Wednesday, March 31, 2010

This rush into health-care "reform" reminds me of...

...the rush into the Iraqi war. We had no choice in the matter, it was a done deal, forces beyond our control, it was out of our hands. I feel like with Bush and now Obama no president represents me anymore, the independent conservative along with independents of other stripes who are supposed to swing elections. Bush was a polarizing president, Obama even more so and it's like all you can do is sit on the sidelines and watch the show go by. By signing that final version of the health-care bill yesterday Obama has also in one swipe of the pen federalized the whole student-loan industry. At what point in time will we stop saying this is not socialism? In both cases we paid dearly, the one in lives lost and the other a debt problem to hand down to future generations. To be as nonpartisan as I can about it Obama has none of the virtues I am looking for in a leader: deliberation, reflection, nonpartisanship and the rest of the statesmanlike qualities. Then again neither did Bush and that old old conspiracy theory that the money-masters are really in charge of the world well that's not so radical anymore. So fight on Tea-Partiers but you're really the flipside of the liberals who were against going into Iraq. If something's gonna happen it's gonna happen, there's a reason for it. Call it the Matrix of Politics, you don't even know you're in it.

Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Thoughts on unions and a note on Idol

Unions: fine in theory, worse in practice

Conservatives usually focus on larger more general issues when bashing labor unions, the fact they are a left-wing group supporting only left-wing candidates whereas for me it's more personal. The long and the short of it is that unions make it harder to fire people and this seems to be the main complaint I've heard from young conservative managers I've worked under. I worked in a library once, a heavily unionized job if there ever was one and it was my job to do Interlibrary Loans (ILL), alot to do as books come from all over the country. As a sidenote this is weird but one of the more popular books that folks reserved was Mortuary Science but anyways this young woman, we'll call her Amy, was being groomed to be my backup on those days I was off or on vacation. Took a week off and enjoyed my vacation thinking all was well and when I got back found out she called out sick the entire week so I had more work than ever. Seems to me the director should have been able to take her aside and say to her "look Amy I don't know what's going on in your life right now. Maybe it's all legitimate but you do have this pattern of calling out sick alot and you cannot in my view contribute effectively to this workplace. Good luck in your future endeavours." So that's a problem. Now do unions make for a better work environment? You would think so but having a long and varied resume myself consisting of union and non-union jobs I would say the answer is in large part no. Shit still happens that's not supposed to happen despite your dues going up all the time and believe me they will. I've also found that many times and it doesn't seem to matter what the issue is unions will often side with management, a form of collusion it would seem. Another interesting sidenote: even during the last Democratic primary season our union early on endorsed Obama over Hillary so what does that tell you?

& there's something weird about this season's American Idol

Admittedly I'm a heavy channel-surfer but from what I've caught it goes like this. A week or two ago this young singer named Didi was up and she belted out her version of Linda Ronstadt's 1974 hit "You're No Good." Now I'm not a professional when it comes to these things, had no musical training whatsoever but to me it was near perfect so Randy got the ball going and the rest always seem to follow his lead. It's all kind of Stepford Wive-ish so you're getting that vibe of something not quite right but anyway Randy said the girl was "pitchy" his fave phrase this season and the rest, Ellen, Kara and Simon all panned her with nothing good to say. Now I've heard another viewer say they've had flat singers come on to rave reviews so clearly something's up and it ain't with the singers who are singing their hearts out. DJ's the next morning often scratch their heads. Your options:

(a) Is the show fixed?
(b) Are they all on drugs (mysterious substances to be determined later)? or
(c) Have they simply made a fetish out of being quirky?

If I may tie this all together we will now be forced to buy health insurance or else pay fines and they're calling this health-care reform, you got Al Sharpton talking about an N-word tape that only he has seen, ya got your Idol problems, unions are no good and things in general just don't make sense. If you're a woman Tiger Woods wants to slap you around and choke you a little according to the latest e-mails recorded for all posterity by his porn mistress so that goes beyond being your average red-blooded American male imo. It's not just that we're liberal or conservative, always have been, but we seem to be meandering along in this fog of weirdness we're in, not quite thinking straight and not knowing we have a problem and if you point out that something is wrong then you're from the Fringe ((key up weird Suspiria music)).

