags, light eternal flames. In J.L. Austin’s terms, one could say that these routine tasks enact the “behabitive dimension.” This gestural dimension is steadily growing. It also is changing by becoming less routine, even risky.
Today’s gestures are meant to respond to unexpected situations. They take place in real time. There is nothing routine when Bush responds poorly to Katrina victims, or when Sarkozy calls young people who insult him “scumbags” (racailles). Of course, presidential jobs still consist of what Austin would call “exercitives.” Yet, the “exercitives,” speech acts making decisions such as orders and grants, increasingly give way to a vast array of “behabitives” such as offering condolences, “apologizing,” asking forgiveness, dissociating from, displaying solidarity .
Why the Importance of Behabitives? The Question of Visibility
While at the heart of governmental action, processes of deliberation, moments of decision are not really visible. They only become visible through announcements, or, much later, through their results. Yet the multiplicity and variety of media available allow for an almost continuous visibility of the political personnel.This visibility is expected to consist in presentations of self, which are anticipated, deliberately performed and controlled by those who choose to appear in public.
This visibility also consists in situations where those who “appear in public” lose control over their appearances. Suddenly thrown in the public eye, political actors are submitted . . .
Read more: Political Leadership and Hostile Visibility
By Gary Alan Fine, February 2nd, 2011 
I am addicted to Glenn Beck. Don’t misunderstand, I do not love Glenn Beck, nor do I sing in his chorus of the righteous. But neither am I a Beck-hater, feeling that he is – as he speaks of mega-billionaire George Soros – a “spooky dude.” Further, I am no Beckaholic (Mr. Beck, a recovering alcoholic, might appreciate this). If I miss a night, don’t look for me on a ledge. If I watch too much, don’t search for me in the gutter. However, I prefer that my day ends with a shot of Beck and bourbon. (In California, my current home base, Beck’s show airs at 11:00 p.m.).
Academics often find themselves in deep shade, hidden from bright public debate. Despite our striving for impact, few pay us mind. We dream of celebrity, but on our own terms, and we worry that the unwashed masses will not understand (lecturing to unwashed students makes this concern more plausible). When academics reach the spotlight, it has sometimes been for plagiarism (Doris Kearns Goodwin), losing control (Henry Louis Gates), or political misdemeanors that suggest that a Ph.D. is no substitute for a heart (Newt Gingrich). Perhaps we should lust for dim obscurity. The attentions of Mr. Beck suggest a certain benefit of anonymity over infamy. Beck pays the academy the uncertain honor of believing that we count for something. He believes our writings can change the world, much as Jesse Helms insisted that contemporary art really, truly mattered enough to be censored. Beck scopes the intellectual barricades to find those he presents as cultural subversives, reporting to his million-man audience about the moral felonies of Edward Bernays, Stuart Chase, Walter Lippmann, and, the most dangerous man in America, Cass Sunstein, professor at Harvard Law School and Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. Pre-Beck, such a list would seem eccentric. Post-Beck, the list seems alternatively mad, malevolent, and revelatory. Despite his biting attacks, Beck is insistent on proclaiming the mantra of non-violence. Gandhi is a hero. But on Beck’s website some responses are not so gentle. To be sure, . . .
Read more: Beck and Call
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, January 26th, 2011 
Last night in his State of the Union address, President Obama revealed his fundamental approach to governing: centrist in orientation, pragmatic in his approach to the relationship between capitalism and the state, mindful of the long term need to address the problem of spending deficits, yet, still committed to social justice – “But let’s make sure that we’re not doing it on the backs of our most vulnerable citizens.” (link) As I have put it before, a centrist committed to transforming the center.
The speech was finely written and delivered, tactically and strategically formed to appear post partisan, while putting his Republican opposition on the defensive. As I understand his project, it was a continuation of the course he set during his campaign and has been following during his Presidency, despite the fact that many observers claim that he is now shifting to the center (if they like what has happened recently) or to the right (those on the left who see betrayal).
