The Progressive Meme Shop

by Daniel Rigney

You may have seen Woody Allen’s time-travel comedy, “Midnight in Paris,” about a popular Hollywood screen-writer working on a serious novel about a guy who opens a little “nostalgia shop” selling memorabilia from half-imaginary golden eras of the past.

Seeing this movie made me want to open a little meme shop specializing in customized words and phrases that refract future thought and action in progressive directions.  I’m picturing a little shop of hope for this pessimistic time of horrors.

What I’m imagining is  just  the opposite of what conservative Republican propagandist Frank Luntz  sells in his little shop,“Word Doctor,” on the other side of the street.  Luntz, whose company specializes in creating and managing words and images for his right-wing clients, describes himself as an “Orwellian” manipulator of emotions – and he means that in a good way.  [NPR interview with Terry Gross, “Fresh Air,”  1/9/200

I momentarily thought of naming my progressive shop the Meme Boutique, but I quickly discovered  that name had already been taken by a women’s clothing store in Raleigh, North Carolina. Besides, the name was way too chi-chi for my taste.

How about the Meme Factory? Sounds like an assembly line operation. I wasn't sure an industrial metaphor would evoke the creative spirit of the kind of place I’m imagining. Too brutal.

The Philosophy Shop?  No, Jay Leno (a philosophy major in college) has already laid claim to that name. Anyway, it's way too non-anti-intellectual for this country.

Me!Me! ?  Too narcissistic.

Progressive Memes?  It says what it is, but is it catchy enough? Does it have viralocity and iconability? [Text to self:  How does the word "progressive" do in Luntz-style focus groups?  Is "liberal" too bell-bottomy these days?]

Or how about calling the shop Manipulative Memes?  No. That wouldn’t set it apart from any commercial ad agency --  including Luntz's "Word Doctor." For Luntz, it's not an estate tax; it's a "death tax." It's not oil drilling; it's "energy exploration." It's not global warming, it's "climate change," which doesn't sound nearly as scary.  It's all in what you call it, and in the audience's emotional reaction to what you call it. 

Why are there not more Frank Luntz's working on behalf of progressive causes?  A progressive might, for instance, call for a more equitable economy (not the current "dog eat dog"or "everyone for himself"  economy); for energy conservation and clean 21st-century technologies (to supplant our reliance on "dirty energy" and "dirty industrial" technology); and for sustainable  environmental policies to replace the "slash and burn" policies that are now turning the North Pole into the "North Pool."

Two teams can play this game, Frank, and our team is just getting warmed up.

Finally,  I considered calling my little corner of e-space  the  Meme Shoppe.  That name, it turns out, has not been overcommercialized yet.  I hesitated for a moment, thinking that to call anything a "shoppe" outside the former British empire would be laughable on several levels.

But then I thought “laughable” might be a good thing, so I decided to go with it as a provisional brand name.  Nowadays it's all about the brand in our frantic attention economy.

The Meme Shoppe, if it ever actually exists, will be a branded shop that makes and sells more brands – a cultural replicator and mutator in the service of  worthy causes. 

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viralocity, iconability, meme factory, north pool, everyone for himself economy, dog eat dog economy, meme shoppe, meme shop, mutator, replicator, laughable ideas, manipulative memes, progressive memes, philosophy shop, meme boutique, frank lutz, word doctor, plays one on tv, words refract thought, mad men, me!me!, branding+herding, attention economy, daniel rigney, danagram, open+call, politics, business, news, midnight in paris, woody allen, owen wilson+midnight, non-anti-intellectual. half-imagining, orwellian is good? fresh air+terry gross=fank luntz, emotional minipulation, rwellian, bell-bottom words, frantic attention economy, attention economy, progressive meme shop, counter-shop

Anti-Intellectualism in 21st-Century America

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When we consider that the United States was founded largely by intellectuals – Jefferson, Adams, Madison and others – it is ironic that we as a nation have rarely celebrated the value of intellect, except when it can be shown to produce financial gain.  This is amply documented in American historian Richard Hofstadter’s modern classic, Anti-intellectualism in American Life (1963), winner of the Pulitzer Prize for non-fiction in 1964.

Hofstadter defined anti-intellectualism broadly to refer to an attitude of “resentment and suspicion” toward the “critical, creative, and contemplative side of mind.”   He identified at least three distinct expressions of this attitude, which we may call anti-rationalism, anti-elitism, and unreflective instrumentalism .  Nearly thirty years after the book first appeared, I wrote an analytical essay examining its major themes and their continued relevance to American life (Rigney 1991).  

As we now approach the fiftieth anniversary of the book’s publication, it will be worth our while to revisit Hofstadter and to ask whether his diagnosis of our cultural condition is still pertinent today. This brief essay is based on, and offers some further reflections on, my previous article.

Anti-rationalism

                Hofstadter begins by analyzing anti-rationalism, which manifests itself as a suspicion and hostility toward the value of critical thought and reasoned discourse in general.  This form of anti-intellectualism, which tends to regard intellect as cold and passionless, has a long lineage in our history.  It is rooted particularly in the history of American Protestantism since the Great Awakening of the early 17^th century. 

