Lab Notebook – May 19, 2013

Posted on May 19, 2013 by Mark Willis

  • My Medical Choice by Angelina Jolie – NYTimes.com 051413
  • Angelina Jolie’s Disclosure Highlights a Breast Cancer Dilemma – NYTimes.com 051413
    Now four decades later, another leading lady — the actress Angelina Jolie — has focused public attention on breast cancer again, but this time with an even bolder message: A woman at genetic risk should feel empowered to remove both breasts as a way to prevent the disease. Ms. Jolie revealed on Tuesday that because she carries a cancer-causing mutation, she has had a double mastectomy.
  • Challenging A Monopoly on Genetic Information – On The Media 050313
    As the Supreme Court decides whether genes can be patented, one geneticist has taken matters into his own hands. Dr. Robert Nussbaum is less worried about the owning of genes and more concerned about the monopoly that private companies have over genetic intellectual property – specifically what the mutations in a gene might mean for his patient’s health. He tells Brooke how he’s challenging the stranglehold on that information one patient at a time.
  • Covering the Veteran Beat – On The Media 042613
    NPR’s Quil Lawrence spent a decade in Iraq and Afghanistan as a war correspondent. But now, he’s covering a new beat – veterans from those wars as they transition back to civilian life. Bob talks to Quil about challenging his own assumptions and the conventional wisdom on the veteran beat. QUIL LAWRENCE: "I went over to London with this preconceived story in my head about, you know, American veterans knocking up competition a notch, and I found out that no one needs to teach Paralympians about competition. And the vets, they fit right in as really competitive guys. We ended up following this Navy unexploded ordinance operator who’d been blinded in a bomb blast in Afghanistan."
  • Teenage Diaries Revisited 051013
    Melissa’s son is a teenager. She and Issaiah have faced many challenges, from eviction notices to his serious health issues. Now, she shares her teenage diary with him and reveals things about her past that she’s never mentioned.
  • Online Legacies Prompt Growing Legal Challenges : NPR 051413
    When we die, we leave the people who knew us with memories. But what about everything we posted online? We leave that in the hands, not of our families, but of big corporations such as Google and Facebook.
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Lab Notebook – May 12, 2013

Posted on May 12, 2013 by Mark Willis

  • Communication privacy management theory – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
    Communication privacy management theory, originally known as communication boundary management, is a communication theory first developed by Sandra Petronio.[1][2] Petronio’s conclusions are relevant to the study of communication because before Communication Boundary Management there was only one other theory that studied self-disclosure, Social Penetration Theory. While both communication privacy management theory and social penetration theory are based in self-disclosure the critical difference is that CPM focuses on understanding “the conceptual idea of disclosure [3] ” The theory evolved from boundary management to privacy management because Petronio believed that this name was more representative of the theory. This is because the theory explains how and why people regulate their privacy as opposed to their personal boundaries. | Communication Privacy Management theory describes the ways in which relational actors manage their privacy boundaries and the disclosure of private information. The theory focuses heavily on the processes that people employ to determine when and how they choose to conceal or reveal private information.[4] Through this theory Petronio describes the ever-present dialectic of privacy and openness within various relationship models, explains how relationships develop as public and private boundaries are negotiated and coordinated, and demonstrates how individuals regulate revealing and concealing information through communication.[5]
  • Allan Sekula – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
    Allan Sekula (born Erie, Pennsylvania, 1951) is an American artist, of Polish descent, photographer, writer, filmmaker,theorist and critic based at the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) in Valencia, California. His work frequently focuses on large economic systems, or "the imaginary and material geographies of the advanced capitalist world." | Allan Sekula (born Erie, Pennsylvania, 1951) is an American artist, of Polish descent, photographer, writer, filmmaker,theorist and critic based at the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) in Valencia, California. His work frequently focuses on large economic systems, or "the imaginary and material geographies of the advanced capitalist world."
  • Civic Media Lunch: Counter-Cartographies | MIT Center for Civic Media 050913
    Counter-cartography uses maps and mapping to challenge the mainstream narrative of a site or history, from a political or activist perspective. This practice overlaps with ‘radical cartography’ which more explicitly uses mapping to actively promote social change. Both of these use and appropriate cartographic conventions in order to analyze and create a balance of power. Much of this mapping work is hybrid, combining aesthetics and information. It’s also temporal and anti-monumental, because it is responsive to a political moment.
  • Lize Mogel
    Lize Mogel is an interdisciplinary artist who works with the interstices between art and cultural geography. She has created and disseminated counter-cartography— maps and mappings that produce new understandings of social and political issues. Her work connects the real history and collective imaginary about specific places to larger narratives of global economies. She has mapped public parks in Los Angeles; future territorial disputes in the Arctic; and wastewater economies in New York City. Lize is co-editor of the book/map collection "An Atlas of Radical Cartography" and co-curator of its related traveling exhibition.
  • Podcast, Mary L. Gray: "Size Is Only Half the Story: Valuing the Dimensionality of BIG DATA" | MIT Comparative Media Studies 042313
    Mary L. Gray: think of big data as a “fiction with consequences” – a kind of constructed narrative, not reality itself. | Recent provocations (boyd and Crawford, 2011) about the role of "big data" in human communication research and technology studies deserve an outline of the value of anthropology, as a particular kind of "big data". Mary L. Gray, Senior Researcher at Microsoft Research New England and Associate Professor of Communication and Culture at Indiana University, will walk through the different dimensions of social inquiry that fall under the rubric of "big data". She argues for attending to different dimensions rather than scales of data, more collaborative approaches to how we arrive at what we (think we) know, and critical analysis of the cultural assumptions embedded in the data we collect. By moving from the "snapshot" of quantitative work to the "time-lapse photography" of ethnography, she suggests that researchers must imagine "big data" as an on-going process of modeling, triangulation, and critique. Gray’s current research includes work on ethnographically-informed social media research, compliance cyberinfrastructures in universities and their impact on emerging media research, online labour, and the importance of location and place in the context of mobile technologies. Her book Out in the Country: Youth, Media, and Queer Visibility in Rural America examined how youth in rural parts of the United States fashioned "queer" senses of gender and sexual identity and the role that media–particularly internet access–played in their lives and political work.
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MiT8 Abstract Highlights

