Please read this whole post before making any assumptions about my interpretation of the recent arrest of Andrew Meyer at the John Kerry event on the UF campus.
1. Talking about the UF taser incident on a blog is, indeed, a large part of why the very non-virtual incident needed to happen to begin with and a huge part of the overall problem with the current trend of "social activism".
2. My hypocrisy is going to be alleviated by the fact that from the ages of 15-22 years old I do have a record of non-virtual activism/conscientious objection that took place in the real world and not on the internet. Amazingly I was never tasered - this is probably because I remember in 1996 that the very idea of a police taser was the punchline at the end of an early Daily Show episode, not an actual weapon carried by cops.
3. The kid who got tasered seems like a real asshole. He has a website dedicated to making himself famous - which, in his future line of work, I can appreciate the need for some vanity. Thus, on it's own, I think I could let that slide. I mean, many of us do have blogs, myspace pages, and family web sites - a page collecting early professional work of a wannabe isn't too vain in context. He also has an irksome email address though (famouswriter@....) and apparently had a track record of writing poorly researched articles aimed at angering the UF student body.
4. It seems pretty obvious the kid was being disruptive, speaking out of turn, and flailing about in front of a current veteran senator and past presidential candidate. Surely, the guy should have been kicked out of the event, right?
5. Yes, he should have been kicked out of the event. At the same time he should never have been tasered. I mean, come on, no matter how much a dorky kid bounces around, 4 or 5 burly cops should be able to handle the situation without much problem. Furthermore, a taser is not a weapon to dismiss lightly. In medicine, we learn the pathophysiology of many diseases that cause much less morbidity and mortality than the 61 deaths reported last year as a result of a police taser.
But now, let's take the argument one step further......
6. We need more assholes like Mr. Meyer. We need more people who purposely set out to cause disruption. We need more people to start flailing about right now.
Especially our 21 year olds on college campuses who don't yet have that weight of real-deal adulthood bearing down on their shoulders with wives and kids and careers always resisting their actions much more strongly than any police taser.
There are millions of blogs like mine and places to go to voice every protest to every speech, every politician and every action in the country. There are TV channels dedicated to every viewpoint.
Does this translate to any change, to any action? Well, if a social faux-pas is committed, than, yes, I will allow that youtube-ostracism does change careers (Howard Dean, Sen. Allen, and Larry Craig).
But how about social justice? The most recent examples of large scale youth movement in the U.S. is probably the WTO protests in Seattle - well before the Web 2.0 revolution. Just after this was the Gore 2000 Washington marches - again, before Web 2.0
I would argue that - if these events took place now - real world action would be eroded by virtual protest. I would offer that the lack of daily large scale protests against the Iraq war are partly due to the prevalence of virtual protest which is doing much more than disseminating information equally. It is eroding a collective nationwide response to injustice.
7. Comedy is an excellent weapon and tool to cope with life but right now we are using comedy to alleviate middle-class guilt. The popularity of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report (both excellent programs) demonstrates that people do have problems with the Iraq War and President Bush (both frequent topics on these 2 programs) - otherwise, free market economics wouldn't allow those shows to focus on such issues repeatedly. But this current trend of comedy, and the shared popularity of these themes in our collective conscious, makes us impotent to do anything more than watch and laugh as the world passes by. This is clearly made evident by the quick response to that already-famous line "Don't Tase me, Bro!". Buy your T-shirt now!!!
Although, at least Comedy Central's Mr. Colbert did call for his viewers to stop blogging, stop watching and follow Mr. Meyer's lead.
8. Web 2.0 promised to change the world, and, indeed, it has. But is this the change we had in mind when we envisioned equal information access?
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3 comments:
hominid,
The daily show was around in 96? I didnt know that. I agree with the crux of what your saying but the taser incident wasnt really groundbreaking, just another convenient temporary diversion. folks get tasered everyday, only this guy made a (sort of) funny scene about it and he was being an annoying goofball right before and there was a decent camera angle so people have been relishing watching the poor guy suffer. and he said "bro". There should be more smart provacative social activist disruptions and less of the ego driven andrew meyer kind. His questions posed thoughtfully and less obnoxiously would have been more productive. But you gotta admit the remixes have been pretty cool, and to me, more interesting than the incident itself. Not that the incident wasnt troubling, it's just that, at this point, the writing's on the wall, you know?
indeed, daily show started in 1996 with killborn, a. whitney brown, and lizz winstead, and beth littleford....
i agree that meyer was obnoxious but I don't think being less obnoxious would have been useful at all...it would have been just like everything else....
the whole point to me is that the world - or at least this part of the world - needs more obnoxious, more assholes. there is plenty of serious discourse going on all the time but some physical action is important as well - with a little healthy instigation at it's core.
could it have been more provocative? maybe - but this seemed to do pretty well in that regard
and, yes, i will admit that the hammer mash up isn't too bad - but so much energy put into what?
This incident IS just like everything else man. That's the point. He's the flavor of the week. Before that it was britney, paris, and the obama girl. Jerks like this play right into the hands of the establishment, they dont challenge it. Did you see how Fox spun it? Nice little diversion around the office. This cat didnt raise no stakes, he didnt even take one for the cause, he just got excited and bigheaded at the wrong place and got his 15 minutes out of it. Not that it invalidates the point he was horribly attempting to make, but now he's a joke and noone's talking about voter disenfranchisement or skullnbones. (Instead we're dancin to MC Hammer-shit is tight)
You're right, people aren't pissed off enough about what's going on around them and they spend too much time watching TV and hangin out on the internet. What else is new? One thing I learned from being attacked by cops in LA, shot by them in Miami, and jailed for nothing in NYC...The establishment prefers your "healthy instigation" occasionally underhandedly instigating it themselves via provacatuers because it gives them an excuse to clamp down as our famous "dont tase me" meme shows.
You don't think the world has enough obnoxious assholes already, huh? Are they giving PHDs out like candy now?
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