Category: media and media people

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Accountability crime and punishment First Amendment rights general freedom media and media people moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies property rights responsibility too much government

Google: Disagreement

Google, censorship, Boycott, Competition, free market, be evil

Once upon a time, Google penned a stern note to self: “Don’t be evil.”

What you regard as avoiding evil, though, depends on what you regard as doing good. 

Does Google think it’s “good” to fire someone for offering reasoned objections to vapid pieties about why there are more men than women working as programmers, and about how to fix the problem? Assuming it is a problem.

If the answer is yes, then it’s up to more reasonable people to say, “No, Google, stomping on candid internal discussion of your (bad) politics and policies is not ‘doing good.’” 

Alas, some Google critics push for a “remedy” worse than the problem: government force. They want government to impose new prohibitions and mandates on large private firms that help people to spread their opinions.

I don’t necessarily agree when a firm — Google, Twitter, PayPal or anybody else — stops providing services to persons expressing views that managers and HR departments disdain. Yet I may agree. No one is morally obligated — and no one should be legally compelled — to help spread the views of others. 

I certainly refuse to distribute any installment of “Common Sense” guest-​authored by The Anti-​Paul-​Jacob Club.

When market actors make bad decisions without violating anyone’s rights, others have many powerful and peaceful means of opposing those decisions. Criticism. Boycott. Competition. 

But we shouldn’t seek to outlaw the decision-making. 

The right to freedom includes no guarantee that one will always do the right thing as others see it.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Common Sense ideological culture media and media people national politics & policies too much government

The Underground Amphibian

Purple Pig-Nose Frog, Ghats mountain range in India, KEK, Kekistan, endangered

A new species of frog has been discovered, and I’m just happy it has nothing to do with online japes and jibes about Trump, social justice, or an ancient Egyptian deity. But before you can say “Praise Kek,” please note:

Sometimes a frog is just a frog.

But this frog is special, living most of its life underground. It is purple. And though this is not stressed in the reports, it’s markedly gelatinous.

In an article entitled “New Purple Pig-​Nose Frog Found in Remote Mountains,” Jason Bittel explains that the frog comes above ground only when it rains — which in the Western Ghats mountain range in India is during monsoon season.

Named after the discovers’ late colleague, Dr. Subramaniam Bhupathy, it is dubbed Bhupathy’s purple frog (Nasikabatrachus bhupathi). I have to tip my hat to them, so to speak, for the herpetologist’s first name seems more fitting for a submerged-​in-​earth amphibian: “Subramaniam purple frog” would almost qualify as a pun. And, as readers of these Common Sense squibs will confirm, I am not always so valiant in resisting the art of the pun.

But you don’t read these commentaries for science news. 

So, a moral.

Around the world, amphibians are disturbingly under threat. As Alex Jones hyperbolizes, “they’re turning the frogs gay!” But be that as it may (or, more likely, may not), even under greater threat is political common sense.

Let’s hope it, too, will emerge with the coming monsoon.

In India? Your neighborhood? Kekistan?

Probably not in Washington, D.C. But it’s Friday, we can at least hope.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture media and media people moral hazard

Is This Even Funny?

Amy Schumer, comedy, equal pay, feminism, The Leather Special, PC, HBO, equality

Stand-​up comic Amy Schumer made headlines in Variety, this week, for her re-negotiations with Netflix over her recent comedy special, The Leather Special.

It initially garnered her a “mere” $11 million, while, Variety reported, comedians “Chris Rock and Dave Chappelle were given $20 million per special as part of their deals with Netflix,” according to a summary at Vulture​.com.* “Schumer then went back and negotiated for ‘significantly more compensation,’” scuttlebutt has it.

After-​the-​contract negotiations seem weird to me … almost … indecent.

But then, this might be apt, considering Schumer’s characteristic form of humor, which is almost relentlessly of an intimate sexual nature. Like many another Netflix watcher, I could not finish her special. “Indecent” is the nice word for it.**

The special was so relentlessly panned that Netflix created a new feedback system to discourage viewers from leaving severely negative criticisms and evaluations. It was a big deal months back.

So why did she think she could get more? Though she now denies it, the early reports said she demanded some sort of parity with Rock and Chappelle. And that “equal pay” for “equal work” ethic does seem to be behind the very idea of her ex post negotiating strategy. 

The thing is, Rock and Chappelle got more money, obviously, because their ability to make money for their venues is amply proven. Schumer, though she is not without talent and definitely has her partisans, is not as big an audience draw.

Like wages in the normal labor market, it’s about productivity.

And you’d have to pay me to watch The Leather Special in its entirety.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 

 

* Variety is behind a paywall. I’m quoting Vulture because, like any good scavenger, I’m not paying for Variety.

** No idea whether I would have made it through a special with Chris Rock or Dave Chappelle. I get the impression I’m not in the target audience.

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Accountability ideological culture media and media people moral hazard national politics & policies

One Way to Do It

Philip K. Dick, Nazi, ovens, ashes, smoke, abortion, crematorium, camp

While reading CBS’s recent story on Iceland’s success at reducing the number of Down syndrome cases, I was reminded of the Amazon Prime series Man in the High Castle.

