Greg Hollingsworth

I'm guessing that most, if not all, of you have never heard of Bart Stupak before. To be honest, I hadn't heard of him until last fall and had almost forgotten about him until this morning when I heard of the 12 Dems who were planning to kill health care reform over abortion language that was supposedly in the bill. I have not read the bill, I cannot comment on the language in it regarding abortion and to be honest, this post has absolutely nothing to do with any of that.

Tonight I happened across the Rachel Maddow show, and watched her spend the first 15 minutes of her show talking about Bart Stupak (D - MI). She program began with her discussing Mr. Stupak's objections to the current health care reform plan before congress. Then, she did something that I have to admit I wasn't expecting, she launched into over 10 minutes of pure and simple obfuscation and character assassination.

Bart Stupak may or may not be a noteable congressman (although he has obviously done enough to keep the people of his district sending him back (he has been on the Hill for over 15 years), but I don't see how his involvement (or non-involvement) with some mysterious secret theocracy has anything to do with his stance on abortion. Yet, the segment made up the entire 1st 15 minutes of her show.

And we wonder why voters are uninformed.

This post is probably a little out of the ordinary, as I normally focus on politics, news, etc... but I've been feeling the effects of an ever-growing trend more than usual lately and it's really starting to bug me, so this will be a short rant. I am not the first person to speak out, Julien Smith did a fairly elegant job of it back in September, but I feel his sentiments need to be recalled, and amplified.

I was reminded of Julien's post the other night when we had dinner with some friends of ours. They are both apple apologists (and shall remain nameless, as they will undoubtedly now who they are, should they ever read this) and iPhone owners/users. They are fine people, with whom I share many common interests, except most notably for this post, the iPhone.

To be fair, only one of them pulled out the iPhone at all the entire night, but good lord, once it was out, it hardly went away. From checking sports scores to calculating the tip at the end of our meal. While I will admit that it's presence didn't bother me, I found myself thinking "is this what is coming? are we going to soon be so reliant on technology that we won't be able to do simple math without it, because we just can't be bothered to divide something by 10?".

Then, the first thing I see this morning is a post about Gowalla on one of my preferred communications blogs. Can someone please explain to me how turning your life into a GPS-based game is a good thing? First off, and maybe I'm just paranoid, but I'm a little concerned with the growing presence of GPS in our daily lives. I mean, you do realize that by having the GPS on your phone turned on at all times that means that someone, somewhere is recording every location you visit and storing that data? Not to get all conspiracy theory, big brother on this, but do you really want your phone company having a record of everywhere you've been in the last month? 

What is exceptionally hard for me to believe is how willing we seem to be as a society to open our lives up to the world in one area, yet expect to have our privacy guaranteed in others. Take the Facebook privacy settings everyone has been discussing this week for instance. Everyone is upset that FB changed their privacy settings and defaulted them to public, and that is totally understandable. FB users expect a certain level of privacy from that network, as that's always been one of the features. Yet I can tell you the favorite hangouts of many people I follow on twitter due to the numerous "I'm the mayor of..." posts from Foursquare. So no, I may not be able to see your personal photo albums, but I know that you're at Sam's coffeehouse 80 times a week. I ask you, which set of information is more valuable?

This is turning into a long rant, which was not my intent so I am going to cut this short by saying that these cries of outrage over FB privacy changes ring somewhat hollow to me coming from people who will allow an iPhone app to know their exact location 24 hours a day. 

Not long after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 Bill Maher, then the host of Politically Incorrect, made a statement in reaction to President George W. Bush's labeling of the 9/11 hijackers as cowards, that ended up ending his career on ABC. While agreeing with Conservative political commentator Dinesh D'Souza's statement that the hijackers were not cowards, but rather that they were warriors, Maher said the following:

We have been the cowards lobbing cruise missile from 2,000 miles away. That's cowardly. Staying in the airplance when it hit's the building, say what you want about it, it's not cowardly"

-Bill Maher 9-17-2001

In the days following that statement, FedEX (the single largest advertiser during his late night time slot) pulled their ads amid the backlash against Mr. Maher's statement. The show was canceled the following June, and it's cancellation, in the estimation of Maher and many others, was a direct result of the controversy. The show ran for 10 seasons on two networks, was nominated for 17 Emmy Awards (winning 1 in 2000), and yet it was brought down by 3 highly controversial sentences.

Two weeks ago, Fox commentator made a statement on the Fox & Friends morning show that is drawing a similar kind of ire:

"This President, I think, has exposed himself as a guy, over and over and over again, who has a deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture, I don't know what it is...I'm not saying he doesn't like whie people, I'm saying he has a problem. Ha has a -- this guy is, I believe, a racist." 

Glenn Beck 7-28-2009

Well, the backlash against Mr. Beck has begun in earnest with reports that Geico, Procter & Gamble, Progressive Insurance, SC Johnson, Sargento Foods and State Farm either pulling their ads or asking for guarantees that their ads will no longer appear during his show's broadcast.

The question I suppose is whether or not this is just for Mr. Beck, and if you think it was unjust in the case of Bill Maher, because if you supported Maher, you can't go changing your mind now.

Here's my point, I don't like Glenn Beck anymore than the next guy, but you don't get to apply the rules only when they best suit you. You may not agree with Mr. Beck, but the man has a right to his opinion, and he has a guaranteed constitutional right to express it openly and freely. Granted, those advertisers have every right to pull their ads from his show, fearing any sort of backlash from crazed political activists that might convince people not to buy Sargento cheese or buy their insurance from Progressive, State Farm or the gecko, and give up their Johnson & Johnson Baby Wash.

Let me emphasize this point, I do not agree with Glenn Beck, I do not believe that President Obama is a racist, nor do I believe that he was born in Kenya, or that the health care plan includes death panels, nor did I vote for him. To be completely honest, I never dreamed that there would be a scenario where I would actually be defending Glenn Beck, but it seems like in this society we tend to forget too quickly what makes our country so unique.

In some countries Beck would have already been arrested and possibly executed for publicly slandering that countries leader. Our right to voice our opinions, however unpopular or controversial they may be, is one of the most sacred privileges we have, and to tell you the truth, Glenn Beck is almost assuredly not alone in this belief.

Glenn Beck and Bill Maher both made comments that they would probably have been better off not making on national television, but they both had the absolute, inalienable right to make those statements. The great thing about America is that we have the freedom to make our own choices, and it's really really easy to change the channel. As for Mr. Beck (and Mr. Maher) they made their choice, and as with all choices, they must live with the consequences, good or bad.