I hate this time of year

It starts with October being the month of Halloween.

The whole month we have increasing promotions of horror-themed films and products. Since I am not a fan of the horror and blood-and-gore genres, this leaves me cold but it is hard to avoid. I am also not a fan of dressing up in costumes, unless you are a child.

And then there is the deluge of pumpkin-flavored food products. I do not like pumpkin at the best of times and never eat it. The thought of pumpkin-flavored coffee and other edibles turns me off.

I’ll just have to suck it up and wait until the month is over.

But then we will enter the month of November which kicks off the Christmas shopping frenzy.

I should make it clear that I have no objections to these holidays themselves. What I find nauseating is the media seizing on them to generate saturation coverage, using the same trite techniques and cliches.

Wake me when it is January.

The ugliness of Facebook (exposed again) may be a sign of its impending demise

Facebook has become a colossus in social media all over the globe, along with the companies it purchased like Instagram and WhatsApp. It has become so big, its power and influence so widespread, that it is seen a threat to the well-being of societies. The various abuses that it has been associated with, such as enabling the fomenting of hate and divisiveness in societies that have led to genocidal actions, have been well-documented. After each such revelation, Facebook executives come before various bodies and go through the same ritual. They claim that they just provide a communication platform for people to express their views and that it is not their fault if other people abuse their platform. They then promise to try and implement safeguards that will minimize the risks of damage. But nothing they claim they are doing seems to work and the cycle gets repeated.
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An obvious publicity ploy

When a major organization commits what seems like an obvious public relations blunder that makes you wonder how anyone in the organization could have possibly signed off on it, one has to always bear in mind that the ‘blunder’ was in fact a deliberate act, designed to get attention. The people behind the ‘blunder’ then apologize profusely and thus avoid the opprobrium. A win-win!

That was my suspicion with this report about a fashion accessory in the shape of a noose. There is no way that anyone could not see the noose as offensive. It seems like a rather obvious ploy to get attention and it worked.

Of course, by blogging about it, I too am feeding the monster …

Public Service Announcement: Never trust someone’s friend about anything

In the crazy media world we live in these days, I saw multiple headlines about a story in which Nicki Minaj had tweeted that a friend of her cousin who lived in Trinidad and Tobago got swollen testicles and became impotent after taking a covid-19 vaccine and his fiancee called off their wedding. The ensuing publicity resulted in the minister of public health in that country wasting his time investigating this before announcing that they could not any evidence of swollen testicles.

I grant that this story has many clickbait features: A celebrity, covid-19, impotence, and swollen testicles.

But really? Whenever you hear an outlandish story, your guard should immediately go up. And you should definitely ignore the story if it is ascribed to an unidentified friend of even someone you know personally, let alone someone whom you do not know at all. That almost guarantees that the story is at best highly exaggerated or more likely outright false.

This has been a Public Service Announcement. We now go back to our regular programming.

How politicians’ books become best sellers

Prominent politicians write books and, despite the fact that the books may not contain a a single interesting or original thought, or indeed may not have been even written by them at all but instead by a ghostwriter, they usually end up on a best seller list. It is an open secret that politicians and their parties are the ones who buy many books in bulk and then give them away as gifts to party faithful, thus boosting their sales numbers. But who exactly ends up footing the bill for the purchases? It is the suckers who donate to their political campaigns.
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The problem of Facebook and mission statements

We know that misinformation via social media runs rampant around the world and has been the vehicle for creating massive amounts of conflict among various groups. But up to now, the havoc created worldwide has been localized, such as in Myanmar, Sri Lanka, and Ethiopia, where it has fueled murderous conflicts between different ethnic, religious, and language groups in those countries. But the pandemic has more clearly revealed the global scale of the problem as lies and distortions about the virus and vaccines and masks have spread around the globe, hampering efforts to suppress the spread of the pandemic.
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The demise of the general opinion columnist

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about how Bernie Sanders handled an interview with New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, where he managed to force her to deal with serious issues instead of the superficialities that are her forte. After writing it, it struck me that Dowd had not crossed my mind for a long time. I do not subscribe to the New York Times and never seek out their opinion columnists though once in a while I will read an article if a link comes up to their work that looks interesting. It has been ages since I came across any mention of Dowd. But she is not alone in being ignored. There was a time when regular opinion column writers like Dowd, David Brooks, George Will, Thomas Friedman, the late Charles Krauthammer, Richard Cohen, and the like would be referred to by others as sages or barometers of some issue. Now they seem to be largely ignored.
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Are Republican leaders and Fox News finally accepting the need for vaccinations?

With the rapid spread of the Delta variant of covid-19 that now makes up 83% of the cases, Republican opposition to the vaccines may be wavering. House minority leader Steve Scalise, who had refused to get the vaccine before, has just announced that he got the first shot.

House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) got his first dose of the Pfizer coronavirus vaccine Sunday, calling it “safe and effective,” Nola reports.

Driving the news: Scalise said that his decision to get vaccinated was driven by the spread of the Delta variant, which he noted was “aggressive” as well as a recent spike in case numbers.
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Why it matters: A number of public opinion polls have shown Republicans have been among the most vaccine-hesitant group in the country, and some have urged public officials to more publicly encourage constituents to get inoculated.

Fox News has been one of the biggest purveyors of misinformation about the extent and threat of covid-19 and has played a central role in increasing vaccine skepticism. This is appallingly irresponsible behavior given the risk to people’s lives. But it appears that reality may be finally sinking in with at least some of its show hosts.
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