Obama Enters the Ring

For many observers, it's taken too long for Barack Obama to formally enter the ring of America's health care debate; he's chosen, some say, to hang behind the ropes while partisan hacks grapple with the art and fakery of a wrestling match. Well, now there's no doubt: this president has joined the fight for real.

Analyzing last night's speech before a joint session of Congress, Adam Nagourney (NYT; registration may be required) does a swell job of laying out the political side of President Obama's challenge when it comes to bringing real health care reform to fruition:

It is one thing to create and surf a political movement, as Mr. Obama did in capturing the White House. It is quite another to lead an uneasy country and a politically divided Congress toward tough decisions that create winners and losers.

In his speech Obama crafted a clear and coherent argument about the need for reform. He proposed specific steps toward a workable bill, and he masterfully personalized the debate by invoking one champion of health care reform, the late Senator Kennedy, pausing before his conclusion to consider the "character of our country."

And yet I think the president's finest moments were in the bumpiest times. Obama - courageously, I think - warned Progressives not to sink the ship by fixating upon the single-payer option as the only star in the heavens. And Obama rightly rebuked Republicans (many, but hardly all) for demagoging the debate with misinformation and outright lies about "death panels" and free passes for illegal immigrants.

At this moment, in a manner seemingly scripted by a Hollywood dramatist, some GOP back-bencher from South Carolina - Why learn his name? Even members of his own party will likely send him back to the minor leagues in 2010 - let loose with an epithet that shocked the entire chamber, responding to a president standing before Congress with the invective, "You lie!"

Part of me wishes that Obama would have seized that moment and called this loony out, by name if possible, thereby painting the entrenched enemies of reform with the face of a know-nothing bomb-thrower. Just as a successful bill should honor one of its longtime heroes - the Edward M. Kennedy Health Care Reform Law rings a bell - its villains should be named and shamed.

But Barack Obama is no back-alley brawler; the president was wise to pull his punches. Hitting the GOP and hoping to wrangle the necessary votes from Democrats alone will not work in this case. The country has been wound into confusion and frustration during a sweltering summer of health care town hall meetings that revealed little more than the disparate poles of American political discourse.

That's why I loved the moment when our young president cited Arizona warhorse John McCain by name during last night's speech, praising his 2008 opponent's contribution of an idea Obama hopes to sign into law: a health care safety-net for the most poor among us. Even through the distance of a television screen, I read McCain's bemused smile and grudging thumbs-up as a sign of respect: The Kid from Chicago has got the touch.

Nagourney writes that Obama is a fighter who works best against the ropes, and I agree that the president may yet pull this thing off. Still, many an idealist has been been carted from the health care arena on a stretcher. Last night's speech offered a way for our nation to rethink the narrative of this drama, but many grueling rounds remain before a meaningful bill can become law.

This year we will get the full measure of President Barack Obama.

Read Nagourney's Analysis: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/10/us/politics/10assess.html

Infomercial Hell

Among my favorite guilty pleasures are half-hour infomercials.

I suppose I got the bug as a young man working in the video production industry, especially one day when I went out for an informercial shoot. The product was one of those stone surfaces that you bake (or microwave, or whatever), which then heats your food and keeps it warm. Honestly, I remember being pretty impressed with the gimmick back then.

On that shoot, I began to understand the initial message of all infomercials: Your life sucks. Too much back-breaking work, too many clogged lint traps, too many lids that you just can't open! Then comes the pitch, the revelation of a path to a better life: a device so simple, so elegant, so perfect, that you know you'll improve your life (and the lives of your family!) just by whipping out a credit card (Sorry, no C.O.D.).

Then comes the crisis. Surely this product is too expensive, someone will wonder. In persuasion theory the strategy is called "inoculation," injecting the body with a weakened virus - in this case a poorly crafted argument - to bolster one's natural defenses. "Too expensive?" comes the reply... "Why, how can you afford not to buy it?" Pretty soon the audience is convincing itself: "What's my problem? Why haven't I called the toll free number? Do I like living this sucky life?"

The commercial ends with glorious confirmation. Happy guests, happy host, happy audience members. There's just one thing to do...

That's the idea, at least.

But what happens if you never get to that moment of catharsis? What happens if you never escape the life "before" the purchase? To the folks at Funny or Die, the result would be nothing less than Infomercial Hell.