                    The Puritan ideal of the minister as an intellectual leader, Hofstadter writes, “was steadily weakened in the face of the evangelical ideal of the minister as a popular crusader and exhorter.”  This evangelical tradition lives on today in the emotional  appeal of charismatic and fundamentalist clergy, who commonly challenge the more secular culture of critical discourse, especially as it is practiced and propagated in modern universities. 

                   Conservative religious hostility toward modern science, and particularly toward the cosmology of the big bang, organic evolution and climate science, is rooted in this evangelical tradition.  The religious right directs hostility toward the humanities as well when they, like the sciences, seem to  relativize moral teachings, promote a secular worldview, and present a godless vision of the universe and our place in it.

                Underlying this religious anti-rationalism is the fear that critical discourse will challenge traditional sources of authority and thus undermine the foundations of absolute belief.  Hofstadter acknowledges that these fears are not entirely groundless.  Critical thinking really does threaten the unexamined  traditions of the past.  He writes that “left free, there is nothing it will not reconsider, analyze, throw into question.”  Authoritarian regimes, whether religious or secular, know this and suppress freedom of thought and speech accordingly.  In the domain of critical thinking, nothing is sacred – except perhaps  reasoned discourse itself.

                Today the culture of reasoned discourse appears to be at a low ebb in the United States.  Wars of words between traditional conservatives and more secular modernists fill the airwaves and the cables,  polarizing our national politics.  The messages propagated at the extremes – slogans, soundbites and simplistic talking points easily learned and repeated by uncritical thinkers – belie the increasing and frightening complexity of the realities they describe.  Such messages are fueled by what we might call complexiphobia in the public at large, the anxious yearning for simple answers in times that are anything but simple.

Anti-elitism

                A second kind of anti-intellectualism identified by Hofstadter, anti-elitism, manifests itself in the rise of populist political movements which express mistrust and resentment toward the educated elite and their presumed claims to superior knowledge and wisdom.  Public respect for the highly educated has waxed and waned through American history.         

                 Hofstadter notes that at the founding of the new republic, the leaders were the intellectuals.  Thomas Jefferson and his colleagues were drawn largely from a propertied and learned class, a class of gentlemen.  Soon after the founding, however,  this educated elite confronted opposition from a grass-roots populist upsurge represented most notably by Andrew Jackson, the rough and ready man of the people. 

                 Later, during the Progressive era, the nation gained a new respect for intellect, now represented by an emerging stratum of scholar-experts capable of helping  to manage the growing complexities of an industrial order.  The country elected Woodrow Wilson, former president of Princeton University, as its leader.

                In the twentieth century we have seen political expressions of anti-intellectualism on both the left and right.  On the left, Hostadter observes strains of anti-intellectualism in the blue-collar labor movement, expressing feelings of anger and resentment toward an educated elite drawn from the Ivy Leagues and other bastions of higher learning.  Blue-collar workers, whose educations were often earned in what Eugene Debs called the “hard school of human experience,” looked askance at booklearning.  The perception that the educated elite “thinks they’re better than we are” survives to this day in working-class populist culture.

                From the right, attacks on university faculties in the McCarthy era of the 1950’s, and later George Wallace’s tirade against what he called “pointy-headed intellectuals” in the 1960s, remind us that populism is not easily cast in simple left-right terms.  The contemporary Tea Party movement has effectively mobilized many of the same resentments that McCarthy and Wallace did, arousing hostility toward  “ liberal elitists” who “think they know what’s good for us.”

                Interestingly, conservative ideologists today frequently make a distinction between the cultural elite and the economic elite.  In this view, the former  includes most liberal media and politicians, Hollywood celebrities, and university professors, while the latter includes most corporate rich and super-rich.  Oddly, members of this financial elite largely escape populist wrath unless they are seen to have benefited outrageously from the recession that has left so many others without jobs or homes.  Populist anger toward liberal political elites in particular, whether deserved or not, appears to have played a significant role in the defeat of the Democratic Party in the recent mid-term Congressional elections, widely viewed as a rebuff of the policies of the Obama administration.

                Harvard historian James Kloppenberg, in his new book Reading Obama (2011: xv.; see also Cohen 2010), contends that Barak Obama is one of only a few intellectuals to have held the office of President in American history.  (Kloppenberg names Jefferson, Madison,  John and John Quincy Adams, and Lincoln as the others, with Wilson and the Roosevelts also honorably mentioned.) 

                  Perhaps indicative of our national tendency toward anti-intellectualism, the philosopher-president is a rare breed in our history.  No doubt many presidents have been intelligent, but few have been intellectual in Kloppenberg’s view.  The fact that Obama has muted his intellect in public when he talks to “the folks” in campaign appearances, displaying instead the common touch as he seeks to connect with his audiences at a personal level, suggests that populist anti-elitism is still alive and well in American politics.

