Let's Revisit School (from an earlier Tea Party protest) © 2009 Michael M. Smith

From my office window I can see Michigan’s State Capitol building. On most workdays, during the spring and summer, there are organized demonstrations on the capitol lawn, each addressing a particular issue or grievance.

Today’s demonstration (24 June 2010) was huge. It was the Michigan Education Association and they were well organized—several thousand of them in coordinated tee-shirts. They arrived by the busload. Large circus style tents covered the grounds and as a mark of just how organized this demonstration was there were no less than 10 porta-potties on the southside sidewalk and behind the capitol sat 5 state police cruisers.

A couple of weeks ago it was the motorcyclists protesting the Michigan law that requires them to wear helmets. I appreciate their logic. If they prefer to have their unprotected heads smash the concrete at sixty miles an hour what’s the point of government trying to protect them?

Anyway, my point here is not about the MEA or helmet laws, it’s about demonstrations. Do they accomplish anything other than making the demonstrators feel better? I doubt it. As I said I see them almost every working day.  And they follow the same pattern. Someone, or several someones, mount the capitol steps and deliver righteous messages to the assembled believers. At key moments the demonstrators hoot, cheer, clap and wave their signs in the air. But rarely do the legislators or governor come out to meet the crowd—unless they are in the midst of a reelection campaign. Mostly, it’s the demonstrators demonstrating for themselves and the amusement of the lunch crowd. It’s purely theater and most of it amateur.

In his TED video, Political Change with Pen and Paper, Omar Ahmad claims the most effective way to get the attention of legislators is to write them letters—handwritten. When they receive thousands of hand written letters they pay attention. However, when they look out their windows and see signs and placards bobbing up and down, it’s just another day at work. Letters are personal. Bobbing signs are anonymous.

It takes tremendous energy and money to move tens, hundreds and even thousands of people to converge on a single location, there to vent their frustrations and express their views—particularly when tomorrow there will be yet another performance by another group and the day after that another. And to what avail? Inside the walls of government the deals are made based upon political and personal expedience and favoritism. If bricks and bullets aren’t coming through the windows the demonstrations outside are of no more concern than the day’s weather.

© 2010 Michael Maurer Smith

Our Demand © 2010 Michael Maurer Smith

Our unbridled thirst for oil made this disaster all but inevitable. When will we realize that we are petroleum addicts?

After more than 150 years of photography—of millions of photographs showing humans shredded, burned, drilled by bullets, eviscerated, or hacked to pieces, we must acknowledge that murder, genocide, slaughter and natural disaster continue undeterred by the witness of photographers and photojournalists.

Words may reveal the mind of the victim or the perpetrator and thereby teach us something, but never the photograph. It can only re-present that which was visible. You will not get blood on your fingers by dragging them across the photograph of a dead soldier or accident victim. You will not hear the victim’s dying screams or last words. You will not smell the stench of the body’s decay. Still photographs remain still—odorless artifacts.

Most of the photographs of war and suffering are made to sell—not just to teach, witness, document or chastise. The photojournalists who make these pictures expect to be paid for taking the risk. And the news agencies expect to be paid for the use of the images.

Such photography panders to the viewer/reader’s anxiety and need to feel safe. It is expected they will find comfort in knowing they have been spared the horror shown in the photograph. But is this real journalism? Does it truly educate and serve any noble or practical purpose? Or does it principally titillate, stir fear and fan prejudice?

Eddie Adams won the Pulitzer Prize for his photograph of General Nguyễn Ngọc Loan executing a handcuffed Viet Cong prisoner in Saigon. This picture helped turn American sentiment against the Vietnam War and hasten its end. However, it has done little to prevent America’s involvement in subsequent wars. Likewise, the highly publicized photographs of the My Lai massacre, of more than 347 unarmed men, women and children, by U.S. troops, on 16 March 1968, has done little to prevent subsequent mass murders and genocides from happening around the world.

Photojournalism’s demonstrated failure to prevent or end wars, genocides and disaster makes it cynical if not immoral for photojournalists, news agencies and publishers to continue profiting from the photography of people’s suffering, pain and tragedy—photographs that are sold and peddled as a commodity to be consumed like coffee at breakfast. Is this what it means to be civilized? Is this being informed or simply inflamed? Who really benefits?

© 2010 Michael Maurer Smith

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

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