Don't be scared but I'm introducing a new phrase myself here (btw don't try this at home, leave it to the pros). Re the whole health-care debate white liberals have niggerized the discussion, the whole process and that basically means they wanna keep the old racial flames burning. You see if you niggerize something you can never really put our old racial history to bed, let folks live in peace and Move On. You're in crisis mode all the time and you like it, it's your whole goal to agitate, to roil, to masturbate people's minds.

a'ight?

Monday, March 22, 2010

The Polarizer

It was a depressing way to go to bed. Wasn't gonna but caught some news before I turned in and they really shouldn't do this on a Sunday night, shit like that is bad for your sleep but I've got other things on my mind. The final score in the House of Representatives on the health-care bill was 219-212 with 216 needed to pass and 34 Dems voted no. I was informed that all Republicans voted against it which in and of itself is interesting because if even a RINO voted against it that tells you something right there. Though they're treating this as historically as important as the passage of Social Security and Medicare (and it is) the fact that 34 Democrats voted against it shows you're a polarizer even within your own party. Now the very subject of polarization I'm not gonna get into here, I don't always think it's a bad thing but that would require a bit of a dissertation. Having glanced at the comments to yesterday's blog abortion is one of these subjects but I think the major complaint I had last night before I went to bed was this: admit that you are a polarizer rather than the healer, centrist and reconciler that you campaigned as. That president Obama is a polarizing president is a perfectly apt and objective description despite your politics and at this point he needs to explain this polarity that drives him, that animates him rather than continue to pretend he is some type of pragmatic moderate reaching out to all sides (where is tort reform in the final bill?). Bill Clinton was a triangulator, felt that need more to come down somewhere in the middle (then again he had a Republican Congress) but Obama is none of that, he is pure ideologue. Politically he is a cyborg, he came into existence with a mission, cannot be reasoned with and his mission is nearly complete. None of this is to judge him as a person but the will of the people seems hardly even a factor in his thinking. Used to be conventional wisdom was that politics in the end was all about compromise, to use a TAO phrase "the moderation of ideology" but Obama represents a new political breed with a kind of Nietzschean twist. He is Superman beyond all that, beyond our usual understanding of the paradigm of politics. His vision is so clear it approaches metaphysical certitude and again all those wonderful things he campaigned on probably played a large part in getting him elected in the first place but it wasn't his essence and it fooled alot of people who are now suffering buyer's remorse. The nonpartisan guy, the moderate, the centrist, the non-ideologue, the healer, the reconciler, now we know although some of us knew all along that's not him. He is the Polarizer and he's just getting started.

Sunday, March 21, 2010

Personal autonomy, where libs and cons differ

I'm gonna break this down in porn terms but apply it to the abortion debate. Philosophically where do you come down on this issue of personal autonomy? Take a young woman who decides to become a porn star. That in and of itself shows a totally autonomous decision, a decision many of us are not even capable of. What it says is I don't care what my mother and father think, if I embarrass them, what my family and friends think, what my pastor thinks, what my neighborhood thinks, what society-at-large thinks. I would go so far as to say it's not the right decision, a very poor decision but a totally autonomous decision. On some level you have to admire if that's the right word the sheer audacity of the decision. So here's the issue: is it more important for a decision to be the right one or a totally autonomous one? For a decision to be the right one you have to take into consideration other factors besides your own personal autonomy, for instance how will this affect my family, my standing in the community, my career and a myriad of other factors. The totally autonomous decision-maker says I'm gonna do what's right for me. So for a liberal or perhaps the better word is libertarian the totally autonomous decision is also the right decision, the two are interchangeable by the sheer fact of it being autonomously made. For the conservative, the socially conservative ones anyway, the right decision and the totally autonomous decision are not one and the same thing, indeed the latter smacks of moral relativism because YOU are the sole arbiter of Right and Wrong. As applied to abortion the fact of someone practicing total autonomy is the attractive feature here, it's very Randian, but to not consider other factors would seem to show the lack of a complete decision. So where do YOU come down on this issue of personal autonomy? it's not so much the wrongness of the decision that is of importance here but the fact that you can make it freely without undue societal and religious pressures, that's the libertarian position anyway. I can kind of guess soapie's position on the matter but maybe some things are deeper than any one philosophy can offer. I'm in a philosophical frame of mind.

