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January 29, 2003
Le brand, c'est moi
In the current issue of the New Yorker, there's an excellent piece on Martha Stewart by JefferyToobin. It examines the charges she's facing for insider trading, and concludes that it will be hard for the government to nail her. I'd assumed Stewart was probably guilty; this is the first plausible defense of her I've read.
But what's more interesting are the first 1,000 words of the piece, which constitute a mini-profile of Stewart as she hangs out with Toobin in her house. He asks he about how she's feeling, having been mocked so viciously in the public eye:
Then Stewart, describing the reaction to her plight, went on, "Well, that's puzzling to me, O.K., that's puzzling and also confusing, because my public image has been one of trustworthiness, of being a fine, fine editor, a fine purveyor of historical and contemporary information for the homemaker. My business is about homemaking. And that I have been turned into or vilified openly as something other than what I really am has been really confusing." She said, "I mean, we've produced a lot of good stuff for a lot of good people. And to be maligned for that is kind of weird."
Read that again: The way that Stewart describes herself is so amazingly weird. She doesn't say "I have been trustworthy, and a fine, fine editor, etc. etc." No, she says "my public image has been one of trustworthiness, of being a fine, fine editor, etc." It's as if she were describing not herself, but a separate construct -- a platonic ideal of Martha Stewartness, floating out there in the ocean of zeitgeist.
Which is, of course, precisely the point: Martha Stewart the icon is far more important than Martha Stewart the person. Stewart knows as well as we do that her appeal is the persona she's cultivated. Who cares what she's really like? Consumers buy her stuff based on what she seems to be like.
But the demented thing is that now she, too, seems concerned only for what she seems like. Martha Stewart The Real Person has ceased to be a concern even for, well, Martha Stewart; when she wakes up in the morning and looks in the mirror, she sees a brand, not a human being. It must be very strange to have that sort of life. But you can hardly blame her. Stewart's success is a direct result of today's peculiar mix of celebrity culture and incorporation. As with Oprah and Rosie O'Donnell, Stewart's business is based on nothing but her persona -- a feat that is possible only in a world as highly mediated as ourselves. The closest parallel I can think of is Queen Victoria, who was incredibly obsessed both with spreading her image to every corner of her empire, and yet also micromanaging that image with a watchmaker's precision. Victoria knew that a chief ingredient to her success would be flooding Britain with pictures of herself, the better to instil love and obsession in her mostly-illiterate subjects. So she issued licenses to craftsmen to make zillions and zillions of pictures, baubles, and daguerrotypes in her likeness. But she also imposed the sort of quality-control that you'd normally associate with Fabrege Egg production, and threatened to torture and behead any craftsman who painted her in an unflattering light.
Which, come to think of it, is another interesting parallel with Stewart. As is typical in situations where the press begins teasing the powerful, tabloid papers are running some really ungainly pictures of her:
In an afternoon of conversation, Stewart generally declined to fire back at her tormentors; she has no complaint with the late-night comics, who used to welcome her. "My buddies—Dave, Jay, Conan," she said with a sigh. "I miss the fun. They have a job to do, they can comment on anybody in a playful way, and I don't think it's at all damaging. In other parts of the press, more damaging. In terms of photography, even more damaging." She's particularly bothered by the photographs that appear in the Post, which often show her looking haggard and distraught. "The ugliest pictures. And I'm a pretty photogenic person, I mean, and they manage to find the doozies," she said.
It makes sense, though. Stewart is an incredibly hard-assed businessperson, who can clearly deal with any sort of verbal criticism. But a bad photo? Ah, that cuts to the heart of her brand, and, by inference, to her own heart itself -- since there is no real difference even for her. The SEC, the goverment courts, the judges; none can disturb her equanimity. But those who attack her image? Off with their heads!
Posted by Clive Thompson at January 29, 2003 03:20 PM
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While you might be right about Stewart, I think you're making a bit of a leap from the evidence presented. She was making a point about the public reaction to her plight -- the public's perception of her honesty etc. are much more *relevant* than the truth, whether the perception and the truth are the same or not. And, she does go on to talk about "what I really am," after all. Didn't strike me as weird at all.
Posted by: Franco at January 29, 2003 4:35 PM
Hmmmmm. Well, true -- for anyone being vilified in the press, public perception is a significant thing, and more important than reality. I mean, if I were being crucified in the Post, I'd be worried about that too!
But clearly, her public image is of even greater concern to her than it would be for most people, merely because she's got so much riding on it. It was her image that made her momentarily worth over a billion dollars; it's been the erosion of that image that has melted $400 million off that fortune. And the fact that bad photos so singularly unsettle her is another issue here. There are plenty of other professions -- law; medicine; insurance -- where you can destroy people with words, but not often with photos that merely make them look unattractive. I think that's what I was reacting to, as well as the singularly strange way she had of referring to herself.
