This certainly is a little weird when you think about it. From the NYT:

Human rights organizations and the co-chairman of the Congressional Human Rights Caucus protested on Thursday a decision by the Bush administration to back a measure introduced by Iran denying two gay rights groups a voice at the United Nations.

In a vote Monday, the United States supported Iran's recommendation to deny consultative status at the United Nations' Economic and Social Council to the Danish National Association for Gays and Lesbians and the International Lesbian and Gay Association, based in Belgium.
...
Among countries with which the United States sided were Cuba, Sudan and Zimbabwe, nations the State Department has cited in annual reports for their harsh treatment of homosexuals.

Emphasis mine. Link found via Digby.

The official excuse is that these groups were once (along with one of my heroes, Alan Ginsburg) affiliated with NAMBLA, an affiliation which ended more than 10 years ago. By most accounts, NAMBLA no longer really exists as an organization, other than as a couple PO boxes and a website... and apparently as a convenient boogyman for justifying homophobic US diplomacy.

But it's nice to see we can see eye to eye with Iran, Cuba and Sudan in terms of keeping fags out of the UN. Nice job, Bolton.

Just watched the first 7 episodes of Boondocks. It's seems to be just finding it's stride, the timing could be tighter at times, but it's most definiately smart and most definitely art. The comedy pushes the envelope constantly, and the visuals are quite cinematic.

I, of course, enjoy the politics. I mean, the episode with the two whiteboy gangsters named W and Rummy, and W's voiced by Charlie Murphy and Rummy's voiced by Samuel L. Jackson, and he's shouting, "The absense of evidence is not evidence of absence!" and "That's an unknown unknown!" while on a spree of robbery disguised as vigilantism... that was fucking funny.

I torrented the pack of episodes because I'd been curious about the show (have enjoyed the comic strip) but then I heard somewhere it wasn't good. Since I don't have cable, I never saw for myself. But then I read this post by Steve Gillard:

Besides the gorgeous, anime-level animation, the politcs here are much more aggressive than in the strip. The word nigga is the least reason to complain about the show. The grandfather beats a man to death over an argument, Uncle Rukus is a self-hating black man who would surpass the clowns who work for NRO. In short, there is a lot to dislike about the show.

But, the fact is that this is the first time a non-rapper, non-novelist gets to have a forum to discuss black life from someone under 50. This is a nearly unique perspective on modern African American life and it is not comfortable at times. But it is not ignorant either. It is extremely well thought out and makes points in a way which need to be made.

That sounded interesting, so I decided to check it out. Ironically, Steve's blog post was in response to Al Sharpton asking Aaron McGruder (the creator of the show and strip) to apologize for a recent episode which I have not seen that they did with Dr. King. So, you have me getting turned on to a show because Al Sharpton called for the creator to apologize for the show being offensive. Fucking postmodern, yeah.

Anyway, enjoyable comedy. I heard they got renewed. Many happy returns to McGruder and cheers to Comedy Central Cartoon Network (thanks Stephen... it's all bittorrent to me) for taking a chance on something nonstandard.

I call bullshit.

The City of LA is suing Take Two Interactive, parent of Rockstar Games and publisher of Grand Theft Auto, after a sexy easter egg was uncovered in San Andreas. Here's the bit that threatens our children's sanity. It's not even titilating, and I like that it includes the message "Nice guys finish second," which is a good idea to spread among the gaming youth, and IT'S TOTALLY RIDICULOUS THAT THIS SOMEHOW REPRESENTS A CRIME.

The game is already faimously violent. It carries a M rating for Mature. You shouldn't let your 10 year old play it, probably. But this "porn" scene isn't going to warp the mind of any child.

Oh, and Rockey is running for State Attorney General. Coincidence?

And he's a Democrat. Nice work picking up Joementum's methodology. Way to dump on the future of your party, guys (see below).