Thursday, March 18, 2010

The whole process has become gangsterized


I can't really explain to you how the Democrats in Congress are gonna try to pass health-care reform because I don't fully understand it myself. It's alot like reading your DVD/VCR player manual, you might wanna have your techno-savvy friend come over and explain it to you. All I know is to be able to pass something through non-votes or non-voting is un-American. To change the rules in midstream because you don't like the outcome is basic Thuganomics 101 but it ain't in keeping with the whole purpose of a democracy which is somehow supposed to reflect in no small measure the will of the people. Why don't we just have the Mafia run Congress? Now if you're on the liberal side of the aisle on this one that doesn't make you a bad person but don't try to take us out in the woods and Ned Beatty us.

Diners

Woke up hungry and figured after my walk I'd hit a diner, can't blog on an empty stomach and so I walk into this place. Now most places seat you, some don't and you just park yourself down but anyways I walk in and everybody's ignoring me so a couple minutes go by and I motion to a waitress that looks none too happy and she goes with that definite sarcastic wave of the arms and inflection of the voice "anyWHERE" so instead since I had to go anyway I just used the Men's Room and then walked out. That's my new policy, I don't even retort anymore I just walk out. Strike a blow for civility and that's the trouble with the Bad-Mooders, we don't ostracize them enough. Happens at work, lady boss was chewing out the black guy and so I took him aside and go "why do you take it? why not just clock out and go home for the day?" Let them marinate in their own mental diarrhea, box 'em off for the outcasts they really are. If you wake up in a good mood for that day by my rights you should be able to continue in your good spirits, it ain't your problem if that waitress or your boss is going through some dry spell, cracked lake bottom, boulders, dead fish. OK, so

Obama on FOX News

Acted like he was in enemy territory last night but that's all for show, to show his base he has the balls to take on FOX. Didn't address head-on the propriety of Democrats changing the procedural rules to get the most sweeping social legislation since FDR's New Deal passed. How could he when Nancy Pelosi is really running the show? and so it was good fare to wake up to with your coffee and cruller. Now I'm just gonna get a bite to eat and be back later.

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

metrosexualis


Friend and I went over to Rockland County yesterday, costs 5 bucks for cars to cross the Tappan Zee back. Why don't they just raise it to 10? Ate at a diner and then I had to get some Christian Brothers so we stopped at a place in Nyack and I went in. Large selection, young guy comes out to help me and he said he doesn't carry that brand, how 'bout some Paul Masson brandy instead? How 'bout not and I walked out. Got in the car and said the guy sounded gay, not that this had anything to do with the price of onions, just being conversating is all and he said could be a metro Jew, that metro Jewish voice like Bloomberg. You know rather high-pitched, nasally, could be mistaken for being whiny. To you it sounds like a gay accent but it's really Bloomberg explaining the latest power outage (btw for this little cultural insight he said he doesn't want anyone to come to his house to protest). Hit the Palisades Center Mall and B&Noble:

underrated (not that I'm drawing any comparisons)

While my friend was over by the Science Fiction section I was at the magazines browsing through the latest issue of MAD magazine. Here's something that has stood the test of time, something that by any objective analysis can even be quite brilliant in spots yet judging from most reactions it's something on the outskirts of culture, something that if you even admit to reading from time to time folks think you lack basic intellectual skills and I never got this. The quality of the humor, mostly social and political satire and parody, is vastly underrated imo. As a whole MAD magazine is vastly underrated and even though it ain't Shakespeare it still deserves a cultural rung definitely above Family Feud. Even the late William F. Buckley Jr. gave it a nod once and regarding its politics it might skew slightly liberal but seems pretty even-handed to me overall. I remember when I was a young'en and proudly brought a copy home judging by my Mom's reaction you'd think I had brought porn home and laid it on the coffee table. As a kid growing up the face of Alfred E. Neumann kind of scared me, how many bad trips have people had when they hallucinated this ugly bastard walking down the street and to this day don't want to talk about it? MAD magazine, another guilty pleasure.

