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I got a call last Wednesday (6/2/2010) from a "Central Research". Normally I'd dismiss this call as simply a telemarketing call, but at the time I actually had a bit of time to spare, so I entertained the call.

Very glad I did. Very interesting call.

The caller was conducting a "survey" regarding my "TV watching habits" and assured me the call would only take a few minutes. 25 minutes later, I had to dismiss the caller so I could get to my class.

I'm not going to regale you with all the questions of the call. To basically summarize, the caller was a survey taker, but his questions were pointedly pro-Fox, and his comments explaining the questions were also pointedly pro-Fox. Sprinkle in a few Tea party movement references. A few examples:

• What cable news network show do you normally watch during primetime programming, from 6pm -10pm? Fox News, CNN, Headline News, MSNBC?


• Which primetime cable TV program/personality are you more likely to watch? The O'Reilly Factor, Anderson Cooper 360, On The Record with Greta Van Susteran or Countdown with Keith Olbermannn?


• What's the likelihood that you would watch The O'Reilly Factor for your primetime news source? Rate this on a scale of 1 - 5.


• Which primetime cable TV personality do you find most appealling? Bill O'Reilly, Chris Matthews, Anderson Cooper, Greta Van Susteran, Sean Hannity, Keith Olbermann?


• Which primetime cable news station's coverage do you consider to be most 'fair and balanced'? (author's note:: hysterical. just because I don't watch Fox, doesn't mean I don't know their alleged slogan.)


• What Can _______ (Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, Greta Van Susteran) do to improve their show and get you to watch?


• Was I registered as a Democrat or Republican?


• Rate your approval of the current administration on a scale of 1 - 5.


• Which primetime cable news channel are you most likely to turn to for election coverage in 2012?

Yes, you get exactly where that's headed.

That's roughly the order, although there were many additional questions. It was interesting, especially given the survey taker's comments in between my responses, such as the fact that I never watch Fox news, primarily due to it's conservative bias. He did try to slip in an occasional one-liner to suggest Fox doesn't have conservative bias. Riiight. There were also a few questions/comments about the Tea party and which news stations I associated the Tea party movement with o_O.

So, what the hell does this have to do with you? I try not to mentally masturbate through this blog, so I'm always conscious that if you're reading, what I write should relate to you. Well, Central Market Research, Inc is a NYC company that has been doing this for a while. Even pre-2008 election. An interesting comment I found on a no-call list website, from September 2008:

These calls are ILLEGAL PUSH POLLING: SPREADING LIES ABOUT OBAMA, here's the truth from someone that answered a call from that number:

I Just Got Push-Polled on Obama and Israel

It turned out to be a political poll. And not just any old poll.

From there, the focus became more explicitly political--and, again, perfectly typical. Was I Democrat or Republican? Etc.

But soon enough I understood why they were asking about Carter. After going over some more issues and confirming the fact that I was likely to vote for Obama, the caller made a series of rather pointed inquiries. Would it affect my vote, he said, if I knew that

* Obama has had a decade long relationship with pro-Palestinian leaders in Chicago

* the leader of Hamas, Ahmed Yousef, expressed support for Obama and his hope for Obama's victory

* the church Barack Obama has attended is known for its anti-Israel and anti-American remarks

* Jimmy Carter's anti-Israel national security advisor is one of Barack Obama's foreign policy advisors

* Barack Obama was the member of a board (sic) that funded a pro-Palestinian chartiable organization

* Barack Obama called for holding a summit of Muslim nations exlcuding Israel if elected president

Is it possible to get push-polled outside of "election time"? Seems they're starting early, possibly with a focus on the incumbent seats for the 2010 elections. And yes, the next calls will probably be to your phone, to get you to tune in ;)

I can't tell you to avoid a specific number, since my call came in unpublished. The no-call website has a few numbers listed in the 212 area code, but that's from 2008.

So, this is the next step in political marketing propaganda. Telemarketing for fun and votes? #LeSigh.

*sigh* my people make me really tired sometimes...

From a discussion board I frequent, someone shared a story about President Obama being stopped and frisked by the NYPD. Now, I'm avoiding linking the story for this post, because I'm not sure whether the story is true, but it was published on 5/18/2010 - so if you're interested, you can find it.

