The Consumer Electronics Show, My No-Go, and Big Bird in the Mobile Nest

In previous years at precisely this time I would be shuffling through a casino in Las Vegas on my way to catch a bus to the CES.  My route had been dictated by the architects who designed this place of lost weekends, as both reward and punishment.  Nothing wakes you up faster than watching overnight gamblers downing neat whiskey while digging deeper into pockets and purses for the last coin that will change their lives forever.  Welcome to the Show.

Despite the casino perp walk, the hour-long taxi lines and the highly textured food at the electronics show, it has something of a funhouse quality that is hard to replicate.  Why go to the beach when you can visit 3,000 booths, most displaying products that will never get to market; listen to the endless pitches, and finally place a bet on the Panasonic Viera TV that can read your face and summon to screen your favorite features and apps?  If only that screen could read my mind.

Mat Horan in the current issue of Wired writes that “CES is the world’s greatest hardware show stuck in a software era.”  He has a point; after all, these days the world turns on apps, experiences and integration.  Horan reminds us that in 2012 the Nokia Lumia was the talk of the show and widely touted as a breakthrough product but was obsolete five months later after a Windows upgrade.  He also mentioned the BlackBerry tablet, the PlayBook, which had received similar rave reviews and made one of the show’s “best” lists.  I recall how difficult it was to get close to the BlackBerry booth because buzz was in the air and there is nothing like huge, ravenous crowds at trade shows to signal a successful product.  This tablet was a market failure.

All this is my lazy way of saying that, once the acres of CES have been walked, measured, and digitally charted for future generations, year-after-year, I can watch most keynotes on the computer and get first-hand reports from family, friends, and spies in attendance.  And I won’t need to purchase a promising new product displayed at the show.  Trakdot has a SIM card that could track my lost fantasy luggage.  Whether I leave home or not, I am keen on another offering, Flower Power by Parrot.  It monitors and tests a plant’s soil and ambient conditions against an ideal environment and updates the user through an iPhone app.  Keeping green things alive in the hot-house theater called CES is a real challenge.

All hyperbole aside, there is clearly a sea-change happening at CES, at least when it comes to the pre-show keynote speaker whose task is to prefigure the show and especially to imagine the future.  For the first time, a Microsoft executive didn’t fill this role.  Rather, the baton was handed to Dr. Paul Jacobs, Qualcomm CEO, who reminded his audience that 2013 was the first time a mobile company opened CES.  It won’t be the last (Jacobs’ one-hour keynote is available at Qualcomm.com).

I’m a fan of Qualcomm and have consulted for their QMT division, but after hearing Jacob’s remarks it is hard not to see how the emerging mobile eco-system is maturing in ways advantageous to the company and those in the competitive set.  There are 6.4 billion mobile connections, just short of the number of warm bodies on the planet.  A central theme of Jacobs’ address is that we are now born mobile, with perhaps Qualcomm being the first citizen of mobile, having shipped 11 billion chipsets since the company’s founding 27 years ago.

While I loved the visuals, including a flight line of fire breathing dragons, a show-and-tell by Big Bird and an cameo by an actress from upcoming Star Trek movie, all were in service, more or less, to Jacobs’ iterative themes.  We are born mobile and mobile is fast-becoming our sixth sense, an extension of our personas and realities.  He mentioned the Vuforia platform that enables augmented reality (AR) app experiences and gives mobile apps the power to see.  Big Bird uses this application for text recognition so he can differentiate between the words for cereal and milk.  The Context Aware offering (Gimbal) includes a full library: geofencing, interest sensing, and image recognition.  For all Star Trek fans this will be used in the run-up promotion to the new film Into Darkness and allow interested players to interact through their smartphones with billboards and the like in order to gain points and other goodies, but most importantly, to add notches to their hero belts and move higher on the vanity charts.  Participants can perform such heady feats without removing their smartphones from their pockets or their bags.  The blurring between physical and the digital continues.

