Category: Uncategorized

SOPA: What’s it all about?

It’s no surprise that the huge anti-SOPA/PIPA Internet protest on Wednesday caught a lot of people under the chin.  This included several American lawmakers who weren’t aware that the Internet is more than a bunch of geeky guys (the kind they pushed around in high school) playing video games in their parents’ basements.  These senators and congressmen (persons of congressness?) woke up Wednesday morning to discover there is a power in this world that they can only fantasize about.  They also discovered that Washington, DC is actually connected to the rest of the country.  Most of them probably had to sit down for a minute to take it all in.  Regardless, chances are good SOPA and PIPA are dead, and the only side effect is the American government may shut down for a while as frightened lawmakers make themselves scarce in the face of an angry mob of lobbyists.  Ah, democracy!  Ya gotta love it!

The thing that surprises me, however, is why people didn’t see this coming.  The battle for information didn’t just start last Tuesday, nor, for that matter, is it over today.  These are just the most recent shots fired in a war that’s been going on since our hairiest ancestors learned how to grunt.  And, BTW, although cries of censorship look good on bumper stickers and make terrific sound bytes, make no mistake: this current battle has nothing to do with banning content.  It’s all about who gets to use the content available, and how.  This is a battle between old media and new media, just like it was seven centuries ago when minstrels found out Gutenberg was printing more than just Bibles.  They didn’t like it because they were about to be put out of business.  Fast forward to 2012 and it’s Hollywood vs Silicon Valley.  Plus ca change!

If you’re still confused, let me break it down for you.  We need to go way back to caveman days, when life, although very similar to ours, was a whole lot simpler.  This is how the media worked back then and it’s how it still works today.

It all started one night when Grog, the Caveman, was lying around the fire, burping up mastodon and wondering what to do with his spare time.  Mrs. Grog probably said something innocuous like, “How was your day, dear?” and Grog proceeded to tell her.  Bada-bing, bada-boom, the world changed.  It was the original “Shooting a Mastodon” story, and although Grog was no George Orwell, the family was enchanted.   Pretty soon, Grog was doing story night twice a week.  Word got around.  After all, Cro-Magnons didn`t have all that much to do after dark.  So, instead of just sitting there, watching the in-laws pick fleas off each other, the neighbours would pack up the kids, grab the Cro-Magnon equivalent of popcorn and head on over to Grog’s cave for some entertainment.   In essence, Grog controlled the media; they were his stories and he told them well.

As I’ve said, despite what anthropologists will tell you, Cro-Magnons were not that much different from us.  They liked a good story; therefore, Grog became something of a celebrity.  The locals started treating him differently – first bite off the bone, closest seat at the fire, that sort of thing.  Grog had a good gig going on.  Enter Cro-Magnon #2 (we’ll call him Eddie for clarity; that’s not his real name.)  Eddie was pretty smart for a Cro-Magnon, given the limitations of his receding forehead.  Eddie saw Grog acting like the world’s first Rock Star and he wanted a piece of that.  He decided that he could tell stories, too.  However, the Cro-Magnon world was limited, there really weren’t that many stories yet, and Grog was already telling them all.  Eddie needed a hook; a reason for people to abandon Grog and come and hear Eddie’s stories (even though they’re basically the same.)   Fortunately, Eddie was kind of a caveman Stephen Jobs, and he figured out that, if he added pictures to the stories even the hillbilly Neanderthals down the road would be snarling around, trying to get in.  So Eddie drew a bunch of pictures on the walls of his cave to illustrate the stories he was telling: the first multimedia presentation.  Suddenly, Eddie was the guy you wanted to see in Cro-Magnon town when the sun went down.  Grog, on the other hand, had three options; go back to being a nobody mastodon hunter, go over and kick the snot out of Eddie or draw his own pictures and get better stories.  Luckily, he chose door number three because, if he hadn’t, we’d all be watching Mastadon Hunt MMMXCVI, in 3D.

