Showing posts with label Paul Levinson. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Paul Levinson. Show all posts

Tuesday, July 17, 2018

Book release!


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And CONFIRMATION has arrived! My first novel is now available in hardcover, paperback, and electronic versions. Whatever your preference, you can get the book from any of your favorite booksellers.

As Kirkus Reviews wrote, the book is “A captivating examination of humanity’s fear of the unknown, with hints of sci-fi and fantasy.” You can read their full excellent review right here!

Paul Levinson, Fordham University professor of communication and media studies, former president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, and the author of such acclaimed science fiction novels as “The Plot to Save Socrates,” “The Silk Code,” and “The Consciousness Plague” calls the book “A media-savvy, X-Files-like, fast-paced story that’s just dying to be made into a Netflix or Amazon series.”

Thursday, February 11, 2010

An assault on reason by unethical frauds


Well, try as I might, it becomes just about impossible to escape the Parents Television Council's unrelenting assaults on mainstream American attitudes and values - not to mention basic reason and logic - all bolstered by non-existent data and a complete incomprehension of social science methodologies. I have written about this on the blog numerous times, but a new editorial - a call to censorious action, as their editorials usually are - by the PTC has just staggered me by the audacity of its unethical, dishonest misrepresentation of a study.

When I wrote about the PTC's mangling of the Kaiser Foundation's study on children's media use, I wrote that I felt that the PTC's laughable conclusions were due perhaps to their sheer ignorance, ineptitude, and blind ideological dogma, rather than willful dishonesty. I no longer say that after reading a piece by PTC member Melissa Henson. Here, she does not merely mangle social science data, but attacks the character of Fordham Professor Paul Levinson. Since I know Dr. Levinson, since I got a chance to read and listen to his defenses of free speech and expression, and know his honesty and integrity, Henson's article is especially offensive to me. But once you get a chance to read the actual study she uses to make her arguments, you realize that you just read the work of a con artist, a fraud, a liar who wilfully distorts clear data for her extremist social agenda.

You can read Henson's piece right here.

Now, not to put myself too high on a self-righteous pedestal or anything, but I do give my readers the references to everything I talk about. Henson does not.

But Henson's piece is an editorial piece on the web page of a group called The Church Report. They are an evangelical organization that characterizes its own social activist positions as "Christian. Conservative. Concise."

The meat of Henson's article - and its many underhanded, unethical distortions - starts right in the title: "TV Trash is Harming Our Children." This is a conclusion Henson reaches after having read a study on the sexual attitudes and behavior of teenage boys, put forth by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy. The actual study itself can be read right here. You owe it to yourself to check it out. It's not a difficult read at all. Now Henson does tell us that the study has also been quoted in a Seventeen Magazine article. For a moment or two, this does make me wonder about Henson. Might her offenses be just a result of her obtuseness. Maybe she only read the Seventeen article and never bothered to check out the actual study. You can find it quite easily on Google! But, again, reading her sleazy little attack on Dr. Levinson, I hesitate to blame her absurd article on her ignorance alone. This is a profoundly dishonest and unethical editorial she writes. But, back to the meat of the article...

Henson tells us that the study has concluded that children are "harmed" by "trash" on television. She makes an argument for some causality when it comes to the kind of life children are living. She claims that somehow children - mainly boys - are hurting today and this harm has been caused by television. This could not be farther from the truth.

The study is made up of a several quantitative data sets, all compiled from surveys. That means the study lists numbers. Numbers as in statistics gathered by asking the subjects closed-ended questions and multiple choice questions where they could only choose from a given set of possible answers. Based on this research methodology, the study lists lots of percentages. So what do all these numbers tell us? As it so happens, the numbers paint a surprisingly positive picture of boys and their attitudes toward sex, toward girls, and sexual mores.
Now the authors of the study tell us this right in the beginning!! I'm not sure how Melissa Henson could have missed this. There is plenty to be happy about. In fact, I think the numbers of this study paint a portrait of America's young boys that shows a generation that is surprisingly mature, well-balanced, sensitive, and decent. We find out things like the fact that the majority of boys (66%) would rather have a meaningful relationship with a steady girlfriend than just sex, the same percentage would be happy in a relationship without sex(!), and a majority (75%) prefer to date an exclusive girlfriend instead of sleeping around and playing the field. Furthermore, 75% of the boys say they have more respect for girls who are not quick to say "yes" to sex, 56% are "relieved" when their girlfriends tell them they want to wait to have sex, 74% think other teenagers take sex "too lightly," and 75% want to lose their virginity with someone they are in love with. Moreover, there is also quite a bit of empowerment of girls in many of the relationships, with 78% of the boys saying that their girlfriends greatly influence their sexual decisions. Sounds pretty good, right?

