Walter Lipp, man

The further we go in this semester, it seems the more hopeless, for lack of a better word, the world around us is. That is, whether it's news bias, personal or information, stereotypes, or even the tendency to ignore unions in reporting, it begins to seem almost impossible to walk outside, watch a man break a stick, and actually know if you just walked outside and watched a man break a stick.

Perhaps he was a transsexual, or even a hermaphrodite, or just a mannish woman? Maybe the stick was more twig than stick, or more baseball bat than twig?

Walter Lippmann's famed statement, "we do not first see and then define, we define and then see" calls into question if what we actually think we see is truly so, or if our preconceptions intrinsically morph our brains into creating a type of smoke screen to filter images into what we subconsciously want them to be.

Now, that's not to say everyone should go all Roland Barthes and call language a barrier that makes meaning further removed an extraneous step. But it is important to realize that Lippmann is in many rights correct--humans accrue knowledge which they unnecessarily use to shape what they see and learn in the future.

What's the point of retaining anything if you're not going to use it in the future?

That said, however, there are certainly negative aspects to working in stereotypes. Take for example the group below, which defined its stance on President Bush's Supreme Court nominees (several of which were never really in contention) months in advance, before hearing any criticism that might deter what they ended up seeing.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/14/politics/politicsspecial1/14progress.html?pagewanted=all

"Though the group describes itself as an independent grass-roots organization, it receives millions of dollars from the president's largest fund-raisers, is run by former Bush campaign aides and draws heavy support from a Republican lobbying and consulting firm in Washington.
As a result, Progress for America often functions like an unofficial extension of the White House, advancing the president's policies alongside the Republican National Committee. "

By aligning itself with the administration regardless of any of Bush's future actions, the group predefines what it is to see. That is, by becoming more than a staunch supporter, the group doesn't allow itself the chance to even think about criticizing or disagreeing with a Bush policy, because it has already ascribed to a "can do no harm" view of the president.

Definitions do change what people see. Just ask recently defeated Rep. candidate for governor of NJ, who is claiming in the wake of his horrible showing at the polls that by being lumped in with President Bush--who he claims has gained a negative image in the last few weeks due to the horrific handling of Katrina--he lost an election that had little to do with the president.

That little "R" next to his name at the polls is the most basic of definitions we have in this country, and yet instead mobilizing a party line, it may have cost Doug Forrester the state.

Instead of focusing specifically on "the issues" the Forrester claims his opponent, Dem. Jon Corzine tried repeatedly to link Forrester to Bush, which he hoped would play on people's changing definition of Bush so they'd see a negative image of Forrester as well.

---As a result, he said, "it was not a foolish thing" that Mr. Corzine had sought repeatedly to link him to the Bush administration. "If Bush's numbers were where they were a year ago, or even six months ago, I think we would have won on Tuesday," Mr. Forrester told the newspaper, in his first interview since losing to Mr. Corzine, by 53 percent to 44 percent. "Katrina was the tipping point."---

The rest of the story is here: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/14/nyregion/metrocampaigns/14bush.html

I have refrained from using the name of the group in the first example until now in order to underlie my point. By calling itself Progress for America, the group seeks to predefine itself to the hoi polloi, so that they will "see" what the group wants them to see--a progressive, positive group seeking to improve the US, not a partisan group receiving millions a year from the president's own party to further his agenda.

By that logic, I am hereby renaming this blog "The greatest blog ever, by which all future blogs will be compared."

Now if that works, we'll really know Lippmann was on to something.