The Common Good: No Sacrifice At All

David Brooks again shows why he's the liberals' favorite conservative in his New York Times column this week (registration and possible payment required; free registration at the StarTribune). His theme is one I've been harping on here and in political conversations for some time now: why can't a Democrat get up and say what they stand for -- because clearly they stand for both everything and nothing today.

Brooks notes a growing consensus by liberal intellectuals around an old but forgotten theme: The common good. Citing a recent essay by writer Michael Tomasky, Brooks notes:

"Tomasky is now back with an essay in the American Prospect, in which he argues that it is time Democrats cohered around a big idea -- not diversity and not individual rights, but the idea of the common good. The Democrats' central themes, Tomasky advises, should be that we're all in this together; we are all part of a larger national project; we all need to make some shared sacrifices and look beyond our narrow self-interest. Tomasky is hoping for a candidate who will ignore the demands of the single-issue groups and argue that all Americans have a stake in reducing economic fragmentation and social division."

He notes that Democratic pollsters are saying the same thing.

"John Halpin and Ruy Teixeira, have just finished a long study that comes out in exactly the same place. Surveying mountains of polling data, they conclude that the Democrats' chief problem is that people don't think they stand for anything. Halpin and Teixeira argue that the message voters respond to best is the notion of shared sacrifice for the common good."

As a conservative, Brooks points this out a more negative light than I would. If I were writing for Democrats today, I'd talk not in terms of "shared sacrifice" but about that shared mission.

I'd point out that we are a part of all of our communities, and in America, our government is not some separate caste of elites but an expression of ourselves, what we want for our communities, our states and our nation. Our shared mission is to make them all a place where people can improve their lives, make something of themselves and take care of each other when they can't do it themselves.

You can tax me for this. It's no sacrifice at all.
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Bonus! Visit some of my other political screeds!

Criminal Ineloquence

Invest in America

Hindsight is Foresight

State of the Union Part II

State of the Union Part I

Drinks Are On Me!

An Observation:

Here's what my work life has looked like over the last eight months:

• Sincere emotional and physical burnout at work. Ability to concentrate, focus and enjoy life severely impacted.
  
• Said burnout contributes to loss of major account.
  
• Loss of major account leading to dramatic turnaround in overall mood and outlook on life. Laughing more, speaking and acting with confidence.
• Said outlook and mood improved by boss who, embarrassingly, pushes all the right buttons and sends me on a positive career course.
• Contribute mightily to many non-revenue generating but important new business projects.
• Receive raise via said boss.
• Direct supervisor recommends me for promotion.

Exactly what's going on here?

Is being happy and confident is good enough in today's work world?

Or am I just better at this than I thought?

Regardless, it's severely impacted my blogging. So, I apologize to my thre or so regular readers and those of you who land here via odd MSN searches. Thank you for your support.

And smile! Drinks are on me!

The Opposite of Humor

Or, "Snark for Snark's Sake"

I've discovered the opposite of humor and it is Newsweek. And Jay Leno. Newsweek and Jay Leno epitomize this pop culture referencin', we-all-know-what-jerks-they-are, it's funny 'cause it's cruel kind of humor that is just...not...funny.

Here's a recent Newsweek headline on Julia Roberts' appearance on Broadway: "It Sure Beats Mona Lisa Smile 2". Check out the article. No mention of the movie, no relevance. "Remember that Julia Roberts movie that sucked? Ha ha!" Basically, it's a cheap shot. The mass media equivalent of pulling on Julia's pigtails and then pointing a laughing.

This pretty much all there is to Leno's humor, and Newsweek is chock full of these. I'd offer more, but I'm late for a meeting. With a jerk. Ha ha!

Musings on Web 2.0

I wrote this little musing on communications, where the web is going, etc. I liked it, so I thought I'd share it:

In 1971, Memorex launched its audio recording products with a commercial featuring Ella Fitzgerald’s recorded voice shattering a wine glass. The tagline: “Is it live or is it Memorex?”

The ad was a sign of the times. Back then, the pinnacle of the entertainment experience was the live performance. Real, immediate, unmediated.