I think so, although the study is not all a rosy picture. It does indicate that the knowledge of a lot of boys about safe and effective contraception and birth control techniques is sadly lacking. Furthermore, a lot of the classic double standards are still alive and well in boys, like expecting girls to take care of contraception. But what this data also seems to indicate is that the antidote is rigorous and thorough sex education for kids starting in the middle school years and into high school. Aye, but therein lies the rub, don't it...?
The sort of far right wing social conservatives like the Church Report organization and people like Henson's PTC/MRC/CMI organization have always fought tooth and nail to keep sex education and contraceptives from teenagers!

And what bothers Henson the most out of this entire report? A section of a sentence that tells us that boys "feel way too much pressure from society to have sex." At this part in her editorial, Henson is off and going. Or, perhaps, we should say that she is flying off on auto-pilot, unreeling all the usual PTC talking points about the "trash" and "sleaze" and "garbage" on TV. This is where her editorial turns into a scummy little canard against Paul Levinson, insinuating that he prefers children to watch scenes of "bestiality," "adult/child" sexual contact, and contact between children and prostitutes. But even when it comes to that single statement of "too much pressure from society," Henson's conclusions perfectly demonstrate the usual PTC two-plus-two-equals-five logic. In the section of the study where the "pressure" from "society" phrase comes up, there is not one word about the media, about TV, about advertising, about the internet, or anything of the sort. Instead, in the same paragraph we are told that teen boys sometimes feel pressure to become sexually active from girls and that they might sometimes lie about their sexual experiences in order to stop OTHER KIDS from pressuring them into becoming sexually active. In fact, the study does mention that boys (as they always have since time immemorial, no doubt, and certainly well before advertising and TV) often lie about their sexual prowess, their conquests, and proficiency. In other words, the classic, teen macho "locker room" behavior. And this sort of sexual posturing has always been a part of adolescent and young adult male behavior. Anthropologists will even tell us that it might be a part of a genetically-programmed part of the male psyche with evolutionary advantages. One can find all that stuff in the sorts of book that The Church group people probably don't read much.

Now when it comes to analyzing the data to get some sort of a picture for where TV and all that sleazy, Satanic porn come into play, one should go to the later parts of the study and look at a table under the question "how much does each of the following influence your decisions about sex?" Do we not raise our eyebrows about the ambiguities in that question? Pop quiz folks: how can something like "decisions about sex" be interpreted in all sorts of ways? Moreover, the subjects gave their answers to this part of the survey by filing out a Likert Scale questionnaire. Those are the things that go on a spectrum between "a lot" to "a little." So, in other words, there is no discussion, no question and answer interaction between the researcher and the subject. But even so, the "influence" of porn is still below that of girlfriends, parents, friends, religion, and sex education in school. Below porn is information coming from doctors and TV only shows up on the list below that. Only "online" information about sex has less of an impact on boys than television.

But finally, I would also like to draw a bit of an attention to who exactly Melissa Henson is. Just what makes her so qualified to come to such drastic, apocalyptic conclusions about the study's data. Her bio under the editorial claims that she is a "noted expert on entertainment industry trends and the impact of entertainment media on children and pop culture." Yet her more extensive bio on the PTC web page tells us that she is merely the Director of Communication and Public Education (doesn't public education sound kind of Orwellian?) of the PTC. She's their PR person! She also somehow became a "noted expert" in social science research with only a BA in "Government" from the University of Virginia. In 1997, we are told, she started at the PTC as an entertainment analyst, documenting instances of inappropriate content on television." So she was one of the people watching hours of TV for the PTC, counting every utterance of a "hell" or "damn" on television shows.

