Looking for a little gift for the jogger who has everything? Why not a nice taser holster / mp3 player combo? Think of the space it saves! And, if you're on the fence, surely the fact that it's available in a nice leopard print will tip the scales for you. Yet another benefit to the combo is that taser victims tend to make an unpleasant screaming sound, and the mp3 player will help to drown that out.
It's interesting that Taser International, which until recently had successfully defended every lawsuit brought against the company as a result of a taser death, has opted to start quietly settling taser lawsuits at the same time that the company is actively marketing tasers to the general public. Aren't police departments across the country injuring and killing plenty of people with their tasers? Do they really need reinforcements? And do WE really need to hand them an excuse to use force against every kid with an mp3 player? ("I thought he had a taser, your honor--honest I did!")
Friday, January 11, 2008
Sunday, January 6, 2008
Customer Service...Need I Say More?
Recently, I saw a forum discussion on how difficult Paypal was to work with, and I was very surprised. I've done tens of thousands of dollars worth of business through Paypal, and I've never had a problem.
But did you catch what I just said? I almost didn't.
It seemed to me that Paypal couldn't be more user friendly. It was easy to get someone on the phone, and to talk to the same person more than once. Phone calls were returned; emails were answered promptly, and in such a way that it was obvious that they'd been read by a real human being.
That contrasted sharply with my experience of some other online businesses. Amazon.com, in particular, served as a counterpoint to Paypal in my mind. About a year ago, I purchased eight books all at once through Amazon. For reasons I still haven't been able to sort out, seven of those books were correctly billed to my current debit card and the eighth charged to a checking account I'd closed several months earlier. The ensuing nightmare still hasn't been fully resolved, and I'm an attorney with a background in consumer protection work--I can't begin to imagine what dealing with Amazon is like for the average person.
First, because I lived in the modern-day, real-world equivalent of Mayberry, the bank paid the charge despite the fact that the account had been closed for several months. However, the bank also sent notice to Amazon that the account was closed. So Amazon sent the charge on to Certegy for collection.
When I got a collection letter from Certegy (requesting, of course, my original $9 plus a $25 charge), I called them and pointed out that the charge had been paid, and that I had documentation from the bank to prove it. They told me I'd have to take that up with Amazon, because they got their information from Amazon.
Except when I called Amazon, they told me that it was "out of their hands" and I'd have to resolve it with Certegy. They seemed entirely oblivious to (or more likely, impervious to) their potential liability for passing along false information to Certegy and then refusing to correct it. All together, I spent more than four hours on the telephone with Amazon and Certegy. Amazon never budged an inch. No one at either company was interested in seeing my proof that the charge had been paid. Certegy, at least, was a bit more sensitive to the legal ramifications of trying to collect a debt that had never existed, and they went away.
Well, for the moment. I did hear from them again a few months later with a required disclosure letter letting me know that they'd had some sort of breach and personal data had been disclosed (good thing for me this all related to an account that had, by that point, been closed for more than a year, hm?)
So I was loving Paypal. I was STUNNED to hear someone describe something very similar to my story above. Why didn't they just call Jen? She was always such a help. It sounded like we were dealing with two different companies.
And then it hit me.
We were.
I might never have caught it were it not for my experience with Dell. A few years ago, I ordered a computer from Dell, and then just a few months later, my mother ordered a similar computer. There was only one significant difference: I purchased my computer through a corporate discount program offered by a multi-national corporation, and my mother ordered hers all by herself. MY computer was listed under the name of a company with hundreds of locations around the world, and it rapidly became clear that when I called customer service or tech support for issues relating to my computer, I was routed to an entirely different department than when I called about those same issues relating to my mother's computer.
Perhaps "I've done tens of thousands of dollars of business through Paypal and I've never had a problem" isn't evidence at all. Perhaps it's an explanation. And I'm not okay with that.
That doesn't mean that I think your biggest and highest-paying customers shouldn't get special perks. That's only good business. If you want to have a gold circle support team that assists the major accounts, that's fine with me. If you want to send them little gifts at Christmas time and offer small services for free that others might have to pay for, it's all good. But that all assumes a basic level of competent, well-intentioned customer service for everyone. We don't seem to be in a place anymore where the general public gets the basic service and the big spenders get perks--we seem to be in a place where the general public can't get service at all, and the big spenders get what used to be perceived as the basics.
