Another Crack At The Political Ad Problem

by Piker


A while back I floated the idea of banning political ads on TV, because it's the single biggest eater of money in political campaigns (and consequently the reason why politicians have to rely on special interest donations to get elected) and because the issues are never adequately covered in 30 second spots. And I admitted that banning is an imperfect solution because there are obvious free speech problems.

So okay, I've taken the bill into committee and come back with a watered down compromise: Allow television advertising, but no political ad can be less than 15 minutes in length.

What are the advantages? The most obvious one is that it prevents the advertiser from picking a single lie and jamming it into your cranium every hour all day long. Instead, at worst a political advertiser (this would be for people AND propositions) could attempt to get 15 minutes a day in prime time, and even if they repeated the single lie in that slot, most people would note the message and switch channels after a few minutes. Probably in order to hold your attention the slot would have to go into detail, which is fine because there is nothing in politics that can be summed up in 30 seconds. 15 minutes is inadequate too of course, but it's a start.

And since there is practically nothing on American TV that starts or ends on the 15-minute mark, programmers would probably book a slot of two ads, hopefully opposing. Or one advertiser would buy the full half hour. Or a whole hour, in Obama's case. Yes, I'm talking about infomercial programming here. And this is another reason why this compromise is easier to swallow than my original plan: it doesn't yank a huge revenue stream from the TV industry. Also a half hour of television shouldn't be any more expensive than 8 minutes of it. Typically that's how much commercial time a network sells, and they could charge half that because they don't have to support the expense of that troublesome sitcom that they put between the ads.

You could argue that this would be bad for ratings, but if it's a choice between ACCORDING TO JIM and competing bond measures, I'm flipping a coin.

The main problem with this compromise is that it doesn't save enough money. At first. But honestly, this kind of advertising wouldn't be nearly as effective (i.e. wouldn't sucker as many potential voters) and therefore would gradually be dropped in favor of internet advertising, which is at least cheaper. Again, at first. But in the big picture, probably a lot of people who vote now wouldn't be bothered to next time? Is this bad? Not if it's birthers. Not if it's people who think Bush was behind 9/11. It's just like the stock bubble - most of the problems were caused by people investing who had no idea what they were doing. You should know a little before you vote.

Okay, so that's that idea out there. Anybody have anything to add?

Initial Thoughts on Health Care and the Conservative Reaction

by D. Ray Morton



I can't begin to describe how difficult it is to thoughtfully engage someone on the other side of the heathcare debate, not out of frustration with their opinion so much as a combination of my own ignorance on the subject and my struggle to justify my sometimes very general and idealistic opinions on the matter. It's hard when I'm talking to someone who is ready to stock up on ammo and canned goods as if the world is ending, and the burden of proof is suddenly on me to prove to him things AREN'T going to hell, instead of the burden of proof being on him to prove to me the world is going to end if Obama's health care bill passes.

If in the last 8 years you happened to nod along to the suspension of habeus corpus and our rights to privacy, I have a hard time believing your outrage that suddenly we all might have to buy health care is an unnacceptable encroachment of our freedom. Annoying? Sure. A financial burdon? More than likely. But let's try to look outside our own window and think of it as something we might have to buy into so that millions more can afford it themselves.

We always forgo the societal good for our own selfishness.

Clearly conservatives and liberals are hardwired to wonder how the hell the other side can rationalize their arguments, but DAMN. After everything we experienced with the last administration, doesn't it seem strained to treat the introduction of new healthcare reform as the last straw?

There are a couple of things I've never understood. It seems to me that the conservative exremist view is that Obama is after power and wants to cripple the country. It's this "He wants to fuck up what we love" mentality. I just don't get that. What the fuck is he, a Bond villain? He wants to destroy the world? What does he gain? If nothing else, the reaction to Bush being a fuckup at least took into account that we as liberals were aware he was doing "what he thinks is right", even if it was misguided and irrational. But it seems the more ridiculous arguments against Obama and his health care plan paint him as someone who doesn't care if the world crashes down around him, which to me is proves just how bad conservatives are at propaganda. It's always seems to be an argument more obtuse, over the top, or life-and-death.

More soon.