HOTT News Adds Pundit to the Mix

HOTT News--set to debut next month--has hired a full-time pundit to cover the 2012 presidential election. Che Clinton, who will only say his educational background is having a Ph.D. in punditry, is excited to join the HOTT News team. "I join the cable news industry at a critical time. CNN is on life support, FOX News is completely discredited, and MSNBC has hit a ratings ceiling. No one can find Current TV in their cable package. So here we come."

Curious about his first name, I asked if it was a tribute to Che Guevara. "I'm sorry, but I don't know who that is. Che is short for cliche. I specialize in cliches. You know, you can't spell my name without cliche!" I asked Mr. Clinton what kind of political expertise he will bring to the HOTT News round table. "Not much. Basically, I just repeat what I hear other people saying, but I say it in more interesting ways. Analysis is paralysis, as I like to say. Analysis is for goons is another. Primarily, I'm here to fun chat." Fun chat? Did I hear that right? Mr. Clinton continued: "Cable news excels at manufacturing controversy. And the talking heads are admirable in their blowhardness. But there's no fun. Except for Bill O'Reilly's quizzes about pop culture from the 1960s. That's super fun. Aside from that, it's miserable. Talking, talking, talking. It's bad enough to be stuck in an airport. Can you imagine being stuck in an airport and having to watch CNN? OMG, I'm having a nervous breakdown just thinking about it."

I asked Mr. Clinton if he wanted to share any observations about the 2012 presidential contest. "This election is going to be about paper or plastic. 2008 was all about the kitchen table. You know, the kitchen table as a metaphor for families hunkering down to figure out their budget and pay bills. Well, any pundit who says "kitchen table" or "pocketbook" is working with yesterday's cliches. This year the big cliche is "paper or plastic," meaning when you go to the grocery store you're given the choice of paper or plastic. Personally, I ask for both, because the paper sack is a perfect container for my empty cans and bottles, and I use plastic bags to seal up my one-year-old's poopy diapers. Sorry, TMI! But really, "paper or plastic" as a metaphor for grocery bills is going to be my bread and butter cliche. Bet on it."

Wow, he sure is good. I have to admit, I'm likely to tune in when Mr. Clinton mans the cliche machine next month on HOTT News.

Fight the Power Tools

Father's Day is around the corner. You know what that means: plenty of advertisements for power tools, golf balls, and neckties. Please, no drills or circular saws for me. I don't know how to use them. For me, a power tool is a laptop. Skip the golf balls too. It's not good family policy to spend five hours on a golf course hitting balls into sand and water. No one is comfortable wearing neckties (except for Mitt Romney), so don't buy those either. Can we order up some new cultural images of men? Are there fathers that we know that might like other kinds of gifts? How about a book? Maybe even a cookbook. No, not the ones about grilling meat. How about a simple cookbook for practical family meals with vegetables too!

Check out this Sears ad for Father's Day: "This is Destination Dad." No thanks. Instead, how about a gift certificate to a local restaurant that the family enjoys?

I give JCPenney credit for noticing that not all dads are exactly the same. They departed script with an advertisement of a gay couple and their children. Offering a diverse image of dads earned JCPenney a boycott from a group called One Million Moms (a group that doesn't actually consist of one million moms).

Recognizing the work of parents is a worthy endeavor (of course, the validation needn't come by way of consumerism). By all means, find some way to acknowledge the work of dads on this Father's Day. Buy something if you have to. Maybe even try to find a family-friendly gift for a dad that doesn't involve power tools, golf balls, or ties. (How about one of those awesome #1 Dad t-shirts?)

E-Mail and Conversations

Sherry Turkle's opinion piece, "The Flight From Conversation," was published more than a month ago in The New York Times. Her main point is that nothing substitutes for face-to-face conversation. Alongside Twitter and Facebook, she mentions e-mail as a form of communication that pales in comparison to face-to-face conversation. She says that when we communicate using technology, we do so in a faster, less nuanced manner than when we converse in person. In face-to-face conversations, she says, we are more attentive to other people's viewpoints.

