lighting seeds

sometimes I love kodak.com. I mean really love it. We just had a huge lighting storm hit rochester and a group of us, including the head of kodak.com, all gathered at the large windows in our office and stared to the west and watched the storm. It’s moments like that which make this place great.

i finally figured it out

it took a while but i recently realized what i don’t like about like about Eminem. For me he epitomizes our society’s desire to embrace “rights” without embracing the “responsibility” that goes along with them. A few days ago I had the chance to listen to a some stuff off of the new album, The Eminem Show and songs I heard all had a similar theme: “all I’m speakin’ is words and I’ve got a right to do that and my words don’t really effect what people do.” Sweet baby jebus, someone tell me when and where this idea that words don’t affect people’s behavior came from? Or what’s worse why every time the idea that words might have an effect on people is brought up the entire entertainment industry wraps itself in an American flag and starts wailing about First Amendment rights.

The funny thing about the First Amendment is it protects your right to speech (as it should) but it doesn’t protect you from the responsibility that right requires. It also doesn’t necessarily protect you from the results of your speech. I mean Em, or is it Mr Nem, you can’t seriously believe that your lyrics don’t affect the way that teens (let alone adults) think or act? I mean just about any form of communication is about affecting behavior. That’s the power of any mass media form of communication (why can the industry charge so much for Superbowl ads? Nah, advertising goal isn’t to influence behavior…. never).

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting that the First Amendment is a bad thing. In fact it’s a crucial part of our democratic republic (remember, we’re not a democracy). But for God sake, can people at least take responsibility for their words? ‘specially those moving some 3+ million albums in less than five weeks.