Munchhausen Nation

There be those who think you should see a doctor over everything. There be family members like this, perennial advice-givers but as I said to her the other day sit down and make yourself a list of everything that's wrong with you or bothering you (e.g. humming in the ears, diarrhea, sporadic sleep etc.) and you'll always be seeing some doctor or other and that ain't my scene. I only go when I feel it's absolutely crucial and feel the rest can be taken care of by ourselves. Whatever happened to that self-help movement, the whole self-help philosophy?? Now it's like doctors are a trend but that's because we're munchhausing too much. Flipping the dial the other day and you got your Dr. OZ (talking mostly about Sex), you got some other Doctors so how did this group that used to be some sort of necessary evil become so hot all of a sudden? because we kvetch too much and can't stand the slightest discomfort, our philosophy doesn't include suffering. I just think we like to be poked and prodded lately. It's weird, maybe we're bored.

Getting back to the MAD comparison for a minute if history judges this blog as it was pretty good in spots I'll be happy, occasional flashes of brilliance even. The rest? eh.

Monday, March 15, 2010

Get it all in now

before they pass a law against it. Do what you can while there's still time. Stock up on soda, hit the restaurants before they're forced to serve hospital food. Have your doctor you've known all these years stick his finger up your rear one last time before some government bureaucrat does it. Eat drink and be merry, enjoy the Whatever before the Whatever becomes subject to legislation. In the Future the only thing it'll be legal to do is to kill a fetus.

Digital TV

I don't have even your basic cable so basically I have two sets, one upstairs and one downstairs. Of course I have to use a converter box but that's not the problem. Upstairs I get some programming I can't get downstairs. Watching a very interesting program the other night on Ch. 58-2 on the last flight of Amelia Earhart (hey Jess was she murdered?) and so go downstairs later to play around in the kitchen and can't even get that channel on the other set. On the downstairs set I get at least five channels playing the exact same Spanish show then I get a whole slew of Korean fare I don't even get on the upstairs set. No great loss there but I'm just sayin' In the old days ALL tv's had the same basic channels, now with the much-heralded digital transition they scan differently depending on which part of the house you're in (maybe the attic gets porn, dunno). I don't get the Home Shopping Channel on either set which I was kind of into only as a last resort when all else failed to interest me. I think it's all a conspiracy to make you buy cable so that Verizon Fios guy can come to your house. How is this progress?

Saturday, March 13, 2010

The politics of obesity

They say we conservatives are reactionary by nature, real ornery bastards, player-haters and so because one of our own isn't sitting in the Oval Office we're still pissed even taking it out on Obama's missus. I'm talking of course about her signature issue, her campaign against childhood obesity. Sometimes a person annoys the hell out of you and you don't know why, there's something lurking, taking shape in your id and btw I count myself among the ranks of the annoyed. It's like when you have a boss at work and he's not really bothering you that day, even buys you a cup of coffee but his mere presence still annoys, irritates, rankles. Maybe he's overly into his job so you just look at him, it could be he's a dick and doesn't know it but it's something. So what bothers US about Mrs. Obama's drawing attention to what is a legitimate public-health concern? If I may diagnose the problem here first off it's that despite all the liberal commenters of late on the blogs saying that nobody's brought up the need to get the government involved, quite the opposite your bullshit meter's arrow is in the red zone. OF COURSE they do even if they haven't said it yet. Already in New York State there's a proposed or about to be proposed bill to add tax to soda the whole idea being to deter people from drinking the evil carbonated beverage. Then ya got another politician who has proposed that salt be forbidden in the preparation of foods in all New York State restaurants so your bs-meter is right on target as usual. Yeah but there has to be something ELSE that bothers us about Michelle Obama. Maybe it's this: how important IS this issue of our nation's chubsters anyway? How do you rank it? For me speaking honestly it's nowhere near the top of my list, the husketeers will always be with us and some of them are kind of charming anyway in an Our Gang sort of way, that's what gives society its character and the thought occured why doesn't she just start with Oprah Winfrey? set some type of moral example for the rest of us but the long and the short of it is she just plain annoys the hell out of us and we don't know why. I know I'M annoyed, she's put me in a bad mood like when you have skid marks in your drawers at work and just want to call it a day and go home. Maybe the whole Fat Acceptance Movement has a point, just accept us for who we are and get on with your lives. So we've made the decision in Life that food is more important than sex, what of it? are we bothering you? It's like when you were a kid and you were watching tv and your Mom said it's a nice day why don't you go outside but there was some hot chick on Hee-Haw that you wanted to see first. That's fine when you were a kid but now that you're full grown if you want to keep your pajamas on all day and stay in bed W(ho)TF's business is it of anyways? She wants to raise our kids for us so I guess my Mom and Dad were evil because when they went food shopping every Friday night they brought Devil Dogs home (ok that was Dad's idea). Alot of black women are fat as hell but there's something human and earthy about them, they don't have this NO TRESPASSING sign at the shrine of their pussies like the supermodels do (John Mayer and Leo DiCaprio yes, YOU got a court date buddy).

