Orgy of Outrage

You remember the old television news adage: “If it bleeds, it leads.” Sorry, but blood doesn’t do it anymore. Nor disasters, nor cute animal/kid stories. Not even cleavage. It’s OUTRAGE.

The most recent example involves the North Carolina preacher who had some really bad things to say about what should happen to gays and lesbians (which I won’t repeat here). You probably remember the Florida minister who was planning to burn the Koran. Then there was the Texas judge caught on video beating his daughter. On a larger scale, you have the reported behavior of Secret Service agents in Colombia and the overspending on the GSA on a conference. If your blood is still at its usual temperature after watching all this stuff, you’d better see you doctor.

The big question for me is, how serious is some of this in the great scheme of things? In the old days of broadcast news, would a couple of crazy clerics have even been given a millisecond on the national stage? The Secret Service thing clearly seems like a more substantial issue, but does the behavior of those agents really appear, in a larger context, all that shocking? Are all business conferences now going to be classified as hedonistic wastes, and should such meetings be held on folding chairs in a local high school gym instead, to keep us all calmed down?

Annoyance or irritation is one thing, but I think outrage should be reserved for issues that are at least worthy of it. I can think of one: Syria, where close to 13,000 people – including children -- have been killed by government troops or militias. Why isn’t there real outrage over the failure of world leaders to do anything about it, instead of their spending time coming up with brilliantly defended reasons why they can’t?

There are plenty of serious events out there that could drive almost all of us up the wall. However, I don’t know about you, but I can only do a finite amount of outrage at once before I have to recharge batteries. Admittedly, outrage is one of the few things in life that gets easier with age, but if I were you, I’d be careful about getting talked into spending it on the wrong things. Someday, your outrage is going to be needed to actually change something.

Negative Campaign Ads Work...Don't They?

For decades, this has been the conventional wisdom, and there’s no question they make an impression. But do they really “work” – meaning change minds, or push undecided voters to a commitment?

I think hit pieces are sort of like antibiotics. They’re effective for a while, and then they start to lose their potency. The bacteria simply mutate around them – get too “smart” for them, if you prefer.

Now I’m not exactly an optimist when it comes to this subject. I won’t say that the majority of the electorate are stupid – they’re mostly uninformed, and usually only get informed if they have to. Even so, thanks to the Internet and other channels, the percentage of really uninformed people, in my estimation, is dropping. As this percentage goes down, the effectiveness of negative ads drops as well. Even stupid people, in this information age, can recognize a hit piece for what it is.

I have reached the point where I just don’t care about certain things (though they may be important to you – sorry if you’re one of those folks). I don’t care whether Mitt Romney made his dog ride on the top of the car or whether Mormonism is a cult. I don’t care whether Obama’s preacher was a racist or whether he had radical friends. When it comes to creating – or losing – jobs, neither Romney nor Obama really had all that much to do with it. I’d be happy to see a line drawn under all this stuff.

So what’s going to “work,” message-wise? First, a focus on the future, not the past. And second, messages that clearly lay out the country’s problems and offer realistic – but creative – means of solving them. Herman Cain flew high for a while because he had a plan – it may have been crazy, but at least it was a plan, and voters have a thirst for that sort of thing.

With the billions that will be spend on campaign ads, the news media don’t need to compound the problem by dealing with the back-and-forth and playing them all over again for free. Fact-check, OK, but don’t give the “horse race” more time than it’s worth. The Kentucky Derby only took a couple of minutes.

As an experienced radio operator, I am very good by now at picking out the signals in the middle of the static. The purveyors of negativity will find that the electorate is getting better at it, too.

Nice Problem to Have

OK, let’s get this out of the way first: I’m envious of all those new Facebook zillionaires half my age. What are they going to do with all their money?

First, I hope they spend it! The economy has been in the toilet in large part because money hasn’t been circulating. If the Facebookers, as an example, insist on building ugly monster homes, at least there will be lots of tradespeople with new gigs.

The first folks to cash in will be financial advisers, who will be swarming over the new wealthy like ants. If you’re young, and all of a sudden you have money, you probably don’t know what to do with it, so it doesn’t hurt to listen to someone who knows more than you.

I’ve never quite had the experience, so am not one to talk, but handling wealth wisely involves time, effort and imagination. I’m reminded of the elementary school teacher who told her students that, for one class, they each had $5 million, and their assignment was to write down 10 things they’d spend it on, not including real estate. The kids, of course, took the whole class period to make their lists, and most didn’t come close to disposing of all the money. Adults might have a little easier time with this game, but it’s not nearly as easy as it sounds.

The good news is, that people who literally have more money than they know what to do with often have little choice left but to invest it in ways that do good for others, whether funding a company that creates jobs or setting up a charitable foundation. It’s almost imperative that they “send it out” in some form.

I’ve never fully understood gold as an investment. Gold is the investment of fear. It’s a gilded mattress. It’s pretty, but it doesn’t do anything or really make anything much. Real wealth comes from ideas – the idea behind Facebook, or the ideas behind Apple’s products. Apple stock has multiplied much faster than gold did, even at the height of the recession.

China has made lots of money putting together products that people want – but many of the ideas for those products have come from the United States. As long as we keep coming up with ideas, we can dig ourselves out of our current financial hole.

But I digress. I’m still envious of those Facebookers. Looks like I’m going to have to postpone my visit to the Porsche dealership – I think it’s going to be a little crowded this week.

