Media

SPORTS: Clemens vs. Bonds in the public arena

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By A.J. Hayes

After hurling fastballs, screwballs, and more than his fair share of bean balls at major league hitters over the last 25 baseball seasons, an impassioned Roger Clemens had no trouble knocking 60 Minutes’ Mike Wallace’s lollipop questions out of the park Sunday night.

clemens1.jpg
Roger Clemens: Speaking freely?

“Its hogwash,” Clemens said in response to how a former associate could have fingered him as a steroids user in the Mitchell Report. “Twenty-four, 25 years, Mike. You’d think I’d get an inch of respect. An inch.”

To that, Wallace gave an approving nod.

You may have been watching the 60 Minutes broadcast asking yourself, ‘why does Clemens get to play paddy cake with old’ prune face, while Barry Bonds is an unlucky verdict away from pounding license plates?’

Easy: public relations. Clemens cares what people think about him and his baseball record. While Bonds could give a rat’s ass what fans and especially the media thinks about him.

Edwards Reconsidered

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There have been good reasons not to support John Edwards for president. For years, his foreign-policy outlook has been a hodgepodge of insights and dangerous conventional wisdom; his health-care prescriptions have not taken the leap to single payer; and all told, from a progressive standpoint, his positions have been inferior to those of Dennis Kucinich.

But Edwards was the most improved presidential candidate of 2007. He sharpened his attacks on corporate power and honed his calls for economic justice. He laid down a clear position against nuclear power. He explicitly challenged the power of the insurance industry and the pharmaceutical giants.

And he improved his position on Iraq to the point that, in an interview with the New York Times at the start of January, he said: “The continued occupation of Iraq undermines everything America has to do to reestablish ourselves as a country that should be followed, that should be a leader.” Later in the interview, Edwards added: “I would plan to have all combat troops out of Iraq at the end of nine to ten months, certainly within the first year.”

Now, apparently, Edwards is one of three people with a chance to become the Democratic presidential nominee this year. If so, he would be the most progressive Democrat to top the national ticket in more than half a century.

The main causes of John Edwards’ biggest problems with the media establishment have been tied in with his firm stands for economic justice instead of corporate power.

Several weeks ago, when the Gannett-chain-owned Des Moines Register opted to endorse Hillary Clinton this time around, the newspaper’s editorial threw down the corporate gauntlet: “Edwards was our pick for the 2004 nomination. But this is a different race, with different candidates. We too seldom saw the positive, optimistic campaign we found appealing in 2004. His harsh anti-corporate rhetoric would make it difficult to work with the business community to forge change.”

Many in big media have soured on Edwards and his “harsh anti-corporate rhetoric.” As a result, we’re now in the midst of a classic conflict between corporate media sensibilities and grassroots left-leaning populism.

On Jan. 2, Edwards launched a TV ad in New Hampshire with him saying at a
rally: “Corporate greed has infiltrated everything that’s happening in this democracy. It’s time for us to say, ‘We’re not going to let our children’s future be stolen by these people.’ I have never taken a dime from a Washington lobbyist or a special interest PAC and I’m proud of that.”

But, when it comes to policy positions, he’s still no Dennis Kucinich. And that’s why, as 2007 neared its end, I planned to vote for Kucinich when punching my primary ballot.

Reasons for a Kucinich vote remain. The caucuses and primaries are a time to make a clear statement about what we believe in — and to signal a choice for the best available candidate. Ironically, history may show that the person who did the most to undermine such reasoning for a Dennis Kucinich vote at the start of 2008 was… Dennis Kucinich.

In a written statement released on Jan. 1, he said: “I hope Iowans will caucus for me as their first choice this Thursday, because of my singular positions on the war, on health care, and trade. This is an opportunity for people to stand up for themselves. But in those caucuses locations where my support doesn’t reach the necessary [15 percent] threshold, I strongly encourage all of my supporters to make Barack Obama their second choice. Sen. Obama and I have one thing in common: Change.”

This statement doesn’t seem to respect the intelligence of those of us who have planned to vote for Dennis Kucinich.

It’s hard to think of a single major issue — including “the war,” “health care” and “trade” — for which Obama has a more progressive position than Edwards. But there are many issues, including those three, for which Edwards has a decidedly more progressive position than Obama.

But the most disturbing part of Dennis’ statement was this: “Sen. Obama and I have one thing in common: Change.” This doesn’t seem like a reasoned argument for Obama. It seems like an exercise in smoke-blowing.

I write these words unhappily. I was a strong advocate for Kucinich during the race for the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination. In late December, I spoke at an event for his campaign in Northern California. I believe there is no one in Congress today with a more brilliant analysis of key problems facing humankind or a more solid progressive political program for how to overcome them.

As of the first of this year, Dennis has urged Iowa caucusers to do exactly what he spent the last year telling us not to do — skip over a candidate with more progressive politics in order to support a candidate with less progressive politics.

The best argument for voting for Dennis Kucinich in caucuses and primaries has been what he aptly describes as his “singular positions on the war, on health care, and trade.” But his support for Obama over Edwards indicates that he’s willing to allow some opaque and illogical priorities to trump maximizing the momentum of our common progressive agendas.

Presidential candidates have to be considered in the context of the current historical crossroads. No matter how much we admire or revere an individual, there’s too much at stake to pursue faith-based politics at the expense of reality-based politics. There’s no reason to support Obama over Edwards on Kucinich’s say-so. And now, I can’t think of reasons good enough to support Kucinich rather than Edwards in the weeks ahead.

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Norman Solomon’s latest book is “Made Love, Got War: Close Encounters with America’s Warfare State.” For more information, go to: www.normansolomon.com

Will money win tonight in Iowa?

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B3 note: This is an important and timely “follow the money” report from the Center For Responsive Politics in Washington, D.C. It makes a significant point: that even though there are 2,000 or so journalists covering the campaign in Iowa, and even though there is almost saturation media coverage, nobody can really follow the money.

As the report notes in section 3 below, “If money raised in Iowa is any indicator of popular support, Mitt Romney and Hillary Clinton will win their respective caucuses tonight. And in New Hampshire, it’ll be Romney and Barrack Obama. But remember that these figures represent fundraising thruogh Sept. 30 only. The fundraising and spending reports for October-December aren’t due to the Federal Election Commission until after the caucuses on Jan. 3l.” The best you can do to follow the money, as we learned to do from Deep Throat in the movie “All the President’s Men,” is to read this report and follow its advice on how to go further. Alas, that’s not good enough.
Congratulations to the Center for doing the best that can be done under current election reporting law. B3

CENTER FOR RESPONSIVE POLITICS
MONEY-IN-POLITICS NEWS
January 3, 2008
tel: 202-857-0044, fax: 202-857-7809
editor@capitaleye.org
www.OpenSecrets.org
www.CapitalEye.org

WILL MONEY WIN TONIGHT IN IOWA?
Winning the Iowa caucuses takes organization and money, certainly, but the biggest spenders haven’t always won there. Howard Dean, Steve Forbes and Pat Robertson are just a few of the candidates who dumped money into the Hawkeye State with little to show for it. How much have the ’08 candidates spent to campaign in Iowa? Well, it’s hard to know. Using campaign finance reports, the best you can do is look at vendors’ addresses. But the biggest expenses, like for advertising, staff and travel, are often paid out to companies and individuals outside the state. In the first nine months of this campaign, the candidates reported spending more than $13 million with Iowa-based vendors. If the true cost of the Iowa effort were known, a single top-tier campaign might have spent that much alone — or more — in the state. As it is, Barack Obama’s reports detail about $2.6 million in Iowa expenditures from January through September, followed by Mitt Romney with about $2.4 million. By comparison, during the entire ’04 presidential election cycle, including the general election, the field of mostly Democratic candidates reported spending about $8.5 million in Iowa. Leading up to the caucuses that year, the field reported spending just $5.2 million, or 40 percent of this election’s reported spending.

*2008 presidential expenditures

Staying power

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com

Looking back at the Bay Area art scene in 2007 affirms our perennial difficulty in holding on to ambitious players. It’s an oft-repeated story. Given San Francisco’s commitment to nonprofit and alternative models over commercial ones and the high cost of living, artists find it easier to start off than to build their careers here. Since the art world in general has been buoyed by brisk sales, art fairs, and biennials, the Bay Area’s condition applies as much to high-profile curators, dealers, and administrators as to artists.

Curatorial flux is particularly apparent. Madeleine Grynsztejn, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art’s Elise S. Haas Senior Curator of Painting and Sculpture since 2000, recently announced her new position as director of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. René de Guzman left his post as director of visual arts at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts to become senior curator at the Oakland Museum of California. Daniell Cornell, currently the director of contemporary art projects and curator of American art at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, will become the deputy director for art and senior curator at the Palm Springs Art Museum, while the Berkeley Art Museum — which is embarking on a capital campaign for a new building — saw senior curator Constance Lewallen and director Kevin Consey leave for various reasons. This means there are a number of key positions that, when filled, will change the directions of these important venues. Or will they? Such turnovers have happened before, and frankly, institutions rarely undergo radical makeovers.

In 2007 new curators began or continued their programs. In May, Liz Thomas, the Matrix curator at BAM, began her first slate of shows with Allison Smith’s participatory, craftsperson-based Notion Nanny project, Rosalind Nashashibi’s film installation, and Tomás Saraceno’s current "suspended environment" (through Feb. 17), revealing a solid and diverse range of emerging international practices. This curator’s strategy is to build slowly rather than open with a bang.

The program moves at a faster and flashier clip at California College of the Arts’ Wattis Institute, where in fall 2007 curator Jens Hoffman began his first season of programming with a sporty graphic identity and high-concept group shows. These include "Pioneers," a nod to Bay Area mavericks from gold rush groundbreakers to conceptualists; "Passengers," a long-term, rotating round-robin show; and "Apocalypse Now" (through Jan. 26), a political "attack" he curated with international biennial-favorite artist duo Allora and Calzadilla. The pair’s works were also highlighted as the main fall exhibition at the San Francisco Art Institute’s Walter and McBean Galleries, which are programmed by curator Hou Hanru. Hou’s exhibits started in fall 2006, and in 2007 they included "World Factory," a two-part group show that boisterously explored conditions of global capitalism in various media while serving as a test ground for the 2007 Istanbul Biennial, which he also organized. Hoffman and Hou are key figures in an international circuit of curators that also includes SFAI dean Okwui Enwezor, and the three simultaneously work on projects here and abroad. (Full disclosure: I teach at both of the aforementioned schools.)