Matt Buchanan at Buzzfeed suggests two reasons for the decreasing importance of CES: “Software and services have become the soul of consumer technology.”  And the “social web has replaced the trade show as a platform for showcasing and distributing products.”  He’s absolutely right.  The old days are not likely to return.

One of my favorite venues at CES is the health and fitness tracks, which seem to be growing in importance every year as the health/tech connection becomes clearer.  Jacobs spoke in passing about the company’s commitment to e-health and in this context Archbishop Desmond Tutu addressed the prospects for mobile health in Africa and around the developing world.  Mobile health is less sexy than Big Bird or the next Star Trek, but is hugely important to the company through its Qualcomm Life business that invests in early stage high-tech health companies with an eye to accelerating wireless health services.

Arianna Huffington, who is moderating a panel at CES titled “The Digital Health Revolution: Body, Mind and Soul,” writes in The Huffington Post about “the new wave of technology that connects us to ourselves.  For example, a robust market of wearable devices—like the Nike+ Fuelband, Jawbone UP, FitBit and Lark—has emerged, monitoring everything from activity and food intake to weight and sleep.”  She is right and these developments will only quicken as more venture capital flows into mobile health.  Qualcomm Life, through its 2net Platform, which is technology and device agnostic, cloud-based, data encrypted, and linked to multiple carriers, offers a scalable, protected way to move medical data from device to server to doctor.  

We now have throwaway bandages and other sticky devices that monitor our vital signs.  But mobile health will truly become the soul of the new machine when there is an integrated, scalable platform with carrier participation.

Zynga’s Woes, Freud’s Literary Nose, and Playing Psychological Games

Those of us not following the Fiscal Cliff chatter were paying requisite attention to Zynga’s end-of-the-year announcement outlined on TechCrunch that the company would be shuttering eleven games, or pulling them from the app stores or not accepting new players to PetVille, Fishville, Forestville and others.  The constituents not in mourning could be found on the Zynga site bashing executives for producing a series of me-too, copycat games that were destined to die on the corporate vine when the blue-suited, cost-cutters came to town.

Others, more emotionally invested in the notion that family connections can even extend to fictional creatures who populate the rugged digital landscape, expressed outrage that Zynga killed their pets or, at the very least, did not give them time to download lovable Spot.  One gamer with no obvious ironic intent advised fellow players to only get open source pets and run them on their own servers.   The family who had time to dress their pets in PJs and bunny slippers and apply a little lipstick to their cheeks was the decided exception.

From a psychological point-of-view the jury is still out on the effect such imaginary pets has on the real lives of individuals.  From my study of psychology, I think such projection, play, and creativity is healthy and, short of us all becoming Spot, necessary.  The late Dr. James Hillman, a psychologist, writes in his Healing Fiction how we are constantly exposed to a pandemonium of images and from these come our art and our sanity.  In this context, Zynga might or might not be a helpful partner.

I have long been amused by Freud’s acknowledgement in 1934 that his job was “to translate the inspirations offered by modern literature into scientific theories.”  After all, Freud won the Goethe Prize for literature and not the Nobel Prize for science.

The notes Freud took while famous patient Dora told her life story on the couch behind his back became a case history.  The style in which the father of psychology actually wrote these case histories was literary and, by the author’s own account, they were closer to dramatic stories than scientific fact.  Or in the vernacular, they were fiction, which doesn’t mean they weren’t true.   Modern psychology owes more to literature than to science, as every parent who has been involved in the Oedipal wars already knows.  

Dr. Hillman, one of the most original thinkers in this field in the last fifty years, extends Freud, differentiating between case history and soul history.  The case history is a biography of historical events.  The soul history spontaneously invents fictions and “inscapes” without major outer correlations; it is reported best by emotions, dreams and fantasies. The case history presents a sequence of events; the soul history is about imagination and play. 

