The two loudest cable TV commentators recently decided to fix America.  This fall, millions witnessed a pair of huge political rallies in support of two equally esoteric principles.  Each rally drew hundreds of thousands of confused supporters where God and Sanity (respectively) were declared vital components to the American political process.  Unfortunately, when all was said and done no one knew what either side was talking about.  This essay is dedicated to Jon Stewart, who should have known better.

Normally he is satirizing an old point, but when Jon Stewart has something original to say, big things happen.  The last time he put his foot down, Tucker Carlson was out of a job and CNN’s afternoon lineup was left wide open.  Crossfire was hurting America, Stewart argued, and America agreed.  Recently, Jon Stewart let his other shoe drop in front of two hundred thousand Americans (and millions more on TV).  It was a major undertaking; restore sanity to the broken American political process.  Three days later, America responded with confusion.  Somehow the Republican Party, boasting the lowest approval rating in recorded history, recaptured control of the House of Representatives.

Holding a rally in support of political sanity is like arguing against a thunderstorm.  No amount of logic will prevent hail from falling or wind from blowing.  There is no counter-argument to a lightning crash.  There is no sanity to restore because there has never been sanity in any political system.  This is an obvious point, but not to the millions of fans of the Daily Show.  What are they looking for and what is Stewart’s point?  Nobody knows.

Jon Stewart is rallying for something that does not exist.  There is no utopian Grecian Senate that deliberates over the issues of the day in cold and stoic colloquies.  He is making a very public and compelling mistake that is dragging millions of potential voters away from the polls.  The 45 million voters who saw a clear distinction between the Republican and Democratic candidates in 2008 decided to sit out the 2010 mid-term elections.  To put this in perspective: if those 45 million voters decided to sit out in 2008, Vice President Palin would be deciding split votes in the Senate today.

Why is the media forgiving Stewart’s confusion?  They remember Tucker Carlson.

Jon Stewart is funny and smart and he is also confused.  He satirizes partisan media for establishing a false equivalency between left and right.  If Obama is for this, the Republicans are for that.  If Glenn Beck is against this, Keith Olbermann is for that.  This equivalency is impossible because neither side is having the same conversation.  Keith Olbermann is arguing that America needs a public option and Glenn Beck is arguing that Obama is Hitler.  Obama is arguing that tax cuts for the richest Americans will explode the deficit while Republicans argue that Obama is Hitler.  This example is real and it reinforces the idea that our political conversations are indeed insane.   But what problem is Stewart trying to solve?

Facts are ugly and divisive and there is no way to sugar coat them.  Stewart recently sugar coated a really ugly fact.  George Bush’s memoir proudly declares that the phrase “Damn Right” officially authorized waterboarding as US Policy.  Waterboarding has been declared torture by US and international law for over 50 years.  Those are the facts.  Stewart suggested in an interview with Rachel Maddow that the framing of those facts spoils the discussion.  ”I wouldn’t suggest [the argument against torture] was that this was bad for the country but that [President Bush] is a bad man.”  We are now off-course and discussing something else entirely; rather than question the ramifications of President Bush’s potential war crimes, we are now concerned by the bad names people might call the President.  Is this sane?  Rarely will the facts be so clear when discussing something so important.  The President’s memoir admits the crime but Stewart refuses to pursue the issue because doing so would be partisan, leading to conflict and perpetuating the insanity.

Jon Stewart gets to argue that the system is insane without admitting his role in it.  That may not be insane, but it is dishonest.  He gets to have his cake and eat his cake.  In the Rally, Stewart created an equivalency between Keith Olbermann and Glenn Beck.  Both men are unlikeable, popular, rich, and shout ugly and divisive things to an agreeable audience.  It is a false equivalency; however, as Keith Olbermann doesn’t hold rallies.  The real equivalence is between Glenn Beck and Jon Stewart.  They’re both rallying at windmills with an army of fans behind them.  Meanwhile, the powers-that-be go on about their business undisturbed.

An everyday order belies the incredible weirdness of life.   There are phrases and words and compliments and mannerisms and womannerisms and made up words and single and double and triple entendres all like a giant raging river and it’s dammed and controlled by whatisit? our language or our God or our culture or our wommanerisms or our nationality?  I won’t even venture a guess.  But it’s controlled – only slightly, barely, as if a tiny hole would bring the whole thing crashing down.  It’s controlled and harnessed, as best as can be expected by the things we take for granted.  The power of language and ideas and conversations and arguments and confusion and boredom.  It’s all important.  This video plays with language the way today’s child plays a video game.  It’s sure-footed and quick and it comes out of a place apart – let’s call it the shore of the river that’s dammed by God.  Was that a pun?  Dammed by God.  Damned by God.  Does that even have to make sense?  Remember the river is life or truth or something I probably didn’t clarify because I never claimed to know in the first place.

The things I don’t know are probably not answers to questions.  They are things though, I can tell you that – they are items that can be quantified and probably stacked like books.  But books are filled with more things listed on pages.  Those pages are counted and numbered and then read and turned-over.  The aggregate of those things leads to less things but bigger things.  Bigger things are probably more important things; things with weight.  What is the thing of a book?