It’s been difficult, though, to gauge these projects’ impact on the doggedly localized Bay Area art scene — or how their curators will take to the regional climate. Such curatorial presence has provided an opportunity for a larger number of artists and other curators to pass through the region, and it’s offered platforms for provocative group shows that are rarely staged in museums around here. The bottom line, though, is that in the present model of international art, change is driven by the marketplace, and these institutional spaces exist outside the commercial gallery arena that makes certain cities more visible art hubs than others.

There was, however, movement in the local commercial realm. Catherine Clark broke from 49 Geary to open a Chelsea-style space in the shadow of SFMOMA. Ratio 3 unveiled a surprisingly large and cannily designed new space near 14th and Valencia streets, not far from Jack Hanley Gallery’s two spots on Valencia (another recently debuted in New York) and Southern Exposure’s just-opened second temporary site. Combined with other galleries nearby — Intersection for the Arts, Needles and Pens, Adobe Books, etc. — the neighborhood could be turning into a destination alternative to the exhibition spaces on the first block of Geary. The Dogpatch neighborhood shows promise of becoming another art zone with the ambitious Silverman, Ping Pong, and Ampersand galleries, which have all been staging interesting shows, though the area is still a bit under the radar.

All said, we’re at a transitional moment, and forward thinking seems in order. The year ahead offers huge potential for new faces, directions, and already scheduled programs at many of the aforementioned venues. I’m anticipating the Gilbert and George show at the de Young Museum, Lee Friedlander at SFMOMA, and a Paul McCarthy project at the Wattis, as well as the 2008 openings of the California Academy of Sciences and the Contemporary Jewish Museum. All provide plenty reason to stick around. *

GLEN HELFAND’S TOP 10


The following exhibitions, events, and films enthralled me with their winning combinations of joy, originality, and serious subtext.

Pina Bausch Tanztheater Wuppertal’s Ten Chi, Zellerbach Hall, Berkeley

The Book of Shadows," Fraenkel Gallery

Liz Larner’s lecture, San Francisco Art Institute

"© Murakami," Geffen Contemporary, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles

Mitzi Pederson’s "Unlet Me Go," Ratio 3

Ratatouille, directed by Brad Bird

"A Rose Has No Teeth: Bruce Nauman in the 1960s," Berkeley Art Museum

“Rudolf Stingel” Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Weeds

Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Unknown Forces installation, REDCAT, Los Angeles, and his film Syndromes and a Century

Technology in wartime

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› annalee@techsploitation.com

TECHSPLOITATION War changes everything, including technology. We are roughly six years into what the George W. Bush administration calls the war on terror and what hundreds of thousands of soldiers know as the occupation of Iraq. Gizmos that a decade ago would have been viewed entirely as communications tools and toys are now potential surveillance and killing machines.

Don’t believe me? Consider how much the Web has changed. Referred to naively 10 years ago by Bill Clinton and Co. as the friendly, welcoming "information superhighway," the Web is now the National Security Agency’s surveillance playground. Last year a whistle-blower at AT&T revealed that every bit of Internet traffic routed by AT&T was also being routed through an NSA surveillance system. Millions of innocent people’s private Internet information, including online purchases and e-mail, was being watched without warrants.

Cuddly consumer robots epitomized by Sony’s Aibo robot dog have changed too. The company that makes adorable Roomba vacuum robots, iRobot, just announced a huge deal with the United States military to make reconnaissance and killing robots called PackBots for use in combat zones. Already, 50 PackBots have been deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan. These are the ground versions of crewless aerial vehicles, remote-controlled spy planes that can also shoot weapons.

Tech security expert Bruce Schneier describes technology as having "dual uses": one for peacetime and one for war. The Wii video game console, for example, is great for transutf8g physical movements into movements onscreen. That makes the Wii great for party games in which you swing your arms to move dancing penguins on the screen. It also makes a great interface for remote-controlled guns in a combat robot. Just move your arm to aim.

In a time of war you can’t enjoy a party game without thinking about your game console being used to kill people. I realize that sounds melodramatic, but looked at pragmatically it’s quite simply true.

Once you realize that every form of technology has a dual use, it becomes much easier to argue for ways of limiting the uses that aren’t ethical or legal. Consider that a roboticized antiaircraft cannon (similar to the PackBot) turned on its operators during a field exercise in South Africa in October 2007, killing nine people before it ran out of ammo. The software error that led this robot to slaughter friendly soldiers is no different from errors that make your Roomba crash. What do we draw from this analogy? Perhaps robots that are perfectly legal as vacuums should be illegal on the battlefield. Perhaps no weapon should ever be completely autonomous like the Roomba.

Questions like these led me and my colleagues at Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility to put together a conference at Stanford University on the topic of technology in wartime, focusing especially on ethics and the law. Coming up on Jan. 26, the conference will be a day packed with talks and panels about everything from dual-use technology (Schneier will be a keynote speaker) to what happens when robots commit war crimes. We’ll also hear from people who are appropriating military technologies for human rights causes — the very technologies that let military spies hide online also help human rights workers and dissidents shield themselves while still getting out their subversive messages.

We’ll also have a panel on so-called cyberterrorism, or destructive hacks aimed at taking down a nation’s tech infrastructure. But should fears of cyberterror lead to total government surveillance of the Internet? Cindy Cohn, the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s legal director, will talk about how the NSA used AT&T to spy on US citizens and the suit the EFF has brought against AT&T for vioutf8g its customers’ privacy rights.

If you want to find out how to change the way militaries are appropriating consumer tech or just want to learn more about how war is changing the way we use technology, come to Stanford on Jan. 26 for the conference. It’s open to the public, and you can register at www.technologyinwartime.org. The cost of admission gets a you free lunch and a T-shirt, as well as a chance to talk to some of the smartest people in the field. See you there!

Annalee Newitz is a surly media nerd who wants smart defense to replace buggy offense.

Iowa report: Iowans want a winner

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I asked Carolyn Schmidt, our citizen reporter in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, if Iowans this time around would be trying to make up for the fact that they chose Kerry over Dean four years ago and thus did not pick a presidential winner. Here is her response and report on Friday (Dec. 28):

By Carolyn Schmidt

Cedar Rapids, Iowa– Iowans do want to make a winnable choice this time, although frankly it wasn’t the Iowans who took Dean out of contention last time. It was the media feeding frenzy over Dean’s rallying of his supporters after the caucus results were announced. He was yelling above the crowd noise at the time, and the broadcasters took out the background noise and just ran Dean’s over-the-top yelling. It was all pretty unfair–and of course was repeated ad infinitum, which just buried him.

I can report that foreign policy expertise is now expected to influence caucus-goers more than was the case before the Bhutto assassination. McCain, who hasn’t been campaigning heavily in Iowa but concentrating on New Hampshire, made an appearance at a Cedar Rapids restaurant yesterday.

International intrigue

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› annalee@techsploitation.com

TECHSPLOITATION The following story is not entirely made up. But it’s fictional enough that if you think you recognize yourself or your friends, then you must be mistaken.

He had a vaguely European-sounding name and a vague job doing something with the United Nations, or perhaps one of its subcommittees or projects or councils. It sounded important because it had a lot of words in it, and one of those words was Internet. That’s why Shiva met him.

They were at some kind of after-conference party, or maybe it was midconference. Anyway, it was for some center or special interest group at Harvard that was very concerned about the Internet in Africa. Shiva had come late in the afternoon to hear the keynote presentation, which wasn’t actually related to Africa. It was delivered by someone whom she admired, a technologist with a social conscience who would have done something about Africa if he had had time after haranguing the United States government about putting its citizens under surveillance without warrants.

The keynote speaker talked rousingly about how easy it was for governments — even ones in Africa, he was careful to add — to spy on people’s activities online. He talked about all of the great activist groups at Harvard and elsewhere around the world where smart geeks were figuring out ways to hide personal data from invasive states. He invited them all to help out by contributing to several open-source software projects, and then he invited them to the reception for wine and cheese.

There Shiva met the guy with the European-sounding name, who regaled her with stories about the wine in Spain and setting up wireless networks in Africa. He was so entertaining that she forgot to ask him which country in Africa, and then she consciously decided not to ask him since she knew so little about African geography that she might come across as exactly the sort of person who didn’t belong at Harvard. At one point he mentioned Lagos, which she knew (to her relief) was in Nigeria.

One thing led to another, and they wound up at Shiva’s lab at MIT because the European guy got really excited when she told him about her project on assembling virus shells for drug delivery. He would be leaving for Lagos in the morning, he told her, and she thought, "What the hell? I’m going to take this guy back to my lab and fuck him." And she did, and it was pretty hot, especially because he seemed so interested in her work. Before he left they exchanged e-mail addresses.

Lagos is one of the biggest cities in the world, but its exact population is unknown. A 2006 census claims the state of Lagos (which includes the city) has a population of nine million, but locals say these numbers are low and should be as high as 10 or 12 million. A city like that, whose population can’t even be determined to the nearest million, is a good place to disappear.

But the European guy didn’t disappear, and he would occasionally write Shiva e-mails from Lagos, forwarding her links about local politics or commenting on how locals ate this green stuff they called simply vegetable. He was setting up wireless networks and writing reports about them for his UN group or council or whatever. To get data in and out of the country, he wrote, he had to hide it on USB devices that looked like toy models of the TARDIS spaceship. People were so suspicious of anything that looked like a computer.

Eventually, the e-mails trailed off. He was in Switzerland, then Dubai, then Africa again. Never Cambridge. Shiva was busy prepping a paper for Nature, and then she was prepping for a conference. She hooked up with a couple of other people, started exchanging other flirtatious e-mails, then forgot about the European guy entirely.