Infomercial Hell - watch more funny videos

Want more infomerical hell?: Return to this past summer's episode of Daytime Dispatches

Q[uickly]FML

Surely FML (need it be spelled out?) is an internet cliché, but I still check the site regularly. There's an unabashedly guilty pleasure lying in each miserable narrative of surprise and embarrassment. That said, I cannot avoid the presumption that most entries are written solely for shock value, their truths shaped and mutated by the scripts and props of maybe a dozen typical memes (and the abbreviation of space).

What's worse, I imagine that today's crush of cascading and conflicting reading opportunities makes it difficult even to peruse a page-full of new FMLs, real or otherwise. It all becomes a blur, hard to sort, easier to ignore. Happily, there's help. To save you some time and hassle, I've taken the liberty of summarizing a typical day of FML posts, distilling each to its most elemental narrative, editing the list to fit your busy schedule.

Best of all, if you care to manufacture an FML for yourself, you'll find plenty of building blocks here, everything necessary to craft your own tale of woe.

Let's call this collection: Q[uickly]FML:

• Something scared me; it was not scary to others. I appeared foolish. QFML

• I thought my friends/family love(s) me. Turns out, they don't. QFML

• My family treats me like a child. In fact, I am well over 18. QFML

• I thought my significant other was cool. (S)he's not. QFML

• I really thought she was a he; she's a she. QFML

• I looked foolish in front of a child. QFML

• I accidentally injured myself. QFML

• My bf or gf is cheating. QFML

• Crap! "Reply all." QFML

• I's robbed. QFML

• Fired. QFML

Oh, here's a bonus entry: No week on FML can conclude without a story that ends like this:

• ... while we were having sex. QFML

Did I catch 'em all? What would you add? Let me know by posting your own QFML nugget: a building-block for dozens and dozens of clones that change the places and names but ensure that the suffering remains the same.

My Life According to Steely Dan

Another day, another Facebook meme: Yeah, I'm punting on this post. What can I say? It's Labor Day!

The pitch is to use song names from one artist to answer these questions, and then - pass it on...

Pick your Artist: Steely Dan

Describe yourself: "Almost Gothic"

How do you feel: "Reelin' in the Years"

Describe where you currently live: "The Last Mall"

If you could go anywhere, where would you go: "Aja" - but I'm flexible. I'll be happy with "Any World (That I'm Welcome To)"

Your favorite form of transportation: "Bad Sneakers"

Your best friend is: "Two Against Nature"

Favorite time of day: "Countdown to Ecstasy"

If your life was a TV show, what would it be called: "The Royal Scam"

What is life to you: "Pretzel Logic"

Your Fear: "Haitian Divorce"

What is the best advice you have to give: "Rikki Don't Lose That Number" - as "Any Major Dude Will Tell You"

How would I like to die?: "Do it Again" - of course, "Don't Take Me Alive"

My soul's present condition: "Through with Buzz" - in other words, "FM (No Static At All)"

My motto: "Everything Must Go"

Wish: "Things I Miss the Most"

Friday Fun Post: Clever Contextual Ads

The world is inundated with advertisements, and yet so many of these pitches are mind-numbingly dull. Most are, in fact, but not all.

Check out this set of advertisements that depend on some clever integration of the human- or built-environment to make sense.

The pleasure of making sense of them merits inclusion into the hallowed collection of Friday Fun Posts! Have a great weekend.

See them all: Creativity in Advertisement

Scratch the Cat?

While playing with my iPhone this weekend, I started thinking about those "virtual pets" that were popular a few years ago. It would be fun to have an animated kitty on my phone, I figured. I possess my new toy with the passion of a fetish object; it seemed appropriate to add even more life to this thing.

So I looked at a few options and decided to join a web-based "pet" site that allows you to create, feed, groom, and play with an animal of your choice. Within minutes, I was staring at the pixelated face of an 8 week-old kitten who stared back at me through the screen. I fed her, I gave her water, I stroked her fur. I named her Apollonia.

My choice of name follows a family tradition in which we give all female cats living with us an appellation that starts with an A, preferably something reminiscent of Greek or Roman mythology or history. Apparently, among other things, Apollonia refers to a Greek martyr for Christianity. Yes, I felt a bit Godlike. I had given life to a virtual cat.

And then after returning to work, I forgot her.

The next day, I received an urgent email. Apollonia was hungry.

I visited her website - ready to press the button necessary to free me from seeing a graphically dead kitty, a corpse swarming with virtual flies.

I found the website, readied my clicking finger, tutted at my forgetfulness, and...

