Friday, February 15, 2008

Repression Roundup

Andy at Towleroad brings us the first three:

A minister and former Christian college instructor in Canada was found guilty of sexually assaulting a young man who came to him for ‘therapy’: “In earlier testimony, the alleged victim, now 29, told court he started meeting Lewis for counselling sessions in early 2000 after his parents caught him viewing gay pornography on the family computer. Lewis — a family friend and minister - confided he had his own sexual identity issues and the two embarked on weekly counselling sessions designed to ‘assist me to be straight and to live a straight life,’ the man said. The man said Lewis started a program of ‘touch therapy,’ which included the two kissing and fondling each other and engaging in sexual roleplaying. ‘He said I was to tell no one about it because no one would understand,’ the man testified.”

And in Texas a Catholic priest accused of sexually molesting children in two states is HIV-positive, officials say: “Last week, a leader in the Catholic Diocese of Fort Worth heard someone mention that the Rev. Philip A. Magaldi has the virus that causes AIDS, said diocese spokesman Pat Svacina. The diocese leader then got verbal confirmation from Magaldi as well as a letter from his doctor who said he has HIV, Svacina said. Church officials said they believe he has been HIV positive since 2003. The diocese then alerted the alleged victims - at least five minors in two states - and the parishes where Magaldi served for nearly four decades, Svacina said.”

A Methodist Church in DC has been criticized for recognizing committed gay relationships: “If they’re not violating the letter, they’re certainly violating the spirit of United Methodist standards...Ceremonies that celebrate homosexual unions shall not be conducted by our ministers and shall not be conducted in our churches.”

That Texas priest had also embezzled a couple hundred thousand bucks. Good Catholic!

This last is a twofer—Republican and an officer in his church:

Robert A. McKee, a long-serving Republican delegate from Western Maryland, announced his resignation yesterday after authorities, who say they are conducting a child pornography investigation, seized two computers, videotapes and printed materials from his Hagerstown home.

First elected to the House of Delegates in 1994, McKee was chairman of the Western Maryland delegation and sponsored legislation to protect minors from sexual predators. McKee, 58, also resigned yesterday from his post as executive director of Big Brothers Big Sisters of Washington County, a child mentorship program where he has worked for 29 years.[...]

McKee, who is considered a political moderate, has sponsored bills this year dealing with minors, including the Child Protection From Predators Act and a proposal to collect DNA samples from sexual predators. McKee has sponsored several other sexual offender and child abduction bills in previous years.

For decades, McKee has been involved in youth athletics and children’s groups, according to his General Assembly biography. He has served in officer positions in two Little League groups and as secretary of a parent and child center advisory committee.

During the 1970s, McKee was a reservist in the U.S. Navy. He is a former chaplain for the Hagerstown Jaycees and is a trustee and community services chairman at First Christian Church.

John Lewis & The Tipping Point

The Lewis switch has lots of people talking tipping points again.

“The willingness of a high-profile politician not simply to endorse one candidate but to switch from one to another (at least in terms of who he believes he’ll vote for as a super delegate) is a powerful sign that a tipping point is at hand,” says Josh Marshall.

“He gives permission - even encouragement - for other Clinton super-delegates to move to prevent a bruising and bitter fight through the spring. It’s a tipping point,” says Andrew Sullivan.

The term “tipping point” became fashionable with the publication of Malcolm Gladwell’s 2000 book which defines “tipping points” as the levels at which the momentum for change becomes unstoppable. Significantly, the book sought to explain how ideas, trends and products are moved to the tipping point.

Gladwell asserts that ideas spread like viruses and credits “Connectors”—people who “link us up with the world ... people with a special gift for bringing the world together”—for moving those viruses to the Tipping Point. The suggestion implicit in the statements of Marshall and Sullivan, then, is that Lewis is a Connector who will act as an agent to move us to the Obama Tipping Point.

Journalists reporting on endorsements typically point out that endorsements rarely translate into actual votes from voters. Bloggers are under no such obligation. And even Gladwell was not proposing a one-to-one direct correlation. Rather, he was describing a dynamic, a sociological occurrence.

But as it happens, in February’s Fast Company Magazine writer Clive Thompson asks, Is The Tipping Point Toast? He looks at the work of network theorist Duncan Watts, now working at Yahoo!, and finds that it shoots down Gladwell’s idea of influencers. Thompson says Gladwell’s book was built on shaky science from an old and imperfect study.

And Watts’ work might help explain why endorsements don’t always translate into votes:

[T]here are a lot of ways an Influential could convert the masses. Merely talking to a friend once could infect her with an idea. Or it might take several conversations. Or maybe Influentials are so persuasive they’re like trend vampires, and each victim they bite becomes hyperpersuasive too. Depending on how you define the specific mechanics of influence, you’d get totally different types of epidemics--or maybe none at all. But gurus of the Influentials theory never directly clarify these mechanics.

