We're Back, Baby

So... Barack Obama will be the 44th President of the United States of America. He won somewhere north of 370 electoral votes, including pretty much every swing state with the exception of Missouri. He won in places like Indiana, North Carolina, Virginia, and Colorado. It was an historic moment, one of the greatest I have been a part of in my adult life. People stopped in the street, dancing, singing, and hugging total strangers. I have never seen anything like it. I think it surprised even Obama's biggest supporters, the level of emotional outpouring. It wasn't just history, it was us as a nation standing up and saying, no, this is who we are, we're not going to spiral into oblivion. I have never been prouder to be an American.

Life goes on. Here's a story I haven't seen elsewhere: There has been a major cholera outbreak on the campus of China's Hainan University, and it's resulted in the gradual breakdown of civilization. Though cholera can be treated with a three-day course of treatment and is no longer considered fatal in developing countries, the Chinese government has quarantined the campus. Food is running out, and the military is trying and failing to control the crowds. It's like a dry run for when the big epidemic hits. If the disease doesn't get you, the quarantine will. The media hasn't picked up this story, but one female student on campus has been writing a harrowing blog that is getting some attention on the net. Read about this here.

Presidential Smackdown III: The Final Battle

The third Presidential Debate just finished at Hofstra University on Long Island. It was the most combative and personal of the debates, and I think certainly the best debate and the one most useful to the voter. Someone with a moderate level of skepticism and/or media literacy could gain from this debate a basic grasp of the contrast between the two candidates on a variety of issues, including energy policy, tax policy, trade policy, health care... the real substantive issues. There was also a long exchange about "negative campaigning," in which the debate moderator, CBS anchor Bob Schieffer, asked them if either of them would make the accusations they'd been making on the trail to each other's faces, something that has bothered me throughout and earned Schieffer my biggest cheer of the night.

The candidate story seemed to be that McCain was either "combative" or "feisty," depending on your point of view, and Obama was mostly playing defense, with a few very clear explanations on issues I hadn't heard from him on that I enjoyed but I'm not sure will go over soundbyte-conscious pundits. McCain's supporters have been asking him to really take it to Obama, and he did. (ACORN is fundamentally undermining American democracy? Really? But that's another post...) However, I think it might be a mistake for McCain to dial up the anger. He's been falling farther and farther behind the more angry he seems. He doesn't wear it well. So he's placed in the bad position of having to attack to make up ground but not coming off well when he attacks. Obama was cool and collected, and McCain was attacking and sometimes not very coherent.

Even MSNBC thinks McCain may have "won on points," and it's entirely possible he had good arguments. You'll notice here I'm talking about his presentation. It got to the point sometimes that I didn't know what he was getting at. He brought up "Joe the Plumber" at least 20 times (CNN was counting), and I'm not sure what he was getting at. We'll see if that resonated with people who, y'know, aren't me. But I want to go back to the presentation, because I think the policy speaks for itself and you can make your own decisions. More than pretty much any other debate I've ever seen, this debate was in split-screen. McCain seemed angry when Obama criticized him. Obama smiled and shook his head when McCain criticized him. That is a big difference.

People will remember the section on "negative campaigning." McCain spent a long time harping on Rep. John Lewis' recent comments, basically demanding an apology from Obama which he didn't get. Obama actually brought up the McCain supporters literally calling for his head, which surprised me, and McCain's response was basically, as far as I could tell, that some of his supporters were veterans. I think McCain didn't do himself favors in this section, despite the extremely vocal demands of his supporters.

So this is the last debate. If you're still undecided... who are you? Are you living under a rock? Or maybe you're like my dad, who spends weeks shopping around for the simplest items. The vote's in 19 days.

MemeWatch: Republican Rage

Nearly every news outlet (except, of course, for FoxNews, which seems to be pre-occupied with the fact that Sarah Palin's face is too wrinkly on the latest cover of Newsweek) has run a story in the past few days about the rising level of anger at McCain campaign rallies. The McCain campaign has always had him asking things like "Who is the real Barack Obama?" but lately when the Senators pulls out that line he's been met with angry screams of "traitor," "terrorist," and even "kill him!" When he takes questions from the audience, as he often does, they have mostly turned into supporter after supporter begging him to "take it to" Obama. With Obama pulling away in the polls, the raw nerves of the Republican base are exposed, and they're showing up on primetime network news.

