The Lovely Local News

3/24/2009 KARE11 10:00pm

News:Fargo Flood: 3 min.
- Sandbagging
- Weather
- Cresting
- Begging for Volunteers

News:Breckinridge Flood: 1 min.

News:Bismark Flood: 1 min.

News/Weather:Duluth Ice Storm: 30 sec.

News:Elderly couple murder in Hudson, WI: 1 min.

News:Missing man in Crystal Lake: 45 sec.

News/Consumer Safety:Charges against Sarah Jane Olson for Voter Fraud: 3 ½ min.

News:Obama speech about economic recovery: 1 min.

News/Human Interest:Statue of Liberty Crown opening up: 30 sec.

Consumer Interest:Credit Crunch: 5 min.

Weather:Weather: 5 min.

Sports:Sports: 6 min.

Entertainment:Dog Stuck in Tree: 1 min.

Random comments from anchors with weather wrap up: 1 min.

I chose, for this blogpost, to watch KARE11 News because the other local news shows make me kind of depressed for a variety of reasons that I won’t get into right now…

Looking at the above breakdown of the news, you can see that there was actually a lot of actual news going on in this particular broadcast. I was actually quite impressed! I have to admit that I was a bit disappointed with the lack of world news coverage and short time slots allotted to some of the more dramatic local news stories, but they only have 30 minutes.

I picked a pretty unique broadcast to watch; there was a lot of local tragedy going on with the flooding of the Red River Valley so the rhetoric was rather matter of fact. There was a bit of emotional appeal going on in requesting volunteers, but who can fault them for that?

The only part of this particular broadcast that made me raise an eyebrow was the story about Sarah Jane Olson’s return to Minnesota and the possibility of indicting her on voter fraud. It started out as a kind of alert story implied by the urgent speaking tone of the anchors. What transpired, was completely different than what I had anticipated. The people interviewed for this story seemed completely indifferent to Olson’s return and possible voter fraud because she had already spent time in prison. The only person in the whole story to show any concern at all was a state senator, whose name escapes me. KARE11 even went so far as to interview the attorney general about the issue…which is, apparently, a total non issue. Olson had been investigated for voter fraud before and they came up with nothing. It seemed that KARE11 was implying that this woman should just be left alone at this point. I would almost call this segment an entertainment piece because I found the entire topic quite amusing.

What always surprises me about local news is the amount of time the shows spend on weather and sports. I know that weather can be a big factor in peoples’ lives, so it makes sense that a local station would spend so much time on it, but the sports stories can sometimes drag on an on for no apparent reason. On this particular night, they spent a lot of time highlighting scores, which seems legitimate, but I know that in the past KARE11 has spent a lot of time with the “Perk at Play” segment and human interest stories based on local athletes. This suggests that they are playing to our community’s want to know more about personal stories, or are trying to keep us from feeling too negative about the state of things. In other, national, news broadcasts, they tend to focus a lot more on the economy, corrupt politicians, and war.

Anonymity and Empathy...or Not

One of the things I like to do in the mornings is peruse the Star Tribune website to see what’s happening in the city. Over the past few months, my interest has transferred from the actual articles to the comments left by other readers. They consistently entertain me because of the sheer range of attitudes they cover. When I was thinking about what to analyze for this week’s post, I had a few options but decided on the comment section of a Star Tribune article when I saw one with which I have a personal connection: “Cold and wide and shallow: Anxiety hits the Red River Valley". Having grown up in this area and living through the flood of 1997, I felt I had a bit of expertise in such matters.
In the past, I’ve noticed that the comment sections in these articles typically follow a pattern in which three to four major threads develop with sporadic thoughts intertwined. The major threads typically turn into pointed arguments in which some members simply try to discredit other view points while others resort to direct, personal attacks. Rarely, does anybody change anybody else’s mind; at least the comment sections never include enough information to reasonably assume so.
When I came across the article about the flooding, there were a mere five comments. I didn’t feel that was enough to warrant interaction, so I “lurked” until I was able to amass a collection of 29 comments. At first glance, it appeared that the comments were going to follow the typical pattern, but I noticed some irregularities; presumably because many of the posts came from people with personal connections to the Red River Valley.
In looking at the posts, I kept careful note of the tone of each comment, the different viewpoints presented, and how many people posted in response to others. What surprised me most was the sarcastic tone taken by many of the participants of this particular thread. Stories like this have historically brought on critical viewpoints of people in trouble, but the cavalier attitude people threw at the victims of this year’s flood seem more poingiant than usual. One person writes, “They made their bed, now they have to sleep in it. Or at least that's how it should be. But nope, we have to pour hundreds of millions of dollars into flood control to subsidize their stupidity” referring to the people that are asking for help with sandbagging. This pretty much sums up one of the major attitudes present.

The other major tone present in the Red River Valley Flood thread can best be described as academically condescending. In between the sarcastic jibes and name calling, a few participants posted well thought out, yet rather condescending, arguments in support of the people living in the flood plain or suggesting that they relocate. One participant writes this about the flat spots near rivers: “This is the flood plain and virtually all rivers in an unmodified (natural) state have them. It's the way rivers deal with spring runoff and it IS the adaption. It also tends to make rich farmland as the finer, easier to suspend soil is what's carried by the water”. This is one of the more tame posts present on the thread. The strange part is that these logical and academic posts rarely see a response. In fact, on this thread, none of them did. The only ones that received replies were the sarcastic ones and the few that employed personal attacks.

