13th
March
2007
Out of touché
posted by saurabh in Of The Gay |Check out this little poll the Chicago Tribune has running on whether homosexuality is immoral, with their columnist Eric Zorn bravely holding the fort in defense of the obvious answer. A fairly unvarnished question. I don’t think I know a single person who would answer yes. But the poll stands at an almost even tie. O tempora, o mores.
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You have to see these online and TV polls for what they are — attempts to rile people up, get them to e-mail friends and draw attention to the Web site, and thereby increase “hits” to impress advertisers. Advertisers who learned at least 5 years ago that hits are irrelevant; they now pay for clickthroughs.
The Chicago Tribune, part of Tribune Corp., is a cow that needs to produce more milk even as its masters decline to feed it such frills as “reporters,” “editors” and “foreign bureaus.” They have the skeleton of printing presses and ad salespeople and the pretty hide of famous names (Los Angeles Times! Sammy Sosa!) and still they want more milk than ever before from the dessicated beast. Polls, porn and other “controversies” are the rBGH of Web advertising. If we refuse to drink the milk, the farmers will stop using the chemical. Jeez, overdone metaphor alert. Point being: don’t click on polls. It just rewards them.
but if we don’t click on the poll, what will happen to the gay people? will they be happy?
Though her campaign later announced that Senator Clinton disagreed with General Pace, when asked the poll question initially, she gave this non-answer, “Well I’m going to leave that to others to conclude.” Obama didn’t do any better (though, he later issued a more concrete statement). Perhaps they were too concerned about pissing off the half of the country country who answers “Yes,” to respond with the logical and humane answer.
Clinton should have, could have said:
“Are you asking me to call the Vice President’s daughter immoral?”
or
“A man who has overseen the use of white phosphorous bombs on civilians in Fallujah and the torture of people who were picked up for traffic violations at Abu Ghraib shouldn’t be anyone’s moral authority.”
or
“I did a lot of immoral things at Wellesley, but I don’t see what was so bad about sucking off my roommate.” (Pause) “Just kidding, people, come on. Now can we talk more about social security reform?”
or
“i could tell you stories about peter pace.”
Clinton and Obama supporters, speaking on condition of anonymity, said both might have been trying to avoid offending socially conservative Democrats, particularly churchgoing African-Americans, who share Pace’s views.
Oh, for more Corettas. . .
that reminds me of the very first thing that came to mind when i heard the question:
“It used to be people thought it was immoral for someone like me to date an African-American. Today that seems ridiculous. Soon Mr. Pace’s comments will seem equally ridiculous.”
Ah for more Washington players who know how to make an analogy.
what a minute. you can’t put supporters, speaking on condition of anonymity, and might have been together without everything blowing up. there’s nothing there. no authority, no accountability, and no certainty. no story, neither.