So, is all this overblown? And where is it coming from? Well, the answer to the first question is both "yes" and "no." Helpful, huh? The McCain campaign has no control over the fact that they're going to attract some crazies (just as Obama has no control over the far left's support). This is a situation that some on the right thought would never occur again, that they had built a permanent majority, so there's a level of anger. And it's true that Obama's a true liberal, something that hasn't been successful on the national stage since JFK, (I would argue that we've had several true conservatives) so that has led to the usual (in my opinion outdated) charges of "socialism." And that's fair game. If they want to talk about how "liberal," Obama is, as they did with Gore and Kerry, that's fine. And this is, of course, nothing new. Republicans did their best to imply that John Kerry was French because he liked windsurfing. I can't make something like that up.

The problem is two-fold. The tone with Kerry and Gore was more mocking (chants of "flip-flop, flip-flop"), but now it seems more like an angry mob, who if pointed in the right direction would be ready with a rope and tree branch. That may sound extreme, but I didn't make it up. It's being implied and outright stated across the left two thirds of the media spectrum, from Chris Matthews to David Gergen. And because Obama is Black, it adds a racial tinge to some of this stuff. The other issue is that people weren't seeing McCain and/or Palin doing anything about it. When you hear one of your supporters yell "kill him," about your opponent, something needs to be done about that. McCain started to do that a little yesterday, assuring a woman in his crowd that there was no need to be scared of the idea of Obama as president (after she said "I hear he's an arab."), but it should have been reflexive, and it obviously wasn't.

There is the perception that at least some of this has come from the official mouthpieces of the McCain campaign, which is interesting because it's a new twist (Bush denied all links to "Swiftboat Veterans for Truth"). They're running official ads about Bill Ayers, the Chicago politician, and Palin actually said in Florida this week that Obama "thinks this country is so imperfect that he's palling around with terrorists." McCain's campaign has openly said that they're going negative in response to falling poll numbers. So it's a difference of source from previous years.

Here's a question that may or may not be relevant... will it work? I doubt it, and I'm normally a believer in the power of negative advertising. The Bill Ayers business doesn't hold up under any sort of scrutiny, and all it takes is a one sentence explanation ("So... you're blaming me for something that an acquaintance I hadn't met yet did when I was eight?") to make the Republicans look like they're making something out of nothing (which, of course, they are). Perhaps more importantly, the economy is such an overwhelming issue at this point that it's hard to take anything else seriously. And, as someone said on MSNBC's Hardball yesterday, "Most Americans today think the Weather Underground was a rock band fronted by Lou Reed."

I don't mean this as a partisan screed. McCain has tried to calm things down a little in the past few days, though it's mostly resulted in him appearing to be at odds with his base. Lately he's spending a lot of time looking surprised at how bad things have gotten. And this meme only hurts his campaign, no matter what they did to cause it. In any case, don't take my word for it. Here are articles from the past day or so from CNN, Huffington Post (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/10/obama-called-traitor-agai_n_133613.html), Talking Points Memo (http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/10/bomb_obama.php), New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/11/us/politics/11campaign.html?_r=1&ref=politics&oref=slogin) Yahoo! (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081011/ap_on_el_pr/mccain_42;_ylt=Ak4Do42TCidwdG1eix_J5IJh24cA), and Salon.com (http://www.salon.com/opinion/walsh/?last_story=/opinion/walsh/election_2008/2008/10/11/current_mccainsdishonest/).

Enjoy.

Presidential Smackdown II: Return of the Awkward Q & A

Some initial reactions on my part to the second Presidential debate, which just finished in Nashville, Tennessee. It wasn't real spectacular in any respect. After the two nationwide campaigns threatened to reach levels of animosity unprecedented in a mass media-era election this week, the debate was relatively free of that, on the surface, anyway. They clearly don't like each other, which is interesting on one level, I suppose. What we got, actually, was something approaching an actual, substantive debate.

