From Monday to Friday of this week, I tried to interest DU in a "frame" to describe the GOP. I laid it out in
"The Party of Death"
http://journals.democraticunderground.com/arendt/145In this weekly wrapup, I will pick the grisliest of the PODD depradations. This week's winner for PODD violence is the coming war on Iran, as laid out in:
British fear US commander is beating the drum for Iran strikes
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=3256381&mesg_id=3256381I argue that headlines like this are the reason that framing is important. This one topic, IMHO, is THE most important story out there. Having a frame allows you to stay "on message". (My frame is death, and this is the biggest bunch of death coming down the pike.) The media will bury this secret march to another war of aggression. Instead, they will report almost exclusively on the cratering economy (which is definitely worth reporting on, but not the way the Corporate Media are covering it); they will report on the primary slimefest; they will even report on the runup to the previous war and the war-criminal involvement of top WH officials. But they will not report on the coming war on Iran. They will let the PODD put this bag of dogshit on our front porch and light it on fire - without doing a thing to expose it beforehand.
Petreus' testimony will be a pack of self-serving baloney about his failure in Iraq and outright lies about Iran's capabilities, intentions, and actions. If you go to overseas websites (like the UK one above), you can watch the preparations for unspeakable, nuclear aggression going on. Did you happen to notice that a B-1 bomber crashed at our main airbase in the mideast last week? Now you tell me what we would do with a B-1 bomber in Iraq? Bomb a fruit stand in Sadr City? No, that plane (worthless piece of Cold War defense pork that it is) has one capability - long range attack.
Deathwatch is truly an apt metaphor for these monsters.
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Having said that, I must talk about the DU response to my endeavors with the PODD frame.
On the first day of Deathwatch, I got 39 comments and 27 recs. By day four, I was down to 2 comments (that weren't kicks by me) and 2 votes. Clearly, this "frame" has been treated as a one time thing by DU.
That was not my expectation when I started this little project/experiment. I thought DUers cared about the bigger picture, about coming up with ways to really hurt the PODD. But, outside of my own threads, I haven't seen one person refer to the GOP as the PODD.
Even though I have blocked the GD-P crap throwing contest, I find that the rest of DU is as unfocused as ever. Today, for example, everyone had to comment on the death of Charleton Heston. To my mind, that has zero to do with the policies of the PODD. It belongs in the Lounge or some other place for cocktail-party conversation. The other day, there was a huge fight about Randi Rhodes. Now the RR situation was worth dissecting, to see if this was a case of media bias. Instead, the threads turned into a circular firing squad about why Dems can't/must say such things. Finally, the hot topic of the last two days has been a post from a newbie (11 posts) about his experiences at an un-named major retailer: "I work retail and I can tell you something big is definitely coming."
It seems to me that posts become huge hits when they tap into the visceral fears of DUers or their sense of Schadenfreude. Then everyone wants to share his anxiety or piss on someone's grave. Those are legitimate uses of DU. But, they shouldn't be the only uses. After a certain point (like six years, in my case) you want to make stuff happen, not just sit around commiserating about all this bad shit.
As I keep hearing from my management gerbils: Focus, Focus, Focus. Why does everyone at DU feel they have to add their tiny soundbite to the headline of the moment? Why can't more DUers pick a specialty and better inform us all? As I've been selecting headlines for Deathwatch, I have noticed several very focused people that I think are doing a great job:
Omaha Steve posts great stories on labor.
hatrack posts a lot of environmental news.
kpete, kentuck, and flashl post all kinds of good political stuff (high quality and high volume)
McCamy Taylor, when he posts, is always worth reading.
(apologies to anyone I didn't mention.)
Of course, David Swanson, Larisa A., and other name bloggers who post on our site are also fairly focused.
Myself, I seem to have two focuses: framing issues and bashing fundamentalist religion. Today, I tried to combine those interests in a post "Sub-Prime Religion". Predictably it went nowhere. If my hypothesis about motivation at DU is correct, my post offered nothing new or specific to fear from the fundies and no fundie's downfall to be happy about. So, it vanished.
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I've decided to stop doing Deathwatch. The meme I'm pushing doesn't seem to be very infectious. This week, instead of posting at DU, I will pester my Congressmen to please stop the lunatics from nuking Iran. That's because I believe my own framing. These guys are killers, and we have to stop them.
Peace
arendt
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