I have a growing list in my head of what I think those bottom line offerings should be, but this post is already so long that it's in danger of being mistaken for an e-book, so I'll save that for another day. Suggestions are welcome.
But did you catch what I just said? I almost didn't.
It seemed to me that Paypal couldn't be more user friendly. It was easy to get someone on the phone, and to talk to the same person more than once. Phone calls were returned; emails were answered promptly, and in such a way that it was obvious that they'd been read by a real human being.
That contrasted sharply with my experience of some other online businesses. Amazon.com, in particular, served as a counterpoint to Paypal in my mind. About a year ago, I purchased eight books all at once through Amazon. For reasons I still haven't been able to sort out, seven of those books were correctly billed to my current debit card and the eighth charged to a checking account I'd closed several months earlier. The ensuing nightmare still hasn't been fully resolved, and I'm an attorney with a background in consumer protection work--I can't begin to imagine what dealing with Amazon is like for the average person.
First, because I lived in the modern-day, real-world equivalent of Mayberry, the bank paid the charge despite the fact that the account had been closed for several months. However, the bank also sent notice to Amazon that the account was closed. So Amazon sent the charge on to Certegy for collection.
When I got a collection letter from Certegy (requesting, of course, my original $9 plus a $25 charge), I called them and pointed out that the charge had been paid, and that I had documentation from the bank to prove it. They told me I'd have to take that up with Amazon, because they got their information from Amazon.
Except when I called Amazon, they told me that it was "out of their hands" and I'd have to resolve it with Certegy. They seemed entirely oblivious to (or more likely, impervious to) their potential liability for passing along false information to Certegy and then refusing to correct it. All together, I spent more than four hours on the telephone with Amazon and Certegy. Amazon never budged an inch. No one at either company was interested in seeing my proof that the charge had been paid. Certegy, at least, was a bit more sensitive to the legal ramifications of trying to collect a debt that had never existed, and they went away.
Well, for the moment. I did hear from them again a few months later with a required disclosure letter letting me know that they'd had some sort of breach and personal data had been disclosed (good thing for me this all related to an account that had, by that point, been closed for more than a year, hm?)
So I was loving Paypal. I was STUNNED to hear someone describe something very similar to my story above. Why didn't they just call Jen? She was always such a help. It sounded like we were dealing with two different companies.
And then it hit me.
We were.
I might never have caught it were it not for my experience with Dell. A few years ago, I ordered a computer from Dell, and then just a few months later, my mother ordered a similar computer. There was only one significant difference: I purchased my computer through a corporate discount program offered by a multi-national corporation, and my mother ordered hers all by herself. MY computer was listed under the name of a company with hundreds of locations around the world, and it rapidly became clear that when I called customer service or tech support for issues relating to my computer, I was routed to an entirely different department than when I called about those same issues relating to my mother's computer.
Perhaps "I've done tens of thousands of dollars of business through Paypal and I've never had a problem" isn't evidence at all. Perhaps it's an explanation. And I'm not okay with that.
That doesn't mean that I think your biggest and highest-paying customers shouldn't get special perks. That's only good business. If you want to have a gold circle support team that assists the major accounts, that's fine with me. If you want to send them little gifts at Christmas time and offer small services for free that others might have to pay for, it's all good. But that all assumes a basic level of competent, well-intentioned customer service for everyone. We don't seem to be in a place anymore where the general public gets the basic service and the big spenders get perks--we seem to be in a place where the general public can't get service at all, and the big spenders get what used to be perceived as the basics.
I have a growing list in my head of what I think those bottom line offerings should be, but this post is already so long that it's in danger of being mistaken for an e-book, so I'll save that for another day. Suggestions are welcome.
Thursday, December 6, 2007
Who Wants to...Go to Jail?
It's probably no surprise that I'm no fan of reality TV--I really hoped that the whole Borat lawsuit hurricane would put an end to the industry altogether. But every once in a while I run across something that surprises even me. This time, it's a proposed reality show modeled on the old "Dating Game"...but with a twist. The winner just might get to marry a U.S. citizen and gain citizenship!
Thinking that doesn't quite sound legal? I agree completely: Who Wants to Commit a Crime?
