Category: media and media people

Categories
crime and punishment ideological culture media and media people too much government

Show Me the Way to the Next Hookah Bar

I could never emulate the economist Irving Fisher — and not just his use of index numbers. He was a perfervid purist. He didn’t just defend “the success” of Prohibition, he looked forward to the day when coffee, tea and bleached flour would be outlawed, too.

Hey, I love my coffee. You’ll have to pry my cup from my cold, dead fingers.

Of course, many forms of purism are obviously hygienic. But take purity beyond persuasion, into force, that’s not safe for anybody. And fraud? Weasel-​wordy purists aren’t against lying for the cause, either.

Take the hookah.

Hookahs are to tobacco-​smoking what bongs are to marijuana-​smoking: A water-​filtration-​based, easy-​to-​share drug delivery system. In “Putting a Crimp on the Hookah,” the New York Times quotes one hookah smoker as saying he’s unconcerned about the health effects, since he only smokes it about once a month. The author then states “But in fact, hookahs are far from safe.” As Jacob Sullum of Reason magazine points out, both can be true. Tobacco smoking isn’t exactly healthy. But occasional imbibing of water-​filtered smoke is almost certainly better for you than regular cigarette use.

The New York Times focuses on the next leg of the “ever-​shifting war on tobacco,” the prohibition of “hookah bars.” Though there’s some talk of protecting second-​hand smoke victims, it’s pretty obvious that this war is really about squelching a “vice” by force.

Which is itself worse than vice.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
media and media people

Pogue Privacy “Paranoia”

Apple customers recently learned that the cellular versions of their iPhones and iPads are storing detailed tracking information about users in an unencrypted format.

Ace New York Times tech reviewer David Pogue belittles anyone concerned about the threat to privacy. He himself has “nothing to hide,” lacks the “paranoid gene.” In conclusion, “So what?”

Chiming in online, reader “Diana” avers that “Privacy is dead. It is time to get over it” — a familiar yet incoherent sentiment which assumes that privacy is an all-​or-​nothing commodity.

If there were a spate of break-​ins in a neighborhood, would anyone feel justified in blithely asserting, “Security is dead. It is time to get over it”? Would you be making a pointless fetish of security by continuing to lock your front door or improving the lock? Should everyone suffering under dictatorship be instructed that their freedom is dead, get over it?

The costs of breaching privacy can be minor or great. With respect to unencrypted and archived tracking data, the practical costs of the vulnerability may be zero until the wrong person with the wrong motive exploits it. The danger may be a lot greater in other countries.

It’s appropriate to debate how great an apparent threat to privacy may be, and the best way of countering that threat. But it is wrong to assume that institutionally persistent but unnecessary assaults on personal privacy are either irreversible or silly even to notice.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets media and media people national politics & policies

What’s Going Up

When it comes to government policy and the politics that supports it, why people advocate what they advocate can get complicated. 

It’s obvious that people don’t always vote their wallets, their narrowly perceived “self interest.” But it’s just as obvious that even the biggest advocates of “sacrifice” and “public spirit” often come off as greedy and narrowly pandering to at least some interests.

And then there’s the issue of fuel to throw on the fire of ideology.

Gasoline, especially, leads to some bizarre expressions of opinion.

When gas prices rise, people talk “conspiracy.” Chris Cuomo makes the case that “speculators” drive fuel prices up — though I notice that neither he nor his guest seemed much inclined to use actual economic analysis to explain anything. “The facts” Cuomo makes much of are embarrassingly superficial.

Two U.S. senators now push for regulators to “apply the breaks” on speculators. Current prices are, as one of them puts it, “unwarranted.”

In past decades, I remember some prominent politicians talk about adding huge taxes to gas, “just like in Europe,” to discourage consumption and “encourage green energy” and thereby “save the planet.”

I don’t hear those notions often, anymore. Could it be that none of us wants to pay more, so when gas prices rise, we forget our ideologies and other fine notions and just yearn (or scream) for cheaper gas?

