Culturally Speaking #50: For Number 50, We Visit Number One
By Sarah Stodola
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Yes, I have now written this little "column" here for 50 completely non-consecutive weeks. That's almost a year if you line every week up back to back. And what
better thing to do with a nice round number like fifty than to promote the primest of prime numbers, one. Or, in other words: The Me Three Print Journal, Volume One. Some of you have already seen or received advance copies. However, the rest of you who ordered the thing can blame some warehouse in Queens that seems to be holding the bulk of the journals hostage. According to package tracking, the boxes have been "loading for city delivery" for like six months now.
So the second the warehouse releases the books to us, we will in turn release them to you. And also, we are planning some sort of little celebratory party, although the whens and wheres have yet to be worked out. In the meantime, you can buy the journal here, so that when you come to the celebratory party, you will know what you are celebrating.
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Hotel Rwanda -- Definitely an important movie, especially for us Westerners who seem to find it so easy to overlook things like genocide in the Third World. And it's amazing that the filmmakers were able to feature a few humorous moments within such a dire story. However, I don't recommend seeing it alone, as I did, because you come out of the theater feeling quite twisted, and there is no one to commiserate with.
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As if the state of Health Care in this country wasn't already bad enough, it may soon become even worse for New Yorkers...
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Salon identifies 34 scandals created by the first George W. Bush administration. Rather than protest our current leaders with silly acts like refusing to buy anything on Inauguration Day, wouldn't it be potentially really effective if every one of us who has a public outlet chose one of these scandals and used that outlet to expose it to the public? Clearly, the majority of America has not been sufficiently informed of even the most glaring of these political misdeads. We have the ability to make people more aware of the truth, and we should take advantage of that opportunity. Yes, bloggers I'm talking to you. And yes, online literary journals, you too. And the bands, and the public speakers, and the people who go to cocktail parties and teach classes and speak on the radio. Yes, you!
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Yes, many of us are steeped in the winter blues right about now. And now it's official, this coming Monday is as bad as it's gonna get. It's like the winter solstice of emotions!
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Wow, this "coffee shop" in Park Slope seems to be trying to convert people to Christianity through their kids. Pretty sneaky, and not a chance in hell it's going to work in a neighborhood like Park Slope. (via Brownstoner)
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I'm not really all that crazy about much of this article, but I do agree that the media is returning to the structure of the 18th century, when papers were unabashedly partisan and there was one for every opinion. The following excerpt does a good job of summing up what seems to be going on these days:
For some time now Americans have been leaving those vast media spaces where they used to come together and have instead been clustering in smaller units. The most broad-based media outlets, the networks and metropolitan newspapers, have been losing viewers and readers for years. But lately, thanks to the proliferation of new cable channels and the rise of digital and wireless technology, the disaggregation of the old mass audience has taken on a furious momentum. And the tribalization is not just about political ideology. In the post-mass-media era audiences are sorting themselves by ethnicity, language, religion, profession, socioeconomic status, sexual orientation, and numerous other factors.
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Yesterday could have been such a happy time...instead, I lay in bed watching Newt Gingrich on Charlie Rose discuss Bush's inauguration and how it's good because now the Creator can have more of a role in determining US policy. And that, my friends, is as sad as it comes.
Click here for the last Culturally Speaking.
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Sarah Stodola is the Executive Editor of Me Three. She can be contacted here.
© 2005 Me Three