Of course, another reason she's concerned about looking bad in photos is that she's an older woman, and women always get brutally savaged and mocked for looking bad in a way that men don't -- which is both unfair and creepy.
Posted by: Clive at January 29, 2003 5:05 PM
There's a similar take on Shania Twain, in the sense of persona vs. person, here!
Posted by: El Rey at January 30, 2003 6:19 AM
Ahahahha! Oh my god, that piece is superb!
Posted by: Clive at January 30, 2003 10:51 AM
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Posted by: Online Casino at January 16, 2004 2:47 AM
The most basic duality that exists with variables is how the programmer sees them in a totally different way than the computer does. When you're typing away in Project Builder, your variables are normal words smashed together, like software titles from the 80s. You deal with them on this level, moving them around and passing them back and forth.
Posted by: Ottewell at January 20, 2004 12:18 PM
This will allow us to use a few functions we didn't have access to before. These lines are still a mystery for now, but we'll explain them soon. Now we'll start working within the main function, where favoriteNumber is declared and used. The first thing we need to do is change how we declare the variable. Instead of
Posted by: Isabella at January 20, 2004 12:18 PM
This will allow us to use a few functions we didn't have access to before. These lines are still a mystery for now, but we'll explain them soon. Now we'll start working within the main function, where favoriteNumber is declared and used. The first thing we need to do is change how we declare the variable. Instead of
Posted by: Joos at January 20, 2004 12:19 PM
Note the new asterisks whenever we reference favoriteNumber, except for that new line right before the return.
Posted by: Nathaniel at January 20, 2004 12:19 PM
This will allow us to use a few functions we didn't have access to before. These lines are still a mystery for now, but we'll explain them soon. Now we'll start working within the main function, where favoriteNumber is declared and used. The first thing we need to do is change how we declare the variable. Instead of
Posted by: Theodosius at January 20, 2004 12:19 PM
This code should compile and run just fine, and you should see no changes in how the program works. So why did we do all of that?
Posted by: Thadeus at January 20, 2004 12:20 PM
Note first that favoriteNumbers type changed. Instead of our familiar int, we're now using int*. The asterisk here is an operator, which is often called the "star operator". You will remember that we also use an asterisk as a sign for multiplication. The positioning of the asterisk changes its meaning. This operator effectively means "this is a pointer". Here it says that favoriteNumber will be not an int but a pointer to an int. And instead of simply going on to say what we're putting in that int, we have to take an extra step and create the space, which is what does. This function takes an argument that specifies how much space you need and then returns a pointer to that space. We've passed it the result of another function, , which we pass int, a type. In reality, is a macro, but for now we don't have to care: all we need to know is that it tells us the size of whatever we gave it, in this case an int. So when is done, it gives us an address in the heap where we can put an integer. It is important to remember that the data is stored in the heap, while the address of that data is stored in a pointer on the stack.
Posted by: Blaise at January 20, 2004 12:20 PM
When the machine compiles your code, however, it does a little bit of translation. At run time, the computer sees nothing but 1s and 0s, which is all the computer ever sees: a continuous string of binary numbers that it can interpret in various ways.
Posted by: Ottewell at January 20, 2004 12:20 PM
That gives us a pretty good starting point to understand a lot more about variables, and that's what we'll be examining next lesson. Those new variable types I promised last lesson will finally make an appearance, and we'll examine a few concepts that we'll use to organize our data into more meaningful structures, a sort of precursor to the objects that Cocoa works with. And we'll delve a little bit more into the fun things we can do by looking at those ever-present bits in a few new ways.
Posted by: Cornelius at January 20, 2004 12:21 PM
For this program, it was a bit of overkill. It's a lot of overkill, actually. There's usually no need to store integers in the Heap, unless you're making a whole lot of them. But even in this simpler form, it gives us a little bit more flexibility than we had before, in that we can create and destroy variables as we need, without having to worry about the Stack. It also demonstrates a new variable type, the pointer, which you will use extensively throughout your programming. And it is a pattern that is ubiquitous in Cocoa, so it is a pattern you will need to understand, even though Cocoa makes it much more transparent than it is here.
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While you might be right about Stewart, I think you're making a bit of a leap from the evidence presented. She was making a point about the public reaction to her plight -- the public's perception of her honesty etc. are much more *relevant* than the truth, whether the perception and the truth are the same or not. And, she does go on to talk about "what I really am," after all. Didn't strike me as weird at all.
Posted by: Franco at January 29, 2003 4:35 PM
Hmmmmm. Well, true -- for anyone being vilified in the press, public perception is a significant thing, and more important than reality. I mean, if I were being crucified in the Post, I'd be worried about that too!