I've thought about her piece a lot since reading it last month. Today, it occurred to me that my best friendship has been sustained by e-mail. My best friend and I graduated from college in 1994. Since then, we have almost always lived 500 miles apart. We get together in person a few times a year. Between visits, we rely on e-mail to stay in touch. Neither of us like to use the phone. Never have. But we both like e-mail and have consistently used it in the course of our friendship. Sometimes the messages consist of frivolous one-liners and not-so-important updates. Other times they have included serious exchanges filled with deep meaning. There are things that are hard for me to say to anyone's face, for fear of being judged for what I have to say or how I say it. E-mail has allowed me to say what I want to say in a careful and measured way. Turkle sees this as a problem. Human relationships are messy and we use technology to clean them up, she says. To that I would say without e-mail, there are things I never would have said to anyone in any way. In college and graduate school I hid a lot of my thoughts in diaries. I've opened up since then, but not totally. There are lots of thoughts I choose not to share. E-mail allows me to carefully share some of those sensitive thoughts. I don't see this as being shortchanged. Nor do I want to pick up the phone every time I want to share a book recommendation with my friend or ask him for a movie recommendation. Occasionally he sends me a hilarious account of something that happened to him. Then I can read it 2-3 times because it's such a great story and I get to enjoy it more than once.

Aside from describing the centrality of e-mail in an important friendship, I want to briefly say something about conversational skills. Being a college professor, most of my daily conversations are with students. Unlike me, they grew up with cell phones. For many of them, Facebook is a vital part of their lives. And yes, they are experts at texting. I also find they possess good conversational skills. I regularly speak with students face-to-face. I am generally impressed by how they carry on conversations. They send me e-mails too, but it's not a flight from conversation. Turkle is right in saying that human relationships are rich. I think that all of the ways we communicate make our relationships rich. We talk, we text. We text while we talk. There are so many ways to enjoy each other. I like a good conversation as much as anyone. But in my life I've found that good conversations are hard to find. So I'm happy to connect with people in any way that I can.

HOTT News Developing Show to Compete with 60 Minutes

Lee Roger Hodgson, Developer of Programming for HOTT News, plans to take on 60 Minutes. Hodgson grew up watching 60 Minutes and has profound respect for the show. "Ed Bradley was my hero growing up," said Hodgson, "He was an outstanding journalist." But Hodgson believes the show needs a serious tweak, and that's where HOTT News enters the fray. Hodgson envisons a thirty minute show with shorter segments. Tentatively, the program is called 30 Minutes. Hodgson explained what he has in mind: "The premise is that sixty minutes is just too long. So why not cut it in half? We're thinking four segments, each of them slightly over seven minutes in length. Fast and fun, baby! And no commercial breaks. Instead, the occasional advertisement will scroll at the bottom of the screen. We're also toying with the idea of our correspondents occasionally wearing corporate logos for a revenue stream."

I asked Hodgson if investigative journalism would be the key feature of 30 Minutes. "Absolutely not," he said without blinking. "No no no no no. No. We plan to take the investigative journalism out of investigative journalism. I mean, maybe a correspondent will be able to slip a piece of investigative journalism by us once in a while. But ultimately, we regard investigative journalism as a thing of the past."

So what does Hodgson have in mind? And if it's not investigative journalism, how does he expect 30 Minutes to compete with 60 Minutes? "Did you see Anderson Cooper's interview of Michael Phelps?" Hodgson asked. "That was brilliant! Cooper palling around with Phelps, the two of them playing a video game. That was inspiring television. You won't find a television executive who wasn't impressed by that. I won't kid you, that's exactly the kind of thing we want to do. Infotainment. What the world needs now is more infotainment. We believe that's the direction 60 Minutes is heading. Believe me, we won't be out-infoentertained by 60 Minutes!

So there you have it: 30 Minutes will offer short segments of infotainment without commercial breaks. Sounds to me like 60 Minutes will soon have a serious competitor to confront.