In the words of Crystal Madison, the New Jersey chapter president of the PTC, one of our former Culture Wars guests who tried to rally the PTC to put financial pressure on St. Peter's College, the sort of "studies" the PTC conducts are worthless. Or, specifically in Madison's words (check it out right here) "we're not a lab, nor are we scientists."

Sunday, February 7, 2010

Fordham Prof's retort to PTC terrorists...

Check out this nice piece on CBS's self-censorship and comments from Fordham Professor Paul Levinson and the wing-nuts of the Parents Television Council.

Readers of this blog are already familiar with the fringe lunacy - bolstered by a thorough and spectacular level of ignorance of basic social science and constitutional law - of the Parents Television Council. If not, look at all my comments about this group in the archives on the right and below (especially my comments on their policies of threatening learning institutions).

The PTC and its head, Tim Winter, sent a "thank you" note to CBS for its heavy-handed censorship of the Grammy broadcast. The group seems to be happy that its terroristic campaign of letter writing to the FCC is paying off when broadcasters censor themselves. When TV networks choose to step on artists' rights to free expression out of fear of being punished by the FCC's unconstitutional powers to levy fines for broadcast content, the PTC feels that it has scored a point in the culture wars.

The only war the PTC is waging is on the most basic American, constitutionally-guaranteed, rights to freedom of speech and expression. When CBS takes these censorious measures to avoid the FCC, we see that the PTC's war is a true terror war. They are creating a chilling effect on free expression, creating a cultural atmosphere of fear and intimidation.

As I had written before, all people concerned with freedom of speech and democracy should exercise their own rights to speech, visit the web pages of the PTC and their adjunct groups like the Media Research Center, and let them know that Americans will no longer cave in to the pressure campaigns of cheap, mindless thugs and bullies.

Sunday, January 24, 2010

This is just too easy...



Last week the new Kaiser Family Foundation report on children's media use was released and it made a few headlines.

The crux of the report was something that most people who are somewhat aware of their surroundings, who are in the proximity of young kids - maybe if you go to the mall or get pissed off in a movie theater when all the cell phones are lighting up around you - pretty much expected to read: kids are using the media more than ever. They are using new media more than their elders and they are using what Fordham Professor Paul Levinson calls "new new media" (twittering, texting, blogging, YouTube, facebook) more than anyone. Frankly, Levinson's new book, "New New Media," is a much more enlightening and engaging read about these technologies and a book I highly recommend. The Kaiser study is a series of statistics based on surveys of teenagers...hey, it is what it is.

But now I just ran across something I was sort of expecting to see once the Kaiser study appeared: its paranoid misinterpretation.

The first people to point to the Kaiser report's statistics and issue portentous warnings about the decline and fall of civilization (again) are my good buddies in the Parents Television Council. The PTC is doing its usually thing in light of the study: jumping to completely unwarranted, censorious, hysterical conclusions. They can be read in their weekly warning newsletter right here.

The PTC piece is erroneously called "Children Overwhelmed by Media." This is impressive in itself because the very title of the article is already a misinterpretation of the Kaiser data. Some could call it a willful misrepresentation perhaps, an outright lie, but I really don't want to give the PTC that much credit. After my past experience with the PTC, including my debate with their 2008 "activist of the year," Crystal Madison, I've come to the conclusion that from the rank and file of the PTC and all the way to its top leadership, these people are simply too ignorant of social science research methods and data interpretation to even come up with a sophisticated lie about a simple survey like the Kaiser study. The study does not talk about whether or not children are "overwhelmed" - the loaded, negative connotation of that term is obvious - but that children are using new new media a lot more than before and they are using media in a different way than their elders, than children in the past. Why does this data mean that children are "overwhelmed?" Who has ever conclusively proven and established what is a "normal" level of media use and what is "pathological?" Thus, what standard is the PTC using to determine that the media-use percentages of the Kaiser study qualify as "overwhelming."

