3/?/09 the new snakeoil

3/?/09

As I watched the feud unfold between John Stewart and Jim Cramer it was interesting to hear the Daily Show host use a word that we have discussed at length in class. “We are both snake oil salesman, the only difference is people know what im selling” John said. Poor Jim Cramer sat there throughout the whole interview looking like he was going to cry. I think that Jon Stewart is one of the great minds of out times, and like I have said in class before, comedians are really the true documentors of history. For all network news claims of being “truthful” and “unbiased”, comedians are the ones who don’t apologize for their opinions, and their audiences are testaments to the psyche and opinion of the public. It was interesting to think about the concept that snake-oil has transcended the material scam to become synonymous with a scam that is perpetrated by people in the public sphere. The new snake-oil salesmen are the Bill O’rielys and Jim Cramers and Jon Stewarts. This means that their audience is much more massive than the original door-to-door snake oil salesman, but for some reason their accountability has not caught up yet.

4/2/09 creating propaganda

4/2/09

I was surprised how hard it is to creat a piece of propaganda. I guess it is one of those things that seems so effortless when it is done by people who really know what they’re doing. I kept trying to think about the techniques we learned in class and apply them, but my idea (showing the subjectivity of the word patriot by pasting the head of a “terrorist” onto the body of a colonial militiaman) didn’t exactly lend itself to the dangling comparative or superlative swindle. I think that propaganda is more easily applied to simple issues. Or maybe propaganda just simplifies issues, deduces them to easily conceivable ideas, which in a way is an injustice in itself. 

4/13/09 group collaboration project

4/13/09

For our group collaboration project, me and my group were going to film a kind of commercial. We were going to go to a Starbucks and film one of the group members trying to order a coffee but getting confused by the inexplicably foreign named sizes, then have the same person go to Fennario, a locally owned coffee and tobacco shop that exclusively sells fairly traded coffee and show the difference in atmosphere as well as understandability of the menu. Well we didn’t even get to film in starbucks, because apparently you cant film in a corporate store. The “barista” suggested that we film in Sprazzo, a coffee place across the street that has had a “closed for business” sign on the door for the past two years. “I think you already put them out of business” I said. They looked at me with blank stares and as we were leaving I kind of felt guilty. Corporations are so ingrained in out culture and so widespread that you cant really blame individual employees. Its not like they are physically going to peru or Colombia or wherever and enslaving the people that live there. It’s just a shame that more people don’t know what is really going on.