And while I'm at it, here is an email I sent to Dr Anthony Fauci and a cc: to a number of his staff a few days ago, just before the idiot in the White House decided it would be a good idea to discredit the good doctor.
Urging You to Speak more forcefully
To: anthony.fauci@nih.gov Cc: hilary.marston@nih.govDr. Fauci,
Having worked as an HIV/AIDS Counselor at the Connecticut State Department of Health Services during the height of the AIDS crisis, and having survived that epidemic, I recall having a great deal of respect for you and your leadership during those times.
I am now 72 years old and I am very concerned, not only about the possibility of my contracting COVID-19, but also the devastating effect this pandemic is having on the lives and loves of so many others.
I sense that you have been less than forthcoming lately - as if you’ve been told to tone it down and make things (the facts) seem relatively ambiguous. We have let this get out of control and desperately need your leadership!
So, I urge you:
Please speak more forcefully and definitively about the reasons for the explosion of COVID-19 cases and please be unequivocal in your admonitions to the president, government officials and the citizenry about what each person needs to do get this horrible disease under control.
I will look forward to your most authoritative message soon.
Sincerely,
Frank DeFrancesco
8 comments:
That final meme says it all!
What Debra said.
Good for you sending Fauci some support and encouragement. I was a volunteer HIV/AIDS counselor myself for four years, and trainer and supervisor - I seem to remember Dr. Fauci worked like a Trojan on the AIDS crisis and was enormously respected.
But Trump says everybody's lying - Fauci, doctors, the media, and the Dems of course - just to spoil his re-election chances:
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/07/13/trump-questions-public-health-experts-twitter-359388
Ain't it a shame?
PS - the video makes some great points about the military and Democratic leadership - but overall I'm uncomfortable with the dark, spooky-voiced, sensational tone that goes for the gut and bypasses the intellect. This is unfortunately the ghastly norm for political ads in the modern world, which shows how low the level of discourse has sunk.
I expect better from the Democrats. "When they go low, we go high" - ya know?
Interesting that we see the ad so differently. I don't find the voice-over dark or spooky at all. While not "intellectual" it makes a point in a short video without lies and/or misinformation. So, high rather than low?
Well, de gustibus non est disputandum - but as one who has not watched regular broadcast television for 25 years now, and has tried to preserve some sense of what used to be call decency, my taste is certainly old-fashioned; to me that's a good thing.
What is considered to be decent and fitting in all sorts of communications has been slowly but constantly corrupted in the last 50 years. You must remember as I do a time when you hardly ever heard "damn" or "hell" on TV or saw them in newspapers and respectable magazines. Now "fuck" and even worse things are heard and seen all the time in all media. So it may be that folks who have drifted along with the stream all these years may not be aware of how far the boat has gotten from the shore.
Now as to the ad itself, this is a piece of argumentative rhetoric - i.e., writing or in this modern age, YouTubing that attempts to convince someone of a truth or persuade them to do something. And as Aristotle, Quintillian, and various other smart old boys pointed out long ago, there are three main appeals that may be effective in such a piece: appeal to the intellect, to the emotions, and to morality.
Most arguments of any length do, in fact, appeal to all three, but in political ads, the appeal to the emotions is too often perverted into a cheap shot, a dog whistle, a nudge to the lowest instincts.
This ad is full of emotional appeals - the blood and guts stories, the flag (even when misused by Trump), the minor-background music that rolls and swells but never gets to a resolution (thus creating an automatic feeling of unease in the viewer), and the emphatic voice that steadily gets louder and more demanding as the video goes on (I shouldn't have said spooky; let's just call it intensifying). All these elements, and others we could point out, are not there by chance: they are there to grab you where you live and stir you up. Without your being aware - the producer hopes - that you are being manipulated. An easy thing to do in this high-tech age - and an underhanded trick.
This is propaganda in the technical sense, even if the video is providing true facts. But this is ubiquitous in the modern world - try to find a historical or sociological documentary on any subject without an unresolved background tune, or without an ominous, insistent narrator. Very hard to find nowadays because this is the New Normal and has been for at least a couple of decades.
Of course, this is a species of attack ad, not a conventional "Vote for Jones" ad. But just to refresh your memory of what an honest campaign ad sounds like - or haha, should I say at least a less dishonest one - check out these two from 1976, a faraway time now:
Ford: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1hBq44ejfA
Carter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNoPaLVmv7c
Notice that the emotional appeal in each of them is very moderate, and no ominous, queasy-making music at all.
Correction: I should have typed "minor-KEY background music."
Russ, Thanks for your analysis...you are more the renaissance man than I...I'm not sure who Quintillian was and I wouldn't know a Minor Key from a Major Key or whether a tune is unresolved. I guess I'm more a Gestalt kind of guy.
Our parents and grandparents would lament "What is the world coming to?" Well, I guess it's come to this, and if we don't destroy it or kill one another with lethal weapons or the virus, it will go on....
Don't be too impressed - I exhausted about all my musical knowledge above, haha. And probably didn't say it right - it's all about tension and resolution, which you understand full well, having heard it all your life. Think about "Happy Birthday" - the first 3 verses build up an expectation for your ear, which is resolved or comes to rest at the end of the last line.
More sophisticated examples might be "Don't Worry Baby" and "California Dreamin" - the verses build up tension, or expectation that is not resolved until the chorus comes in. You can play the tape of those songs in your head I'm sure - but you'll have to get a music major to explain the chord progressions further. But your ear knows it when you hear it: the tension and resolution is what makes a tune interesting. A tune with no tension is boring; no resolution is unsettling, frustrating, irritating.
Which is a good metaphor for what the state of the world right now - lots of tension and disharmony, but where is the resolution?
Post a Comment