Please just go away and take up crocheting or something. First ladies and their causes, wouldn't be a bad idea to have a single guy in the Oval Office some day.

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Jesse Ventura's "American Conspiracies"

This is a topic that many people are afraid to talk about for fear of being labeled, others dig right in and wallow around, have the four-course meal and dessert. My position as I stated the other day -- while I discuss various conspiracy theories at my own blog I generally don't endorse them which reminds me I've been meaning to google Alex Jones as my friend keeps talking about him. Re conspiracy theories I'm generally more open-minded about many of them than your typical conservative but generally they disappoint in the long run. Nevertheless my main criterion for reading or watching anything is that it's not boring and so in this department Jesse Ventura does not disappoint. Only skimmed the surface last night, well when you're multi-tasking like me watching Idol, drinking and reading all at the same time that's the way you do things but the gist is he doesn't buy into the lone-nut theories in the assassinations of Abraham Lincoln, JFK of course, RFK and Martin Luther King Jr. He talks about Jonestown and how the Rev. Jim Jones was working for the CIA and that Jonestown was a massive mind-control experiment so that mass suicide with the Kool-Aid he pretty much chalks up to Congress was looking into something and they wanted to shut people up (all 900+ of them? shutting up, shutting up). I'm glad he mentioned MK-ULTRA, conservatives don't seem to want to talk about this. You see they have this quaint view of the CIA and Mother Teresa as somehow being on the same moral level (check out Kyle Smith's review of Green Zone starring Matt Damon, could've been written by Bill O'Reilly). I've made the point and you can look it up in my archives that while conservatives are all for smaller government they seem to trust the government more by which I mean they've pretty much concluded that government conspiracies are somehow metaphysically impossible, they never occur and that it's a sure sign of paranoia to entertain them. In the Z-Universe paranoia in moderation is healthy, a good thing and keeps you safe. The Z-Universe also has more dimensions than your typical conservative Newtonian cosmos, for instance while the vast majority of conspiracy theories are simply untrue it defies logic to say we've never had true conspiracies in history or will never have them again from time to time. Mankind is simply not this virtuous (yo, Tuskegee).

Of course Jesse devotes a separate chapter to the tragedy of 9/11 and concludes that the government knew something like this was bound or going to happen and so let it happen anyway. They said the same thing about FDR, he knew the Japanese were going to attack Pearl Harbor before it happened and the trouble with most conspiracy theories is this: while they may make perfect sense in your own head they are notoriously difficult to prove, to nail down but the intrepid Mr. Ventura carries on anyway with some concluding thoughts on how Bush has eroded our civil liberties and that we are this far away from setting up a police state and imposing martial law. That's an interesting one and not at all new, Glenn Beck seems to be saying much the same thing except that it will come at the hands of Obama.

Not light reading but easy to read except for the footnotes. All I can say is you're gonna tell him he's wrong??

Monday, March 08, 2010

So what animates your conservatism?