Today, the media is the experience. Home theaters with high definition television and stereo surround sound are seen by some as superior to going to the movies. Most sports fans will tell you that watching a football game on TV has distinct advantages over seeing it live. iPods are piping all the music you choose in high quality sound, right into our ears. TiVo let’s you watch what you want, when you want, again and again.

We’re no longer passive consumers of entertainment. We’re creators. Bloggers aren’t journalists, they’re moderators, asking questions, opining, trying to set the agenda and create more chatter, whether among a small group of friends or in the global conversation on big issues. We create iPod playlists and download songs rather than buy entire CDs. We by video cameras and make our own movies to record our lives in living, moving color … we even can edit out the sad parts. Kids take video and music from the Web and make mash-ups and viral funnies that become conversation fodder among IM buddies, message boards, email, in the coffee shop and around the water cooler. We upload our photos to Yahoo or Snapfish to share with friends. With a few clicks, we create memory books, coffee mugs and t-shirts. We publish our novels on CafePress. We play our music and bare our souls on MySpace. Even if you don’t do all of this … you know you can. Maybe you even think you should. It’s not a part of life. It’s part of living.

The truth is this: We no longer “experience”. We no longer consume: We author. We collaborate. We participate.

We are the media. We are the message.

Where do you think things are going?

Creating Online Community

Recently, the creator of the online comic "Johnny Saturn" posed a question on his forum about how one builds community online. Here is the answer I posted on his forum, slightly edited. He liked it, and I was quite proud of it myself (mainly because someone liked it). Perhaps you'll find it useful. Perhaps, someday, I'll find it useful, too:

...I follow a couple forums for humor sites that really have created community (see www.jaypinkerton.com or www.pointlesswasteoftime.com -- some of it is NSFW, if that matters to you).

Part of the community feel is that the people involved are invested in the site somehow -- their forum entries contribute to the site, they entertain and critique each other, they're creative together via humor. And they show off. I think part of it also is that people feel like they get to know these humorists on a semi-personal level -- they're part of something (Pinkerton, for example, has met a woman, taken jobs at National Lampoon and Cracked and moved from Canada to LA to New York since he started his forum). PWOT has been around long enough that there are core members of the community who meet offline once in awhile and clearly care about each other.

They seem to involve a good number of friends and fans in driving and moderating the forum and they have nurtured the community for many years. The folks who started the forums also contributed to other forums over the years, made internet friends and built a network that way.

Not an easily duplicated formula... I think it's hard to build the forum around Komikwerks because it's not a Johnny Saturn forum for Johnny Saturn fans. You might consider building a blog or community around the Johnny Saturn site and offering opportunities for fans to contribute ideas and art, letting us know where you are and how you're promoting the comic, offering sneak previews, introducing other projects, etc.

Just a thought (and I'm in PR, so I think about these things) ... I agree that vibrant message boards are the exception rather than the rule ... and I bet you'd get a pretty good readership for a blog...

What do you think?

So...

My six-year-old informed me last night that I begin all of my stories with, "So...", as in, "So, Space Knight had been flying through space for many days..." or, "So, the Awesome Eight gathered for their weekly meeting in Sky City..." or, "So, would you get in bed already...?"

So, I thought, it could be worse. Here's the thing: I've been happy lately. A little bit more productive, not a lot, but happy. I'm not used to it, and not sure what to do with the extra energy. I've been running on the basement treadmill a few mornings a week, which is cool, given my mysterious 10-pound weight gain a few weeks ago and accompanying belly. I've had great conversations and a few bits of inspired wisdom to share with colleagues, which is fun. And I've been put in charge of "Web 2.0" for our office, which will be super neato cool, as soon as I figure out what that's going to mean.

I've even got nice feedback on a bit of inspired wisdom about building online community to one of my favorite webcomic writers, which I think I'll blog here separately.

It's not like life is so perfect. I just refuse to be bothered by it.

Here I am finding nothing to write about while I'm feeling strangely happy ...

But, I've never bought into the "you need to be tortured to be an artist" thing. You're an artist if you can do art, tortured or not. Which makes me...

So.