Video Killed the Radio Star — Or Did It?

At midnight on August 1, 1981, MTV began broadcasting. This was back in the days when it played only music videos (imagine that), and its very first, appropriately, was a little ditty by the Buggles called "Video Killed the Radio Star." For those of you who, like me, are old enough to remember this and want a little nostalgia fix, here you go:



OK, back to the blog.

Since that moment 27 years ago, the Internet has become ubiquitous. A majority of Americans has broadband service at home. Tens of millions can view email and video on mobile devices like iPhones and Blackberries. 

So why do our leaders still rely on the radio to communicate with citizens? 

Each week the president delivers a radio address to the nation. Typically issues of great importance to citizens are discussed. The opposition party also delivers a response, much like the way an opposition leader speaks on national television following a president's annual State of the Union address. After being elected president last week, for example, Barack Obama delivered the Democratic Party's weekly radio address, using the occasion to lay out much of his early agenda. 

I've never heard one of these addresses. Have you? Isn't it a little bizarre that, decades after television supplanted radio and well into the digital information age, our government chooses such an outdated medium of communication? Our cratering economy may make it feel like the 1930s, when Americans huddled around their radios to listen to FDR's fireside chats. But it isn't. 

To be sure, there are some legitimate reasons why radio makes sense. For one, the tens of millions of Americans who don't have broadband (or any) Internet access can tune into radio at little to no cost. Of course, they could also tune in to network television for free, presuming they own sets. I don't know the details of how all this evolved, but I'm guessing that television networks have judged their time too valuable to give away to politicians each week, and their lobbyists have convinced Congress of the same, thus the persistence of the radio address. 

It's also true that the press pay attention to these addresses and report on them, disseminating their messages to citizens who don't tune in. And the president and opposition leaders often repeat the themes from their radio addresses in press conferences, which results in these messages being carried on television, the Internet and print media. 

Still, I'm flabbergasted that our leaders are not making better use of cheap, widely available technology to communicate more directly and effectively with citizens. Why not convert the radio addresses into video addresses that are posted on the Internet and emailed, along with a text transcript, to citizens? For those without broadband or any Internet access, the audio could still be broadcast on the radio. But those of us who do rely on the internet and mobile devices could watch these speeches at our leisure -- after work, before retiring for the night, during commutes. Citizens could sign up for email alerts so they don't have to check websites regularly. It would improve participation in the democratic process. 

In this election we saw the power of the Internet. Obama used the medium very effectively to organize a community (hmmm...) of supporters that spanned all 50 states (and those supporters used the Internet to quickly debunk the silly false rumors being spread about him, a stark contrast with the sliming of John Kerry in 2004). His backers regularly received video updates from campaign staff and the candidates on the ticket. My hope is that as president, he will try to apply these same principles to governing. That will be a good thing for everyone —just as long as he doesn't wear huge glasses and a silver lame´ jacket.

Gay Marriage: What's the Big Deal?

Help me understand this. Why shouldn't two gay people who love each other and want to make a lifelong commitment to one another be able to marry one another?

I've thought about this a lot and I've never been able to understand the opposition to gay marriage except that it is simply a form of discrimination against homosexuals. I've heard people say that they don't oppose homosexuality but think that marriage should be only between a man and a woman. I can't reconcile those positions intellectually. If you accept homosexuality then why shouldn't you want gays to be able to marry one another and enjoy the same rights and privileges as heterosexual spouses? How can so many religious conservatives who oppose gay marriage want to promote loving families yet prevent their formation?

Obviously the defeat last week of Proposition 8 in California got me to thinking about this again, and I still can't figure it out. Am I missing something here? Please help.

The Day After: Let the Healing Begin

Today I am very proud to be an American. 

I feel that pride every time the people of our great nation peacefully hand the reins of power from one president to another, regardless of whether the winner is the guy I voted for. It is what separates us from so many other countries. Our founders' great experiment with constitutional democracy, born in an era of monarchs and tyrants, continues to set the example for the rest of the world.  