Unreflective Instrumentalism

                Hofstadter identifies a third kind of anti-intellectualism, which I have elsewhere called unreflective instrumentalism, or the devaluation of forms of thought that do not promise relatively immediate payoffs.  In American culture, “payoffs” typically means money.  Instrumentalists want to know the cash value of an idea.  This attitude derives most directly, Hofstadter argues, from our predominant economic system, capitalism.  Instrumentalism is not inimical to reason per se, but only to reason which does not serve some “practical” end, such as making money. 

                But this attitude is usually held without much reflection.  It insists on practicality, but it never inquires very deeply into the meanings of the word “practical.”  Is a song or a painting practical?  Only if it makes  money.  Are pure mathematics and science practical?  Only if they result in the solution of “real world” problems – another phrase that is almost always invoked unreflectively.  Is philosophy a real-world activity?  One might argue, if arguments mattered to the anti-intellectual, that philosophy is in fact the most practical thing we possess – the basic operating system upon which all of our important decisions about reality are based.

                Hofstadter observes that how we value intellect is profoundly reflected in our views of education.  Some years ago the educator Alexander Astin (1987) conducted the first annual national survey of the attitudes of first-year college students.  Astin found that over several decades, undergraduates have trended steadily away from viewing the college years as a time to develop a meaningful philosophy of life.  Increasingly and overwhelmingly they, and probably their parents as well, now view higher education more instrumentally, as a means of pursuing material success. 

                  This attitude  is understandable enough in light of the hyperinflationary costs of higher education and the burden of debt that saddles most college students after graduation.  Moreover, the current job market for recent graduates is fiercely competitive, and the liberal arts are continually having to defend their value, as they should.  But to be a truly well-educated person is to be concerned, as the saying goes, not just with how to make a living, but with how to make a life.  Narrow vocationalism is a liability if it constricts the development of the whole person.  As I have written elsewhere (Rigney 1991:  447), neither bread nor philosophy is valuable as an end in itself,  but both are valuable for what they contribute to human well-being.  The perennial task of intellect is to reflect critically upon what ends, both material and ideal, are worth pursuing.

                We find unreflective tendencies in American culture not only in purely vocational conceptions of education, but also in the messages communicated via the mass media (both old and new) and popular entertainment, which are sometimes quite literally mindless.   We often hear  that we live in an “information age,” but this is also an age of misinformation and even disinformation.   If we are really living in the information age, then why are we so poorly informed?  Never before have the sources of our messages – cable news, Wikipedia and the web, Twitter, Facebook, i-things generally – been so diverse and needed such subtle and discerning intellectual skills to evaluate and interpret.   Never have we had such sophisticated communication technologies  as we have today. Yet have the quality of our messages, both incoming and outgoing, advanced with them?  What if we had the most advanced communication devices ever, but had little worth communicating through them?

             Anti-intellectualism, then , is no simple thing.  It takes multiple forms and derives from multiple sources in the dominant institutions of our culture.  Anti-rationalism has its roots largely in traditional religious institutions that seek to preserve elements of a simpler, pre-modern view of the world amid burgeoning complexity.  Anti-elitism finds its roots in populist political movements  that live on today in the resentments of the less advantaged.  Instrumentalism grows out of the material values and economic motivations of capitalism.  Each of these forms of anti-intellectualism has its own distinctive character and provenance; each poses its own distinctive threat toward educational policy and practice; and each persists and even thrives in contemporary American life.

REFERENCES:

Astin, Alexander. 1987.  “The American Freshman:  National Norms for Fall, 1986.” Los Angeles: Council on Education and UCLA.

Cohen, Patricia.  2010.  “In Writings of Obama, a Philosophy is Unearthed.”  New York Times, October     28: C1.

Hofstadter, Richard. 1963. Anti-intellectualism in American Life. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

Kloppenberg, James T.  2011.  Reading Obama.  Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Rigney, Daniel.  1991, “Three Kinds of Anti-intellectualism.”  Sociological Inquiry 61 (4): 434-51.

Daniel Rigney is professor emeritus of sociology at St. Mary’s University in San Antonio and is  currently a Complimentary Visiting Scholar in the humanities at Rice University in Houston.  He can be contacted at drigney3@gmail.com.

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Selective Attention Deficit Disorder (SADD)

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By Daniel Rigney
Do you have Selective Attention Deficit Disorder?  Here are several warning signs to watch for:
You’re a conservative (or liberal) and expose yourself only to news stories that support your viewpoint.
You remember and talk about only stories that support your viewpoint.
You try to engage your son-in-law in conversation about these stories at every possible opportunity.
You tune out your mother-in-law every time she starts moving her lips.
Symptoms of SADD take the general form: “You X (attend/remember/talk) selectively to Y (parent/child/other family member or friend/anyone who will listen) about Z (guns/unfinished chores/bedtimes/something Rush Limbaugh said/other).
What SADD symptoms have you noticed in your own life?  Please take a moment to send your symptoms to the comment section of Danagram (search: Salon Danagram) or e-mail drigney3@gmail.com.  Call a doctor if symptoms last for more than four years.
 Danagram
(search: Salon Danagram)
                      

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Secret Journal. Do Not Read.

