Greetings Economists, JKS writes, I didn't think I said anything about broadcast TV either, apart from its being too expensive. I really don't know what you are driving at. jks
Doyle, Your position I am critical (mildly and friendly) of centered upon the boring quality of what the left puts out. So let's talk about that. What can we say? For example you use the word, boring, which is an emotional response on your part. I take that seriously in terms of understanding what is to be done with respect to what the left needs to do. But what you do say isn't very penetrating to the depths of the problem? To paraphrase you 'I'm bored with what I read, and hear the left say coming from the stage in mass rallies'. So how could we consider that in a larger sense? The particular instances I associate with your position are with journals, Fox network political talk shows, and mass rallies. Fox (right wing television) is entertaining, left events are dull and boring. So what are we to do from a left perspective? I'm saying that to take seriously the emotional content of media we have to consider the interactivity content of media. For example journals unlike broadcast television do not well carry emotional content. Face based communications structures like broadcast television communicate the emotional content of communications structures albeit in a one way non conversational technique. That is one reason why broadcast television come across as more interesting than written media. The boundaries imposed upon the whole process as far as the left is concerned is the conversational limits of what media produce. It is one thing to know how someone feels by watching a movie, and it is another thing to make a media conversational. Despite it's limitations carrying emotional content, emails can have something like a conversational quality to them. That is important to make things more interesting to human beings. That is what it takes to make organizing people happen. So I am taking your basic thrust to make an emotional comment about left discourse and I am pointing at what it takes to move the intellectual work forward. Two basic elements improve the emotional content in media we produce. We must utilize face based methods of communicating (so that emotional clarity can be understood), and Secondly emphasize the conversational structures that we could build. These together would massively improve the left's media communication. thanks, Doyle Saylor
