The Niagara Times blog administrator seems to be going off the loony deep end. Hobbes, whomever that is, whom I’ve had some civil exchanges with by e-mail, seems to revert compulsively back to an agenda of political assassination usually of Tom Christy. He seems to exhibit or to be motivated by a kind of stalker mentality at this point.
Now I get a lot of good information from his/her(?) site and some interesting insights. I respect just about anyone who participates in the public sphere whether as citizen or government official. But unfortunately there is an aura of ill-willed pernicious partisan politics on the Niagara Times site. And moreover when we don’t know who you really are it is not really public, should not be taken equally seriously and should of course be held under suspicion. Attacking from behind his moniker, Hobbes refuses to confront and challenge publicly as him/herself and prevents democratic dialogue from moving forward toward a political ethos worthy of the values and virtues of America.
The best I can deduce from that site is that it is a republican blog promoting a programmatic agenda to further their cause, projects and power structure. Their particular attacks on Christy are undoubtedly focused on controlling the airways in Niagara County. Of course the logic, be it as it may, is veiled in a bureaucratic rationalism that strains to appear as if it has the interests of clear and unadulterated discourse at heart. In truth it is obscurantist at best and tactically proto-fascist at worst. The substantive argument proffered as reason to remove Christy is that government education on LCTV should, apparently, contain no “political” content. Hobbes, in the name of, well what? Purity, justice, bureaucratic cleanliness?, insists that Christy’s exercise of free speech, his practical questioning in effort to unfold the meaning, implications and possibilites of the matter at hand, not to mention his jokes, violate the sanctity of legitimate educational discourse on government. Yet government actions which can be construed as containing or implying no political content actually presupposes a Fascist social context. A Fascist social sphere is purged of political possibility. All political decisions are already made and embodied in the formal institutions of the “government.” Maybe Hobbes would really like to go beyond Republicanism or possibly even neo-conservatism toward the image and ideals of Cheney’s war machine and dictatorial Executive branch and bring about a neo-Fascist regime.
In truth, government actions engender concerns in the public sphere that are exactly of the nature of “the political.” The real intention of Hobbes' sustained attack is to continue to inflame the fears, defensiveness and anger that can be released with the accusation that language is “politically incorrect” in a political culture that is deeply divided and afraid that the real divisions in our society will surface. So the attempt is made to control speech, dialogue and substantive content such that we cannot move politically beyond the bureaucratically sustained divisions of society that are real.
The cat really slips out of the bag however when Hobbes takes faux “offense”, only in the name of what is “legally” correct of course, at Christy’s “foggy memory” joke. This is really reaching for straws. Not to mention just a little slimey pretending to be sensitive to and getting the humor as if he’s really really down with it. Sorry but this pretense just doesn’t fly. There is an underlying hostility in such subterfuge but it fails to cover up the violence perpetrated against democratic freedom and openness in the name of and in the form of formal concern about following the rules.
So let’s censor political content, humor and then next possibly questions themselves. In fact the reports and opinions of our government officials are really not even opinions when torn out of the concrete context of a dialogue that flows from the interests of the people affected by governmental decisions, projects, attitudes and expectations. Without honest, multi-faceted examination of government officials especially by people without a voice, such opinions are mere propaganda. EDUCATING the public about government comes about through discussion. Mere unexamined information is not EDUCATION. Such discussion need not necessarily have government officials present. In fact much of such discussion would benefit more form the absence of the officials. Reportage by the legislators about the legislators is mere declamation unless placed within the living context of real people with real questions flowing from their lived concerns and interests. Christy seems to fill that bill.
No, Hobbes, there is not an absolute identity of government and politics. They are two sides of the same coin of civic life. To pretend they can be other than analytically separated as concepts useful for intellectual study is to fall into a form of thought called positivism. It imagines or pretends to imagine that each word can refer to a distinctly separate thing in the world. It tries to put such artificial separations to practical advantage as Hobbes is doing here by using highly interpretable bureaucratic rules to separate and alienate what in reality always go together especially if one wants to talk about them as they affect the real world.
