Liberals: Stop Rebutting the Healthcare Lies

Today I received an email from Obama’s Organizing America about a new site to fight the opposition’s lies about the health care reform bill. This is the wrong approach. Completely.

There are times when a rebuttal is bad strategy. If you allow your opponent to control the debate, you forfeit your chance to tell your story. That is exactly what President Obama, the Democratic Party, and cheerleaders like MSNBC are actively doing.

I already know that the US Health Care system is broken. You don’t need to convince me that there is a problem. But aren’t there great, compelling, positive reasons for the Reform bill? A well-articulated vision of the future should make the idea of Death Panels universally laughable. Win the PR war by selling what we’re going to do/get/have.

If you are not sure what I mean by controlling the debate, please see “Excerpt from Debate 101” below.

My Reply to Mitch Stewart & Barack Obama’s Email

Please stop rebutting and start leading.

Frame the bill as an Apollo Project, its goal is to make us #1 in the world.

This is worth another 1/2 hour commercial:

• Appeal to pride: make it unpatriotic to oppose the bill
• Explain how the top health ranked countries in the world run their public plans…
• Then show how ours will be better than theirs…
• Tell how new medical innovation will stimulate our economy and increase our status as world leaders

We cannot win by rebutting the lies. That yields control of the conversation to our opponents.

Don’t think of an elephant.

Excerpt from Debate 101

Watch from 20:40-22:50 as Reagan discards an indictment against him and goes on the attack, landsliding Mondale with several allegations. Mondale falls for it, attempting to respond to one of the several allegations, leaving all the others still in question.

It doesn’t even matter whether Reagan’s allegations were accurate: Reagan controlled the debate.

More on Use of Great Apes in Advertising

In 2006, I posted my letter to CareerBuilder.com after seeing their Superbowl TV commercial.

I sent a similar letter to Castrol Motor Oil for their Superbowl commercial this year.

Now, an article entitled “Ape Advocate Cries Foul Over Super Bowl Simians” in the Huffington Post provides some solid background on the issue.

My Secret Life as a Gay Tourist in Asia

A couple years ago, I took a business trip to Beijing for Novell, along with several of my colleagues.

One of the excursions was to the Great Wall. Because United Airlines (who collectively eat their unhatched young) had lost my luggage, I ended up wearing some shorts borrowed from my colleague Justin Taylor. I was stuck wearing the dark shoes I had worn on the plane, and some dress socks I had picked up in the city. I looked like a even more of a dork than usual.

At the Great Wall, we clowned around and took some pictures. I posted the pictures on Flickr, titling one, “Justin and Ted’s Big Gay Chinese Adventure.” The name just fit. Here’s the picture:

(I suppose Justin is kind of the “Papa Bear” type.)

At the end of February, I received the following message through my Flickr account:

Using one of your photos

Hi, I’m Jessica, an editor at a magazine in Shanghai, China called City Weekend. We have an LGBT Column in the magazine and our columnist came upon your photo titled “Justin an Teds Big Gay Chinese Adventure” and would like to run it in with his article. I see you’ve restricted it’s use online but I was wondering if we could have your permission to run it and if you had a higher res copy of it. If you do and we can, of course we’d be happy to credit you for the photo in the magazine.Please let me know if we can use the photo or not. The best way to reach me is via email at Jessica@XXXXXX.com.cn or if you want to call China, 13X-02XX-8XXX.Cheers, Jessica Beaton Shanghai Senior Editor City Weekend Magazine Ringier Asia

Which made me laugh. Here is my response to Jessica’s request:

Re: Using one of your photos

Jessica: I would gladly allow you to use the photo in your publication on the following condition: if you do use it in your publication, you must send me 5 copies of whatever edition of City Weekend the picture appears in.Please send to: Ted Haeger University of Pyrotechnics Street/City/etc. USA Thank you for your kind inquiry, — –Ted

It took me three weeks, so I hope–for posterity’s sake–that my response wasn’t too late.

June 8, 2008 Follow-up: Sigh. Still no magazines and no response.

Richard Dawkins meets Stephen Colbert

Film at 11:30.

Bush and the Grand Obfuscation

If God had meant for us to believe in Intelligent Design, he would have given us an actual theory to study for it. ID offers no theory other than "we don't know how it's possible, so only God could have done it."

Unfortunately, President Bush does not understand what a scientific theory is. Of course, the distinction is unimportant to the President. He got to where he is not by demonstrating worldly knowledge, but on being aligned with his voting constituency for his political support. Even if he knew the distinction, it would be politically unfavorable to clarify it. So, obfuscation it is.

Nevertheless, I think that we should teach Intelligent Design. It could be a great tool for teaching critical thinking. But to get this Darwinian's backing, we have to agree on these terms here.

–Rev

Modern Chinese Water Torture

I lost my employee badge recently, so yeserday I finally went to get it replaced. The security office is out in one of the older 1980's era buildings, in a windowless room with several video monitors of cameras panning different sections of the Provo campus. When I got to the door (solid, no windows, of course), I could hear rock music of some sort playing inside.

