Revolutionary Moderation

Trust the popular media.



Literally. I mean, this story on anti-SUV ads has gone from being a blog blip to getting a lot of air. To some, it's treated as bumpf, but I was wrong about one thing: I would have eventually heard all about it, even without August.



I don't mean to be intentionally obtuse, but why wouldn't any tv station, anywhere, sell time for these? Not out of any sense of generousity or even of fairness. Sell the time, and people will fast-forward or channel surf through the ads as quickly as they can. Don't sell the time, and people will watch it from the web, undistracted, rapt.



And as Monday approaches, so does the beginning of the trial of the two American pilots involved in bombing Canadian troops in Afghanistan, killing four. So we're going to start hearing much more about this... in fact, the defense will be doing their best to turn the trial into a trial of the amphetamines banned in 1992, but quietly brought back into service very recently. Here's the story that started the discussion, from an American television newsmagazine(!).