I Want My TV

Today Frost/Nixon premieres in Finnish cinemas. Just yesterday the film was nominated for an Academy Award for best direction, best actor in a leading role and best picture. I have been waiting for this film with an eagerness I have seldom experienced. There are a number of reasons why.

Some years back I was visiting London for work and met up with a friend of mine, a British playwright of Indian descent. The British media had only one issue on that day and neither us or anyone else could avoid the topic: Celebrity Big Brother on Channel 4 showing how nonsense celebrity Jade Goody and a number of other contenders were bullying Indian actress Shilpa Shetty in a racist manner seldom seen on primetime television. The white English women were according to my interpretation intimidated by the successful and beautiful Indian superstar and decided to gang up on her revealing all their prejudices on the Indians.

A large portion of the British quality media took a unified stand: the fuss around the programme was exaggerated. However, during our drink on that London afternoon I got another look into the issue. I still remember her telling me:"I am born in this country and so are my children. My children have been glued to the television during Celebrity Big Brother as they see on screen remarks they hear daily in school. As Shetty, they are told to go back to their own country. What country is that for a 10-year-old child with both parents born in the UK and one of them having Indian parents?"

That personal take showed me a part of the media often forgotten in academic media analysis and journalistic critique. The way the media validates and presents everyday situations and in that way acknowledges that these things do happen. By the media covering them, they are also submitted to a list of subjects suitable for private discussions. This has been the power of telenovelas in South America covering HIV-AIDS or As The World Turns showing a gay kiss.

After our drink she rushed to the theatre to see the "IT" play of the moment: Frost/Nixon. I tried to get tickets to it without success on the last moment.

I ran into Frost again two years ago when visiting the Museum of Television and Radio in Los Angeles and watching clips of his most famous interviews - including the Nixon one. Using the same strategy as he got Nixon to talk, his soft, direct but polite style brought into the surface some of the deepest thoughts of Muhammad Ali on black supremacy or Robert Kennedy opening up in his ideals. As one can see also in this clip from an interview with Thatcher, his background research forces people to answer directly without having to take refuge in hostility towards the guest.

I love television. I really do. In the work of David Frost as well as in the fuss around Big Brother, television has the power to reveal truths of ourselves and our societies - in more and less idealistic manners. It can facilitate people opening up sensitive discussions using commenting of a television programme as the cover up.

I never understood the people who take pride from not watching TV. How would it sound like if I would state at a fancy dinner party that I categorically don´t read printed material as I just don´t have the time?

Just A Few Hours

"Our lives on this planet are too short, the work to be done is too great. But we can perhaps remember, that those who live with us are our brothers, that they share with us the same short moment of life that they seek as do we, nothing but the chance to live out their lives in purpose and in happiness, surely this bond of common fate, this bond of common roles can begin to teach us something, that we can begin to work a little harder, to become in our hearts brothers and countrymen once again."
- Senator, Presidential Candidate Robert F. Kennedy at the City Club of Cleveland
Cleveland, Ohio (5 April 1968)

Scary Little Thing Called Hope

Robert Kennedy
Originally uploaded by luckyds

If I would ever call someone my hero, Robert F. Kennedy would be on top of that list. Having just finished Thurston Clarke´s magnificent new book The Last Campaign on his presidential bid leading to his assassination in Los Angeles in 1968, my fondness towards this exceptional politician just grew stronger. Clarke - like a good journalist does - had combined extensive literary research and interviews with RFK staff with meeting normal Americans who met him often very briefly. Clarke´s ambition with the book is to explain why Robert F. Kennedy gave such hope to people and why his death is often seen as the end of politics of hope.

I admire RFK for his peculiarity and strength in idealism. He is characterised as a shy and slightly awkward person with a tendency to come across as arrogant. In his earlier years he made some drastic mistakes in his career such as approving the wiretapping of Martin Luther King but he did not allow this to stop him from changing course. As he beautifully explained his U-turn in terms of agenda when running for president, a previous misjudgement is no excuse for its continuation. He dared to be human, show emotions and admit having been wrong.

I am still most struck by the way he was moved by seeing people suffering, which often led him manically talking about the living conditions of African Americans in the Mississippi Delta or Native Americans in the reservations. He dared to step outside the normal "on the other hand" language and used words like immoral, right and wrong. According to his staff and the people who met him, Kennedy had an exceptional capacity to understand people´s conditions and see himself living in the same situation. He was driven into anger by the injustice and poverty within the United States, which led him to step on many toes, make unneccessary enemies and act in haste. He talked often about the equality of sacrifice if America wants to become truly one nation. This was for instance the reason why he was against freeing college students from Vietnam drafts. He explained his position simply on this issue as well in moral terms.

