"Sure, his ideas are crap, but I can tell he really believes what he's spewing..."

As I continue trying to avoid delving into topics explicitly dealing with the impending presidential election - an abyss that it is all too easy to drown in, and which plenty of others have already sacrificed themselves to in my stead - the following post has been draped with a thin veil of anonymity. -Ed.

In the course of a recent political debate with a regular interlocutor of mine, I became aware of a previously unrecognized polarization in the spectrum of theories of what should be valued in choosing a candidate to support. On one hand there is my own position, which is that one should vote for the candidate whose policy proposals one most agrees with, in the understanding that, even if none of those policies are successfully implemented, making the attempt to realize them is the most logical action toward securing one's interests.

My friend, however, took a position that I don't agree with, but can't criticize as logically unsound: he says that, all else being equal, he would vote for the candidate whose policy proposals seem most likely to be actualized, even if he disagreed with their motivating principles. His reasoning was that he could not trust a politician who campaigns on a platform that the candidate him- or herself must be aware is impracticable; it is nothing more than disingenuous, political posturing to win votes.

The core difference that I see this polarization deriving from, is over the question of whether one takes a basically optimistic or pessimistic view of human intentions. I dunno... am I just a pollyanna?

By a Nose

Well this is interesting (courtesy of the Washington Post, via the Tabsir blog). The "this" I'm referring to, in case you were unsure, is the rather exuberant advertisement in that screenshot of the Wall Street Journal's website, from the A.M. hours of September 26, proclaiming "McCain Wins Debate!" The "interesting," of course, arises from the fact that the debate didn't occur until the evening of the 26th.

(Disclaimer: I've visited the actual page for the WSJ article, and after reloading it a couple of dozen times, none of the handful of ads that appeared were the alleged McCain piece. I can only assume that the Washington Post writer that passed it along checked its veracity.)

Whether it is/was real or not, what I find interesting is the concept of an ad such as this one, and what, exactly, it's intended to do. The ad plays upon the foregone assumption in public discourse about presidential debates that one of the candidates "wins." I've always found this idea odd because, unlike in a typical competitive debate, there is no officiating party to adjudicate the merit of opposing arguments. This complicates the question of how a winner is determined - most topics conceded by the opponent? But of course no candidate ever concedes a point... What makes an argument "successful" in this context?

My point, I guess, is that, like most of the political jousting that takes place in the public eye (debates, campaign ads, monologues of talking points), the purpose here is not to facilitate the electorate's objective decision-making. Their minds have already largely been, and continue to be, unconsciously made up through processes of identification, affection, etc., and only subsequently consciously justified to themselves in rational terms of public policy. A debate, then, can only provide fodder to reinforce preexisting identifications - everyone believes "their" candidate won, and if the victory was less than resounding, it was only because the other guy behaved in a despicable, immature manner anyway, thus evoking even more sympathy for "the noble underdog" (Didn't Orwell play with something like this? Though I seem to recall more screaming...). The "winner" existed in the mind of each observer before the debate even began.

So what does an ad preemptively declaring disputational victory do to potential voters? As far as I can tell, pretty much the same thing as the debate itself.

Neil Postman is Rolling

In an unrestrained indulgence of irony, tonight's broadcast of the 60th Emmy Awards cut to a commercial break during Kirk Ellis's acceptance speech for Outstanding Writing for the HBO miniseries John Adams, in mid-sentence, in a sentence praising the coherence and depth of political dialog in Adams's era. And I quote:

...this amazing opportunity to talk about a period in our history when articulate men articulated complex thoughts in complete sentences. They used words...

and cue musical transition to commercial. Nope, we'll have no complete sentences here!

Pocket-Change Revenue and Ethical Standards, or Why I'm Wary of AdSense

During the earliest planning phases of my blogging venture, I became aware of the Google AdSense service. While the idea of making some extra money, even a few dollars, for labor I'd be expending anyway, with essentially zero investment, is undeniably a tempting proposition. Nevertheless, I've yet to install this particular widget, and I don't expect to any time soon.

My initial reason for refraining was more a matter of some imagined sense of "professionalism" or "integrity" than anything else (blogging - serious business!). But more recently, I've been reminded of another problematic aspect of forming relationships with advertisers: abandonment of ideological control.

Desperate for cash, traditional print media are not very fussy about their advertisers these days. Ann Caulkins, the publisher of the Charlotte Observer, told the paper’s religion reporter that [Obsession, a DVD currently being distributed by the Clarion Fund (http://clarionfund.org/), a nonprofit shell organization devoted to propagandizing against Islam] met the newspaper’s criteria for ads: “We’re all for freedom of expression, freedom of speech. This is in no way reflecting our opinions, but it is something we allow,” she said, adding that the newspaper would not allow material that is racist, profane, or “offers graphic images of body parts,” which at least distinguishes the paper from anything in the CSI television franchise.

Explicit standards of decency for advertisements, such as those maintained by the Charlotte Observer, the Journal of Higher Education, and presumably Google, are designed not with objectivity, but rather consumer palatability, in mind. An advertisement is deemed acceptable so long as a majority of a publication's audience will not become offended and raise an (circulation-plummeting, revenue-slashing) outcry.

The problem is that some products and services that many people find palatable or even enticing, I find myself unwilling to implicitly endorse by featuring on my website. Surely nothing so vile as Islamophobic propaganda films, certainly not from Google; but I don't want to associate myself with any of the vacuity- and vanity-perpetuating goods that are the mainstream advertising norm, either. Luckily for me, that zero investment-cost I mentioned above means my publishing overhead is significantly lower than the average newspaper or scholarly journal, and so, unlike the unfortunates at the Observer, I remain free to allow only content that does reflect my opinions. Ah, to be in the new-media vanguard...