Call it Jacksonian humor. For what it's worth, the mix of Bush and Blair singing about a gay bar that made the e-mail rounds a few months ago was a lot funnier, if a bit less intelligible. While Lessig celebrates it, I'd be surprised if he or anyone else in the room is creative or witty enough to have done it themselves. Weinberger, in blogging a response to your post, thought your issue was the political bias. That's funny too!

I have found that as most of my friends are liberal and predisposed to sitting around and wringing their hands about all the wrong in the world when politics comes up, I just need to sit back and wait for them to screw up their facts to let air out of their balloons. For example, I'm at dinner Friday night and a friend mentions that the grocery strike out here in SoCal is aboout health benefits being cut 50%. "If someone goes in for a $100K surgery, they will have to pay $50K of it, and what grocery checker has $50K lying around?". Well, that's the line the union bosses are spouting out here and it's total BS. In actuality, the contract offer has their hourly contibution to health coverage and their per-visit copayment increasing.

So you just point out the absurdity of their underlying assumptions or reasoning on occasion. Going through Weinberger's blog, there is tremendous fodder from this conference for substantive criticism and biting mockery.

-Brad

Those of us who haven't seen the video are not going to be able to offer much; beyond pointing out that the limits where satire spills over into tastelessness are a perennial bone of contention. What is described both here and by Weinberger, a love duet between Bush and Blair, doesn't seem to be anything beyond a stock cliche of editorial cartoonists since the 1800's, about any number of political alliances. What was the vicious element in Lessig's offering that made it tasteless?

I can certainly relate to the experience you're describing. We've all seen it at some point, and I've felt the same sort of embarrasment even when I'm a card-carrying member of the crown. I think Johne has a point, which is that the line in front of tastelessness can be fairly grey. Maybe you're just the only one who didn't find it funny. That's happened to me, too, and it's a different situation than tastelessness.

I'm surprised by Arnold's reaction. While I certainly am not an admirer of the president, and indeed, at one point made an unintentional slip about him that came out very negative, I meant the link below to be an example of the potential of the medium, not a particularly strong criticism of the president. And you're right Brad -- it's much better than anything I could ever do.

More importantly, I don't see why criticizing the effect of overregulation make my message Left wing. When did the Right become a fan of regulation?

See the bush/blair gig here: http://politicalhumor.about.com/cs/bushmultimedia/v/blendlesslove.htm

It’s sad to hear that Larry Lessig is making a fool of himself. I was very impressed by his book, Code. Lessig superbly reminds those who tend toward Libertarianism (like myself) that the government will always have a legitimate role to play in our lives. However, I had a run with him during the Florida recount fiasco. He argued that the Gore campaign was getting the shaft. However, he cowardly ran away from my central point: it is virtually impossible, if not even intrinsically impossible, for human beings to accurately recount the ballots in such a large election. An error rate of a mere .001% would still skew the final totals. Human beings, regardless of their personal honesty, will inevitable mess up. Thus, the U.S. Supreme court acted pragmatically ---and therefore accurately.

The far Left reminds me of the boxer who is warned not to lose his cool in the ring. His opponent can use his out of control anger to their own advantage. Those who viscerally despise President Bush are their own worst enemies. They will probably suffer the same fate as the right wingers who similarly hated Bill Clinton. The American general public is quickly turned off.

As an attendee with generally right-leaning views at Pop!Tech, I certainly felt the overwhelming liberalism. A political statement about Iraq came up in seemingly half the presentations, in most cases without much connection to the theme. In contrast, I saw the video clip just as Lessig suggests above, as an example of repurposing media and the resulting legal implications. I saw it as exceptional creative expression and added my share of applause. I was not offended as a Republican, nor did I simply join in with the crowd behavior. The video is great and I recommend that you have a look using the link above if you haven't already seen it.

Why are political statements about Iraq an indication of liberalism? Opposition to our actions in Iraq clearly run across the political spectrum.

I see a good sign of truly being open to the thoughts and beliefs of the other side are when they are taken in large doses.

The left complains about the right's media and communication tactics, the right does the same about the left.

If a speaker feels strongly enough to slip in a comment about his political beliefs, war beliefs, or beliefs on new urbanism in the context of his speech no matter what it is - more power to him/her.

I'm sick of people trying to say they only want to hear about "some" thoughts in a persons head, or that they can only take so much of it.

I've had some very republican weekends, and felt myself lucky for the exposure, not as if I was suddenly a victimized minority.

I had a great weekend and recommend all democratics, republicans, and non-politicos to come back next year and let their thoughts be known.

I would describe my feelings about the conference atmosphere overall using this metaphor:

I went to Pop!tech in 2000, and as someone to the right of center I felt like a Jew in a group that was overwhelmingly Christian.

In 2003, I felt like a Jew in a group of Christians in which the main topic of conversation was the despicable qualities of Jews.

In 2000, I felt accepted. In 2003, I did not.

I'm actually opposed to strong copyright protection, and I strongly oppose the RIAA. I understand that the video illustrated fair use. But the hooting and hollering at the video was directed at the content, not at the fair use doctrine. And in that context, I did not feel that Professor Lessig was interested in obtaining my support.

Arnold, for what its worth, politics played absolutely no part in the programming of the Pop!Tech conference. We did not choose speakers based on their political leanings *at all*, and those of the speakers ran a gamut from center-left (Robert Wright, for example) to conservative-right (Bob Metcalfe) to Libertarian (Virginia Postrel, former editor of Reason Magazine). In fact, we made sure that everything else, from the entertainment to the videos on display were politically neutral.

I'm of course sorry if your feelings were offended or if you felt out of place, but it's hard for me to see how such a diverse spectrum of opinions adds up to "a group of [Liberals] in which the main topic of conversation was the despicable qualities of [Conservatives]."

I am confident that the organizers did not set out to create a climate of political intimidation. Things just turned out the way they turned out.

Surely you must make a distinction between an attack on *individuals*; which, however childish, is due to who they are and the actions they've taken; and an attack on *types* of person, because of some class properties, like their colour.

ARNAOLD
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