What makes him even more fascinating is that he was no softy social democrat when it came to politics. He always saw work-based assistance as the best way for people to lift themselves and their families out of poverty with still keeping their dignity. In the same way he had zero tolerance towards lawlessness - whether carried out by the ones oppressing or being oppressed.

When reading the descriptions of the emotions he generated especially in the African American and Latino communities, I find myself wondering how wonderful but scary hope is when it is truly released. People saw Kennedy as the man who could change things to an extent that threatened his life, made him lose shoes and shirts while making his way through crowds and made the establishment extremely worried. He was giving people a role and seeing them as the ones needed to change the course of America. As many of his opponents said in 1968, they were afraid of RFK as he was seen as someone who really would carry out his ideas on redistribution of wealth.

One only wonders what the world would be today if this man would have lived to be president and could have executed his dream of "taming the savageness of man and making gentle the life of this world." And why we have never seen a leader of his league after that.

Collaborative Production of Meaning

nautablog
Originally uploaded by amsterboy

On Thursday I attended the launch event of PICNIC, the Dutch Cross-Media Week where we shall be publishing our research on young people and expressive democracy. At the launch, Programme Director Monique van Dusseldorp quoted my favourite innovation philosopher Charles Leadbeater and his new book We-Think where he talks about collaborative production of meaning. With this he means processes such as Wikipedia or certain online games where collaboration is required to create, archive, file and check content. I found it highly exciting.

My personal modest input in this respect is joining Frans Nauta´s blog Excellent Government. Frans is the founder of Kennisland think tank, a lover of the Finnish innovation policy and currently Professor of Public Sector Innovation in Arnhem. I met him in 2003 when I was invited to a Kennisland event in the Netherlands to talk about how a Finnish university student experiences the Finnish innovation wonder. I like Frans´ enthusiastic, critical and exploratory tone which is why it is a pleasure to co-blog. I did my first dip today on the latest Vanity Fair and on my political idol Bobby Kennedy.

On Violence

Handgun Class
Originally uploaded by Chase Allgood

I am writing this post at Brussels airport. It’s 10.30 on Friday morning and I have been awake already for six hours. These are situations where one realises the difference in being thirty and twenty. I must say that I have never been as happy for seeing the Starbucks sign as 5.30 this morning at Vienna airport.

I attended yesterday in Vienna a meeting for European online media initiatives such as Eurozine, OpenDemocracy, signandsight.com and Transitions Online. The discussion during the day was on what counts as a European issue. However, during the evening we found ourselves discussing once again in the national roles – as a German, as a Finn, as an Austrian, as a Swede.

Yesterday morning I had once again a realisation that I do live outside my own country. As I was brushing my teeth I had BBC World on which covered extensively the riots in Georgia. In the ticker running on the bottom of the screen I noticed one headline saying:”Teenager shoots seven others and a teacher in Finland”. I stopped brushing and just waited to see it again. ”But something like that cannot happen in Finland. I must have seen wrong”, was my immediate reaction. I texted a friend of mine and my sister and in a minute, my sister called me back.

My first reaction was anger. Why the hell things like this happen? How can someone at that age hate the world so much that he sees killing other people as a resolution? In the discussions during the day I got the full picture. I still could not get over the anger but it was coupled with immense sadness. This morning I checked the website of Helsingin Sanomat again. My anger grew when reading news about fansites for the killers. What the hell is wrong with the way we perceive humanity and violence? I could not help thinking about the speech Robert Kennedy gave over violence.

I am at the airport waiting for teenagers flying over from countries ranging from Turkmenistan to Denmark for the annual The One Minutes Festival. These are people of the same age as the perpetrator and the victims – filled with optimism and talent. What went wrong in Jokela?

When these school shootings have happened in the US, the reaction in the European media has often been that this could never happen in Europe. Europe still has a tendency for a rather arrogant way of defining its values and traditions with a cherry-picking method. Even taking into consideration the role of the European Union as a successful peace project, we are a violent continent. In that sense the tragic incident which happened in Jokela is a European experience which needs joint discussion on how we perceive violence and guns.

