Left or right side of the aisle, we’d probably all agree that we’re in trouble the day Paris Hilton makes the most sense on energy, and that day just might have come.
Here’s Ms. Hilton’s opening volley in her 2008 presidential platform:
“OK so here’s my energy policy: Barack wants to focus on new technologies to reduce foreign oil dependency and McCain wants offshore drilling. Well why don’t we do a hybrid of both candidates ideas? They can do limited offshore drilling with strict environmental oversight while creating tax incentives to get Detroit making hybrid and electric cars. That way the offshore drill carries us until the new technologies kick in which will then create new jobs and energy independence.
Energy crisis solved!”
What Ms. Hilton gets is that critical Village Square concept, “the power of AND.” Solving our energy problem will require lots of “ANDs”. Of course, there are holes in her platform beyond that, but since she’s such a dark horse, we’ll let them slide.
If you actually look at either candidate’s energy platform, they DO contain many ANDs. It is, instead, the bizarre quality of our public debate that artificially eliminates the ANDs. So… I say, let’s all try to add them back in and, in our own tiny corner of the national debate, not be outdone by Paris Hilton.
Did you know that while there are regulations on the veracity of advertising regarding the cereal you eat or the juice you drink, there is absolutely nothing regulating truth in political advertising?
Brooks Jackson, from the organization Facts.org offers us a bottom line: “If all you know about candidates in an election is what you see in their ads, you are going to cast a very poorly informed vote.”
The first amendment gives the press in this country and that includes broadcast outlet terrific freedom which is used to make a lot of money. But it’s there because the voters need information to base a sound decision on. And I think In too many cases broadcasters and cable outlets are making huge amounts of money from running these political ads which in many cases are false and misleading and they’re putting very little of that money back into some reporting that would inform their viewers about when they’re being scammed…
…If you think commercial advertising is misleading, you’ve got to realize it’s the wild wild west when it comes to political advertising.
So as campaign 2008 ramps up, remember “let the buyer beware.”
Last spin through South Carolina for the Senator, pro-Bush groups conducted push-polls asking voters how they would feel if they knew McCain had fathered a black child out of wedlock. Truth? The Senator and his wife adopted an Indian ORPHAN from MOTHER THERESA’S ORPHANAGE, no less.
Then there is this smear against Mitt Romney a “mailer in heavily evangelical South Carolina, purporting to be a holiday card paid for by the Mormon Temple in Boston, wishing fond holiday wishes from the Romney family,” beginning with this sentence: “We have now clearly shown that God the father had a plurality of wives…” The FBI is investigating, though a lot of good it will do candidate Romney as a postscript months down the road.
“Help me sound the alarm that one day the Mormon Church plans to replace the Constitution with a Mormon theocracy. Mitt Romney’s political success indicates this may be sooner than most have thought…”
Then there is email, this breathless Obama as undercover radical Muslim screed that’s been arriving in in-boxes for months. One version even mentions that email fact-checker www.snopes.com had verified the story when it had, in fact, done the exact opposite.
And, now, a Village Square pop-quiz. Referencing our last post, do you suppose these tactics target our:
1. Human brain
2. Lizard brain
3. Our inner second-grader?
Hint: My apologies to second graders for impugning their intelligence.
For more than 30 years, crowds have flocked to the small English fishing village of Lyme Regis to watch an annual tradition — two teams of fishermen standing on wooden platforms as human bowling pins, hurling a dead giant eel at each other. But the ritual was abruptly abandoned after an animal rights activist threatened to draw negative publicity to the latest tournament, organizers said Saturday.
The practice, known as conger cuddling, is the annual highlight in the small coastal town about 155 miles southwest of London. The object of the game is to knock the opposing team off the platform by swinging a 25-pound eel at them.
Crowds have flocked to Lyme Regis since 1974 to watch rival teams of nine men swing the giant conger eel — suspended in the harbor by a rope — and local residents said they are dismayed at the demise of their historic event.
Andrew Kaye, a resident and spokesman for the Lyme Regis lifeboat crews who raise money through the tournament, said an anonymous e-mailer had called the practice disrespectful to the dead eel.
The lone activist threatened to film the contest to attract adverse media attention, Kaye said.
“We decided that it really wasn’t worth upsetting anybody by going ahead with using a dead conger,” Kaye said. “But it’s a dead conger, for Pete’s sake. I shouldn’t think the conger could care one way or another.”
He said fishermen often accidentally catch the creatures in their nets, deep-freeze them and defrost them in preparation for the tournament.
Ron Bailey, a fishing boat skipper, said the tournament is meant as a wet, carnival-like event which usually raises about $5,600 for Royal National Lifeboat Institution lifeboat crews.
About 300 people attended an alternative event on Friday night. But the boat dock fender that participants used paled in comparison to being struck by a dead eel, Bailey said.