Posted on May 9, 2013 by Mark Willis

  • “Gangnam Style, Azonto and the Cosmopolitan Remix” | Media in Transition 8: public media, private media abstracts and papers
    Ethan Zuckerman: “Internet memes — humorous, remixable, amateur content designed for spread online — have attracted attention as an rapidly expanding space for political, personal and corporate expression. While the characteristic of a meme is that it is designed to be spread by the internet public, the cultural rootedness of memes place constraints on the ability of a particular expression to transcend the boundaries of a specific culture: the features of Kenyan internet superhero Makmende that made him spreadable within his home culture may have made him incomprehensible outside the Kenyan internet. The creation and release of memes into an internet that crosses cultural, national and linguistic borders raises questions about how meme authors and remixers concieve of their audience. As the daily newspaper invites us to imagine a body politic in Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities, does the dissemination of memes encourage us to imagine communities that share fundamental characteristics despite cultural differences? How does that imagined community correspond to the reality of communities that remix and spread content? Dance video parodies offer a rich space to explore these questions, as they spread across cultural borders in ways that both celebrate local internet culture and assert participation in a global phenomenon. Parody remixes of PSY’s Gangnam Style video suggest features of dance videos that allow remix across cultural lines. These same features invite corporate cooption of the memes, which may ultimately check their organic spread.”
  • “On Murderous and Other Kinds of Rage: Mapping Participatory Culture in Digital India” | Media in Transition 8: public media, private media abstracts and papers
    Aswin Punathambekar: “The past decade in India has been marked by a number of astonishing instances of popular participation intersecting with and reshaping a wider political field. The third season of Indian Idol, which saw fan mobilization for the two finalists influencing broader political movements in Northeast India, and the Pink Chaddi campaign designed to protest attacks on women pub-goers by a conservative, right-wing Hindu group, come to mind right away as two key cases that have attracted considerable attention. There has been significant academic commentary on such moments of political mobilization, with considerable attention devoted to the question: what constitutes meaningful participation? However, the discussion so far has been marked by a focus on the ‘political’ dimensions and the implications that such moments and zones of participation hold for our understanding of the tenets of normative political theory. Media and popular culture remain incidental to these analyses. In this paper, I attempt to redress this gap by examining two very distinct expressions of public sentiment (rage, in particular): one involving the issue of corruption and the nation-wide mobilization led by a politician, Anna Hazare; the other involving a film song (Why this kolaveri di / Why this murderous rage) that went on to become the most popular YouTube video of 2011. Tracing changing relations between the circulation of news/entertainment programming and mobile media, I argue that the link between participation and citizenship in contemporary India is to be found in the realm of ordinary, everyday media use.”
  • “The ‘Mothership’ Goes Up the Amazon: What Does “Transmedia” Mean for Brazil?” | Media in Transition 8: public media, private media abstracts and papers
    Henry Jenkins: “The term, “transmedia,” means simply “across media” and implies some kind of structured or systematic relationship between multiple media platforms and practices. Transmedia storytelling has been defined as representing “a process where integral elements of a fiction get dispersed systematically across multiple delivery channels for the purpose of creating a unified and coordinated entertainment experience. Ideally, each medium makes it own unique contribution to the unfolding of the story.” Transmedia combines multimodality with radical intertextuality: the term has evolved through ongoing conversations between academics, journalists, media makers, policy creators, and fans, around the world. As the transmedia impulse was absorbed into the existing Hollywood industry, what people have called the “west coast” or “mothership” model has defined this approach primarily in terms of mechanisms for engagement which merge aspects of promotion and storytelling in ways where content dispersed across other media platforms helps to drive audiences towards the core text — the “mothership” — most often a feature film or television series. Transmedia Producer Brian Clark contrasts this “mothership” approach with an “East Coast” model for transmedia strongly impacted by its ties to games, publishing, music, advertising, and independent media, again suggesting the localization of the content based on the structures and resources of dominant media industries. Yet, we could take this interest in “localization” a few steps further, focusing on the differences in how “transmedia” works in a commercial industry like Hollywood as opposed to in the context of “public service” media systems, such as those in Canada, England, or the European Union, where the production of transmedia is often shaped by government funding and cultural policy, and the goals are often directed towards education, enrichment, and social awareness. Most recently, the term has reached Brazil and other countries in Latin America. Using the entries from a recent transmedia competition, this paper will examine the ways that transmedia production reflects Brazil’s “hybrid” media economy, noted for public-private partnerships, and the ways transmedia has been deployed to bridge between the country’s diverse cultural traditions. Taken as a whole, this paper will explore how the concept of “transmedia” has diversified as it has spread across different national contexts.”
