The thing that is most surprising to me about the recent election in Iran where the incumbent hardliner won re-election is that anyone would be surprised about the outcome. I mean, come on, this regime in Iran is not exactly known for concepts like democracy or even making decisions based upon data (see Islamic Republic – if it ain’t in the Koran it ain’t happening.)
So there’s all this news coverage spewing all over on this subject and I find myself asking “why is anyone surprised and why is this news?” When the Ayotollah dies and isn’t replaced, then we can see if any real change is possible in Iran. While religious nutjobs run the country, things aren’t going to change without armed revolt.
I have no enmity toward the Iranian people (in fact, some of the most interesting, intelligent, kind, and capable people I know originally hail from Iran – often they’re more oblique indicating they’re from Persia.) Indeed, I hope for their sake, they are able to reach some reasonable accord between their own collective free will and religion. It’s just that the situation that has recently played out had zero promise of that happening.
It’s up to the people of Iran to figure this out and if we’re smart, we’ll stay out of it whilst that happens. The rule of unintended consequences you know…Meanwhile, present-day Iran provides good example of why to keep church and state separate.
06.13.09 |Permalink|Comments Off on A Very Clever (Un)Apology
Have to say, I’m with Dave on this one. If you’re of legal age and you’re in the public eye, then you’re fair game. However, minor children of people in the public eye really shouldn’t be part of the conversation (Do you hear that Governor Palin?)
Frankly, to me, the thing I remember about the campaign isn’t her daughter getting knocked up, but rather the way she used her baby as a prop at rally after rally. As a parent, I turned to my wife at one point and said “how is this kid getting any rest or attention?” I really thought that set of activities was more revealing than anything else.
While we’re on the subject of the Palin family, the other thing I found highly ironic was that her unwed, daughter’s choice to keep her baby was a private family matter. Yet, these are the same people who seem to want to intrude on other people’s choices and private family matters. Hypothetically, imagine that an Obama daughter was 17 years old during the campaign and was impregnated out of wedlock – how exactly would that have been greeted?
In any case, Dave, go get ’em. You haven’t been funny in a very long time, but at least you’ve still got balls. And for that sir, I salute you. And Sarah, sorry to break it to you, your 15 minutes are up. Go chase a moose or something.
In a down advertising market, a game maker has decided to absolutely flood the available online ad space with the image shown to the right. For some reason, my ad block software seems to fail on this particular set of ads, so I see it all the time and I’m sick of them. So my plea is, please don’t play the game, or better yet, do play the game and kill Evony!
It’s interesting, yesterday I sat in a marketing meeting and there was a discussion about advertising and one of the key execs in charge relayed a story that when he goes to parties and people ask what he does. He replies advertising and they move away to talk to other people. His view is that this is the opposite of what he’d like to see happen (he’s one of these forward thinking, advocacy-based authentic voice advertisers based upon tangible benefits communicated by others on behalf of the company.)
My view is that the most scarce resource we deal with is attention. Since the attention span is shrinking dramatically and since there is much more competition for that scarce resource, advertisers are taking a more brute force approach as a general rule to “take” attention rather than the more effective and subtle approach advocated by the advertising exec in the meeting yesterday. The question is, how can an organization effectively communicate its message without alienating the population? That’s a question worth answering.