Until one day she saw a picture of him on her favorite blog, right next to a post about how to make bicycles from foam. Apparently he’d been selling bioweapons information to groups variously labeled terrorists or insurgents, using his UN gig as cover. He had been teaching guerrillas about viruses. Nobody could figure out where he’d gotten his data. They figured it was a disgruntled Islamic militant somewhere, a person with a vendetta against the US government. Shiva never knew if it was her. *

Annalee Newitz is a surly media nerd who doesn’t know anything about virus shells and has never been to Lagos.

The Ron Paul phenomenon

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› news@sfbg.com

San Franciscans rarely get excited about Republican presidential candidates, and it’s rarer still to see GOP campaign signs in Mission District windows, beat-up old cars, or crowds of enthusiastic supporters flooding the city’s streets. But that’s what Ron Paul has been inspiring.

"I would give my entire net worth to see Ron Paul elected president," a man holding a "Ron Paul ’08" sign on the corner of Powell and Geary on Dec. 16 said. "I’ve never contributed to a candidate’s campaign in my life, but in the past months I’ve given about $600 or $700."

Paul’s frank assessment of the United States as an overreaching empire got his campaign rolling, and it has gathered serious momentum in the past couple of months, as evidenced by an increasing online presence and record-breaking fundraising for November and December. Paul’s essentially libertarian platform is attracting support from a surprisingly diverse range of people, from lifelong members of the National Rifle Association to medical marijuana activists to disenchanted college students.

Perhaps even more surprising, this Republican from Texas is generating significant support among Bay Area voters. "Ron Paul" signs are now visible at antiwar protests, on lawns, and in apartment windows. People who have never been politically active or have never felt excited by a candidate before are spending their free time tabling at weekend farmers markets and walking precincts after work in support of the candidate.

A recent recruit of the San Francisco Ron Paul meetup.com group, which is attracting new members daily, captured the fervor of Paul supporters with this posting: "I can’t believe my new hero is a politician. Never in my life have I encountered any political leader who actually represented me. This country needs Ron Paul desperately."

Despite their demographic diversity, one unifying theme among all Paul supporters is their absolute belief in their candidate’s integrity. He is perceived as a man who says what he thinks and takes action according to what he says; he is seen as a rare breed among politicians, especially those who, like Paul, have served several terms in Washington DC. "My gut tells me Ron Paul is different," said John Harvan, one of about 60 radiant Paul supporters gathered amid Union Square holiday shoppers Dec. 16.

Bay Area supporters — organized through online meet-up groups — were congregated on the chilly Sunday in solidarity with a national Paul fundraising push, or what the campaign dubbed "a moneybomb." Staged to coincide with the anniversary of the 1773 Boston Tea Party, the Ron Paul Tea Party was, as one Web site put it, "a symbolic dumping of these tyrannical systems that thwart our true destiny of Freedom & Liberty!"

The Dec. 16 fundraising push was an unquestionable success, raising more than $6 million in a 24-hour period. Paul’s campaign had already received national attention when it received $4.2 million in donations Nov. 5, which precipitated his much-needed boost in the polls. But $6 million broke the record for funds raised in one day, a record previously held by the John Kerry campaign for raising $5.7 million in 2004.

Most of the donations to the Paul campaign are small contributions from committed individuals. Proving the grassroots nature of Paul’s support, the average size of each donation is consistently around $100.

Yet there is no political mystery to Paul; he has been articuutf8g the same message — one of limited constitutional government, low taxes (if any), and free markets — since he was first elected to the House of Representatives in 1976 from his home state of Texas. And his dependability is starting to gain traction with libertarians, Republicans, Democrats, and independents.

"A real mix of people are brought together by Ron Paul’s message because we sense the danger in the country," Gerald Cullen of San Francisco told the Guardian. "I think the [George W.] Bush administration has just about destroyed the country. Nothing in the Constitution provides for a president to attack another country that hasn’t attacked us."

Paul is a self-proclaimed noninterventionist and has opposed the war in Iraq from the start. He is by no means liberal or progressive; he’s more a classic conservative who opposes government regulation. "A lot of people are frustrated by the different regulations and infringements on our liberty day in and day out," said Ralph Crowder, who lives in Berkeley. "Ron Paul’s not trying to sell you on himself; he’s just selling you the message of freedom."

And while there are varying definitions of freedom, Paul’s fundamental noninterventionist belief translates into a variety of positions that appeal to voters on both ends of the political spectrum. He sees the USA PATRIOT Act as a breech of civil liberties; wants to stop US involvement in the World Trade Organization, the North American Free Trade Agreement, and other free trade agreements; and supports bringing American troops home from Iraq posthaste.

Appealing to the opposite end of the spectrum, he is also staunchly antichoice, introduced legislation in 2004 to repeal bans on assault weapons, and wants to beef up the US’s borders.

Adrian Bankhead, who also lives in Berkeley, wants Paul to be the Republican nominee but disagrees with his social policies too heartily to vote for him in the general election. "His social views against immigration, abortion, affirmative action, and women make me nervous," Bankhead told the Guardian. But Bankhead respects what he sees as Paul’s fundamental honesty: "He is the only Republican nominee who would not steal the election in November."

However, Bankhead’s position is a minority one among Paul supporters. Crowder and Cullen, for instance, agree with almost everything Paul says. "There’s not much difference between where he stands and where I stand," Crowder said. And Cullen, who worked for Paul during his 1988 bid for the presidency as a Libertarian candidate, sees the candidate’s principles as "very much in line with the old Republican Party principles … before the madness took over the country."

Stephanie Burns, one of the main organizers of online Bay Area meet-up groups, says she agrees with Paul "all the time."

There are more than 80,000 Ron Paul online meet-up members around the country — 452 in the San Francisco group as of the writing of this article — and most of them find themselves in complete agreement with Paul’s perspectives.

Scott Loughmiller sees the Paul campaign as being in a prime position to steal the nomination, with his polling numbers rising, his momentum building, and plenty of money in the coffers. "We’re right where Kerry was in 2004 going into the primaries, when [Howard] Dean had already been crowned winner by the media," Loughmiller said.

Politics as cryptography

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› news@sfbg.com

In his new book, Cracking the Code: How to Win Hearts, Change Minds, and Restore America’s Original Vision (Berrett-Koehler), author and Air America radio personality Thom Hartmann offers a how-to manual for expressing political viewpoints. He says the left’s struggles are not the fault of liberalism as an ideology; the problem is that many liberal politicians simply do not know how to talk to people.

Part self-help book, part populist polemic, Code puts our country’s political discourse under the knife and dissects how master communicators like Bill Clinton, John Kennedy, and Ronald Reagan won elections by talking their way deep into voters’ consciousnesses. He spoke with me by phone.

SFBG The poet Muriel Rukeyser said, "The universe is made of stories, not atoms." You have a similar view of the political universe, don’t you?

THOM HARTMANN Story is the way we transmit culture. Story is the way we remember things…. The story we call politics is the story of how to best accomplish the common good.

SFBG In Cracking the Code, you trace the lineages of the modern conservative and liberal stories to two philosophers, Thomas Hobbes and John Locke.

TH The conservative worldview is grounded in Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan. You could argue that the Adam and Eve story is an early articulation of it as well. This [story] suggests that people are intrinsically evil, and because of that we have to find the most meritorious, the few who are good, and put them in charge. And small-d democracy with a lot of people participating is not such a good idea….

The liberal story came out of John Locke, but also [Jean-Jacques] Rousseau and eventually Thomas Jefferson. It says the vast majority of people are good and therefore collective wisdom can be trusted. The more people that participate in democracy the better. That’s why the liberal founders of this country put "We the People" as the first three words of the Constitution. It wasn’t "Us the meritorious few, us the ones who are in charge." It was "We the People."

SFBG You say that after Sept. 11, George W. Bush was able to get even liberals to buy into the conservative story. Do you believe it’s still a powerful enough narrative to bring another Republican into the White House?

TH Yes, I think it’s possible. Particularly if we don’t have Democrats stand up and say, "I’m not afraid anymore." I’m still waiting for a Democrat to stand up like Franklin Roosevelt did and say, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself, and we will not be frightened."

We’re wired for survival first and foremost. The reptile brain is the most primitive part of our brain. [It] is where fear is processed, and it’s all-powerful. So those people who motivate us with fear and danger are, over the short term anyway, typically going to have success. The problem is, it’s sort of like whipping a horse, these "moving away from pain" strategies. The more often you whip a horse, it’s going to go faster and faster until it hits a limit, and then it’s going to fall over dead…. At some point people say, "Wait a minute, you’re fearmongering. You’re the little boy who cried wolf."

SFBG You speak in the book about effective communication inducing a kind of trance.

TH If you want to teach somebody something, they have to be in a kind of trance state. And I refer to the techniques for bringing that on as "inducing the learning trance." Mostly these have to do with pacing and using different modalities as you speak.

The big mistake that John Kerry made against George [W.] Bush in 2004 was that he induced a boredom trance while Bush induced a feeling trance. Bush communicated feelings. They were clumsy, yes, but that made it more intense, frankly. Kerry communicated ideas and concepts. But people don’t vote on ideas and concepts. They vote based on their feelings.

SFBG Ronald Reagan was pretty much the master at appealing to emotion, wasn’t he?

TH Ronald Reagan, FDR, and Jack Kennedy were three of the greatest communicators that we’ve had in the White House…. What made them great was, first of all, their ability to be multimodal in their communication. They talked about their vision for America, they talked about their story of America, and they gave America a sense of what they thought it could be.

Number two, they all principally used "moving towards pleasure" strategies instead of "moving away from fear" or "pain avoidance" strategies. In other words, they held up an ideal of what we wanted to move towards as a country and made us proud of ourselves.

Number three, they communicated emotion and always used story and emotion to pass along information.

SFBG You point out how Reagan picked up one of Kennedy’s themes, which Kennedy himself picked up from John Winthrop: the "America as a city on a hill" theme. Except Reagan inserted a key word into its phrasing, didn’t he?

TH Yes, shining. He dramatically improved the "America as a city on the hill" metaphor by making us a shining city on a hill. He put that word in, and it gave the image even more power.

What’s interesting is … Reagan’s notion of America as the city on the hill was very different than Kennedy’s. John Kennedy’s idea of the city on a hill was that the entire world is looking at [America], and every single one of us in the country is the city. From the highest and best to the poorest economically, we are all part of that city on the hill, and we welcome people in to participate in it. Reagan, on the other hand, his version of the city on the hill was we’re the castle, we’re the fortress, we’re the place where Cinderella the lowly commoner hopes one day to get in and dance with the prince.

