By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, July 19th, 2012 Is democracy sick of its own media? I seek to address the question before us, with a clear and forceful answer: yes, and no, but with no maybes. Yes, when it comes to certain emerging media conventions, revealed most vividly in the U.S. by Fox News (and its lesser imitators of the right and the left). But no, when it comes to an opposing and promising trend, the ongoing struggle to inform and constitute publics capable of deliberate discussion and informed actions, using a variety of media forms, new and old, but especially new. This trend is observable both in the central arena and, especially, on its margins, as a global development. I think that there are troubling trends in the dominant media, but I also think that it is important to pay attention to counter trends, and to take note of a new kind media war in political culture.
The conclusion of my presentation will highlight the counter trend, the “no” side of my answer to our question, doing so by linking two of my major projects, the study of the politics of small things and of reinventing political culture. I will suggest, further, the need to carefully consider Daniel Dayan’s ideas of monstration. In my conclusion, I will make a sort of book proposal for Dayan and me to work on, so that the weaknesses of my approach can be addressed. I will move toward the conclusion first by examining what I take to be the way a cable television network contributes to the sickness of democracy, specifically in the United States – the yes side of my answer to our question. I will then make my second move, to the no side, considering how social media and other new forms of electronic media open the opportunity for a counter trend, supporting the politics of small things. I analyze both tendencies as they are tied to significant social movements that define and redefine political culture, for better and for worse: the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street. I want to be clear that I don’t see the problems and potentials I identify here as being primarily the consequence of media form, cable news, . . .
Read more: Fake vs. Fox News: OWS and Beyond
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 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
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, October 21st, 2011 
Occupy Wall Street reminds my friend, colleague, and frequent “co-conspirator,” Elzbieta Matynia, and me of our long term engagement in the democratic opposition and alternative cultural movements in East and Central Europe. There and then, we coordinated an international seminar, before and after 1989, between scholars and activists, concerning the theoretical and practical problems of democracy, “The Democracy Seminar.” As we observe Occupy Wall Street with a great deal of interest, appreciation and in support, we are moved to act.
We therefore have proposed to The New School community and the activists in OWS the creation of a new seminar, as a place for mutual learning and discussion that can inform action, The Flying Seminar (the name inspired by a dissident academic program during the late 70s and 80s in Poland). The idea came out of an informal chat with one of OWS’ outreach people at Zuccotti Park. Tomorrow at 3:00 pm, we will have a planning meeting and a first conversation, as part of an Occupy Wall Street Teach In at The New School.
We propose to organize a series of portable conversations with key participants and dedicated observers in various movements and actions in the United States and beyond, which could help to crystallize the differences and parallels between projects of resistance then and now. We had in mind, for example, the Civil Rights Movement , SDS, the 1968 movements in Europe, the second wave feminist movement in the States, the Solidarity Movement in Poland, The Anti-Apartheid Movement in South Africa (its peaceful and its militant side), the Green Revolution in Iran, and the Arab Spring. Our goal will be to facilitate discussion about movements past, from here and elsewhere, as a way of guiding the future of movements present. The hope is that this discussion could help address the key question of what is to be done now.
We agree with many . . .
Read more: A Flying Seminar and Additional Reflections on the GOP, BHO and OWS
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, October 20th, 2011 
We live in difficult times, but the political capacity to address the difficulties may be emerging in America, none too soon and in the right place.
The Republican presidential nomination debates reveal how far the GOP is from addressing the concerns of the American public. It seems, as a consequence, that President Obama’s re-election is likely, even with the persistent tough economic situation. He makes sense. The Republicans don’t. They offer the 999 plan and other fantasies as economic policy. Obama proposes sensible realistic programs, the jobs bill and the like. The re-election, further, may very well have very significant consequences. The Obama transformation, which I have reflected upon in an earlier post, may proceed and deepen. I have this hope because of Occupy Wall Street.
OWS is already a resounding success, and it has the potential to extend the success for months, indeed, probably for years ahead. We at Deliberately Considered have been discussing the occupation. Scott and Michael Corey, like observers elsewhere, are concerned that the occupiers don’t have a clear program. They seem to be a hodgepodge of disparate misfits, anarchists, druggies, vegans, feminists, trade unionists, environmentalists and veterans of left-wing battles past, with no clear unified goals. The political causes they espouse seem to be as varied as they are as a group. They express a sentiment and sensibility, but they do not propose any policy. Yet, I think it is crucial to note that there is a simple and telling coherence in the protest and that there is a discernable achievement already that is being deepened as the occupation persists.