These candidates have big differences on a lot of issues (which, after the looong primaries, is a bit refreshing), and they, for the most part, did their best to elucidate them. But there wasn't much new for those of us who've been paying attention, with the possible exception of McCain's poorly explained proposal about the government buying mortgages. Overall, things were just very stilted. Part of that was the format and rules, part of it was Brokaw's somewhat weird follow-up questions (which came off more as what one particular old guy was interested in than what the country wanted to hear) and part of it was the candidate's determination to stay relentlessly on-message. So, though we ask for substantive debates, we got one here and it was pretty boring.

The general media consensus is probably going to be that it was basically a tie, and a tie goes to Obama because he's ahead. I can't really dispute that in any way. I find it hypocritical that they can yell at each other day-in-day-out, and then show up and smile at each other. It's one of the things that drives me nuts about my day job, probably the biggest thing, because that's the fundamental disonnect in politics, and it bothers the crap out of me.

I feel like I'm not saying much, but neither did the candidates.

TechWatch: Flexible Video Screen

Scientists at Sony Corp., working with the Max Planck Institute in Germany, have apparently invented a paper-thin, flexible video screen (i.e. you can crumple it up and uncrumple it and then watch TV on it). The screen is less than a millimeter thick, and is made up of organic molecules that produce an image by "transmitting light in all directions at once." Researchers told The Journal of Physics that there are virtually no size limitations to the technology, could be produced on the cheap in comparison to today's LCD screens, and has an extremely low energy requirement. Of course, my mind immediately went to the video paper stuff seen in, well, lots and lots of Sci-Fi, from "Firefly" to Minority Report. Here it is!

Positives: The applications are insane. Yes, we can have flexible laptops that fit into our pocket. But it doesn't stop there! How about video T-shirts? You know you want one. Or blankets that double as TV screens?

Negatives: Well, based on the pics that were released to the media, the technology looks very early-stage to me, so don't start lining up for one now. Also, How does it uncrumple without still being wrinkled? You'd have a wrinkly screen!

Will it Catch On?: Oh, totally. I want my video newspaper from Minority Report, and I want it now.

Machinima: Like Fan Fiction, but in Reverse

A few days ago I mentioned in a "Bits" post an online project that is animating Joss Whedon's Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season 8 comic book series using machinima. I'm sure at least a few people didn't know what I meant by that, and so I decided to expand on what machinima is a little bit. It's an interesting subject that I'm sure my Communications Theory professor would have been fascinated by.

Basically, Machinima is animation accomplished with the use of video games. The name is a merging of the words "machine" and "animation." Rather than expensively rendering their stories, creators tell them with the tools that they have. Some have compared it to a digital version of puppetry. In other words, creators take the pieces of a computer game and rearrange them to tell their own story. You might think this would just result in a recording of someone playing a video game, but that's definitely not the case. Complex editing tools are often used, and some games now released come with their own built-in machinima capabilities.

Machinima began as a very small niche with the gaming community, but has become more and more mainstream in the years since. It has adapted to new games as they are released. Wikipedia credits the 1996 piece "Diary of a Camper" as the first Machinima to gain a wide audience. It was created using the game Quake. In 2006, the South Park episode "Make Love, Not Warcraft" featured extended Machinima sections and was credited with bringing the form to a wider audience. Today there is a national Machinima Film Festival and even an Academy of Machinima Arts & Sciences.

I (along with plenty of others) was first exposed to Machinima via the popular, and even critically acclaimed (the Director of Lincoln Center supposedly called it "as sophisticated as Samuel Beckett"), webseries, "Red vs. Blue". Created using Halo 2, the game of choice for, well, everybody circa my freshman year of college, the series ran 5 seasons and 100 episodes, from 2003 to 2007, and has since spawned a spin-off. The series is about two sets of soldiers fighting for control of a valley (and each other's "flag"), a standard Halo scenario. The series began as a simple, sitcom-type parody, mostly of video games, but soon evolved into a more general science-fiction comedy that even occasionally took itself seriously. And in its scenario of two sets of soldiers (who often find they have pretty much everything in common) set down for an interminable period of time to fight over a piece of ground nobody wants for reasons neither of them understand, the series manages to send up echoes of everything from Kafka to M*A*S*H. The series almost immediately became a huge online hit and is now available on DVD.