Facebook: The Place and the Time

Well, here we go. One writer has likened Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg to Gandhi or Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in their relative impact on society. Before St. Mark (I thought we already had one of those) is assumed into heaven, it’s useful to think about where ideas come from, their often humble beginnings, and the people who take them to great heights.

Thanks to history, we all know that the greatest inventions are really discoveries – and a discovery isn’t something created by the discoverer – it’s there all the time, waiting to be found. Sometimes, discoveries languish because the discoverers don’t understand the significance of what they’ve found. Columbus may have “discovered” America, except he thought it was India (which is why we call them the West “Indies”). And those called the Indians simply called it home.

Discovery can also come by accident. The medical literature is filled with such stories. Penicillin, one of the most hallowed antibiotics of the 20th century, was a suspicious mold found growing on one of Dr. Alexander Fleming’s Petri dishes. Had the good doctor been less than curious, we would never have known about it – and it took him 20 years to see it developed into a useful medication.

My favorite invention, radio, may have been discovered by Marconi, but he considered it primarily as a means of communication with ships at sea. He saw no entertainment value in it – those ideas would come from David Sarnoff and his successors, who would make much more money than Marconi.

Let’s remember what Facebook was originally. You saw the movie. It was used to rate the attractiveness of women in college dormitories. Facebook, of course, wasn’t even the first social network. It’s all about what you do with the ball after you pick it up. Zuckerberg learned quickly how to run with it, focusing on essentials to bring Facebook to where it is today. And yes, he should get credit for that. Certainly, he’ll be counting it on Friday.

Often, the way for the “next big thing” is paved by others. Many had tried flying; the Wright Brothers got the plane off the ground. Part of it is learning from others’ mistakes (or your own), part is persistence, and part is luck. Or, if you prefer, it’s simple evolution – it’s just time for it to happen.

I’m jealous, of course, of all those at Facebook headquarters who will become instant zillionaires this week when the company goes public. The challenge for them is not letting it go completely to their heads. They’re simply the poster children for being in the right place at the right time.

The N Word

The ongoing debate about same-sex marriage is only part of a larger subject: sexual behavior that’s considered “normal.”

When I was in high school, a friend pulled me aside one day and sheepishly told me his mother had caught him perusing a copy of “Playboy” in his room. She took it away from him, but also told him that at least he was “normal.”

Gay vs. straight is only the tip of an enormous iceberg. When it comes to sexual predilections, “common” seems to be a much more accurate, though less comforting term than “normal.” Just read Dr. Kinsey’s and others’ findings. Some people like breasts, others prefer bums. Some like legs, and others, feet. There’s missionary and there’s doggie, as well as daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, and even never. To some, size matters, others could care less. Some like to wear handcuffs, and others like to do the cuffing – you fill in the rest. Accounting for the differences in the wiring of people’s brains, if that’s what we’re talking about here, is a virtually impossible task.

Sadly, there are some predilections that eventually involve victims, such as when adults prey on children. Clearly, such behavior is criminal, and it has to be dealt with in the ways that most effectively protect society.

But what about the attraction to children, for example, in the first place, or other non-standard attractions? It’s easy for those of us who consider ourselves “normal” to label others’ attractions as sinful (“How could those awful people even think that way?”). Perhaps instead, we should recognize -- maybe with gratitude -- that our own brains just aren’t wired in those ways, and that we don’t have to deal with the struggles such attractions can bring.

As I have said before, there are almost as many strokes as there are folks – and as long as no victims are involved – and that’s a very big condition -- what standing do we have on which to judge each other? If you’re looking for “normal” in the sexual proclivities of modern human beings, well, maybe you should ask yourself if you really want to go there at all.

The M Word (Again!)

Some day, the long fistfight over whether same-sex couples should be allowed to marry will be over. Both sides will have punched themselves out.

If I could write the law, it would come out something like this. For the purpose of rights and responsibilities, there would be no such thing as “marriage” in our legal codes. All willing couples, regardless of gender, would get some kind of certificate of union, with all the rights and privileges –- and I mean all -- currently afforded couples whom we now call married. But issuing that certificate would be all that government could do, and the spiritual and emotional components would be the province of some other entity.

This way, the county clerks wouldn’t be in the position of having to perform any ceremonies, and their sensibilities, or their biases, if you prefer, would not be part of the equation. If a couple wanted to find a church or some other party to perform a ceremony so they could call themselves “married,” that, in effect, would be none of government’s business. The person administering the ceremony would not be able to say, “By the power vested in me…”, because no power (at least no LEGAL power) would be vested in that individual.

We could avoid the insoluble arguments over the definition of marriage, which kinds of couples are more capable of raising children, or whether a same-sex union lasting 20 years is more valid or justified than a heterosexual union lasting only three years. Clearly, if two people of any sex want to make a long-standing or even a till-death-do-us-part commitment to each other, that’s something that society should encourage. And it appears that a certain percentage of human beings, indeed, mammals in general, are gay. They can’t “fight” it; why should others waste time trying?

I know this horse left the barn a few thousand years ago; I’ll leave it to the interpreters of the Bible or other books to tell me how many thousand. But I’m hoping that evolution (whoops, I mean SOCIAL evolution) takes us past this discussion eventually and that we can focus on other issues. How about curing cancer or ending war? Well, those are horses that may never leave the barn, but we can hope, can’t we?