Thinking that doesn't quite sound legal? I agree completely: Who Wants to Commit a Crime?
Wednesday, December 5, 2007
US Energy / NICOR Gas Scam - What They Really Want (and Why NICOR Won't Help You)
Late Sunday afternoon, a man in a US Energy jacket and a NICOR cap came to my door. He introduced himself as being from US Energy, but had a conspicuous NICOR label on his clipboard. He asked to see a copy of my gas bill.
I couldn't think why he would need that.
He explained that NICOR had sent him, because the company was planning a rate hike, but that if I "qualified" they wouldn't be able to raise my rates, and he needed to see my gas bill to determine whether or not I qualified. US Energy, he said, actually supplied the gas; NICOR just supplied the lines. "A lot of people don't know that," he said, and launched into an explanation of the utility's structure. I didn't care all that much and I'm not at all sure that it was accurate, but it sounded very official.
I learned early in my career that letting people know I was on to them was a bad way to gather information, so I asked as innocently as possible, "Doesn't NICOR have that information?" Well, yes, he conceded that they did, but it was up to US Energy to find out whether or not I was qualified to avoid that rate hike.
I couldn't help myself. I asked why they didn't get the information from NICOR.
He said it was because I was the one who had the paper copy of my bill. So, yeah, of course, that made perfect sense. Who would want to get a database import file with sortable information all in one place when they could go door to door on a cold Sunday afternoon, wait on the porch while people hunted up their gas bills, and then check one paper bill after another?
He flipped convincingly through the pages on his clipboard, creating more confusion. See, he'd told me more than once that he just needed to LOOK at my bill, yet someone's gas bills were attached to his clipboard. And he wasn't carrying a copy machine. I guess the gas bills he carried were meant to show me that other people were handing theirs over, but instead it showed me that he was carrying props...if his story were accurate, those gas bills would have been returned to their rightful owners by now.
I told him (truthfully) that I paid my gas bill online and I didn't have a paper copy of my bill. He asked if maybe I could print one out. (So much for that whole "because you're the one who has the paper bill" thing, hm?)
He said he'd come back.
Monday morning, I called NICOR. The customer service rep at NICOR confirmed that NICOR hadn't sent him, and asked whether I'd signed up with US Energy. Apparently, this is the company's standard approach to getting people to switch their service. As soon as I said I hadn't, though, NICOR lost interest. When I pointed out that these people were going around defrauding people in their name, NICOR said there was nothing they could do about it.
"It's fraud," I said. "It's illegal."
"Well, then," she told me, "you'd have to call the Citizen's Utility Board or the Better Business Bureau or someone like that. We have to remain neutral."
They have to remain neutral.
US Energy, certainly, is dirty. The man on my porch told me at least two direct lies in an effort to divert my business, and the extensive misleading props he carried and wore (along with his repetition of the same information in different words in response to my questions) made it clear that it wasn't just a spur of the moment departure or a case of accidental misspeaking. It's clearly a dishonest business practice and very probably a crime.
But who are the good guys? Why does NICOR "have to remain neutral" when it knows that an outside company is using its name to defraud NICOR customers? It seems to me quite the opposite, actually. I haven't had the chance to research it yet, but it seems to me that if NICOR knows that someone is holding himself (or themselves) out as representing NICOR in order to perpetrate fraud and chooses not to act on that, it's a ratification that just might mean NICOR is just as liable to its defrauded consumers as US Energy.
Definitely bears further investigation.
I couldn't think why he would need that.
He explained that NICOR had sent him, because the company was planning a rate hike, but that if I "qualified" they wouldn't be able to raise my rates, and he needed to see my gas bill to determine whether or not I qualified. US Energy, he said, actually supplied the gas; NICOR just supplied the lines. "A lot of people don't know that," he said, and launched into an explanation of the utility's structure. I didn't care all that much and I'm not at all sure that it was accurate, but it sounded very official.
I learned early in my career that letting people know I was on to them was a bad way to gather information, so I asked as innocently as possible, "Doesn't NICOR have that information?" Well, yes, he conceded that they did, but it was up to US Energy to find out whether or not I was qualified to avoid that rate hike.
I couldn't help myself. I asked why they didn't get the information from NICOR.
