Making Free Speech Free
January 31st, 2010 · Design and Communication, Editorial, Politics and Social Issues, law, media
The recent decision by the United States Supreme Court, in the case of “Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission,” allows corporations and unions to spend unlimited amounts of money to promote political candidates, parties and causes. This effectively nullifies Democracy as we once thought of it.
The individual or small business that can only afford to spend a few hundred dollars will now ask what’s the point? If giants like AIG, General Motors and Exxon Mobil can spend millions of dollars to hire the best writers, designers, photographers and filmmakers to make their ads in support of their favored candidates, political parties and issues, how will the small business or individual get heard? Politicians remember and favor those who get them elected and big money buys access.
So far the protests against this ruling assume that the relative financial disparity is the problem. I’d like to suggest otherwise.
As a designer I develop communications intended to extend the client’s message to their target audience. The message is crafted to persuade and encourage action. To do this I use various typefaces, photographs, illustrations, formats, colors and media to set a specific tone and to bring content and form into an integrated whole that promotes a specific point-of-view and sets a tone. When doing this more money certainly allows more options. This is why WalMart’s advertising is typically more polished and effective than that of the small business owner.
So it seems to me that fairness would be a law that required all political campaign and advocacy advertising to be limited to type only. No sound, illustration, photography or color, other than black and white, would be permitted. Likewise, only a single typeface could be used, say Helvetica or Arial—something precise and modern but lacking a suggestive character. Everyone would be required to use this same typeface (or Braille for the blind).
Type set in Helvetica.
All this would assure visual neutrality and a kind of equality. It would compel and challenge those who write the copy to persuade their audience using only the written word—appealing to the intellect. Unlike colors, photographs, illustrations and sounds, which are responded to immediately, viscerally and emotionally, the written word must first be read and interpreted—it requires thinking and understanding.
These restrictions would apply to everyone rich or poor, individual or corporate. The individual or corporation could say whatever he or she wanted to but only using words, no pictures and no movement or sound. The emotional appeal of color and imagery would be unavailable and the need for big budgets for production costs would disappear. Anyone with access to a desktop computer could prepare typewritten copy ready for use in print, online or on television.
Taking this a step further designated sites on the Internet could be made available for these ads and statements. Such sites would be open to all and at no cost.
Of course some people write better than others, and the better writer will be more persuasive. However superior writers may be found at all income levels and writing requires little in the way of production costs. So restricting published (print or online) political advertising and advocacy to the written word would go a long way toward assuring that everyone will have a fair and equal opportunity to be heard, regardless how much money they may have.
It is worth remembering that before the Internet, radio and television and before the halftone process permitted photographs to be reproduced in books, magazines and newspapers most publishing and advertising took the form of the printed word.
In the end it is our choice. We now have to accept that corporations have been granted the same rights of free speech formerly exclusive to human beings. However we can insist that equal opportunity, access and methods be available to permit the exercise of free speech for every citizen (Can a corporation be a citizen?) regardless of their finances, power or connections. Indeed we must do this if we are to remain a Democracy and not become a Plutocracy.
© 2010 Michael Maurer Smith
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A Conspiracy of Ignorance
January 30th, 2010 · Editorial, Politics and Social Issues, media
As each new day unfolds it seems the United States of America becomes more disunited, impatient and uncivil. What passes for entertainment, education and political discourse, particularly in the media, is rarely more than sensationalism and the exchange of insults and shouting. And with the exception of few good newspapers, magazines and websites, along with the Public Broadcast System (PBS) and C-Span, there is little balanced and meaningful reporting.