The occupiers are telling a simple truth. America is becoming an increasingly unequal society. The rich are getting rich and the poor (and working people) are getting poorer, especially the young and people of color. The occupiers call upon the media, the political class and the population at large to take notice, and notice is being taken as the occupations spread around the country and the world.
. . .
Read more: The Republicans, Obama, and Occupy Wall Street
By Irit Dekel, October 18th, 2011 
Gilad Shalit is home today, after five years and four months as a captive of Hamas. My initial reaction, as an Israeli, reflecting on these developments in Berlin, looking mostly at Israeli written press online: I think it is wonderful that Shalit’s mental and physical condition is good enough for him to be able to appreciate his return.
As for the “home” he will find, others have written about the Israeli society he left in contrast with the one to which he returns. I wish instead to comment on two significant symbolic questions: Was the “price” paid for his return justified? And, the more difficult question which requires the help of a philosopher to address: what is the nature and meaning of his homecoming?
The first issue concerning the “price” paid for the safe return of a soldier seems to me and to most of the Israeli public as a no- brainer: one has to save the life of a soldier sent in one’s name. This issue has been covered in the German press I follow in Berlin, praising the commitment of the Israelis to their own people. However, the Israeli press’ apparent need to declare Hamas inhuman concerns me.
I am happy that Shalit is healthy, and recognize that the call in the Palestinian street today to capture other “Shalits” so that other prisoners will be released is obviously morally wrong. Yet, the parallel Israeli use of “price tag” to refer to the urge to hurt Palestinians, as well as the attacks upon what is conceived as the memory of left wing and secular Israel, specifically focused upon the Rabin Assassination, are no less morally wrong.
The attacks, about which Vered Vinitzky Seroussi has extensively written, seem to appear at moments of peaceful interaction and are deeply problematic. Last week, graffiti on the memorial site read: “free Yigal Amir” [Rabin’s assassin]. Perhaps the positive lesson from the discourse on “prices” is that it cannot be read in a vacuum: talking . . .
Read more: Gilad Shalit Comes Home
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, July 26th, 2011 
I did not have the time to prepare a post while teaching with Daniel Dayan “Media and News in a Time of Crisis” in Wroclaw, Poland. This was unfortunate because there were news events during the period of the course that seemed to be a series of case studies on our topic. As we were examining theoretical material, which illuminates the roles media play in such cases, media were playing important roles, from the Murdoch scandal, to the terrorist attack in Oslo. Today, I will reflect on Murdoch and, more broadly, the tasks of making distinctions and coming to actionable judgments in the media. Oslo will wait for another day. I draw on the ideas of Eviatar Zerubavel, a distinguished sociologist of cognition and student of Erving Goffman, to make sense of our ongoing seminar discussion and the debate between Daniel and me.
The Murdoch presence in America has long concerned me, particularly Fox News and the Wall Street Journal. While Fox is a strange mix of opinionated journalism and political mobilization instrument, as I have already examined here in an earlier post, the Journal has been a distinguished business newspaper with a conservative slant on the news, with the slant increasingly prevailing over the news in recent years with Murdoch’s ownership. I was struck by Joe Nocerra’s analysis in The New York Times. Concern with factual reality has diminished. Editors went beyond improving reporter’s copy from the stylistic point of view to ideological “improvement.” Political and business news reported was re-worked to confirm the political positions promoted on the editorial page. Note the problem in these cases is that strong distinctions between journalism as a vocation and other vocations are ignored became fuzzy, in the terms of Zerubavel.
Such willful ignorance is also present in The New York Post, another Murdoch enterprise that I see in my daily life. I read it only late at night, picking up a discarded copy on the train when I have . . .
Read more: Making Distinctions: Murdoch, WikiLeaks, and DSK
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, July 8th, 2011 
Next week I am off to the New School’s Democracy and Diversity Institute in Wroclaw, Poland. The Institute opens today, but I will be arriving a few days late. As I review the events of this week at Deliberately Considered, I am anticipating my work at the Institute, which will be reflected in upcoming posts. The last two posts, on Iran and on American identity, in fact, were informed by Democracy and Diversity experience.
