Tag Archives: media

I Was the Victim of Voter Fraud

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Awhile back I posted a nifty little poll on my blog asking you, my dear readers, what you would like me to write about.

You voted.  Thank you.

I made sure not to check the results until the poll closed, but the current results were displayed to voters, and so my readers who I also know in real life kept reporting back to me that the winning category was overwhelmingly “stuff about life: relationships/friendships/making-your-way-in-the-world.  maybe kinda self-helpy but hopefully not in an obnoxious way”.

This was not necessarily the news I had wanted to hear, but I had gotten myself into this ‘tell me what to write’ mess and I would deal with the consequences – no matter what they were.  Sure maybe after a decade in grad school I wanted someone to hear my anthropological take on politics and culture, but whatevs.

So imagine my surprise when I logged on to see my polling results and found the following:

The votes were pretty much split evenly between three categories: stuff about life, culture & sh*t, and politics & the world.  This was good, if unexpected, news.

More surprising to me was the fact that somebody had voted for me to ‘please stop writing’.  I figured it was one of those legendary internet trolls I kept hearing about.  But it bugged me.  Like back in the day when I was teaching and I would get 29 great teaching evaluations from students but the 1 evaluation that was negative – or just didn’t sing my praises as ‘like, the best teacher I’ve had’ – would gnaw at me for days.

So I did a little digging and I was able to obtain the IP address for the user who had cast that fateful vote (welcome to the internet, people!).  And then I called a tech-savvy friend of mine – I wanted to know if I gave her an IP address if she could find out more about who it was.  It wasn’t like I was going to freak out on the person, I just wanted to know.

And when she called me back she fessed up.  SHE was the one who had placed that single vote in that category because she needed to ascertain how much weight any one vote had.  This would make it easier for her to skew the results of my poll.  Why you ask?  Because, indeed, the ‘stuff about life’ category was leading the votes, and my friend wanted to make sure that she didn’t “have to always read about relationships and bullshit”, so she had voted in the poll like 20 times to make sure there was an even distribution into two other categories as well.

This was my fault, it turns out, because I hadn’t set the poll settings to limit one vote per IP address – although this same friend is internet-smart enough to be able to cast her vote through ghost host IPs.  Though I doubt she would have put in the time to do that.  But the point is, she could have if she wanted to.

So what’s my point here?  Well, there’s two really.  First, this whole poll and IP address fishing expedition kept me thinking about what Liz Lemon famously called the interwebs.  If you read my post about the film Disconnect (if you didn’t, you can read it here) you’ll know I’ve been thinking about privacy and identity in the age of the internet.  Given the recent revelations about NSA collecting internet data on US citizens this topic seems more timely than ever, so you can expect a post or two about that.

Second, I did hear you, and if you really want to read “stuff about life” then I’ll write some stuff about life.  Because I’m here to make you happy.

One thing though (and I kind of can’t believe I’m quoting Ani DiFranco here, but hey – it’s a good quote): “art may imitate life, but life imitates TV”.  This is something I think is really interesting – so simultaneously important and outmoded – television.  I know, even the word makes me think of some Pleasantville old-timey black and white with rainbow ears and knobs TV.

But at its heart, TV shows are stories – and, from the time we are old enough to “see spot run” we learn about our world from stories.  We learn how to make sense of this world through stories.  And we inevitable make up our stories own along the way.

All that is my long-winded way of telling you that – heads up peeps – I’m gonna write about TV.  And movies.  And stories.

But I’ll write some ‘stuff about life’ too.

One rule though, no crying.  There is no crying in this blog.  This is a cry-free zone.

See you again, soon.

I promise.

*kaila

It’s a brand new year

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Dear Readers,

2013 has gotten off to a VERY interesting start and amid all the new and crazy things that have transpired I have been woefully neglectful of my blog.  I actually went on my website for the first time this year a few days ago and was greeted by my “2012 Annual Report” generated for me by the kind folks (or computer programs) at WordPress.  The best part of this report was the map they included which shows where in the world people have viewed my blog.  Check it out:

going global

It’s not the number of views I was paying attention to but rather where the views occurred that captured my attention.   All in all my blog has been viewed (well, hopefully read) in 19 countries – including Nepal (!!).