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By Daniel Rigney
Houston novelist and playwright Nancy Geyer (gladly would she teach and gladly learn) has been guiding me and about a dozen of my fellow scribblers through the looking glass of writing this semester in a Rice University continuing studies course. One of our very first questions in class was “What is a personal journal anyway?”  It turns out there are many  kinds.
A journal may go by other names. Younger people (or older), and especially females, may call it a diary.  Manly men may call it their captain’s log, or playbook, or even give it some bogus name like Garage Tool Inventory to make sure no one is tempted to read it. I call my journal Danagram, to suggest “telegram” (a brief communication) and  “anagram.” (an amusing word puzzle, such as my beloved daily Jumble).
Ms. Geyer recommends that we write PRIVATE on the covers of our journals to dissuade others from intruding on our inner thoughts and lives.  I’ve hit upon an even better idea.  Why not record your thoughts in a blog and post them on the Internet?  No one will find them there, probably not even members of your own family --  the ones for whom PRIVATE on a book cover would be an open invitation to the joys of reading.
So a few weeks ago I decided to post Danagram at Open Salon, a great place to visit but an even better place to live. No one will find me here.  It’s the same strategy I used nearly 30 years ago to escape the notice of a university president for whom I toiled at the time. I hid out in the library because I knew he never went there. Worked like a charm.
Thank you for not reading.

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Hypochondria Digest

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By Daniel Rigney
Does hypochondria run in your family?  All the more reason to subscribe today to Hypochondria Digest! 
HD!  brings you the very latest in research and urban legend from the frontiers of medical science, giving you information you can use and spread to others. Find out what the latest studies and infomercials show, and what you can do to protect yourself and those you love from the growing concerns that many experts have about your future.
Here are some current stories from this month’s issue. Subscribe now before it’s too late.

Food Is Medicine:  Five Recipes for a Longer, More Flavorless Life
Doctors Who Carry Sickness from Patient to Patient: Hidden Epidemic?
Top 10 Health Hazards That You May Be Overlooking
Can Hypochondria Itself Cause Illness? The Answer May Disturb You
Guarding Now Against the Undiscovered New Illnesses of Tomorrow
Your Lab Results Are Back: Do You Really Want to See Them?
The Myth of the “Anxiety-Industrial Complex”: Who Really Profits From Health Fears?
Summer’s Here: Stay Inside, But Take Extra Vitamin D
Did You Know That Mosquitoes, Spiders and Roaches Are Moving to the Outer Suburbs?
They Have a Cute Name. But Are Dust Bunnies Really Harmless?
RomneyCare: Is It For You and Yours?
How Hosting a Tea Party Can Improve Your Health and Lower Your Taxes Forever

Hypochondria Digest is brought to you by some of America’s most trusted names in insurance, pharmaceuticals, home security, health food and tabloid media. Neither HD! nor any of our sponsors is responsible for raising fears that may cause you to invest in your family’s future by buying more of their products than you can reasonably afford. Our aim is only to raise public awareness of all the things in your diet and lifestyle that might prevent you from living forever.
We inform. You decide. Ask about our gift subsriptions!

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read these tags and worry, death, anxiety, worry, pharmaceuticals, insurance, home security, tabloid media, infomercial, roaches, mosquitoes, outer suburbs, tea party, comedy, satire, news, views, politics, television, danagram, daniel rigney, open call, anxiety industrial complex, dust bunnies, spiders, romneycare, romney care, hypochondria digest, hypochondria