By the way, as a side note, one should go ahead and check out who some of the most committed activists of the PTC are by visiting their web page, http://www.parentstv.org/, and looking at the "grassroots" link. This has information on all their regional directors, including brief biographical information. What's obvious is that none of these people have any real background in social science research whatsoever. They appear to be a lot like the busybody neighbor, Gladys Kravitz, in the old "Bewitched" sitcom; the shrill, judgmental prude who can't make it through the day without sticking her nose in other people's lives. The sole reason for the PTC's existence is for its own censorious prudes to stick their noses in other people's lives and tell them how to run their families.

As for the PTC analysis of the Kaiser study, as you read on, you find it getting more and more amusing as it goes along. The more I think about it, as a matter of fact, the more convinced I am that I can use this as a piece of teaching aid in the future when I need to illustrate the most incompetent way to misinterpret the basic meaning of statistical data. But anyway, just after summarizing the Kaiser study, the PTC goes on to its rant about the data's "Impact." Naturally, according to the PTC brain turst, this data conclusively proves that children are harmed, they are turned ignorant, violent, sexually promiscuous band of little savages. The article rails against all the "harmful" media content children are now exposed to, including pornography and violence.

Except, of course, that the Kaiser study says nothing of the sort. First, the Kaiser study does not talk at all about the specific content of the information its subjects view or listen to. The PTC assumes that the subjects are watching porn and violence. And need we bring up the old joke about what you do when you assume...? Ok, sure, let's bring it up: you make an "ass out of U and me." The PTC, though, seems never to hesitate in making asses out of themselves. Second, the Kaiser study very clearly states that CAUSALITY IS NOT TO BE INFERRED from this data. Even when the data claims that more of the children who are the heaviest media users (47 percent of the children with high-use levels) tend to have lower grades (C or lower), the authors write "the study cannot establish a cause and effect relationship between media use and grades." This conclusion, by the way, is not merely "political correctness," as the PTC founder Brent Bozell has claimed in his past articles when he cavalierly equated a statistical correlation with a causality, it is a FACT!! Maybe kids who are lazy, unmotivated slackers in school to begin with tend to waste time on their iPods and their computers and smart-phones more than the over-achieving kids. Generations of slackers have found ways to waste their time long, long before the arrival of new media. Moreover, I'm also just kind of impressed by the fact that even 53 percent of the new new media's high users DO NOT get bad grades.

But such a laughably incompetent interpretation of simple statistics is not much of a surprise when it comes to the PTC, its activist members, or any of their adjunct organizations like the Media Research Council or the Culture and Media Institute. These are the folks who put links on their web pages to studies that prove the exact opposite of what the PTC et al. is trying to argue. These are shrill, authoritarian censors who, apparently, are too busy to be bothered to read a study past its title. Perhaps they should ask their illustrious advisory board, made up of such intellectual giants as Pat Boone and has-been Disney actor Dean Jones, to do a better job of advising them about the meaning of very basic scientific data.

Wednesday, October 7, 2009

"New New Media" on Culture Wars



One of the best past guests on Culture Wars returns for the October 10 episode!


Check out Fordham professor Paul Levinson as he talks about twittering, blogging, and the reasons to love all the new new media when he discusses his latest book...New New Media.

Tuesday, April 7, 2009

New podcasts of Culture Wars shows!

Be sure and check out http://culturewars.libsyn.com/ for more episodes of WSPC Culture Wars, including Paul Levinson's discussion of "sexting," Jennifer B. White talking about the publishing industry, PR, and the beginning writer, and Jeff Yang and Parry Shen talking about Asian American superheroes and comic books.

If you haven't been browsing the links over on the right side of the screen recently, be sure and check out Paul Levinson's blog post about sexting for more really great points about the issue, or click right here.

Thursday, March 26, 2009

Comparing "Sexting" to Child Porn is Ludicrous

Check out this latest article about how a budding new moral panic, the teenage cell phone phenomenon of “sexting” is about to turn into the next salvo on free speech and expression in America.

