CommenTerry

The Perennially Uninformed Strike Again

I’ve previously written about the perennially uninformed – those who are so caught up in their own little worlds that they never pay attention to the things that are going on around them. Most of the time, their ignorance is costly only to them. Recently, though, some of them created big problems for lots of other people, as their lack of awareness was a catalyst in the collapse of IndyMac Bank.

The media, along with various politicians, had been reporting that this bank was in danger of failing. Oblivious to the fact that, in the majority of cases, their money was completely insured, depositors created a run on the bank to try to withdraw their money as quickly as possible. This led to IndyMac’s failure and subsequent takeover by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC).

All of this could have been avoided if its customers had been mindful of the fact that the FDIC insures their money, up to $100,000 per account. The FDIC was created by the government during Franklin Roosevelt’s administration to prevent a repeat of the bank failures of the Great Depression, when people lost all or most of the money they had on deposit with those banks. Now, banks pay the FDIC a small monthly premium to insure their depositors’ money. With the FDIC insurance in force, those who don’t have more than $100,000 in any bank account (I would say that this is the case for more than 95% of all account holders) have nothing to worry about and are never in danger of losing their money. Why is that so hard to understand?

Of course, those who had more than $100,000 in any IndyMac account will likely lose some of their money, although the FDIC is promising to return to them at least 60% of amounts in excess of $100,000 per account. These people have no one to blame but themselves for any losses that they incur. They should have known the limits of the insurance and therefore structured their deposits in a way that none of their accounts exceeded the $100,000 limit. Either they were among the perennially uninformed or they just assumed that their bank would never go under.

Is a Flood of TV Indecency about to Begin?

Conservative columnist and activist L. Brent Bozell and the Parents Television Council (PTC), an organization he founded, are upset about two recent appeals court rulings. One was made in June by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York, which threw out an FCC fine against Fox Broadcasting for allowing some “fleeting expletives” to get through uncensored during two of its live Fox Billboard Awards broadcasts. The other was last week by Third Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia, which struck down the FCC’s $550,000 fine against 27 TV stations owned by CBS over Janet Jackson’s now-infamous “wardrobe malfunction” during the Super Bowl halftime show in 2004.

In one of his latest columns, Bozell says the earlier decision “opens the door for F-bombs galore, any time, anywhere.” He also implies that the latter decision will likely do the same for nudity. He then sums up his disgust over these decisions by predicting that a flood of unrestrained indecency will soon begin on broadcast television. Oh really? I’ll take the other side of that bet.

I agree with Bozell that much of what passes for entertainment nowadays on broadcast television contains far too much objectionable material. This comes in the form of profanity, violence, suggestive dialogue, and sexual situations. However, I believe broadcasters would not cross certain lines, even without FCC regulation. Why do I say this? Because of the restraint that broadcasters practice during unregulated hours. From 10 p.m. until 6 a.m. every day, they are free to broadcast all the indecency they want. This includes the F-word, the S-word, explicit sexual suggestiveness, full frontal nudity, and even soft core porn. The only limit during those hours is that they can’t broadcast obscenity, i.e., hardcore pornography and the like. Now, when is the last time you’ve seen or heard any of this stuff during those hours? Be honest. You don’t hear or see it because they don’t broadcast it, even though they would have every right to do so and they could do it with impunity.

What Bozell conveniently ignores is the fact that broadcasters, along with basic cable stations, have to answer to their advertisers. Just about all of their programs are advertiser-supported. Most of those advertisers, for fear of repercussions from individual citizens and organizations like Bozell’s PTC, would pull their commercials from programs that go too far. Bozell knows this is the case because he’s encouraged this kind activity by using “shaming” tactics against various companies whose ads have appeared on shows (both broadcast and cable) that he considered objectionable. However, his argument was made more effective by not acknowledging that part of broadcast paradigm.

How Can 'Different Worlds' Be Equal?

During a recent impromptu debate about the n-word on ABC’s The View, co-host Whoopi Goldberg remarked that blacks and whites live in “different worlds.” She used that rationale to justify her assertion that it is okay for blacks to use the n-word but not acceptable for white people to use that degrading racial epithet. First of all, I don’t believe anyone should be using it, but that’s beside the point here. The real point is that, by claiming blacks and whites live in different worlds, Goldberg is summarily dismissing Martin Luther King’s ideal of equality of the races. He championed the goal of a colorblind society with no barriers or divisions between the races.

Ms. Goldberg, on the other hand, seems to be okay with the doctrine of separate but equal, a dogma that was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court’s Plessy v. Ferguson decision in 1896, but struck down by its Brown v. Board of Education ruling in 1954. Of course, the argument back then was over schools. Goldberg wants to consign blacks to entirely separate world from whites. But the concept is still the same – separate is inherently unequal. How can one say he or she supports racial justice with a mentality like that? Goldberg is doing a great disservice to Americans of all races.

Random Rants and Raves #132

If you want to know what an elitist looks like, look no further than Arianna Huffington.        

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Nancy Grace has managed to become fodder for misogynists everywhere.

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To those Republicans who make the silly argument that Barack Obama is too inexperienced to be President, I have the following question: How much executive experience does John McCain have?

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A change in lifestyle must always be preceded by a change in attitude. 

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There is no such thing as an easy game in any sport -- the score always begins at 0-0.

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Life starts to become better for most people once they decide to just be themselves and stop trying to win popularity contests.

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Have you noticed that tests of the Emergency Alert System never occur during commercials?

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If they ever make a movie about Mike Huckabee, Kevin Spacey should definitely get the lead role.

