Random Notes
Research on the mass media has shown that it does not do a very good job of telling us what to think, but is does have a significant impact on what we think about. 

If learning to think, being educated, being free is not about the capacity to think or about knowing facts, but about choosing what to think about, what to pay attention to (and seeing this choice in order to reject the unconscious default pathway to thinking about the world in a self-centered way and recognize that there are alternative things to think about and pay attention to...yes, stealing from David Foster Wallace, Part I and II see earlier blog), then the power of the mass media in nothing to take lightly.

Read New Jim Crow, by Michelle Alexander.  Powerful and smart.

I just picked up a 2007 book that looks promising, but have not yet read it.  Anyone read Talking About Race: Community Dialogues and the Politics of Difference by Katherine Cramer Walsh and willing to share your thoughts?

Ran into this data today.  Similar to data after earlier elections showing that red states have the highest divorce rates and lowest IQs.  What does this data really tell us?  And if does not provide significant explanatory value for questions we consider important today, since we know it also insults those who bring competing perspectives into our democratic deliberations, does circulating this (and snickering about it) distort political communication and weaken democratic deliberation? 

 

And for those with a love of historical context, you can read President Nixon's plans for national health care, in his own words here.  Thanks to an old friend for sending this to me today!  Wow.  Please note, once you get to the page, on the right menu you can choose to download the document in a much more reader-friendly format.