But the key word here is "educate." And if Hobbes is truly serious about education, then he should allow what belongs together in reality to be together on LCTV. And, by the way, there is nothing more educational than a good laugh.
I suspect that if the Government channel is finally antiseptically purged to Hobbes liking and all Politics exiled to another channel, probably then the Host on the Politics channel won’t be able to talk about Government. You see it can all get a little absurd can’t it? Rather than become more “politically correctly” paranoid if not stupid, let us lighten up and give up this fear of open public knowledge and discourse.
Moreover, why doesn’t Hobbes come out from the shadows and publicly thematize and debate what he finds so deleterious to the public sphere? Why hide and snipe and beg like the King in "A Man for All Seasons" trying to guilt trip his princes into killing Beckett for him? Why not give up these insidious attacks and be openly and publicly political.
Why not come out of the closet, be a man or woman as the case may be, and talk about what you feel is really at stake. Why can’t you take responsibility publicly for your insights and your errors. There’s something quite anti-democratic and unjust about the secrecy. I’m not quite sure what it is. When I put my finger on it, I’ll let you know.
Friday, February 29, 2008
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
CENSORING POLITICS ON LCTV
It seems it doesn’t take much rumbling among the pundits in Niagara County for the local politicos, that is, bureaucratic servants of the status quo, to start tightening the reins on democracy. After having read several posts over the past couple months on the Niagara Times blog attacking Tom Christy and calling for a letter writing campaign for his removal for various crimes against political correctness, it did begin to look like there was some attempt underway to oust Christy from Legislative Journal.
As it turns out, through some tortured interpretation of apparent state regulations, LCTV Board of Directors felt “obligated” because of “some complaints,” yet undisclosed, to enforce certain restrictions as to format. The “reasoning” is that a Government channel should only be about “government.” That means to the Board that only elected officials of government are permitted to be on the show. Moreover the Legislative Journal is now limited to non-political discourse and Christy is limited to being only a facilitator of “discussion.” Christy is not permitted any editorializing. READ: No new thoughts that might embarrass the politicians! Lastly, alternate guests who are not elected officials and alternative guest hosts are also barred from the hallowed halls of LCTV.
This not so subtle, yet unabashed and really very embarrassing power play, the motivation for which may be varied, surely is partly about local political sycophants unwilling to displease their bosses, whether in Albany or locally, and defend the principles of democracy not to mention the first Amendment.
At worst, such cleansing is proto-fascist. At best it continues a historical process of modernity in which the realm of the political is forcibly displaced from the public sphere to institutions of government and then finally removed from government itself. What this means is that the kind of discourse and ethos of openness and inquiry that constitutes democratic culture, is now even being expunged from within the realm of the governmental. In terms of the censorship at LCTV, it is happening by trying to control who gets to talk such that what gets talked about is in effect safe, propagandistic and thereby depoliticized. Only the interests and issues of those in power may be articulated and argued. Only the questions that limit discussion to institutionally circumscribed means and ends are permitted—especially the ends of the local party machine, in this case probably Republican.
The ideologues at LCTV do not want the talk show to become “politicized.’ The same “reasoning” continues that such “talk” belongs on the public access or possibly educational channel. This is such utter faux-analytical non-sense, I don’t know where to begin to critique this sophistry. The only reason that they might get away with this, other than that they have the power and can prevent any information from surfacing as to how and why this is really being done, is because our political consciousness and language is so completely hypostatized, that most of us may actually believe that government officials once purged of nasty questions and commentators that might ask them some real questions regarding who and what they really serve, can talk about what they do in a non-political language. They want us to believe that such reportage regarding what the politicians are doing is not really political. They want us to believe that there is this isolable thing called “government” that doesn’t include, imply and require political analysis. And, they want us to believe that there is another thing, equally hypostatized, called “politics” that can be safely placed on another channel. I guess then on that other channel it means you can talk all the “politics” you want without embarrassing or implicating any government officials, government policies, government actions, well, you get the idea. Do they really believe we are that stupid?