In the most mundane way, the Institute is like many other international summer schools. Students from many different countries, this year Kazakhstan, Ethiopia, Italy, Poland, and the USA, among others, come together to study a set of problems from a number of different academic perspectives. As usual, in my judgment, the topics are particularly interesting, this year, each addressing the theme of the year The World in Crisis: “Gender in Crisis? Strengths and Weaknesses in the Strategy of Emergency” (Prof. Ann Snitow), “Media and News in a Time of Crisis” (Prof. Jeffrey Goldfarb and Prof. Daniel Dayan), “Romancing Violence: Theories and Practices of Political Violence” (Prof. Elzbieta Matynia), and “‘We the People’: Nationalism, Ethnicity and Belonging” (Prof. Sharika Thiranagama). Still there are many summer schools that offer interesting programs with talented students such as we have. Yet, there is something special about this Institute that makes it different than most summer programs, linked to its history.
In terms of my student’s observations and reflection on Iran this week, our institute is in a sense, paraphrasing Hannah Arendt, a not so lost treasure of  the revolutionary tradition. He observed how freedom was experienced in the days before and after the 2009 elections in his country, and noted how even in the face of extreme repression, the ability of independent people to speak and act in each other’s presence is still consequential, apparently preventing the execution of Habibollah Latifi. But the real significance of the free politics, before the elections of 2009 and through the Facebook . . .
Read more: DC Week in Review: Democracy and Diversity and Free Public Action
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, July 1st, 2011 
It is my custom before sleeping to read a novel. I turn off the events of the day and start my journey into the world of imagination. Last night, I was reading Madame Bovary when my wife told me about the latest turn in the Dominique Strauss-Kahn case. I was surprised, but left it to the morning to find out what happened. The New York Times report made it clear, the person who had every right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty by the courts, appears to be really innocent, a victim, not a criminal.
The implications for French and global politics and culture are significant. I worry that France, which desperately needs a serious political alternative, may be deprived of a capable public servant as President because of a false accusation and prosecution. I also worry that very serious problems concerning the relationship between public and private, the intimate and the open, sex and politics, may now go unexamined because the case is being closed, when serious deliberate consideration is what is needed now more than ever, there and here.
Daniel Dayan and I have been discussing the case as it unfolds. A few minutes ago, I received an email from him, continuing our discussion. We will actually make this discussion a part of our “Media and News in a Time of Crisis” seminar at the Democracy and Diversity Institute in Wroclaw, Poland, later this month.
He wrote:
“Just a little note to set up our discussions to come: I may have told you that I was talking with a friend on a bench in Central Park, one Saturday morning, around 11 AM just when the Strauss-Kahn episode was going on, 10 blocks south. Uncannily, I was telling my friend that Strauss-Kahn was likely to win the elections unless he was the victim of some trap. I did not realize the trap I was anticipating was functioning already while my friend and I were . . .
Read more: Dominique Strauss-Kahn: A Play in Three Acts?
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, June 10th, 2011
As I reported last week, Daniel Dayan and I had a nice lunch in Paris on the terrace of a little restaurant at the Palais Royal. He ate blood sausage. My wife, Naomi, and I had couscous with chicken. I followed Daniel’s recommendation and ordered mine with olives, a dish that was his grandmother’s specialty back in Morocco. We discussed what proved to be the theme of last week, looking at North Africa and the Middle East from the point of view of Europe. But of course, we couldn’t and didn’t ignore the Dominique Strauss-Kahn scandal, then raging in Paris. The following evening, he extended his side of the conversation in a crisp essay, which we posted on Monday. Here I continue my side of the conversation.
My first response came in the form of an email I wrote him upon receiving his piece:
I don’t agree with you on all points, centered on two issues: the way the distinction between private and public moves (the most general issue), and how the presumption of innocence necessarily varies from one institutional sphere to the next, from the judiciary to the police to the press, for example. Consider the case of a child molester and how the presumption is enacted or not by different people placed differently in the society. This is an empirical and normative issue. More soon. Again it was great seeing you and great receiving the post.
In the case of a child molester, the police look for a suspect and attempt to confirm guilt, while in court there must be a presumption of innocence. Before, during and after a trial, the press and the general public judges, independently of formal legalities, and explores whether they think justice is done by the police and the courts, sometimes in a sensational way. The spheres of public activity and the press are different from the professional activities of the police and the courts. And quite clearly, when the issue is child molestation, the public and the press are predisposed, often without regard to the solidity of the evidence, to believe the police, given the nature of the crime . . .
Read more: DC Week in Review: DSK and the Presumption of Guilt
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