I have looked in vain for Dreamville, the ideal original, finding rather a company that sells hoodies inspired by a 1950's cartoon about dream chasers.   But no sectors, even our nighttime dream and fantasy worlds, are safe from SEO.  The online Dream Dictionary has identified 5,300 dream keywords that to date have at least 20,000 possible meanings.  The Dictionary has only scratched the surface of our collective unconscious.

Dr. Hillman has warned us about this attention to the literal and about assuming every image or dream has a one-to-one correspondence to events we experience in daylight.  In his words, the difference is between image as presence and image as presentation or between symbol and allegory.

Nonetheless, even with this psychological proviso, there might be a way for a prospective new Zynga venture we’ll call DreamMe that marries the essence of crude SEO mapping with the personal, interior landscapes of our psyches revealed in dreams, nightmare, fantasies and similar niceties.  This is not a stretch.  I note that Dreamvale, available on iTunes, is a perfect dungeon crawl involving four players and six levels.  I could envision a similar dungeon crawl, for example, based on Carl Jung’s Psychological Types that would enable you to find your true Self.   If that is not demanding enough, how about a dungeon crawl through Jung’s world of alchemy and encounters with the sleeping king, the wild man,, and Hermes, among others.  I should advise that these figures represent projected psychological conditions and killing the monster means we are putting the shadow sides of our psychology behind us.  In other words, the Gamer grows up.

In the meantime, until developers seize on these very pregnant and free business ideas, there’s always Dream:On, the app for those who want no more than to dream of strolling the countryside, flying, or lying on a sun-drenched beach.  It’s as simple as that.

Spot can be summoned at will.

    

     

  

Millennial Ticks, Non-Profit Shticks, and the Future of Mobile Giving

It’s been harder for me to skip around Salvation Army kettles this year because where I roam this non-profit seems to have brought out the dancers, the tuba players, and the occasional therapy dog to encourage me to part with my cash.  And it has worked.

I advise a number of nonprofits on the art and science of fundraising and think a lot about the subject.  Given the effects of Hurricane Sandy on my immediate and extended family and friends, the subject has become much more personal.  Over Christmas, I listened to some family and friends complain about what they considered the virtual absence of the Red Cross in their neighborhoods.  That most media outlets in the Greater New York area encouraged viewers to text $10 to the Red Cross for Sandy victims seemed to add salt to the wounds.

The Red Cross has been very public about its charter, contribution to Sandy victims, and how funds have been expended.   Consumers are understandably nosey about how donated fund are used.  I stopped contributing to United Way some years ago when I learned executives were flying first-class.  Other charities felt donor backlash when they misappropriated 9/11 funds, using them to buy computers and cover various unrelated overhead costs.

The New York media seemed to pay considerable attention to college students and young adults who were very supportive of Sandy victims.  These young adults would represent the Millennial generation, aged 20-35 years.  I became interested in how and to what degree this smartphone generation engages with nonprofits.

“The Millennial Impact Report” prepared by the JCA Group served as a useful introduction. The study, which is based on online surveys, focus groups, as well as input from non-profit professionals, examined how to engage Millennials from a nonprofit perspective.  The researchers caution that it is dangerous to overgeneralize about this demographic.  They are not necessarily favorably predisposed to nonprofit brands that they have grown up with.  The research suggests that Millennials tend to make decisions about charitable donations “in the moment” but are still keen to know about results.  Early research citing the narcissism of this generation and its lacks of civic-mindedness does not seem to be supported by this study.

Sixty-five percent of the more than 6,000 surveyed preferred a website for receiving information about a charity, followed by social media and enewsletters.  Respondents said that they looked for a strong call to action on websites and don’t like layers of descriptive content.  They want to act quickly and connect easily.

Millennials are heavy users of mobile apps but don’t think apps are particularly useful for nonprofits.  Sixty-seven percent of those surveyed had interacted with nonprofits on Facebook, largely through “liking” and “sharing” functions.  However, this generation donates negligible amounts through social media.  Use of video did not receive high marks except if it showed the organization at work.  Only 28% had interacted with nonprofits via Twitter.