SFBG I noticed your Wikipedia page says you campaigned for Barry Goldwater in your youth.

TH When I was 13 years old, my dad was active in the local Republican Party, and I went door-to-door with him. I read [Goldwater’s] autobiography Conscience of a Conservative [Victor Publishing Co., 1960]…. I even went to a John Birch Society meeting. I was convinced that the communists had infiltrated the State Department and they were coming to get us. But within two years I had completely shaken myself out of that trance. There’s nothing like growing up, going off to college, and discovering that you’re of draft age and your government wants to kill you. Not to mention being exposed to ideas beyond what I had learned up to that point, [like] the core concepts of the Enlightenment.

SFBG So you heard a different story.

TH Exactly, and I lived a different story. I really saw America differently the first time one of my friends came back in a box from Vietnam.

SFBG My mother is a big fan of your radio show. But she lives in San Diego, and the Air America affiliate there is either going off the air or has already gone off the air.

TH It went off the air last week, actually.

SFBG Can you talk about the future of progressive media in light of that kind of setback?

TH The first two or three years that conservative talk radio was on the air, it struggled terribly. But then it reached the point where advertisers realized they were getting results and program directors realized that they had a core listenership, and it started to take off….

In the next year or few years I think there’s going to be a broad perception shift across radiodom that beyond the ongoing feast and famine of Air America, liberal talk radio is here to stay…. Right now the conventional wisdom [for program directors] is "nobody ever got fired for putting Rush Limbaugh on the air." When the conventional wisdom becomes "nobody ever got fired for putting Thom Hartmann on the air," then everything will change, and I think we’re very close to that.

Switching sides

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› gwschulz@sfbg.com

Following the waves of layoffs that have occurred over the past year at several newspapers in the Bay Area, former top editors and reporters are reinventing themselves as media spokespeople, also known as "flacks," after the jackets that deflect incoming rounds of ammunition. At least a half-dozen prominent journalists have succumbed so far.

Their job now is to stamp out unsettling questions from their former colleagues or put a positive spin on bad press, like calling a slight dip in San Francisco’s homicide rate last year a huge success for Mayor Gavin Newsom or characterizing his lurid affair with a subordinate as a chance for him to heal emotionally.

They’re perhaps most famous for the phrase "no comment," but flacks the world over would likely prefer a more honorable description, like the one promoted by the Public Relations Society of America: "Public relations helps our complex, pluralistic society to reach decisions and function more effectively by contributing to mutual understanding among groups and institutions."

Spoken like a true flack.

So who better to work as a media relations executive than a former reporter? Newspaper insiders know more than anyone else how to kill a story or at least blunt its impact by instilling doubt in the mind of the reporter. It’s not uncommon for journos to hear "That’s not a story" from the new flacks.

Another tactic, used by C.J. Cregg, the fictional flack in Aaron Sorkin’s television series The West Wing, is to invite uncooperative reporters out for coffee and off-the-record chatter until they’ve been befriended. District Attorney Kamala Harris’s press office is famous for coffee invites.

Among the newspaper expatriates:

•Chris Lopez, an editor of the Contra Costa Times who was laid off by parent company MediaNews Group last year, took a job as a communications director for the Denver host committee of the Democratic Party’s 2008 convention.

•Paul Feist, formerly the Sacramento bureau chief for the San Francisco Chronicle, was appointed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger earlier this year to serve as a communications secretary for the California Labor and Workforce Development Agency.

•Tom Honig, who recently departed as the longtime editor of the Santa Cruz Sentinel, accepted a job with Armanasco Public Relations, an affiliate of Hill and Knowlton, which represents such illustrious clients as McDonald’s, Pacific Gas and Electric Co., and Starbucks. Hill and Knowlton helped McDonald’s diminish fallout from the 2004 documentary Super Size Me, in which filmmaker Morgan Spurlock attempted to survive exclusively on the fast-food chain’s food for 30 days, with disastrous results (his health condition plummeted).

Honig, however, promised Sentinel staffers Nov. 30 that he wasn’t betraying the values of news reporting and proclaimed himself a martyr hoping to save the Sentinel from further staff cuts enacted by MediaNews CEO Dean Singleton.

"Just because you’re in public relations does not mean you’re a liar," the paper quoted Honig as saying. "What I do now is tell people’s stories. This is just another way to tell people’s stories."

He’ll make a praiseworthy spinner indeed.

Lopez and Honig could not be reached by deadline. Nor could we get hold of a spokesperson for the spokespeople at the Public Relations Society of America. Feist wouldn’t comment when we contacted him.

There are other defectors. A former Chronicle reporter from the paper’s Sacramento bureau, Lynda Gledhill, is now a spokesperson for State Senate leader Don Perata, and a San Jose Mercury News capitol reporter, Kate Folmar, is working for the press office of Secretary of State Debra Bowen. And former Chronicle City Hall reporter Charlie Goodyear is now working for the high-powered SF flack firm Singer Associates.

Newspaper giant MediaNews set the trend this year for pushing career journalists into public relations. The company laid off scores of people after it purchased several newspapers in the Bay Area, including the Sentinel, the CoCo Times, and the Mercury News. But other Bay Area newsrooms, including the Hearst Corp.–owned Chronicle, today have literally half the staff they had just a few short years ago.

Lopez previously worked for Singleton’s flagship paper, the Denver Post, which he helped earn a Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of the Columbine shootings. Columnist Charles Ashby of the Post‘s rival Pueblo Chieftain pointed out Dec. 10 that two more former Post staffers are now working as press secretaries for Colorado governor Bill Ritter and reporters from other large Colorado papers are today handling public relations for the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce and the University of Colorado.

Gene Rose of the National Association of Government Communicators insists citizens are better served by bureaucracies that contain former reporters.

"With the shrinking news hole and with less reporters to cover news, agencies and governments are being forced to figure out ways to communicate more directly with people one-on-one," Rose, also a former reporter, said.

The interim dean of the University of California at Berkeley’s journalism school, Neil Henry, documented the phenomenal rise of public relations in this year’s book American Carnival: Journalism Under Siege in an Age of New Media (University of California Press). In particular, he notes, TV news organizations have grown increasingly reliant on polished video news releases produced by flacks, which sometimes air verbatim, as opposed to expending their own dwindling newsroom resources. The VNRs, as they’re called, give "coverage" of a product or idea the veneer of journalistic credibility, when in fact they’ve been created by professional manipulators.

"For the concerned citizen and certainly for the dedicated American journalist, it is horrifying to see how significantly business and political advertising has compromised the mission of the news industry, at times with the industry’s full participation," Henry writes.

He adds that in 2004, New Mexico governor Bill Richardson lured more than 20 journalists, including some of the state’s best, into his administration with the promise of good pay.

So who else in the Bay Area plans to depart for the dark side? No comment.

Kucinich no-shows, ditto media

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Well, Dennis Kucinich had a good excuse for missing the kick-off of his “Peace Train” presidential campaign in San Francisco – the untimely death of his brother, Perry.

The media, however, didn’t have an excused absence. Despite the lack of Dennis, over 200 people turned up last Friday night to hear the Nation’s John Nichols, writer Michael Parenti, Code Pink’s Medea Benjamin, Bill Simpich from the Iraq Moratorium, and Kucinich scheduler, Amy Vossbrinck, laud the Ohio congressman and his bid for the White House.

While all of the speakers had interesting points to make, Parenti made the really obvious one that had to be in the backs of all the minds sitting in the audience – that no one’s paying attention to Kucinich’s campaign. “Candidates used to hide how much money they had. Now they brag,” said Parenti, and the more money they have, the more “serious” their candidacies. But, said Parenti, it’s the newscasters that really call the shots. “The media makes these designations. They say these are the leading candidates.”

City College chancellor steps down; Christmas ruined for thousands

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How can the people of San Francisco make it through the holiday season without crying uncontrollably over the just-announced departure of San Francisco City College Chancellor Phil Day? In a statement, Day apologized profusely for destroying your Christmas.

“I am truly sorry that I must deliver this message on the eve of our traditional holiday break but I did not want you to find out about this by reading the papers or having it via news reports.”

Thank you for being so kind, Chancellor. Clearly the media frenzy resulting from your official announcement to step down is making it difficult for San Franciscans to concentrate on their celebrations — including the public and private critics of your administration, many of whom worked hard to help us understand just how much of a mess the school’s costly bond projects are in.

Humans are dogs

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› annalee@techsploitation.com

TECHSPLOITATION Two new studies of animal intelligence caught my attention last week because they prove that humans are no better than dogs and monkeys. This is something I’ve always felt to be true on an anecdotal level, and now cognitive science backs me up.

A researcher in Vienna, Austria, trained dogs to sort photographs into two categories: pictures of other dogs and pictures of landscapes. This is big news because it means that dogs not only recognize what’s happening in symbolic visual representations (photos) but can also figure out how to translate an abstract concept ("dog") into a category of pictures. Previously, nobody thought dogs could categorize photographs or even abstract concepts other than "food" and "enemy."

The other study is even better, partly because it’s called "Basic Math in Monkeys and College Students" (oh, those zany editors at PloS Biology). In this study, cognitive scientists gave monkeys and college students a series of very simple tests to determine how quickly and accurately they could add up the number of dots on a screen. On average, the monkeys and students answered in the same amount of time. The students were 94 percent accurate in their answers, while the monkeys were 76 percent accurate. So monkeys are nearly as good as humans at adding dots, even without the benefit of a college education.

What struck me first on contemputf8g these studies is that cognitive science has taken us in an unforeseen direction. This is a field that promises to study consciousness as if it were a machine, to look at thoughts as electrical impulses and biological structures rather than sublime metaphysics. It would seem, therefore, to run the risk of dehumanizing us, of converting all of our crazy, ambivalent feelings into mere blips on a chart. Instead, what cognitive science has done, at least in these studies, is show us how deeply connected we are to the living creatures around us.