2666 is 900 pages of things that I’ve read and loved and when you ask me what is the book about? I answer back that it is probably…… probably about life – life like living, the verb part of life, the noun.  It’s a documentation of many things that are semi-related but man, they are barely semi-related.  The only thing linking them is the beating heart and blood and raging stupid sweaty hormonal thoughts of the characters involved.  God are they stupid.  God, did I love this book.  What was it about?  It’s about that god damn river.  Did we even get to the part where we wonder where the river originated and to where it leads?  Do metaphors have myths and origins?

Slate.com can’t ask you about the T or the Metro because it doesn’t know who you are.  And if it knew who you are, then it would know where you are.  That knowledge is the thing that makes a cloud-based publication a community.  That knowledge is the thing that can be harnessed to solicit information of value from a community that is not interested solely in prize money but rather in the value that is collected by the community itself.  Because the community shares a problem that needs to be solved.

So Slate.com which may or may not succeed in solving the world’s transportation woes made me realize recently the difference between an online publication with user-accounts and comments sections and blogs and the same thing that is also an online community.  I posted a solution to transportation woes and if you were to be so kind, I ask you to please vote in favor of my smart buses solution.

Mario!  Welcome to Nintendo Presents Super Mario Brothers!  Press Right or Left to Walk!

The original Mario Brothers was intuitive and that made it so interesting (I knew I loved it when I first got it).  The point of a game is not always to solve it – the point of the game is to play the game and the point of playing is to not have a point.  The concept of making the web simpler has invaded a space that was doing just fine, thank you.  The web should be confusing in some circumstances.  Let’s not breed a generation of web users that depend on instructions, please.  We can overdesign every experience into a useless gesture – like telling two chess players what moves to make.  Eventually, they stop playing the game and start moving the pieces.

I know why we’re doing this.  I’m guilty of it myself.  There is a glut of step-by-step instructions living online.  They’re ugly.  They’re confusing.  They’re everywhere.

New sites are streamlining these lists with friendlier presentations.  Foursquare is the latest hottest newest coolest thing.  They don’t even have landing pages on their site!  I went there to grab their how-to list and found a video instead:

What am I getting at here?  I don’t know, man.  This whole thing is just an exercise for me to just write anyway…  Foursquare has to be defined – it takes a long video to do it and the answer I get to this question: what is foursquare?  Is: a thing that makes you happy.  Which is probably a good answer, because, when I ask myself as if I wasn’t answering this question: what is Super Mario Brothers?  I say: it’s a game, shut up; just keep moving to the right and you’ll save the princess (and isn’t the dungeon music awesome?).  But SMB didn’t require a 2 minute video to define the product.  Not because anyone knew what the thing was – but because nobody needed to be told about it.

Why didn’t they need to be told about it?  Because they were too busy playing it to ask.

♣ Post Script ♣

Check out this interview with Shigero Miyamoto & Satoru Iwata – the top dogs at Nintendo, Miyamoto being the originator of SMB – about their work and how they “trained” users to know the difference between a turtle, bad, and a mushroom, good, without telling the user.

http://us.wii.com/iwata_asks/nsmb/vol1_page4.jsp

Like I said, I’m a regular reader – going on two years.  It took me a while to understand the format of the Daily Dish.  The rapid fire posts, the jump-links.  The various awards and photos.  You are right, this is a broadcast medium at heart and I climbed the learning-curve because you were constantly refreshing content and I was stimulated enough to endure.  Now I’m on top, so to speak, and the view is a crystal clear vista of a brick wall.

I do not associate your content with the Atlantic Monthly.  I think that’s important.  I do not associate your content with anything other than yourself.  Your friends, your enemies, your opinions, your arguments, your obsessions, your everything.  For a while, I was satisfied with that.  Your perspective offers readers your expertise on various DC goings on.  Additionally your personal story is compelling enough to color several socio-political issues with a relevant point of view.  But your POV is only valuable if it’s directed outward.  But The Dish is an inward-facing organism.  Hence, my shabby view.  I only see you.

So…

This is all about you, Andrew.  Isn’t that weird?  Sit on that for a minute.  As your reader, I’m tracking you in real time deal with too much information.  I know you know that.  You’ve said it before – this is what blogs do.  But that doesn’t sit well with me.  I don’t care that much about you.  Should I?

I started reading Studs Terkel recently.  I see meaningful connections between his work and yours.  Our evolving society has meaning and texture.  Essentially, you both strive to document and ponder our life in this place.  Studs found meaning in the people – their fragments and stories – the things that they did, didn’t do – the fun stuff and boring stuff.  Some of it meaningful and lots of it confusing.  Studs took fragments out of the whole and weaved together a contextualized story.  It took time and patience and editing.  Studs was a hub of information.  He organized it and provided that context.  Your work is on the other end of the spectrum – the boring stuff, the fun stuff, the right stuff, the wrong stuff – the dissents, the back-pats – all of it is from you, about you.

Your expertise is valuable.  It is lost on Chris Matthews’ rapid fire show where fellow pundits pass around a hot potato until the next issue.  It is diluted by the wide-open valve that is the Daily Dish.  It is hollowed out by an echo chamber unto itself, as represented by the blog roll on the bottom right of your page.

This is not an email where I tell you that I’m done reading your work.  I’m trying to make a broader point.  Why does your process matter? Patton Oswalt has a great bit about preventing George Lucas from making the prequels. The punchline (word for word): I don’t give a shit where the stuff I love comes from; I just love the stuff I love.

Well anyway, I’ll keep reading.  This is getting interesting.