Here's my issue with the whole thing though. Someone posted the story (sans sources, authors or hyperlinks) to a discussion board, and the conversation ensued. Comments regarding how "things haven't changed", "we all look alike", "brown" people are devalued in this country, and "racial profiling" followed.

The problem with this, IMHO, is that this story seem a bit implausible. The NYPD frisked the POTUS, without interference by the Secret Service? Or the NYPD kept the Secret Service at bay, while they frisked the POTUS? Or, maybe the POTUS was walking outside of Secret Service range, and the NYPD took it from there?

Yeah, see....that sounds like a bit much, right? So, I asked the person who originally shared the story the source and got....*crickets*. Hm...that's curious.

Well, my fingers know how to Google too, so I did. And here's what I found (click the pic for a larger image):

O-kaaaay. I spy what I think may be the problem. The NY Times, by most accounts, would be considered a legitimate news source (my editorial comments about multinational corp news media are topics for another post). So - the NYPD frisks Obama headline appears on the NY Times website. Hm - might that give this headline credibility? But the NY Times uses Blogrunner, and blogrunner crawls both news sources and blogs for keywords (including Ray Kelly). Blogrunner's crawler comes across this headline, pulls the RSS feed and voila - it's published on the NY Times' website.

A closer glance (and a couple of clicks) and I've got the actual post, which is a blog post. The blogger may be a legitimate blogger, and may run factual stories from his local community that have yet to hit major news-wires. Completely within the realm of possiblity.

But what makes my fingers hit keyboard - what truly sticks in my craw about this, is the willingness of my people (black people) to take an uncorroborated story about the POTUS and run with it, as an example of the static state of race relations in this country. It screams "this is how it's always been - and this is how it will always be. We'll always be profiled, oppressed, victimized - so of COURSE that story is true..."

*screeeech* pump the brakes. Are we still really going with the whole "it's the oppresion, mayne - it's always the oppression" theory? Still?

It's 2010, people. One of the things that drives me nuts about social media the internet is people's ability to use it without gaining any knowledge from it. In other words, we're not getting smarter for having it available. We're getting dumber. Less analytical. Thinking less critically.

Steps 1-6 of internet usage: Sort. Filter. Analyze, Disregard. Rinse. Repeat.

Seriously @ my people (brakka ppl). Steps 1-6 above should be followed for any story you stumble across on the internet. Again - this story may be true, but I'm waiting for corroboration. This ran May 18th. It's now May 23. And no one's picked this up yet? o_O

We have to be more discerning & analytical, and stop getting out backs up about any slight we collectively come across. Pick your battles (and choose well).

I've stayed away from politics/economics/social theories for a while - because honestly I twitter (see twitter box at right) - and the people I follow, both via blogs/twitter do politics so much better than I. But this is truly sticking in my craw.

I was...ok, let me be honest...I believe I was watching the True Blood season finale on 9/18, and left HBO on because I was in shock, lol. But I caught Real Time with Bill Maher, as his guests were: Journalist Matthew Continetti (editor of The Weekly Standard, contributing writer to the Washington Post and the LA Times); historian Annette Gordon-Reed (The Hemingses of Monticello, Harvard Professor); author Jeffrey Toobin (staff writer at The New Yorker since 1993 and the senior legal analyst for CNN); former health insurance executive Wendell Potter; and comic David Cross.

And (of course) the first topic of discussion was Obama's health reform efforts, debates regarding it, etc....and the following discussion snapped me back to reality:

Bill Maher: Are we (Americans) a good people? ......what is it about the American character that allows us to do what no other nation in the world does, which is make a buck off of breast cancer?

Matthew Continetti: I don't think it's the American character...I think it's the American political system.

Bill Maher: But doesn't one lead to the other?

Matthew Continetti: No, not at all...you can have....

note: this is where Bill & I both simultaneous pumped the brakes

Bill Maher: Our political system is not the outgrowth of our character?

Matthew Continetti: Well, our political system was created 200 years ago, so it's not going to reflect the characters of people.

Bill Maher: The system we have now does not reflect the system we had 200 years ago.