From a kos diary which covers Bush approval from a number of angles. I just have a particular interest in this. Look at some of these trends:

Texas:

55+	35 - 55	18 - 34

About the only place this dynamic isn't at work is in Utah, which actually has the precise reverse. Utah Youth Stand By Their Leader! Well, actually, Maine seems to have the same thing going on, though to a much less extreme degree. It woudld be interesting to map demographic changes as well, as in which states have young people moving away, which ones have them staying, etc.

But for scholars of electorality, just check the deep blue character of the youth in Ohio, Florida and PA. I'm aware of the old saw about how if you're not a liberal with your young you have no heart, but I think this is more than just your typical young/old liberal/conservative spread. Younger people don't pay much attention to the 24-hour cable ecosystem, which is the central hub of the Bush propaganda message machine. Younger Americans are more likely to be looking online for their information, and while this presents some dangers in that it's easy to stay in a partisan crease on the internet, the general quantity, quality and depth of information you get is a cut above the high-fructose corn syrup that the talking heads offer, if only because of the prevalence of linking.

As the semantic web emerges both in thought and in deed, and as commenting/publishing systems become better suited to sustaining conversation and debate, there's a chance that the signal-to-noise ratio online will improve, especially if improvements in social behavior (e.g. the type of stuff I see Glenn Greenwald succeeding in doing in terms of really trying to engage other writers) create a culture of inquiry rather than a playground shouting match.

It's not going to happen overnight. The info-war tactics of the "Conservative Movement," as well as the counter-tactics from the left-wing resistance, have left us literally in a state of cold civil war. That'll take some time to defuse, but when it happens (and it will, one way or another), there's a decent chance that if the Internet is still Free (as in Freedom), that a much more productive, advanced and inclusive civil society could emerge. I'm hoping it's here by the time I have kids in high school.

Here's some video. It's really pretty astounding. She might as well have gotten her talking points straight from Karl Rove. Maybe this is how they do their interviews on the Today Show -- taking on the role of the political opposition -- but I'd be surprised if Ken Mehlman (head of the GOP) or any member of the Bush Administration got the same treatment.

Pretty Cool -- My old org, Music for America, is voting a regular member/volunteer onto their Board of Directors:

The winner will receive an all-expense-paid trip to San Francisco for the MFA Icon Awards and will serve for one year on the MFA Board of Directors, effectively becoming (gulp!) our boss. So please, choose wisely! We beg you!

Oh, and remember, first 50 voters receive a free cd with music from Death Cab for Cutie, Bright Eyes, Elliot Smith, R.E.M., Tom Waits, Nada Surf, David Byrne, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and more. Incentive!

If you've ever done any MFA stuff, you should vote! I'm still thinking it over.

Pretty Cool -- My old org, Music for America, is voting a regular member/volunteer onto their Board of Directors:

The winner will receive an all-expense-paid trip to San Francisco for the MFA Icon Awards and will serve for one year on the MFA Board of Directors, effectively becoming (gulp!) our boss. So please, choose wisely! We beg you!

Oh, and remember, first 50 voters receive a free cd with music from Death Cab for Cutie, Bright Eyes, Elliot Smith, R.E.M., Tom Waits, Nada Surf, David Byrne, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and more. Incentive!

If you've ever done any MFA stuff, you should vote! I'm still thinking it over.

Pretty Cool -- My old org, Music for America, is voting a regular member/volunteer onto their Board of Directors:

The winner will receive an all-expense-paid trip to San Francisco for the MFA Icon Awards and will serve for one year on the MFA Board of Directors, effectively becoming (gulp!) our boss. So please, choose wisely! We beg you!

Oh, and remember, first 50 voters receive a free cd with music from Death Cab for Cutie, Bright Eyes, Elliot Smith, R.E.M., Tom Waits, Nada Surf, David Byrne, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and more. Incentive!

If you've ever done any MFA stuff, you should vote! I'm still thinking it over.

Hamas wins big in Palestine.

Frank has the best buzzword reaction I've seen yet: Rogue Democracy. We've got Rogue Democracies in Palestine, in Venezuela, in Bolivia and who knows where next. Maybe right here in the good old US of A? This must be stopped...

