LONGMONT, Colo. — Rush Limbaugh, Keith Olbermann and the vast cast of political entertainers who populate cable television, talk radio and the blogosphere are modern day lotus-eaters.

In Greek mythology, the Lotus-Eaters gave Odysseus’ men narcotic laced flowers that caused the men to give up care for anything important.  They were content to lounge peacefully without regard for home or duty.  Odysseus had to forcefully extract the men from the grip of the Lotus-Eaters and take them back to the ships “weeping bitterly.”

This scene was played out in the book made movie, Percy Jackson and the Olympians, in a Las Vegas casino.  Percy and his friends were on a mission to save humanity from the wrath of the gods but, under the trance of the lotus flowers, forgot their purpose.  They, like Odysseus’ men, were content to frolic without concern for the real world.

We enter a lotus filled Las Vegas casino each time we tune into political entertainment on talk radio and cable television.  As a nation, we have serious challenges that merit serious debate and considered action.  But, serious issues are not being discussed in forums that purport to be “The Place for Politics” or “Fair and Balanced.” Instead, the leaders of talk show nation distract us by promoting division, mistrust and antipathy.

That’s the difference between the modern day lotus-eaters as compared to those from Greek mythology.  The lotus-eaters of Odysseus’ age did no harm to those who excepted their “gifts.”  The political entertainers of our age do great harm.

The talk show leaders pretend to be serious.  They are given platforms by major corporations under the banner of “news” and “journalism.”  But, rather than inform discussion, they distract us by cultivating anger and fear.

Political leaders and lay people alike are becoming incapacitated by loathing for our fellow Americans.  Though we are not peacefully apathetic as were Odysseus’ men, the net effect is the same.  We’re unable to face up to our challenges and obligations in a responsible manner.

Republicans in Congress don’t dare work with their Democratic counterparts.  The primary defeats of conservative stalwarts Senator Bob Bennett of Utah and Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska (not yet official) sent a clear message.  Don’t diverge from the Limbaugh/Hannity/Beck political doctrine or be struck down by talk show nation.

The Obama administration fears talk show nation, too.  Baited by Andrew Breitbart’s doctored video, Shirley Sherrod was dismissed from the U.S. Department of Agriculture without due process.  Conservative talk leaders could barely contain their glee over the Obama administration’s poor judgment.

The escalating war among talk show leaders has gone beyond normal hardball politics.  The current tactics have reached a point we should all be shouting, “Enough!”

On one end of the spectrum is Keith Olbermann’s juvenile feature, “The Worst Person in the World.” Olbermann’s daily tirade serves no useful purpose beyond providing liberals with a chance to say “nyah, nyah, nyah” to the conservatives they love to hate.  Indeed, it seems that hating conservatives is more important to many liberals than solving problems.

But, Olbermann’s approach is almost benign compared to Rush Limbaugh’s recent tactic to refer to President Obama as “Imam Obama.” Rush Limbaugh is clearly intelligent.  He understands the power of language and symbolism.  He knows that combining Islamic terms with the president’s name will incite fear and loathing.

scottywz (flickr)

Limbaugh is using long established war time tactics.  During times of war, people impose derogatory labels upon their “enemies” to make them seem less than human.  It is far easier to attack and disparage someone who is less than human.  Except now, talk show leaders are using these tactics against fellow Americans.

Indeed, others are adopting Limbaugh’s dehumanizing tactics.  Bill Kelly’s Truth Squad, right here on The Washington Times Communities, employs symbolism to cultivate antipathy.  A recent post, “Take back the victory mosque, formerly known as the White House,” includes a photo with a superimposed crescent moon and star, an internationally recognized symbol of the Islamic faith, on the White House.  In the article, Mr. Kelly writes, “the President is not what he pretends to be.”

Serious people have serious disagreements with President Obama and his administration.  Mr. Kelly’s tactics are not serious.  They are gratuitous.  They are embarrassing.  Indeed, if no one else will say it, I will.  These types of tactics are just plain wrong.

It is not just the political entertainers who distract us from serious concerns.  We are distracting ourselves.  We often place more energy into finding ways to insult those we dislike than figuring out ways to work together and solve problems.