The contrast with the Republican response, delivered by Paul Ryan, could not have been greater. He spoke in an empty House Budget Committee meeting room bereft of notables and dignitaries, without ceremony. But he forcefully argued for significant budget cuts and warned of an impending crisis, being pretty effective under difficult conditions.
“We are at a moment, where if government’s growth is left unchecked and unchallenged, America’s best century will be considered our past century. This is a future in which we will transform our social safety net into a hammock, which lulls able-bodied people into lives of complacency and dependency… Speaking candidly, as one citizen to another: We still have time… but not much time.”
His central principled position which he developed extensively:
“We believe, as our founders did, that the pursuit of happiness depends on individual liberty, and individual liberty requires limited government.” (link)
The virtue of limited government and a balanced budget through cuts in government programs was his major theme.
. . .
Read more: Obama vs. Ryan vs. Bachmann
By Daniel Dayan, January 25th, 2011
This is the first of a series of posts by Daniel Dayan exploring the significance of WikiLeaks.
Is WikiLeaks a form of spying? Transferring information to an alien power can induce harm. This is why spying constitutes a crime. In the case of WikiLeaks, the transfer concerns hundreds thousands of documents. The recipients include hundreds of countries, some of which are openly hostile. In a way WikiLeaks is a gigantic spying operation with a gigantic number of potential users. Yet, is it really “spying?”
Spying (in its classical form ) involves a specific sponsor in need of specific information to be used for a specific purpose, and obtained from an invisible provider. WikiLeaks “spies” eagerly seek to be identified (Julian Assange, WikiLeaks founder and editor in chief, has been voted Le Monde’s “man of the year”). Information covers every possible domain, and there is no privileged recipient. Anyone qualifies as a potential beneficiary of Wiki-largesses and most of those who gain access to the leaked information have no use for it. Spying has become a stage performance.
On 9/11 a group of Latin American architects hailed the destruction of The Twin Towers as a sublime event. The pleasure of seeing Rome burning had been made available for the man of the street. It was –suggested the builders – a democratization of Neronism. In a way, WikiLeaks, could also be described as a democratization of spying. It offers a form of “public spying.” Distinct from mere spying (a pragmatic activity), it proposes “spying as a gesture.” This gesture concerns other gestures. What WikiLeaks discloses is less (already available) facts than the tone in which they are expressed.
Content or gestures? 
If the Assange leaks reveal nothing that we did not know already, what counts is less their propositional content than the enacted speech acts. The vocabulary of WikiLeaks gestures starts with the noble gestures of war. Many commentators tell the WikiLeaks saga in military terms. For the Umberto Eco, it is a“ blow:” “To think that a mere hacker could access the . . .
Read more: WikiLeaks and the Politics of Gestures
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, January 23rd, 2011 
I’ve been on the road this week, giving a public talk in Santa Barbara at Fielding Graduate University, and taking a break from a very hectic writing and teaching schedule. Returning to frigid New York, I feel cut off from my usual news sources and news gathering customs. As it happens I couldn’t read the paper version of The New York Times first thing, as is my morning custom, didn’t listen to Morning Edition and All Things Considered on NPR, and didn’t go from there to search the web for interesting under reported news and commentary. Instead I took a look at cable news, and found, to my dismay, that I really didn’t understand what had happened this week. This underscored Laura Pacifici’s point. Audiences consume “news products” that confirm their beliefs; news reporting and commentary are not informing. It struck me that this is the way that many people keep up with public affairs. I felt like I was in a fog. No wonder fictoids work! I was warmed by the Santa Barbara sun, chilled by “the lame stream media.”