But today is different. And it is different because of who Barack Obama is, and what he represents. 

Today is different because a black man has become the leader of the same United States of America that codified slavery into its constitution 220 years ago and continued to tolerate racial segregation, discrimination and persecution for generations after emancipating African and African-American slaves. 

Today is also different because it promises an end to decades of bitter division among Americans. Our nation has for too long been cleaved into warring factions, divided over civil rights, Vietnam, religion and social issues. Politicians first exploited these developing cracks in our society in the late 1960s, with the ascent of Nixon's Silent Majority. This slow-growing cancer on our nation metastasized over the past 16 years, with the ascents of the baby boomers Bill Clinton and George W. Bush to the White House. What once was a government of honorable, decent individuals, who held the best interests of the nation at heart despite their often strong disagreements, swiftly devolved into a death battle of glorified high school cliques. These overgrown children and their minions devoted more energy to pointing fingers, calling names and holding grudges in the selfish pursuit of political power than they did to doing the right thing for our country and its sovereign citizens. Control of government became a mere instrument for advancing the next electoral campaign. Our founders meant for this to happen the other way around. 

And today is different because it finally gives Americans something to cheer about after a long, depressing stretch of bad news that had even the most optimistic of patriots worried that the nation's best days may already have passed. Clinton ended his reign by defiling the White House and lying straight to our faces on national television. The ballot-box irregularities and Supreme Court resolution of the 2000 election left a potent, sour taste in the mouths of many Americans. Soon thereafter the bursting of the dot-com bubble and a spate of corporate scandals, including the fraudulent collapses of Enron, WorldCom, Tyco International and Adelphia Communications, hit the economy. Then came the shock, horror and deep national grief of 9/11, war in Afghanistan and a military misadventure in Iraq that has overstretched our budget, torn apart families and extinguished tens of thousands of lives. Since then we've also seen New Orleans devastated by Hurricane Katrina. We've seen North Korea and Iran advance their nuclear weapons programs. And we've witnessed the inflation and explosion of a gargantuan real-estate bubble that has plunged us into the worst financial and economic crisis since the Great Depression. 

Today, with Barack Obama as president-elect, we can start the healing process. As an Ivy League-educated black man, raised largely by his white, working-class grandparents, he transcends racial, economic and social barriers. As the first post-boomer president, elected with an outpouring of support from long-apathetic young people, he transcends generations and is not bound by the identity politics and old grudges of the 60s and Vietnam. And as a man who campaigned on hope, confidence and civic responsibility — on inspiring the better angels of our nature instead of exploiting our worst fears — he can begin to give us something, at long last, to look forward to. 

I was particularly struck last night by the televised images of people pouring into the streets to celebrate Obama's victory — in Chicago's Grant Park, in New York's Harlem and Times Square, on college campuses throughout the nation and, indeed, on Pennsylvania Avenue, in front of the White House. This is truly like no other election we've seen. I am not ashamed to admit shedding tears at the sight, the sound, the gravity of it all, and I struggled to think of a modern parallel. The only other time I've seen such national jubilation was when the US ice hockey team improbably defeated the USSR at the 1980 Olympic Games in Lake Placid, New York. That moment, while it pales in comparison to this one, also inspired in us a sense of the possible, at a time when so much seemed hopeless.  

Obama's election is certainly not a panacea for all that ails us. He faces the toughest set of challenges of any incoming president in recent memory. And with the economy in serious trouble, President Obama surely won't be able to deliver everything that Candidate Obama has promised during the campaign. He will never be able to successfully prosecute two wars, reduce our dependence upon fossil fuels, expand health care and help restore our economic strength without support from other leaders of all ideological and political stripes, as well as from each and every citizen. 

Obama acknowledged this difficult fact during his victory speech last night. So did his opponent, Senator John McCain, in his gracious concession address. Leaving aside for a moment the mystery of where the Republicans had been hiding that John McCain for the past several months, these words from both men were quite encouraging to hear. Our new president-elect, hopefully, is indicating that he will not be an ideologue or a permanent campaigner but rather a problem solver — one who needs help from every American to tackle our truly formidable challenges. And the leader of the defeated Republicans invoked the spirit of sensible, bipartisan cooperation that he so valiantly stood for before lurching to the right to win his party's nomination. 

