(Sniiiiifff.) Smell that? That, my friends, is the smell of free time. Or, well, free-er time. We are all well aware of the economic truth that there is no such thing as a free lunch. But we all too often forget its opportunity cost corollary, there is no such thing as free time. And with the end of the semester, my opportunity costs have reduced to the level that I can now afford such luxuries as\u2026spending time with my children. And blogging!
\nIt\u2019s not a lot, but it\u2019s my life.
\nAs you might imagine, quite a few burrs have built up under my saddle. So please pardon me if it takes a while to catch up with the news. (Just sing \u201cTime Warp\u201d in your head every time you log on. Fishnet and heels entirely optional.) And what has my dander up today is Hillary Clinton\u2019s claims to the Democratic nomination.<\/p>\n
(Sniiiiifff.) Smell that? That, my friends, is the smell of free time. Or, well, free-er time. We are all well aware of the economic truth that there is no such thing as a free lunch. But we all too often … Continue reading
\nNow, let me first point out that I don\u2019t have a dog in this hunt (translation for Yankees: I have no interest in the outcome). What bothers me is that Hillary and her campaign have gone to great lengths to emphasize that she won \u201cthe big states,\u201d that she won in states with a lot of electoral votes, or states that Democrats have to win in order to succeed, such as Ohio, Florida, Michigan, and Texas. This claim is disingenuous, to say the least. (Well, \u201cdumb\u201d would probably be the least number of letters, but you know what I mean.)
\nOn the one hand, these claims make no sense because Hillary didn\u2019t necessarily beat Barack Obama in all of them. He wasn\u2019t on the ballot in one of them, and didn\u2019t campaign in another because the party had already excommunicated it. But more importantly, they are nonsense, because Hillary didn\u2019t win those states\u2014she won Democratic primaries in those states.
\nAnd much as Bill Clinton was right that the person who won the South Carolina primary did not go on to win the party\u2019s nomination (much as he was wrong for the way he said it), many people have won their party\u2019s primary in a state without carrying the state in the general election. Need an example? Pick a state (outside of Minnesota) that Walter Mondale carried in the Democratic primary in 1980. So long as people in the party prefer their party\u2019s candidate to the other party\u2019s, they\u2019ll vote for them\u2014and that works more in Obama\u2019s favor than Hillary\u2019s.
\nThe real question in carrying a state, though, is whether independents will vote for that candidate over the other party\u2019s. And the Clinton campaign doesn\u2019t want people to think about that question, because once again, the answer favors Obama. And this leads me to my problem with PR.
\nThe art of public relations, like any other thing, is inherently neither good nor bad. It is a tool, and we may use it or abuse it. If we define public relations as the art of putting your best foot forward, it is a good thing. It is, or should be, diplomacy\u2014saying unpleasant truths as pleasantly as possible.
\nSo far, so good. But there is a thin line between many things, and among them is putting the truth gently and molding it to be more gentle. I suppose the analogy is between setting a porcelain cup down gently and gluing rubber to the bottom\u2014or putting it in a box surrounded by foam rubber so that no one can find or use it. And too often, trying to put the facts in a good light comes down to what the meaning of good <\/em>is. And to define good<\/em>, we have to define a purpose.
\nSo if our purpose is to promote knowledge, we will work on the means of delivering the message, without compromising the message itself. If our purpose is to make our life better\u2014to convince someone of something, so that they will act the way we wish\u2014then we will start to manipulate the material, and not just the medium.
\nThe problem I have with this is that the whole purpose of science is to discover truth by exposing everything to criticism. Whatever is left after the collision of ideas is kept as being at least provisionally true. When there is instead a collusion of ideas, and some are kept from the playing field in order to cast better light on one that is, we all suffer.
\nLet me give you an example. In one of my classes, we read The Skeptical Environmentalist<\/a><\/em>, by Bj\u00f6rn Lomborg. Lomborg discusses what he calls The Litany, the list of claims environmentalists make to rally us to action, and \u201cdebunks\u201d it, showing that its claims are either complete fabrications or based on only partial evidence. So, in relation to cancer rates, for example, he adjusts cancer rates (number of incidences) to account for increases in population and life span, as well as tobacco use\u2014to show that pesticides can\u2019t be causing an increase in cancer rates, since the rate is declining (the highly carcinogenic ones already having been banned).
\nBut our students had trouble distinguishing between what Lomborg was doing and what those making the claims were doing. They saw both as equally culpable of manipulating data. But Lomborg adds data so that the numbers actually reflect what the others imply it does. They omit information to make an implication the data doesn\u2019t actually support. And I can\u2019t help but think that the constant effort to manipulate the truth leaves people unable to know the truth, as it all becomes suspect.
\nAh, there it is. The problem I have with PR is that it leads to postmodernism. So remember: PR doesn\u2019t kill the truth, postmodernism does.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"