Now, as for the title of this post. Reverse probably isn't the best way of putting it, but let me explain what I mean. In fan fiction, writers use their own materials (i.e., usually prose writing, but there are fan films, as well) to tell more stories about their favorite show, movie, game, book, etc. Machinima creators use the materials of a game to create their own, original story, usually relating only tangentially, if at all, to the actual subject matter of the game. Both are perfectly valid forms of expression, but I find the contrasts interesting. In both cases, they are putting the materials provided by the creators of media to a use that wasn't originally intended by their creators. And the internet has proved the magic bullet that has exponentially accelerated both the spread and cultural acceptance of both forms.

TV Is Back: Sanctuary

Sci-Fi Channel(as it still called for the moment) debuted the latest addition to its Friday night lineup tonight, "Sanctuary." It is an early example of a webseries making the jump to mainstream TV, and, with a full-season order already from a cable network, it may have a better shot of making it than such past jumpers as NBC's "Quarterlife," which lasted exactly one episode. The web roots are still apparent in this TV version, most prominently in the use of greenscreen techniques. Rather than building many of the sets, the actors play them against a greenscreen. This isn't as intrusive as you'd think, since the CGI is done well, and shows up most often in bizarre shots and angles that could only have been achieved with the use of a computer.

The series' pedigree stems largely from the "Stargate" franchise that has long been one of the corner stones of Sci-Fi Channel, as both of its executive producers, star Amanda Tapping, and cast members Ryan Robbins and Christopher Heyerdahl have their roots there. While the premise is very different, the feel of the series is actually similar. Both "Stargate" and "Sanctuary," ironically, are at their best when not being themselves, that is, when the characters are just hanging out talking rather than actually doing anything related to the plot. Those are the moments when we believe in the proceedings.

The idea of the series is that Tapping, rocking an English accent and long, brunette hair, runs, you guessed it, a sanctuary for monsters ("We prefer to call them abnormals"), dead ends or flukes or evolution and mutation that are persecuted by a fearful society. They also make it their mission to contain those that are a danger to the world. She has a hot blonde daughter (sans accent) whose job is to kick ass, as well as a resident nervous techie and a taciturn australopithecine/bigfoot/whatever. We enter their world in the premiere episode through the eyes of a young "forensic psychologist," (portrayed believably by Robin Dunne) who is supposed to be good at figuring out behavior but actually seems closer to the protagonists of "Psych" and "The Mentalist." We're shown the inner workings of his mind through a silly CGI gimmick that reminded me of that used in "The Da Vinci Code."

The premiere episode, "Sanctuary For All," suffers heavily from being one hour worth of story spread out over two hours. If we hadn't seen any of the ads (though I suppose we wouldn't be watching if we hadn't), we wouldn't have a clue what was going on until about 40 minutes in. The rest flows better, though as a coherent plot it works only in fits and starts, and we're occasionally asked to buy things that are a little sketchy. Then we get a denouement with a lengthy Jack the Ripper flashback. They really couldn't think of a more original backstory for their villain? (as one character asks, "Really? We care about this?")

I always root for web entertainment to make the successful transition to the old media mainstream, as it represents a democratization of the media in general. I wish "Sanctuary" all the best. It has a refreshing positive attitude that often gets lost in the formulaic hunger for villains on shows like this. However, it has yet to show any signs of being any more than the vaguely fun trifle the "Stargate" franchise has always been. That will probably get me to catch the occasional episode, but it won't make this appointment viewing.

Vice Presidential Smackdown: Vice Harder

Some quick thoughts on the Vice Presidential debate that just finished. I personally was bothered by Sarah Palin, but I don't think a lot of Americans will be. This is where I have a fundamental difference with a lot of my countrymen and women. I don't think it's too much to ask the Vice President to put gs on the end of words when they go there, or to use words the way they were actually meant to be used. And yet afterwards on CNN the commentators, on either side, universally praised how "folksy" Palin was. Just because people seem to like it doesn't mean it's actually a good thing. Is she going to be in the room with Putin, as the current cliche goes, saying "I'm hopin' and wishin' we can find some positive impacts for our folks back home"?