I live near Boulder, Colorado.  President Bush haters feel comfortable expressing their distaste for our now former president in the most vile terms.  Bumper stickers that read, “The only Bush I trust is my own,” aren’t funny.  They are pornographic.

bossco (Flickr)

Clearly we all have a First Amendment right to say what we want.  And, there is great comfort knowing that we live in country where we can say literally anything about our political leaders without fear of repercussion.

But it is shameful to act with such vulgarity in a public setting. How can those who compare Republicans to Satan and mock Christians expect respectful treatment of Democrats and the current president?  You can’t call people names and get warm fuzzies in return.

We don’t have an Odysseus to extract us from the lotus-eaters and force us back to our ships.  We must do that for ourselves.  The time has come for all of us to take action.

Political entertainers only have power if we let them have an audience.  We can turn off the television.  We can turn off the radio.  We can tell our neighbors, in a cordial manner, that the unsavory bumper stickers are less than amusing.

These may be the most important political acts of our era.  We may not be able to deal with any of the challenges facing our nation until we do.  It’s time we all say, “Enough!”

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John Creighton  can be found on Twitter @johncr8on and on Facebook.

How do you teach your children self control?  How do you help your children set limits so they don’t get “too much of a good thing?”

If there is one thing that is more difficult for parents of this generation to instill in their children than previous generations, perhaps limits and self control are it.  Setting limits on TV, computer, food, consumption in general is a daily issue now.  Not so much when I was a kid.

My parents did not have to impose limits upon me.  Limits were built in.

In the summers, I watched TV between 4 and 5 p.m. and Saturday mornings.  That’s the only time there was something on TV I wanted to watch.  Cable came to Atwood my senior year of high school.  During my elementary years, the National Anthem came on around midnight to announce the end of the broadcast day.  We didn’t have a VHS until high school either.  And, there was nowhere to rent movies until after I went to college.

A friend from Bennett, Colorado told me the relatively new King Soopers, open 24-7 is the worst thing that happened to her waistline.  Now, at 11 p.m. at night when she’s craving ice cream, she can drive to the store and get it.

That type of option didn’t exist in Atwood in the 70s and early 80s.  High school kids who had the munchies had to drive to Colby.  Nothing in Atwood was open.  No fast food.  No convenience stores.  It was hard to make it to Colby and back and still make curfew (staring the night at the Rusty Bucket was another story).  I remember the short lived outrage when Ridgway’s market stayed open on Sundays and after six p.m. on weekdays.  It was no longer necessary to buy Sunday supplies on Saturday or do without.

I’m not being nostalgic in the sense that I believe things should go back to the way they were.  (But I do admire businesses such as Chic-fil-a who forgo business on Sundays because of their religious and family beliefs — values before dollars.) Instant access to everything — food, video, box scores, you name it — is here to stay.

There is a lot to like about instant access to everything.  No more waiting two days to find out how the Royals did because they are playing on the West coast.

But, when we have instant access to everything, there is a new premium on learning self control.  Otherwise we can easily go through life distracted and overweight.

Groups don’t stay together long without help.  We’re like cats.  We tend to drift off in our own direction doing our own thing unless someone herds us back together.

That’s the way it is with groups.  Groups need someone to organize activities and events.  Someone must make sure everyone in the group knows what’s going on.  Someone must help people feel welcome and connected.  Over time, someone must make sure members of the group know what is happening in one another’s lives.  Someone must invite, encourage, nudge and harangue people to attend group gatherings.  All of these things take time, energy and emotional effort.

The group which I’ve been part of the longest (nearly ninety percent of my life) is Atwood High School Class of 1983.  We began our journey in Mrs. Connelly’s Kindergarten class in the fall of 1970.  Forty years later many, if not most of us, are still connected to one degree or another.  Not just those class members who happened to live in Atwood in the spring of 1983 when we walked across the podium in the high school gymnasium to receive our diplomas.  Classmates who moved away in grade school and junior high are still members of our group.  Foreign exchange students remain connected, too.  That’s because the class of 1983 has a someone.

Natalie Ruda Seybold is the someone who holds us together.  It’s hard to be an organizer.  It’s especially hard when your group is scattered across the country and globe and neither the internet nor Facebook exist.  Most people would get burned out over time.  Or, just get busy going to school, getting a job, getting married, raising kids and caring for parents.  Yet, for nearly thirty years, Natalie has kept our class connected.