The graphics wouldn't load. I tried accessing the page through wifi and then through AT&T's notoriously spotty network. I restarted my computer and tried again. No luck, no cat, just an empty box. Once my creature gazed upwardly from that enclosure, her life given by me. Now she was nowhere to be found, lost amid the spectral desert of zeros and ones. Like any busy god, I was frustrated. Unlike God (I hope), I was pissed.

Screw this, I figured. I don't have time to stress about a virtual pet who won't even load when I come to visit. I've got two real cats in Scotts Valley who, every single day, "download" their fur all over our non-virtual carpet and furniture. Tufts of wispy detritus are constant reminders to groom our sweet kitties. We feed them, we play with them, we love them. We are hardly gods to them (more like "staff," as any cat lover will affirm). So be it. With these two waiting at home, I need no pixel kitties.

I then began to wonder, how do you "uncreate" a computer cat?

Searching the site, the part that was working despite the hassles of reaching it online, I found plenty of ways to buy "accessories" for a virtual pet, and lots of reminders that Purina cat chow is popular with real cats too. But "uncreating" a cat?

Oh, God. I knew what I was trying to do.

Guilt-laden, but unwilling to confront the implications that I was abandoning a helpless animal, a creature scratching at my computer screen for attention, I returned to my email, where I read my first reminder to feed Apollonia. I clicked the "no reminders" button. Then I closed my laptop. This was a permanent decision.

I would not feel guilty, I told myself. Maybe I'd get a virtual pet rock instead.

So today I decided to write a note about the ethics of keeping virtual animals, musing about the implications of these simulacra, how we can assign and un-assign meanings to them so easily. I'd explore an interesting query without too much personal investment. A harmless question:

What does it mean to kill a virtual animal? Does the act desensitize us to the prospect of killing for real?

I figured I'd write something thought-provoking, a note that demonstrated suitable reflection on my own ironic position, but ultimately something designed to help me prepare a lecture about online ethics one day. An abstract future for an abstract topic.

Just one problem: I needed to go back to the site and grab a quick pic of Apollonia, preferably still scratching at my screen, to illustrate the post. I was in full utility-mode. Get in, get the pic, get out. I needed an image depicting our strange and fascinating online era, nothing more. So I returned to the virtual pet site and looked...

I couldn't find her.

Was Apollonia dead already?

I began to click frantically. Where is she? Has she starved, her cries so long ignored by my email filter? I clicked and clicked.

And then I found her.

Apollonia was panting, mewing frantically; she was hungry.

I clicked the virtual "food" icon.

A big bag of Purina cat chow appeared and poured itself into her bowl. Apollonia ate heartily, kicking the bowl back when she was done.

She was thirsty too, and she trilled with joy at the sight of a bowl being filled with life-giving water. She gulped it down.

I looked into her half-crazed eyes - an expression that asked, as only a cat can ask, "where the hell were you?

I pet her, trying to soothe her fears at being left alone so long. She purred.

I offered her a toy mouse, a gesture of regret at my cruelty. She played.

I then closed the page, checking one last time to confirm her healthy status, and opened my calendar. There, I added an item to my daily schedule: Feed Apollonia.

The reminder appears every day, weekends, furlough days, holidays: Feed her, repeating at the same time each afternoon. Until September 15th.

After that, we'll see...

November 28, 2009 update

Well, slow graphics and buggy interface inspired me, at last, to send Apollonia to a "farm - upstate." No worries. She's playing with lots of virtual mice and has, I suspect, many friends.

Connecticut Lawmakers Hard at Work

This AP photo illustrates that while the economy continues to limp along, lawmakers are still working hard to fulfill their sworn duties. Confused? Let me translate this image (photographer unknown).

While the screens to the left appear to depict time-wasting games of solitaire, I'm certain the playing cards are symbolic of how Connecticut legislators are prioritizing their stacks of budget priorities. Hearts for social programs, Spades for construction projects, that sort of thing.

The baseball website to the right? Not what it seems. Actually, you can clearly see one of Connecticut's elected officials researching how to "hit the budget deficit out of the park." This objective requires consultation with experts, what with all the balls lawmakers must keep in the air. Better check with a ballplayer.

Note: While the related story is posted here, Senate Approves Budget, the image comes from the front page of the Connecticut Courant. That's a weird word to spell, so here's a hint: You can't spell "Courant" without rant. Also, I must admit, I found this image on Drudge.