Swartz's Legacy: Public Goods and Private Profits

Aaron Swartz courtesy London Guardian

en Eenhaundel 

 Of increasing concern to the Internet Generations has been the conflict between the rights of the individual and protection of the public or communal good against the means and goals of private enterprise (a wealthy few) to benefit from manipulation of the individual and exploitation of public resources.  Far from being a new fad or youthful preoccupation, this is merely the latest battle between privilege and the profit of the few against the common rights and dignity of the individual and recognition of the shared access to and interest in the common good.  The only difference between the Internet cultural conflicts of the early 21^st Century and struggles against religious oppression and royal prerogative in the 16^th and 17^th Centuries, and between the individual and Big Business in the 19^th and 20^th Centuries  is the public resource over which the battles are being fought.

    Reminiscent of former struggles against Borgia Popes or against the censors of l’ancien regime, the last two months have witnessed seemingly excessive efforts on the part of United States Feds to exert the full might, power and authority of their government against the lives and ideals of two rather ordinary young men on behalf of American Big Business interests in the media, culture and formal economy.  These youth represent a sort of Robin Hood versus the ‘Man’ in the complicated but lucrative world of the modern Internet.  Both stories have, however, come to rather different conclusions – one malféant being forgiven and the other hopelessly determining to end an extremely promising and rather gifted life in suicide.

Rural Jews, Urban Mennonites and Diaspora Identities

Actor Rob Morrow as Dr. Joel Fleischman

Northern Exposure, ep 3.13 

Things Become Extinct 

(20 Jan 1992, No. 77513)

Dr. Joel Fleischman: I'm not a vanishing breed.
Ed Chigliak: Well, you're Jewish. That's pretty rare.

"This is not homesickness.  This is more than homesickness.  I'm facing serious personality meltdown.  Joel Fleischman, the Jewish doctor from New York.  You take that away and who am I?  What am I?"
"Well, Fleischman, just forgetting a few subway stops..."
"This is just the tip of the iceberg.  Don't you understand?  It's like 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers.'  I'm being replaced by some insidious replicant, a Joel Fleischman look-alike that talks about crop rotation and carburators.  I've got to stop it before it's too late." (sic)
        - Joel to Maggie

"You had me do a two hour turn around to Anchorage to pick up *bagels*? They were supposed to be medical supplies!"  - Maggie, to Joel

“You know, I tried.  I really did.  I gave it my best shot.  It just didn’t work.  Scratch the plum pudding, there’s a matzo ball underneath.  I’m a Jew.  That’s all there is to it.”  Joel to Maggie after dismantling his first, and unsuccessful, Christmas Tree and re-establishing it in Maggie’s front yard.

   As a Postmodern prairie dweller, I was raised on episodes of the Beachcombers, Ann of Avonlea and Little House on the Prairie with a few reruns of Grizzly Adams.  In college, it was reruns of Northern Exposure that fired my imagination and appreciation for the world I left behind – and when I had to return to that country for to bury the dead, it was Northern Exposure that enabled me to laugh painfully at the rapid, if semi-consensual change from downtown Chicago to the mountains of Montana’s Yellowstone.  Where Fleischman missed his bagels, I longed for my bitter Starbucks coffee.  Fleischman longed for his lost Bordeaux, I missed my Art Institute – Fleischman’s golf course was my softball fields.  All in all, a little bit different, yet very much the same.

   Apart from humor, Northern Exposure exemplified numerous socio-ethnic situations and struggles for identity as individuals, as communities and as historic ethnic groups assimilating into something new – both an inclusive new and an often exclusive new.  Ed Chigliak’s statement Fleischman about being a vanishing breed was both a statement as to Fleischman’s personal Jewish identity and Fleischman’s need to adapt to new realities and to establish himself as something new – not exclusive of his Jewish New Yorker past, but rather inclusive of the new person Fleischman was becoming outside of the social and cultural reinforcements of the ethnic Jewish diaspora.  Tellingly, much of Fleishman’s humor stemmed from his travails to adapt to the Postmodern reality as an individual while longing for the communal support of the Modern New York Jewish community.

American Voyeurism and the Amish

Note: I have significantly revised the introduction to this essay...  I am now much happier with the wording.  Thanks.

 

(c) Wikipedia Images

     They might not be exactly superstars, but America’s Amish have been increasingly in the spotlight lately – some good and some bad.  PBS has capitalized on this recent publicity with a documentary titled, imaginatively, The Amish.  While I will certainly view the documentary at a later convenience, I was intrigued by The New York Times critic, Neil Genzlinger’s, take on the whole thing (They’ve Got Cute Buggies and Kids, but Their Lives Aren’t Always Heavenly, The New York Times, New York, NY, 28 February 2012, p C5).

    I especially enjoyed reflecting on Genzlinger’s observation’s regarding why the Amish (and elsewhere, the conservative Mennonite sects and Hutterites) continue to mystify their neighbors and stimulate often unwanted curiosity and publicity.  Genzlinger seems to indicate that this might be a sort of cultural fetishism.  I would tend to agree – but why is this and how does it impact this Anabaptist ethnicity?

Simply the Simpsons

(c) Fox Broadcasting Co.

    Congratulations to the cast, crew and creative genius behind Fox Television’s The Simpsons on the occasion of their 500^th episode (airing 19 February)!  The Simpsons is now officially both the longest-running scripted show for television, and one of three to hit the coveted 500-episodes mark (along with Gunsmoke and Lassie).

    A television standard for over 20 years, the Simpsons were created as a bit for the Tracy Ullman show in 1987.  Creator Matt Groening, an ethnic Dutch Russländer Mennonite, used a cast of characters from his own family to create America’s First Family of Dysfunction.  In 1989, the show gained its independence and is still beloved by millions 23 years and 500 episodes later.

    Groening’s Mennonite ancestry has deep roots.  His father, Homer Groening, was raised in a Plautdeutsche-speaking family  in Main Center, Saskatchewan.  His grandfather, Abram Groening, of the Krimmer Mennonite Brethren, taught at the MB’s Tabor College in Hillsboro, Kansas.

    I would write more, but an old friend, Mr. Dale Suderman, has already written one of the best articles on Matt’s connections to his Mennonite heritage.  I strongly recommend following the link below.

Congratulations, Mr. Groening!

‘tag

Dale Suderman - The Groenings, The Simpsons and the Mennonites