Men apparently like being told what to do

Lately I've been trying to try inverted perspectives. "What if the person asking for directions were white rather than black?" The idea is to directly confront the possibility of a bias. If detected, it will also dictate how I'd act without the bias.

So there I am, reading a bit of Slate when I get to this. Note that I tend to skip over writer names when I start an article and only check back if something seems particularly odd. So no bias checking to do on that bit. But on the article itself, I tried some flipping. Here's a bit from the original:

My husband even says, “Men like it when women tell them what to wear, because we don’t know.” Telling your man to shave, in other words, is not so far off from telling him that dishes left by the side of the sink eventually have to make their way under the water, etc. Listen to the outtake from the commercial, where Kate, Hannah and Genesis discuss what they were up to. “We have to help guide you along,” Kate says. Not much threat there.

Nothing bad there, right? I was a little bit annoyed though. Here's the re-write that I'm picturing:

My wife even says, “Women like it when men tell them what to wear, because we don’t know.” Telling your wife to shave, in other words, is not so far off from telling her that dishes left by the side of the sink eventually have to make their way under the water, etc. Listen to the outtake from the commercial, where Kyle, Harry, and Joseph discuss what they were up to. “We have to help guide you along,” Kyle says. Not much threat there.

Stupid women! Don't you know how to shave? You're gross! Just look at all that... woman hair! In places! Here honey, let me help you out there: The dishes go in the sink, not to the side. Ha, you women aren't so great at this housework thing, are you? Dumb bitch.

Of course it won't be perfectly mirrored, so the inverted perspective will yield odd results. Men don't have a history of being chained to housework or being treated like barely-sentient dopes who need to be told how to carry out basic functions. Women, as well as many racial and ethnic minorities, have had that history, and so recently that it is only forgotten to the extent that we forget all sorts of stuff, individually.

Nevertheless, I don't particularly like her claim earlier that: "These Gillette ads feel harmless and funny. No one really thinks that Kate and Hannah and Genesis are doing these men any damage." To that I say, fuck you! That's precisely the problem with this sort of damage: no one thinks they're doing any damage; it's all so very harmless. Except of course when it adds up and feeds into a larger trend. Thankfully, we're not yet at the point where it has all added up into harm, but why start?

Barack Obama is a person

The White House recently released a photo of Obama skeet shooting.  Along with it was a strange-sounding bit that it could only be used for news and not manipulated.  Clearly a blatant attack on free speech!  Or is it?

I don't see what legal weight the caption has.  Perhaps copywrite, in which case, the problem is the limits of copywrite and fair use, not that a tyrannical president is running a cult of personality.

On the other hand, he is a person.  I think people have rights on how their images are used.  Of course if he put, and enforced, that limit on every image of him then that would be a problem.  But surely a person is due some amount of deference, not as president, but as a person.  It is not merely his photo in terms of intellectual property, but his image.

Of course such an appeal to human decency and respect is nowhere in the Constitution.  Were we to follow the Constitution and nothing else we'd be left with little more than the lowest of human vulgarity and anarchy.  Murder isn't even banned and surely there is a precedent in that second amendment.  My point is that the Constitution is a floor.  Maybe a foundation as well.  We should stand on it and build up from there, not sit on the floor screaming at anyone who builds anything.  I don't think the Founding Fathers intended for us to sit on the floor.

We could all get up in arms, literally or figuratively.  We could make a fuss.  Or we could ask questions.  What does that caption actually mean?  Do they plan to enforce it?  Is it even there at Obama's request?  Is it boilerplate phrasing stamped on everything?  Who cares?

My theory is that it is there, that Obama put it there personally.  On his last day in office he will repost that image, edited, with the big letters "YOU GOT TROLLED" typed over it.  The mouseover text will be "wtf is wrong with you?"

It's okay, that was just the primary

For months there has been the attempt to moderate Romney's image.  He won in part by taking the more extreme path.  He didn't go off the deep end like Ron Paul, but he clearly was not running in the primary as a centrist.  Now he's tacking back toward the center, shaking the etch-a-sketch if you will.

Which Romney are we supposed to believe is the real one?  If the primary Romney was the real one, then he's currently running a nation-wide, by which I mean a half-dozen states, campaign of deception.  If that was the real one then I'm rather terrified by the prospect of putting him in the White House.

On the other hand, if the real Mitt Romney is a centrist, then that may be even worse.  It means that he was willing to spend months lying to Republican voters, pandering and spinning to appeal, with varying success to the far-right.  I'm rather wary of someone who not only runs a massive deception campaign, but who succeeds at it as well (the failures are less worrisome, due to their failure).

A centrist Romney might appeal to me.  But a centrist Romney who got there by lying on a massive scale, that's not appealing.  It means he was willing to take on, not just different, but opposite positions, to get elected.  To get power.  That raises the question, why?  We didn't need a second centrist candidate; we already have one.  Maybe Romney thought that he was the only one who could get the job done.  Not that he was offering a different vision, but the same vision but better.