Fresh Euphemisms for Retirement

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By Daniel Rigney
In today’s column we’ll consider some fresh and creative ways to euphemize the cultural shame of retiring a little early in American society.  This is a subject I know something about.
My wife and I are academicians with a newly-empty nest.  I have more than 35 years of college teaching under my robe, and when my wife received an auspicious offer of a job at a university in another city, we decided that I could afford to resign my long-held position and follow her there.
I was not quite old enough yet to qualify for reduced-benefit Social Security, but I was frankly burned out and ready for a rest –  I mean a reinvention of myself.
No one warned me how hard it would be to describe myself as “retired” at the tender age of 61. I had previously planned to put in another five years or so on the treadmill, and I didn’t feel good about getting off before finishing my full workout.  I am among the “young old,” as sociologists call us, and it seemed a bit early for me to be hanging up my battered briefcase.
I don’t know what the word “retired” suggests to you. Tired out? Used up? Badly in need of a rest or a reward for years of toil?  All true, perhaps, but none of these sounded good to me.
These were all dysphemisms.  I needed a few interesting-sounding euphemisms to describe my emerging identity, whatever it was going to be. But I needed some fresh euphemisms, some newly-minted memes, to move me forward.  No “life at the crossroads.” No “golden years.”  No “more time with the grandchildren” (don’t have any).  No “exploring other opportunities.”  No “long walks on the beach.”
Above all, no “consulting.”
Choose your own retirement euphemisms carefully to reflect your unique set of interests and qualifications.  Be aware that the labels you choose for your new retirement identity may actually frame and define the direction you take with your life.  They become your “brand,” as we’re now supposed to say. What could you get away with calling yourself, at least in jest, without risking criminal charges of perjury or fraud?
Everyone’s list of creative euphemisms will be different, of course, depending on our varying backgrounds, skills and interests. Here is an array of post-retirement identities that I could hypothetically lay claim to without undue dishonesty. I’m still deciding which of these to be.
So what are you doing these days?
Oh, I’m a freelance sociologist, or social-science fiction writer, or editor, or reader, or blogger.  I write mainly about politics and the human comedy.
 Or I’m an urban anthropologist or ethnographer or participant-observer, out in the field in Houston.
Or  I’m  a social or cultural  or media or corporate  or advertising critic.
Or I’m on an independent scholar, or postscholar.
Or I’m a columnist, or a correspondent, or a cultural reporter, or a mild-mannered satirist on the daily planet.
This is my not-a-retirement.  If you need some fresh euphemisms to describe your own not-a-retirement, tailor-made to your unique background and interests, get in touch.  I do some identity coaching on the side as a creative retirement consultant.  I design later-life narratives.  I’m what you might call a biographical reinventor.

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dysphemisms for retirement, euphemisms for retirement, retirement shame, empty nest, two academician marriages, your hidden message here, retirement, comedy, humor, creative euphemisms, freelance sociologist, fresh euphemisms, fresh memes, blog, daniel rigney, danagram, post-scholar, exploring other opportunities, human comedy, advertising, media, politics, retirement consultant, later-life narratives, identity coach, biographical reinventor, daily planet, mild-mannered satirist, satirist, participant-observation, houston, urban ethnographer, urban anthropologist, brand, freelance blogger, freelance reader, freelance writer, social science fiction, sociologist

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Taste Test (Word Cloud)

By Daniel Rigney and wordle.com

This is a test. This is only a test. I'm testing a program called Wordle that allows us all to make homemade word clouds (or cloud poems) and share them with friends. I've been living in a cloud of words all my life, and I quite enjoy it, but that's another story.




 

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Real NYRB Personals (Word Cloud)

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By Daniel Rigney and wordle.com

 

      

Foodies love food, and wordies love words. I confess: I'm a wordie -- not a wordy one, I hope, but a genuine one. I love to tinker with words. They're my tinker toys. [rimshot]
Today I'm reporting another in a series of conceptual experiments in the use of word clouds to create cloud poems. The word-cloud poem shown below is a found poem of the "treated" variety. The words themselves are culled from the most recent list of actual personal ads posted online at the New York Review of Books (accessed on May 10, 2011), and then rearranged, sized and positioned for effect. They're sliced, diced, and tossed in the Wordle-matic. Click on the image for a clearer view.
In yesterday's post (May 9) I satirized these same NYRB personal ads in a purely fictional way.  I was trying to say that each individual ad tells a short-short story about its author's personal situation, and that we can imagine invisible narrative threads that link these micro-stories to each other.
The word-cloud poem below, on the other hand, is a more macro-level composite or aggregation of words from many different and seemingly disconnected ad-stories in NYRB. The word cloud gives us one possible bird's-eye view of the larger cultural context within which the ad-stories are told --  in this instance, the rather rarified culture of  North American wordies and bookies living in an ever more cosmopolitan and commercial world. 
Or maybe the word cloud is just an eye-catching graphic device. You may have noticed that advertisers already know ways to capture eyeballs and "move product" with what amount to word-cloud poems.
In any case, thank you, wordle.com, for making such a promising and easily useable tool available to ordinary non-technos and non-commercios like me. Conceptual and graphic artists and  English teachers probably discovered the cloud-word poem years ago, but it's new to me. I'm exploring its possibilities for the fun of it. Others of the reading and writing persuasion might want to do the same. 
So again, thank you, Wordle, and may the farce be with you.

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comedy, open call, booklovers, bookies, wordie, tinker toys, words as tinker toys, wordies, wordy, capturing eyeballs, conceptual art, graphic art, word clouds in advertising, short short stories, micro-stories, macro-stories, non-technos, non-commercios, cloud poem, found poem, poetry, open salon, danagram, daniel rigney, personal ads, personals, wordle, of the reading persuasion, of the writing persuasion, may the farce be with you, rimshot, word cloud, new york review of books