He said it was because I was the one who had the paper copy of my bill. So, yeah, of course, that made perfect sense. Who would want to get a database import file with sortable information all in one place when they could go door to door on a cold Sunday afternoon, wait on the porch while people hunted up their gas bills, and then check one paper bill after another?
He flipped convincingly through the pages on his clipboard, creating more confusion. See, he'd told me more than once that he just needed to LOOK at my bill, yet someone's gas bills were attached to his clipboard. And he wasn't carrying a copy machine. I guess the gas bills he carried were meant to show me that other people were handing theirs over, but instead it showed me that he was carrying props...if his story were accurate, those gas bills would have been returned to their rightful owners by now.
I told him (truthfully) that I paid my gas bill online and I didn't have a paper copy of my bill. He asked if maybe I could print one out. (So much for that whole "because you're the one who has the paper bill" thing, hm?)
He said he'd come back.
Monday morning, I called NICOR. The customer service rep at NICOR confirmed that NICOR hadn't sent him, and asked whether I'd signed up with US Energy. Apparently, this is the company's standard approach to getting people to switch their service. As soon as I said I hadn't, though, NICOR lost interest. When I pointed out that these people were going around defrauding people in their name, NICOR said there was nothing they could do about it.
"It's fraud," I said. "It's illegal."
"Well, then," she told me, "you'd have to call the Citizen's Utility Board or the Better Business Bureau or someone like that. We have to remain neutral."
They have to remain neutral.
US Energy, certainly, is dirty. The man on my porch told me at least two direct lies in an effort to divert my business, and the extensive misleading props he carried and wore (along with his repetition of the same information in different words in response to my questions) made it clear that it wasn't just a spur of the moment departure or a case of accidental misspeaking. It's clearly a dishonest business practice and very probably a crime.
But who are the good guys? Why does NICOR "have to remain neutral" when it knows that an outside company is using its name to defraud NICOR customers? It seems to me quite the opposite, actually. I haven't had the chance to research it yet, but it seems to me that if NICOR knows that someone is holding himself (or themselves) out as representing NICOR in order to perpetrate fraud and chooses not to act on that, it's a ratification that just might mean NICOR is just as liable to its defrauded consumers as US Energy.
Definitely bears further investigation.
Sunday, December 2, 2007
Blogs that Appall Me # 1
I've been debating for a while about whether or not to write about blog like this. On the one hand, I didn't want to give them any "press" or inbound links that might help boost search rankings or traffic. I didn't want to facilitate getting like-minded people together to do evil. And most of the time I'm pretty negative on negativity.
But sometimes you just have to shine a bright light on something and encourage the world to take a closer look in hopes that most people will recoil in horror and give an extra moment's thought to the little things that we let slide by every day, dismissing them as mildly unpleasant or letting them roll off altogether or--worst of all--finding humor in them.
Of course, this happens everywhere in life, including the blogosphere. But some blogs are more shocking than others, just like some of the things people say to one another in person are more shocking than others. For the past few months, my # 1 spot for poor taste and lack of humanity has been reserved for a blog astonishingly named "Counterfeit Humans - How to Maintain Sanity over Everyday Stupidity".
The premise seems to be that the blog's author was gifted (without having done a thing to deserve it) with an above-average intelligence, and that since she already has that little bit of good fortune up on the rest of the world, the general population should get right to work making her already easier-than-average life even easier by having the common courtesy to realize that they're just in the way in her world and, if they aren't gifted with her native intelligence, they don't have the right to participate in everyday activities where they might slow her down.
Oh, wait...did I say "people"? Apparently I misspoke just a little, since (as the blog's title makes evident", Keli doesn't believe that these lesser beings are actually human at all. She doesn't even call them people; she calls them "stupers". Yep, that's right--a term she defines again and again as shorthand for "woefully stupid persons". The whole blog is about stupidity, and the enormous strain of being a superior being forced to deal with "stupers" everywhere she turns. We have stupidity at the holidays, stupidity at the hospital, stupidity field notes, stupidity of relatives, stupidity "behind the counter"...but nary a word about the stupidity of taking the gifts you're given so for granted that you come to believe you've earned them and achieved some sort of moral superiority through your good fortune.
But sometimes you just have to shine a bright light on something and encourage the world to take a closer look in hopes that most people will recoil in horror and give an extra moment's thought to the little things that we let slide by every day, dismissing them as mildly unpleasant or letting them roll off altogether or--worst of all--finding humor in them.
