From her website, Ms. Okrant coyly explains the impetus behind Living Oprah:
“I believe Oprah to be the single most influential person in the media today – especially when it comes to impacting women… I wondered what would happen if one of us committed ourselves whole-heartedly to her lifestyle suggestions. Would the financial and time costs of living as Oprah prescribes be worth the results?”
Honestly, there’s no way I could do something as masochistic as this. Beyond the everyday tedium of having to watch Oprah, read Oprah, and then do Oprah’s bidding, in the end I’m fairly certain I would not have learned anything new. I don’t need to be water-boarded, for example, to know that torture sucks, and I certainly don’t need to follow the half-brained, neoliberal, new age, new thought nonsense of Oprah frickin’ Winfrey to know that her ideologies are fundamentally corrupt. Ultimately, in my estimation of things, this life-style stunt amounts to a kind of death by a thousand cuts, and it’s definitely not worth all the hardship. I’d much prefer a quick and painless ending.
That said, I must admit that I’m happy Ms. Okrant was more courageous than me. She is clearly willing to subject herself to whole lot of costly, sanctimonious, froo-froo, snake-oil bullshit, and she should be lauded for her resolve through what must have been a very difficult year. But more than that, Orkant has decided to write about her experience and expose (we can only hope) the absurdity of Oprah’s worldview, to which I am exceptionally grateful. It’s high-time the suburban set were confronted with the dangerous bigotry of their televised savior’s magical thinking. Maybe Living Oprah, the book, is just the literary insight we need to finally stop ourselves from living Oprah, the phenomenon.
LINKS:
Living Oprah Blog
Chicago Tribune Article
NPR’s All Things Considered
MSNBC Report
Come on, dude! Everybody’s NOT doing it! Even the right Rev. Billy is playing his part with his Union Square Dance Your Debt Away party up in New York City! So get yer little bum out there and start NOT buying things!!!
Buy Nothing Day, Links:
UPDATE:
Clearly these Wal-Mart shoppers in NY state could use a little Buy Nothing Day. Just stunning…
]]>(See Rocketboom, Boing Boing, The Huffington Post, or the NY Times online Arts section for more details and imagery.)
I am particularly fond of the fictitious editorial, presumably written by NYT columnist Thomas Friedman, brilliantly titled “The End of the Experts?” In it the phony Friedman declares, “I will keep my opinions to myself.” He goes on to aks:
“…why are newspapers like the New York Times letting people like me make fools of themselves, mislead the American people, and, worst of all, give their wives a lifetime of ammunition? To err is human, but to print, reprint, and re-reprint error-mad humans like me is a criminally moronic editorial policy.”
Here, here, faux Thomas Friedman! For once, I couldn’t agree with you more. Let’s hope the publishers of the fake New York Times can inspire the publishers of the real New York Times to get real for a change.
]]>This is somewhat similar to the Freedom Forum’s journalists memorial at the brand new ‘Newseum’ in Washington, DC, which opened in April of this year. Unlike the BBC, however, the Newseum’s version (I can’t say that name with a straight face, by the way), is focused more on the sacrifices and contributions of American journalists.
I hope someday to see both of these memorials. Until then, a tip of the proverbial 40 oz. for our fallen reporters.
]]>This is really not much of a surprise. Foreign companies wrapping themselves in the flag–in this case a bright, red one–is nothing new, and it was bound to happen sooner or later in China. There’s certainly a lot of money to be made from the emergent market that is the Chinese mainland, especially so during the Olympics. Corporate interests know this. They’re not gonna let a golden opportunity pass them by.
However, I do worry that corporations are stoking an already healthy fire. National pride is dangerous regardless of the nation in question. When that particular passion is combined with large numbers of disenfranchised people (China in a nutshell), it could spell future chaos in the form of violence, mob rule, or, in the American context, mass adoption of brutal foreign policies (ie, the asinine Bush Doctrine).
In any case, it’s important to remember that flattering advertising does not a comrade Lei Feng make. Please believe me. As a well-seasoned serf in the global fraud that is economic neoliberalism, I know of what I speak. These corporations couldn’t give two chopsticks what happens to China.
]]>The fresh-faced Ma, a Harvard grad, appeared slightly awkward but enthusiastic in her jump-off post. The two-minute ‘welcome’ video was very optimistic, as you might expect from a corporate launch, during which time she proclaimed, ever-so-bubbly:
“This stuff is awesome, you guys! And we want to see lots and lots of it. Because we believe that you YouTubers out there are changing the world of journalism.”
Hmm. Well. We’ll see.
To Olivia Ma’s great credit, Dan Gillmor, director of a the Knight Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship at Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, and the esteemed author of We The Media: Grassroots Journalism By The People, For The People (which was released on a Creative Commons license, by the way), has given his hesitant approval of the project. Gillmore blogged his initial response to the online channel on the Center for Citizen Media website, stating:
So far so good — another worthwhile experiment in citizen media. I’m looking forward to seeing how it works… But as they monetize this, I hope they’re going to find a way to reward the people who are doing the work. As I’ve said again and again, I’m not a fan of business models that say “You do all the work and we’ll take all the money, thank you very much.”
I’m a little more skeptical of YouTube’s ‘Citizen News Channel’ than is Mr. Gillmor, though I will withhold judgement for the time being. But, and just to keep things in perspective, I do feel compelled to remind people that YouTube is owned by Google, a publicly traded multinational corporation and a global goliath in the tech industry.
As of late, Google seems to have strayed a bit from their much-publicized motto of ‘Do No Evil.’ The company has been called to task for participating in what some have identified as unethical, media-related human rights abuses in the ‘developing’ world. Many feel that Google, and other western tech and info firms, have given away their moral legitimacy in China, for example, in order to cash-in on growing economic markets overseas.
The NY Times Magazine had a fairly comprehensive article on Google in China. I don’t personally agree with the equivocation made between offenses of capital and that of the state, as presented by columnist Clive Thompson, but this text will give you a good start on what amounts to a very, very complex issue.
That being said, then, some folks are rightly concerned that media are increasingly controlled by fewer and fewer people and with damning consequences on the quality of news journalism. Ironically, one of those concerned citizens is Dan Gillmor himself. In this YouTube video via PBS (will the irony never end?!?), Gillmor hints at the web censorship taking place all around the world (00:01:48). Though he doesn’t connect the dots as clearly as I would like, it is readily apparent that wide-spread restrictions on internet use by foreign governments are enabled in large measure by western (i.e., American) corporations that seek only to earn money abroad. And Google is right in the middle of this global phenomenon.
For a more playful analysis, check out this animation entitled ‘iRepress’ from former journalist turned citizen animator, Mark Fiore.
So, in my mind at least, the potential in YouTube’s efforts to promote citizen journalism, incidentally or otherwise, is kinda behind the curve. I mean, in Web 2.0 terms, they’re really, really late to the party. There are currently many well-established, NON-profit alternatives in the field of participatory news media, and their reputations haven’t been called into question with the fervor of a gazillion pithy tech writers. Here’s a brief list of the citizen journalism websites I frequent:
The wisdom of the academics and media advocates notwithstanding, I guess I’d have to encourage people to avoid mainstream versions of citizen journalism. Start with what is already known to be truly humanitarian, not to mention supported by means outside the narrow agenda of capitalistic enterprise. Maybe Google (via YouTube) will make of a fool of me later on down the road. But for now, I will be holding the ‘Citizen News Channel’ at arms length.
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