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Hello,

Blogs are a familiar feature on the internet - where users post content in an accumulating manner, with comments, and search options, etc. They facilitate expression and exploration, and via attached comments, also debate and synthesis.


Reading and
Navigating Blogs

Our blogs are quite powerful. Each writer can post, as is typically the case. Sustainers who have the option can also post, however. All Blogs appear in the blog system, and sometimes also in content boxes the top page of ZNet - and always via the left menu of the top page - and can be found via searches, etc.

Commenting on blogs follows the blogs, attached at the bottom, and blog comments, like all others, are also visible in many places that show comments including in the forum system. In addition, the entire blog system gathers content for everyone - but one can look at the accumulating content in many ways.

  • For example one can look at one writer's efforts - so one is seeing what is effectively a blog system for that one writer, or Sustainer.
  • One can also look at the content by topic, seeing blogs that are tagged as being about a certain topic - or place, as well. Thus, when doing that, it is a blog system about a topic, or a place, with many contributors.
  • One can look at only writer blogs, or only sustainer blogs, as well.
  • One can look at blogs for particular Groups, too.

All this is easily done using the left menu. Searches allow even more variables and refinements.


Creating Blog Posts

If you are a Sustainer with permission, and are logged in, you will see a link in the left menu for you to post a blog - and you can use that to post one, and then tag it various ways (such as with a topic or place, or a group tag), and once you do, it is in the system with you as the author.

You can also use the console button to the left to post a blog - anytime and from anywhere in the site, as long as you are logged in.

Meanwhile, enjoy the blogs - and, by the way, if you are a Free Member or a Sustainer with a ZSpace page, of course you can put one or more content boxes on it, pulling blog links of any sort you may want to filter for, for example, by you or by your friends or by others - and by topic, about places, for groups, etc.

Blogs

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Roger Bybee's Blog

Web Address: http://www.zcommunications.org/zspace/rogerdbybee
Bio: I've recently been invited  to write a twice-weekly blog in In These Times, appearing Tuesdays and Thursdays (go to www.inthesetimes.com and flick the In These Times Working link at the top of... (More)

All Bybee Blogs

Corporate-fed sexualization

By Roger Bybee at Sep 24, 2007


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Given the the reactionary, poorly-written views of Wendy Shalit, it is hard to extract a valid point amidst the debris of right-wing cultural myths. But Wendy Shalit indeed properly points to the hyper-sexualization of culture that injects sex into the lives of younger and younger audiences all the time. She deserves credit for correctly observing an obvious and disturbing trend.

But what seems to be missing from Wendy Shalit's analysis--and more broadly, from the Right's--is any comprehension that this force-feeding of sex into the minds of young kids is driven by the very capitalist machine they so deeply admire. Sexualization of children and their culture is inextricably linked to the growing corporatization of every nook and cranny (no crude puns intended) of our culture. This disturbing trend has institutional roots in the conduct of corporations that Shalit and Co. are so loathe to regulate.

Thus, Shalit's strategy of promoting individual "modesty" is likely to be just as effective (that is, counter-productive) as Bush's much-heralded abstinence programs, which studies have shown to be correlated with increased sexual behavior. All of Shalit's hectoring will merely trigger a backlash among teens and pre-teens striving to assert their independence from adults seeming to curb their freedom. "Modesty" culture will be overwhelmed by the continuing torrent of sexualizing/commercializing messages flowing from Corporate America.

Instead, what is needed, in line with the media reform movement launched by the Left, is the assertion of democratic controls over our mass media so that TV and video programming for kids is age-appropriate. If this pressing concern for parents, teachers, and society is handled properly, we could develop a vast Left-Right coalition to begin to reclaim our popular culture. Roger Bybee, Milwaukee

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