{"id":91,"date":"2003-11-08T12:52:40","date_gmt":"2003-11-08T17:52:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vmalt\/?p=91"},"modified":"2005-12-04T11:20:57","modified_gmt":"2005-12-04T16:20:57","slug":"other-revolutions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/other-revolutions","title":{"rendered":"Other Revolutions"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here’s an article<\/a> on the profusion of conservative ideas in today’s media. The writer cites a couple of major sources for this trend: Fox News, the Internet (and the Blogosphere or, as I like to call it, the Bloggerdome), and conservative-slanted books.<\/p>\n

I’m not going to take an ideological stance on this one, since I’ve spent my last few years unsuccessfully trying to reconcile a lot of my conflicting political viewpoints (and then there’s the attempted reconciliation of my philosophic and mystic bents). However, I will observe that this trend is similar to something that occurred around a decade ago in the music industry and, in both instances, technology was the root.<\/p>\n

The author of the article seems to be saying: Conservative America is growing, but the real point is that its very existence and immensity is finally being acknowledged. As new outlets come into play (particularly the collective mental “processing power” of bloggers and other Internet users), we’re finding that a lot of people prefer to get their spin from non-mainstream sources (which, of course, “mainstream-izes” these new sources).<\/p>\n

This trend reminds me of what happened when SoundScan was implemented in music retail outlets. See, for the longest time, the “Tops of the Charts” were determined through a pseudo-scientific method that relied heavily on informal polling. So certain musicians were given more heft as chart-toppers than they should have received. With the advent of SoundScan, which compiled sales info through bar-code scanning, a seismic shift occurred: Garth Brooks turned out to be the biggest seller in America.<\/p>\n

Until more accurate sales records existed, the country music scene in America was pretty much relegated to underground status, weird as that seems. It was perceived as the province of rednecks and other southerners. With SoundScan, we learned:<\/p>\n

a) this genre had broader geographic appeal in America than anyone thought, and<\/p>\n

b) there are a lot more rednecks and other southerners buying CDs than anyone thought.<\/p>\n

Similarly, SoundScan revealed that hip hop was a much bigger market than previously thought, and that sales were heavier in white suburban areas than in some black urban regions.<\/p>\n

My point is, the market (or the population) was always there, but without the technology, its size was criminally underestimated. Of course, this led the major labels to focus almost exclusively on the demographics that were thus revealed, which naturally brought about a stagnation and self-parodization of those music styles, but hey. We’ll see what happens with conservatism in America.<\/p>\n

Kudos to Arts & Letters Daily<\/a> for linking to this City Journal article.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here’s an article on the profusion of conservative ideas in today’s media. The writer cites a couple of major sources for this trend: Fox News, the Internet (and the Blogosphere or, as I like to call it, the Bloggerdome), and conservative-slanted books. I’m not going to take an ideological stance on this one, since I’ve … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Other Revolutions”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-91","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4C7K-1t","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":798,"url":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/george-will-is-pissed","url_meta":{"origin":91,"position":0},"title":"George Will is peeved","author":"Gil","date":"January 10, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"A few days ago, Radley Balko (aka The Agitator) quoted a recent George Will column excoriating the attempt at moralizing via tax breaks in the post-Katrina recovery package (I goofed on that subject in December. With today's column, it looks like Balko underestimated how pissed off Will is at the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Politics (explicit)"","block_context":{"text":"Politics (explicit)","link":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/politics-explicit"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1393,"url":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/drugsre-bad-mmmkay","url_meta":{"origin":91,"position":1},"title":"Drugs’re bad, mmmkay?","author":"Gil","date":"March 15, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Scot Pollard hasn't had a distinguished career in the NBA. He has shown off some tremendously bad haircuts, which I give him credit for, because not a lot of white guys go with crazy styles in the league. Although he had a bright yellow mohawk going earlier this season, he\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "basketball"","block_context":{"text":"basketball","link":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/sports\/basketball"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1982,"url":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/writing-and-blogging","url_meta":{"origin":91,"position":2},"title":"Writing and Blogging","author":"Gil","date":"April 2, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"The NY Observer has a funny article about how there's no \"career path\" for writers nowadays, because they can't work their way up from magazines into high-paying jobs as 'intelligentsia' or something, the way they once could. Oh, and writers can't get expense accounts anymore. I was entertained by its\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "literature"","block_context":{"text":"literature","link":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/literature"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3192,"url":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/unrequired-reading-jan-9-2009","url_meta":{"origin":91,"position":3},"title":"Unrequired Reading: Jan. 9, 2009","author":"Gil","date":"January 9, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"It's the pre-birthday edition! Celebrate my 38th by enjoying some great links! And buy me stuff! Or at least wish me a happy birthday on Sunday! The bees also joined investment banks and started wearing power ties. * * * My blog is worth $200 million, too! Buy it now!\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Big Business"","block_context":{"text":"Big Business","link":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/big-business"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2723,"url":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/thats-certainly-transformational","url_meta":{"origin":91,"position":4},"title":"That’s certainly transformational","author":"Gil","date":"October 19, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"I try to cut the Drudge Report a bit of slack; I figure everyone has an agenda, and so I do my best to weigh their biases and suss out the signal from all the noise. Still, I was a little sad when I checked out the site this afternoon\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Politics (explicit)"","block_context":{"text":"Politics (explicit)","link":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/politics-explicit"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/drudgerepub.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2029,"url":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/sun-roth","url_meta":{"origin":91,"position":5},"title":"Sun Roth","author":"Gil","date":"May 1, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Today's edition of the New York Sun's Arts+ section continues to defend its title as Official Newspaper of Gil Roth (and several other Roths, as seen in #s 1 and 2): Roth Time Redux, discussing the impact of Dieter Roth, a new exhibition on Philip Guston, with a shout-out to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Art"","block_context":{"text":"Art","link":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/art"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=91"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=91"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}