We, too, must embrace this spirit. Let the healing begin. 

Why I Vote

Below is an essay I wrote several months ago, during the primary races, to accompany a donation to the Obama campaign. I thought it appropriate to share on Election Day. Even though it supports a particular candidate, I think it also delivers a message that might resonate with all citizens, regardless of who they cast their ballots for. Don't forget to vote!

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I vote.

I vote regularly, almost religiously. I vote in cutthroat presidential battles as well as in boring, uncontested plebiscites for the local board of education.

Too often I do so while holding my nose.

For most of my adult life I’ve carefully guarded my undeclared voter-registration status and bemoaned the bitterly partisan nature of our politics. Why, I’ve long wondered, are so many elected officials more concerned with winning arguments — on getting and staying elected — than they are with solving our problems?

A big part of the answer to that question, I have theorized, is that so many private citizens are similarly obsessed — perhaps the cumulative effect of so many years of The McLaughlin Group, Crossfire, Limbaugh, The New York Post, the Drudge Report, Dan Abrams and Air America pounding a once-engaged citizenry into knee-jerk know-nothingism. Another big reason is that so many Americans could completely care less. Some have been so turned off by our infantile politics as to completely tune it out; Others are too busy trying to make ends meet and content with simpler pastimes like reality TV, Page Six and Us Weekly. The result: most Americans don’t bother to vote. And we are left with the candidates — and the leadership — that we deserve.

So when I find myself in the ballot box, increasingly it’s a dutiful exercise, not something I’m excited about or proud of. I vote for Democrats on my town council and board of education because Republicans dominate those bodies and because most people where I live are so reflexively anti-Democrat as to blindly disregard good public-policy ideas just because Republicans didn’t invent them. Conversely, I vote for Republicans to serve in the county government, which is in the stranglehold of a corrupt, wasteful Democratic machine that makes me pay more in property taxes than I rightly should so that it can buy votes and campaign contributions with government jobs and contracts. In both cases, I know that the candidates I support will lose, and lose big.

I know that my state and federal legislative districts, like so many throughout the country, are feats of gerrymandering worthy of Rube Goldberg, producing seats so safely in the column of one party that they render meaningless the spirit of free and fair elections. I know that races for statewide and federal offices have become made-for-TV battles of the substance-free sound bite. I know that a class of truly reprehensible human beings will function as sometimes-anonymous surrogates who will say, write, mail and post on the internet false and unfair statements about their opponents that the candidates themselves would never deign to utter in public. I know that in these campaigns there will be generous doses of “gotcha” quotes dredged up, liberated from all context and leaked to the press by opposition research teams. I know that there will be fliers left underneath windshield wipers in Wal-Mart parking lots intimating that candidates are somehow of the wrong race, religion or sexuality for a particular segment of voters.

I know that these are the malodorous byproducts of what has come to be known as the Permanent Campaign. From my vantage point, as someone who came of age during the 1990s, the Permanent Campaign is a creation of Bill and Hillary Clinton and those who have supported their political careers. I know that’s not completely true in the purest sense; Nixon and his ilk practiced dirty tricks, to be sure. And as a student of history I know that the Jacksonian era was marked by intense partisanship and appeals by politicians to the basest voter impulses. But even if the Clintons didn’t create the Permanent Campaign, they certainly reinvented it for the Information Age. You were either with them or you were against them.

I voted for Bill Clinton twice — the first time with youthful exuberance and the second with more than a little skepticism. During this time I also took note of Clinton Hatred, a passion that so infected Republicans that it impaired their ability to serve the public as elected officials and contribute to our democracy as citizens. The poisoned well of our politics grew more toxic still with the controversy over the election of 2000. And now that we can view the Bush-Cheney administration in hindsight it is clear that it has taken the Permanent Campaign to a new, more perfect and damaging level.

