Friday Night Web Picks--Vandals and Elites

By borges, Section Friday Web Picks
Posted on Fri Jul 18, 2008 at 09:31:46 PM CST

Seems a trend these days that some folks with spray paint cans can't get enough of putting their two cents out there in that unpleasant way. From cemeteries/parks (1, 2, 3) to the Democratic_Party_HQ (video and pictures from Channel_8) in this area we see a need to vent writ large (literally.)

The pattern here is a bit difficult to read with any certainty. But the comments after the above linked-to stories show a distinct pattern. A familiar culture war that plays out in this rural part of Wisconsin as it does across the nation.

More in the full story...

At some place in this is a frustration with perceived elitism, Obama's elitism perhaps and a feeling of loss on the part of local folks who don't seem to understand the world--it seems to be spinning out of control. Deface a cemetery? What kind of monstrous person would do that?

Elitism is much discussed, but without threading a way through to root causes of the frustration on both sides...at least usually. On the one side we have something on the order of rants_about_rich_folks and how they control my life--and they don't know squat by the way. On the other side we have wide-eyed educated types who expecting a rational discussion without emotion, get caught in the headlights of the divisiveness, and on a good day make an appeal for "negative capability" and the like...

poet John Keats, in a letter to his brothers, called "negative capability": "that is when man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts without any irritable reaching after fact & reason."

from a totally different place, but this *is* web picks and it works in this situation

These encounters eventually end with a comment like, "who are these people?"

I think it comes down to power, and those who feel power is being sapped away needing to do something...even if it is just with a can of spray paint or a rock_through_a_window of Walgreens. And finally I think it has something to do with what Collinson recounts in his book Managing the Shopfloor:

..."managing reality" is a primary function of management's elite role. The power to define the reality of the organization is central to managerial prerogative and discretion.

a preview of this book is available via Google

And so returning to the comments attached to the Broadcaster stories, we have pleas of "Why don't you join the real world?" When the real question is who will decide how that is defined. Well, perhaps it can be negotiated?