This is one of the best spots i've seen in a long time. It's a Nike football ad that shows dramatic, almost video game-like footage of Shawn Merriman and Stephen Jackson battling their opponents, the weather, and gravity itself. It's done by Wieden & Kennedy, who've long been making some of the most sensational and epic commercials in the business. Turn up the sound, you might recognize the music from Last of the Mohicans, which is beautifully juxtaposed against the raw power of the game of football. Just awesome.
Saturday, September 29, 2007
Verizon vs. Pro-Abortion Group
My response to a comment left about the recent Verizon issue:
What do you think about the recent news about Verizon refusing to allow NARAL-Pro Choice America to use its service for some sort of campaign? This made big news, then within days, Verizon changed its mind and decided to work with the pro-abortion group. What do you think about that?
-hobbiewho
This is an interesting issue. From my point of view there are several values at stake here. If you asked me if I morally agreed with Verizon’s actions, I’d tell you that I think it’s ridiculous that they’d prohibit speech that is intended for those whom have signed up to receive these texts.
Legally though, the company is probably within its rights to ban this type of transmittance. Verizon has said that they have traditionally avoided “advocacy issues” like abortion or war. It’s a private company and it can do what it wants. The 1st amendment protects speech from government censorship only.
This is why the salient point here is that this is mostly a business issue. First and foremost, Verizon is a business whose sole objective is their bottom line. We must consider whether the company made a smart business decision by banning this type of speech from its network. This is a perfect example of the beauty of free markets. Verizon made a decision that was based on something other than profit and the market spoke. Who knows if it would have picked up steam, but why risk alienating millions of paying customers by taking a toothless moral stand? Should they also ban people from having phone conversations about this topic on their network?
It’s similar to the recent NY Times controversy over the MoveOn.org ad. The Times was well within its rights to run the ad, but ultimately it was a bad business decision. It only served to bring more attention to the charge that it’s a partisan organization for allowing anti-war advocacy advertising, but not pro-life advertising, with which it editorially disagrees. Was the Times legally wrong? Nope. Did they make a bad business move? Yep.
What do you think about the recent news about Verizon refusing to allow NARAL-Pro Choice America to use its service for some sort of campaign? This made big news, then within days, Verizon changed its mind and decided to work with the pro-abortion group. What do you think about that?
-hobbiewho
This is an interesting issue. From my point of view there are several values at stake here. If you asked me if I morally agreed with Verizon’s actions, I’d tell you that I think it’s ridiculous that they’d prohibit speech that is intended for those whom have signed up to receive these texts.
Legally though, the company is probably within its rights to ban this type of transmittance. Verizon has said that they have traditionally avoided “advocacy issues” like abortion or war. It’s a private company and it can do what it wants. The 1st amendment protects speech from government censorship only.
This is why the salient point here is that this is mostly a business issue. First and foremost, Verizon is a business whose sole objective is their bottom line. We must consider whether the company made a smart business decision by banning this type of speech from its network. This is a perfect example of the beauty of free markets. Verizon made a decision that was based on something other than profit and the market spoke. Who knows if it would have picked up steam, but why risk alienating millions of paying customers by taking a toothless moral stand? Should they also ban people from having phone conversations about this topic on their network?
It’s similar to the recent NY Times controversy over the MoveOn.org ad. The Times was well within its rights to run the ad, but ultimately it was a bad business decision. It only served to bring more attention to the charge that it’s a partisan organization for allowing anti-war advocacy advertising, but not pro-life advertising, with which it editorially disagrees. Was the Times legally wrong? Nope. Did they make a bad business move? Yep.
Friday, September 28, 2007
Just Beat It
One more note from the Democratic debate two nights ago...
Russert, playing his favorite gotcha game with flip-flopping politicians, posed the following question/scenario to Mrs. Clinton:
“I want to move to another subject, and this involves a comment that a guest on ‘Meet the Press’ made,” Russert said. “I want to read it, as follows: ‘Imagine the following scenario. We get lucky. We get the number three guy in al Qaeda. We know there’s a big bomb going off in America in three days and we know this guy knows where it is. Don’t we have the right and responsibility to beat it out of him? You could set up a law where the president could make a finding or could guarantee a pardon.’”
Russert asked the candidates to comment. Obama said he wouldn’t torture the prisoner under any circumstances. So did Sen. Joseph Biden. Then Russert turned to Sen. Clinton. “Should there be a presidential exception to allow torture in that kind of situation?” he asked.
“You know, Tim, I agree with what Joe and Barack have said,” Clinton answered. “As a matter of policy it cannot be American policy, period….These hypotheticals are very dangerous because they open a great big hole in what should be an attitude that our country and our president takes toward the appropriate treatment of everyone. And I think it’s dangerous to go down this path.”