This is the harsh reality of Bush's statecraft. If you go around pushing democracy while simultaniously turning most of the world against your policies, you're going to have some unhappy results.

Tell Me What You See Here:

This is about 50,000 people downloading episodes 10 and 12 of Lost off a popular bittorrent tracking site. If you're in the entertainment industry, your answer is going to be something along the lines of "$100,000 in lost revenue!" At $2 a download from the itunes store, that is the direct equivalency, so there's a certain kind of logic here.

However, this sort of grade-school economic arithmatic isn't how the world really works. I fileshare a good portion of my media intake, including shows like Lost, but that doesn't mean ABC and Apple are missing out on my $2, because I wouldn't pay $2 an episode to watch the show, especially not at the quality level (well below broadcast) that's provided via iTunes.

As a media consumer, the DVD set, which will include 25 or so episodes for $60 retail, offers a better value. Savvy mathamaticians will point out that this is slightly more than $2 and episode, but there are important differences:

• A DVD set will have HD-quality visual resolution and sound. The iTunes version will have about a quarter the visual resolution.
• With iTunes I need to provide my own valuable hard-drive space (close to 10GB a season) to store my media. The DVD set is its own archive.
• The DVD set can be easily loaned to friends. Apple's DRM prevents me from introducing my friends to one of my favorite media experiences on their own time, unless I want to give them my iPod.

I could go on, but the point is that the $2-a-show download from Apple's iTunes is a poor bargan for media consumers v.s purchasing a DVD set. The only benefit is that you get to watch it today rather than in several months, but this option is open to anyone with a television, a pair of rabbit ears and a clock, let alone one of these newfangled "VCR"s or futuristic "TiVo"s. So there's that.

The other point about Lost's "lost revenue" is that a lot of these people were never going to buy the DVD either. Read this next part slowly if you're an industry person: If the filesharing option didn't exist, a lot of these downloaders simply wouldn't watch the show. I'm in that camp. If I didn't have filesharing, I might be more likely to join NetFlix or some similar group, and I might rent more movies from the video store, but I'm not a high-rolling media consumer. Never have been. The same dynamic holds true of music vis-a-vis Naptser and the subsequent p2p networks.

Will the entertainment industry get smart?

The interesting thing is that I think the industry benefits from this, whether it realizes it or not. It's widely understood that Microsoft has made piracy a part of their strategy in rolling out new software: they would ignore it and let it help spread the word about a new product, even through several versions (1.0, 2.0, 3.0, etc) until finally when they'd gotten enough user feedback and a broad enough userbase -- when people were actually semi-dependent on this piece of code -- they release the next version (4.0), lock out previous versions, generally drop the hammer in a number of ways, and thus maximize their profits.

Making use of illicit filesharing to boost popularity and grow an audience, followed by a strong move to capitalize on that market, should produce good financial results, though methods for this need development. The mid-season release of the first half of Battlestar Galactica Season 2 on DVD is an interesting experiment, one I predicted we'd see about a month ago. This obviously has stronger applications now for youth and techie oriented products, and at almost $5 an episode I think Battlestar is pricing itself out of the market, but give it five years and something like this will be the norm for any hot media product.

The business of entertainment has a populist character. You're trying to make money by pleasing people through your hard creative work. The current model for television is financed by advertising, which sort of turns the nature of entertainment on its head: the consumer of media is the real product, their assumed eyeball-time sold to advertisers to reap profits for the studio and finance further production(s). This revenue model (along with the idea of financing many failed projects with a few hit properties) is falling apart in the information age as eyeball-time fragments, independent production continues to grow, and broadcast advertising looses its punch.

I would like to see an open source entertainment endeavor: one which makes its finances largely public, its products available (at Sub-DVD quality) for free, and which is clear that it's relying on viewers to support it (though DVD purchases, other merchandise, or simply direct donations) to keep up production. It's sort of an OpenPBS model -- "this show is supported by viewers like you" -- but I think it would work if you could get the initial nut together and you had a good idea, good talent, and a sound community-marketing effort on board.