Researchers note that Millennials prefer to make donations online, in person or by mail, in that order.  The study finds that the future for mobile giving faces an uncertain future. Only 15% of those surveyed report donating by smartphone.  Participants indicated that the $10 limit for smartphone donations was problematic.  Security is also an issue with mobile as it is with social media.  Therefore, a website optimized for mobile is essential.

Seventy-five percent of those surveyed said they made a financial gift to charity in 2011.  Forty-two percent gave to what inspired them in the moment.  Their biggest Pet Peeve: “I don’t know how my gift will make a difference.”

Help is on the way.  The Salvation Army, realizing that Millennials conduct business in a manner different than earlier generations, has added a Millennial position.

No news about the tuba players.

Hockey Sticks, Mobile Licks and Measuring Arousal

If I had a hockey stick for the fistful of grandiose mobile predictions I have heard (and made) over the last decade, I would be able to start a National Hockey League franchise.  Unfortunately, the NHL is currently on strike, so I will leave this dead metaphor hanging in mid-air begging for icy mercy.

My brother-in–law just got a mobile phone and based on the Eternal Law of Device Penetration, this man is a Laggard.  Sorry Steve, but the family has done its best to convert you over the years, and you have only yourself to blame for coming so late to the party.  That said, this is about market segmentation, brother, and decidedly not about your character, per se.  But we will have plenty of time to discuss your behavior over the holidays.  But can it be that the smartphone celebration is already winding down?

It is hard not to embrace the hockey-stick metaphor.  PC sales have flattened as sales of mobile phones and tablets have soared.  The disruption of old media and old portals and old attitudes continues at a ripe pace and this can only be good news for mobile.  Henry Blodget, CEO of the Business Insider, reminds us that what is holding the business of mobile back is the business of mobile where we are still exchanging analog dollars for digital dimes.  Simply put, the effective CPM for the desktop is $3.50; for mobile. $0.75.  Certainly targeted, location-based and video ads are already changing these percentages and the increased interest on the part of marketers in “native” advertising is bound to move the mobile needle.  But as Blodget notes, the smartphone screen is still really small.

Folks at the IPG Media Lab have raised the right question at the right time:  “Are All Screens Created Equal?”  This research examines whether a device and or screen have an impact on the effectiveness of video ads.  Do other variables, including ad clutter, creative quality, type of video content, and location of consumption, play a role in video ad effectiveness?  The Lab looked at connected TV, linear TV, mobile and the PC at the IPG Media Lab in San Francisco.  Attention was measured by eye-tracking hardware, excitement by biometric bracelets; and ad recall in the traditional manner.

Screen type played a role in ad recall but the differences were not marked: PC (43%); Connected TV (38%); Mobile (35%); and Linear TV (27%). Arousal levels, measured by distinct moments of excitement in each record, were also fairly similar among screens: Connected TV (8%); Mobile (4%); Linear TV (7%); and the PC (7%). The researchers found that “attention levels are high particularly for screens consumers are most familiar with—TV and PC.”

The Media Lab reports that females tend to be more attentive while males show a higher level of excitement.  While TV performs well on attention and excitement measures, this does not translate into strong recall.  Not surprisingly, researchers have found that ad clutter undermines the ad effectiveness of TV.

In summarizing their findings, researchers suggest that, overall, “the much-hyped screen size did not play a role in ad effectiveness.”   But controllable facts such as ad clutter and perceived lack of creativity did.  Similarly, the most engaging content attracted the most attention.  And locations matters: “lean-back environments with less distraction, such as at home in bed, enhance attentiveness.”

This research is certainly not the final word on screen size.  But it might place a little more emphasis on clutter-free environments and encourage advertising agencies to conduct more creative testing, rather than dismiss mobile out-of-hand.

And one wonders what the “always on” smartphone metric might have to contribute to this conversation.

I don’t wear biometric bracelets, but am still very excited.

