Wednesday, December 19, 2007

Content creation by teens grows: girls lead

A new Pew report finds:

Content creation by teenagers continues to grow, with 64% of online teenagers ages 12 to 17 engaging in at least one type of content creation, up from 57% of online teens in 2004.

Girls continue to dominate most elements of content creation. Some 35% of all teen girls blog, compared with 20% of online boys, and 54% of wired girls post photos online compared with 40% of online boys. Boys, however, do dominate one area - posting of video content online. Online teen boys are nearly twice as likely as online girls (19% vs. 10%) to have posted a video online somewhere where someone else could see it. [...]

There is a subset of teens who are super-communicators—teens who have a host of technology options for dealing with family and friends, including traditional landline phones, cell phones, texting, social network sites, instant messaging, and email. They represent about 28% of the entire teen population and they are more likely to be older girls.

Britney’s little sister Jamie Lynne is pregnant at 16

Davey D wonders, should we blame hip hop?

So yesterday word came down that Britney Spear’s little sister Jamie Lynne is pregnant at age 16. Yep, the little sis who is a frequently trotted out as a role model on the Nickalodean channel. This comes at the heals of her mom getting ready to drop a book on parenting. How ironic is that?

I’m not gonna take any sort of glee in that. Teenagers getting pregnant has been going on since human beings showed up on the face of the earth. It happens. I’m just wondering what will happen in the aftermath. For example will conservatives trot Lynne Spears out and give her major kudos for NOT getting an abortion? Or will they pound their chests and say this is the result of not teaching enough abstinence? I’m asking this because Lynn who lives in the Bible belt comes from a place where teaching abstinence is mandatory… maybe that course of action ain’t working.

Cynthia Tucker recently opined in the AJC that Bush policies are to blame for the sudden increase in teen births. And the number of states refusing federal money for “abstinence-only” sex education programs jumped sharply in the past year as evidence mounted that the approach is ineffective.

Davey continues:

I do know that we are already hearing praises being heaped upon her for ‘being responsible’ and keeping the child. We rarely hear those praises for young Black and Brown mothers who have kids at a young age. We look at them and say the country is in crises. ... Jamie Lynn’s boyfriend-Casey Aldridge. He’s 19 years old. Now I know many of you who are reading this will say what’s the big deal? Teenagers are teenagers? In a sexually charged environment should we not be surprised that folks get together?

Well lets keep this in mind several years ago a young man who was an honor student and home coming king by the name of Genarlow Wilson was sentenced to 10 years in prison for having oral sex with his 15 year old girl friend. Wilson was 17 at the time. His sentence was recently overturned, but not after he had to under go the horrors of being in the state pen for a few years. Will the heavy hand of the law come down on Jamie Lynn’s boyfriend? Isn’t it against the law to have sex with a minor? Here in the Bay Area about 10-11 years ago, rap star Ray Luv spent a year in jail after it was discovered thathe got with a 16 year old while he was 19 and we are liberal as hell. What’s gonna happen to this Casey guy? It’s interesting to note that many of the news agencies aren’t stating his age. Instead they are sugar coating things by saying things like ‘long time boyfriend’ and ‘boyfriend who she met in church’.... mmmmmm thats the sort of thing that makes you wonder. Lets keep an eye on this one folks…

CNN reports it. In entertainment news:

Spears, the star of Nickelodeon’s “Zoey 101,” told OK! Magazine that she’s pregnant and that the father is her 18-year-old boyfriend. [...]

In Louisiana, where Spears lives, it is a misdemeanor for someone age 17 to 19 to have consensual sex with someone age 15 to 17 if the difference between their ages is more than two years.

In California, where she sometimes tapes her television show, it’s a misdemeanor to have sex with someone younger than 18 if the offender is less than three years older. Someone more than three years older could be charged with a felony.

We need statutory rape reform. Let’s stop criminalizing our kids for being kids!

Smearing Edwards

Speaking of odious, the baseless Edwards rumors first flacked by Mickey Kaus showed up in the National Enquirer as Breaking News! yesterday, disappeared for a while this morning [Enquirer ed. tells Wonkette: “Due to a website malfunction a summary of the story went live last night for a brief time. It was then taken down because it was scheduled to be released this morning."] but is back again and smelly as ever right now.

Interesting that Edwards was the top story on Memorandum twice this morning; briefly for the Insider Advantage poll finding him leading in Iowa, then for the Enquirer trash.

I’ve been seeing people’s politics peeking through in their reactions all day; I have to wonder if I, myself, would think twice before jumping on, say, a National Enquirer story that Huckabee has a love child on the way. I like to think I would and that a search of this blog would bear me out.