Okay, rant over. I'm going to try not to do that too often. In terms of actual analysis, I think that Biden did a fairly good job of calling Palin on any outright lies she made without seeming petty (he didn't call her on calling Gen. McKiernan "General McClellan," for example). Palin tried her darndest to do the same, but I don't think she made many of her points with the same specificity. She also said a few things that may come back to bite her. She said she agreed with Vice President Cheney on the subject of expanding the powers of the Vice Presidency. She said she is not convinced humans are responsible for global warming. These are positions that I'm not sure are in tune with what people are looking for.

I think it was a decent strategy on Palin's part to try to link Obama and Biden to "looking backward" when Biden tried to link McCain to the failed policies of the Bush administration. It worked rhetorically to shape the debate the way she wanted it. Biden, however, did not let that effect his own strategy, which was to do just that. In my opinion, "looking backward" or not, every time McCain/Palin talks about changing something from the status quo, Obama/Biden should come back with "Republicans have had the Presidency 20 of the last 28 years. Republicans have controlled the Congress 10 of the last 12 years. Why hasn't any of this happened before now?"

It was sometimes frustrating how much Biden insisted on sticking to the "3rd Bush term" idea, at the expense of offering more coherent versions of his own ideas. It may come off as overly negative. However, I don't think that will be an issue in the long run in a campaign where Democrats seem to often say good things about John McCain but Republicans resolutely refuse to say anything positive about Barack Obama. The "attack dog" role is a traditional one for a Vice President candidate, so the Presidential candidate doesn't have to get their hands dirty.

The usual question after these things is "well, who won?" That is of course completely subjective. I think Gov. Palin gave Sen. Biden the openings he needed to really ram home any advantage he may have had, and I'm not sure he followed through on those. I think he may have performed better overall, but I recognize that many reasonable people may disagree. Many people thought Palin's performance here would hurt the McCain campaign, and I don't think it really did. However, McCain's been steadily losing ground lately in several key states, and I doubt Palin did anything here that would change that.

In other news... wow, the Cubs are in trouble. You'd think I would have seen that coming, but I definitely didn't.

Bits: Theater of the Absurd Edition

-The Machinist today has a great entry on how digitized today's entering college students are, focusing on the Amherst College class of 2012. 99% are on Facebook, 99% have only cell phones, 99% have only laptop computers...

-Michael Grunwald has a great article on Time.com... "Oh, the Drama! McCain in the Theater of the Absurd".

-Watch the Sarah Palin/Katie Couric interview on YouTube. "Saturday Night Live" hardly had to change the words in order make this hysterically awful.

-io9 tells the bizarre story of the recent Season Finale of the Sci-Fi Channel drama "Eureka"... which I recently watched most of without actually realizing it was the series finale. Sci-Fi Channel apparently repeatedly rejected entire plotlines, resulting in the finale basically being improvised by the writers as the episode was filmed... thus lending credence to all those viewers who think "they're just making this up as they go along." "Eureka" is a fun show, but in the end it's inherently "small"... something that, based on my possibly mistaken impressions of what's going on here, may have been Sci-Fi Channel's problem. In other weird news, there's a rumor going around the intertubes that the Sci-Fi Channel wants to change its name to "Beyond." Kay.

-This week's WalrusFile free internet TV pick is the season premiere of "The Office." I'll be trying to come up with a full review of it in the next day or two. In the meantime, discuss amongst yourselves.

-Overlooked News Story of the Day, from the Dayton Daily News: Chemical Irritant Empties Dayton Mosque. An apparent major hate crime not that far from where I live. Sigh.

Corporations In Space!

In other breaking space news, SpaceX's privately developed rocket became the first of its kind to make it into space, following up on SpaceShipOne's suborbital flight in 2004. The launch of the rocket was shown live from Kwajalain Atoll in the Pacific. They attached a camera to the side of the vehicle, following it all the way up into space!

You can ride a rocket into space with the spectacular footage that can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=To-XOPgaGsQ

It's a little early to tell, but so far this has gotten even less American media coverage than the Chinese spacewalk, failing to even make the front page at CNN.com. This is unfortunate, because, if space travel is to have any role in the future of humanity (which, in my opinion, it must), then that travel will be done by private companies, not governments. Space needs to be profitable before it can become a part of normal life.