What's So Ethical about Letting People Die?

I understand the reasons why allowing people to sell their organs would create an ethical problem. However, people are dying everyday while waiting for organs they never get. Paying people for donating their organs would greatly increase the supply and make them available to those who would not otherwise get them. Am I supposed to believe that the selling of organs is more unethical than allowing people to die when they could be saved?

To Single-Gender or Not to Single-Gender

I recently read an article in my local newspaper about the four remaining women-only colleges in Virginia. Along with the article, a student at one of these colleges was pictured wearing a shirt with following printed across the back: "Not a girl's school with no men, but a woman's college with no boys." They seemed think that was quite funny, but I wonder how they would feel about a male alumnus of VMI going around wearing a shirt reading, "VMI used to be a man's college with no girls."

How to Deal with Elderly Drivers

How should we deal with the problem of elderly drivers having so many traffic accidents and causing so many deaths on the road? We can’t just stop people from driving after a specified age. That would be unfair and probably illegal. Some people can still drive safely even after they are very old. In fact, I’ve even heard of people as old as 100 or more still being able to drive well.

I believe the way to handle it would be to require that drivers who are 70 years of age or older take the vision and road tests every year, without any extra charge. They wouldn’t have to pay a renewal fee any more often than anyone else would. Whenever they could no longer pass these tests, their driver's licenses would be taken away permanently. That way, elderly people who couldn’t drive safely anymore would be removed from the roads while those whose skills had not diminished would be allowed to keep their licenses indefinitely.

The Thankless Status of Being a Valued Customer

The credit card companies I do business with are constantly reminding me that I’m such a “valued” customer. But each time, however, they follow it up with a solicitation for one of their worthless credit protection programs. I can try one of these offers free of charge for one month, but failure to cancel by the end of the trial period will result in each monthly balance thereafter being inflated by a percentage or two. Is that the kind of thanks I’m supposed to get? If I am truly a valued customer, they should give me something of worth that they do not give to customers who have not achieved such a status.

Then we have the cable, phone, electric, and water companies. As is the case with my credit card companies, I always send them payment for their bills within a few days of receiving them. I never wait for the payment deadline to draw near. One would think they would give me a discount or rebate once in while for such promptness. But I’ve never gotten any such thing from any of them. Most of the time, I don’t even get any kind of special acknowledgment. I just get a bill the following month thanking me for the previous month’s payment and demanding payment for new balance. That “thank you” I get is the very same one that those who always wait until the last minute to pay also get. I get nothing extra.

Those ingrates at my phone company even allowed my annual DSL contract to lapse without reminding me to renew it. This resulted in my DSL charges automatically reverting to the month-to-month rate, which is much higher. Doesn’t a customer who always pays his bill well ahead of time deserve a little courtesy call on a matter like that? I guess not. This kind of stuff prompts me to believe that it’s their customers’ money they value most – not their customers.

Will Dobson Defy His Conscience?

Back in January, Dr. James Dobson, a leading conservative Christian activist, said he “could not in good conscience vote for John McCain.” He went on say that he “would not vote for John McCain under any circumstances.” That’s because, among other things, McCain had voted in favor of human embryonic stem cell research and failed to support a constitutional amendment that would have defined marriage as between one man and one woman.

What a difference six months make! Now, claiming to be “more comfortable with McCain,” Dobson is not only considering voting for him, but he is actually thinking about endorsing the Arizona senator. What has changed? Dobson now sees McCain as not such a bad choice compared to the much more liberal Barack Obama. However, by going back on his word, Dobson is risking hurting himself in two ways.

First, it will damage his reputation. It will make him look no different from the politicians he often criticizes. It will expose him as a man who is motivated by political power rather than one who is bound by his conscience. Since he is supposed to be moral leader, he will be perceived as a hypocrite who asks people to do as he says, not as he does. He would no longer be trusted to keep his promises. He will be seen as a pragmatic person who is willing to do or say whatever it takes to help bring about an outcome that he desires.

Second, he is putting himself in jeopardy of being marginalized and losing the very political influence that he seems to be trying to protect. If he ultimately supports McCain after saying that he wouldn’t, no one will pay any attention to him the next time he threatens to withhold support from a less-than-conservative candidate seeking the Republican presidential nomination. The party would feel free to nominate such a candidate with the assumption that Dobson would fall in line in time for the general election campaign. Dobson would be a like the boy who cried wolf. He would be like a parent who threatens to punish a child if he does such-and-such, but then doesn’t back up his words with actions after the child goes ahead and does it. That parent would lose his power over that child from then on. Likewise, Dobson would lose what remaining influence he has with Republican voters.

Viagra Question Caught McCain off Guard

I don’t think I’ve seen a politician caught more off guard than John McCain was the other day. One of his top campaign advisors, former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, had criticized the fact that many insurance companies pay for Viagra and other erectile dysfunction treatments for men, while not covering birth control products for women. Shortly thereafter, a reporter asked McCain what he thought about this issue and why he voted against a Senate bill that would have remedied such inconsistencies. His initial response was to freeze like a deer caught in the headlights of an automobile. After several seconds of embarrassing silence with a blank look on his face, he hemmed and hawed for a few more seconds before mumbling out an answer.

This made him look extremely unprepared for the job of President of the United States. If he can be tripped up so easily on a question like that, how will he handle questions on issues of greater importance that he might not be anticipating? McCain sells himself on his experience and preparedness for the office of president. In fact, that is his campaign’s primary selling point. This incident did not help his cause at all. He can’t afford too many more stumbles like that. His handlers should take warning.