  • “Music Without Borders: Globalization and its Contents” | Media in Transition 8: public media, private media abstracts and papers
    Nancy Baym: “The rhetoric of piracy focuses on how the internet has increased unauthorized downloading, and the growing rhetoric surrounding streaming sites such as Spotify tends to focus on the small payments to musicians. Although these are serious concerns, this paper argues that the picture is more complicated by considering this phenomenon from musicians’ perspectives. Based on approximately 40 interviews with musicians from more than a dozen genres and seven countries, I show how these technologies have resulted in the internationalization of previously regional music audiences, bringing musicians indirect rewards both financial and personal. Musicians have found audiences in locations they never imagined they would, international booking has become significantly easier, and they have found revenue streams from international touring even when those populations have relied on unauthorized downloads to initially access the music. Furthermore, increased globalization has brought ephemeral rewards that increase the value of a career in music. These include travel, international friendship, and experience of the common language of music. Ultimately, I argue that these new global flows push us to reconsider piracy and streaming in social as well as economic terms, situating concerns about money within a broader understanding of what makes an artistic life worth living.
  • “The Culture of Connectivity: A Critical History of Social Media” by Jose Van Dijck (2013)
    Social media has come to deeply penetrate our lives: Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and many other platforms define many of our daily habits of communication and creative production. The Culture of Connectivity studies the rise of social media in the first decade of the twenty-first century up until 2012, providing both a historical and a critical analysis of the emergence of major platforms in the context of a rapidly changing ecosystem of connective media. Such history is needed to understand how these media have come to profoundly affect our experience of online sociality. The first stage of their development shows a fundamental shift. While most sites started out as amateur-driven community platforms, half a decade later they have turned into large corporations that do not just facilitate user connectedness, but have become global information and data mining companies extracting and exploiting user connectivity. Author and media scholar Jose van Dijck offers an analytical prism to examine techno-cultural as well as socio-economic aspects of this transformation. She dissects five major platforms: Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, and Wikipedia. Each of these microsystems occupies a distinct position in the larger ecology of connective media, and yet, their underlying mechanisms for coding interfaces, steering users, and filtering content rely on shared ideological principles. At the level of management and organization, we can also observe striking similarities between these platforms’ shifting ownership status, governance strategies, and business models. Reconstructing the premises on which these platforms are built, this study highlights how norms for online interaction and communication gradually changed. “Sharing,” “friending,” “liking,” “following,” “trending,” and “favoriting” have come to denote online practices imbued with specific technological and economic meanings. This process of normalization, the author argues, is part of a larger political and ideological battle over information control in an online world where everything is bound to become social. Crossing lines of technological, historical, sociological, and cultural inquiry, The Culture of Connectivity will reshape the way we think about interpersonal connection in the digital age.
  • “Reshaping Public Space in a Culture of Connectivity” | Media in Transition 8: public media, private media abstracts and papers
    Jose van Dijck: “Online sociality is increasingly dominated by major social media platforms (Facebook, YouTube/Google, Twitter) that share operational principles such as algorithms based on popularity rankings and the exploitation of (meta)data for predictive and real time analytics. In the top 100 of most popular websites, there are only two nonprofit platforms, most notably Wikipedia (number 6 in the Alexa rankings). The dominance of corporately owned and commercially run platforms in the evolving ecosystem of connective media is quickly changing the meanings of “social,” “public,” “community,” and “nonprofit”. The question whether Wikipedia can procure its position as a nonprofit platform in this overwhelmingly corporate ecosystem is quite relevant when it comes to determining what is left of the participatory culture that was enthusiastically welcomed six or seven years ago. Government regulators and NGOs have rightly defended the interests of individuals’ privacy against the pervasive power of social media and data industries. However, public space is much harder to defend as corporations like Google and others are gradually penetrating every inch of heretofore-public sectors: education, health care, public broadcasting, and so on. The penetration of online public space by corporate forces is even more urgent in Western-European societies, which traditionally have a much stronger public sphere than the United States. This lecture will address the question whether sustaining public and nonprofit space is possible in a culture of connectivity dominated by data corporations.
  • “The Paradox Between Public Action and Private Control on Facebook and Google” | Media in Transition 8: public media, private media abstracts and papers