& please don't say Smaller Government, we all agree on that, but what other things? For me some of my animating principles:

free speech -- I have over the course of time distilled a new (really old) Z-Principle and it is this: In the majority of cases free speech should prevail. Sounds simple enough but much more complicated in practice. Now I know free speech is not absolute but what would happen if we had near total free speech? Well we'd have to Deal With It and so if (a) nappy-headed 'hos didn't cause (b) the planets to spin out of their orbits then there really is no need to lose sleep over it. (a) Pornography may be debasing but if it doesn't lead to (b) cancer than it clearly falls into the zone of protecting freedom is more important than shielding us from bad taste which segues nicely into,

freedom (to not have a police state) -- A few years ago I was in the village of All-White-Dobbs-Ferry-on-the-Hudson going through one of those personal problems/issues phases in my own life kinda mulling things over on the street corner, wasn't bothering anyone, walking around a little and this young woman comes up to me and goes "you can get arrested for that." Now if memory serves my penis wasn't exposed so she must have meant loitering even though I was only there for about 20 minutes tops. Now here's where my animating principle comes in: does this mean Dobbs Ferry NY has a police state? no but if the village adds 50 more laws like this one then you do wind up with one so I am opposed to not only a police state but anything that foreshadows a police state. Beth's Nolan Chart doesn't deal with stuff like this but I'm filling you in anyway which leads up to my third animating principle:

minimal laws -- It's simple logic, the more laws you pass the less freedom you'll enjoy so for me the test is so simple it's astonishing even to me: if the old law or proposed new one doesn't serve some dire need, in short if it's not absolutely necessary to the survival of, to the cohesion of a just Society as we know it then it shouldn't become law or if a law should be repealed instantly. Again if my presence in Dobbs Ferry bothered that young woman that much then Deal With It, this in a village that used to allow later-term abortions where one young Spanish woman even died undergoing the procedure and they covered it up but I'm the problem apparently.

pro-life -- Not even coming at this from a political angle per se but just feel it would be better if Society were pro-life. The opposite leads to all types of things like the time I boarded a bus in White Plains and the driver had to take some time to lower the handicapped ramp so a disabled guy could get on and some young woman in the back started bitching about it. That be an ugly society indeed and again my bar here is very low, despite our political views on abortion why can't we all be personally pro-life?? Doesn't seem much to ask and if we did we could all tell the bitch in the back of the bus to STFU!

spend spend spend -- Don't feel guilty about it, you can't take it with you. If your Mom tells you you spent too much on a carton of ice cream don't worry about it. On a related subject it's also why I'm against dieting, well the more spartan ones anyway. There's an anti-pleasure principle at work here which goes against the fundamental ethos to just enjoy Life (God must be scratching His head). John Tesh is a major spokesman of this approach but he must be driving Connie Selleca nuts. Spend $$$ and enjoy Life, you'd think this would be obvious.

war only as a last resort -- When I was growing up leaned heavily towards the pacifist position, thought two countries fighting each other was the height of human stupidity and folly. Call this the Henry David Thoreau position but as I got older saw the world was far more complicated than this but despite my much more reasonable older self the invasion into Iraq didn't cut it for me. To be willing to give up your own life for your country is the height of bravery imo, takes your moral character to a whole new level but it has to be absolutely necessary not because Dick Cheney thinks it's a good idea.

Just so we're clear.

Tuesday, March 02, 2010

Maybe he deserved to be Borked

Robert Bork, conservative icon, should've been on the Court and helped knock down some pretty bad decisions but I've really changed over time on this one. So I was channel-surfing the other night and came across some program on the Constitution on NJN2 the theme being Original Intent vs. an Evolving Constitution. Now I'm mainly an originalist myself but I actually found myself agreeing with at least one of the libs on the program who said what conservatives like Bork really want is to go back to the old days and by old days I mean olde olde days, it's like they're stuck in a kind of Victorian timewarp, Oscar Wilde got what was coming to him and so there was Bork saying things like liberals have used the courts to push sexual permissiveness, "to create a right to homosexual sodomy"...ok let's stop right here and have a cup of coffee.