The show, based on the celebrated alternative history novel by Philip K. Dick (1928 – 1982), explores a timeline wherein the Axis powers won World War II. The United States is divided between the Greater Nazi Reich and the Empire of Japan.

In one scene, one of the protagonists — a hero? a villain? — is stalled on a Midwest country roadside. He smells something in the air. Smoke. Ash.

The very American sheriff explains: it is a local hospital destroying defective humans. The weak, the sick, the disabled. 

And we, the viewers, recoil: how evil. Nazis actually execute the weak, the sick, the disabled. Well, they did, in history, not just fiction.

But, as CBS explains, the reason Down syndrome cases are disappearing all over the place, and in Iceland most of all, is not a new cure. Chalk it up to the rise of prenatal screenings. We see fewer Down syndrome people because, before birth, they are executed. Aborted.

In our non-​fictional timeline, many Americans are incensed that a few folks proclaiming to be Nazis have been “allowed” to demonstrate in public. 

Nazism is evil. I agree.

But how do these morally horrified people react about the very “progressive” and culturally acceptable practice of killing the unwanted?

Think I’ve gone over the top, have abused a revered author to make a point alien to his own? Well, please read Dick’s “The Pre-​Persons,” a story about abortion, way post-​natal … until the age at which a person can understand algebra.*

Quite the moral calculation we make, eh?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* That could mean it’s open season for murder as states are moving to drop algebra requirements because so many fail to master the subject. 

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Accountability folly general freedom ideological culture media and media people moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies too much government U.S. Constitution

Statues and Limitations

Thomas Jefferson, pixelated, Robert E. Lee, Washington, Jefferson, free speech, slavery, Nazis, Charlottesville, KKK, slippery slope

“Should they take down the Jefferson Memorial?” 

That is what PBS’s Charlie Rose asked Al Sharpton. Now, the “Reverend” is not my go-​to source for political insight, but his answer* caught my attention. 

“I think that people need to understand that, when people that were enslaved and robbed of even the right to marry and had forced sex with their slave masters, this is personal to us,” replied Rev. Sharpton. “My great-​grandfather was a slave in South Carolina … Our families were victims of this.”

Asked if this precluded “public monuments” for “everyone associated with slavery,” Sharpton argued: “When you look at the fact that public monuments are supported by public funds, you are asking me to subsidize the insult to my family.”

One can attack the messenger, Sharpton, sure. But what if we instead think of him as our neighbor? I certainly wouldn’t want to insult a neighbor, much less make him pay for the privilege. 

Notably, the Reverend embraced privatization, suggesting, “You have private museums.” Privatizing controversial monuments would certainly solve Sharpton’s stated problem.

Of course, the logic behind taking down statues or dismantling the Jefferson Memorial — or merely privatizing them — might also lead to changing the names of cities, counties and states, rivers and mountains. And it’s not just Washington and Jefferson — twelve presidents were slave owners, including Union General U.S. Grant.

Who knows how many are undeservedly memorialized?

Frankly, I’ve never liked the name of my Virginia county: Prince William. A liberty-​loving people ought not be stuck with such a monarchial brand.

Let the people decide. 

But by vote, not street brawl.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* This exchange begins at the 15:22 mark in the interview.

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Accountability general freedom ideological culture media and media people moral hazard national politics & policies Regulating Protest

Gatekeeping 2.0

gate keeper, Jordan Peterson, censor, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, censorship, new media,

There once was opinion hegemony, almost a monopoly. Official gatekeepers kept unwanted ideas — including some of mine, including many I strongly oppose — out of public consideration. 

Then came the online media revolution, which switched influence from corporate, academic-​approved media outlets to truly new media, like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

And now? The counter-revolution. 

We saw it obviously in the downgrade and then banning of Milo Yiannopoulis’s Twitter, last year. Since then, new measures surface on a regular basis.

We helots, we commonfolk, must not be allowed actually to affect an election!

Or the hearts and inquiring minds of Americans, Europeans, and others worldwide.

Unless that opinion has received the imprimatur of the Center-Left.

I’ve written about this return of the Gatekeeper mentality before. The latest malefactor is YouTube, which locked Dr. Jordan Peterson out of his account this week* as well as put in place new policies to hobble the social sharing elements of YouTube.** 

A week or so earlier, Patreon, an online crowdfunding patronage web service I’ve been thinking about trying out, cancelled independent journalist Lauren Southern’s account. Patreon managers charged that her most recent endeavor might cause “loss of life,” but, tellingly, “showed no evidence or proof, are allowing no appeal and have acted as judge, jury and executioner” — as one concerned netizen not inaccurately summarized.

The company’s CEO calmly explained himself to Dave Rubin on YouTube. Does he convince you? 

I catch a whiff of panic.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 

 

* Dr. Peterson’s account has since been reinstated, no explanation given.

** You can learn all this and more on YouTube itself — so the platform hasn’t been shut down as such. Instead, a new Artificial Intelligence will restrict videos that do not even break YouTube terms of service, removing Likes, Comments, and Search features.

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