    Jaigris Hodson: “Google and Facebook have become synonymous with social media and the participatory web. Selling the attention spans of internet users to advertisers using content almost entirely created by the labor of others, makes these organizations leaders in a media environment that is beginning to redefine the relationship between consumers (or prosumers), technology, and the modern digital organization (Drache 2007, Lessig 2008, Rainie and Wellman 2012, Castells 2010, Shirky 2010). This paper examines Google and Facebook blogs between 2006 and 2011. When taken together, the discourses from the Google and Facebook blogs illustrate a paradox which may be characteristic of many online participatory organizations; that is, there are indeed more opportunities for public participation in these organizations, but private corporate concerns mean that the large degree of citizen participation has not necessarily created the level playing field for which some scholars once hoped.”
  • “Auto-biography: On the Immanent Commodification of Personal Information” by Kenneth C. Werbin | Media in Transition 8: public media, private media abstracts and papers
    Kenneth C. Werbin: “In the last years, a series of automated self-representational social media sites have emerged that shed light on the information ethics associated with participation in Web 2.0. Sites like Zoominfo.com, Pipl.com, 123People.com and Yasni.com not only continually mine and aggregate personal information and biographic data from the (deep) web and beyond to automatically represent the lives of people, but they also engage algorithmic networking logics to represent connections between them; capturing not only who people are, but whom they are connected to. Indeed, these processes of ‘auto-biography’ are ‘secret’ ones that for the most part escape the user’s attention. This article explores how these sites of auto-biography reveal the complexities of the political economy of Web 2.0, as well as implicate an ethics of exposure concerning how these processes at once participate in the erosion of privacy, and at the same time, in the reinforcement of commodification and surveillance regimes.”
  • “Digital Öffentlichkeit” by Dan Faltesek | Media in Transition 8: public media, private media abstracts and papers
    Dan Faltesek: “In Louis Brandies’ famous quote “Sunlight is the best disinfectant” there is a nested theory of the public sphere: exposure of relevant facts to dialectical judgment is perhaps the best technique for achieving the public good. It is this idea, that exposure and debate might produce better decisions at work in what has come to be known as the public sphere. Much of what has come to characterize criticism of big data and surveillance relies on a conception of privacy that is at odds with a concept of publicity in public culture, which is problematic. This is particularly true when privacy, ownership, and control are elided into a single form of self-control. In this paper, I argue that in the way that interpersonal communication research has displaced privacy with self-disclosure (the groundbreaking work of Sandra Petronio). Media studies should dispense with privacy as a central concern and turn toward disclosure toward publicity (and thus rhetoric) as the grounding point for theory and criticism. Re-reading public sphere theory as being concerned with the procession of disclosures, debates, and networks that characterize social media offers important insights into how publics and counter-publics form, and their potential for using social media as a publicity mechanism.
  • “Flashing Lights: Paparazzi Photography and Celebrity Overexposure” | /Media in Transition 8: public media, private media abstracts and papers
    Brandeise Monk-Payton: “An important aspect of the production and consumption of celebrity culture is the desire to access the remainder or residual quality of the star that is not usually within the public’s grasp. Therefore the allure of celebrity becomes predicated on an epistemological quandary. How do we come to know the star? Allan Sekula attests to the “higher truth of the stolen image” through the candid photograph. Particularly in contemporary celebrity culture, the harbinger of such photographs is the paparazzi. This paper theorizes the intersections between the informal practices of ‘street’ paparazzi (sometimes known in extreme cases as stalkerazzi) and celebrity overexposure. Overexposure is a concept that makes apparent how the flashing lights of the camera can be considered an imposition on the star, an excess of publicity that manifests itself as a crisis in celebrity (re)presentation. On February 16, 2007, a seemingly innocuous visit to the hair salon resulted in pop star Britney Spears’ complete shaving of her head apparently undeterred by the system of celebrity in place that regulates her image and brand. The paparazzi, visually complicating the divide between public and private acts, were present and recorded this instance of star defilement through the windows of the establishment, exposing crisis as a fundamental element of celebrity culture. This paper analyzes the paparazzi’s photographic documentation and the media’s circulation of Britney’s spontaneous performance of the ruin of the star body, arguing that the images produced from this moment seem to paradoxically emphasize that it is precisely Spears’ literal removal of the traces of her celebrity that becomes the validation of her “truth” and status as an overexposed affective and affected laboring subject of stardom under the public eye and publicity’s glare.”
  • Azonto Gangnam Style – Ghana Style – Zigi (African Parody) – YouTube
    African Parody of PSY’s Gangnam Style (Azonto Version)
    Download here http://www.hulkshare.com/b3xbv4wkiark
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FDR and the Hidden Work of Disability