Moreover, I believe there is a tacit conspiracy to make Americans more ignorant and thereby gullible and easily led. This is done by flooding the media with crass entertainment and pseudo news—programming that appeals to people’s base desires and prejudices and which is aimed at the sociopath, sadist, fool, ignoramus, intellectually lazy, self loathing and narcissistic. How else can the following television programs, which currently air in prime time, be explained? Admittedly most of them are on cable but surprisingly many of them run on the networks. Here is a sampling: Ghost Whisperer, Medium, Smackdown (wrestling), Criminal Minds (profiling serial killers), Kitchen Nightmares, I’m Alive, I Shouldn’t be Alive, Gangland, Swamp Loggers, UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship cage fights), Pride (more cage fights), Dirty Jobs, Project Runway, What Not to Wear, Conspiracy Theory with Jesse Ventura, Disorder in the Court, Full Throttle Saloon, Inside American Jail, Most Daring, Most Shocking, Speeders, Ice Road Truckers, Monster Quest, Nostrademus Effect, Pawn Stars, World War II in HD, UFO Hunters, Ghost Lab, 16 and Pregnant, Teen Mom, and the list goes on.
In addition to the programs that exemplify the inane, insane, base, violent and idiotic there are others dedicated to smart-mouth sniping and howling outrage. This category is peopled by such luminaries as: Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, Chris Matthews and others of the same ilk who have become wealthy by reducing serious issues to the level of a poorly written comic book.
So what now represents typical prime-time programming principally falls in the categories of: cage fighting, so-called reality TV, sexual exploitation, the occult, political rant and ridicule, and murder and mayhem as entertainment. Edifying!
Glaringly underrepresented are thoughtful, meaningful and intelligent presentations of the arts, history, science, and social and political issues. That’s because the corporate heads of the media companies are as cynical and shrewd as they are grossly overpaid. They correctly reason that sex, scandal, crime and stupidity have greater appeal to far more people than anything demanding intelligence, sustained attention and serious thinking. They know that far more people will watch two men (or women) beat each other unconscious than will watch a documentary on the global water crisis or a serious presentation on the Constitution. They know many people love to watch other people’s tragedy and loss of dignity. And they know their audiences love to watch politicians insult each other and confess their sordid affairs in public.
So it is that as the American people become exposed to more and more that is superficial, irrational, hyperbolic, biased, and nonsensical they become collectively and individually less capable of sustained attention, reason and analytical thought—their senses having been dulled by all the shouting, quick cuts and decontextualized snippets of word, sound and image. Moreover, with nearly everything being presented as partisan or in the guise of contest there is ever less willingness on the part of the audience to hear, perceive and understand the deeper significance, potential and meaning of what is presented.
All of this contributes to a dumbing and numbing effect on the part of the general public which works to the advantage of the cynical politicians and corporate executives. There are of course good and well-meaning politicians and corporate executives, but they are increasingly being marginalized by the power of political action committees and the “bottom line.” As the saying goes, money talks. And where money talks, taste, ethics and morality walk.
As the public is bombarded with half-truths, nonsense, pseudo science, alleged reality, and spectacles of sex and violence, they become less able to distinguish fact from fiction or pay attention to how their basic human rights and dignity are being taken from them in the name of comfort, convenience, entertainment and security.
We are indeed living in the information age. We are certainly not living in an age where reason, wisdom, taste and compassion prevail.
© 2010 Michael Maurer Smith
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Still Waiting for the Change We Can Believe In
January 15th, 2010 · Editorial, Politics and Social Issues
I voted for a “change we can believe in,”—for President Obama and the Democrats. Today I am dismayed.
Yes, we have gotten change, the change of spin and rhetoric. But corporate greed and the arrogance of the nation’s top bankers continue unabated while our social fabric and economic system shreds. In contemporary America, justice, ethics, morality, compassion, fairness and humility have become little more than words in the dictionary.
Having endured eight years of the arrogant, cynical and inept Bush/Cheney regime Americans are now credulously being asked to accept as statesmanship the diddling of the Democrats and hyper-partisan circus Washington has become. Change indeed! Tweedle dee and tweddle dumber!
Today’s (15 January 2010) Lansing State Journal reported the President as saying the recent round of bank bonuses were “obscene.” And so they are.
But, Mr. President it was you and your fellow Democrats we elected to end the abuse and you haven’t. We’d hoped you might forge the bipartisan support you promised, but all we’ve seen is the withering of that promise. And now you sound like just another impotent citizen—off to the side decrying how unseemly it all has become.