But the actual fact of the matter in social reality is that everything that government officials do in session, on talk shows and probably even at home is wholly and essentially political. One blogger on the Niagara Times site who would like to see Christy deep-sixed said he would just like the Legislative Journal show to “give him the facts” of what’s happening in government session. The naivete of such a wish is incomprehensible. Unless of course you wake up to the fact that the degree of reification of our world allows people to believe that there is this thing out there called a “fact.” And this innocent fact innocently imparted by our innocent government servants will be like an aspirin that we can take when we have a headache. Or, such a wishful thinker may argue that he just wants the bald, unadulterated “facts” such that he can bravely make up his mind himself as to what they mean. Of course our wishful thinker can imagine that such thought is possible without being troubled by the opinions, questions and interests of others in his world, because he lives in a politically alienated fantasy land of so-called “facts,” partisan formulas and supposed leaders who will show him and his party the way back to “Kansas.” In short his de-politicized thought is really a de-democratized thought and discourse. “Facts” don’t come with their meaning and historical context written on their face. They must be examined from many perspectives, people and points of view.
So what we might need to understand here is that all the flack that Christy has taken regarding his loud voice, impulsive interruptions, oh so very vulgar and offensive language and bad haircut is really simply the excuse and cover for not wanting to suffer the openness, honesty, passion and unpredictability of the democratic process that he represents. It is an attempt, seemingly successful, to artificially squeeze the politics out of the government and the separate the politician from the people. The tactic is common: get people worked up with some politically correct hot button issue, usually “bad speech,” and then transfer that angry, indignant energy to throw the baby out with the bath water.
Where have we seen this before? Well, we’ve seen it all over America from the President who can’t hear the press shouting at him as he walks to his helicopter; to the White House Press conference where a nicely trained and polite press corp can ask as many insipid questions as openly as they like; to a news media that progressively becomes more entertainment than investigative journalism; to an educational system that no longer teaches Civics and a secondary/higher education establishment that worships abstract, pseudo-objectivity as learning drifts further and further from any relevance to the lives we lead and the passionate self-interest that generates inquiry, research and questioning is stigmatized as irrationalistic and biased.
It is incumbent upon LCTV to stop relying upon the coercive and manipulative distortion of language and democracy and stop pretending that politics can be separated safely from the words and actions of legislators. Stop pretending that the “facts” can be alienated from their examination, interpretation and critique from the standpoint of ordinary everyday people. This bureaucratic maneuver is repressive, oppressive and, very simply anti-American.
The censorship of Legislative Journal on the part of an obviously partisan Board of Directors is blatantly political but egregiously anti-democratic. But who still believes that the partisan parties are still interested in defending democracy and promoting such education, whether in the schools or media, that furthers democratic culture and action? Let speech be fairly and robustly freed by freeing the airways from such bureaucratic “reasoning” and regulations that serve the well-placed and powerful. Stop repressing and oppressing passionate participation in the creative dynamics of democracy.
As it turns out, through some tortured interpretation of apparent state regulations, LCTV Board of Directors felt “obligated” because of “some complaints,” yet undisclosed, to enforce certain restrictions as to format. The “reasoning” is that a Government channel should only be about “government.” That means to the Board that only elected officials of government are permitted to be on the show. Moreover the Legislative Journal is now limited to non-political discourse and Christy is limited to being only a facilitator of “discussion.” Christy is not permitted any editorializing. READ: No new thoughts that might embarrass the politicians! Lastly, alternate guests who are not elected officials and alternative guest hosts are also barred from the hallowed halls of LCTV.
This not so subtle, yet unabashed and really very embarrassing power play, the motivation for which may be varied, surely is partly about local political sycophants unwilling to displease their bosses, whether in Albany or locally, and defend the principles of democracy not to mention the first Amendment.
At worst, such cleansing is proto-fascist. At best it continues a historical process of modernity in which the realm of the political is forcibly displaced from the public sphere to institutions of government and then finally removed from government itself. What this means is that the kind of discourse and ethos of openness and inquiry that constitutes democratic culture, is now even being expunged from within the realm of the governmental. In terms of the censorship at LCTV, it is happening by trying to control who gets to talk such that what gets talked about is in effect safe, propagandistic and thereby depoliticized. Only the interests and issues of those in power may be articulated and argued. Only the questions that limit discussion to institutionally circumscribed means and ends are permitted—especially the ends of the local party machine, in this case probably Republican.