Of course, this happens everywhere in life, including the blogosphere. But some blogs are more shocking than others, just like some of the things people say to one another in person are more shocking than others. For the past few months, my # 1 spot for poor taste and lack of humanity has been reserved for a blog astonishingly named "Counterfeit Humans - How to Maintain Sanity over Everyday Stupidity".
The premise seems to be that the blog's author was gifted (without having done a thing to deserve it) with an above-average intelligence, and that since she already has that little bit of good fortune up on the rest of the world, the general population should get right to work making her already easier-than-average life even easier by having the common courtesy to realize that they're just in the way in her world and, if they aren't gifted with her native intelligence, they don't have the right to participate in everyday activities where they might slow her down.
Oh, wait...did I say "people"? Apparently I misspoke just a little, since (as the blog's title makes evident", Keli doesn't believe that these lesser beings are actually human at all. She doesn't even call them people; she calls them "stupers". Yep, that's right--a term she defines again and again as shorthand for "woefully stupid persons". The whole blog is about stupidity, and the enormous strain of being a superior being forced to deal with "stupers" everywhere she turns. We have stupidity at the holidays, stupidity at the hospital, stupidity field notes, stupidity of relatives, stupidity "behind the counter"...but nary a word about the stupidity of taking the gifts you're given so for granted that you come to believe you've earned them and achieved some sort of moral superiority through your good fortune.
Saturday, December 1, 2007
When Brilliant Men Have Dumb Ideas
It was bound to happen someday.
It appears that the guys at Google had a very bad idea.
They were on a streak, what with revolutionizing web search and coming up with that friendly and easily identifiable little logo and becoming so popular that they had to fight to try to keep their trademarked name from becoming a standard-English verb and all that. They did pretty well for themselves making billions of dollars and buying up major players in closely related industries. Their "foothold" in web search became a stairway and then an escalator, and now few people even know the names of the early search engines and Yahoo! threw up its hands last year and said, "Maybe we should do something else."
But for some reason, these guys who understand technology and algorithms and the value of a good, free lunch onsite and the need to encourage employee creativity have missed the boat on Blogger comments. In fact, I don't think they even know where the shore is.
I can think of a lot of possible reasons that the outbound linking process from comments on Blogger blogs has changed (without notice), but they're all guesses.
I am sure of one thing, though. Someone has radically underestimated the importance of this functionality to bloggers and to those who leave comments on blogs. It's possible that the hope is that everyone will quickly sign up for a Google account so that they can leave comments with links in them, but it seems more likely that people will quickly move their blogs to other platforms where this issue doesn't exist...and that those who don't will see diminished traffic and a decline in comments.
They've also either overlooked or dismissed the fact that Blogger bloggers who do get visits from comments on other blogs will no longer be able to identify where they're coming from. Since they'll all be routed through the Blogger profile, all stats will show is a lot of referrals from the profile, not the actual source of the traffic.
I hope it doesn't turn out that we all have to abandon Blogger; I hope it mostly for selfish reasons, because I like Blogger a lot from a user perspective and would prefer not to move. But I'm not optimistic.
Of course, from what I've been hearing recently about disappearing blogs and comments, it may just be that after this post, I WILL find myself shopping for a new host...so watch this space. If I'm moving VOLUNTARILY, I'll let you know in advance.
It appears that the guys at Google had a very bad idea.
They were on a streak, what with revolutionizing web search and coming up with that friendly and easily identifiable little logo and becoming so popular that they had to fight to try to keep their trademarked name from becoming a standard-English verb and all that. They did pretty well for themselves making billions of dollars and buying up major players in closely related industries. Their "foothold" in web search became a stairway and then an escalator, and now few people even know the names of the early search engines and Yahoo! threw up its hands last year and said, "Maybe we should do something else."
But for some reason, these guys who understand technology and algorithms and the value of a good, free lunch onsite and the need to encourage employee creativity have missed the boat on Blogger comments. In fact, I don't think they even know where the shore is.
I can think of a lot of possible reasons that the outbound linking process from comments on Blogger blogs has changed (without notice), but they're all guesses.
- It MIGHT be because Google, which uses backlinks as part of its algorithm for determining the value of a page, doesn't want to allow people the ability to create their own backlinks by commenting on blogs--even when the blogger has deleted the default "no follow" tag in the comment section.