Seeing that map was completely inspiring.  It reminded me of the power of the internet to connect people and ideas on a global level, and it also reminded me that so many people have supported my writing and taken the time to check out my blog when they could have been on Facebook or following the never-ending twists and turns of the Kardashian family.  So, dear readers, this is just a brief post to say thanks, to let you know that I haven’t forgotten about you, and to say that I’m back and ready to blog my way through 2013.

I’m switching things up a bit this year – there will be the usual rants about politics, culture and the world-at-large, but I’ll also be writing more about media, movies & T.V. (because let’s be real, at the end of the day it’s more fun to focus on FLOTUS’s new bangs than Benghazi).  Last but not least, I’ll be writing a little more about my own life.  You’ll get to join me on a new adventure I’m about to embark on, and you might even get to meet a few of the kooky characters that make my family and friends the most entertaining group of folks that I know.  That’s right, it’s about to get personal up in here – but I promise to do my best to make it funny, worth your while and not too damaging to anyone’s reputation :).

Thanks for joining me in the blogosphere so far – and here’s to a great 2013!

“A Swing & A Miss”: Taxes, Athletes & Rigged Games

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Who’s on first?

In Friday’s issue of The Boston Globe, a front page article entitled “Eye on ’13 tax bite, big earners seek to move up pay dates” opened with a discussion of Mike Napoli’s $39 million contract offer from the Boston Red Sox.  According to the article, with a payday such as this, Napoli is a member of the tax bracket that may potentially see a rate hike of about 4.6% come January. In addition to Napoli, columnist Callum Borchers describes a number of athletes – or more specifically – athletic agents attempting to lessen their clients’ tax obligations in 2013 through a few interesting tactics (including having some of their 2013 wages turned into 2012 bonuses).  And it’s not just a baseball issue, Borchers illustrates the same strategies used by players in the NBA and NFL as well in order to underscore the fact that “it is common practice for the rich to adjust their pay dates when tax increases loom,” (A17).  Ok.  But just which ‘rich’ is Borchers focusing on?

It is Borchers’ choice of which ‘high earners’ to include in the article that gives me pause.  Let’s put this into perspective – Mr. Napoli’s salary from the Texas Rangers in 2012 was $9.4 million, so a 3-year $39 million contract with the Red Sox is nothing to sneeze at.  However – and this is crucial – in the world of the truly wealthy, it’s also nothing much.  Let’s be real, if the Koch brothers – estimated to be worth $31 billion each – lost $39 million, would they even notice?  Indeed, in their September issue Forbes reported that for 2012 the “average net worth of a Forbes 400 member is a staggering $4.2 billion”, which is the highest average in history.  This is not a collective number, this is the average worth of the 400 wealthiest individuals in America.  In fact the collective worth is even more startling, as msnbc.com reported that “collectively, this group’s net worth is the equivalent of one-eighth of the entire U.S. economy, which stood at $13.56 trillion in real terms according to the latest government data”.  $4.2 billion, $31 billion, $13 TRILLION…these are the numbers of the real ‘high earners’ according to the leading financial magazine, yet the Globe gives front page coverage to “high earners” earning…$39 million over 3 years?  Really?  In my opinion, focusing our attention on high earning athletes is a sleight of hand designed to trick our attention away from the real game & how it may be rigged.

So let’s play ball.  When we are talking about the potential impact of a tax hike on the richest Americans we are not talking about athletes or movie stars, though they are often the face of celebrity and fortune.  But that’s not just because they are good looking, rather it’s part of the game designed to focus our attention off those that are truly the biggest earners and also (according to many) the biggest policy impacters and political lobbyers.  In fact, the richest Americans maintain their power largely by remaining invisible.  Yet when the earnings of just one address – like 740 Park Avenue (which a recent documentary by Alex Gibney claims is “home to the highest concentration of billionaries in the United States”) – is equal to or greater than a large portion of America and yet they often pay less taxes, there is a big problem.  But the more we are concerned with the Pitt-Jolies or Evan Longoria and his $100 million six-year contract, the less attention we pay to the people for whom $16.7 million annually is, truly, chump change – people who could buy and trade baseball teams the way kids trade baseball cards.

To talk about “high earners” and limit the conversation to star athletes is a problematic but clever move.  Using a sports analogy we might say it’s like a pitcher about to attempt a pick off of a runner trying to steal second base.   In the crowd we watch the position and movements of the pitcher, carefully designed to avoid a balk and – critically –  drawing our attention to the lead off, our eyes glued on the runner hovering between first and second, while we ignore all the other players breezing into home plate.