Hospital Health, Digital Stealth and When Software Isn’t the Solution

During the last month I have spent a fair bit of time in hospitals, but not as a patient.  The first occasion was to visit a friend from Italy who was stricken while in San Francisco and hospitalized.  This true Gentleman from Verona is now home in one piece, having left a part of his colon on the West Coast.  The second occasion was with a family member in New York, stricken with a similar complaint, but recovering nicely.

After  I was sure both friend and loved one would be alright, I paid more attention to my surroundings and how important digital had become healthcare, from electronically monitoring medications and potential interactions to bringing technology, such as X-ray equipment, to bedside for quick results.  In both instances, digital initiatives seemed to have compressed healthcare into a shorter time span and the long wait for tests and additional opinions was almost immediate.  The family member had to go to another floor for a CT-scan, but within minutes the doctor had the results on a computer terminal outside her room for immediate analysis.  And this was not a secret confab in some dark ante-room; I could actually ask questions.  In this instance, surgery was necessary but the run-up allowed the patient to be much more of a participant and I know this lowered her level of stress.

Most noticeable was the absence of paper, especially in New York.  Each nurse had a mobile computer terminal that he or she wheeled into hospital rooms and recorded on-site vital signs, anecdotal observations, and concerns from patient and family.  A software program translated the data into a content framework common to the hospital.

This effort to digitize medical records is the result of $4 billion in funding to 83,000 professionals and 1,500 hospitals that was a little known part of the 2009 Stimulus Bill designed to jumpstart the transition to Electronic Health Records (EHR).  So far, so good.  However, the Office of the Inspector General for the Department of Health and Human Services reports, anecdotal evidence aside, that this program is based on self-reporting and participants do not as of yet collect supporting documents that verify the actual shift to EHR.  So every new technology has a shadow side and this example might be the least of it.

Through September 2012, more than one billion dollars has been invested in digital health initiatives, primarily involving the smartphone, with apps that can check heart rate, pregnancy, suspicious moles, questionable pills, saliva, flu symptoms and so on.  Theoretically, smartphone apps can be used as a tool in everyday health care and for more exotic application.  The Washington Post reports that AliveCor is seeking FDA approval for an app that will provide an EKG by simply pressing an iPhone to the chest.

After my friend and loved one were in the hospital more than a few days, I began to worry about opportunistic infections.   While I was very satisfied with the hospitals in San Francisco and Nyack, New York, I’m well aware that the more digitized hospital services become, the more opportunity for abuse.  Professor Amitai Etzioni, George Washington University, writes in the Huffington Post about the digital fraud in the system, using the Health Management Associates (HMA) as an example (60 Minutes looked at this issue in its December 2, 2012, broadcast).

“According to its own ER doctors, HMA requires that 20 percent of people who step into the ER are admitted to one of HMA’s hospitals—and 50% of seniors.  When a person visits an HMA Emergency Room, company software loaded onto the ER computer automatically orders a bunch of tests, whether they are needed or not, before the person is even seen by a doctor.  When doctors try to discharge a patient from the ER, the computer intervenes, presenting them with a warning that a patient is a candidate for admission.”

My friend from Verona, an Englishman who speaks fluent Italian, was lucky enough to have a doctor in San Francisco who also spoke Italian.  At Nyack Hospital we happened to have a doctor who was a friend of our extended family.  That made all the difference.

The Institute of Medicine estimates that Medicare fraud and abuse range from $75 billion to $98 billion annually.  This number is not surprising because Medicare is required by law to issue payment within 15 to 30 days and there is little time to scrutinize invoices.

This is a problem crying out for a technology solution.

Dictionary Cops, Literary Snobs, and Twitter Wrestles with Hercules

Not far from where I write this blog rests like a sturdy door stop Webster’s Third International Dictionary published in 1971 in the Philippines and given to me when I received a PhD in Philosophy a few years later.  Over the decades, I have opened this thirty-pounder usually when I wanted to get deep into etymology and learn whether a particular verb appeared in the subjunctive mood on Anglo Saxon riotous tongues.  These days such excursions over to the wild side of linguistic subtlety are few and far between, but I did pull out this old, respected and heavy beast during Hurricane Sandy, when we were reminded of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and what it really meant to be pinned down at the safety level.  Reading Webster under a hurricane lamp is no laughing matter.

