Years of Poems and Spirits

NYT introduced a couple of recent books (“Dumb and Dumber: Are Americans Hostile to Knowledge”)on America’s anti-intellectual tradition.

Quotes:
Ms. Jacoby, whose book came out on Tuesday, doesn’t zero in on a particular technology or emotion, but rather on what she feels is a generalized hostility to knowledge.

T. J. Jackson Lears, a cultural historian who edits the quarterly review Raritan, said, “The tendency to this sort of lamentation is perennial in American history,” adding that in periods “when political problems seem intractable or somehow frozen, there is a turn toward cultural issues.”

The article also cited Ms. Jacoby (started as a Washington Post reporter) as saying the problem was with the flawed educational system and religious foundamentalism.

I disagree. This is just another manifestation of the knowledge-power relationship. Or the ontology of knowledge: if people already feeling empowered, why do they still need knowledge?

This may seem obvious, but my contention is: this is NOT an abnormly, nor a unique phenomenon.

I am always fascinated by the process how the image of a public figure is shaped up in people’s minds.

It seems like there is this “caricaturization” process: a caricature is apparently an distortion of a character’s real appearance. Yet such a distortion is so sticky, once it enters in one’s mind, it is almost impossible to get rid of.

Is there a similar effect/process in media’s portray of a public figure? Given that most audiences may have never met/interacted with a public figure, how can such an effect/process generate traction in people’s minds? In other words, there has to be a balance between “what people are willing to hear/believe” and “whether the figure is actually more eccentric in certain ways”. But then to what degree can one (i.e. media actors) blur and distort each of the two in the process of creating a public persona?

The following triggered the above thought:
Source: “Anti-Obama Film On the Way”
“Obama is a completely clean slate,” said David Bossie, president of the group. “We will develop the image that we want the people to see. We’re doing the hard work of the research right now. The American people don’t know much about Obama, except that they like his speaking style.”

A day after I wrote about Steven Bach’s book on Leni Riefenstahl, here comes another documentory film maker controversy: Ken Burns was critisized by Latino groups for failing to include the stories of their soldiers in his WWII documentary. The story went to extra inning when Burns refused to alter his story at first but gave in after Hispanic politicians threatened to cut PBS funding because of this.

The cacophony from the left and the right ridiculed the strong-arm tactic by the Hispanic lawmakers, yet their colleagues in the Congress largely remain silent. As much as I dislike anyone taking political shortcuts, I am grudgingly agreeing with the agitators: everything they have done so far is by the book (i.e. the Huntington’s book, that is): they stayed within the political system, participated in it and claimed their stake through legislative venue.

This is particularly important because of Latino citizens’ relative marginal status in our society. More specifically, they are politically under-represented because of their immigrant stigma. They filled the cities, the factories, the schools, and the churches of this land, yet their political status is forever in precarious state because of a piece of paper issued by the only institute of the land they do not fill. Therefore, the “justification” of their political exclusion is even more ridiculous than that against the Blacks during the segregation era. In this regard, we should be appreciative that they stayed in the current political regime and exercised their influence the way we are accustomed to.

I got side-tracked a little because what I meant to say was how Latino activists justified their tactic. Recently, one such lady on Jim Lehrer’s News Hour put in one sentence why Burns must change his movie: because of the sacrifice of the Latino soldiers and the large Latino population we have in America today. The congruence of the two arguments struck me as odd at first but moments later, it makes so much sense! As a matter of fact, I myself have written on it: what is history? Or does history belong to the people in the past or people in the present? My thought was triggered by a story on dying WWI veterans: even if there is a time machine that we can travel back with them to their time, we would not come back with the same “history”. It is so fascinating that I found some supporting argument but didn’t recognize it. Apparently, as I have learned from Marketing, there is a substantial difference between thinking and feeling.