Of all the conservatives who populate our corner of the conservative blogosphere, hell conservatives in general, is there anyone out there who seriously wants to put folks in jail who have gay sex with each other? I'm not talking morality here, views and tastes differ but should anal sex even be included within the purview of the Law? I'm finding Bork's brand of conservatism to be......disturbing. So what other acts of a sexual nature is Bork ok with a legislature or political body banning? Bork strikes me as the kind of guy if his wife was starting to do something orally creative he'd push her off and go "get off me bitch!" Again when it comes to Sex opinions definitely differ, folks do all kinds of freaky things in their early years they may regret later on in Life but again this properly falls within the sphere of personal morality and not law and I think most folks would agree it's far better to ponder on your life and the things you should or shouldn't have done in the safety and privacy of your living room with a bottle of Jack with the tv droning on in the background than in a prison cell.

Think of the conservative landscape out there and how vast it is. At one end you have your libertarians smoking dope, getting down with the 'hos but otherwise being very fiscally conservative and for smaller government. In the middle you have your soccer Moms, PTA gals, committee members who go food shopping, attend the neighborhood watch meeting, vote straight Republican (even McCain) and otherwise live quiet suburban lives. Then all the way around the other side of the globe intrepidly trudging across the frozen tundra in Viking helmut sun glistening off their frozen snot are folks like Bork harpooning those buggering homos on the ice floes. Welcome to the Land of the Strict Constructionists, guy masturating in an igloo, tie him up on the sled and bring him in. So how did we all manage to inhabit the same planet?

Monday, March 01, 2010

Not getting hired because of something you said online

This seems to be one of those rather hot topics that pops up every now and then in the press and the spin is always, well it seems to be that you should never post anything online for fear that it will come back to haunt you in any future job search. Z-man has multiple problems with this not the least of which is Free Speech but here for a typical column offering the typical sagelike advice in this area are some excerpts from conservative Kyle Smith's piece yesterday in the New York Post, Idiocy in the age of Facebook - Why you're not getting that job (2/28):

"A 2009 study concluded that 45% of employers were checking social-networking sites before deciding to hire someone...The news gets worse: of that 45% who bothered to check 80% subsequently decided not to offer a job to someone based on info found on the sites..."

Aren't there enough violations of free speech already? I know I know an employer can technically do this I suppose just like a radio station can fire someone for saying whatever but it's a violation of the spirit of free speech and when you look at it cumulatively we're a less free nation because of it. What you do online is your own creative domain and this is likely to have a chilling effect on bloggers, commenters, MySpacers, Facebookers etc. It's absolutely no business of the employer how much you drank at a party last week let's say or what conspiracy theories you believe in. It might be unwise to post some things but that's for your fellow commenters to point out, to issue TMI Alerts but it still shouldn't invalidate you from further consideration to fill that post. Besides don't these pencil-pushing geeks have anything better to do?

"As an employer you're taking a chance when you hire someone. No one wants to hire a dud. What if someone has a history, say, posting rude sex jokes about women on his Facebook 'wall' and turns out to be much the same around the coffee pot? No sex-harassment lawyer is going to fail to tell the jury that...

OK stop right there!! Time was, in recent memory in fact that most conservatives questioned, criticized the growing field of sexual-harassment law but ever since we learned from Paula Jones that Clinton has a crooked member they got with the program. I'm calling them out on this. Kyle bro you're smarter than this, many people are not going to repeat in the workplace what they say online ("geez Madam can I pour some blueberry syrup on those pancake nipples of yours?"). If there's one thing I hate with a passion it's this fashionable politically correct conservatism, neocon pussies all.

"...The No. 1 reason not to hire someone discovered on social-networking sites, though, is 'provocative or inappropriate photos'."...

Again too much time on their hands, not worried enough about the Bottom Line which may be part of the reason why our economy is in such a shambles. You got time to worry about this shit then pluck your candidates from a convent. Are such images right or wrong? that's purely in the eyes of the beholder but what Kyle doesn't mention is it can surely work in the opposite direction and I'm sure it does. When Tiger retires and runs his own golf equipment company I'm sure he would take it into consideration.

Then there's some crap about divorce lawyers just love Facebook and college admissions offices are getting into the act too. Z-man's position is simple -- if a boss cares this much about your online activity then he or she is probably not worth working for in the first place.