Breaking Copy is a better blog than this one. It’s more focused–covering subjects related to writing–and under the hood, it’s much more advanced.

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This post first appeared on the History Eraser Button blog.

First, I’m developing a new blog that will replace History Eraser Button. It’s a blog about copywriting called Breaking Copy. You can read my first real post today. It’s about Sarah Palin and it’s called “Blood Libel.”

Breaking Copy is still being developed and may have some bugs. I’m planning to spend the next few weeks ironing out the wrinkles, with a real launch date of February 1, 2011.

Also during the holidays, I created a page about the history of the building where I’m living now. See my 63 Wall Street Scrapbook.

Thanks for reading and watch this space soon for more information about the Breaking Copy blog.

This post first appeared on the History Eraser Button blog.

Thanks for making 2010 a great year for History Eraser Button! It’s been heartening to watch this blog grow from a small creative sandbox into a platform with tens of thousands of monthly readers.

It’s great fun to write on a blog, but it’s time for a break. I’m going to spend November and December enjoying the season and developing new projects. This will be my last post of the year. I’ll be back in 2011 with some fresh ideas.

Happy holidays!
– Daryl

This post first appeared on the History Eraser Button blog.

The YouTube Moment came at the end, when Jon Stewart devoted about 10 or 15 minutes to a serious speech. He spoke about how, unlike what you see on cable TV news and in Washington politics, Americans are mostly people who work together to solve problems.

On a windblown stage on a sunny afternoon, Stewart tried to make himself the voice of reason in American media. I think he succeeded, but in doing so I’m worried he ignored the role that passion—irrational, rude, confrontational passion—plays in making American work.

During his speech, Stewart played some footage of cars lining up for the Holland Lincoln Tunnel and used it as a symbol for America: People of all different backgrounds lining up and taking their turns to get through the darkness. Stewart noted there is the occasional driver who comes up on the shoulder and cuts people off, but that person is rare and scorned—not hired as an analyst. Stewart identified two problems that cause people to mistrust their fellow “drivers”: Cable television and Washington politics. (Of course, Stewart owes his success to both. His show airs on cable, and a large part of his material comes from ribbing politicians.)

I get Stewart’s point about how we all need to respect one another’s differences. But is the Lincoln Tunnel the America we want? A nation sitting in traffic, waiting patiently in the face of problems? Or do we want a place where people get fired up? This country is not just about solving things. It’s about inventing things. Our greatest writers, architects, engineers and businesspeople did not just set out to make improvements, they set out to create something awesome, to get famous, to make money. Some of the most beloved Americans left behind a trail of hurt feelings and enemies. Thomas Edison did not wait patiently in line for cars at the tunnel. (OK, literally he took the train and the ferry over from Jersey, since the tunnel wasn’t built yet.) He behaved totally unreasonably and irrationally, screwing his investors, taking credit where it wasn’t earned, flattening his competitors, and in doing so managed to bring electric lights to the masses. If he had been a rational man, a large part of the American story would have unfolded more slowly.

Stewart’s call for reason is right on if we’re limiting the conversation to politics. Our political leaders have strayed into dangerous territory lately with statements that slander Muslims and immigrants. Cable news is bad for rational discourse (but probably no worse than the pamphlets, newspapers, rallies and party machines in the last century).

Outside of politics, though, there’s a need for irrational actors. If Stewart himself had followed his own advice—shown restraint, respected everyone—his career probably wouldn’t be anywhere near where it is now, and the millions of people who enjoy his entertainment would have missed out. Sometimes you have to piss people off to get stuff done. And when someone is a jerk to you in America, you sometimes have to be a jerk back.

Not that The Daily Show is any less funny or pointed when Jon Stewart acts righteous. The fact that Stewart can inspire this kind of rally, with this kind of high-quality conversation, is a testament to his skill as a thinker, orator and entertainer.

Update: Here’s a video of the speech:

This post first appeared on the History Eraser Button blog.

I love it because it goes in for the kill with just five brutal words: “John Raese’s ideas are crazy!”

