Know what's sad?

[hazliya]

When you can directly tell what political ads a person has watched by the way they express their opinions on the candidates.

What happened to a grain of salt in politics? Sometimes I think that people who base their opinions on ad campaigns shouldn't be allowed to vote. As in, make it a weeding out process.

"This is Candidate A's team. Candidate B is a spineless worm, and here's why!"
"Oh, man. They're so right! Candidate B is such a spineless worm. I'm glad they opened my eyes."

What? What?

-Haz

Comments

[cactusforpants.livejournal.com]

this wasn't about my post, was it? >>



cause i definitely went beyond what i saw on the tv screen to figure out who i wanted. oO .....which is also how i found out i don't want any of them.

typical.


want to move to germany with me?

[hazliya.livejournal.com]

My german is awful. And I don't know if they allow dual citizenship. =/

[cactusforpants.livejournal.com]

i can fix the former, and many do have the latter. :]

[elenuial.livejournal.com]

You clearly don't talk to me enough about politics.

I think it's a fallacy to assume that just because someone has a strong opinion they also are idiots, unable to think for themselves, or are inflexible. Ads have little to do with it.

Not only that, but nearly any information has an agenda hanging onto its coat-tails. Your choice of sources is just you choosing which spin you want to swallow. It's up to you, as an intelligent human being, to make up your own mind not only about the contents you consume, but what you should be consuming at all.

[hazliya.livejournal.com]

See, the people that annoy me are the ones that take everything they hear 100%. To the point that if someone were to make ridiculous accusations, they'd believe them full-force.

And I'm fully aware that everything in the realm of politics has an agenda. But the people who refuse to acknowledge that and see each and every ad/article/statement as flat-out truth make me sad.

I also find nothing wrong with having strong convictions about politics. Especially about backing candidates - everyone has an opinion. But when those strong convictions come from something like only ad campaigns rather than firsthand research, it makes me seriously doubt that person's intelligence.

Though I have to say, the ads do have an effect on me - if I see an ad that says Candidate A saw Candidate B get into an alien warship with gay communists, Candidate A is going down in my estimation.

[elenuial.livejournal.com]

It's not just information specifically tagged political. All information has a social or political agenda by how it interacts with the body of information as a whole -- including how it causes you to cast the rest of your information in a different light. Some would say that data is just data, but I contend that all information merits some kind of consideration in a larger context.

[hntrpyanfar.livejournal.com]

Are the gay communists hawt? That totally changes things. >:)

Seriously, you also have to remember that people are likely to have witty catchphrases they agree with stick in their brains. So you may be hearing the same thing over and over because Candidate A has a good speechwriter... or is one.

I will agree, however, that people who do not give caveats as to their sources tend to bug me a lot. In the age of blogs, we seem to specialize in opinion ... and layers of opinion... rather than fact. It does seem a bit egomaniacal to do so at times, but I'd rather know where you got that opinion from so I can assign it some weight vs woo-woo. (For what it's worth, my news sources are left leaning typically... CNN and the New York Times. I know this and try to 'adjust' my opinion of what I read... but I'm a left leaning independent myself. ;)

As elenuial was hinting at too... it's very hard to get data on anything without some sort of spin on it. Take the current temperature as given by a weather person. Undoubtably, a below-freezing temperature will be more welcome in a skiing area than in a metropolitan area prone to icy roads. ;)

[londo.livejournal.com]

There are ads?

[hazliya.livejournal.com]

I'm not talking about the TV stuff. Mostly about the campaigns. I'm sorry - I use the word "ads" to cover any publicity specifically engineered by the respective campaigns.

[vjnightshade.livejournal.com]

I generally hate smear campaigns. I'm more inclined to favor a candidate who speaks well of himself than one who speaks illy of his rival.

The sad thing is, more people are interested in the skeletons in your closet than that bus full of orphans you just stopped from falling down a cliff.