9:54 p.m. - 2008-01-23
tv and politcs
Kevin is in Chicago. I spent the last two nights out and about so tonight i'm in and have taken out the garbage and cleaned the kitty litter and am now watching this new show "Moment of Truth." It's kind of daunting but not as good as it maybe could be. They bring these people on and have their friends and family present and they ask them personal questions like "Do you have a bank account that your spouse doesn't know about?" and "Have you ever suspected one of your friends was making a play for your spouse?" and "Have you ever looked through a co-worker's personal belongings?" They have been asked these questions while hooked up to a lie detector before so they already have heard the questions. (Although they don't know which of their answers the detector deemed true or false.) On the one hand, it is kind of dumb because if there was some question the contestant knew was bad news, before the show they could come clean about that one time at a friend's bachelor party or whatever. The big problem is that the wording of the questions is...questionable. The first guy on the show "lost" when he "lied" answering the question "have you ever touched one of your personal training clients more than was necessary?" he said "no" and I think he really meant it, given his honesty over much stickier questions. I would have such a hard time with these questions because of the possible meanings behind them. Like, you could interpret that question in more than one way. One is obviously sexual. One is like if you are just a "touchy" person and you grabbed their arm while reacting to something they said - obviously not "necessary" but if you are like slightly confused about the intended meaning, you might "lie" without really meaning to. I think most people will care about the money so much and realize that everyone is going to know if the lie - so they will tell the best truth they can by answering yes or no.
So basically the hype is dumb.
On to something else. I was thinking today - I think that most people's opinions on a lot of political isues are them responding more to "Do you think this is right or wrong?" Instead of "Do you think this should be legal or illegal?" I guess a lot of people just think that whatever they think is wrong should be illegal. But I think it's really important to think beyond that. For example, I really hate predatory lenders. Really really really. Some candidate for something or other has pledged that he is going to irradicate predatory lenders, and my gut reaction was like "Yes! Finally someone is going to go after those mother effers who exploit poor people in their darkest hours." But then I thought about it and I finally had to admit...I think those places totally totally totally suck. But. This is going to sound harsh...but if someone is dumb enough to take a pay day loan when they are short on cash and then have to face the ridiculously high interest rate, somehow believing that the next week or month is going to bring with it a windfall, I guess they are going to have to deal with those consequences. It really is evil that whole companies profit from taking advantage of people's bad decisions. But it happens every day. Should credit cards be illegal? No! It's my dumb fault for buying plane tickets I couldn't afford in college. It's the same with pornography and strip clubs and those liars who make infomercials. I hate them all and think they are wrong and encourage people to make bad decisions - some worse than others. The democrat in me really feels like I should form my political opinions partly in favor of protecting poor people or weak people. But on the other hand, what does that say about my confidence in them - how like condescending is that? And shouldn't we all have the right to make what appear to be bad decisions? And I guess that means that the people who own those companies should have the right to operate them. I'm not totally comfortable with that but I think that is what I think. In case you were wondering or whatever.