Natalie is the person who I count on to let me know when my classmates get married, have kids, lose a parent or are ill themselves.  Natalie is the person I turn to when I need to contact someone.  I know she’ll have their address, phone number and now email.  I’ve been able to reconnect with old friends who slipped out of my life because Natalie made it happen.  Natalie is the one who keeps me excited about being a member of this very special group.

I’m glad for Natalie’s sake that tools like Facebook now exist.  I can’t imagine how much effort it was to make all the calls she made and write all the letters she wrote.  She did those things in the Eighties and early Nineties when most of us had never heard of email or the internet.  Now, her tasks may be a little easier but the enthusiasm and the passion for the Class of ’83 still burns as strong as ever.

This recent exchange on Facebook is just one small example.

I tell Natalie thank you from time to time but never often enough.  I’m proud to be a member of the AHS Class of ’83.  I’m grateful we have someone named Natalie to help keep us all connected.

Clay Shirky, author of “Here Comes Everybody,” provides concrete evidence for why we should care about the diversity of our social networks.  And, the flip side of that coin, why we should be more concerned about the fragmenting of America.

Many authors have written about the growth of self-isolating communities, places and spaces where people choose to associate only with other like- minded people.  Bill Bishop documented this phenomenon thoroughly in his book “The Big Sort.”

I have written before about the consequences of people choosing to live in echo chambers.  When we only hear ideas and points of view that reinforce our own biases, it is difficult to consider, let alone discover or adopt, innovative ways to solve problems.  This is part of what is causing Americans to become “Accidental Extremists.”

My concerns about the accidental extremism gripping America has been for public life.  We struggle to solve public problems because we’re less capable of working with those who hold different ideas.  Shirky’s work suggests that enclaves are a problem for individuals, too.  People who choose to live in social isolation are less successful in life.

Shirky details two types of social capital (a person’s network of friends and acquaintances who he or she turns to for help) in his book.  Bonding capital is a measure of the depth of a person’s social network.  People tend to bond with those who hold similar interests, which is most likely or most easily done within a person’s day-to-day community (a neighborhood or department at work).  One way to build bonding capital is to invest time and energy to strengthen relationships with those who already are part of one’s self-selected community.

Bridging capital is a measure of the breadth of a person’s social network.  Bridging capital is more difficult to accumulate.  It requires a person to reach beyond those who are part of his or her day-to-day community.  It also requires a person to reach beyond their own comfort zone and form relationships with people who have different interests and perspectives.  The barriers to accumulating bridging capital are much higher than those to building bonding capital.  But bridging capital may be the more important of the  two.

Shirky reports on a research paper by Ronald Burt of the University of Chicago titled “The Social Origins of Good Ideas.” Burt examined a major U.S. electronics firm to learn who within the company was the source of the best ideas — from the perspective of senior managers.  The study found that the best predictor of who was deemed to have the best ideas was bridging capital.  People who had relationships beyond their own department were the source of the highest percentage of good ideas.  Employees who had little bridging capital seldom came up with good ideas.

The lesson of this study is that living in an echo chamber is not a great way to advance one’s career.

This practical example of the power of diverse social networks reinforces my concern for the resegregation of American schools.  As I’ve written before, our schools are more segregated today than they were in the late 1960s or early 1970s.  According to the UCLA Civil Rights Project, the average black child attends a school that is two-thirds black; the average Hispanic child attends a school that is 70 percent minority, and the average white child attends a school that is 80 percent white.

Children don’t just learn math, science, reading and writing at school.  They learn lifelong habits.  One habit children are being taught is to remain in their narrowly defined enclave of like-minded peers. Intended or not, that is the lesson of segregation.  Many schools are effective at teaching children how to accumulate bonding capital — parents often refer to this as developing social skills.  But do schools do enough to help children learn to form social relationships outside their comfort zones?  Do we even expect, or want, schools to accomplish this goal?

Clay Shirky and Ronald Burt provide us a concrete example of why we should.

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John Creighton writes on community life and public leadership at johncr8on.com.  He can be found on Twitter @johncr8on and on Facebook.