Not exactly a rational attitude towards policy. But maybe not that mysterious, either.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
ideological culture media and media people

The AP’s Memory Hole

In our age of the Internet, cheap digital video recorders, etc., it’s harder than it once was to enforce an “official” version of an event .… the un-​airbrushed knowledge of which might embarrass some potentate.

Memory-​tweakers keep trying, though. Including Winston-​Smith wannabes at the Associated Press.

An example is President Obama’s appearance at a wind turbine plant, where he made a pitch for “energy independence,” a concept presidents have been pitching at us at least since the long gas lines of the 1970s. One concern of attendees was the latest bout of high gas prices, caused by inflationary pressures and uncertainty about the Middle East.

According to an early version of the AP’s report, “Obama needled one questioner who asked about gas prices, now averaging close to $3.70 a gallon nationwide, and suggested that the gentleman consider getting rid of his gas-​guzzling vehicle. ‘If you’re complaining about the price of gas and you’re only getting 8 miles a gallon, you know,’ Obama said laughingly, ‘you might want to think about a trade-​in.’” The passage downplays how jovially patronizing the president was even after it became clear that the questioner had ten kids to support.

Obama’s unscripted condescension toward a struggling plant worker is not so outrageous as the AP’s strange memory-​hole behavior. The incident was later scrubbed from their report. But InstaPundit’s Glenn Reynolds saved a screenshot of the original passage. And there’s video.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
ideological culture media and media people

How the Worm Turns

Some folks wait till the last moment to decide how to vote. And when indifference was the mental state right before the decision, we can’t help but wonder what moved the person from indecision to selection. A coin toss?

Or something more insidious? 

This kind of worry lies behind a mini-​controversy over a CNN News feature. For the 2008 presidential campaign CNN gathered 32 undecided voters and gave them knobs to turn as they listened to candidates’ speeches. Turn the knob one way for approval, the opposite for disapproval. A computer averaged out the responses, and graphed them in real time underneath the TV image of the candidate speaking. 

Such graphic elements of newscasts have been called “worms.”

Psychologists have studied this sort of thing, and suspect that the mere presentation of this average approval rating amounts to “spin.”

And, as such, constitutes undue influence of a small group, perhaps easily manipulable, over a large group of voters. 

British psychologists studying CNN-​like worms say they accumulated data of measurable signs of influence. “The responses of a small group of individuals could, via the worm, influence millions of voters,” the scientists write. They also declare this effect “not conducive to a healthy democracy.”

Yes, yes, but “peer pressure” has been a known element of democracy for some time.

Only the worms are new. 

And, in their context, they provide more information. As with speech we may not like, more and different worm varieties (on different networks, perhaps) is undoubtedly the best response.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
ideological culture media and media people

Kochs: The Real Thing

Lying about who you are to trick an ideological adversary into embarrassing himself on tape?

A dubious means of advancing your cause. 

But James Taranto notes a key difference between an effective conservative sting operation against an NPR officer, Ron Schiller, and an earlier, ineffective liberal sting operation against Governor Walker of Wisconsin. Namely, “that the guy who prank-​called Walker claimed to be an actual person, so that there was a second victim of his prank.”

The other victim in the Walker sting, which rocked Wisconsin politics with all the power of a wet firecracker, was industrialist David Koch, one of two brothers who have philanthropically supported free-​market causes over the years. They’ve been a major backer of the Cato Institute, for example. The guy pretending to be David Koch in the prank phone call to Walker sought to represent the Kochs’ influence on Wisconsin politics as somehow corrupt and immoral. The opposite is true.

Richard Fink, executive vice president of Koch Industries, told National Review Online that the brothers won’t be deterred by smear attacks from the left.

“We will not step back at all,” Fink says. “We firmly believe that economic freedom has benefited the overwhelming majority of society, including workers, who earn higher wages when you have open and free markets. When government grows as it has with the Bush and Obama administrations, that is what destroys prosperity.”

Good for them.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.