In the days after the 2004 election, I had a huge pet peeve about people saying “I just didn’t know what Kerry’s plans were. What was his plan for jobs? He never communicated that well.”
To which I would typically respond. “Well, Kerry being a far more moderate Democrat than he typically got credit for, the plans were sympathetic to big business in lots of ways. Mostly, he focused on job training programs to prepare people to do the jobs that big corporations are hiring for and doing things like giving tax breaks to companies who brought outsourced jobs back to America.”
“Wow.” Said person would say. “How did you know that?”
“JohnKerry.com?”
The assumption that if a piece of information hasn’t been tossed up into our collective faces, we haven’t been given it annoys me. Right now, I’m seeing it from the opposite side in that people are so upset that at McDonalds one must WALK OVER TO THE POSTER on the wall to get the nutrition information on one’s Big Mac rather than having the information printed on the packaging.
In California, Conservatives are all in a fuss because Union members have to LOOK IT UP ON THE INTERNET if they want to know what political causes their union dues are supporting.
All this makes me want to make the internet available as a public utility. Already, you can get a cheap computer for not much more than you would pay for a decent TV. (Dell’s low-end models start at $349. Emachines at $339, etc. Yes, those both include monitors.) For other folks, there’s always the library.
Anyway, we aren’t quite there yet, but I look forward to the day when people having internet access is as natural assumption the way people having a phone is.
Then I will finally be able to respond:
“Shut up and Google it!”
CC
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