Picture Credits: ilamont.com (Flickr) ]]> http://johncr8on.com/dispatches/advance-your-career-develop-a-diverse-social-network/feed/ 0 http://johncr8on.com/dispatches/producer-nation/ http://johncr8on.com/dispatches/producer-nation/#comments Mon, 15 Feb 2010 22:34:10 +0000 John Creighton http://johncr8on.com/?p=446

Patrick Allitt describes the United States as “America the Miserable” in a recent addition of The Spectator.  The mood of the country certainly seems stressed.  But, Mr. Allitt says that American gloom is more than just a temporary blip.

The source of immediate stress for many American families is neither hard to trace nor difficult to understand.  Nearly one in five American adults are either unemployed, underemployed or have given up looking for work as my colleague Brad Rourke reportedrecently.  Lack of jobs is a big deal that I feel palpably in my own community.  It’s hard to feel cheery about the world when you lack a revenue stream.

The state of America’s political process is no source of cheer, either.  Our political institutions appear incapable of responding to the challenges we face.  I am increasingly convinced that the only way to tackle tough challenges such as health care and education are through local action.  Our federal and state legislative bodies are too paralyzed by partisan politics.

I met recently with a high ranking state official here in Colorado to discuss education policy.  His calculus for action is dialed in on the politics of education reform (what actions are needed to win the political show?).  He is simply responding to the environment in which he works on a day-to-day basis.  The pressures he feels make it difficult to focus on actual content (what’s the best thing to do?).

Mr. Allitt asserts, however, that neither the recession nor the impotence of our political institutions is the real source of the malaise infecting America.  He argues that everyday Americans have lost their sense of optimism.  We Americans no longer believe that any challenge can be conquered or that the future will be better than the past.  In short, Mr. Allitt, a native of Great Britain, writes, American’s have lost “the infuriating but reassuring can-do spirit that once defined the United States.”

I beg to differ.

There is a profound shift taking shape in America, led by younger generations, in which Americans are reclaiming the do-it-yourself philosophy that is the foundation for a can-do society.

I have the opportunity to meet a number of young people in my role as a school board member.  Like all parents, I have the opportunity to witness the interests of my children and their friends take shape.  I sense in young people a desire to be craftsmen – to build and create and produce and do.  The tools to do-it-yourself are available and increasingly affordable.  Young people want to use them.

The do-it-yourself approach is most noticeable in the way this generation uses media compared to my generation.  But, do-it-yourself is extending in to every area of society.  Chris Anderson is the one of the best known writers on these topics, including his most recent contribution to Wired magazine.

Let’s compare how young people use media today compared to thirty years ago.  I came of age in the 1970s and 1980s.  My generation was passive media users.  We watched television sent to us by broadcasting companies and their local affiliates.  The extent of our engagement was limited to learning the theme song lyrics for The Beverly Hillbillies, Green Acres, Gilligan’s Island and, of course, The Brady Bunch.

(If you’re feeling nostalgic, check out the Classic TV Database.)

Young people today create their own productions.  YouTube is five years old this month.  The site serves up more than 12 billion views per day.  It’s a place to watch videos and a place to post your productions.  My kids and their friends produce movies on a regular basis using iMovie and a FlipVideo. They crowd around the computer to edit and watch their work.  Movies are being produced in households across the nation and globe.  Young people don’t just watch TV.  They make TV.

The same phenomenon is taking place in other areas of media, too.  We listened to albums.  We had to take or leave what the record labels produced.  Young people today make their own play lists and mix their own soundtracks.  A take-it-or-leave it selection of albums is a foreign concept.

A handful of young people read newspapers when we were kids – mostly the comics and sports section.  The rest of the paper was filled with news of little interest.  Today, young people create their own “feature sections” using social media tools ranging from text to Facebook to blogs.

We played video games located in arcades and pizza parlors.  Arcade video games were the most interactive media we had a generation ago.  Those who could master the joysticks were able to advance to new levels.  Today, young people create their own characters to participate in the games.

The Pew Internet Project suggests that people like me might overstate what young people are actually doing with media.  Perhaps that true.  But, the difference I notice in young people today is not their level of technical savvy but rather their expectations for how to engage in the world.

They are producers.  They expect to play a role in shaping their experiences.  The idea of being just a passive consumer is a fading concept that young people find frustrating at best.