By breaking down our thought processes into their component parts — pattern recognition, counting — we are able to see that the building blocks of thought are not unique to Homo sapiens. Dogs and monkeys are doing this shit too. In fact, there is a monkey out there who can add better than a college student (some of the humans did in fact score lower than some of the monkeys in the study).

So what do we do now that we know dogs and monkeys are capable of humanlike intelligence? Shall we test more animals and discover what we already knew about elephants and dolphins having language? I hope so.

If nothing else, this should teach humans to be a lot more damn humble about our supposed niftiness.

Of course, there are dangers in taking this scenario too far. Instead of seeing ourselves as having something in common with animals, we might use this information to make animals into better slaves. Science fiction author David Brin’s Uplift series is partly about this. He describes humans using biotech and genetic engineering to "uplift" chimps and dolphins, giving them human-equivalent intelligence. The creatures become fully intelligent, but socially they remain second-class citizens.

The two transformed species are in a constant struggle to prove themselves to the humans, and often fail; Brin portrays the dolphins as liable to slip back into incoherent animalness when threatened.

Still, we have not yet appointed ourselves uplifters. Humans are at a moment in our history when we are still in awe of animals who can think the way we do. Now we have to figure out the appropriate next steps.

Obviously, we need to test more animals for intelligence, using a variety of methods.

Probably the most oddly hopeful news to come out of all of this is the fact that both of these tests were done without any killing or brain invading. The researchers who did the dog test even invented a special paw-operated touch-screen computer for the dogs to use. I like that. Not only have we discovered that dogs are like us, but we’ve also invented the first dog-friendly user interface. What next? Wii for dogs? That would pave the way for true interspecies bonding. *

Annalee Newitz is a surly media nerd whose cat is unfortunately not among the mentally gifted creatures who can add, sort, or even recognize food.

The case for Kucinich

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OPINION At a recent Potrero Hill Democratic Club presidential forum, when the representatives of Hilary Clinton, John Edwards, and Barack Obama spoke more about how the candidates made them feel than about their positions on the issues, it first struck me as strange. Eventually, though, their approach made sense — I realized these people weren’t necessarily all that hot about their candidates’ actual policies.

In defending their health care programs, for instance, the Clinton and Obama reps tacitly acknowledged that a single-payer plan was superior to their candidates’ offerings, while the Edwards spokesperson cautioned the audience against seeking a candidate who believed everything they believed.

Maybe it’s the lack of distinct seasons in San Francisco or something, but these people seemed confused about the difference between voting in a primary and in a final election. November is the month when you vote for what you have to vote for; in February you can vote for what you believe in. In November the halfhearted health plan of one of these candidates, which would continue siphoning scarce public funds away from health services and into the coffers of the private health insurance industry, will likely be superior to whatever scheme the Republican nominee offers up. But in the February primary you can actually vote for Dennis Kucinich’s single-payer plan.

Logically, we might ask why any of these front-running candidates who won’t pledge to have all American troops out of Iraq by the end of their first term should expect much support in San Francisco, arguably the nation’s most antiwar city. Why would anyone who opposes this war not back a candidate like Kucinich, who calls for complete troop withdrawal within three months? Or why, for that matter, would voters who support gay marriage not also back Kucinich, a gay-marriage supporter himself?

Well, when I appear as a Kucinich representative at election forums, people answer those questions for me all the time in postmeeting conversations. They and their friends believe in what Kucinich says, they often tell me, but "he can’t win," so they’ll vote for someone who they think can.

Now let’s be honest here and admit that those of us who get worked up about peace and justice issues are prone to complain a lot. We are ever bemoaning the influence of money in politics and the poor job the news media do in covering the real issues. But when we get to the point where a candidate is raising the important issues and we know we agree with him and we still won’t vote for him, then the next time we start complaining, it may just be time to look in the mirror.

Casting a vote against the war in Iraq is a lot easier than marching against it or even writing a letter. But if antiwar voters won’t vote for antiwar candidates, you have to ask why those candidates should go to the trouble of running and why the big-money candidates should pay any attention to the supposed antiwar vote.

Whatever else happens in this election, one thing is certain: if you don’t vote in February for what you believe in, you won’t get to vote for it in November. And then there will be no one else to blame. *

Tom Gallagher, a former Massachusetts state representative, is a San Francisco activist.

Homes for whom?

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› sarah@sfbg.com

After years of letting the free market dictate San Francisco’s housing mix — as a result steadily losing ground on the city’s affordable housing goals — the Board of Supervisors appears primed to place an ambitious bond measure on the fall 2008 ballot to address the housing imbalance.

Winning the necessary support from two-thirds of voters won’t be easy, coming on a ballot with the majority of supervisorial seats up for grabs, the presidential election, and a likely bond measure for rebuilding General Hospital. But Sup. Chris Daly, author of the affordable-housing bond measure, believes it’s a good time to have progressives focus on this most important of problems facing the city.

Last summer affordable-housing funds became a political football in a budget showdown between Daly and Mayor Gavin Newsom, a fight Newsom won, leading to a budget that prioritizes clean streets and a beefed-up Police Department over affordable housing. Newsom’s reelection campaign, which was just gearing up at the time, successfully cast Daly as the villain after the occasionally hotheaded supervisor threatened to bolster housing funds by cutting Newsom’s "pet projects," as Daly called them, which included a community justice center, a Police Academy class, street trees, and the Small Business Assistance Center.

Daly clearly lost that duel when he was savaged by the media and removed from his chair on the Budget Committee by board president Aaron Peskin. But now Daly has bounced back on the issue and secured solid support for his measure, which progressives and affordable-housing activists are already gearing up to fight for next year.

"Just because Newsom had a significant political operation this year does not mean that the affordable-housing issue went away," Daly told the Guardian after securing support for the amendment from six of his colleagues and a broad coalition of housing activists.

The measure would set aside $2.7 billion in city funds for affordable housing over 15 years. It is cosponsored by Sups. Tom Ammiano, Jake McGoldrick, Ross Mirkarimi, Gerardo Sandoval, Sophie Maxwell, Bevan Dufty, and Peskin and backed by Coleman Advocates for Children and Youth (which has made affordable family housing its top priority), the San Francisco Organizing Project, and the Housing Justice Coalition.

The measure would give affordable housing the same baseline of funding that the city already allocates to the Recreation and Park Department fund and the Library Preservation Fund — and less than what it sets aside for the Children, Youth and Families fund, the police fund, and the fire station maintenance fund.

"If we don’t have affordable housing, who is going to use the parks and the libraries?" housing activist Calvin Welch asked.

The amendment would also require the Mayor’s Office of Housing to prepare an affordable-housing plan every three years, present an annual affordable-housing budget, and complete these steps before the rest of the mayor’s budget proposals are finalized.

"I hope these provisions will bring some much-needed transparency and clarity to the affordable-housing process so we can avoid the train wreck of last year," Welch said.

In a June 8 editorial still posted at Newsom’s www.actlocally.org reelection Web site, the San Francisco Chronicle appears to have bought the mayor’s spin that Daly’s request to prioritize housing was all just political theater.

"There was nothing wise or efficient about Supervisor Chris Daly’s bald political ploy to strip $37 million from Mayor Gavin Newsom’s budget priorities and shift most of it into affordable housing," the Chronicle claimed. "Now let’s be clear. We know that San Francisco does need housing. Newsom’s budget also acknowledges the shortage, pumping $217 million into housing programs."

But, according to Welch, "the lie was that Newsom allocated $217 million when he really only allocated $78 million and the board added a further $10 million to the pot…. Newsom was taking credit for more than he was actually allocating and using those other funds to imply that he’d already used a massive amount of the General Fund when he was, in fact, allocating less than the year before. So he was actually talking about a cut."

Newsom press secretary Nathan Ballard told the Guardian that the total affordable-housing budget for fiscal year 2007–08 was $226 million — and of that total budget, "just approximately $90 million is General Fund dollars.

"The balance of funding (the difference between $226 million and $90 million) is a whole variety of other funding sources," he added, listing inclusionary housing in-lieu fees, redevelopment funds, jobs housing linkage fees levied on private development, federal and state sources, and other funds, many of which accumulate over many years, further distorting the budget picture.

But Welch said the housing situation is grim. As he told us, "The truth is that 92 percent of the city’s population can’t afford housing."

Daly’s affordable-housing amendment awaits a Jan. 8 board vote, following a request by Maxwell to allow for affordable housing to be built on sites used under the San Francisco Housing Authority — the so-called Hope SF program — a request Daly supports.

"My issue with Hope SF is [with] any proposal to build a large number of market-rate units on public housing sites," Daly explained, referring to a central tenet of the Newsom-created program.

Meanwhile, a June 2008 ballot measure being pushed by Newsom, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, and a host of other prominent local power brokers threatens to drain what little money the city does have for affordable housing in order to subsidize a massive push by Lennar Corp. to build 8,000 to 10,000 new houses in Candlestick Point, Hunters Point, and the Bayview.

Other than committing to replace low-income Alice Griffith public housing units at a one-to-one ratio, the Bayview Jobs, Parks and Housing Measure does not specify what percentage of the Lennar-built homes will be considered affordable or sold below market rates. Publicly, backers of the measure are presenting the efforts as focused on building a new stadium for the San Francisco 49ers, even though the team has said it would rather move to Santa Clara. Yet the campaign is also keenly aware of the public support for more affordable housing, at least if its ground-level pitches are any indication.

A paid signature gatherer who was recently working the 24th Street BART station (and who also told a Guardian source he was getting the unusually high sum of $2.50 per signature) presented the proposal to passersby as "an affordable housing measure."

FCC votes for Big Media

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And now we need l00,000 people to get Congress to reverse the FCC of George W. Bush to reverse the commission’s sellout to the Big Media who supported us going into Iraq and are now helping keep us there

By Bruce B. Brugmann

(Scroll down to sign a protest letter to Congress and the New York Times story)

As expected, FCC Chairman Kevin Martin and his two Republican colleagues approved new rules that will unleash yet another flood oer media consolidation across the country. As expected, the Big Media is either blacking out or minimalizing the story, with the notable exception of the New York Times which ran an opposing editorial in Monday’s edition and a strong story online today. (See below).

