{"id":3598,"date":"2010-09-11T22:41:59","date_gmt":"2010-09-12T05:41:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/?p=3598"},"modified":"2010-09-11T22:41:59","modified_gmt":"2010-09-12T05:41:59","slug":"obviously","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/2010\/09\/11\/obviously\/","title":{"rendered":"Obviously"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s 9\/11 and many of us have abiding memories &#8211; for me, I was in Europe (in Baden-Baden, actually), and we had to access internet at the public library to find out if a friend was on one of the planes.<\/p>\n<p>He was.<\/p>\n<p>Watching the events on my mother-in-law&#8217;s TV was compelling, but seeing the scene a few days later, after we landed in Newark and were taken by bus to Logan (in Boston), was more visceral. Everyone on the bus was very quiet.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/George_Orwell\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright\" style=\"border: 4px solid white\" src=\"http:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/thumb\/2\/23\/GeoreOrwell.jpg\/240px-GeoreOrwell.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"86\" height=\"120\" \/><\/a>A lot has changed since the end of the 1990s. Security theater, and lots of frothy bullshit around ideas.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;Wait, &#8230;maybe a lot has stayed the same&#8230;?<\/p>\n<p>Of the many things that glimmered across my computer screen in the last couple of days, this (regarding the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.spiegel.de\/international\/world\/0,1518,716858,00.html\">ousted asshat<\/a> who&#8217;s trying to gather attention via book-burnings) stood out, however:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The problem is not the Web. Anti-JFK rallies &#8220;revealing&#8221; to every school child in Orange County, California that Communists planned to colonize the United States by the year 1970 drew bigger crowds than Tea Parties today, with nary a blogger among them. (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/roomfordebate\/2010\/09\/09\/when-a-fringe-figure-becomes-news\/a-broader-media-problem\">source<\/a>)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>That&#8217;s from Rick Perlstein&#8217;s NYTimes article, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/roomfordebate\/2010\/09\/09\/when-a-fringe-figure-becomes-news\/a-broader-media-problem\">When a Fringe Figure Becomes News<\/a>. &#8220;&#8230;by the year 1970 &#8230;bigger crowds than Tea Parties today&#8230;&#8221;?<\/p>\n<p>You have to wonder why we&#8217;re paying attention to scoundrels like that &#8220;minister.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>You have to wonder what we&#8217;re paying attention to (and what we&#8217;re ignoring), &#8230;and why.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s 9\/11 and many of us have abiding memories &#8211; for me, I was in Europe (in Baden-Baden, actually), and we had to access internet at the public library to find out if a friend was on one of the planes. He was. Watching the events on my mother-in-law&#8217;s TV was compelling, but seeing the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":311,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[96],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3598","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3598","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/311"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3598"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3598\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3601,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3598\/revisions\/3601"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3598"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3598"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3598"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}