But clearly, her public image is of even greater concern to her than it would be for most people, merely because she's got so much riding on it. It was her image that made her momentarily worth over a billion dollars; it's been the erosion of that image that has melted $400 million off that fortune. And the fact that bad photos so singularly unsettle her is another issue here. There are plenty of other professions -- law; medicine; insurance -- where you can destroy people with words, but not often with photos that merely make them look unattractive. I think that's what I was reacting to, as well as the singularly strange way she had of referring to herself.
Of course, another reason she's concerned about looking bad in photos is that she's an older woman, and women always get brutally savaged and mocked for looking bad in a way that men don't -- which is both unfair and creepy.
Posted by: Clive at January 29, 2003 5:05 PM
There's a similar take on Shania Twain, in the sense of persona vs. person, here!
Posted by: El Rey at January 30, 2003 6:19 AM
Ahahahha! Oh my god, that piece is superb!
Posted by: Clive at January 30, 2003 10:51 AM
non c'est moi !
Posted by: portable at January 8, 2004 8:13 AM
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Posted by: Online Casino at January 16, 2004 2:47 AM
The most basic duality that exists with variables is how the programmer sees them in a totally different way than the computer does. When you're typing away in Project Builder, your variables are normal words smashed together, like software titles from the 80s. You deal with them on this level, moving them around and passing them back and forth.
Posted by: Ottewell at January 20, 2004 12:18 PM
This will allow us to use a few functions we didn't have access to before. These lines are still a mystery for now, but we'll explain them soon. Now we'll start working within the main function, where favoriteNumber is declared and used. The first thing we need to do is change how we declare the variable. Instead of
Posted by: Isabella at January 20, 2004 12:18 PM
This will allow us to use a few functions we didn't have access to before. These lines are still a mystery for now, but we'll explain them soon. Now we'll start working within the main function, where favoriteNumber is declared and used. The first thing we need to do is change how we declare the variable. Instead of
Posted by: Joos at January 20, 2004 12:19 PM
Note the new asterisks whenever we reference favoriteNumber, except for that new line right before the return.
Posted by: Nathaniel at January 20, 2004 12:19 PM
This will allow us to use a few functions we didn't have access to before. These lines are still a mystery for now, but we'll explain them soon. Now we'll start working within the main function, where favoriteNumber is declared and used. The first thing we need to do is change how we declare the variable. Instead of
Posted by: Theodosius at January 20, 2004 12:19 PM
This code should compile and run just fine, and you should see no changes in how the program works. So why did we do all of that?
Posted by: Thadeus at January 20, 2004 12:20 PM
Note first that favoriteNumbers type changed. Instead of our familiar int, we're now using int*. The asterisk here is an operator, which is often called the "star operator". You will remember that we also use an asterisk as a sign for multiplication. The positioning of the asterisk changes its meaning. This operator effectively means "this is a pointer". Here it says that favoriteNumber will be not an int but a pointer to an int. And instead of simply going on to say what we're putting in that int, we have to take an extra step and create the space, which is what does. This function takes an argument that specifies how much space you need and then returns a pointer to that space. We've passed it the result of another function, , which we pass int, a type. In reality, is a macro, but for now we don't have to care: all we need to know is that it tells us the size of whatever we gave it, in this case an int. So when is done, it gives us an address in the heap where we can put an integer. It is important to remember that the data is stored in the heap, while the address of that data is stored in a pointer on the stack.
Posted by: Blaise at January 20, 2004 12:20 PM
When the machine compiles your code, however, it does a little bit of translation. At run time, the computer sees nothing but 1s and 0s, which is all the computer ever sees: a continuous string of binary numbers that it can interpret in various ways.
Posted by: Ottewell at January 20, 2004 12:20 PM
That gives us a pretty good starting point to understand a lot more about variables, and that's what we'll be examining next lesson. Those new variable types I promised last lesson will finally make an appearance, and we'll examine a few concepts that we'll use to organize our data into more meaningful structures, a sort of precursor to the objects that Cocoa works with. And we'll delve a little bit more into the fun things we can do by looking at those ever-present bits in a few new ways.
Posted by: Cornelius at January 20, 2004 12:21 PM
For this program, it was a bit of overkill. It's a lot of overkill, actually. There's usually no need to store integers in the Heap, unless you're making a whole lot of them. But even in this simpler form, it gives us a little bit more flexibility than we had before, in that we can create and destroy variables as we need, without having to worry about the Stack. It also demonstrates a new variable type, the pointer, which you will use extensively throughout your programming. And it is a pattern that is ubiquitous in Cocoa, so it is a pattern you will need to understand, even though Cocoa makes it much more transparent than it is here.
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