Matthew Continetti: Well, it's also the case that as government grows, and lobbyists are able to get their way, what the lobbyists want is to protect the status quo......I want a competitive marketplace....I want to go in another direction, where you have a free market.

Jeffrey Toobin: This is why we don't have....why we have the system we do. Because people like Matthew genuinely believe that the market is the answer to virtually all problems...and that is a well established view in this country across the board...

...and I totally agree with Jeffrey. And I find this both maddening and terrifying.

I zoned out as they debated the Healthcare public option vs. single payer systems, and whether or not a "free market" could work in the health insurance industry. I zone out - because I couldn't get past Matthew's awkward marginal response to Bill Maher's original question: "Are we a good people?" It was almost as if the idea of a collective "us" (i.e. Americans) being a good people was antithetical to him.

"Good? Pssshaw - America is soulless. The free market should step in, to avoid us making moral decisions, and the government being charged to execute/implement them."

The conversation continued, with some discussion about whether compassion should be expressed by the government spending money, whether Bush was compassionate (!), etc. And as it continued, the only thought that crossed my mind was that Matthew had no experience or frame of reference with America's collective social conscious, so his responses shouldn't be surprising.

See, Matthew, like so many people now, is a product of the 1980's, and their collective consciousness is capitalist; their guru is Gordon Gecko:
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Greed, indeed, is good.And the free market defines/clarifies/purifies it all. (and if it wasn't clear, yes - that is sarcasm).

what's a collective social conscious you ask?:: I can remember being a kid in the 1970's, and being held captive in class watching movie reels of public service announcements ranging from the benefits of nuclear energy, why littering is bad for the environment, why it's good to eat breakfast, why you should listen to your parents (Timmy was forever making bad decisions, wasn't he?)... to not drinking the stash of brightly colored liquids underneath mom's sink:

But also, I can remember PSA's about the role of government in our lives, and the 3 branches of government, and how bills are passed, and why (as good American citizens) we're required to participate in the voting process. Now, mind you - it was all propoganda, granted. But it did create a spirit of collectivism (well that, and those air raid drills which were terrifying). We were in this together. And together, we knew (from these movie reels) what was important to us: family, values, taking care of each other, participating, making a difference. Oh, and brushing our teeth.

the decline:: whose idea was it to take all this out of the minds of our youth? Out of the classroom, and off Saturday morning tv? I can remember watching cartoon's in the 1990's with my daughter, and it seemed like most of them were geared toward combating our declining moral values, than instilling any values in us, they talked about STD's, and not smoking, internet safety, and not being prejudiced. Ok, I get it - I know what NOT to do. But when did we teach the kids what they SHOULD do?

We took values out of the classroom, off of popular media, and left it strictly to parents, even as we said "it takes a village". And what happened? We created a nation of Matthews. The idea of a collective social conscious totally escapes them. Then we wonder why the idea of socialism is completely abhorent to them. But someone should've created a PSA about Socialism, Communism, Democracy and other socio-economic/political ideologies, so they'd truly understand the concepts they so freel bandy about.

But back to the original question:: Are we a good people? Matthew's answer seemed like deflection. It was a classic non sequitor, or if not that - at least an appeal to common practice, which in this case is free market capitalism, which obviously is the only solution to our nations' problems.

This premise that capitalism/free markets is the only solution is flawed. We haven't taught our children that there may possibly be other options that are not only applicable, but viable, in certain applications. We haven't taught them that those other options may have value. Don't get me wrong - I couldn't live in a purely socialist country. But universal health care is far from socialist. And we never taught our children that. Hell, a lot of us know this, but are willfully ignorant because it serves us well to promote Capitalism.

How to turn this around? I don't know. And even though Michael Moore's movie "Capitalism: A Love Story" opens next weekend, his reputation will prevent the audience that needs to hear a different perspective, from going to see it. It's preaching to the choir, IMHO.

Right now, I've love a SchoolHouse Rock remix, that illustrates our insurance system for the masses. And an animated Supernews explanation of Socialism/Capitalism/Deomcracy and social consciousness for Matthew. Not that I think he'd actually watch it. SMH