- It MIGHT be to prevent non-Google-registered commenters from leaving URLs; this would encourage everyone to sign up for a Google account whether they needed on or not--a solution that won't be of much help to bloggers with multiple blogs, anyway.
I am sure of one thing, though. Someone has radically underestimated the importance of this functionality to bloggers and to those who leave comments on blogs. It's possible that the hope is that everyone will quickly sign up for a Google account so that they can leave comments with links in them, but it seems more likely that people will quickly move their blogs to other platforms where this issue doesn't exist...and that those who don't will see diminished traffic and a decline in comments.
They've also either overlooked or dismissed the fact that Blogger bloggers who do get visits from comments on other blogs will no longer be able to identify where they're coming from. Since they'll all be routed through the Blogger profile, all stats will show is a lot of referrals from the profile, not the actual source of the traffic.
I hope it doesn't turn out that we all have to abandon Blogger; I hope it mostly for selfish reasons, because I like Blogger a lot from a user perspective and would prefer not to move. But I'm not optimistic.
Of course, from what I've been hearing recently about disappearing blogs and comments, it may just be that after this post, I WILL find myself shopping for a new host...so watch this space. If I'm moving VOLUNTARILY, I'll let you know in advance.
Tuesday, November 6, 2007
The Biggest Obstacle to Electing the Right President
Like many members of the Skilled Political Debate Group at Blog Catalog, I'm marking the one-year countdown to the election with some thoughts on what's going to make it tough to elect the right President in 2008.
The biggest obstacle to electing the right President is the marketing culture in which we live. It's a culture in which sound bites are powerful and anything we really want people to hear must be reduced to a few-second clip. It's a culture in which the written word has to be formatted in bullet points and short, bold-headed paragraphs if it's to be read. It's a culture in which newspapers are careful to work the key points into the first paragraph of an article because they know that the vast majority of their "readers" never turn to page eight to continue the story. And it's a culture in which most newspapers and consumer publications work to keep their articles at a 7th-9th grade reading level.
On what, then, do voters base their decisions? Note that I did not say, "On what, then, are voters to base their decisions?". The answers to the latter question are myriad and crystal clear. One good piece of information would be a candidate's voting record as a Senator or Congressman--but not the checklist many interest groups or neutral voting organizations put out. That's not enough information, not because the information can't be trusted but because it's meaningless standing alone. Knowing that a Congressman voted "for the bankruptcy bill" or that a Senator "opposed a bill that would have brought our troops home from Iraq" is meaningless unless you know what the bill contained, what its impact would have been or has been, and what information was available at the time the official made his decision. The significance of those votes would also be clearer if you knew whether or not they were consistent with the candidate's previous positions, and if not, what accounted for the change.
And, of course, as our tolerance for dense text and long explanations diminishes, our world is growing more complex. At the very moment we most need to focus deeply, to understand the details, to analyze the connections and to think beyond the sound bite, our time and our patience have all but disappeared. The vast majority of us simply don't have enough information to cast a reasonable vote.
There's a lot of talk every election year about how terrible it is that voter turnout is so low. I'll agree that it's a shame that more potential voters don't participate in the political process, but I don't think that's all about voting. In fact, I think too many people are voting. People who are voting based on ten-second sound bites and whether or not someone "looks Presidential" should either be educating themselves about the issues and the candidates or staying home from the polls. And those aren't the worst votes cast by any stretch of the imagination--they pale in comparison to the voters in the 1986 Illinois primary who made Janice Hart and Mark
Fairchild the Democratic candidates for Attorney General and Lieutenant Governor on the strength of their NAMES. After the election, many voters admitted that they'd had no idea who the candidates were. I'll let you draw your own conclusions about why voters who (by their own admission) knew nothing about the candidates chose Janice Hart over the party-supported Aurelia Pucinski. Because the candidates for Governor and Lieutenant Governor run on a single-vote ticket like the President and Vice President, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Adlai Stevenson III left the party's ticket and ran as a Solidarity candidate, losing the election by the widest margin in Illinois history.
Just a little rule of thumb: If you've never heard of a candidate, YOU PROBABLY SHOULDN'T VOTE FOR HIM.