Foodies love food, and wordies love words. I confess: I'm a wordie -- not a wordy one, I hope, but a genuine one. I love to tinker with words. They're my tinker toys. [rimshot]
Today I'm reporting another in a series of conceptual experiments in the use of word clouds to create cloud poems. The word-cloud poem shown below is a found poem of the "treated" variety. The words themselves are culled from the most recent list of actual personal ads posted online at the New York Review of Books (accessed on May 10, 2011), and then rearranged, sized and positioned for effect. They're sliced, diced, and tossed in the Wordle-matic. Click on the image for a clearer view.
In yesterday's post (May 9) I satirized these same NYRB personal ads in a purely fictional way.  I was trying to say that each individual ad tells a short-short story about its author's personal situation, and that we can imagine invisible narrative threads that link these micro-stories to each other.
The word-cloud poem below, on the other hand, is a more macro-level composite or aggregation of words from many different and seemingly disconnected ad-stories in NYRB. The word cloud gives us one possible bird's-eye view of the larger cultural context within which the ad-stories are told --  in this instance, the rather rarified culture of  North American wordies and bookies living in an ever more cosmopolitan and commercial world. 
Or maybe the word cloud is just an eye-catching graphic device. You may have noticed that advertisers already know ways to capture eyeballs and "move product" with what amount to word-cloud poems.
In any case, thank you, wordle.com, for making such a promising and easily useable tool available to ordinary non-technos and non-commercios like me. Conceptual and graphic artists and  English teachers probably discovered the cloud-word poem years ago, but it's new to me. I'm exploring its possibilities for the fun of it. Others of the reading and writing persuasion might want to do the same. 
So again, thank you, Wordle, and may the farce be with you.
 

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comedy, open call, booklovers, bookies, wordie, tinker toys, words as tinker toys, wordies, wordy, capturing eyeballs, conceptual art, graphic art, word clouds in advertising, short short stories, micro-stories, macro-stories, non-technos, non-commercios, cloud poem, found poem, poetry, open salon, danagram, daniel rigney, personal ads, personals, wordle, of the reading persuasion, of the writing persuasion, may the farce be with you, rimshot, word cloud, new york review of books

Lost Angels in Los Angeles (Word Cloud)

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By Daniel Rigney and wordle.com

 
Today's column reports on my continuing thought experiment with wordclouding (or cloudword puzzles, or whatever we call them) as first reported yesterday in "Taste Test" and "Real NYRB Personals" (May 10, 2011).
Here once again I'm looking at anonymous personal ads as short-short stories that may say interesting things, not just about the micro-lives of personal advertisers themselves, but also about the macro-lives that people create and share socially and culturally -- in this instance, the people enmeshed in the intricate and elaborate cultural web that is Los Angeles, California, USA, circa 2011.
The adwords below are historical and cultural ephemera par excellence, deserving of a close if fleeting look for what they might tell us about our times.
In today's post, I have culled words from ads in Craig's List (Los Angeles/Personals/Lost Connections). Then I've sliced and diced them and thrown them into worldle.com's word salad maker (thank you again, Wordle) to come up with the following word photo of a certain segment of Los Angeles life in the early 21st century.
The authors of these ads are the souls I'm calling, without derision,  the "Lost Angels of Los Angeles." (I just couldn't resist the pun.) I'm guessing these folks are mostly younger, mostly single, fairly diverse with respect to ethnicity, gender and sexual orientation, and probably more educationally and electronically plugged in than a representative sample of Angelenos in general. But I'm just guessing.
Click the word cloud below for a sharper image.  The more closely you examine this configuration, the more enjoyment you're likely to take from it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Lost and Found in Chicago

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By Daniel Rigney
This  just  in. We’re told that Craig’s List in Chicago reports the following items lost and found in the Chicagoland area over the last 48 hours. These entries are real, though lightly edited. You can look them up.  More from WGN News at noon.  And for more about Craig’s List itself, stay tuned for a comment coming up later in this broadcast.
And now for a fleeting glance at ephemeral culture—to be read on the fly, of course -- from the folks who brought you “Lost Angels in Los Angeles” and “Real NYRB Personals.”

Thu May 12
Lost:  teddy bear, wearing a red vest, appears in photo  holding a cordless phone in his lap while maintaining  a contemplative Buddhist silence.  (lost near red line and Loyola)
Lost:  pink blanket (Naperville) [ed: Entry doesn’t specify blanket’s gender]
Lost:  orange tabby, in snow.  Has original claws. Is fixed.  Small slit on left ear.  (Arlington Heights)
Tips:  What to do if you find a lost dog.  First, find Lost Dogs Illinois on facebook.]
For Hire:  pet detective with bloodhound.  Helps find pets lost on weekends only.  As seen on national TV.  (Chicago)  [ed. tip: Never lose a pet on a weekday.]
Lost:  wallet.  Describe wallet and contents  [ed.: or former contents.] (N. Broadway)
Lost:  magnetized wireless trailer lights for tow truck. (Chicago)
Found:  “something” at Chicago City Colleges (CCC)  graduation. (IUC Pavilion). [ed.: “Something?” The mind races.]