The ideologues at LCTV do not want the talk show to become “politicized.’ The same “reasoning” continues that such “talk” belongs on the public access or possibly educational channel. This is such utter faux-analytical non-sense, I don’t know where to begin to critique this sophistry. The only reason that they might get away with this, other than that they have the power and can prevent any information from surfacing as to how and why this is really being done, is because our political consciousness and language is so completely hypostatized, that most of us may actually believe that government officials once purged of nasty questions and commentators that might ask them some real questions regarding who and what they really serve, can talk about what they do in a non-political language. They want us to believe that such reportage regarding what the politicians are doing is not really political. They want us to believe that there is this isolable thing called “government” that doesn’t include, imply and require political analysis. And, they want us to believe that there is another thing, equally hypostatized, called “politics” that can be safely placed on another channel. I guess then on that other channel it means you can talk all the “politics” you want without embarrassing or implicating any government officials, government policies, government actions, well, you get the idea. Do they really believe we are that stupid?
But the actual fact of the matter in social reality is that everything that government officials do in session, on talk shows and probably even at home is wholly and essentially political. One blogger on the Niagara Times site who would like to see Christy deep-sixed said he would just like the Legislative Journal show to “give him the facts” of what’s happening in government session. The naivete of such a wish is incomprehensible. Unless of course you wake up to the fact that the degree of reification of our world allows people to believe that there is this thing out there called a “fact.” And this innocent fact innocently imparted by our innocent government servants will be like an aspirin that we can take when we have a headache. Or, such a wishful thinker may argue that he just wants the bald, unadulterated “facts” such that he can bravely make up his mind himself as to what they mean. Of course our wishful thinker can imagine that such thought is possible without being troubled by the opinions, questions and interests of others in his world, because he lives in a politically alienated fantasy land of so-called “facts,” partisan formulas and supposed leaders who will show him and his party the way back to “Kansas.” In short his de-politicized thought is really a de-democratized thought and discourse. “Facts” don’t come with their meaning and historical context written on their face. They must be examined from many perspectives, people and points of view.
So what we might need to understand here is that all the flack that Christy has taken regarding his loud voice, impulsive interruptions, oh so very vulgar and offensive language and bad haircut is really simply the excuse and cover for not wanting to suffer the openness, honesty, passion and unpredictability of the democratic process that he represents. It is an attempt, seemingly successful, to artificially squeeze the politics out of the government and the separate the politician from the people. The tactic is common: get people worked up with some politically correct hot button issue, usually “bad speech,” and then transfer that angry, indignant energy to throw the baby out with the bath water.
Where have we seen this before? Well, we’ve seen it all over America from the President who can’t hear the press shouting at him as he walks to his helicopter; to the White House Press conference where a nicely trained and polite press corp can ask as many insipid questions as openly as they like; to a news media that progressively becomes more entertainment than investigative journalism; to an educational system that no longer teaches Civics and a secondary/higher education establishment that worships abstract, pseudo-objectivity as learning drifts further and further from any relevance to the lives we lead and the passionate self-interest that generates inquiry, research and questioning is stigmatized as irrationalistic and biased.
It is incumbent upon LCTV to stop relying upon the coercive and manipulative distortion of language and democracy and stop pretending that politics can be separated safely from the words and actions of legislators. Stop pretending that the “facts” can be alienated from their examination, interpretation and critique from the standpoint of ordinary everyday people. This bureaucratic maneuver is repressive, oppressive and, very simply anti-American.
The censorship of Legislative Journal on the part of an obviously partisan Board of Directors is blatantly political but egregiously anti-democratic. But who still believes that the partisan parties are still interested in defending democracy and promoting such education, whether in the schools or media, that furthers democratic culture and action? Let speech be fairly and robustly freed by freeing the airways from such bureaucratic “reasoning” and regulations that serve the well-placed and powerful. Stop repressing and oppressing passionate participation in the creative dynamics of democracy.
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