Posted on May 2, 2013 by Mark Willis

Photo of Franklin Delano roosevelt on Inauguration Day wearing a formal top hat. With him in the back seat of an open touring car is wife Eleanor Roosevelt and President Herbert Hoover. [Source: American Heritage]
Franklin Delano Roosevelt  wearing a formal top hat on Inauguration Day in 1933. With him in the back seat of an open touring car is wife Eleanor Roosevelt and former President Herbert Hoover.  [Source: American Heritage]

Mark Willis will present “FDR and the Hidden Work of Disability” at MiT8 (Media in Transition 8) at M.I.T. on May 4, 2013. See the MiT8 agenda for details.

Read more content tagged FDR and MiT8 on this site.

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Lab Notebook – May 1, 2013

Posted on May 1, 2013 by Mark Willis

Watch FDR on Lying: Hiding a Disability on PBS. See more from American Experience.

  • WGBH American Experience : PBS video Alistair Cooke interviews Hugh Gallagher about FDR on Lying: Hiding a Disability
    Hugh Gallagher, “Biographer: The country just simply didn’t perceive Roosevelt as being handicapped, and they would look and they just would not see what they were seeing. People wanted him to be president, he wanted to be president. There was this little matter of being crippled in the way. The President was always performing. He was performing before crowds, before visitors of state, the Congress and so forth, but also for his family and everyone else. When he met Orson Welles, he said, “Orson, you and I are the two best actors in America,” and he was right, you know. He was right.”
  • Social Security History
    Disability Policy & History
    Statement before the Subcommittee on Social Security
    of the Committee on Ways and Means
    July 13, 2000
    Edward D. Berkowitz
    George Washington University
    “Although Social Security Disability Insurance did not become law until July, 1956, a long period of discussion both in the executive agencies and in Congress preceded its passage. Planners in the Social Security Administration began their consideration of this measure in 1936. They devised a program that they felt could withstand the pressures of the depression. In particular, they wrote a tough definition of disability into their proposals so as to distinguish sharply between unemployment and disability. Instead of adopting a definition similar to the ones in the existing workers’ compensation and veterans pension laws, they chose to define disability as “an impairment of mind or body which continuously renders it impossible for the disabled person to follow any substantial gainful occupation,” and was likely to last for “the rest of a person’s life.” | “Even with this tough definition, which is similar to the one in the present law, many doubted the ability of federal officials to administer a disability program. As an actuary who served on the 1938 Social Security Advisory Council put it, “You will have workers like those in the dust bowl area, people who have migrated to California and elsewhere, who perhaps have not worked in a year or two, who will imagine they are disabled.” The actuary warned that unless a highly qualified medical staff examined each applicant, the cost of the program would be higher than “anything that can be forecast.”
  • Disability rights movement – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
    In 1948, a watershed for the movement was the proof of the existence of physical and program barriers. The proof was provided as a specification for barrier free usable facilities for the handicap. The specifications provided the minimum requirements for barrier free physical and program access. An example of barriers are; providing only steps to enter buildings; lack of maintenance of walkways; locations not connected with public transit; lack of visual and hearing communications ends up segregating individuals with disabilities from independent, participation, and opportunities. The ANSI – Barrier Free Standard (phrase coined by Dr. Timothy J. Nugent, the lead investigator) called “ANSI A117.1, Making Buildings Accessible