I have a hypothesis.  Much public policy and many business models fall flat because they are designed for a passive consumer society.  Young people, in particular, have little interest in methods that require them to just sit.  Once businesses, service organizations and government start to better align with people’s desire to be active…  We’ll experience a renaissance of America’s can-do spirit.

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John Creighton can be found on Twitter @johncr8on and onFacebook.

Photo Credit:  Wesley Fryer (flickr)

Hundreds of thousands of Iranians took to the streets in mid-June to protest what appeared to be a bogus vote count to re-elect President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.  The protestors used Twitter to communicate with each other and the world.

Americans – and people from many other countries – celebrated both the Iranian protestors’ cry for freedom and the role of the social media phenomenon Twitter.  The Washington Times dubbed the June rallies as Iran’s Twitter Revolution.

A craze quickly swept the Twitter-sphere.  Twitter users added green shade or borders to their photos.  Some added the text, “Where Is Their Vote.”  These tweaks to personal icons were a demonstration of solidarity with Iranian protestors seeking greater freedom.  Or, was it to celebrate how cool Twitter had become and to tell the world I’m an early part of this new spectacle that’s now grabbing the headlines?  I was never quite sure.

Most, not all, of the green shaded photos are gone.  Iranian protestors have mostly faded from the headlines.  Are Twitter users still standing in solidarity for democracy and freedom?  Or, has a new fad captured our fancy.  Letting one another know that we sent the text “Haiti” to 90999 (which I did).

I have become a fan of social media.  I find it a useful tool to reconnect with old and new friends; seed conversations about public issues; let people know I’ve posted a new blog, and contribute funds in a hurry to organizations responding to an urgent need.  But, I’m sometimes concerned that social media promotes a false sense of action.  We use social media to engage on the issue du jour and let ourselves believe that we are doing more than we are.

I came across a post by blogger Geoff Livingston titled, “Why We’re in the Age of the Citizen Philanthropist.” He describes a phenomenon he dubs, “Slactivism.”  Mr. Livingston writes, “The ease of social tools creates another phenomena: The rise of slactivism. Now anyone can think they are a philanthropist simply by sounding off with a tweet or texting ten dollars for Haiti relief. While the simplicity of such actions increases the likelihood of charity, an individual’s long-term impact can be considered negligible.”

Contrast the rise of slactivists to a man I met this weekend named Bob Charles.  He has dedicated countless time, money and energy over many years to a single organization.  The organization is known as Imagine, which is dedicated to providing innovative resources to people with cognitive and physical challenges.  He was recognized at the banquet I attended.  I couldn’t see him when his name was called.  I was told by a friend at his table that he didn’t want to stand up.  Bob doesn’t shade his photos green to show solidarity.  He prefers to work often behind the scenes.

Or, consider a mentor of mine, Karen Sekich.  She dedicates herself to Rotary International, raising money locally to end polio and traveling the world to help with projects to provide people with clean water.  She focuses much of her time and energy on one organization.  No issue du jour for her.

I don’t want to knock the potential – past, present and future – of social media to help rally people around a good cause.  But, we must be cautious in our globally networked world that we don’t simply become fascinated with fads.  Licking big problems still takes long-term, concerted effort.

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Photo Credit: dougcurran (Flickr).

I was part of a Harwood Group Team which wrote the report Timeless Values: Staying True to Journalistic Principles in the Age of New Media in April 1995.  We were commissioned to write the report for the American Society of Newspaper Editors. I re-read it this week.  It was painful.

We were blind to the most fundamental change that would be brought about by new media platforms.

Consider what we wrote fifteen years ago as guiding principles for journalists considering new media (based on extensive interviews with citizens, leading thinkers, media executives and journalists):

#1: Stick to your knitting – the distinctive value of newspapers and journalists do not change in the new media world.  Journalism is journalism.

#2: Focus on the community – the newspaper’s niche is the local news franchise.  Community coverage should be its main focus.

#3: Connect to readers – newspapers and journalists will need to have a deeper understanding of their readers as consumers and citizens.  Staying connected is an imperative.

#4: Be ready to adapt – new media will require newspapers and journalists to embrace new practices and skills, but within the context of their journalistic values.

#5: Make the leap, but don’t expect nirvana – newspapers and journalists should get involved actively in new media, but should not expect instant success or payoffs.

