Fraud is not a first amendment right

Lance Armstrong lied in his memoirs about his use of performance-enhancing drug. Some buyers in California are suing for fraud, claiming that they'd not have purchased the book had they known it was fictional (or not purely non-fiction / not clearly indicating what was and what not true). Somewhat predictably, the publishers are pretending that this is a first amendment issue.

They are, of course, full of it. The right to make a false claim is not in dispute. Fiction is constitutionally protected. So is non-fiction. Fraud, however, is not. If I offer to sell you X and deliver Y, then I am committing fraud; that is illegal. I do get to claim that my lie was protected speech, and in fact it is protected speech in the sense that I get to say it, but that does not mean that I am magically immune to the consequences of committing fraud.

Lance Armstrong has every right to lie about what he has done. He does not, however, have the right to sell those stories with the claim that they are true, no more than you can market a product as containing a particular ingredient when it in fact does not. The Bill of Rights is not a license to throw integrity out the window.

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.

Feeding the Culture War

It makes me sad that people hate or are afraid of gay people.  I don't know quite why they are.  Maybe they're insecure and overreacting, as I once did.  Maybe they place too much value on old books, detached from context and filtered by generations of agendas and biases.  Maybe it's what they learned growing up and couldn't quite challenge it, whether due to a lack of intellectual ability* or fear of challenging their beliefs.

I'd love to live in a world where people shared my view: not caring.  Maybe that's not entirely accurate.  I do care.  I'd hate it if gay people took over the world and made all the porn gay and had naked man statues everywhere.  But beside that absurd extreme, I don't care.  Why should I?

The whole Chik-fil-A debacle is stupid.  Boycotting it won't change anyone's mind, or even cost the president of the company anything.  Similarly, those who are going out of their way to buy it are doing the exact same thing: using random third parties as symbols in their culture wars.  It's ridiculous.

Let's not pretend that this is all just some innocent comment that got taken out of context and blown up into a fake scandal.  He knew what he was saying.  He could have evaded, toned-down, or refused to talk.  Instead he decided to go ahead, guns blazing.  And why not?  It's a quick and easy way to start up the culture wars and get people rallying around random symbols.  A boycott just feeds the absurdly ironic persecution narrative of bigots.

Eat where you will get the best mix of taste, nutrition, and value.  If it matters to you, add to that things directly-related to the business, such as company policies on worker pay and rights, material sourcing (fair trade, organic, local, whatever else), or even where the company sends its money (such as which super-PAC they steal shareholder profits to fund).

But however you feel about gay marriage, refusing to, or clamoring to, buy chicken from a particular fast food chain is just silly.  It doesn't teach anyone anything and it doesn't advance any cause except a sense of self-righteous superiority for driving a block to a different fast food chain.  Let's hope Ronald McDonald doesn't come out of the closet.

[edit] After reading a bit more, I'm starting to see a point to a boycott, since company revenues go to fund hate groups.  It's not merely a problem of an individual citizen being a hateful bigot.

Recent Onion Articles

I love the Onion. Why? Because it adds humor to what would otherwise be a horrifying news.

Like Hell I'm Going To Let Some Black President Help Me Pay For Dialysis
Freud would have a field day with the healthcare debate and all things related to defending or attacking Obama. Then again, he'd have a field day with his mom. Zing? But anyway, it's interesting to ponder how much racism indirectly fuels opposition. I say indirect because I doubt that any significant group is actually thinking "I must oppose him because he's black." But having a slight distrust of black people would lower the threshold at which people would accept attacks on him. On the other hand, how many people defend him, perhaps consciously, because he's black and are afraid to appear racist.

Then again, the entire concept of the subconscious as some sort of active driver of behavior is quite unscientific due to the inherent impossibility of directly measuring it.

If only Obama were white and then we could viciously attack him for purely partisan reasons rather than there being possibilities of racism. Then again: "Bush doesn't care about black people." *sigh*

Area Man Passionate Defender Of What He Imagines Constitution To Be
It is unfortunate that what is the most important document in America is practically unknown to most people. Or perhaps worse than that. If they were purely ignorant, they might recognize and try to fix that. When they're misinformed, then they see nothing to fix.

While I recognize that the Onion is not factual news, they don't usually make things up entirely out of nowhere. Instead they bring together various tendencies and exaggerate them for comedic effect.

Afghan Presidential Election A Celebration Of All Forms Of Government
I take back what I said about the Onion exaggerating.

American Muslims To Fort Hood Shooter: 'Thanks A Lot, Asshole'
Until this, I couldn't really remember the last time I saw or heard Muslims being portrayed as the bad guys. Maybe some bits during the fighting in Pakistan and of course the ever-present Taliban. The Obama administration had been working to reduce words like jihad and that sort of religious language to reduce the impression that we are at war with Islam. I guess it was working, until this.

Maybe Muslims wouldn't get the false impression that we're their enemy if our douchebag talking heads could stop saying Muslims are our enemy.

To run with that, the coverage of the story annoyed me. The initial story was just the constant every minute crap about Terrible Things, Horror, Massacre, and Oh Noes! That's the total wrong way to portray this. It is an event. It is not a football game where we need a play by play. Bring it up a few times a day as more is known, but we benefit in no way from the heartbreaking painful story of a family member watching and worrying. That reduces it to a generic Bad Things Happened to People. But since no one is ever content to actually analyze and solve a problem, now the Right has turned it into an opportunity to point fingers while the Left gets hyper-defensive. Meanwhile moderates are yelled at to pick sides.

Maybe I should form the Moderate Party. We won't have a political stance. We won't support any agenda. Instead we will be neutral on all issues with one exception: We viciously attack biased media.