Although I was on vacation, I managed to keep DC going, thanks to interesting posts by DC contributors. Will Milberg presented a very different account of the China – America relationship. I am convinced. The issue is less about currency valuations, more about economic practices of them and us. As Milberg succinctly put it:
“The key to the problem of global imbalances is to resolve them in an expansionary way rather than a contractionary way. In the wake of the crisis and a deep and widespread recession, we should be thinking about a reform of the international payments system that shifts the burden of adjustment from deficit countries (who are forced to contract their economies in order to reduce imports) to surplus countries (whose extra spending raises their imports).”
Gary Alan Fine, following up on his brilliant Jared Lee Loughner post, considered a fundamental problem in representative democracy, should we vote for representatives because of their personal qualities or principled positions. He makes . . .
Read more: DC Week in Review: Obama, no Lincoln, and a few other observations
By Laura Pacifici, January 18th, 2011
Laura Pacifici is a senior at Brown University concentrating in Political Science. A contributor to an international publication, Voices, she is particularly interested in domestic policy issues and has a forthcoming article on the criminal justice system. After graduating in May 2011, Laura plans on a career in law and politics. Jeff
Almost as quickly as the news media insinuated that vitriolic political rhetoric contributed to Jared Loughner’s killing spree in Tucson, these same reporters and commentators were sharply criticized for having pointed to political explanations. While David Brooks and others such as Charles Blow in their most recent columns were disturbed by these developments, I am not surprised that the news media all but ignored –as Brooks pointed out– psychological explanations in its quest to understand Loughner’s act. This, I believe, is a result of the fact that increasingly we are turning to political commentators such as Keith Olbermann and Bill O’Reilly and away from Diane Sawyer and Brian Williams to deliver our news.
In relying more on “news commentators” and less on traditional “news broadcasters”, we have contributed to the merging of “news” and “commentary.” Commentators on the left and the right know what their niche and partisan viewers expect of them; their task is to fulfill these expectations. This leads to a creative, if unfortunate interaction: Major events come with a prepackaged political bent. It is no surprise that, burdened by the demands of the 24-hour news cycle, these commentators would respond to an event like the massacre in Tucson using politically based explanations.
The news media is not immune from our polarized political climate. Nor is it immune from the increasingly inflammatory rhetoric used by today’s partisans to smear their opponents. Jeff Goldfarb in his recent post discussed the nature of this rhetoric. He pointed to the relentless use of the term “Obamacare” as a modern-day example of what Orwell in his canonical 1984 called “newspeak”, which Goldfarb describes as a language that conceals and manipulates rather than reveals.
By tuning in night after night to the Keiths and the Bills, to the MSNBCs and the . . .
Read more: The Media and the Motivations of an Assasin
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, January 14th, 2011
Barack Obama is the foremost orator in my life time. During the Presidential campaign, I thought that this may be the case. The first two years of his Presidency raised some doubts. I knew the talent was there, but would the talent be used effectively to enable him to be the great President that I thought he could and hoped he would be? But after his speech at the Memorial Service for the Victims of the Shooting in Tucson, Arizona, I have no doubt. No other public figure could have accomplished what I think President Obama accomplished last night.
He spoke as the head of state, not as a partisan candidate or leader, and a deeply divided country became, at least momentarily, united in response to his beautifully crafted and delivered address. He enabled us to grieve together, helped us try to make sense together, and challenged us to respectfully act together, despite our differences.
The power of the speech was revealed by the reaction to it. Even Glenn Beck recognized Obama’s accomplishment, and publicly thanked the President for giving the best speech of his career. And the instant analysis of the panel at Fox News praised the excellence and effectiveness of the President’s inspirational address. Charles Krauthammer concluded the discussion, recognizing that the President appeared and spoke as the head of state, not as an ideological politician, and maintained that it may have a significant effect on Obama’s fortunes. “I am not sure it’s going to have a trivial effect on the way he is perceived.” This from one of Obama’s major critics.
Of course Obama’s supporters, including most of the people attending the service in Tucson at the vast McKale Memorial Center at the University of Arizona, were deeply moved. My friends and I at the Theodore Young Community Center were especially pleased that our guy did so well.