As President and a Nobel Prize winner you speak eloquently of responsibility and compassion. As a savvy politician you are able to say nearly everything to everyone and commit to nothing! As an attorney, well schooled in Constitutional law, you cite the law with authority. And perhaps it is because you are a lawyer, like so many of your colleagues in the Congress and Senate, that this county is in the mess it is.
Of the 269 members of the current 111th Congress, 204 list their occupations as lawyers! By comparison 6 are engineers, 16 are doctors, 1 is a veterinarian and 1 is a psychologist. There is even one comedian.
Lawyers are trained to be zealous advocates for their clients, their paying clients. They are taught that even the most dispicable criminal is entitled to the best legal representation he or she can afford. They are encouraged to frame and approach problems as arguments and contests. They are taught to use the law to argue and win for their client, albeit within the rules of law, regardless of whether the outcome is just and benefits the greater good. Once in politics the lawyer’s de facto clients become the big money donors who finance his or her campaigns.
It is this occupational mindset of confrontation, contest and the all-important win that the lawyers bring to the Congress, Senate and the Presidency.
What we have just seen in the recent health care debate (calling it that is being generous) is lawyers, in the guise of senators and congresspersons, championing the interest of their current de facto clients, the big businesses and special interest groups that financed their election. Only a few are trying to represent those people without influence—the average working person, the non-voting child, the elderly person living on a fixed income, the incarcerated, and the mentally ill.
I posit that it is the predominance of the lawyering mindset in government that severely compromises its ability to hear and address the real needs of the American people. One has to wonder if we had 204 doctors in this Congress, instead of 16, what kind of health care debate would have ensued and what kind of legislation would have resulted? What changes would occur if we had 204 teachers, or social workers, or farmers in the Congress?
I feel obligated to disclose that my “day job”, is with the State Bar of Michigan. However, I am not a lawyer. I am a communication designer. What I have written is my personal opinion, which as of this writing is still protected by the first amendment.
I must also acknowledge that there are many caring and well-meaning lawyers who do their utmost to serve the public good and achieve justice. However, in general, the legal profession has historically favored the status quo and the rich and powerful. Too often it has turned a blind eye to injustice. One need only recall that the Civil Rights Act did not pass until 1964, women did not win the right to vote until 1920, and that it took a Civil War to bring about the emancipation of the slaves.
© Michael Maurer Smith 2010
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Drawing Conclusions
December 24th, 2009 · Art, Design and Communication, Editorial, Images, Politics and Social Issues, Uncategorized, media
Recently I reread John Berger’s 1976 essay, The Primitive and the Professional in which he offers three sources of the primitive in art. The first is art made by artists working prior to Raphael. Second is the art derived from the “colonies,” that is, art from Africa, the Caribbean or the South Pacific. Finally there is the art made by untrained artists—the naïve.
Berger, for his purposes, proffers a modern and Eurocentric view of primitive art and writes from a Marxist perspective. He locates the definitions, explanations and analysis of art primarily in the contexts of class, culture and economics. His emphasis is upon art as something that may be possessed, valued and exchanged. He says little about the subjective nature and satisfactions of the art making process. It’s as if the quality called art only inheres in the object.
Reading this essay got me thinking about my own practice of Art. I hold both a Masters and Bachelors degree in Studio Art from Michigan State University. I am a painter, photographer and communications designer. So I work in the realms of fine art and applied—the sacred and profane.
It also happens that I grew up underprivileged. My great-grandmother raised me and until I was old enough to work, we had only her Social Security check and a welfare allotment with which to meet our needs. Her formal education ended at the ninth grade level. So I did not grow up in a home that exposed me to high Art. Nonetheless, I went on to obtain a university education by means of the G.I. Bill, a benefit of my service as a Marine during the Vietnam War.
As a boy I liked to draw and was good at it. I liked looking at pictures. I loved the varieties of color and texture and the joy I found in pleasing shapes and arrangements. I checked out art books from the local and school libraries and took art classes in junior high and high school. I gained a reputation as being artistic. Becoming an artist seemed natural and right for me.