To that end, the stated goal of SpaceX is to make space travel ten times cheaper and more reliable. There is still a long way to go, as the company's first three attempts with its Falcon rocket failed for various reasons before reaching orbit. This particular launch, however, ended on a very high note, the company learning from its past mistakes and improving on its technology. SpaceX was founded by Elon Musk, who make his fortune as co-founder of PayPal. The company says it has vehicles in development for both manned space travel and boosting heavy-duty payloads into orbit... for a fee, of course.

Who knows, maybe someday within our lifetimes, you or I, regular people, really will stand on the moon. And I find it much more likely that I'll be riding a ship with the SpaceX corporate logo on the side than one with the USA flag.

Chinese Dudes In Space

The People's Republic of China has become the third nation to have its astronauts (or as the Chinese call them, "taikonauts") complete a spacewalk, after the United States and Soviet Union. Zhai Zhigang, a member of the "Shenzhou 7" mission, spent about twenty minutes yesterday floating outside his spacecraft. Zhai waved the Chinese flag in space for the first time and retrieved a small amount of "hardened lubricant" from the exterior of the spacecraft. This was only the third manned spaceflight for the world's most populous nation, but it's pushing its program hard with an eye on achieving specatacular results that will make the world take notice.

The Chinese government claims that it is working towards putting a man on the moon, something the Americans and Russians don't seem to think is worth the money at the moment. The scientific community appears to be somewhat split on how close the Chinese actually are to achieving this. The spacewalk went off without a hitch, and the Chinese are also pointing to the reliability of their new, independently-designed spacesuit (i.e. it's not a knock-off of the American version), which Zhai used for the first time on this mission. The Chinese also appear to be heading towards their own national "SkyLab"-type space station.

One interesting aspect of this is that the spacewalk was carried live on Chinese television. This shows great confidence on the part of the control-freak Chinese government that things would go well. Even if they had the capability, Soviet Russia would never have considered such a thing, because of the possible propaganda disaster of a catastrophic failure. China's government is learning at least a little of the value of openness, perhaps influenced by the recent Summer Olympics.

I was surprised by the lack of coverage this event received in the United States. Admittedly, it came on a heavy news weekend here, dominated by the Presidential debate and the economic crisis. However, if one wanted to find coverage of this story in any sort of depth, one basically had to seek out science-focused websites. Was there more coverage elsewhere in the world?

Viet Cong is One Thing, Letterman Is Another

An unexpected consequence of John McCain's campaign suspension (is it back on now? Sorta kinda? Was it ever really off?) was this video hitting number one on You Tube:

It won't embed right... here's the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjkCrfylq-E

McCain cancelled his scheduled Wednesday night appearance on David Letterman's talk show. The two have in the past been good friends, and McCain for all intents and purposes announced his candidacy several months ago on Letterman's show. Letterman was at first, he says, understanding, but then became angrier when it was discovered that rather than "rushing to the airport," McCain was just down the street in New York doing an interview with Katie Couric... on Letterman's own network. Eventually Keith Olbermann showed up as a replacement, and more hilarity ensued.

What's most interesting about this to me is that the video that hit number one isn't the official version CBS released, which is under a minute and a half. It's the version I link to above, which is nearly ten minutes. That's right, the people on YouTube apparently have better attention spans than the mainstream networks give them credit for. Huh.

That Economic Summit? It "devolved into a shouting match"

Yahoo!News has become the closest thing the internet has to a New York Times, or at least what the Times used to be. How weird is that? They're actually better than, say, USA Today, at any rate.

So, to keep y'all updated on the current situation, I give you this, which is one of the more entertaining straight news articles you'll ever read: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080926/ap_on_bi_ge/financial_meltdown

I thought political meetings only went like this on West Wing.

Update: Yahoo's doing that thing they do where they're updating on the same topic, so it's important but slightly less entertaining. I encourage you to seek out accounts of the meetings last night. It's pretty awesome.