As Robert McChesney, the president of Free Press, a valiant media reform group puts it in an action alert,
“This is about whether we will have access to the information that democracy requires. it is about whether or not we’ll have real news and local voices on radio, trelevision, and in the newspaper in your town. It’s about whether the public airwaves will represent our nation’s diversity.”

Or, let me add, a city’s diversity, such as San Francsico. Remember the Will and Willie show on the Quake on Clear Channel, a highly valuable show that was killed brutally with no explanation because it didn’t have high enough ratings and wasn’t able to go national? That’s but one local example of this dreadful phenomenon. There are some good people on the liberal Quake on Clear Channel (Thom Hartman, Big Ed Schulz, Randi Rhodes, Rachel Matteo, et al), but none of them bring a San Francisco perspective to the show, even though the city is one of the most liberal and civilized cities in tthe world and has the Speaker of the House and two California Senators (Diane Feinstein in the city, Barbara Boxer in Marin).

McChesney rolls the drums and points out that in 2003 the FCC tried to do the same thing, but millions of people demanded that Congress reject the FCC’s rules. And they did, thanks in large part to McChesney’s group. And it’s ttime to do it again. Sign the open letter to Congress, as suggested in the alert below. B3

Read the New York Times article here.

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Dear Charles,

It happened. A few minutes ago, FCC Chairman Kevin Martin and his two fellow GOP commissioners approved new rules that will unleash a flood of media consolidation across America. The rules will further consolidate local media markets — taking away independent voices in cities already woefully short on local news and investigative journalism.

In 2003, the FCC tried to do the same thing, but millions of people demanded that Congress reject the FCC’s rules. And they did. It’s time to do it again.

We need 100,000 people to get Congress to reverse the FCC’s rules right now.

Sign Our Open Letter to Congress
Then get three of your friends to do the same.

This is about whether we will have access to the information that democracy requires. It is about whether or not we’ll have real news and local voices on radio, television and in the newspaper in your town. It’s about whether the public airwaves will represent our nation’s diversity.

Just yesterday — spurred by your calls and letters — 26 senators from both parties sent a letter to the FCC Chairman promising “to revoke and nullify the proposed rule” if the FCC voted to lift the longstanding ban on “newspaper-broadcast cross-ownership.” But Chairman Martin did it anyway.

Congress has the power to throw out these rules — and if 100,000 people demand it, they’ll have to listen.

Take action now and spread the word.

Some say that nobody listens to letters like this. Well they definitely do, and it’s a way you can truly help the cause with just a few clicks. Sign on now — and get your friends to do the same.

Your actions are making a difference. Let’s keep up the pressure. And stay tuned — this fight is far from over.

Thanks for bringing us this far,

Robert McChesney
President
Free Press
www.freepress.net

P.S. Spread the word: Recruit three new friends to sign on to this letter and send the message to Congress.

P.P.S. Read Senator John Kerry’s blog post on today’s decision on the Free Press Action Network.

——————————————————————————–

View more information about this campaign at: www.action.freepress.net/campaign/sbmopenletter

Tell your friends about this campaign at: www.action.freepress.net/campaign/sbmopenletter/forward

If you received this message from a friend, you can click here to become a Free Press activist.

FOIA reform bill passes!

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After five years of effort, a group of ten media organizations called the Sunshine in Government Initiative has succeeded in getting Congress to pass a much-needed reform bill that addresses some of the worst problems with the Freedom of Information Act. It now goes to the president — but since there are Republican co-sponsors and it passed pretty overwhelmingly, there’s a chance he’ll sign it.

Here’s the official statement:

U.S. House Sends FOIA Reforms to President’s Desk,
Media Groups Praise Changes Helping Public Obtain Documents

The ten media organizations comprising the Sunshine in Government Initiative
(SGI) applaud the House and Senate for passing important bipartisan reforms
to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), House Oversight and
Government Reform Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA), Rep. Tom Davis (R-VA), Rep.
William Lacy Clay (D-MO), Rep. Todd Platts (R-PA) and Rep. Lamar Smith
(R-TX) led the effort to pass this legislation. Senator Jon Kyl (R-AZ) also
played a key role in getting this legislation over the finish line.

The media group members of SGI appreciate the hard work and dedication of
these members and their staffs for their diligent work to improve the way
FOIA works for the American public. Members of the SGI coalition include:
American Society of Newspaper Editors, Associated Press, Association of
Alternative Newsweeklies, Coalition of Journalists for Open Government,
National Association of Broadcasters, National Newspaper Association,
Newspaper Association of America, Radio-Television News Directors
Association, Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, and Society of
Professional Journalists.

Statements from the Sunshine in Government Initiative and SGI Members
Organizations

“After years of growing government secrecy, today’s vote reaffirms the
public’s fundamental right to know,” said Rick Blum, Coordinator of the
Sunshine in Government Initiative. “Fixing FOIA isn’t a secret. This bill
makes commonsense changes to help the public know what government is up to.
We thank the sponsors who championed real changes and worked hard to keep
the government’s doors open.”

“We applaud Congress for resolving the differences that existed in the House
and Senate versions of this important legislation and making its passage a
reality,” said Gilbert Bailon, president of the American Society of
Newspaper Editors and editorial page editor of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
“This action reaffirms the public’s right to know and buttresses a statutory
right vital to our Democracy.”

Long-time open government advocate Pete Weitzel, Coordinator of the
Coalition of Journalists for Open Government, which is a member of SGI,
called the vote “a true holiday gift from Congress.”

Community newspapers particularly sought an independent office to resolve
disputes. “Strengthening the Freedom of Information Act will pay dividends
in public information for a long time to come. This new law has many
virtues. But as community newspaper journalists, we particularly celebrate
the development of an ombudsman office under the Office of Government
Information Services,” said Steve Haynes, President of the National
Newspaper Association and Publisher of the Oberlin (KS) News. “We hope it
will open doors that have too long been locked by delay and inattention to
information requests. National Newspaper Association congratulates Senators
Leahy, Cornyn and Kyl and House Chairman Henry Waxman for their authorship
and contributions to this bill. We hope this will be the first of many
enactments to improve transparency and help citizens better understand how
the government operates.”

Other media leaders praised today’s vote and the bill’s sponsors. ³The
Freedom of Information Act is an indispensable tool for citizens and
businesses to access information about their government, which,
unfortunately, too often includes government waste and wrongdoing,² said
John F. Sturm, President and CEO of the Newspaper Association of America.
³Today¹s bipartisan passage of the OPEN Government Act to strengthen and
reform FOIA is a great day for the public¹s interest in good government. We
applaud the dedication of all the lawmakers who pushed this important
measure forward, particularly Senators Patrick Leahy, John Cornyn, Jon Kyl
and Reps. Henry Waxman and Todd Platts.²

³This is a huge advancement for open government, thanks to the leadership of
Senators Leahy, Cornyn and Kyl and Representatives Waxman and Platt,² said
Barbara Cochran, president of the Radio-Television News Directors
Association. ³But this isn¹t just a victory for journalists; it¹s a victory
for every single member of the American public. This legislation will
eliminate some of the lengthy delays and persistent backlogs in the FOIA
process that create obstacles and limit the public¹s ability to make
informed choices in their communities.²

Other SGI members saw this as a strong change in direction. “Passage of the
FOIA bill will allow not only members of the press but all Americans to hold
their government more accountable. In a time when First Amendment rights
are under attack almost daily in this country, this bill is a major step to
ensuring America has a free press and a government that is transparent and
open,” noted Clint Brewer, president of the Society of Professional
Journalists and Executive Editor of the City Paper in Nashville, Tennessee.

Murdoched: the Stockton Record is next

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By Bruce B. Brugmann

As things get tougher and tougher in the newspaper business, there are two jobs that are the toughest of all. One is writing the obituary for your own paper and your own job. The other is writing the story that tries to explain why the daily paper you work on keeps getting peddled about like the stakes in a Las Vegas poker game.

The latest example of the second story appeared in today’s Stockton Record by an unlucky soul by the name of Mike Klocke. He starts out as these stories usually do, citing the honor that came once upon a time to the paper when it was owned by a local family.

“The Irving Martin Assembly Room at the Record is named for the newspaper’s founder, whose family owned the business for its first 74 years,” Klock wrote. “Ironically, if the day comes when The Record once again is sold, employees will get the news in the upstairs room that honors one of Stockton’s historic figures.

“I bring this up because of last week’s $5 billion offer by publishing magnate Rupert Murdoch to purchase Dow Jones @ Co. The community newspaper division of Dow Jones, Ottaway Newspapers Inc., owns the Record.”

Wait a moment. There is a telling detail: the date on the story is May 6, 2007, the date of Murdoch’s offer to buy Dow Jones, and the Record is running the exact same story six months later on the day that the sale is finalized back on Wall Street.

Bravely, Klocke goes through the Record history of five owners since Loretta Martin ended the family’s association with the Record in l969. The Record, he says, “has been somewhat akin to a baton in a track meet relay.
The Martin family sold to Speidel Newspapers Inc. (l969: which merged with Gannett Newspapers Inc (l977), which sold the Record to the Omaha World-Herald (l994), which sold to Ottaway (2003).

Still more bravely, Klocke writes that “uncertainty can be draining on employees at all levels. If you’re not careful, it can make you lose your focus. I’Ive always believed working in the newspaper business is a mission. We cover news aggressively, help you decide where to shop with advertisements and put the newspaper on your driveway each morning.

“We also now put news and advertising at your fingertips online throughout the day. We also have a bit of the chameleon in our DNA. We embrace challenges and adapt to new environments. The future? Who knows?

“The Record could be sold again, or Ottaway (Dow Jones) still could own the company for decades. Our business model, news-gathering approach and company makeup likely will continue to change.

“Our commitment to the mission and the communities we serve will not falter.”

Idle question: Why can’t reporters who think like this, and editors who allow this kind of story to run when their papers are in play, end up running our valuable community daily papers?

Well, the word from my sources out in the valley is that there are only two real possible buyers: Singleton or McClatchy newspapers, both of whom already own a dangerously huge chunk of the California newspaper business.

They are members in what I call the Galloping Conglomerati. And they are poised to pounce at the very same time that the Big Media are blacking out or marginalizing the major Big Media story that the FCC is about to open the floodgates to even more local media consolidation and even more junk news. (See my blow below.)