--

Addition on Sunday evening: do get a good picture of what the winning oneminutesjr videos were like, check these:
Joseph Fadel: Flow (Lebanon)
Palvan Geldinysh: Rakyp (Turkmenistan)
Jakunze Fiston: Je m’exprime (Burundi)

Robert F. Kennedy speech ~ Mindless Menace of Violence

Just finished Jack Newfield's book on Robert F. Kennedy. Moving and inspiring. This speech given by Kennedy in 1968 is one of the best political speeches I have heard.

A job and some hope

Robert Kennedy campaign badge
Originally uploaded by amsterboy

First week done at the office after holidays. You know, always after holidays it is easy to think that you just aren't not made for working. But after a few days it gets better. And if nothing else cheers me up at the office, my gigantic Disneyland coffee mug (Welcome to the Fabulous Disneyland Resort. Experience the happiest place on Earth!) makes the day.

I have also cheered my week by wearing my birthday present, original campaign badge from Robert F. Kennedy's presidential campaign in 1968. It is sort of a hologram as you can see from the pic and it states: Kennedy for a better America. I think it is (insert Californian accent here) like the coolest thing like ever.

Robert Kennedy is my new hero. After seeing Emilio Estevez's film Bobby, I realised that I knew embarrassingly little about the Kennedy brothers and therefore I decided to improve my knowledge. And it was an investment worth making. Robert Kennedy's way of doing politics and way of speaking fascinates me. The US would have been quite different under his leadership - you don't see Bush quoting Albert Camus and Ancient Green playwrights that often. As journalist Jack Newfield states in the RFK book I am reading at the moment, Robert Kennedy was one of the very few American politicians who managed to connect with white working class, the blacks and the Washington elite. RFK was impatient, shy and at times even arrogant in his willingness for equality. I like that in politicians - too many "leaders" of our time lack his human qualities. And above all, he had dreams. In a TV interview I saw with him, he defined leadership as allowing people to perform at their best. I haven't heard much better.

"It's class, not color. What everyone wants is a job and some hope." - Robert F. Kennedy 1968 during the Indiana primary

Shut up and read

Breakfast in America
Originally uploaded by Ale*

I have been in the US now for more than a week and haven't posted a single thing linked to television. American television would turn me into a couch potato in a few days. Just the fact that in the house I am staying at they have something like 300 channels. I find it difficult to understand that someone can even concentrate on a programme without flicking through the others for something better.

By watching the current affairs TV programmes, one could easily think that the presidential elections are next week. From Meet the Press to Face The Nation they all concentrate on Hillary or not Hillary at the moment. Yesterday's Meet The Press (political journalists commenting on current affairs) one of the biggest topics was the decline in Barack Obama's popularity. The question these professionals were pondering was whether Hillary is starting to be unbeatable.

Ah yes, professionals. Yesterday's LA Times had one of those articles about professional commentators which I thought were already past times. Professor of Journalism Michael Skube from Elon University of North Carolina (Pulitzer winner) shared with us his concern for the way political discussion especially around the presidential elections is losing its quality. And his blaming finger - as a professional journalist - was pointing of course to blogs.

Some quotes from Mr Skube:
"One gets the uneasy sense that the blogosphere is a potpourri of opinion and little more. The opinions are occasionally informed, often tiresomely cranky and never in doubt." Skube also refers to blogging as "armchair commentary". He refers to a famous piece in a Washington Post in the following manner:"Such a story demanded time, thorough fact-checking and verification and, most of all, preseverance. It's not something one does as a hobby."

Just the obvious remarks to Mr Skube:

1. Have you checked what kind of scum and propaganda is on newsstands under the name of journalism?

2. Seeing the blogosphere as a unity is more than one would expect from a professor of journalism at a time when Senators, Editors-in-Chief and other professional journalists, Chairs of NGOs and researchers among many are blogging.

3. The whole blogging has to some extent challenged the idea of journalism as objective practice. I do agree with Mr Skube that our society needs more in-depth analytical discussion but to claim that can only be done by professional journalists is just silly. Many print journalists tend to think that print is superior to other media but just yesterday we saw at the Paley Center for Media (Museum of Television and Radio) how Sir David Frost mastered in interviews with Robert Kennedy, Muhammad Ali and Richard Nixon.

4. What would you suggest, Professor Skube? That bloggers would shut up? That politicians should stop listening to them? That we should all start writing for print journals? Where does your argument take us?