| Number 50 | October 15, 1999 |
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This Week:
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Greetings, This week I would like to ask for a favor. My Internet service provider has got big problems. Do any of you Nygaardians have good Internet service that you can recommend? I have unlimited hours for $14.95 per month. But it's not reliable. Can anyone recommend as good a price for reliable service? And I don't want the free service that makes you look at 7,000 commercials a minute. Let me know if you have a good referral. You should see the voluminous material I edited out of this week's edition. This is getting ridiculous! Some of it, about the serious situation in Colombia, you'll see next week. Just think: when I started doing Nygaard Notes just about a year ago, I was worried about running out of ideas - Ha! I just now noticed that I screwed up the quote of the week this week, so I had to make one up. The result is that I quoted myself! This sort of thing only happens when I screw up. See ya next week. Nygaard |
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"If what we think affects what we do, then we'd better work on what we think." -- Jeff Nygaard |
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There is a relatively new group of anti-war activists in the Twin Cities, and they have a brand-new website that is worth adding to your Internet bookmarks. Here is what they say about themselves on their website: "The CISPES Anti-War Committee began in December 1998, with 13 people who committed civil disobedience to protest the bombing of Iraq. We now meet weekly to organize responses to and educate ourselves and the community about the evils of U.S. foreign policy around the world." The website includes informational links, a calendar of events, and other good stuff. The site is brand new, so it's still got a few rough edges. Go check them out - and give them feedback! - at: www.angelfire.com/mn/cispes |
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Local readers of Nygaard Notes may want to clear some space on their calendars during the week of October 25th, which will be celebrated on and around the campus of the University of Minnesota as Semana Zapatista, or "Zapatista Week." Intended to celebrate and educate about the Zapatista struggle for justice, democracy, and peace in Chiapas, Mexico, the week of programs is sponsored by the Minnesota Alliance for the Indigenous Zapatistas (MAIZ), La Raza Student Cultural Center, University Young Women, Cloudforest Initiatives, and the American Indian Learning Resource Center. From the opening ceremony on Monday October 25th through to a Thursday night showing of the film Zapatista!, the week includes panels, speakers, and who knows what else. Although not part of the official Semana, there will also be what looks to be a pretty hot night of hip-hop and spoken word, with an open mic, on Saturday night the 30th. That part is a fundraiser, so bring your cash. This whole schedule has not been nailed down, so if you want accurate details or the latest list of events, contact Emmanuel Ortiz of the Minnesota Alliance for the Indigenous Zapatistas (MAIZ), at phone number (612) 729-6832. Or E-mail him at: boricano@hotmail.com. |
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Perhaps the most interesting thing about this headline is that it appears in a "newspaper." Newspeople like to say that "Dog Bites Man" is not news, but "Man Bites Dog" is news. This is supposed to illustrate that only surprising or unusual things normally get into the paper. This is nonsense, of course. All sorts of mundane and unsurprising things get in the paper all the time. It is certainly also true that lots of surprising and unusual things never see the journalistic light of day. There are lots of reasons why this is so, but that's another column. One way that non-surprising things get into the paper is that someone releases the results of a new study. This is the case with the current example. The study they're talking about is a major five-year study by the Russell Sage Foundation and Harvard's Multidisciplinary Program in Inequality and Social Policy, called the "Multi-city Study of Urban Inequality." The Star Tribune (Newspaper of the Twin Cities!) placed this story on the bottom of page six in their October 2nd edition, apparently because they had to make room on the front page for photos of Oprah and Warren Beatty in a story entitled "Politics? That's entertainment". I have to give them some credit, though. At least they ran it. I still haven't seen a word about it in the New York Times. I have only skimmed the report itself, but it does seem to provide pretty compelling documentation of some important realities of American life, unsurprising though they may be to anyone with any race consciousness. The reason the study should be on the front page is that there are apparently many, many white people who think that Jim Crow died in the 1960s. Since the paper did such a poor job of summarizing this important study, here is a list of the study's "Findings," as published on their website. Each Finding is followed by a key quote found in the study's report on that finding.