On the story at hand, Ezra Klein looks to the facts as reported in the story:

Right now, the only known facts are that a pregnant former-Edwards staffer moved to North Carolina to be nearer to the man she claims to be the father of her child.  This man agrees that he is the father of her child.  But The Enquirer needs to sell copies, Mickey Kaus needs to ruin Slate’s reputation, and Andrew Sullivan doesn’t like John Edwards.  With each step away from the source, the facts of the article are further ignored, till they’re no longer even mentioned—all that’s uttered is that Edwards is embroiled in a paternity scandal.  As of now, there’s no evidence for this, and those publishing the rumors should be ashamed.  Though the shame they should feel over their journalistic practices pales in comparison to the shame they must feel over their amorous feelings towards goats.

LATER - from the father:

Statement On Behalf Of Andrew Young
December 19, 2007

As confirmed by Ms. Hunter, Andrew Young is the father of her unborn child.

Senator Edwards knew nothing about the relationship between these former co-workers, which began when they worked together in 2006.

As a private citizen who no longer works for the campaign, Mr. Young asks that the media respect his privacy while he works to make amends with his family.

Pamela J. Marple
Attorney for Mr. Young

An avalanche of misogyny directed at Hillary Clinton

I’ve been watching with disdain the odious glee some folks are getting from passing around a not-so-flattering picture of Hillary Clinton. Limbaugh pushed me over the edge:

There is this thing in this country that, as you age—and this is particularly, you know, women are hardest hit on this, and particularly in Hollywood—America loses interest in you, and we know this is true because we constantly hear from aging actresses, who lament that they can’t get decent roles anymore, other than in supporting roles that will not lead to any direct impact, yay or nay, in the box office. While Hollywood box-office receipts may be stagnant, none of that changes the fact that this is a country obsessed with appearance. It’s a country obsessed with looks. The number of people in public life who appear on television or on the big screen, who are content to be who they are, you can probably count on one hand. Everybody’s trying to make themselves look different—and in that situation, in that case, they think they’re making themselves look better. It’s just the way our culture has evolved. It’s the way the country is. It’s like almost an addiction that some people have to what I call the perfection that Hollywood presents of successful, beautiful, fun-loving people. So the question is this: Will this country want to actually watch a woman get older before their eyes on a daily basis?

Kathleen Hall Jamieson addressed this use of imagery in a December 7 interview with Bill Moyers. This video (called Hillary Clinton - And then God Made Women) give the comments context:

BILL MOYERS: When they talk about men, they have Ronald Reagan, cowboy. When they talk about Hillary Clinton or they depict Hillary Clinton, it’s Hillary Clinton the witch.

KATHLEEN HALL JAMIESON: There’s also, however, another way to read this piece. What is Hillary Clinton actually doing? Frightening Reagan conservatives a whole lot. One of the things I think that happens with many of these visual depictions is that the people who are producing them are trying to attach what scholars call negative affect to Hillary Clinton… To the extent that you have negative feelings, have basic affect when you see something. If I can attach that to something, I can make you feel uneasy about it. I can increase the likelihood that you’re going to vote against Hillary Clinton. So we know, for example, that if I show you a picture of someone who’s smiling and feels comfortable and it’s a pleasant video, that’s that Reagan-

BILL MOYERS: Right.

KATHLEEN HALL JAMIESON: You think more positively of the person, even if you don’t know who the person is. Then I show you a scary picture, an off-putting picture. You react negatively. You respond negatively. I can increase the likelihood that you’ll say you’ll vote against that person even if you know nothing about them.

So some of this is what we used to call visual vilification. But it’s also attaching an emotional response to the picture to say feel uneasy, feel uncomfortable. And as a result, keep that emotional tag tied as you hear her explaining positions on issue. Keep that discomfort. Hold onto it till you go into the voting booth. Stay with that comfortable issue and comfortable image of Ronald Reagan.

Moyers noted that you can “discuss this avalanche of misogyny directed at Hillary Clinton without endorsing her campaign.”

KATHLEEN HALL JAMIESON: ...The misogyny that is present on the Internet right now about Hillary Clinton is, I think, something worthy of public discussion. ...One of the complications of this is we’re moving into new linguistic territory. And we haven’t found a way to discuss this. When a woman stands up and asks Senator McCain, “How do we beat the bitch?” and there isn’t a clear statement by Senator McCain that that’s not the way one characterizes, you know, my opponent on the Democratic side. And there’s not a public commentary that surrounds it the way there was a public commentary about the statement by Imus or about the comedian from SEINFELD. Essentially what we say to the culture at large is that must be appropriate discourse to apply to a female candidate running for office - or at least this female candidate.

BILL MOYERS: It’s okay to talk this way.

KATHLEEN HALL JAMIESON: It’s okay to talk this way. ... language is constantly open for discussion. We know what’s appropriate and what’s inappropriate by the way in which society responds, what our peer group responds, the community we turn to responds. And so when someone uses language that is considered inappropriate and there is a national discussion, we dampen down that use. That’s what happened with Imus, who is now just coming back on the air. When something like this happens and we don’t have the discussion, we move it in to acceptable use.