#6:  Roll the presses – both print and new media have their own unique value and role in providing news and information.  Make sure there is room for both.

What do you notice when you read this list?  I notice an underlying assumption.  We assumed that journalism is something that only people within institutions – i.e. news organizations – do.  We described no role for people outside of news organizations.  The community was only a group of people that journalists should get to know better.  We still considered non-journalists to be largely passive.

We thought technology was the game changer.  We were blind to the real game changer.  When people have access to the tools of production and distribution… that’s what changes everything.

Chris Anderson describes it this way in the February Issue of Wired:  “Transformative change happens when industries democratize, when they are ripped from the sole domain of companies, governments, and other institutions and handed over to regular folks.”

We never discussed Anderson’s axiom of transformation and its implications back in 1995.  In the 1990s, few people understood how democratizing production and distribution changes the world.  The music industry did not understand.  Publishers did not understand.  The movie industry did not understand.  Traditional retailers did not understand.  You name the industry or the institution… People just didn’t grasp what could happen when regular folks had access to the same tools as highly paid professionals.

I’m not confident we understand Anderson’s axiom any better today.

It is not easy to shift from an institution centric to citizen centric world. It is not easy for people working within an institution to give up doing things for people and shift toward supporting people to do things for themselves.  It is equally difficult for many people to give up the role of passive consumer.

Early adapters are at the forefront of the transformative change Anderson describes.  The majority of people want institutions to do things just the way it’s always been done… until they don’t.  Back in 1995, most people we interviewed still wanted hard copy newspapers delivered to their homes.

I see this phenomenon all the time in education as a member of the local school board.  Students, teachers, parents and community members are gaining access to the production and distribution tools that once only school districts could afford.  Yet most public policy ignores this game changing fact.

Reform initiatives such as No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top largely ignore Anderson’s axiom of transformative change.  Perhaps well intentioned, these reform agendas assume that the way to change education is to mandate institutional reforms.  The reform mandates still view students, in particular, as largely passive players in the education process.  The reformers leading these initiatives appear to be blind to what’s really going to change the game – just like I was blind back in 1995.

I wrote last week that Americans are accidental extremists.  We are making choices that inadvertently results in more and more of us living in homogeneous enclaves.  Our opportunities to engage with people who have different world views are in decline.

Our choices of traditional media tend to reinforce our preconceived views.  We choose to live in neighborhoods with people who have similar life experiences.  We send our children to schools with students just like them.

Bill Bishop, author of The Big Sort, documents that our churches are becoming more homogeneous, too.  We Americans shop for churches in the same way we shop for neighborhoods and parents shop for schools.  Our choices of religious affiliation have less and less to do with family histories or the community of our upbringings.  Church membership is becoming yet another form of individual self-expression.

There certainly is merit in attending a church because you want to rather than merely out of obligation.  A reverend friend told me recently that it is far easy to minister now than when he began his career twenty years ago.  People want what we have to offer when they choose to be part of our church, he said.  An unintended consequence of church shopping is it is one more mediating institution that is becoming less diverse.

The evidence is that when people isolate themselves in homogeneous enclaves they develop more strident views.  People’s ability to understand the perspectives of those outside their enclave atrophies when they don’t have opportunities to engage.  Empathy is like a muscle.  It requires use.

A recent study issued by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, Social Isolation and New Technology, suggests that social media tools – for instance, Facebook, Twitter and blogs – may be one method we can use to bridge divides between enclaves.

The Pew study confirms that the diversity of people’s core discussion networks has markedly declined.  But, the study suggests, the reason for the decline in discussion networks is not due to use of newer information and communication technologies.  Indeed, participation in a variety of internet activities were associated with larger and more divers core discussion networks, according to the study.

The Pew study resonates with my experience.  I maintain a blog.  I’m on Facebook and Twitter.  I engage with people through these social media forums who self identify themselves as very conservative, very liberal and points in between.  I do not typically engage with the most conservative and liberal people in my “offline” life.  I would be unlikely to have the opportunity to gain the benefit of their perspective if we weren’t all engaged in social medial conversations.

I have friends and acquaintances who annoy the hell out of me – often using social media tools to deliver their message.  But, they help to keep me honest.  They help me to examine my own views more closely.  I believe that’s healthy.

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Picture Credits:  Bridge by Flickr user digital kid2007.