This stuff sure seems like front page material to me. If you'd like to check out more of this report, head over to the website of the Russell Sage Foundation, at: http://www.russellsage.org/special_interest/index.htm Click on "Preliminary Findings from the MCSUI Study." |
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For the past two weeks I have been talking about how you can go about analyzing what a magazine is all about. In Part I, I gave a list of six things to look at, including:
Last week, using this process, I looked at four different magazines and gave my verdict on each of them. I said that you might read National Review to get insight into what the influential right-wing is thinking, or you might read TIME to get a read on the current political climate in mainstream America. I said that I don't expect more than entertainment from the UTNE Reader, and that Z Magazine is for social justice activists. As if anticipating Part III, one Nygaard Notes reader said to me this week, "This magazine thing is kinda weird." That's exactly what I thought people might be thinking, which is why I proposed to answer three questions in Part III:
Why would I analyze a magazine in the first place? If a complete stranger comes up to you and starts talking about politics, most of us realize that there may be some good reasons to distrust them, or even to refuse to listen to them. For example, maybe they are being paid to talk to you by someone whom you do not trust to tell the truth. Or, they may appear to be nuts. Despite the political content of their talk, they may seem to be primarily interested in your money. Maybe what they are saying does not make any sense. It could be that they are simply talking about unimportant things, and you have better uses for your time. How do you decide? You probably will ask yourself a few questions, such as: Who is this person? Why are they talking to me, and why on this subject? Why should I trust them, or not trust them? Do I care about what this person is saying? Reading an unfamiliar magazine is like talking to a stranger about politics. So, before you read an unfamiliar magazine, you might want to ask yourself the same questions. First off, who is this magazine? Check out it's references, the authors, the editors, and the supporters. Steps 1, 4, & 5 deal with this question. Secondly, why are they talking to me? Check out the cover and the ads. Steps 3 and 6 give clues in this area. Thirdly, why is this magazine talking specifically about these issues? Here there are two reasons, and they are connected to the previous question. The people running the magazine may genuinely care about these issues, and want you to care about them, too. Or they may choose these issues because they are likely to get the most people to look at them. Here is where Hearst and his puppies and pretty girls on the cover come in. Monica Lewinsky works well here, too. Steps number 2, 4, 5, and 6 are intended to answer this question. Finally, is it even worth your time to read this magazine? That depends on what you are looking for in a magazine. You'll have to answer that for yourself. How do I do this analysis if I don't have lots of knowledge about writers and editors before I start? Talk to your friends. That always works. Of course, you have to have friends who know something in the first place. I'm sure most readers of Nygaard Notes have a few well-informed friends, but if you don't, not to worry: That's what the Internet is for. These days, if you want to know what a magazine is all about, you can go on the Internet and punch in the name of the editor, or any of the writers, and see what you come up with. Lots of times you will find articles that tell you pretty quickly what they are about. Sometimes you will even find brief biographies that will tell you with whom they are affiliated. Maybe the editor has authored an article defending eugenics, or one of the writers is on the advisory board for Earth First! Either way, you get a hint as to the type of publication you're looking at. Could I use this analytical approach in other places in my life? Of course you can use this approach in other areas of your life! There is no reason why this process should be limited to magazines. You can modify this process and use it to assess all of your information sources. Many of you probably already have your own process. This column is simply my attempt to write down how I do it, which I hope will help you to think about and appreciate how you do it. One added benefit to thinking about this stuff: when you can consciously think about something that you usually do unconsciously, then you can check it to see if it really works the way you want it to. An obvious example would be when your "intuition" tells you not to trust a certain person. If you are able to really think about it, and if you are capable of being honest with yourself, sometimes you will discover that your "intuition" is really based in prejudice instead of clear thinking. That's pretty important for anybody to know, but it's especially important for those of us who have power based on our class, or our race, or our gender, or any number of other things. That's because, when you take prejudice and add power, you elevate that simple prejudice to the level of oppression. That's a whole other discussion that we don't have time for right now. |