The Downfall of Julian Assange

One of my favorite quotes come from John Maynard Keynes, "when the facts change, I change my mind" (see Goodreads for a list of my favorite quotes).   This has now happened regarding my opinion of Julian Assange and Wikileaks.

1. When Assange and Wikileaks were releasing classified government documents, which detailed what our government was saying behind the scenes about our foreign policy maneuvers, I thought that was akin to what Daniel Ellsberg had done with the Pentagon Papers regarding our involvement in the Vietnam War - i.e., good for freedom and our democracy.  I noted that then Secretary of Defense Gates said those initial Wikileaks had not endangered any American lives, and that Ellsberg himself said he stood with Assange.

2. I took pause, and was certainly concerned, when Assange was accused of sexual molestation and "lesser rape" in Sweden shortly after (details here).  But I thought Michael Moore made a good point when he wondered if the CIA or some other governmental organization was conveniently trying to frame Assange, and I noted, as time ensued, that no further allegations (that I know of) were raised against Assange regarding his sexual conduct (unlike the egregious Bill Cosby, for example).  It was also possible that Assange was a personal predator but still doing the right thing as far as freedom of information and world politics.

3. All of that happened in 2010.  Earlier this year - 2016 - I thought Assange's release of DNC emails at the beginning of the Democratic National Convention was not shining a cleansing light on government secrecy, but a heavy-handed attempt to influence our Presidential elections.  This was especially grievous, given that the opponent of the Democrats is a fascist, Trump. the likes of which we have never seen get so far in America before.

4. But the straw that finally broke the camel's back for me regarding Julian Assange was his recent implication that Hillary Clinton may have had something to do with the murder of a DNC staffer in Washington DC in July.   With this suggestion, Assange has moved from disseminator of classified information and hacked DNC emails, to purveyor of sick conspiracy theories, in league with the arrant nonsense that Hillary killed Vince Foster, etc.  It's in league with what Trump has been spewing, and caters to worst elements of humanity.

So, as the Jerry Orbach character says in Dirty Dancing, "when I'm wrong, I say I'm wrong".  I was very wrong about Julian Assange.  He is part of the problem not the solution.  And I can only hope that, whatever happens with the rape charges, he and his business are quickly consigned to the dustbin of history.

Jose Antonio Vargas' Documented - A Review

Tina and I had the pleasure of seeing Documented tonight, Jose Antonio Vargas's auto-biographical documentary about the struggle of undocumented Americans - known in the popular culture as "illegal aliens" - to achieve their just place in American society.   Tina and I each have a little good history with Jose.  Tina was interviewed by him about her work on Wikipedia's political pages in 2007, for a front-page article in The Washington Post.  And Jose and I talked politics and the Internet on Dylan Ratigan's MSNBC show in 2011.  Still, if I hadn't liked the movie, I wouldn't be reviewing it.  And if I had any problems with the movie, I'd say so in my review.   As it is, I found the movie nothing but exceptional.

The movie in effect was presented in two intertwining parts - Vargas's political battles after he came out as an undocumented American, and the personal travails of not having seen his mother in 20 years. The political part of the movie is much like Michael Moore's best work, with one big advantage: Vargas is not only investigating how the cards have been stacked against undocumented Americans, he is an undocumented American himself.  Thus, when he objects to being called "illegal," his complaint comes from a directly wounded heart.  Frankly, the term "illegal alien" is idiotic in any case - where I come from, an alien comes from another planet (science fiction writer Rob Sawyer captures this well in his novel Illegal Alien) - but Vargas is able to demonstrate how being called an "illegal" is an insult to any person working hard in this country, regardless of where they were born or how they got here.   We see Vargas's tears when he learns about Obama's giving undocumented Americans a path to citizenship - but only if they're under 30 years of age - and this provides as accurate an assessment as ever I've seen of Obama's Presidency and its failure so far to take the full steps needed to set America on the right path on more than one crucial social issue.

You might be wondering how Vargas got into this country and managed to become a reporter at The Washington Post without the proper work visa.   This gets into the second element of the movie, which shows us how Vargas arrived here as a 12-year-old, to live with his grandparents, with his mother back in the Philippines.   His grandfather arranged for a doctored green card for Jose, who had no knowledge of what had happened until later on.   Meanwhile, Jose's mother was unable to even visit him in America, because she had no employment back in the Philippines to support her visa application.   The impact of this separation on Jose was painful, to say the least, and continues to this very day.   An emotional highpoint of the movie is the healing that begins when Jose has a difficult Skype reunion with his mother and half-siblings on the other side of the world - it's easily the most effective Skype conversation scene I've seen to date in any movie or television series.

What becomes searingly clear as the movie progresses is the absurdity of our immigration policy - an absurdity which is self-destructive not protective of the best in America.  That a man who has lived such a life and made such a movie could be considered either illegal or alien shows how far our country has veered from its original ideal of all people created equal.   We were and are a country of immigrants, and we're fortunate indeed to have an immigrant such as Jose Antonio Vargas bravely working on behalf of our better natures.   In fact, he could be deported any day for his coming out as an undocumented American - Obama does deserve credit thus far for not deporting him - and this movie provides an inspiring testament to this American whose work is still in progress.

Remembering Tony Schwartz: Master of Propaganda

Tony Schwartz died at age 84 this past weekend. He was best known for the famous or infamous "daisy ad" that Lyndon Johnson ran against Barry Goldwater in the 1964 Presidential campaign. The ad featured a little girl counting petals on a daisy, followed by a nuclear explosion (see YouTube clip below). It was designed to paint Goldwater as a war monger, who could bring the world to ruin. It was famous because it succeeded (without mentioning Goldwater by name). It was infamous because of the way it succeeded. The ad was pulled after one showing on NBC, but was replayed numerous times on evening news shows. That's where I first saw it. I and many other professors have cited this ad for years as a masterpiece of propaganda, with all the good and bad that that can entail.

But I actually knew Tony Schwartz in another, though related way. He was one of Marshall McLuhan's disciples in the 1960s. Tony Schwartz's specialty was what McLuhan would call "acoustic space" - the unique way, or very different from seeing, that sound is perceived by us and can influence us. That way is, mainly, that you don't have to look at it, as you do with an image. In fact, sound can reach us any time it likes, from anyplace in the environment, wherever we may be looking or not. Tony Schwartz put lots of insights like that into his best-known book, The Responsive Chord.

I cited and built upon that book in my doctoral dissertation (Human Replay: A Theory of the Evolution of Media) and my own much later book about McLuhan, Digital McLuhan: A Guide to the Information Millennium, in which I wrote about why radio survived the advent of television in the 1950s. The reason was that radio's presentations - hearing without seeing - are an entirely natural mode of communication. The world grows dark every night but not really silent, we can easily close our eyes but not ever our ears, etc. (In contrast, silent movies did not survive the introduction of talkies - there is no natural niche of seeing without hearing.)

As a Master's student at the New School for Social Research in the 1970s, I was privileged to visit Tony's studio in Manhattan, along with my class, several times. He sat at a desk surrounded by tape recorders and other pre-computer equipment. It felt like a scene out of a 1950s science fiction movie.

The history of propaganda is still being written - more so now than ever in this Presidential campaign. Tony Schwartz will have a permanent place in there, along with Leni Riefenstahl and Michael Moore - but much closer to Moore in the good that both have done for progressive causes.