Once in office, the president becomes acutely aware he is temporary stew ard of a permanent position. … Every day brings the president that much closer to the time he will turn on the TV to see someone else’s face burned in effigy outside a foreign embassy.

The moment, as you can imagine, is bittersweet.

A burning a photo of Obama at an Iranian protest.

Well said.

Jon Stewart. Wow. Sadly, the only source of news I trust (aside from NPR). In one short spot, he made a passionate plea to mainstream media to stop hurting America and called Tucker Carleson a dick (but a smart one, to be fair). My hemming and hawing above was based solely on whether or not he writes his own material, which after some thought doesn’t matter.

Stewart has found, through comedy, a way to do what mosts journalists are too afraid, most politicians too unwilling, and most bloggers have been ignored at for some time. Watching The Daily Show almost…well…daily, I wanted America (The Book) as soon as I heard about it. As my sitting-undisturbed time amounts to way less than my moving-around time, I went instead with an iPod-friendly version from Audible.

I don’t usually go for abridged works, and one review in particular stuck in my mind:

Subject

Funny, despite the content…

Reviewer:

William, from Linwood, NJ, USA

Date:

May 13, 2005

Despite his obvious hatred of the country, Jon Stewart and company from the Daily Show deliver an, at times, fall-out-of-the-chair funny examination of American politics. If you can put out of your mind the obvious liberal/socialist bias and anger, the book is quite enjoyable. Not lost on me, was the irony of Stewart’s attempt to dispute the allegation that the media is a left-leaning, Republican-hating institution, while delivering left-leaning, Republican-hating diatribe after diatribe.
…
I recommend listening to the book while trying to block out the normal reaction, which for most Americans would hopefully be to defend our country against this hilarious assault.

The more I listen to him, the more I find William’s first clause to be incorrect. Stewart writes and performs not out of hatred, but a deep love and sadness over into what our country has desolved. His irony sadly ignores the fact, as did Tucker Carleson, that he is not part of the news media. Nor is The Onion or Tina Fey and Amy Poehler. Perhaps it’s a tribute to his ability—maybe he’s just too good at what he does that America forgets he airs on a network of such journalistic prowess as South Park and Drawn Together.

His rage at the decline of American politics is evident in this excerpt from his Audiobook, which for its inclusion I will probably be added to some Internet smut database, is beautiful nonetheless:

A free and independant press is essential to the health of a functioning democracy, serves to inform the public on matters relevant to its well being. Why they’ve stopped doing that is a mystery. I mean, three-hundred camera crews outside of a courthouse to see what Kobe Bryant is wearing when the judge sets his hearing date while false information used to send our country to war goes unchecked—what the fuck happened? You spineless cowards in the press have finally gone to far: you have violated a trust.

“Was the President successful in conving the country?” Who gives a shit? Why not tell us if what he said was true?

And the excuses—my god—the excuses: “Hey, we just give the people what they want. What can we do, this administration is secretive…uh…uh…but the last season of Friends is news.”

The unmitigated gall of these weak-willed—you’re supposed to be helping us, you indecent piles of shit—I…Fuck it, just fuck it!

And that about sums it up. I couldn’t say it better. But now that he’s pointed out the problem, what about the solution?

…and now I have a hero. Plus, he makes movies with Adam Sandler, which immediate adds points on some peoples’ lists…

Tyrrell and Davis discuss Senator Clinton’s political beginnings at Wellesly college and her liberal mentors, analyze in-depth HRC’s own book, and her political strategies. Luckily for Tyrrell and Davis, they are unfettered by responsible writing. They need not rely on competant and responsible quotations, and often favor anonymous sources. Tyrrell and Davis were lucky to score exclusive interviews with a whitehouse insider, a senate aid, and even a senate colleague. Not to imply that the writers are dishonest, but by quoting people without providing their name, they are not restricted by it.

Tyrrell and Davis do perform an amazing job with language. Madame Hillary is soaked with pre-packaged language, analyzed and polished in order to inflame Conservatives and Conservative-leaning moderates. Tyrrell and Davis recycle phrases coat-and-tie radicals, pennyloafer conservatives and the infamous culture smog to the point of obnoxiousness. These phrase fit well within frames that help establish distrust between progressives and the rest of the world. The word radical implies violence and change, while adding coat-and-tie adds a dishonest tinge, not unlike a wolf-in-sheep’s-clothing. In contrast, Conservative implies cicumspection and wisdom, and pennyloafer qualifies this person as down-to-earth and casual. Which seems more appealing?

A quick reading of Madame Hillary would seem to be a frightened analysis of HRC’s character and politics, but its language attempts to hide her incredible accomplishments. Tyrrell and Davis describe her warlike manner, and simplifying spin and mistakes into lies. What they are describing, however, is Senator Clinton’s strong education, empathy for the less fortunate and common person, and her maturation from Arkansan first lady to New York Senator. While listening to Madame Hillary, I couldn’t help but be impressed by the Senator’s intelligence, political savvy, and drive. It takes an intelligent reader to see through the propaganda.