The personal attack posts are rare, but they did make a few appearances on this thread. One person writes in response to this comment about the people in the Red River Valley, “Move. Problem solved” with “What ever you name is, next time you eat a piece of food, remember, the good folks in the Midwest created it it for your foul mouth..so if they would ..MOVE. you would starve”. What strikes me most about this is the reference to the original poster’s “foul mouth”. There was nothing foul in the original post. This kind of behavior usually goes back and forth for up to six posts, but in this instance, the interaction stopped after this one exchange.
Beach writes about the possibilities of anonymity available to online chats, blogs, and wikis, which, I think, have a lot to do with the different attitudes on this thread; especially the rather crass and sarcastic ones. When one chooses to comment on the Star Tribune website, they must create a username, but there are no rules about what you must call yourself. In fact, it’s very difficult to track down the people behind the usernames at all, which I found out in an effort to ask some of them a question or two about their posts. Since these people are free to choose any identity with no real thought of any consequences for their comments, they seem to communicate much more honestly to the point of becoming offensive.
In a society where empathy and courtesy have high value, I was surprised at the level of judgment and rudeness in these posts, even with the anonymity. Instead of trying to relate to the suffering people of the Red River Valley and offering ways in which they might help with the current crisis, people attacked their “choice” in living there and each other for attempting to defend the flood victims. I could think of only two possibilities for this behavior: 1. These people have become so self absorbed that they have lost the ability to empathize, or 2. These people come from a background of means and have no real concept of how big of a deal it is to move to another city on a whim. I guess a third reason could exist: people just like to complain about things and this anonymous comment format allows them to do it without fear of any backlash. Since I couldn’t find a way to contact the posters directly, for the time being, I won’t be able to find out.

The Stupid Father

When I worked as a Snap Fitness manager, there was this woman that would come in and watch the “Lifetime” network every single day. She would watch during the time when they, apparently, played all of those shows with the stupid, overweight father married to a supermodel. Every show was the same stupid plot with different actors. I became fascinated by my hatred of these shows and figured it would be a good place to start for this post.

I remember seeing lots of shows on “Nick at Night” as a child in which the father was a wise man capable of solving complex problems for his family with time left for ice cream and a laugh at the end of the show. It seems that in more modern shows, the fathers are all idiots. It’s like watching a show where my most irresponsible and inept friends have real responsibilities and the whole thing just makes me angry; especially since there are so many shows like this on TV right now.

A few clips of what I'm referencing:
"Still Standing"

"According to Jim"

"Home Improvement" (go to the 2:00 minute mark)

Apparently, I’m not alone in this observation. In doing a bit of research, I found many articles that commented on this phenomenon and suggested a variety of possible reasons for this. The main two are:

Rise of Feminism
In this school of thought, the idea is that these “buffoon” fathers came to be out of a need to offset the previous model of helpless out of the house wives. The problem I have with this idea is that despite the fact that the woman is smarter in these types of shows, she rarely works and ends up spending most of her time fixing all of the stupid mistakes made by the father whether in or out of the family. I don’t like this argument because it seems that it’s just another form of what we had before; a woman whose job it is to take care of her man. It also raises the question: why isn’t there a show in which a supermodel male is married to a less than “ideal” woman? I think I see a double standard here…

Masculine Ambiguity of the 1950s
If you buy into this one, it all starts out with Playboy. Apparently, when Playboy rose to fame because men were having hard time dealing with the constraints of marriage and families. Playboy glorified the bachelor lifestyle unapologetically, which lead to this idea that men were to behave in a certain way (don’t talk about feelings, be strong, get women, make money, drink scotch and wine). This kind of behavior seems fine, and often desirable, in many contexts. The belief is that it led to the current “buffoon” father figure because it suggested that a man’s priorities should lie elsewhere, which is why TV fathers seem so stupid all the time.

Stewart Hall comments often about how media re-presents reality so it’s based on some sort of truth out there. This may be true, but I worry about how playing up a small sample of men in a negative way might affect the population as a whole. I just spent a weekend in Las Vegas visiting some friends and saw the following instances that made me think even more about this blog post:

On the shuttle, a family gets on and there is only one seat left. The father sits down while his family is forced to sit on the floor with the bags. The father seemed completely oblivious as to why his wife was upset with him as she tried to keep the toddlers in line and safe as the shuttle rattled down the road. The father spent this time checking sports scores on his Blackberry. Perhaps this man was just a jerk, but boy did he play into the stereotype.

At Red Rock Canyon, which is a beautiful place to hike, a woman was trying desperately to keep her kids from wandering too close to the cliffs as they scrambled across the rocks. The father slept in the car listening to talk radio. When the kids whined, the father rolled the window up. Nice.

There were more instances in which it seemed men were playing into the media’s portrayal of the stupid father, but these were the best two. Sure, it’s possible that the shows are based on men like this, but these guys fit the stereotype so well (physically as well as personally) that it seemed like they made it their life’s ambition to be like that guy on that stupid show “Still Standing”.

I understand how these media portrayals came to be, but I still struggle with the idea that they were/are necessary for men to have an identity. I, personally, don’t identify with any of them. It seems that we should be trying to come up with characters that function in a realistic, team manner, much like a successful marriage does in reality. Two smart people that look average and don’t spend a lot of time trying to underhand each other in some sort of stupid power struggle that doesn’t really go anywhere. Wouldn’t that be something?

My Agent: Creepy, yet effective

Express Yourself with Gizmoz Video Clips

The whole idea of conversational agents is really awesome, but wow. When would I, as a single junior high teacher, have time to put together such a fabulous database of possible answers and questions? I would very much like to try to utilize this type of virtual help down the line, but for the time being, it would have to be something someone else has already designed.

I think it would be cool to try these with students and have them talk to each other. I would be curious to see how the conversations would go in that type of a setting; especially if we could have a class that knows I will read them and a class that knows I will not (even though I would) to see the discrepancies in conversations. I'm actually surprised no one has done this before.