And the commentators of the major newspapers and blogs were almost universally in agreement of the speeches inventiveness and excellence. Dionne, Robinson, Thiessen , Gerson at the Washington Post , Collins and the Times editorial voice at The . . .
Read more: The President’s Speech
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, January 11th, 2011
 Anticipating the State of the Union address, with Robin Wagner – Pacifici’s recent post in mind, I thought it would be a good idea to remember how President Obama has used the power of his voice to address political problems. I agree with Robin and with Jonathan Alter that one must govern and not only campaign in poetry. I agree with Robin that such poetry is appropriate about significant matters of state, particularly about war and peace. But I think we should remember that key problems of national identity and purpose, not only matters of war and peace, require such poetry. Today the Race Speech. I will consider other key speeches in subsequent posts.
It was in his “Race Speech,” delivered in Philadelphia on March 18, 2008, that Barack Obama addressed the most serious challenge of his run for the Presidency. In Philadelphia tactics and overall political vision were brought together. The vision was used to serve a pressing necessity.
The situation was grave. The project of his campaign was being challenged by the politics of race, which was perhaps inevitable given the deep legacies of slavery and racism in America. The immediate controversy was a video compiled from sermons given by his minister, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Wright seemed to embody black resentment and anger. If this was Obama’s minister, how could whites be sure that Wright did not say what Obama thought? Why did he stay in Wright’s church? Who is Barack Obama really? In order to have a chance to win the primaries, let alone the general election, Obama had to address such questions. Obama’s campaign advisors counseled a tactical response. Obama overruled their advice and addressed the issue of race head on, choosing to continue telling his story and make explicit that he was proposing, to expand the promise of the American Dream by addressing the legacies of the American dilemma. From the standard partisan point of view, this was dangerous. There was the very real danger that Obama could become identified as a symbolic black candidate.
The setting was formal. He spoke in Philadelphia, across the street from Constitution Hall, from a podium, flanked by . . .
Read more: Anticipating the State of the Union Address; Looking Back at the Philadelphia Race Speech
By Robin Wagner-Pacifici, January 10th, 2011 
The recent movie “The King’s Speech,” has been well and broadly reviewed for the wonderful acting of stars Colin Firth and Geoffrey Rush. The film recounts the story of the arduous treatment of King George VI of England’s debilitating stutter. While the film tells a story of what media pundits call “an unlikely friendship” between Lionel Logue, an Australian actor manqué who has developed a speech defects practice and the imminently to-be-crowned British monarch, it addresses many issues relevant to the mystery of sovereignty itself. As we approach President Barack Obama’s second State of the Union address, and think about our own executive’s voice, “The King’s Voice” can be gainsaid for the way it animates key sociological insights into the nature of political legitimacy, sovereignty, democracy, and the role of the leader’s rhetoric in binding a nation together (especially a nation at war).
Ever since Ernst Kantorowicz analyzed the medieval theological innovation of the “king’s two bodies,” (a theology that managed the contradictory ideas that the king is divine and thus immortal and that the king is mortal and thus vulnerable to corruption and disease), we have recognized the ways in which real-world kings and presidents have been maneuvering to appear human and transcendent simultaneously. Other sociological and anthropological work on transcendence, political ritual, war and legitimacy (Durkheim, Weber, and Geertz spring to mind) has made us conscious of the ways that rulers use their bodies and their voices to demonstrate and symbolize the collectivities they rule. Historically they have done so by highlighting their sovereign exceptionalism. At the same time, an American democratic diffidence toward transcendence and the divine has also insisted that our leaders be “just like us.”
“The King’s Speech” draws our attention to the role of the voice of the monarch in addressing the nation and, in moments of national peril, literally constituting the nation as a self-conscious entity ready to make sacrifices. George VI, catapulted by the abdication of his older brother into being king, must make an important speech as Britain goes to war in September 1939. He stutters badly under . . .
Read more: The King’s Speech, the President’s Speech
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