A few thoughts on the news:
The Supreme Court has just reversed precedent that limited how much corporations can spend on political campaigns. On a theoretical level, I’m torn. I believe in free speech, and the corporations are claiming that money IS free speech.
On a practical level, however, I’m not torn at all. I’m not convinced that money is free speech. If it is, then I don’t really have any access to free speech at all.
If money is free speech, we can’t call it “free” anymore.
The way corporations run everything is already frightening. This decision opens the door to America fully becoming a corpocracy. It’s already absurd that insurance companies get to be “consulted” on health care reform bills (um, they profit when you pay but then they get to deny you the coverage you paid for). Imagine what their “free speech” will be able to accomplish now.
In other news, hearings have shown that one of the major problems that caused the Christmas day Detroit flight near-bombing was a spelling error. That is, the person putting the terrorist’s name into the system spelled it wrong.
Congresspeople yesterday were assured that the government was now using a spell-checker program to prevent this from happening again.
Two things: 1. a spell checker program will not help, because names aren’t in the spell-checker’s dictionary. A spell-checker doesn’t know my last name to know if it’s spelled correctly; it’s not going to know likely bombers’ names, either.
2. To all those people who thought I was crazy for saying that proofreading could sometimes be the difference between life and death . . . I was right.
Finally, Conan’s last show will be on Friday. This is such bullshit. Conan is funnier than Jay has ever been. Jay Leno left The Tonight Show because he wanted more money in prime time. He bombed. And now he’s being rewarded by getting his old job back? Fuck him. If I left my job and my job was filled–with a talented person with a contract–I wouldn’t get my job back after I totally failed at the other job.
In fact, am now boycotting Jay Leno. Yes, he joins Domino’s, Six Flags, Coors, Continental Airlines, and Long John Silvers.