Craziness. That’s why the midterm election this year is so different from campaigns in the past. Thanks to the Tea Party and Palin-inspired D.I.Y. politics, there are candidates for national office who should never have made it that far. The Tea Party national candidates are inexperienced, lost, cartwheeling, and spouting ideas that are, yes, crazy. Consider:

• Stephen Borden, a Republican running for Congress in Texas, refused to rule out a violent overthrow of the government if the election doesn’t go his way.
• The Republican candidate for governor of Colorado, Dan Maes, opposed a local program to encourage bicycling because it “could threaten our personal freedoms” and it’s “part of a greater strategy to rein in American cities under a United Nations treaty.”
• Christine O’Donnell, the Delaware Republican candidate for Senate, recently sounded unsure if our Constitution guarantees separation of church and state.
• In Colorado, Republican candidate for Congress Ken Buck actually opposes separation of church and state.
• In Nevada, Sharron Angle, the Republican candidate for Senate, expressed concern that Dearborn, Michigan was under “Sharia” law.
• Kentucky Republican Senate candidate Rand Paul supports abolishing the U.S. Department of Education because, “I don’t like the idea of somebody in Washington deciding that Susie has two mommies is an appropriate family situation and should be taught to my kindergardener at school.”
• In Utah, Republican candidate for Senate Mike Lee opposes birthright citizenship.
• In Alaska, Republican Senate candidate Joe Miller cited East Germany as a good example of border security, saying, “We have the capacity to, as a great nation, secure the border. If East Germany could, we could.”

There’s not much else to say, really, other than these ideas are crazy. I keep thinking of Barney Frank’s famous line: ”Trying to argue with you would be like trying to argue with a dining room table. I have no interest in doing it.”

This post first appeared on the History Eraser Button blog.

Also: Pled quilty?

This post first appeared on the History Eraser Button blog.

The full text of the ad is:

Our DIVERSITY is our greatest STRENGTH.

When any New Yorker is atacked for who they are, what they believe or whom they LOVE it is a crime against all of us.

Keep our City strong.

LOVE LOVE. HATE HATE.

This is a totally on-pitch PSA that makes me proud of the city. To the best of my memory, this is the first time I’ve seen the slogan “Love love. Hate hate.” That’s a seriously good tagline. Also impressive is how timely this PSA is—the text seems to allude to recent hate crimes against a Muslim cab driver and several gay men in the Bronx, fresh wounds against the city. The campaign was launched October 14, not even 2 weeks after the Bronx attacks. The ads are produced by NYC & Company, the city’s public affairs division; more information in this press release.

This post first appeared on the History Eraser Button blog.

The It Gets Better Project is so good, so spot-on, that it ought to be celebrated as a triumph of Internet video, social media and even the English language. I can’t find one damn reason to be cynical about it.

You’ve probably seen at least a piece of this campaign. It’s an online media project started last month in response to a series of suicides by gay youth who were bullied in school. Writer Dan Savage started a website and YouTube channel seeking videos of adults counseling kids to hang in there, it’s going to get better. Savage recorded the first video with his husband, and promoted it in Savage Love, his nationally published sex column.

The site describes the mission in three succinct sentences:

“Many LGBT youth can’t picture what their lives might be like as openly gay adults. They can’t imagine a future for themselves. So let’s show them what our lives are like, let’s show them what the future may hold in store for them.”

Some earnest LGBT supporters have criticized it as just another act of “raising awareness”—a publicity campaign that spreads a message but doesn’t solve anything. I disagree. The problem of kids being bullied into suicide is one of those rare problems that can actually be improved directly and immediately through words.

Middle and high school is a terrible time. I got teased for being a nerd. But I had good parents, teachers, church members, and Boy Scout leaders who consistently told me people who get picked on in school end up doing well as adults. I got the support I needed. Gay kids are systemically denied that support.

The It Gets Better Project has led to an outpouring of videos from adults of all sexual orientations assuring those kids struggling with bad times that they’ll make it through. President Obama recorded one. Governor Patterson recorded one. Tim Gunn recorded one. So have a lot of other celebrities. But the best ones are by people you’ve never heard of. In the last 11 days, the video of Joel Burns delivering his It Gets Better speech at a Fort Worth city council meeting has been played over 2 million times.

The campaign has also, impressively, caught on among clergy. (I chose to embed a video of Bishop Gene Robinson at the top of this post.) Some of the It Gets Better videos are nothing more or less than small-town pastors and rabbis sitting in their studies, speaking into webcams, telling gay kids that God loves them as they are. Who would have guessed it would take Dan Savage to finally give these good people a national platform!