We hear a lot of sound bites about how voting is a right, or a privilege or a responsibility--but just like the politicians' sound bites leave out all of the unpleasant or complicated or conflicting details, the voting sound bites leave out a critical fact: the right (or responsibility) to vote carries with it a responsibility to make educated decisions. A vote that's a guess is worse than no vote at all.
Here are a few of the other posts on this topic so far.
http://capitalels.blogspot.com/2007/11/its-not-ron-paul-and-its-not-hillary.html
http://blog.techfun.org/political-gossip-clouds-the-issues
If you'd like to participate, simply create your own blog post with the title "The Biggest Obstacle to Electing the Right President" and:
-email the link to either libdrone at gmail dot com or TLSanders at gmail dot com
-post the link in the political debate group at the link at the top of this page
-leave your link in a comment to this post
The biggest obstacle to electing the right President is the marketing culture in which we live. It's a culture in which sound bites are powerful and anything we really want people to hear must be reduced to a few-second clip. It's a culture in which the written word has to be formatted in bullet points and short, bold-headed paragraphs if it's to be read. It's a culture in which newspapers are careful to work the key points into the first paragraph of an article because they know that the vast majority of their "readers" never turn to page eight to continue the story. And it's a culture in which most newspapers and consumer publications work to keep their articles at a 7th-9th grade reading level.
On what, then, do voters base their decisions? Note that I did not say, "On what, then, are voters to base their decisions?". The answers to the latter question are myriad and crystal clear. One good piece of information would be a candidate's voting record as a Senator or Congressman--but not the checklist many interest groups or neutral voting organizations put out. That's not enough information, not because the information can't be trusted but because it's meaningless standing alone. Knowing that a Congressman voted "for the bankruptcy bill" or that a Senator "opposed a bill that would have brought our troops home from Iraq" is meaningless unless you know what the bill contained, what its impact would have been or has been, and what information was available at the time the official made his decision. The significance of those votes would also be clearer if you knew whether or not they were consistent with the candidate's previous positions, and if not, what accounted for the change.
And, of course, as our tolerance for dense text and long explanations diminishes, our world is growing more complex. At the very moment we most need to focus deeply, to understand the details, to analyze the connections and to think beyond the sound bite, our time and our patience have all but disappeared. The vast majority of us simply don't have enough information to cast a reasonable vote.
There's a lot of talk every election year about how terrible it is that voter turnout is so low. I'll agree that it's a shame that more potential voters don't participate in the political process, but I don't think that's all about voting. In fact, I think too many people are voting. People who are voting based on ten-second sound bites and whether or not someone "looks Presidential" should either be educating themselves about the issues and the candidates or staying home from the polls. And those aren't the worst votes cast by any stretch of the imagination--they pale in comparison to the voters in the 1986 Illinois primary who made Janice Hart and Mark
Fairchild the Democratic candidates for Attorney General and Lieutenant Governor on the strength of their NAMES. After the election, many voters admitted that they'd had no idea who the candidates were. I'll let you draw your own conclusions about why voters who (by their own admission) knew nothing about the candidates chose Janice Hart over the party-supported Aurelia Pucinski. Because the candidates for Governor and Lieutenant Governor run on a single-vote ticket like the President and Vice President, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Adlai Stevenson III left the party's ticket and ran as a Solidarity candidate, losing the election by the widest margin in Illinois history.
Just a little rule of thumb: If you've never heard of a candidate, YOU PROBABLY SHOULDN'T VOTE FOR HIM.
We hear a lot of sound bites about how voting is a right, or a privilege or a responsibility--but just like the politicians' sound bites leave out all of the unpleasant or complicated or conflicting details, the voting sound bites leave out a critical fact: the right (or responsibility) to vote carries with it a responsibility to make educated decisions. A vote that's a guess is worse than no vote at all.
Here are a few of the other posts on this topic so far.
http://capitalels.blogspot.com/2007/11/its-not-ron-paul-and-its-not-hillary.html
http://blog.techfun.org/political-gossip-clouds-the-issues
If you'd like to participate, simply create your own blog post with the title "The Biggest Obstacle to Electing the Right President" and:
-email the link to either libdrone at gmail dot com or TLSanders at gmail dot com
-post the link in the political debate group at the link at the top of this page
-leave your link in a comment to this post
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