I'm a fan of the notion of "same idea, but implemented better."  I'm a fan of fixing government before we throw it out.  I do think that Obama could have done some things better, even while staying approximately where he is on the political spectrum.  I think it would be great to see two left-of-center candidates fight it out in the competence battles.  But we're not getting that.  Instead we're getting a left-of-center moderate facing off against the Great Deceiver.

The True Media Bias

Liberal media?  Maybe once upon a time, but not any more.  These days the true media bias is conservative.

Let's start off with 'balance'.  If one person tells the truth and one person lies, what should you do?  You should fact-check.  This is one of the purposes of the media.  Supposedly.  But in practice, the media strives for the illusion of balance, which means that the liar gets equal weight as the honest man.  Given that a truly fair system would call out the lies rather than reprint them without pause, this 'balanced' approach gives a bias to the liar.  In these times, by which I mean my entire lifetime (which admittedly is barely a quarter-century), that has been the Republican Party.  Not that Democrats are paragons of honesty and virtue, but that lies have not been the primary driven of their support and agenda.

But there is a more fundemental source of the bias.  It is in the companies.  They are not there to bring truth and spread information, nor to enlighten, observe, or check the powers that be.  Instead, they are there to pursue profit, with no regard for any of the previously-listed values.  That is the essence of modern conservatism, pursuit of profit regardless of the social harm.

So the next time you think you're seeing spin and bias, remember that there is no agenda behind it beyond appealing to viewers in an attempt to attract advertisers and therefore profit.  In fact, if you believe there is a liberal bias to the media, then it means that the media thinks that a liberal bias is what is most appealing to the widest base of viewers of advertisements.  Of course there are always niche audiences, which is why there is FOX News and various other right-wing sources, because there are sufficient viewers to attract advertisers.  Ultimately though, it is not ideology, but greed, which drives broadcasting.  If you want an objective media, then you're going to have to work against that greed, but good luck with that, liberal.

The Solution to Negative Political Ads

Why doesn't Pepsi run ads that call Coke executives fascist pedophiles?  Why doesn't McDonalds suggest that Burger King is for un-American monarchists?  You might say that these have nothing to do with the product, but this is advertising.  Advertising isn't about the product.  If all they cared about was a good product they'd make a good product and let Consumer Reports tell you about it.  Advertising is about selling mental states: horniness for cars, satiation and fun for fast food, and of course the fear for politics.

Advertising doesn't go negative because sales are not exclusive.  I can buy coke and pepsi and a dozen generic store brands.  Even more importantly, I'm always buying something (not literally), so the key is to get me to buy their product rather than the other one.  Merely bashing the other product may spoil the entire thing.  Or make them look like total assholes.  Besides, it's not as if there are any major problems if I buy the wrong cola.  I drink a few less-than-satisfactory cans and next time I go to the store I buy something else.

The ability to buy multiple products means that the competition is different.  I can buy anything and everything, so by that sense, even if I buy coke, pepsi is fine as long as I also buy pepsi.  What matters is that I buy their product: it doesn't matter if I also buy another.  Contrast this with elections, where if I vote for Romney, I cannot vote for Obama, and the reverse.

In addition to this, the goal is different.  Pepsi wants a lot of sales.  So does Coke.  They even share many interests, such as cheap sugar supplies and high demand for colas, and if these happen, they can both benefit.  It isn't a winner-take-all system.  Elections are winner-take-all.  Obama wins or Romney wins.  They don't win by absolute vote numbers, but by relative votes, specifically: more than the other guy.

Let's imagine I'm a candidate.  If I want to have more votes than someone else and voting is exclusive, what should I do?  Getting more votes has two parts: me getting votes and him not getting votes.  To work on the second part, a negative ad may help.  Portray the other guy as a fascist pedophile monarchist and some people who would vote for him won't.  In effect, preventing a vote for my opponent is as useful as getting a vote for myself.  Conveniently, negative adds also help with the first aspect, of getting votes.  If I create more undecided voters, or even voters who don't like the other guy, then those are more voters which I can potentially get.  It doesn't sound as nice, but if I can get people to vote for me just to keep the other guy away, that's a vote for me.

Negative ads make perfect sense in a winner-take-all system with exclusive votes.  Unless we move to a parliamentary system, the winner-take-all aspect is going to remain, and frankly I prefer that we can at least pretend to have "formed a government" even if a over-represented minority effectively nullifies the process.

However there is some ability to improve: allow multiple votes on a ballot.  This means that even if I am an Obama supporter, I could mark Romney as a way to indicate that I think he still has some decent ideas (note that this is purely hypothetical).  Or even better, I could mark a third-party candidate.  This would remove the spoiler concept and make alternatives possible, since I don't need to go tot he ballot thinking about electability, only about whether I think someone would make a good leader.

Under this system, I'm going to care more about getting people to the polls and voting for me.  Maybe they'll vote for Obama too.  But if I can boost my tally, that adds political capital.

Unfortunately I might have this completely backward.  It could be that once voters can pick multiple candidates, then it becomes even more important to trash the opponent, and not just to independent or dissenting voters.  A vote for me and my rival is as good as no vote at all in terms of a majority, so I need to be sure that he doesn't get a vote.

Maybe politics is doomed to be negative.