Our leaders have spent nearly two decades choosing the Permanent Campaign over devoting their considerable talents to solving the nation’s problems. During that same time many of our citizens have preferred scoring points and landing insults, in cocktail-party and blog arguments about politics, over finding ways to heal our collective ills. Or they simply haven’t been paying attention. As a result, our problems have grown worse.

Now the nation confronts war without end, recklessly and incompetently prosecuted; an economic crisis the likes of which have not been seen in more than a generation; a world that once revered the United States now openly hostile to it; the real danger that segments of our society are becoming so economically and socially disenfranchised that they will revolt against the established order; the list of maladies goes on. These are big problems getting bigger for the neglect of our leaders. It makes me sad. I often blame myself as much as I find fault in others, thinking that I should be a more engaged citizen. But work, family and fatigue too often stand in the way of that ideal path.

I know that one person cannot change all of this. Not one candidate — even one running for president — and surely not just one voter. But I’m encouraged that Senator Obama has chosen to say publicly some of the things that I’ve been thinking as a disgruntled but patriotic American all these years and to make changing this state of affairs so central to his campaign. Make no mistake: I’m still skeptical. It’s certainly convenient that a campaign focused on such ideals differentiates Senator Obama from his chief rival, who so embodies the bitterly divided politics of the past two decades. But the more I see, the more I learn, the more I believe that he’s sincere. Maybe not 100% sincere about every single thing, but as sincere as our political environment permits a presidential candidate to be. I read his memoir, Dreams From My Father, and am heartened that for the first time in my memory we might have a president who is capable of serious introspection and is not completely captive to an elephantine ego.

For all the reasons I’ve laid out in this too-preachy diatribe of an essay, it is not easy in America today for such a person to become president. And that is precisely why I want Senator Obama living in the White House. I know that I do not, and will not, agree with everything he believes in, and that I’ll object to some of the things he does in office should he win the presidency. But I believe that he will listen. He will listen to me and to the rest of the American people, as well as to his peers of all ideological stripes in Washington and throughout the world. And he will strive with us to solve our problems rather than divide us for politics’ sake while our democracy — and indeed, the world — becomes sicker.

That is why I support Senator Obama.

That is why I vote.

What is Palin Hiding?

Just one day before voters have to make up their minds about whether to elect her to the second-highest office in the land, Sarah Palin has still not made public her medical records, according to CNN. 

The other three major-party candidates (McCain, Obama and Biden) released medical records to the public long ago. Palin's campaign has said it would make the records available before election day. They have less than 24 hours left. Even if they make good on that promise between now and midnight, they've done a disservice to all voters by waiting so long. That's especially true when you consider that as much as one-third of the electorate has already cast ballots under early voting programs. 

Is there any good reason why Palin isn't coming clean with voters about her health? I can't think of one.

Former Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis famously said that "sunlight is the best disinfectant." That principle lies behind much disclosure-based regulation in this country, such as the required dissemination of financial statements by public companies. The idea is that requiring disclosure deters bad behavior, or at least prevents bad actors from keeping their misdeeds secret. 

Governor Palin's refusal to release her medical records begs one very big question: What is she hiding? And If there's nothing to hide, why not make the records public? If McCain and Palin win tomorrow, when will we find out about her health? On inauguration day? When she runs for president in 2012? Sometime after then? Never? Okay, that's seven questions, but you get the point. 

Hopefully there are no skeletons in her medical closet, but her failure to disclose her records understandably has minds running wild, especially in light of Palin's well-documented adventures in hands-laying, tongues-speaking and general religious kookery:

Is there some mental health issue we don't know about, and that the campaign would prefer we never know about?

Failing to make such a basic disclosure — every candidate for President and Vice President has done so for as long as I can remember — evidences a fundamental, and quite loathsome, disdain on Governor Palin's part for the principle that the people are sovereign in the United States of America. 

Dick Cheney would be proud.