Hindsight is what they say it is, because many of the problems Tyrrell and Davis foresaw Clinton causing in 2003 where actually prepetrated by the Bush White House. Her politiking and aggressive political strategies would only be acceptable if she were a member of another political party. No one can aspire to the highest office in our country without getting their hands dirty, but if you can wade your way through the intentional and poorly supported character assassination attempt, Madame Hillary offers excellent reason to vote for Rodham-Clinton in 2008.

Larkoff’s work hopes to combat that of Conservative Strategist Frank Luntz, who touts a very 1984-style of language reform for Conservatives, especially in the realm of the environment. According to BushGreenwatch, Luntz encourages Conservatives to call themselves “conservationists” instead of “environmentalists≵ because, ‘conservationist’ conveys a ‘moderate, reasoned, common sense position between replenishing the earth’s natural resources and the human need to make use of those resources’. Luntz would admire Bush’s “Health Forests Act” and “Clear Skies Initiative” for allowing corporate deforestation and air pollution respectively, while hiding behind friendly names.

So what can the wise and selfless do? Change our words. Republicans did this with the Estate Tax, which they consciously re-coined the “Death Tax,” making it seem less like a tax on the elite and more like a tax on everyone. Some ideas:

Progressives could be more successful passing sensible laws if they named them what they were: The Safe Streets and Homes Act would be much more successful than the Brady Bill; safe streets are what we get, whereas “gun control” raises the hackles of libertarians and small-government supporters. Responsible Business Initiatives might crack down on corporate pollution, but they frame it within the idea of responsibility, which is key to protecting the environment.

The major pitfall in the current political diction is avoiding factions. Avoid business versus the environment, because the vast majority of Americans know that having businesses is important to the continued American prosperity—and our having jobs. All Americans are cost-conscious today, so we have to avoid allowing taxes to be a central argument, instead, services, programs, assistance—the things taxes provide—should be central. Americans also love freedom, so government programs must be discussed in terms of their impinging upon civilians’ freedom, especially the USA PATRIOT act.

In the enlightened society, words are our weapons. Conservatives have dug themselves into this image of the common-sense, moral, American values group in the face of their self-serving policies. Selfless policies are not enough—progressives must break their arguments down into positive-sounding terms in order to promote them to the American public.

A fascinating part of her book is her section on commas, which explains how many of these marks evolved. Ancient languages like Hebrew and Latin contained no case or punctuation at all, at times there were not even spaces between words. Imagine the dogmatic problem with:

AMENISAYTOYOUONTHISDAYYOUSHALLBEWITHMEINHEAVEN

Which can be translated into the protestant version:

Amen I say to you, on this day you shall be with me in heaven.

Or, in the Catholic version (which allows for the existence purgatory):

Amen I say to you on this day, you shall be with me in heaven.

All that changed with Aldus Manutius the Elder and Younger, who insisted that marks for text should denote syntax and not simply verbal pace. Since the Manutii of the sixteenth century, there has been a struggle between punctuation denoting syntax or reading speed. Cecily Hartley in 1818 stated that when reading, the comma denoted a one-count pause, the semi-colon a two-, colon a three-, and period a four.

Booooooooring

Why this diatribe on grammar? Web designers today are facing similar problems. The following two snippets of code will produce similar results:

<p>This is a paragraph.</p>
<p>This is another paragraph.</p>

This is a paragraph.

This is another paragraph.

<p>This is a paragraph.<br />
<br />This is another paragraph.</p>

This is a paragraph.

This is another paragraph.

Which is better? I would argue the first example, as tells the web browser syntactically what it is trying to display. As a better example;

<p>I <i>really</i> liked Truss' <i>Eats, Shoots and Leaves</i>.</p>

I really liked Truss’ Eats, Shoots and Leaves.

<p>I <em>really</em> liked Truss' <cite>Eats, Shoots and Leaves</cite>.</p>

I really liked Truss’ Eats, Shoots and Leaves.

This seems fairly striaghtforward and similar. However, what if the author wants all of the text on his page to be italicized? In the first example he is stuck with

I really liked Truss’ Eats, Shoots and Leaves.

Meanwhile, a careful coder could delineate his stylesheet to react in the following way:

I really liked Truss’ Eats, Shoots and Leaves.

So, what?

Today is an exciting time for digital publishing. While Tim Berners-Lee may have been the digital Homer, the new Manutius is right around the corner. Today is the puberty of the web, and those in the trenches—the web designers—will determine the future. Perhaps in the next few years a completely new method of describing text will emerge.

In the end, when Zeldman and co. advocate web standards, while pulling out their hair over content management systems that encourage presentational mark-up like we’re so used to in Microsoft Word, they’re just being sticklers. Style and tags in HTML are nothing more than punctuation. And like these graceful, often misused marks, a designer’s tags will speak to his ability and education in web-based writing.

Work Cited

Truss, Lynne. Eats, Shoots and Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation.New York: Gotham, 2003.