A shareholder resolution to block Caterpillar from selling D-9 bulldozers to Israel picks up momentum.

New Black Face: Neuland and Lithos as “Stereotypography”:

“How did these two typefaces [Neuland and Lithos] come to signify Africans and African-Americans, regardless of how a designer uses them, and regardless of the purpose for which their creators originally intended them? The investigation of this question has four parts: first, an examination of the environments in which Koch and Twombly created the original typefaces; second, an examination of the graphic culture that surrounded African-Americans prior to the creation of Neuland through a close viewing of tobacco ephemera; third, an examination of the Art Deco (French Modern) style, the graphic culture most prevalent in the United States at the time of Neuland’s release; and finally, an examination of the ways designers use Neuland and Lithos today.”

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“You’re traveling through another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind; a journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination.”

Yesterday sat in on an a lecture on theories of the nation and nationalism. The nation is an imagined community, geography a matter of representations, and both of these are fraught with assumptions.

But looking at all the electoral maps and cartograms of the last election one can see the reverse is true as well. The Map Room has cataloged links to several maps: 1, 2, 3, 4.

I’ve read several accounts for the patterns on the map. One can examine north vs. south, heartland vs. fringe, urban vs. rural, plotting various demographics along the way.

Even if one assumes that a few million votes were stolen, a more general insight is unspoken — perhaps because it is a given? Despite increasing consolidated and homogenous media and increasingly pervasive Internet access, ideology exists spatially.

Back in January 2003, nearly a year before the Democratic primaries, I posted a blog entry on The Committee to Help Unsell the War, a mobilization of students and advertising agencies against the Vietnam War.

Without my realizing it, that representative I mentioned from Vietnam Veterans Against the War who “discussed war crimes and problems veterans faced” was, in fact, John Kerry.

Milton Rosenberg, the professor of social psychology from the University of Chicago cited in the piece as “perhaps the most influential speaker,” emails:

“I was ego-surfing yesterday as I tried out the new microsoft search engine---and I came upon your longish quotation from a book that deals with the ‘Unsell the War’ and the organizing meeting that was held at Yale....

Of additional--and rather risible--interest is the reference to ‘a representative of Vietnam Veterans Against the War.’ That was John Kerry!!-- of whom I had never before heard. He stood out for his skeletal frame, his hair and his plummy brahminical accent--but not particularly for his rhetorical skill.

I too was asked to judge the resulting TV spots---but in an advisory role rather than as one of official screening panel.”

Rosenberg notes it was his book that got him invited and on which he spoke. He co-authored of Vietnam and the Silent Majority: The Dove’s Guide in 1970:

“Our book was a quick effort designed to analyze the available public opinion data and to show that the ‘silent majority’ was silent in its opposition (rather than its support, as Nixon contended) of the Vietnam war. It also offered a design for how to propagandize for early withdrawal from the war, a policy strongly urged by the Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy on whose National Board I served at the time.”

Am horrified, dejected, and depressed by the election returns.

Stepping out for a bit.