A small but very dirty trick

[ritaxis]

So I use my friends' list as an RSS list.  I read a number of progressive blogs this way -- The Sideshow, Crooks and Liars, Atrios, Digby, calitics -- a few others.  (I dropped DailyKos because I can't keep up with it).  I also have RSS feeds to some science blogs and The Scientific American, and so on.

Increasingly, I notice that there are right-wing political ads sprinkled through out my friends' list.  I finally got around to complaining.  I don't know if they are inserted at the LJ level or by whoever does the RSS feeds but it pisses me off that the content of my reading is dishonestly coupled with its opposite, in frequently misleading or disingenuous ways.

I'd like ti if everyone who sees this happen even once also complains.

We need to call the creeps on every little trick of theirs and not let them get away with anything,.  And no, these aren't just freedom-of-speech ads, they're, as I said, misleading little squibs that don't make their case honestly and by putting them on progressive blogs like they the implication is that whatever weird position is being pushed by the ad is consistent with the argument in the blog.


Speaking of dishonesty and not making a straightforward case, I listened to an aggregate ten minutes of the debate between Jerry Brown and Meg Whitman today.  The woman is more devil the more I know about her.  She committed maybe ten lies in her four minutes of the time, and failed to directly address any of the questions.  Whereas Jerry Brown -- who is definitely not a left-winger, okay? -- came off as an honest bureaucrat with honest workaday procedural responses to real problems of governance.    I think I actually respect Brown now: I've had my doubts at various times in the past, though I can't think of a time when he was running for something I could vote for that I didn't vote for him.  So even if it wasn't that horrible, horrible, mean-spirited, dishonest, irresponsible woman he was running against,. I'd vote for him.

Comments

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

's funny. I remember Jerry "moonbeam" Brown. But people change, and being mayor is one of the most practical elected offices there is.

As to the right-wing ads, I suspect they are auto-generated by purchased keywords. I use Google Reader rather than LJ, and anti-script and blocking software, so I don't see most of the ads, but that's been happening all along. It even shows up on Making Light sometimes.

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

Actually, Jerry Brown's governorship was really successful. He lost some of my respect with his mayorship: Oakland is a hard city to govern. (not necessarily for the reasons most would think of) His policies seemed off the point at the time, but over the years they have borne fruit and the city is better off for them.

"Moonbeam" was an epithet hung on Jerry Brown by the right wing for his opinions such as . . . well, the state ought to invest in green energy and ought to put money into programs to keep people out of jail and ought to pay public workers a decent wage and ought to strive to support affirmative action and ought not to kill people in the name of justice. Oh, and he used the kind of language that was current at the time. And he lived frugally himself and oh my dog he meditated. How horrible.

Thing is, most of his opinions were correct. And are. He says he still thinks that the state ought not to use the death penalty but that since it was voted in and the courts upheld it he feels that it ought to be managed fairly. Asked how he would shorten the process so it isn't so expensive, he said, "hire enough good lawyers for the defense and prosecution in the first place."

Meg Whitman went off on a tangent about law and order, three strikes, Jerry Brown being a liberal for forty years, Rose Bird (including a bunch of numerical lies), and slipped in an opinion that the thing to do is to execute more people faster to save money on imprisoning them.

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

You're right, he was a good governor. But he was also a bit of a flake and, IIRC, more conservative than his reputation, which he still is. &, yes, compared to Whitman he's a saint, sigh.

[green-knight.livejournal.com]

I had a quick look at your flist, and it appears to me as if the ads are google ads put there by the content providers to 'monetize their content'. If LJ also adds adverts, I can't tell (I don't get to see those).

This is a major problem with google. Places like Making Light and Writer Beware get served 'self-publish and pay $$$$' ads, etc etc: they pick up on certain keywords, whether you approve of the advert or not.