Wed May 11
Lost:  Bloodhound named Luther. (Michigan City). [ed.: This looks like a job for the pet detective above.]
Found:  orange cat w/microchip. Will return to owner.  (N. Paulina)
Lost:  Left bag in your car on our way to Porn and Chicken night at evilOlive [party club in Chicago. I’m not making these names up.]. Return to me at Starbucks, where I work.
Found:  orange and black cat. No identification. (Wicker Park/Bucktown)
Found:  gold charm [not a lucky charm, apparently] in Libertyville hospital parking lot.
Lost:  keys attached to poi strap and bottle opener. $20 reward. (Depaul Lincoln Park Campus)
Found:  male wedding ring/female engagement ring (North Side)   [ed.: huh?]
Lost:  orange male cat, age 3, named Boo Boo [answers to no one?].  (45^th and California)
Lost:  Black North Face backpack in a cab (Lincoln Park)
Lost:  3G iPhone in a cab (North Shore)
Lost:  Red Loyola flash drive. (Loyola? )
Lost:  Digital Nikon camera in bleachers at Wrigley Field, with pictures of IUC graduation, street performers. Reward . [Please. No Cubs jokes about losing at Wrigley. I’m asking nicely.]
Found:  keys (Milwaukee and Armitage)
Found:  keys (Michigan and Jackson)
Lost:  Diplomas – high school, college, and professional.  Reward!  [ed: Were the diplomas from CCC, DePaul, IUC, or Loyola? Just asking.]
Lost  Nokona softball glove. Sentimental value.  Had this glove for 16 years.  (Winnemac Park)
Lost:  brown plastic prescription glasses in case. Reward.  [ed.: I can’t find them. I don’t have my glasses.]
Lost:  $250 reward for lost dog. Two collars. One collar has flowers and the other has black and pink swirls. (Lawndale) [ed:  Dog answers to the name of “make up your own joke here.”]
Found:  Debit card. (Ravenswood neighborhood) [ed.:  Please send PIN to authenticate.]
Final Note from Craig: “it’s NOT OK to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests.” [ed: Craig’s List would never  think of tolerating or profiting from this sort of trafficking ]
Lessons Taken:  Don’t go to college, don’t participate in baseball or softball events, and never own an orange cat, unless you already have one, or course – in which case,  please fix it, implant a chip in it, and try not to lose it. And if you lose your bloodhound, hire another bloodhound to find it.
As for the whole concept of “lost and found,” don’t make me get all metaphorical on you.

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open+call, news, chicagoland, pet detective, bloodhound, ccc, iuc, loyola, depaul, orange cats, animals, humor, this just in. comedy, ephemeral culture, ephemeral history, danagram, human trafficking, trafficking, cub jokes, wrigley, daniel rigney, craig's list, lost and found, chicago

Pepsi Mondrian (Word Cloud)

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By Daniel Rigney with wordle.com
Here is a tribute to one of my favorite artists, Piet Mondrian, brought to you by Pepsi, the drink that does whatever Pepsi does now.

 

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piet mondrian, mondrian, pepsi, pepsi mondrian, mad men, madmen, marketing, modern art, open call, daniel rigney, commericalization of everything, danagram, word cloud, advertising, cola wars, art cola, cola art, satire, parody, humor, comedy, poetry, fiction, design, business

A History of the World in 140 Characters

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By Daniel Rigney
primates ->hunt/gathering -> hortagrarian -> industrial/modern/colonial -> information/postmodern -> global  integration/disintegration ->?
 @danagram