to and Usable by the Physically Handicapped”, provides the indisputable proof that the barriers exist. It is based on disability ergonomic research conducted at the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign campus from 1946 to 1986. The research was codified in the ANSI A117.1 standard in 1961, 1971, 1980, and 1986. The standard is the outcome of physical therapists, bio-mechanical engineers, and individuals with disabilities who developed and participated in over 40 years of research. Easter Seals Education Committee Chairman Harold Wilke was tasked with assembling that diverse group in 1959. The standard provides the criteria for modifying programs and the physical site to provide independence. Applying the researched standards criteria presents reliable access and non-hazardous conditions. In October 2011 the standard turned 50 years old. The standard has been emulated globally since its introduction in Europe, Asia, Japan, Australia, and Canada, in the early 1960s. [8]
  • SPSSI – Journal of Social Issues – Vol. 44 No. 1 1988 – Moving Disability Beyond “Stigma”
    The Journal of Social Issues
    Vol. 44 No. 1 1988
    Moving Disability Beyond “Stigma”
    Issue Editors: Adrienne Asch and Michelle Fine
  • Jesse Jackson full 1984 Convention Speech (starts at 12:55) #occupy1984 leaked draft – YouTube
    Speech starts at 12:55. See the FDR quote beginning at 31:10: “The Rainbow includes disabled veterans. The color scheme fits in the Rainbow. The disabled have their handicap revealed and their genius concealed; while the able-bodied have their genius revealed and their disability concealed. But ultimately, we must judge people by their values and their contribution. Don’t leave anybody out. I would rather have Roosevelt in a wheelchair than Reagan on a horse.”
  • American Rhetoric: Jesse Jackson — 1984 Democratic National Convention Speech (“The  Rainbow Coalition”)
    Jesse Jackson: “The Rainbow includes disabled veterans. The color scheme fits in the Rainbow. The disabled have their handicap revealed and their genius concealed; while the able-bodied have their genius revealed and their disability concealed. But ultimately, we must judge people by their values and their contribution. Don’t leave anybody out. I would rather have Roosevelt in a wheelchair than Reagan on a horse.”
  • Why The Candidates Still Use FDR As Their Measure | American History Lives at American Heritage Feb 1988
    “When the American people got their first look at the entries in the 1988 presidential race, they sensed immediately that not one of the contenders measured up to their highest expectations. The Republican heir apparent was dismissed as a “wimp,” and the original Democratic field as the “seven dwarfs.” Asked whom in either party they preferred, a huge proportion of respondents replied, “None of the above.” And if inquirers had gone on to ask what sort of nominee voters had in mind, not a few would have answered without hesitation, “Franklin Delano Roosevelt.” That sentiment cut across party lines. Predictably more than one Democrat sought to associate himself with his party’s four-time winner. At the 1984 Democratic National Convention in San Francisco, Jesse Jackson had drawn a roar of approval when he said that FDR in a wheelchair was better than Ronald Reagan on a horse, and in the 1988 contest Sen. Paul Simon of Illinois offered any number of New Deal solutions to contemporary problems. More surprisingly, Franklin Roosevelt has attracted no little favorable comment from Republicans, most conspicuously President Reagan. In his 1980 acceptance address Reagan spoke so warmly of FDR that the New York Times editorial the next morning was entitled “Franklin Delano Reagan,” and thereafter he rarely missed an opportunity to laud the idol of his opponents. Indeed, so powerful an impression has FDR left on the office that in the most recent survey of historians, he moved past George Washington to be ranked as the second greatest President in our history, excelled only by the legendary Abraham Lincoln.”

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