So when I arrived at the university I too was presented with the model Berger describes—the modern and Eurocentric model of art—the Capitalistic and consumerist model. I then began to understand art in the context of culture and class—as a signifier of status. Likewise I became aware of the artist’ status within our contemporary class structure.
Like most artists, I was and am an observer. I prefer the periphery from which I can analyze, assess, compare and contrast what I see, hear and feel. I knowingly keep a distance to preserve my options. A Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory I once took revealed me as an Intuitive, Thinking, Judging type and I agree. Being an artist demands being an outsider—a step out of sync. It demands the freedom to ask what if? Why not? Says who? It demands the courage and willingness to defy that which is commonly accepted, known and “understood.”
I concur with Berger’s analysis as far as it goes. However, I believe it is limited to understanding Art as an object within the purview of economics and politics.
In this essay, Berger does not address the artist’ subjective experience of art making. He does not examine the reason(s) the individual artist may have for making art. Nor does he consider the artist’ own definition(s) of art.
It is the confused and collapsed definition of Art that is problematic. Art in common parlance is variously used to mean: an object, a quality, an action or a practice. It is like the word love, which in one context may describe the mechanics of the sex act (they made love) and in another, the Greek concept of agape—selfless love.
The ascription of Art, as a quality, to anything is always a political and cultural decision.
Can something made intentionally for purposes of trade and commerce ever be real Art? Can real Art be made by the naïve and untutored person? Can it be made by accident? Can a computer produce it? Or must real Art evidence the freedom of the artist’ hand and mind and the caprice of momentary inspiration?
What makes art Art? And who says? The answer locates the politics. Is it Art only if the artist says it is? Or is it Art only if culturally accepted institutions, like galleries, museums and universities judge it so? Is it enough to be Art because it is skillfully and beautifully made? Or must the work show evidence of deep thought, meaning and imagination by its maker? Must a work of art be unique? Or can it be one of many machine produced and identical multiples? Why or why not?
Berger correctly posits economics and politics as the arbiters of what is culturally and socially accepted as Art—at least in modern Western society. However, the need for artistic expression—the need to make marks and objects, whether utilitarian, symbolic or purely decorative, is innately human and preexists any political ideology or economic system. In fact it is a defining feature of humans that they can make symbolic marks—marks that stand for shared meanings and concepts. This is the basis for written language and thus for the codification and sharing of mathematics, science, history and religion.
To bring this discussion into focus I want to discuss my brother Tim. Tim is five years younger than me. We have the same mother but different fathers. We did not grow up together. Early in his life Tim began having trouble with the law. This led to his incarceration in prison for several years. During that time he began to draw. His drawings betrayed a lack of formal instruction. Size relationships owed more to emotional meanings than observed differences—like those of children’s drawing. Objects were drawn as outlines and filled with color. There was little understanding of renaissance perspective and chiascuro. These were the drawings of a naïve artist. Yet they were expressive works that made manifest his feelings and did so in ways that were visually compelling and provocative. They were art as act, and art as process. They were art as personal expression. But they were not high Art—not the kind of art a museum would seek to acquire. Tim remains undiscovered.
After his release from prison Tim stopped drawing and began making carvings and constructions out of wood and scrap. He fashions detailed sailing ships, stagecoaches and windmills using humble tools. He does this without regard for efficiency or profit. He places no value on his work hour. He has no business plan or portfolio and his continuing personal and emotional problems make a professional approach to his art making and craft practically impossible. Yet he continues to make his art, probably because it is the one meaningful thing in his life. It affirms his being and gives him a sense of purpose and accomplishment—something that is uniquely his.
Tim and his art © Michael Maurer Smith 2009
Tim’s artistic expression is genuine. At the same time it is derivative. He tries to copy things he’s seen but his mental demons, lack of formal training and proper tools conspire to deny him the skill and discipline necessary to make convincing replicas at a marketable and profitable rate. Instead his pieces are improvisations, born without the pretense of theory and historical justification. They are akin to a journal compulsively kept, markers of a passage. But are they Art? I think they are. He doesn’t.
© Michael Maurer Smith 2009
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