Rimshot the Sitdown Comic: A Tribute to Henny Youngman

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By Daniel Rigney
Today’s column introduces Rimshot the Sitdown Comic. Rimshot is a guy I know from, uh, college who has long dreamed of writing monologue material for standup comedians, but whose serious academic job has deterred him from doing anything so frivolous and laughable. Until now.
Lately Rimshot has been quietly tracking the history of standup humor, as practiced in the United States since vaudeville, in an effort to help preserve and extend our precious comedy heritage.  Rimshot firmly and sincerely believes that the styles and varieties of comedy in a society through time tell us more than we really want to know about its cultural undercurrents and its collectively-unconscious life.
So if wrestlers and country singers and robots and toys, and even school mascots, can have their halls of  fame, then jokes and their creators deserve one too.
Rimshot is talking about a hall that honors not just the famous jokes and jokers, but also our unknown heroes  --  those faceless  comedy script-writers and gag merchants who work ceaselessly and tirelessly that others might have laughs and have them uncontrollably.
Our inaugural induction into the Rimshot Hall of Fame is the late Henny Youngman (1906-1998), whom gossip columnist Walter Winchell once called the King of the One-liner. (There were few prominent woman-comedians when Youngman was young, but nominations are in order for his rightful Queen. Grace Allen?  Lucille Ball in a somewhat later era? )
Henny Youngman took the national spotlight in the mid-1930s as a regular on Kate Smith’s radio variety show. Well, not the spotlight, exactly. Not on radio. Anyway, it was around that time that Youngman developed what would later become his signature catch phrase, for better or worse. (Better for him. Worse for whom?)
“Take my wife. Please!”
Comedians would (and probably do) now say “Take my husband. “  Or my partner, or my significant other, or my hookup.  Please.
If  Youngman’s original line were  uttered for the first time today – on Letterman or Leno, for instance --  it would sound  wincingly sexist and misogynist  to even the most modestly progressive ear. But in the cultural context of its time and place, it was (and still is in some male enclaves)  a traditionally acceptable,  if not outright conservatively correct, expression of marital aggression .
Even in recent times, Letterman has been heard to mutter grumbling asides to his audience of millions -- offhand remarks that seem more than a little disrespectful toward his own marital partner.  For all I know it’s some sort of inside joke between them, as Youngman’s apparently was. (Read on).
Story has it that Youngman’s signature line was not really about his wife Sadie at all. It was a comedy gimmick from which he and Sadie seem to have prospered  together until death did them part. One version of the story has it that Youngman  invented this bit of shtick unintentionally when, helping his wife find her place in a theater one evening, he politely asked an usher to “take my wife, please” to her seat. The usher thought he was cracking wise, and Youngman then realized the line’s comic potential.  At least that’s one way I heard it.
Youngman soon began using the line in an entirely different frame, as one in a series of a rata-tat-tat one-liners delivered between his quick, screeching violin interludes of “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes.”  Younger audiences came to know him through comedy-variety programs like “Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In” and Johnny Carson’s  “Tonight Show.” “Take my wife, please” was one of a multitude of wife jokes he told, seemingly at  Sadie’s expense, as a matter of comic routine.  Yet their marriage lasted more than sixty years, until death took Sadie in 1987. No rimshot, please.
In real life, Mrs. Youngman was not “Henny-pecked,” as Rich Rein quips in a profile of her in People (Oct. 18, 1976). Mr. Youngman called her “My Fair Sadie.”
The basic joke-form “Take my wife. Please,” variously punctuated, has spawned countless knock-offs. According to no less an authority than Google, Youngman  gave this title to his autobiography,  and he called one of his many comedy records “Take My Album. Please!” The British sitcom “Take My Wife” (1979) and episodes of  “Night Court” (1984) and “Married With Children” (1993) bore this title. Two episodes of the Simpsons, “Take My Wife, Sleaze”  (1999) and “Take My Life, Please” (2009), paid tribute to the classic formula. The almost-Shakespearian  “Take My Life, Please” was likewise the title of episodes of  "Twilight Zone” (1985) and “ CSI” (2010).
What other incarnations has this one-liner had?  Tom and Ray Magliozzi, comic hosts of NPR’s “Car Talk,” have publicly talked up “Take My Car,” public radio’s vehicle donation program.   A quick search reveals that other Please-Takes  invite readers or listeners to take, in no particular order, my hard drive, my pickup, my congressman, my mansion, my money, my tax cut, my financial reform plan, my Bar Mitzvah, my stem cells, and my Easter candy -- the latter a reference to the perils of dieting during holidays.  
Variations on “Take my wife” (e.g., “Take my alewife”) abound, including cutting references to  “my mother,” “my father,” “my mother-in-law,“ and my husband's brain."
But as always, some of the most revealing jokes are those that don’t bark in the night --  the ones that could have been told but weren’t.  I am unable to find, so far, references to “my children” “my child,” “my son,” “my daughter,”   and “my grandchild” or “grandchildren.”  There’s something not funny about inviting others to take your own offspring.
I am also unable to find reference, in these hard economic times, to “Take my job.”  More surprisingly, perhaps, I’m not finding “Take my boss, please.” Maybe people say it under their breath, with teeth clenched. But not many comedians say it publicly on stage for some reason.
You may have heard (or not heard) other barking one-liners created from Youngman’s simple formula. Or you may have one or two of your own to suggest. In retrospect, the content of Youngman’s original joke is offensive to many of us in the 21^st century.  But Youngman had thousands of other one liners, sometimes delivered at a rate of 150-200 per half-hour according to legend, which were not about his wife, including many that were self-deprecating.  And  many  of them are, I think,  still very funny.  We report. You decide. Search and read.
However offensive we may find the content of “Take my wife” today,  the essential form of the joke remains classic. In just little four words, “Take,” for short, can carry content of almost infinite variety, and can accommodate messages of almost any cultural or ideological stripe. It can be used by or against both progressives and traditionalists. 
Take Governor Rick Perry of Texas. Finish the joke yourself and go to instantrimshot.com  for a closing sound effect.

Rimshot, the Sitdown Comic
Brought to you by  Danagram.  Curating our precious comedy heritage since 2011.

Author tags:

comedy, humor, precious comedy heritage, joke form, dog that didn't bark, henny youngman, sadie youngman, rimshot the sitdown comic, daniel rigney, danagram, comedy writers, vaudeville, standup, stand-up comedy, schtik, comedy writers, gag writers, comedy hall of fame, sitdown comedy, king of the one-liner, one liners, take my wife please, rimshot, conservatively correct, feminism, open+call, television

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