It’s way more complicated these days, but the same rules apply.  When things change, the media has to change to accommodate them.  Those who do, survive; those who don’t, go under.  Running crybaby to the government is only delaying the inevitable.  If the large media corporations think that’s a reasonable solution, they’re all going to end up like Eastman Kodak, hunting around like a bunch of cavemen, looking for bankruptcy protection.

MITT ROMNEY … OR ELSE (Part II)

Nobody likes Mitt Romney.  The progressives don’t like him because he’s too conservative; the conservatives don’t like him because he’s too progressive.  The media doesn’t like him because he’s not Barack Obama.  Personally, I don’t much care for the guy either.  He’s way to “Man from Glad” for my liking.  If I had a dog in this fight it would be Jon Huntsman — if for no other reason than while Romney speaks French, Huntsman speaks Mandarin.  Do the math!  Fortunately, I don’t have to like Mitt Romney, and neither does the American public.  They just have to elect him because, if they don’t, the road to hell is paved and right now America is using up all four lanes trying to get there.

To those of us who don’t live between Maine and Malibu, it looks pretty seriously like America is coming apart at the seams.  This isn’t journalistic hyperbole; it’s real time observation.  The litany of problems is exceeded only by the list of stumble-bum ideas currently on the books to solve them.  You can disagree if you want to, but you’d better check your pulse because you may be in a coma.  I realize that over the last two centuries our neighbour has had its share of little ups and downs.  I also understand that America is still dancing at the coolest party on earth.  They still hold all the records for achievement above and beyond any other place in the world, and accounts of their imminent demise are greatly exaggerated.  However, here in 2012, it looks remarkably like the ground is shifting out from underneath its feet.  Open any media website and you’ll find a whole lot of “Ain’t it awful?” and not very much “Wow! That was close.”  This has got to stop.  If it doesn’t, those grandchildren in Nebraska are going to find out what comes after WTF.

The problem is for the last four years, America has been on vacation.  In 2008, after eight years of George Bush, 9/11, colour-coded Home Security, war, terrorists, economic meltdown, disease, pestilence and floods, they needed some time off.  And they took it.  The timeshare condo guy came wheeling through with his “Hope” and “Change” sales pitch, and they bought in — without ever thinking it through.  Now, like all vacationers, they’re back home with no money, a couple of trillion dollar mortgages and a suitcase full of useless crap that’ll probably end up in the yard sale next summer.  Oh, yeah — and most of them are about to lose their jobs.  They’re pissed.  The last time Americans were this mad was 1776, and that ended up with everybody reaching for their muskets.

This election is not going to be about “Hope” and “Change”; even the most ardent Obama supporter has given that one up.  But it is going to be about change.  Americans are fed up with politicians.  It doesn’t matter whether it’s a Tea Party rally or an Occupy Whatever! campsite, Americans have had it up to their teeth with petty politics.   They are a pragmatic people, and they’re tired of spending the real money they don’t have on political crap they don’t need.  They want something done about it — yesterday.  This is going to result in a seismic shift at the ballot box.  The Populist candidates (Republican or Democrat) are going to win and they’re going to win big.  Congress will be so down home they’ll be installing porch swings and issuing banjos.

This is not necessarily a good thing.  The will of the people is sacrosanct to Americans — even if it means shooting themselves in the foot.  We’ve been witnessing that for the last two years, as a reluctant president skirmishes with a recalcitrant Congress.   It’s only going to get worse after November when a pile of “We the People” politicians start flexing their muscles on what has already become a lame duck president.  As Niall Ferguson said, they’re going to want to start turning back the clock to a time before Franklin and Eleanor were sitting by the fireside, and there won’t be anybody there to stop them.  After all, Obama couldn’t pull off Healthcare properly back when he had Pelosi on his side.  What’s going to happen when he’s counting his friends on one hand?  Government gridlock will look like a reasonable option.

Romney as president solves this.   He’s the centre-right executive that America needs right now.  America doesn’t need any more ideology; the place is oozing with it.  It needs someone pragmatic, someone who can get the government of the people, by the people — and in spite of the people — moving again.  But, most importantly, Romney can beat Obama; Newt, Paul and Perry don’t have a hope.