Update 2: Best (and most understandable) explanation of aforementioned crisis I have yet seen: http://money.cnn.com/2008/09/26/news/economy/bailout_impact/index.htm?cnn=yes

MemeWatch: Oprah vs. the multitudinous male genitalia

You know something’s become an internet sensation when techno remixes of it start appearing on YouTube. This past week, Oprah Winfrey, talk show host/media mogul/philanthropist/actress/messiah, became the subject of the latest big internet meme, perhaps most popularly titled “Oprah vs. the 9000 Penises.” On an episode of her incredibly popular talk show, Winfrey had come once again to the subject of sexual predators. She announced that she had become aware of a sort of secret society of said predators, and that one of them had sent her a letter stating “We have 9000 penises, and all of them are raping your children.” These words coming out of the mouth of “the world’s most influential woman” were rated hilarious enough to skyrocket up to the top of Digg, and recordings of the segment became, for a few minutes anyway, among the most sought after videos on YouTube. So… where did this one come from?

Winfrey has dedicated a good portion of her imposing influence to the fight against sexual predators. This is completely understandable. She has stated that she was sexually molested herself as a child. When she was 14, she became pregnant, though the baby died shortly after its birth. Unlike almost all victims of such abuse, she is now in a position where she can hope to make a positive difference. She has a section of her website dedicated to tracking down fugitive sex offenders, and at least two arrests have been directly credited to her site. Winfrey’s ability to overcome her history of abuse can be credited as part of her border-crossing appeal… the show is apparently now the number one program in, of all places, Saudi Arabia.

This personal battle has even tinged her takes on other subjects. Winfrey has long been a prominent supporter of gay rights. In the 1990s, she produced an episode of her show on the subject of gay marriage. When an audience member stood up to say that she was tired of homosexuals publicly flaunting their sex lives, Oprah (as she is nearly always simply known) replied “You know what I’m tired of? Heterosexual males raping and sodomizing young girls. That’s what I’m tired of!”

On the other hand, the threat of sexual predation on American children is almost certainly blown way out of proportion, and Winfrey is at least partially responsible for this. The Wikipedia page for “Mass Hysteria” even cites the modern attitude towards such criminals as a possible example. It is probably in reality more comparable to the medieval trend of witch hunts. This is the only crime (except for suspicion of terrorism, but that’s another post) where all those convicted must register their whereabouts with the authorities for the rest of their lives. Legislators have of course continued to pass bills on this subject, which are applied not just to new offenders but to those already registered. Several court cases are currently underway to determine whether these laws count as ex post facto (and are thus illegal). (My take is that they obviously are. The real question in these cases is whether we care.)

Many states enact even more stringent laws. In the Columbus area, where I live, some of the more affluent communities have passed regulations keeping sex offenders from entering into zones within one mile of schools, or playgrounds, or swimming pools… these suburbs, not being that big area-wise, have basically barred those who committed this crime in the past from legally entering their city limits. It’s perhaps worth pointing out that similar laws are not even in effect for convicted murderers.

My take on Winfrey is that she’s talented, shrewd, and well-meaning, but not as discerning (or, strangely, savvy enough in the sort of media studies I spent a lot of time on in college) as is necessary for someone in her position. A prime past example of this is her mid-nineties spat with the Texas beef industry when she declared that she was no longer eating hamburgers due to fears of mad cow disease. She then proceeded to take her show down to Texas and do an expose on the subject. A single cow testing positive for the disease was eventually found in the state… about a decade later. She was sued for defamation by the industry, who claimed she cost them millions of dollars. More recently she has taken to evangelizing on her show for a self-help program called “The Secret,” which takes the “power of positive thinking” and makes the next bizarre metaphysical step.

In this case, the concept of some sort of secret organization of sexual predators seems ridiculous on its face, and not just because we’re presented with this respected woman saying “9000 penises.” These are, speaking in general terms, solitary, depraved creatures, acting on urges that even they often seem to know are morally wrong. How would something like this even get started? What would be the purpose of it? It just fails to make sense to me, and in my opinion it should have made sense to Oprah before she blurted it bluntly out in front of millions of viewers.

So, was that way too much analysis for an internet meme about penises? Whaddaya think?