The ACLU, to its credit, is at least taking on this Pennsylvania county’s paranoid and destructive attempt at prosecuting teenage girls who sent provocative pictures of themselves to their boyfriends over the cell phone. And this prosecution is taking place despite the fact that THE TYPES OF PICTURES SENT BY THE GIRLS ARE NOT CLASSIFIED AS ILLEGAL IN PENNSYLVANIA!!!!!!!! So what the &^$%ing %#&* happened to equal protection under the law?

What happened is the latest case in the ages-old social phenomenon of the moral panic. A moral panic usually ensues when some strange and unusual event, some aberant occurrence is suddenly blown out of proportion (most easily by the mass media) and cast as a pernicious crisis threatening all of society. Sexting is just the latest moral panic, right after the scientifically baseless media violence hysteria, the steroid paranoia, the violent video game hysteria, the Satanic heavy metal hysteria, the comic book moral panic of the 1950s, the Red Scare, and all the way back to the colonial witch trials.

Sexting, as so perfectly argued by Fordham Professor Paul Levinson on today’s Culture Wars radio show, is not child pornography. It is not created under the same circumstances and it is in no way an equivalent of child pornography. Child pornography is the victimization of children, the videotaping or photography of children against their will by a pornographer, for distribution and sale. Sexting is teenagers voluntarily taking pictures of themselves and controlling those pictures by distributing them to friends and boyfriends. It is sexual experimentation and rebellion by kids at an age when every generation of teenagers had been rebellious, when they have experimented with sex and sexuality. Comparing sexting to child pornography is ludicrous.

But sexting is also a wonderful boon to various groups of censorious crackpots and control freaks like the Parents Television Council (check out their web page where they bemoan the creeping immoral menace of sexting) and the rest of their meddling ilk who use this as an opportunity to push for more intrusive laws and regulations that control private behavior. And just be sure and take a look at the part of the Pennsylvania sexting article that describes some of the punishment the authorities want meted out to these girls. A forced “re-education” program? RE-EDUCATION?? The Soviet Union used to have re-education programs in the Siberian gulags!!!

So don’t believe for a microsecond that all the moral watchdogs and media crusader groups are as appalled and saddened and outraged by sexting as they claim. These folks are happy as can be every time they imagine another kid “sexting” a picture of herself. The more kids sexting, the better, they must no doubt be gushing in their most private moments. Every such incident is just more ammunition for these parasites to launch their assaults on free expression and civil liberties.

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

A Can't Miss Culture Wars Episode

Be sure and tune in to the March 26th episode of WSPC Culture Wars, when we talk to Fordham University Communication Professor and Science Fiction author Paul Levinson. Dr. Levinson, a strong supporter of our show and St. Peter's College, will talk to us about the intrusion of ideology and political dogma into the world of science and research.

Plus, Dr. Levinson has debated PTC head Brent Bozell and challanged him on the fact that his regressive and repressive organization has virtually no scientific basis for their anti-speech agendas. You must check those out on YouTube!

Also, Jennifer B. White, author of The Witch and the Devil's Son, will talk about aspiring authors trying to beat the odds and breaking into the big, bad world of New York commercial publishing. In this economy, the deck might be stacked against writers, but Jennifer, a PR professional, has tips for guerilla marketing tactics and how talented and imaginative first time writers can get their work some attention.

Saturday, January 31, 2009

Check it out...!

A quick apology, loyal readers, for being off the blog for the last couple of days. I just got a moment for an update here, so I wanted to urge everyone of take a look at the blogs I follow and check out the piece on the Fairness Doctrine by Paul Levinson. Or just click here. Outstanding!!

Dr. Levinson, a Fordham Communication professor, author of the Phil D'Amato science fiction novels, and free speech advocate also has a couple of words about the NBC/vegetarian ad. And, most importantly, he has a link to the video of the ad!! Take a look at it, unless you're worried that it might usher in the Apocalypse before 2012.

I don't know about you, but I've been getting more and more of an urge to go to the produce aisle at my grocery store!

B.D.