I knocked. Then, I knocked a little louder. When the lone security guy opened and let me in. As he made my badge, I found the source of the music. The guy had Fox News on, playing perhaps only slightly louder than it needed to be. What I had heard had been the exciting music of some commercial.

Now, imagine being locked in a windowless room with Fox News for eight hours a day. If it didn't drive you mad, it would have to reconfigure how your mind works. Perhaps Steven Pinker should look into this.

Soon, the program was back on, with some terrorism expert being interviewed about yesterday's second bombing attempts in London. Most of the dialog centered around the Fox News guy asking many pressing questions about how extremely unsafe the world is and the need for a stronger police state. At the bottom of the screen in large letters was a simple segment title: "Terror in London." (As opposed to using a more emotionally-neutral "Terrorism in London.")

It took a while for the badge making machine to warm up, so I suffered through to the next commercial break. First commercial? WWE profressional wrestling. So I pointed out to the guy that perhaps if professional wrestling advertisments target the viewing audience of your news channel, then there could be a parallel between the two different media. He smiled and sort of acknowledged what I had said without taking any visible offense.

Maybe Fox News should have some kind of Sugeon General's warning. "Prolonged exposure can lead to unhealthy levels of credulity and destroy your natural defense systems that rely on healthy skepticism."

Randall Terry is an Idiot

Randall Terry is infected with a mental virus that has completely impaired his ability to make cognitive sense of the world.

In the name of an allegedly existent god, Terry has been campaigning against American rights to birth control for decades. Now, he has taken up a misguided campaign to save Terri Schiavo, a brain-damaged woman who has recently been taken off the life support systems that have sustained her since her heart failure 15 years ago.

This is religious zealotry at its worst. Terry is making a political issue out of our right to die with dignity.

If you truly consider yourself to be "pro-life," please start working on issues that can save hundreds of thousands rather than individuals. Consider joining the fight against HIV, or erradication polio once and for all. Consider helping to solve automobile safety issues–how many children each year die in automobile-related accidents?

If Terry were really interested in the lives of people, he would devote himself to a more effective and meaningful expression for his cause. Why doesn't he? Because he is mentally ill. He is infected with a severe mental virus that drastically affects his behavior. This virus is the Biblical literalism virus that has grabbed the minds and now controls the actions of conservative Christians.

To be clear, we are all infected with different mental viruses, and each of us are driven by these viruses in different ways. I am infected with the scientific rationalism virus–one I personally think is actually a benign virus. It allows people to look at other mental viruses–like extremist religious convictions–objectively.

Very few medical doctors would likely state that holding a religious perspective is a type of mental illness. Questioning a person's religious beliefs remains the last great taboo we have yet to overcome.

Understanding:
To get more of where I am coming from:

• On "belief": read this interview with the great Douglas Adams, now dead, and certainly not in Heaven nor Hell, but simply dead (and missed by many of his adoring fans)
• On "mental viruses":
  • read the excellent essay by Richard Dawkins, "Viruses of the Mind"
  • or innoculate your mind with beneficial viruses by reading Richard Brodie's book by a similar name

President Bush Smoked Marijuana

The evidence is pretty solid: George W. Bush was a pot smoker. Indeed, marijuana is a gateway drug. It leads straight to the Presidency.

The Founding Secularists

Some months ago, I found myself in a debate with a couple Mormons who insisted that the Bill of Rights was a thinly disguised re-write of the Ten Commandments. (The whole of the conversation started somehow with gay rights in Canada and found its way to a now-well-known American courthouse controversy over housing the Ten Commandments.)

What was startling about the conversation is that these two guys really believed that the founding fathers were deeply Christian. The Net has a lot of debate on this, but ultimately it seems to me that we need to ask: How much God did the framers of our nation's founding documents put into those documents.

It turns out that the answer is: suspiciously little. I ran across an article from The Nation called "Our Godless Constitution" that calls out certain Orwellian techniques used by the Bush administration, and shows that the current administration has ascribed their own religious views to these men who were atheists, Deists and, yes, in some cases Christians.

But, really, there isn't much point in debating who or what the founding fathers were, is there? They provided us with a framework that, if taken seriously, alows us to adaptively self-govern. In one of his serious moments during an interview, Jon Stewart pointed out that the framers of the constitution put down what they thought was best for their time, with provisions for changing what they may not have gotten right. Yet, still we somehow raise these men to a legendary status, as though their intents were possibly even infallible.

In the conversation with the two Mormons, I got suckered into a false debate: were the founding fathers Christian. I think there is plenty of evidence that they were not. But, really, what does that matter? Unless we accept them as infallible–Gods themselves–shouldn't we look at their work as a monumental work-in-progress. Doesn't the other view–that their words and work is the final say in governance–elevate these mere men dangerously close to a violation of the First Commandment?

Ashcroft, Inauguration and Let the Eagle Soar

At the presidential inauguration ceremony of 2005, John Ashcroft sang his song Let the Eagle Soar.

This is a new low in patriotic and God-invoking propaganda. Have we acheived National Socialism yet?

B-A-R-F!