Where it all will end knows only God. B3

Owners might change — but not the mission

The Irving Martin Assembly Room at The Record is named for the newspaper’s founder, whose family owned the business for its first 74 years.

Ironically, if the day comes when The Record once again is sold, employees will get the news in the upstairs room that honors one of Stockton’s historic figures.

I bring this up because of last week’s $5 billion offer by publishing magnate Rupert Murdoch to purchase Dow Jones & Co. The community newspaper division of Dow Jones, Ottaway Newspapers Inc., owns The Record.

Murdoch’s eyes, of course, are on The Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones’ myriad successful online ventures. For now, he’s been rebuffed by Dow Jones’ controlling shareholders.

News industry speculation is intensifying about whether this is a first foray by Murdoch and whether other potential buyers will materialize.

As for The Record? Editor and Publisher magazine’s online site reports that New England-based GateHouse Media Inc., a very active recent buyer of newspapers, would be a likely bidder for Ottaway.

GateHouse doesn’t have a West Coast presence, so The Record could in turn be sold to a company with successful California “clustering” of newspapers such as McClatchy (Sacramento, Modesto, Merced and Fresno) or MediaNews (Bay Area papers).

McClatchy and MediaNews both have pursued buying The Record in the past.

Sure, it’s speculation at this point. It’s difficult not to ponder the future when there’s the potential for a fifth different owner since Loretta Martin decided to end the family’s association with The Record in 1969.

In the past 38 years, The Record has been somewhat akin to a baton in a track-meet relay.

The Martin family sold to Speidel Newspapers Inc. (1969), which merged with Gannett Newspapers Inc. (1977), which sold The Record to the Omaha World-Herald (1994), which sold it to Ottaway (2003).

I’ve worked for three of the owners, and they’ve all contributed in positive ways to the company and community.

Ottaway – with excellent guidance and financial support from Dow Jones – made the dream of a new press facility a reality.

Company executives didn’t waste any time, telling us within 30 days of their ownership to get moving on the long-overdue project. The new press became a reality less than two years later.

Ottaway has given us – and Record readers – something we’ve needed for decades. Our Web site development also has been an Ottaway initiative.

The Omaha company proved to be a very good newspaper steward in its nine years of ownership. Omaha executives invested in The Record, and I believe the newspaper truly reconnected with the community during that time.

The Gannett years were, at times, tumultuous. Some excellent longtime employees were hired in various departments back then, and The Record benefited from the opportunities presented by a large, national chain.

Speidel was before my time.

Business uncertainty can be draining on employees at all levels. If you’re not careful, it can make you lose your focus.

I’ve always believed working in the newspaper business is a mission. We cover news aggressively, help you decide where to shop with advertisements and put the newspaper on your driveway each morning.

We also now put news and advertising at your fingertips online throughout the day.

We also have a bit of the chameleon in our DNA. We embrace challenges and adapt to new environments.

The future? Who knows?

The Record could be sold again, or Ottaway (Dow Jones) still could own the company for decades.

Our business model, news-gathering approach and company makeup likely will continue to change.

Our commitment to the mission and the communities we serve will not falter.

Contact Klocke at (209) 546-8250 or mklocke@recordnet.com.

Click here for article.

Latterman’s analysis, Newsom’s “trying times,” Leal’s demise

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“He remained popular with voters (if not insiders) throughout the whole of his first term (after gay marriage), even through some trying personal times. Effectively, with an absence of challenge, his high poll numbers transferred directly to the ballot—rare in American politics.” David Latterman on Mayor Gavin Newsom’s 2007 reelection.
IMG_0733aa.jpg
Photo from sfgov.org’s Mayoral homepage.

“Trying personal times!” Don’t you just love how Fall Line Analytics President David Latterman tiptoes round the eggshells scattered on Newsom’s reelection path in Spring ‘07, following the news that Newsom had had an affair with the wife of his campaign manager, Alex Tourk?

And you’ve got to give it up to Latterman when it comes to analyzing quantitative and graphical political data, as he has just done for the November 2007 election. Plus, his scatter graphs look mighty festive

Latterman’s “trying times” comment also reminds me why I missed the initial media frenzy that news of Newsom’s affair broke. I was attending a day-long, ground breaking climate change conference, convened by the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission.
susanleal.jpg

I remember it well, because that was the day that SFPUC General Manager Susan Leal kicked off the conference by announcing that we’d be drinking from decanted water that day, since bottled water was bad for the environment–and we have all that great clean water coming from Hetch Hetchy.

Then Newsom made a few comments, before scampering back to the City Hall, where, as it later turned out, all hell was about to break loose, although it took Newsom 24 hours to talk about it.

Who would have thought back then, on January 31, 2007, that by year’s endr, we would see Newsom handily reelected—and Leal, who has worked hard to bring San Francisco’s water and power policies into the 21st Century, with her head on the chopping block?

Now, there’s an explanatory scatter graph I’d like to see, showing Leal’s popularity with the Mayor decreasing, I guess, as her efforts to make San Francisco’s utilities truly public increased, and as the Mayor, I suppose, increasingly took the credit for many of the initiatives that Leal has led the way on? Sweet. Now there’s justice.
map_regional_water_system_large.gif
The Road to Newsom’s rise and Leal’s demise is as winding as the City’s map of how water gets to San Francisco.

5 days left to stop Big Media

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By Bruce B. Brugmann

Did you know that you, as a member of the public that owns the airwaves, have five days left to top the FCC’s plan to allow the Big Media to “open the floodgates of more media consolidation across America?”

Did you know this quiet move by Bush’s FCC helps further enrich media conglomerates like Murdoch, the Tribune Company, and Gannett? Did you know that this holiday giveaway helps reward media companies that helped Bush go to war in Iraq and helps keep us there? Did you know there is an important media reform group that is fighting this move and is calling in action alerts for citizens to sign up and build a wall against the Big Media?

You see, those simple questions make the point: the Big Media and the Galloping Conglomerati (as I call them) routinely black out or marginalize coverage of the monopolizing of the media and FCC concentration stories. And so I am passing along this key action alert from the Free Press media reform group. Sign up. B3

Below is the press release.

stopmedia.gif

Dear Charles,

In just five days, the Federal Communications Commission plans to open the floodgates of further media consolidation across America.

If FCC Chairman Kevin Martin gets his way, your community will be inundated with even more mass-produced celebrity gossip and infotainment, and less local reporting and quality journalism: more of the the junk news that is making us sick.

Together we can stop them. We blocked them in 2003, and today we need you to show Washington that you don’t want more media consolidation. To do it, we’re building a “Wall” of opposition: your photo next to thousands of others, standing shoulder to shoulder against Big Media. We’re going to deliver this Wall to the FCC. Add your name now.

Help Build the Wall Against Big Media

Martin wants to “Super Size” Big Media (watch our new video), allowing companies like Gannett, News Corp. and Tribune to swallow up even more local TV, newspaper and radio outlets. Martin wants to let one company own both the major newspaper and a TV station in your hometown, drowning out the few remaining independent voices, so that media moguls like Rupert Murdoch can expand their empires.

We’ve made a new video that shows just how bad news is for us — and our democracy — and what we can do to put more diverse media back on the menu.

Watch Our New Video and Tell Your Friends

If you’re fed up with junk news — please stand shoulder to shoulder with us against the FCC’s Big Media giveaway.

Onward,

Alexandra Russell
Program Director
Free Press
www.freepress.net
www.stopbigmedia.com

P.S. We can’t do this alone. Please tell your friends and family about this important campaign.

——————————————————————————–

View more information about this campaign at: www.action.freepress.net/campaign/ownership

Tell your friends about this campaign at: www.action.freepress.net/campaign/ownership/forward

Year in Music: Lady day and night

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› kimberly@sfbg.com

Judging from the hoo-ha on the message boards and the late-blooming stories coursing through the mainstream media, this may have been the year the music industry business model truly broke. In a boldly utopian and rawly realistic mood, Radiohead took their music and declared they didn’t want play with major labels any more — let the PayPal bucks fall where they may into the passed digital hat; Kanye West and 50 Cent allowed a gamers’ pseudo–sales war to eclipse any artistic statements they might’ve been making; and Britney Spears’s family-court and fashion disasters climaxed in a widely televised moment of lambasted lacklusterness before she was left, well, alone. Music sales slumped further as live music sales stirred. No wonder Madonna signed with Live Nation — save that black concert T for the Karl Stockhausen memorial, RIP.

It’s tough to find obsession material amid the music business coverage: the sounds that set you dreaming, the blood pounding, the ankles caving, and the thrills coursing down the mosh pit–spindled spine. Speaking to Nick Cave came close to triggering dry heaves for yours truly, but his all-too-human, literate gentleman–degenerate charm simply lanced a boil of long-festering obsession rather than sent me off on reveries of rabid fandom. Better to wrap my flaming neuroses around the highly visible good girl–bad girl archetypes embedded in the Alicia (Keys) and Amy (Winehouse) Show. Here’s to AA — let’s have another guzzle of Wino’s "Rehab."

Keys and Winehouse plugged into some deep doo-doo down in my teenage doghouse: I was the good-girl grind who chomped Chopin piano études when I wasn’t biting AP credits. OK, I never wept openly when I got a B, nor did I turn down a Columbia acceptance letter like the Keys-ter, but I could relate to the snippet of Nocturne no. 20 in C-sharp Minor that opens this month’s guilty obsession, As I Am (J). All about uplift and upholstered with a-mite-too-pristine, carefully calibrated R&B pop, AIA slides seductively through the holiday hokum with its anthemic, Linda Perry–cowritten "Superwoman," the Prince-like "Like You’ll Never See Me Again," and the no-muss lustiness of "I Need You." AIA lacks overall heat and inspired originality; the fact that Keys locks in with that other do-right prodigy, John Mayer, speaks volumes. Rather than hook into her natural-woman, way earthy, baby-blues-mama fire live, the type that threatened to softly blast Beyoncé off the Oracle Arena stage three years ago, La Keys is much too good a girl, making all the right moves, to break with the machine. Tellingly, she’s framed by a music-box mechanism in the video for AIA‘s first single, "No One." Agonizingly, ecstatically curled to within an inch of Diana Ross’s Mahogany, Keys stares into the distance like an anesthetized, perfectly blank, pretty doll.