Webster is already halfway out the door because all its utility, history and girth are available in a variety of apps.  This dictionary technology has always been something of a useful fiction, suggesting in its sheer tonnage that there is something exhaustive and final about the creation.  We know dictionaries also serve cultural and nationalistic ambitions.  The Guardian newspaper recently reported that the editor of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) in the 1970s and 1980s intentionally omitted some words with foreign origins, a curious, petty and racist stance from the man sitting in the high chair overseeing a language that has remained globally vibrant by embracing, at least since 1066 when the French came calling, all manner of words from the global language tree.

Over the last five years, I have given to charities and libraries at least five hundred books, many of them novels I had used in high school and university teaching as well as for academic research.  The sting is less than I thought.  William J. Lynch Jr., CEO of Barnes & Noble, has said he doesn’t really read physical books anymore, an odd thing for an executive to say when his company still generates most of its revenues from physical books.  But it is far more compelling to embrace the Nook in public rather than be seen flipping through a copy of The Old Man and the Sea.

I think it was the NPR program “On the Media” that suggested that the second disruption in the book business will be about entire book categories disappearing or shrinking badly, with literary fiction perhaps the most vulnerable.  The argument goes something like this.  Before America had universal education that would be in place, more or less, by the 1880s, Americans used the poetry and fiction of Hawthorne, Emerson, Whitman and others to forge a national identity.   I think there is truth to that.   I would add that it is in the language of Twain, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and H.L. Mencken, among others, that America found its voice, vernacular, humor, and language appropriate to the psychic terrain, the new geography, and national habits.

Not surprisingly, by the mid-20^th century these writers and others had become enshrined in English departments across the country and literary criticism had become a teachable science with an army of adherents who decided to publish rather than perish.  I was a member of that brigade and that tribe.

Catch-22, The Naked and the Dead, Herzog, Rabbit, Run, Sophie’s Choice, Invisible Man and other favorites had a relationship to American culture that is hard to replicate.  This doesn’t mean current writers have less talent; I simply suggest that literary fiction early in the 21st century is a less important part of our culture and national psyche.  And that trend is likely to continue no matter what screen we are using.

This doesn’t mean fiction is going away, though literary agents will feel the squeeze.  Publishers will focus on their constituencies.  HarperCollins just announced its Harper Teen Imprint, which will publish short stories and novellas, priced from $0.99 to $2.99.  With books and increasingly with magazines, we can expect more unbundling of content that will be distributed in information chunks depending on the desires of the customer.   Atavist, fueled by investment from Barry Diller and Scot Rudin, tells stories through digital apps, ebooks, and magazines with subscription offers.  Ebooks, such as Deborah Blum’s Angel Killer, are under 20,000 words, have audio, video and social features, and are available on all platforms.

Simon & Schuster has teamed with Author Solutions, a self-publishing firm, and created Archway Publishing in part to keep an eye on which self-published authors are rising to the top.  Changes in media, culture, technology and attention span will make it increasingly difficult for writers of literary fiction to find a publisher.  This is a situation that I’m presently facing with “Bunker Kills: A Sea Story,” based on Vietnam experiences.  Since traditional publishers offer relatively little marketing help for literary fiction, it’s tempting to self-publish, particularly if the category is a vertical with an identifiable audience.  And a sailor never leaves the sea.

And a favorable wind helps.  America needs to take a more jaundiced viewing of its military.  General Petraeus has been an absolutely godsend.  We now have permission to say in public that the emperor has no clothes.

We know from our cultural and political history that what begins in tragedy often ends in farce.  For this reason, I’m pleased to learn that a British group aims to revive the classics, retelling one-hundred Greek myths in one-hundred tweets.  The group will also have a go at Henry James’ “The Turn of the Screw.”

