What do you hear? What do you believe?

[malasadas.livejournal.com]

One of the great benefits of the internet is that we can see and hear events that never make it as major stories in the major media outlets. It's also a problem -- obscure events can be elevated to become "representative" of entire groups of people without balance or actual analysis. We are constantly asked in the age of internet media to evaluate raw information without knowledge of context or proportionality.

This video, for example, made some rounds on the net a few months back. It purports to show a group of community organizers praying to Obama. The distributor of the video added captions at key points to assist your hearing of the key phrase "Deliver us, Obama".

Pretty damning, isn't it? Now the audio is pretty low quality, but when you watch it and listen it is pretty clear that they ARE offering prayer directly to the President.

Now listen to the video WITHOUT watching it.

If you are being honest, I'm thinking there is a really good chance that you are a lot less sure of what is being said.

So here is a question: how do you approach the supposedly "raw" information we have constant access to via alternative media sources? How much do these sources influence the "mainstream" media and what are the implications for how much even allegedly unbiased orignal source material can be manipulated?

Comments

[omnot.livejournal.com]

Humans often experience pareidolia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareidolia). Most examples used to describe it involve images, but auditory input can be forced into patterns by our perceptions too.

Check out these hymns (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-ZnPE3G_YY)and I reckon most people will hear just what the peculiar subtitles say.

[malasadas.livejournal.com]

Holy shnikey -- that's bookmarked.

[mahnmut.livejournal.com]

Oh my how can they keep a straight face while singing THIS?!?

Oh wait...

[mrbogey.livejournal.com]

So that's the name for what Lewis and Cleaver experienced.

[thies.livejournal.com]

this morning I saw Obama's face on my toast!

[primroseburrows.livejournal.com]

[thies.livejournal.com]

And then there is Alicia Keyes/Jay-Z "Empire State of Mind" where I always hear In New York… I've become a wintry tomato

[mijopo.livejournal.com]

"Pretty damning, isn't it? Now the audio is pretty low quality, but when you watch it and listen it is pretty clear that they ARE offering prayer directly to the President."

Pretty damning??? What!? Methinks you've been watching too much Fox News. Asking a leader for assistance, even if done in poetic form, doesn't amount to prayer. And some would contend that alerting the president to one's needs is far more sensible than calling out to some mysterious entity in the sky.

"how do you approach the supposedly "raw" information we have constant access to via alternative media sources?"

The same way I approach any information, I try to understand it and consider it sceptically. The nature of "raw" information varies significantly.

[primroseburrows.livejournal.com]

I think you're missing the OP's point, that the video is using text to augment audio that may be manipulating what we think we hear, which may very well be something other than what is in the text.

The question is, how much of what we're manipulated to think of as fact is not, and how does it affect mainstream media?

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

And people pray to Obama why? I mean with Caesar he at least got shit done. What's Obama done besides prove to be less incompetent than George Bush (which is like water proving it's wet)?

you're wrong. Obama gives to the needy!

[verytwistedmind.livejournal.com]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Ojd13kZlCA - Obama Stash

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Ib8SxdQIvk - Obama gives a house and car

And unlike praying to white babby jebus praying to Obama works

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x3732449

[telemann.livejournal.com]

Sophia, is that you?

[verytwistedmind.livejournal.com]

Even with the text I didn't hear "Obama" but Prohpet Martin Luther King Jr....?

Healthcare is the greatest inequality?

Wow powerful stuff.

There's a lot of interesting in this video on a theological/occultic level.

Thank you for brining this to my attention I'm going to use this for another completely relgious debate.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

The last time a religion felt Death was good was in that century or so that the Aztecs made Mesoamerican religion something done on the grand scale. Most modern religions at least hold as an ideal that life is sacred.....

[debergerac.livejournal.com]

unbeliever. i pray to obama all the time.

[verytwistedmind.livejournal.com]

Are your prayers granted?

[policraticus.livejournal.com]

That is very familiar from the Episcopal Liturgy. I deliberately covered over the subtitles on the first viewing. You will find examples of it under the Prayers of the People, which we recite responsively at every service. Of course, we are asking The Lord to deliver us.

I am of two minds on this. One, prayer can be just a supplication to anyone. People still say things like, "pray, pass me the salt." To "pray" to Obama in this sense is just to be a supplicant. Whether you think it is unecessarily servile for an American citizen to ask a boon of Obama the way you would bow and scrape before a feudal lord is a matter of perception I think. On the other hand, this was done (I am assuming here) by an ordained minister... in vestments. And it was done, as I said, in a liturgical manner that isn't just suplication... it is also worship. That is disturbing. I doubt they meant it like that, since I doubt the person who wrote it had any clear idea about how it would sound to people who actually buy the whole Jesus is the Son of the Living God thing. But as one of those Sky God worshippers I'll tell you, it sounds mighty creepy.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

It's creepy to me because it makes Obama a Roman Emperor and not an American President. The West hasn't worshiped its rulers since the last of the Pagan Emperors died. Reviving the custom *now* isn't particularly advisable from a political, religious, or PR standpoint. And it's even worse when the object of worship is a picture of the man who first dug the hole.....

[dreadfulpenny81.livejournal.com]

I think with raw media, unless you can distinctly pick out specific cuts and edits, what you see is what you get. I sometimes have issue with the videos on YouTube that have sub-titles edited in because they're not always right.

[the-rukh.livejournal.com]

Even with 'raw media' it is extremely easy to manipulate viewpoints through showing very selective things, claiming it is film/sound representing something overall when it does not, etc.

[the-rukh.livejournal.com]

As to the video, meh, can't tell, don't care.

Your underlying point is true though. It is extremely easy to lead people to a certain perception about a piece of media information, and that is exploited all the time.

[sgiffy.livejournal.com]

Eh, at least Obama is real.

I heard either Obama, Our Father, Jehovah, and Our God. Even if it were Obama I would not interpret it as praying to Obama as much as using a prayer in a political way.

Regardless I can't see why I should care what some random group of people do. It certainly would not be the craziest thing people have done in prayer.

[mahnmut.livejournal.com]

Eh, at least Obama is real.

Have *you* met him?

[mybodymycoffin.livejournal.com]

They're very, very obviously saying "O, God", not "Obama".

You would have to be half-deaf or retarded to hear it any other way.

[verytwistedmind.livejournal.com]

I can't hear either. What about the reference to the prophet MLK?

[fizzyland.livejournal.com]

What about CCR's classic song where they declare "There's a bathroom on the right"?

[the-rukh.livejournal.com]

Or Blinded By the Light...

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

Sort of like believing you heard racial slurs as you walked through a protest, perhaps?

[malasadas.livejournal.com]

[meus-ovatio.livejournal.com]

GET OUT OF THE HOUSE DUDE!

It's not unusual...

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

... for people to pray to a political leader. I've seen people praying to an itinerant Jewish politico even though he died two thousand years ago. Note also, that in court, lawyers submit appeals to the bench in the form of prayers.

[devil-ad-vocate.livejournal.com]

Reminds me of the little kid who thought the choir was singing about "Gladly, the cross-eyed bear".

[404.livejournal.com]

I listened to it both ways, and they were praying to Obama and his prophet MLK.