A MORAL DILEMMA
I have recently started reading all the blurbs that go with my blogspot subscription. One of them offers me a chance to get advertisements posted on my blog and get paid for allowing them. It's an interesting thought. They promise ads that bear some relationship to the content of the blog. Not sure what that would entail here on DP. It might even be interesting to find out what the adsters thought my blog was related to. If anything.
But why on earth should I subject my loyal readers to commercials? I'm not quite that broke, and the blog itself doesn't cost me a cent. And, even more to the point, advertising on my blog violates my principled objection to what advertising is doing to our culture.
The stalwart conservatives who managed to get "The Book of Daniel" pulled from network television last week seem to have no trouble at all letting the free market advertise cures for genital herpes and erectile dysfunction during prime time. The pundits who loudly deplored Janet Jackson's wardrobe malfunction have no problems with advertisers using women's mostly-undressed bodies to sell cars, liquor, and vacations. Not only does advertising debase our appreciation of the human body, it debases our relationship to communications. We expect advertisers to lie, and that gets us in the habit of assuming that everybody lies, and everybody is entitled to lie. Which in turn gets us in the habit of ignoring everybody who tries to tell us anything, including the purveyors of some very useful information.
For instance, even though most people who get arrested have had the opportunity to hear the Miranda warnings at least 1800 times on assorted cop shows before they are old enough to be prosecuted as adults (do the math yourself!), most of them still don't know that "you have the right to remain silent, etc." means "shut up until your lawyer gets here," and instead they spill their guts. Apparently what they learn from the cop shows is not the fine points of the Fifth Amendment, but that only guilty people call lawyers.
So I guess for now you may continue reading this blog without being subjected to anybody's ads. You'll know the economy is bottoming out when I have to change my mind about this. Happy Muslim New Year (tomorrow, I think.)
But why on earth should I subject my loyal readers to commercials? I'm not quite that broke, and the blog itself doesn't cost me a cent. And, even more to the point, advertising on my blog violates my principled objection to what advertising is doing to our culture.
The stalwart conservatives who managed to get "The Book of Daniel" pulled from network television last week seem to have no trouble at all letting the free market advertise cures for genital herpes and erectile dysfunction during prime time. The pundits who loudly deplored Janet Jackson's wardrobe malfunction have no problems with advertisers using women's mostly-undressed bodies to sell cars, liquor, and vacations. Not only does advertising debase our appreciation of the human body, it debases our relationship to communications. We expect advertisers to lie, and that gets us in the habit of assuming that everybody lies, and everybody is entitled to lie. Which in turn gets us in the habit of ignoring everybody who tries to tell us anything, including the purveyors of some very useful information.
For instance, even though most people who get arrested have had the opportunity to hear the Miranda warnings at least 1800 times on assorted cop shows before they are old enough to be prosecuted as adults (do the math yourself!), most of them still don't know that "you have the right to remain silent, etc." means "shut up until your lawyer gets here," and instead they spill their guts. Apparently what they learn from the cop shows is not the fine points of the Fifth Amendment, but that only guilty people call lawyers.
So I guess for now you may continue reading this blog without being subjected to anybody's ads. You'll know the economy is bottoming out when I have to change my mind about this. Happy Muslim New Year (tomorrow, I think.)
posted by WiredSisters at 11:44 AM
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