There’s a good chance Cliffs Notes will be disrupted.

Vertigo, Approval Whores and Mencken’s Sahara

A timely touch of vertigo spared me much of the eleventh-hour political electioneering and played nicely into my plan to avoid all political coverage for the final month.  Although it wasn’t Lent, I decided at the same time to uncouple from Twitter and start all over again by following only the Khan Academy.  At least once a day, my account manager at Twitter offers regular advice on how to grow my social universe.  I really do like Steve Martin but I just don’t want to follow him on Twitter.  After prayer and reflection, I did add Esther Dyson.

My Twitter-reboot task is not helped by the delicious piece by Jeff Bercovici at Forbes about how social media makes us all approval whores.  So beware the “humblebrag” who fishes for compliments but indemnifies himself against charges of fishing.  Or the “virtuebrag,” who seems to have come out in force after Hurricane Sandy.   I am getting hammered this morning, Veteran’s Day, for not reposting praises for our military on Facebook.  I guess my six years in the Navy wasn’t enough.

To get straight with the world again during this uncertain time, I decided to complete a novel, “Saturn Gets his Peter Back.”  The character is something of a phony esthete, a Baby Boomer, who thinks his life is literature and his abundant dreams provide a big data point for living.  Poor lad, he thinks a stint in Bellevue Psychiatric Hospital in New York is quite consistent with his internal compass.  Saturn, who floats somewhat out of orbit, suffers from a very common psychiatric malady: mistaking the Map for the Territory.   Saturn is a semanticist’s delight.  He confuses levels of abstractions, keeps discovering the “little man who wasn’t there,” and delights in over-verbalization or succumbing to the hypnotic effect of one’s own words.  My character has created a fantasyland with defined borders, rules of engagement, and secret handshakes.  Facts sit uneasily with this celestial body.

The first political piece I read after my novel sojourn was “Fantasyland” by Frank Rich, published in New York magazine, about the post-fact, post-science, and post-reality Republican Party living in a gated community.  “Freud couldn’t have imagined a clearer case of projection,” writes Rich.  Why is Rich writing my fiction?

Thanks to my growing Twitter universe, I discovered the Jezebel site and Floating Sheep, an online demographic firm that tracks the geography of racist tweets after the election.  According to the map posted by Jezebel, the bulk of these come from the South and really the Deep South, including Louisiana and Mississippi.  A lot of high school students were up late ranting. 

It is a hundred years between Frank Rich and H.L. Menken, the Baltimore essayist who wrote a scathing piece on the post-Civil War South in 1917 entitled “The Sahara of the Bozart,” but the descriptions of this region by these two writers are only different by degree.  Rich uses a scapel; Mencken a hammer. Example: “A Washington or a Jefferson dropped there by some act of God would be denounced as a scoundrel or jailed overnight.”  And: “It was in Virginia that they invented the device of searching for contraband whiskey in woman’s underwear.”

Mencken’s pen drips yellow journalism and reads today like a hyperbolic screed, containing enough racial rant to attract warning signs.  But he put his finger on the cultural, political, and religious forces that concocted a post-Civil War Southern fantasy that is alive and well and amplified by social media.

Soon after Mencken’s tirade, we saw the beginning of a remarkable Southern literature movement led by John Crowe Ransom, Alan Tate, Robert Penn Warren and, of course, William Faulkner. The original effort was termed ‘The Fugitive Movement,” an effort to find identity in the New South.  This has been the most important literary development in American history.  I explored the theme of religious sensibilities in some of these writers in a thesis and a dissertation.  One gets the sense that the South has lost touch with its own literature, where many of the present day demons have been visited and slayed.

Time Magazine blogger Joe Klein is more polite: “The South, though a more complex region than ever before, won’t rise again until it resolves the issues that have marked its differences with the rest of the country since the land was colonized.”

And that ain’t just whistling Dixie.