This is a perfect example of what I was talking about this morning. This story about Cramer (the business media guy that Stewart shredded) proclaiming the bottom of the housing market and telling everyone that it was safe to get back in. Turns out, he was wrong. But that doesn't seem to have an impact on his ability to keep spouting new bs or even retracting his previous (recorded) statements though they are now proven demonstrably inaccurate.
Lack of accountability enables wistful judgment because it unhooks the concept from the presence of contrarian facts (or perhaps witnesses the demise of the objective "fact" altogether). The ironic thing in the digital age where everything is recorded is that it creates so much information noise that, though we could go back and see what was said, we actually don't have the time. This creates a disjuncture with the past and a breakdown in linearity which used to tie an evaluative tension on what people say to what they have said.
That doesn't happen anymore. Not only is there too much information out there to stop and look backwards, but also (maybe...and more crucially) because so much of many individuals is now very public, the myth of the cohesively rational actions of an individual is becoming exposed. Because it's becoming harder to accommodate all statements under a single persona, the public has begun to eschew the possibility that precedence and linear rationality are valid standards for evaluating personal action.
for example, the bible-toting, fiscal conservative governor can cheat on his wife and spend thousands of tax dollars on his personal comfort without losing his job. Or a former governor can use her disabled child to score a political point making up lies about death panels, yet still be covered as a serious person the next time she says anything to the press.
Is there really the possibility of judgment in the realm of discontinuity?
Lack of accountability enables wistful judgment because it unhooks the concept from the presence of contrarian facts (or perhaps witnesses the demise of the objective "fact" altogether). The ironic thing in the digital age where everything is recorded is that it creates so much information noise that, though we could go back and see what was said, we actually don't have the time. This creates a disjuncture with the past and a breakdown in linearity which used to tie an evaluative tension on what people say to what they have said.
That doesn't happen anymore. Not only is there too much information out there to stop and look backwards, but also (maybe...and more crucially) because so much of many individuals is now very public, the myth of the cohesively rational actions of an individual is becoming exposed. Because it's becoming harder to accommodate all statements under a single persona, the public has begun to eschew the possibility that precedence and linear rationality are valid standards for evaluating personal action.
for example, the bible-toting, fiscal conservative governor can cheat on his wife and spend thousands of tax dollars on his personal comfort without losing his job. Or a former governor can use her disabled child to score a political point making up lies about death panels, yet still be covered as a serious person the next time she says anything to the press.
Is there really the possibility of judgment in the realm of discontinuity?
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