The genius of the It Gets Better Project is that it carries a near-universal message between generations. It’s a precise, three-word incantation that almost every adult understands, and that almost every child still needs to learn. It’s like the time machine we all wish we could use to give advice to the younger version of ourselves. Saying “It gets better” demonstrates compassion and understanding. How many lives has this phrase already saved?

This post first appeared on the History Eraser Button blog.

• Mike Huckabee: “NPR has discredited itself as a forum for free speech and a protection of the First Amendment rights of all and has solidified itself as the purveyor of politically correct pabulum and protector of views that lean left…. It is time for the taxpayers to start making cuts to federal spending, and I encourage the new Congress to start with NPR.”
• Sarah Palin: “If NPR is unable to tolerate an honest debate about an issue as important as Islamic terrorism, then it’s time for ‘National Public Radio’ to become ‘National Private Radio.’”
• Some dude on Huffington: “It’s clear that NPR would rather play consistently to the left than reach a balanced audience. And for that, they deserve to be pushed away from the public trough.”

I’ve never been a big fan of using tax money to support media programming; its too close to the state-run media in countries with less freedom of speech. But the truth is, in the U.S., public radio hardly gets any tax money. NPR gets no tax money directly. Most of NPR’s revenue comes from private donations. Federal money is funneled through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which doles out grants to local stations, which can use it to pay their NPR dues. How much did the CPB budget for radio this year? $90.5 million. That’s nothing.

I’ve become interested in data visualization, so just for fun, here’s a quick and dirty chart illustrating the amount of tax money spent on public radio compared to a few other choice areas. I threw News Corp’s annual revenues in for good measure. All numbers (except the TARP spending) are from FY 2010.

Sources: 2010 Federal Budget, ProPublica, News Corp. financials, 2010 Federal HHS Budget, Taxpayers for Common Sense, CPB.

Another thought: Fox News has been advancing the narrative that Congress should investigate and defund NPR, with Bill O’Reilly and other commentators framing the federal funding of NPR as tilting the playing field against private broadcasters. So here’s another piece of math if you want it: Federal spending on public radio is less than 0.28% of News Corp’s annual revenue.

This post first appeared on the History Eraser Button blog.

I might have been better off just letting it go, but I wanted to do the right thing. Unfortunately, it became a huge frustration rather than a positive communications experience. Basically, I was letting a company I heretofore never cared about suddenly push me around, demanding my picture and phone number and a big chunk of my time. (You may have already guessed that the site I’m talking about is Yelp.) How annoying!

How many different websites do you use to share your profile, make connections, and respond to people who want to communicate on that platform? Probably at least two, maybe six, maybe ten. It’s a lot of time. Which of these efforts will pay off, and which are pointless work?

We’re all developing profile fatigue. The more common profile fatigue becomes, the harder it is to start a new web business that requires people to set up a login. For years, tech companies have been searching for an answer to this problem. The road to now is littered with burnt-out hulks of multi-site identity systems that didn’t work. (When was the last time you updated your Windows Live profile?)

But for the first time, a universal login seems within reach. The smart money is on Facebook. Almost every new identity-based site being developed today is designed to mesh with Facebook’s infrastructure. You can tap Facebook’s “open graph” for identification the way you tap the power company for energy.

Consider the implications. In a world where our Facebook profiles are displayed everywhere, including in connection with our jobs, we will all be far more careful about what we share. I’d eliminate anything vaguely controversial or mildly rude, for fear of presenting an unwelcoming face to customers.

That means if I wanted to write a post criticizing Christine O’Donnell for not knowing the First Amendment, I might hold my tongue, to keep from souring future encounters with people who support her. I wouldn’t complain about Yelp’s website, in case one day in the future I want to do business with that brand. I wouldn’t write about how some people in my neighborhood get on my nerves, because people in the neighborhood might connect it to my job. To be as professional as possible, I would make sure everything I post on Facebook is as inoffensive as a pair of brown loafers.

I don’t worry much about privacy. But I worry deeply about free expression. When Facebook becomes our public face, there will be intense pressure to be extremely dull. To me, that’s scarier than any privacy breach. Will the social future make us boring?

This post first appeared on the History Eraser Button blog.