“All they’ll ever say,” Watts insists, is that a) there are people who are more influential than others, and b) they are disproportionately important in getting a trend going.

That may be oversimplifying it a bit, but last year, Watts decided to put the whole idea to the test by building another Sims-like computer simulation. ... The results were deeply counterintuitive. The experiment did produce several hundred societywide infections. But in the large majority of cases, the cascade began with an average Joe (although in cases where an Influential touched off the trend, it spread much further). To stack the deck in favor of Influentials, Watts changed the simulation, making them 10 times more connected. Now they could infect 40 times more people than the average citizen (and again, when they kicked off a cascade, it was substantially larger). But the rank-and-file citizen was still far more likely to start a contagion.

Why didn’t the Influentials wield more power? With 40 times the reach of a normal person, why couldn’t they kick-start a trend every time? Watts believes this is because a trend’s success depends not on the person who starts it, but on how susceptible the society is overall to the trend--not how persuasive the early adopter is, but whether everyone else is easily persuaded. And in fact, when Watts tweaked his model to increase everyone’s odds of being infected, the number of trends skyrocketed.

“If society is ready to embrace a trend, almost anyone can start one--and if it isn’t, then almost no one can,” Watts concludes. To succeed with a new product, it’s less a matter of finding the perfect hipster to infect and more a matter of gauging the public’s mood. Sure, there’ll always be a first mover in a trend. But since she generally stumbles into that role by chance, she is, in Watts’s terminology, an “accidental Influential.”

It sounds to me like society is ready to embrace the Obama trend. And Lewis is along for the ride.

How can Nutter sidestep Obama?

So asks Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Annette John-Hall today:

While the Obama Express is rolling this way fast, change and hope already have unpacked in Philly.

Our own Mayor Nutter, known for his bold style, straight talk, and coalition-building, like Obama, got some national face time on ABC World News Tonight this week. He was introduced by anchor Charles Gibson as the mayor who is “making a lot of changes and a lot of friends.”

It feels refreshing, this young, new kind of African American politicians - Nutter, Newark Mayor Cory Booker and Washington Mayor Adrian Fenty - leaders who don’t make race their only talking points.

Both Booker and Fenty have endorsed Obama, not surprising since he’s almost a mirror image of them.

But the man who probably draws the most comparisons to him - from his inclusive politics to his Ivy League training to his ability to transcend race - isn’t supporting Obama.

You can hear Nutter now. Hillary, it’s a new day. [...]

“No,” he replied. “I’ve met Sen. Obama and admire him. My choice was based on who I thought would be the best for Philly, and I think Sen. Clinton is that person.”

It feels like we’ve all been down this road before. It will be interesting to see how long his support will last.

Here’s the ABC News segment on Nutter.

Lingering blog issues

I’m aware that there are ongoing residual problems that remain as a result of last week’s crash of this blog. There are some display issues, but the biggest issue is that you cannot leave comments. I am trying to get these problems resolved. I am also trying to rebuild the archive and develop a long-term strategy for moving forward. 

I hate that my blog is hobbling along. Through it all I have considered quitting, but I have also come to understand how much this blog means to me. I’m totally swept up in my ability to follow and interact with the news, those who report the news, and the newsmakers. I like that from right here in rural Georgia I can be part of the process and the ecosystem that is media at the start of the 21st century.

Significantly, though, I’m learning through this experience that along with the empowerment comes some complicated responsibilities to negotiate. My blog host is in Hong Kong. My designer in Wisconsin. The software from somewhere in the cloud. Much of what is going on with my blog right now is out of my control.

Because I host it myself, you’d think I would have that control. I have a tech team I can draw on; you’d think I could direct them. For a number of reasons, I cannot. I’ve thought, then, that maybe I should take this opportunity to move to a hosted blog option. After all, there’s power in numbers.

danah boyd tells a Google horror story that puts the kibosh to that:

Earlier this week, Bob received a notice that there was a spam problem in his Orkut community. The message was in English and it looked legitimate and so he clicked on it. He didn’t realize that he’d fallen into a phisher’s net until it was too late. His account was hijacked for god-knows-what-purposes until his account was blocked and deleted. He contacted Google’s customer service and their response basically boiled down to “that sucks, we can’t restore anything, sign up for a new account.” Boom! No more email, no more calendar, no more Orkut, no more gChat history, no more Blogger, no more anything connected to his Google account.

::gasp:: My heart threatens to attack my throat at the mere idea of losing four years worth of email. ::shudder:: Or what if this blog disappeared? Like, OMG. {insert horror film music here}

Bob’s story has a happy ending, because Bob is well connected. But what if he were me? I’m not well-connected so I’d have no protection.

The bottom line is: please bear with me. I hope to have comments back soon!