Julie Pippert: Using My Words

Every morning I boot up my Twitter stream because, like this guy I know named Ed, I trust human editors who happen to be people I've deliberately chosen to follow, to let me know what I need to know. In fact, I usually hear on Twitter today the news major media brings me tomorrow. I'm pretty sure journalists are trolling Twitter for inspiration, too. Or trawling. Depending upon the motives. My motive is definitely to be inspired and informed. I love knowing what has caught people's attention and what has held it. The cultural geographer in me finds Twitter an awesome insight into our culture, mindset, interests, motives, and more. I have a lot of different intentions behind using Twitter and the Tweets I send out. Mostly I send out links to interesting things I've read or stuff I think you should know, RTs from people I esteem and who said something I found worthwhile, or germane thoughts about twitversations or current events. I've used it for customer service. C...

This morning, on my walk, I listened to an NPR story about a father, his two daughters, and Internet pornography. I'll include a few salient quotes from the article , but I highly suggest you read the entire piece (it's a short easy read). "[Crystal] Buckner says her daughter had told the counselor that late one night at her father's house, he'd shown his daughters pornography on a computer. "When he called them over, it was a live webcam of a woman by herself and Daddy was typing to her what to do," Buckner says. The live webcam action was followed by exhibitions of other online video pornography. The pornography was all adult. The girls reported that their father, Crystal's former husband, Jack A. Buckner II, said he was showing them the pornography because sex was something they needed to know about." As parents, we can all relate to the general concept of "whew, that was a mistake" along with "not the best approach." We al...

Recently, Erykah Badu, without a permit, stripped completely bare for a video shoot . She traipsed through Dealey Plaza in Dallas dropping articles of clothing as she went. By the time she reached the spot where President Kennedy was assassinated, she was naked. A shot noise sounded, and she crumpled to the ground, with blue letters spelling "groupthink" flowing from her head like blood. Badu has offered a lot of artistic integrity philosophical explanations for why the video required her to strip in a public place with no warning to the tourists and public there. Playing the artistic integrity card is supposed to be the quickest end point of any controversy or argument over an artist doing something the general public finds offensive. Boo. Hiss. That's lame logic and doesn't truly address the issue at hand: the artist inflicted something offensive on an unsuspecting and unwelcoming public. And the general public did find Badu's spontaneous strip act offensive. Wh...