Likewise, I can completely identify with the bad-girl train wreck embodied by Winehouse, howling in a red bra on the street and perpetually hiking up her low-riding denim in concert. Who hasn’t dreamed of cutting class, reviving trash, and dropping the high-achiever act? It’s far more dramatic to star in your own disaster movie, all puffy and tatted with throwback cuties, teased like girl–grouped Ronnie Spector and girl gang–inspired Priscilla Presley by way of Tura Satana, while tacked out in yesterday’s greaser girl garb. Winehouse is the politically incorrect, highly visible dark side of the feminine pop principle; she’s both original and so very not — what with her borrowed looks, band, and sound. Embroiled in a destructo-dance with her Pete Doherty–ish bad-boy hubby, Blake Fielder-Civil, Winehouse has been imploding in the spotlight since the year began with a bang of hype for Back to Black (Island/Universal). Like Spears, she caters to our obsession with woman as time bomb — all foibles, frailties, and fuckery — and helpfully provides a textbook case in cultural appropriation and modern day blackface, from her style to her album title to her lyrics. What are the uses of visualizing and verbalizing postfeminist shame and self-hatred while looking back at pop history, à la Winehouse’s "You Know I’m No Good"? Are these ways to inject new danger — or backhanded authenticity — into the predictable girl group–girl singer machination? Just turn to this fall’s Aretha Franklin compilation, Rare and Unreleased Recordings from the Golden Reign of the Queen of Soul (Rhino/Atlantic), to find that bad can ring as contrived as good. True soul just sings for itself.

TOPS IN 2007


•Rhythm method: Aesop Rock, None Shall Pass (Definitive Jux); Battles, Mirrored (Warp); OOIOO, Taiga (Thrill Jockey)

•Soft shuffle: Bill Callahan, Woke on a Whaleheart (Drag City); Charlotte Gainsbourg, 5:55 (Vice), Mariee Sioux, live

•Popping out: the Besnard Lakes, The Besnard Lakes Are the Dark Horse (Jagjaguwar); Lavender Diamond, Imagine Our Love (Matador); Of Montreal, Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer? (Polyvinyl)

•I hear rainbows: Black Moth Super Rainbow, Dandelion Gum (Graveface); Radiohead, In Rainbows (self-released); White Rainbow, Prism of Eternal Now (Kranky)

•The Davis family reissue korner: Betty Davis, Betty Davis (Light in the Attic); Miles Davis, The Complete On the Corner Sessions (Sony Legacy)

Consumerist crap for the holidays

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› annalee@techsploitation.com

TECHSPLOITATION For the holidays, I don’t want to do something nice for the earth. I don’t want to buy special laptops loaded with Western video games and imagery for kids in Africa without computers. I don’t want to get handmade iPod covers from the Etsy online store that nurtures local craftspeople. And I don’t want to go off-line for a day to commune with people in the real world.

I want toxic Chinese toys covered with paint that will make me hallucinate. I want a sparkly-crap mobile phone that will break within a week and turn into circuit-board garbage that cannot be recycled and will therefore be shipped to developing countries where it will be hacked and resold. I want a media device that’s wrapped in so many layers of plastic and nonrecyclable material that the very act of opening it is like smashing my carbon footprint onto the face of Mother Earth. I want a useless gizmo mass-produced by machines that stole jobs from nonunionized workers who stole jobs from the natives.

In short, I want a Nintendo Wii.

It’s the biggest-selling video game console ever, and it’s made from so much biosphere-destroying garbage that I’ll be scrubbing methane out of the air for the rest of my life to make up for even thinking about owning one. Plus, Wii controllers are motion sensitive, which means they strap onto your body. Every time I use my Wii — which, I would like to underscore, I do not yet own — I will be turning myself into a literal extension of my machine.

Do you hear that, hippies? I want to strap electronics to my body and trance out to violent imagery while I wave my arms around, killing imaginary things. That’s what I want to do for the holidays.

But the Wii isn’t just a consumer electronics death monster. It’s also something I think everyone should own or at least try out, because it truly represents the future of technology. The fact that people can now interact with a video game simply by waving their arms — and the video game "sees" the waving and responds to it onscreen — is revolutionary. There’s a good reason why Wiis are popular with people of all ages, unlike most game systems. They respond to natural human movement rather than force people to learn elaborate combinations of buttons and knobs on bizarrely shaped controllers. The Wii is a machine made for humans.

Already those humans are figuring out ways to repurpose the Wii and make it work with other kinds of devices. There’s a Wii DJ (called, of course, WiiJ) who uses his Wii controllers to cue up and mix tracks on a computer. Somebody else is using a Wii controller to operate Bluetooth devices. And so on. The point is, the Wii is cool not because it’s a video game system but because it’s introduced a new way of interacting with computers. If you want to know what a home computer setup will look like in 10 years, play with a Wii. Your mouse will soon be replaced with a motion-based setup. You’ll point with your finger and click by tapping two fingers together. Or by saying click.

I don’t mean to romanticize the Wii, because it is, after all, just another thing with built-in obsolescence. It’s a toy you’ll throw away without thinking, consigning it to an unknowable half-life as indigestible silicon shards. It sucks when great future innovations are doomed to become garbage that may last longer than the benefits of the innovation itself.

But if the holidays are a time of reflecting on the past and the future, you might as well hang out with your friends and play Guitar Hero on the Wii. After all, donating to cool charities and supporting local artists is something you should be doing all year. You should buy a cute present for your sweetie from Etsy when it strikes your fancy, not just when the capitalist juggernaut tells you to. And, of course, you should never be off-line for a day. That’s just taking things too far.

Annalee Newitz is a surly media nerd who will be online for the next 50 years.

Presidio gets a Starbucks

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› news@sfbg.com

GREEN CITY First came the troubling mandate that the Presidio needed to break even financially, a new model for a national park area. Then came the Starbucks. That’s right: the Guardian has learned that a Starbucks will open next month in the Presidio’s Letterman Digital Arts Center, replacing locally owned Perk Presidio.

The new Starbucks — and all it represents — has raised the ire of both park and city activists. Scott Silver, executive director of Wild Wilderness, based in Bend, Ore., is concerned that the Presidio’s self-funding requirement is a harbinger of things to come across federal land management agencies. He says other properties following the Presidio model include Fort Baker in Marin, Sandy Hook in New Jersey, Valles Caldera National Preserve in New Mexico (Forest Service land), and Fort Monroe in Virginia.

"It brings the entire standard of our national park system down from a high pedestal to a pretty base commercial reality," Silver said. "I just look at the Presidio as the first in what I fear will be a long chain of national parks that move away from the model of a publicly funded public good to a privately funded, largely commercial extension of our commercial world that’s really not in any way what we associate with national parks."

City activists point to Proposition G, which passed by a healthy 16 percent margin in 2006, requiring formula retail stores to get conditional use authorization from the Planning Commission before opening in neighborhood commercial districts. Richmond District residents demonstrated the power of this legislation in September by blocking a Starbucks slated for Fifth Avenue and Geary.

Dean Preston, a neighborhood activist and attorney launching a statewide organization called Tenants Together, said, "The law specifically applies to neighborhood commercial districts, but I think those same people who live in neighborhood commercial districts are using the Presidio, which is here in their backyard. I think that whether or not [Letterman Digital Arts] is subject to local law on the issue, they should be taking into account that city sentiment when deciding what kind of businesses to lease there."

Raul Saavedra, leasing director for Letterman Digital Arts, told us he didn’t know about Prop. G but that the company is aware that some people have opinions about Starbucks. That’s why the LDA originally selected Perk Presidio for the space. "We wanted someone like that to be successful," Saavedra said. "And they weren’t, unfortunately."

So the LDA decided to look for a new vendor, considering sole proprietors and local and national chains. Saavedra said the smaller operators he considered had credit issues and concerns about making the location successful. He said the key factors in selecting Starbucks were its strong credit, good service, and solid sustainability program.

Dana Polk, the Presidio Trust’s senior adviser for government and media relations, said that as master tenant, the LDA is free to sublet that space to any company it chooses. Nevertheless, Saavedra indicated that the LDA anticipated possible concerns with choosing Starbucks: "We went to the trust before we signed the deal with Starbucks, because we knew that there would probably be some opinions. And at that time there was no problem."

This will not be the first national park area to host a Starbucks. That dubious honor goes to the San Francisco Maritime National Historic Park, which since October 2004 has housed a Starbucks as a subtenant of Kimpton Resorts in its Hazlett Warehouse, according to Shelley Niedernhofer, chief of administration and business services for the park.

However, National Park Service concessions program specialist manager Jo Pendry confirms that these Starbucks are the first examples of formula retail throughout the 391-site national park system.

Kim Winston, Starbucks manager of civic and community affairs for the western region, claimed that revenues from the Starbucks help fund National Parks Service operations, but Niedernhofer said of the Maritime Park, "We don’t receive any revenue directly from Starbucks." The Presidio arrangement will be similar.

But Preston isn’t mollified. He said, "To have a Starbucks go into the Presidio with no real public review right after a Starbucks is nearly unanimously blocked [by a Board of Supervisors’ vote] in the Inner Richmond does seem like a real contrast. The fact that there’s absolutely no public process for putting a Starbucks in such a visible spot is really a problem." *

Comments, ideas, and submissions for Green City, the Guardian‘s weekly environmental column, can be sent to news@sfbg.com.

Young journos doomed to poverty and pink slips

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axe4.jpg

Cub reporters are finding it increasingly difficult to climb out of bed each day.

The pay sucks, everyone’s eager to inform you of the real story you’re failing to cover, and no matter how many late nights you put in, opportunities for advancement throughout the biz are slimming down with every new round of announced layoffs.

Spend each waking moment learning how to navigate Byzantine government bureaucracies so you can write a few cool stories, and the thanks you’ll get in return is the axe to help save expenses in the short term for the paper’s media parent. Here’s what management might say these days as an explanation:

“We are not trying to make any other statement here other than it is a competitive world out there and we are doing what we can to make sure we are putting out an excellent paper in the communities we serve.”

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