What’s Wrong with ‘Kony 2012’

The “Kony 2012” viral video created by the Invisible Children organization has taken the internet by storm, accumulating over 55 million views since it was released just a few days ago:

While on its face, the video appears to be an innocuous call-to-action (or a call-to-awareness, at least) about the crimes of the Central African LRA-leader Joseph Kony, online observers have raised several issues with this campaign, including its patronizing imperialistic tone and the fact that Invisible Children have not proven themselves incredibly responsible with their finances.

In their analysis of the video at The Atlantic, Kate Cronin-Furman and Amanda Taub describe why campaigns like these frequently fail to achieve any substantive good. In fact, these campaigns have typically exacerbated the problem because they fail to communicate the vast complexities inherent in these situations:

The problem is that these campaigns mobilize generalized concern — a demand to do something. That isn’t enough to counterbalance the costs of interventions, because Americans’ heartlessness or apathy was never the biggest problem. Taking tough action against groups, like the LRA, that are willing to commit mass atrocities will inevitably turn messy. Soldiers will be killed, sometimes horribly. (Think Somalia.) Military advice and training to the local forces attempting to suppress atrocities can have terrible unforeseen consequences. Consider the hundreds of victims of the LRA’s 2008 “Christmas Massacre,” their murderous response to a failed, U.S.-supported attack by Ugandan and Congolese government forces. International Criminal Court investigations often prompt their targets to step up attacks on civilians and aid workers, in an attempt to gain leverage with the court. (Both Kony and Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir have tried that method.)

Their piece is a must-read and I agree with almost everything in it. The one point I take issue with can be summed up in the following excerpt from their piece:

Treating awareness as a goal in and of itself risks compassion fatigue — most people only have so much time and energy to devote to far-away causes — and ultimately squanders political momentum that could be used to push for effective solutions.

In other words, Cronin-Furman and Taub imagine citizens with a limited “reservoir” of attention, and conclude that an ineffectual campaign such as Kony 2012 drains precious resources from that reservoir.

While I understand that on a basic level, people only have 24 hours per day and must allocate that limited time in prudent fashion, I disagree that campaigns like Kony 2012 are necessarily harmful because of this. In an ideal world, Cronin-Furman and Taub would be correct, and people would be so busy with activism that it would be a crime for them to waste their time entertaining the viral videos of Invisible Children. But we don’t live in an ideal world. We live in one with LOLCAT pictures, and Youtube videos of skateboarders injuring themselves, and iPad announcements and so forth. ‘Kony 2012’ pierces that world and perhaps plants the seeds of activism inside of people (even as it’s also planting some seeds of misinformation).

There are a whole boatload of issues with the ‘Kony 2012’ video. The campaign and the efforts of Invisible Children will probably not directly effect the good they are hoping to. But maybe they will cause a politically concerned citizen to educate him/herself on the topic, to explore it more deeply, and to commit to helping in ways that are actually meaningful. And that’s more than many of us can ever say about our own efforts in social justice.

Everything That’s Happened in the Republican Race Thus Far (2012)

When John Heilemann and Mark Halperin’s book Game Change was first released, it was derided for its reliance on tawdry details and unnamed sources. Still, Heilamann and Halperin proved they knew how to spin a gripping yarn.

Those skills are again on display in a recent piece Heilamann wrote for New York, a blistering summary of the dynamics at play in the Republican race thus far:

The transfiguration of the GOP isn’t only about ideology, however. It is also about demography and temperament, as the party has grown whiter, less well schooled, more blue-collar, and more hair-curlingly populist. The result has been a party divided along the lines of culture and class: Establishment versus grassroots, secular versus religious, upscale versus downscale, highfalutin versus hoi polloi. And with those divisions have arisen the competing electoral coalitions—shirts versus skins, regulars versus red-hots—represented by Romney and Santorum, which are now increasingly likely to duke it out all spring.

Gawker recently published a piece on Romney’s fake-ness, a series of brutal zingers that may nevertheless contain some insights into the man’s image.

Obama Reverses Positions on SuperPACs

Sad that it’s come to this, but I understand the necessity:

Aides said the president had signed off on a plan to dispatch cabinet officials, senior advisers at the White House and top campaign staff members to make clear to donors that they should support Priorities USA Action, the leading Democratic “super PAC,” whose fund-raising has been dwarfed by Republican groups. The new policy was presented to the campaign’s National Finance Committee in a call Monday evening and was set to be announced Tuesday.

“We’re not going to fight this fight with one hand tied behind our back,” said Jim Messina, the manager of Mr. Obama’s re-election campaign. “With so much at stake, we can’t allow for two sets of rules. Democrats can’t be unilaterally disarmed.”

Still, it’s not an unprecedented move, given Obama’s similar reversal in 2008. Principles are nice, but apparently in the end, all that really matters in this system is winning.

Is Internet Access a Human Right?

Despite the troll-y headline from this NYTimes piece, the point it makes is astute and important:

[T]echnology is an enabler of rights, not a right itself. There is a high bar for something to be considered a human right. Loosely put, it must be among the things we as humans need in order to lead healthy, meaningful lives, like freedom from torture or freedom of conscience. It is a mistake to place any particular technology in this exalted category, since over time we will end up valuing the wrong things. For example, at one time if you didn’t have a horse it was hard to make a living. But the important right in that case was the right to make a living, not the right to a horse.

The Problem with Mitt’s $10,000 Bet

Last night at the Republican debate, Mitt Romney bet Rick Perry $10,000 that Romney’s book did NOT state that the Massachusetts health care mandate was a wise choice for the rest of the company. Romney, who is worth somewhere in the range of $150 million, wanted to let everyone know that he was SERIOUS about his position.

Democrats are already rejoicing at this apparent gaffe, which even spawned a Twitter hashtag last night. One analyst made the point that weeks from now, voters may not remember WHY Romney made the $10,000 bet. But they’ll almost definitely remember that number. In Iowa, where the first caucus will be held in January, it’s predicted that this won’t go over well.

In my opinion, Romney went wrong by making the bet too believable. Even though the bet was kind of meant to be a joke, it was entirely plausible that a man of Romney’s wealth could in fact make such a bet. He needed to go big or go home. Bet $5 billion, or bet $5. $10,000 sounds like an impressive amount to many Americans, where the median income is roughly $40,000, but Romney made it sound like he makes that much money in a day and could easily part with it. Not terribly presidential.