....LMB: "Vote Irony"....

December 30, 2002

Just saw a television commericial that is supposed to encourage me to go out and vote. Not sure who made it or paid for it.

A young man is in his car at the drive-thru window of a fast food restaurant. He announces his order to the clerk over the loudspeaker, when suddenly another young man comes walking up to the speaker. The walker pretends to be the driver, and claims that he wants to change his order, and places an order for a completely different meal. The driver restates his original order, and the walker again tries to change it. The two start speaking faster and louder, talking over each other, each trying to order different meals for the driver. The ad then cuts away and says something like "frustrating when someone else makes decisions for you, isn't it? That's what happens when you don't vote." So now, feeling sympathetic frustration for the poor fast food ordering victim, I'm supposed to vow to engage in American democracy from now on.

But the HUGE irony here is that voting explicitly authorizes someone else to make decisions for me. Representative democracy is about choosing someone to make all legislative and executive decisions in your place, with only minimal accountability to the people they are allegedly representing. The commercial presents a problem, but their proposed solution to the problem actually causes the exact same problem.

Voting in this country is not like giving your order to the fast food cashier without interference, it's like being allowed to choose the person (from a VERY narrow field) who will walk up alongside your car and fuck with your order.

What a stupid ad.

Posted by Jake at 07:00 PM
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Jake, you un-American scoundrel! Don't you know that American freedom depends on other people making decisions for us?!

Just remember, if it weren't for life's absurdities, you wouldn't be doing what you do now.

Keep up the good work.

Posted by: Eric at January 2, 2003 11:05 AM
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Media News

November 16, 2004

Tales of Media Woe

Senate May Ram Copyright Bill- one of the most depressing stories of the day that didn't involve death or bombs. It's the music and movie industries' wet dream. It criminalizes peer-to-peer software makers, allows the government to file civil lawsuits on behalf of these media industries, and eliminates fair use. Fair use is the idea that I can use a snippet of a copyrighted work for educational, political, or satirical purposes, without getting permission from the copyright-holder first.

And most tellingly, the bill legalizes technology that would automatically skip over "obejctionable content" (i.e. sex and violence) in a DVD, but bans devices that would automatically skip over commericals. This is a blatant, blatant, blatant gift to the movie industry. Fuck the movie industry, fuck the music industry, fuck the Senate.

Music industry aims to send in radio cops- the recording industry says that you're not allowed to record songs off the radio, be it real radio or internet radio. And now they're working on preventing you from recording songs off internet radio through a mixture of law and technological repression (although I imagine their techno-fixes will get hacked pretty quickly).

The shocking truth about the FCC: Censorship by the tyranny of the few- blogger Jeff Jarvis discovers that the recent $1.2 million FCC fine against a sex scene in Fox's "Married By America" TV show was not levied because hundreds of people wrote the FCC and complained. It was not because 159 people wrote in and complained (which is the FCC's current rationale). No, thanks to Jarvis' FOIA request, we find that only 23 people (of the show's several million viewers) wrote in and complained. On top of that, he finds that 21 of those letters were just copy-and-paste email jobs that some people attached their names to. Jarvis then spins this a bit by saying that "only 3" people actually wrote letters to the FCC, which is misleading but technically true. So somewhere between 3 and 23 angry people can determine what you can't see on television. Good to know.

Reuters Union Considers Striking Over Layoffs- will a strike by such a major newswire service impact the rest of the world's media?

Pentagon Starts Work On War Internet- the US military is talking about the creation of a global, wireless, satellite-aided computer network for use in battle. I think I saw a movie about this once...

Conservative host returns to the air after week suspension for using racial slur- Houston radio talk show host (and somtime Rush Limbaugh substitute) Mark Belling referred to Mexican-Americans as "wetbacks" on his show. He was suspended for a couple of weeks, and then submitted a written apology for the racial slur to a local newspaper. But he seems to be using the slur and its surrounding controversy to boost his conservative cred with his listeners.

Stay Tuned for Nudes- Cleveland TV news anchor Sharon Reed aired a story about artist Spencer Tunick, who uses large numbers of naked volunteers in his installations and photographs. The news report will be unique in that it will not blur or black-out the usual naughty bits. The story will air late at night, when it's allegedly okay with the FCC if you broadcast "indecent" material. The author of this article doesn't seem to notice that Reed first claims that this report is a publicity stunt, but then claims it's a protest against FCC repression. I'd like to think it's the latter, but I'm not that much of a sucker.

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