"Living by the Book" - A Video about Facebook

This is a student-made video about Facebook. One of my students reached out to me for a sociological perspective of Facebook. I briefly appear in the video after being described as a "social media expert." That's a generous introduction, but not quite true. Anyway, it was a nice compliment, and I was glad to add my sociological two cents to this terrific video. I think the students did an outstanding job.

Living By The Book from Amanda Galster on Vimeo.

Asking is Teaching

Lately I've been thinking about questions. Upon the death of Mike Wallace, much was made of his ability to ask good questions. Commentators spoke with admiration for his ability to ask tough questions and elicit information from interview subjects. I noticed some debate about the actual value of the responses he received, and naturally Wallace had critics who accused him as barely more than a showman.

But this isn't about television. This is about asking good questions in our classrooms.

Asking good questions in the classroom is an art form. I consider it an essential tool for the craft of teaching. I'm always trying to ask good questions. These are some of my favorite questions to ask in the classroom:

1. So, what do you make of this? This question basically asks a student to give her/his opinion. It's a simple open-ended question that begins discussion. No doubt it calls for a follow-up question.

2. Do you want to say more? Some students are comfortable talking a lot, others prefer to say something brief. Quite often a student only gives me a little answer, but I love the content in the initial offering. And so I give the student an opportunity to expand her/his thoughts.

3. Can you think of a counterexample? It's common practice to ask for examples, but I also like to ask for counterexamples. It's a wonderful way for students to engage with the subject matter.

I said earlier this isn't about television, but TV interviewers do provide an interesting frame of reference. An interviewer like Bill O'Reilly often behaves like an interrogator. Supposedly on the hunt for "the truth," he promises to find information in a fair and balanced manner (laugh track). As you can see from my three questions above, I pose questions in a gentle manner. I'm not out to prosecute them. I'm not out to embarrass them or put them on the spot. I want them to have their say and to think critically about the material--key parts of the learning process.

Here are a few more examples of questions I ask on a regular basis:

4. Do we agree with what the student just said? One way I get students to think critically is to have them discuss the ideas of their peers. Suppose a student says something controversial or something that is easily fact-checked. In such cases, I let the students do the work by asking students to respond to what a student has said. Sometimes students voluntarily do this work by raising their hands, but I often have to prod them to challenge their peers. I work hard to ensure that the conversation between students proceeds in a respectful way.

5. What's a counterpoint? Gotta say, I love this question. It opens the door to an additional point of view. Sometimes I ask this to a student who has just said something, thereby making the student immediately come up with an alternative viewpoint. I frequently ask it as another way for students to engage with the ideas of their peers. It's also gives students a way to discuss the information I'm presenting at the moment. This lets them know that they can question whatever it is that I'm teaching. Just because I'm teaching something doesn't mean that I'm trying to convince them of something. In fact, this leads to one more example:

6. Do you buy this? Admittedly, this is the kind of question you might hear on television. It's not the smartest question in the world. But suppose you've just spent twenty or thirty minutes introducing a set of ideas. You notice students aren't nodding. They seem to understand what they're hearing, but they're skeptical. Perhaps they're not comfortable voicing an opinion that runs counter to what you've presented; that is, until you ask "Do you buy this?" The question assures them that they are welcome to disagree with the premise of the material you've just taught.

All of these questions come around to the same goal: getting students to think, getting students to articulate their viewpoints, encouraging students to consider various perspectives, and teaching students to discuss ideas in a respectful and serious manner.

No doubt about it, folks: asking is teaching.

Author's note: I recognize some of these questions aren't a good fit in a Research Methods or Statistics course. The six questions I've included here are ones I frequently use in my Introduction to Sociology course and topical courses.

the bluest collar

lethargic jazz

plays my bones

leads me away from the zone

be-bop-be

sleep please come to me

send what i've been waiting for

happier dreams to explore

no more exhausted bodies on the factory floor

some day less will topple more

then i'll stride to the front of the assembly line

force my body to morning sunshine

hey mister trade you two nickles for that dime

ain't it funny how you can't beat time?