Russert then pulled the rug: “The guest who laid out this scenario for me with that proposed solution was William Jefferson Clinton last year."
Bill has it right.
Look, I can see why these candidates are opposed to admitting on national television that they advocate torture. But wouldn't it be reasonable for a serious presidential candidate to say, "I believe that torture is a despicable thing. And 999 times out of a thousand, I'm against it. And I definitely DO NOT believe it should be part of a policy to retrieve information. But I DO feel that in the case stated by the former president, an exception could be made.”
If you caught someone involved in kidnapping your child and knew that if he didn't give you information your child might be molested, injured, or killed, you would use ANY tactics necessary to get the information out of him. The same goes for a terrorist and a dirty bomb in New York, LA, or Chicago.
Any president that refused to “beat it out of him,” within the context of mass murder, should be impeached, charged as an accomplice to murder, and thrown in jail.
The world is sometimes a very ugly and dark place, but ignoring this fact is not going to make it better.
Russert, playing his favorite gotcha game with flip-flopping politicians, posed the following question/scenario to Mrs. Clinton:
“I want to move to another subject, and this involves a comment that a guest on ‘Meet the Press’ made,” Russert said. “I want to read it, as follows: ‘Imagine the following scenario. We get lucky. We get the number three guy in al Qaeda. We know there’s a big bomb going off in America in three days and we know this guy knows where it is. Don’t we have the right and responsibility to beat it out of him? You could set up a law where the president could make a finding or could guarantee a pardon.’”
Russert asked the candidates to comment. Obama said he wouldn’t torture the prisoner under any circumstances. So did Sen. Joseph Biden. Then Russert turned to Sen. Clinton. “Should there be a presidential exception to allow torture in that kind of situation?” he asked.
“You know, Tim, I agree with what Joe and Barack have said,” Clinton answered. “As a matter of policy it cannot be American policy, period….These hypotheticals are very dangerous because they open a great big hole in what should be an attitude that our country and our president takes toward the appropriate treatment of everyone. And I think it’s dangerous to go down this path.”
Russert then pulled the rug: “The guest who laid out this scenario for me with that proposed solution was William Jefferson Clinton last year."
Bill has it right.
Look, I can see why these candidates are opposed to admitting on national television that they advocate torture. But wouldn't it be reasonable for a serious presidential candidate to say, "I believe that torture is a despicable thing. And 999 times out of a thousand, I'm against it. And I definitely DO NOT believe it should be part of a policy to retrieve information. But I DO feel that in the case stated by the former president, an exception could be made.”
If you caught someone involved in kidnapping your child and knew that if he didn't give you information your child might be molested, injured, or killed, you would use ANY tactics necessary to get the information out of him. The same goes for a terrorist and a dirty bomb in New York, LA, or Chicago.
Any president that refused to “beat it out of him,” within the context of mass murder, should be impeached, charged as an accomplice to murder, and thrown in jail.
The world is sometimes a very ugly and dark place, but ignoring this fact is not going to make it better.
Thursday, September 27, 2007
Hello
I'd like to introduce myself. I've been in New York since 2000 and moved to the East Village in 2002. I work at a well known advertising agency and have been in the ad business since 1999.
I plan to use these pages to discuss politics and foreign affairs, but I'll also talk about sports and pop culture. While I'm one of a million Yankees fans in the city, I promise you that I've never met another conservative in my neck of the woods in all the years I've been here. South of 14th and east of 3rd is a bastion of the most leftward-leaning folks in the entire nation. Per capita, there are more Che Guevara T-shirts than any other form of currency or legal tender, and I plan to write about the world from the perspective of a lonely Republican in the East Village.
One other thing before I sign off my first post. I'm not your typical establishment Republican. If you've read P.J. O'Rourke or listened to Dennis Miller, you might know where I'm coming from. I'm into free markets, free choice, and know that we've got no choice but to have the strongest military in the world and be unafraid to use it wisely. I did say wisely.
Thanks for reading.
The East Village Republican
I plan to use these pages to discuss politics and foreign affairs, but I'll also talk about sports and pop culture. While I'm one of a million Yankees fans in the city, I promise you that I've never met another conservative in my neck of the woods in all the years I've been here. South of 14th and east of 3rd is a bastion of the most leftward-leaning folks in the entire nation. Per capita, there are more Che Guevara T-shirts than any other form of currency or legal tender, and I plan to write about the world from the perspective of a lonely Republican in the East Village.
One other thing before I sign off my first post. I'm not your typical establishment Republican. If you've read P.J. O'Rourke or listened to Dennis Miller, you might know where I'm coming from. I'm into free markets, free choice, and know that we've got no choice but to have the strongest military in the world and be unafraid to use it wisely. I did say wisely.
Thanks for reading.
The East Village Republican
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)