News from ESPN comes that Don King (yes that Don King) was able to got a front row seat at Pope Benedict XVI’s general audience Wednesday. (yes, that Pope.)
According to the report, "the Vatican visit was arranged through a boxer King represents — Italian super welterweight champion Luca Messi, whose brother Alessandro is a Catholic priest." So yes, even if you go go to church ever day and live the holiest of lives, Don King is about 4 clicks closer to the pope than you are.
My favorite sentence from the report: "King, who spent four years in prison for manslaughter, had hoped for a personal meeting with Benedict."
A lot of talk has been generated about the "You Tube Effect" on the U.S. Presidential election in 2008. I think the most interesting aspect is the total lack of control that the campaigns will have over their suporters. We are going to see "campaign extremists" completely convolute the message and intentions of the high paid campaign managers.
Here could be the first salvo between the supporters of the two main Dem candidates. In one corner, a slickly produced anti-Hllary video based on the Apple commercial 1984. This is nicely done, and by all accounts, the Obama campaign had nothing to do with it. In response, a Hillary supporter hacks together a low budget retaliation that well, just looks dumb. How will the candidates keep their supporters under control? Check out both videos.
Ah, remember when having the world’s largest selection of merchandise was a good thing? Well apparently Amazon.com’s decision to offer magaiznes catering to the Cock Fighting crowd has – in what will be the most overused pun in a decade – ruffled some feathers.
The Register UK and Computerworld report the Humane Society has slapped Amazon.com with a lawsuit. The action specifically concerns "The Underground Pitbull Breeders Association, StreetHeatDVD.com, and the publishers of The Gamecock and The Feathered Warrior. Also targeted are the DVDs Unleashed: The Realest Pitbull Action Caught on Tape and Hood Fights Vol. 2, The Art of the Pit, both "depicting illegal dogfighting".
According to the Humane Society, "At issue in the case are four items which the HSUS has repeatedly asked Amazon.com to drop from its sales list because they depict and promote cruel dogfighting and cockfighting events in violation of federal law. Amazon.com is the sole retailer of subscriptions to the animal fighting magazines and the only outlet for animal fighters to obtain subscriptions over the internet. Similarly, Amazon.com is one of only three sellers of the dogfighting DVD and the easiest seller to locate on the web. A Humane Society review of the last 12 months of The Gamecock and The Feathered Warrior found that more than 90 per cent of the magazines’ advertisements are nothing more than a solicitation to commit a crime…and uncovered evidence that such magazines are published for the express purpose of promoting unlawful animal fighting and are found at more than 75 per cent of the animal fighting operations that have been raided by law enforcement officers."
So in one corner, you have the Humane Society using a legal argument to try to quell a market that by all terms of human decency, shouldn’t even exist. In the other corner you have Amazon.com, standing behind a 1st Amendment argument of, "Hey we sell everything." Now as easy as this decision might seem, its likely they are sticking to this argument so one day they can’t get forced into a corner either by the religious right or liberal left over whether or not to sell, "How to Fix your Gay Friend" or "Jesus was a Sex Addict." Saying, "We Sell Everything" when it comes to literature on cock-fighting gets you about as far down the reprehensible spectrum as you can go.
And let’s not forget, Amazon doesn’t create the marketplace for this material. Someone is writing the articles, someone is publishing the magazine, someone else is selling the ads, someone else is buying the ads and still someone else buys the magazine. So as awful as it sounds, this isn’t all Amazon’s fault.
Now the marketing side of this is a little grayer. It’s a fallacy for Amazon to say, "We Sell Everything." "24 Ways to Attack Paris Hilton" would not be listed amongst their catalog. Amazon is grown up enough that they need to come out and be strong, and say, "This sport isn’t right. It’s so off the radar in terms of social acceptance, that this is not a 1st Amendment issue. There are bounds of good taste, and while we do not believe that we should be the arbitrator of good taste, we have enough common sense to know this does not live up to the standards of the 1.6 Billion other products we offer."
I’m imagining being the marketing guy at Microsoft charged with increasing the amount of time a user spends on their computer each day, lets call it Director of PCMPD (PC Minutes per Day). Being Microsoft, I probably have a staff member for each segment – 6-10 years old, 11-15, 16-19, 20-29, 30-39, etc….plus a dotted line over to the enterprise PCMPD Director which is split into vertical segments, as well as a weekly meet-up with the XBOXMPD, ZuneMPD, MobileMPD and other MPD directors.
Now my boss’ boss’ boss’ boss’ boss’ boss, Mr Bill Gates himelf, comes out and says he and his wife Melinda decided to set a limit on their daughter of 45 minutes a day of total screen time for games and an hour a day on weekends, plus what time she needs for homework. "Up to some age, to be determined, it’s very appropriate for a parent to get a sense of what they’re seeing out there and be able to have conversations about it," he said.
I think I just heard the head of the world’s largest software company say that kids should not spend all day in front of a screen….
…But what must the rest of the world be thinking. You turn on CNN, and you have an over matched judge mugging for a national TV audience, with a bunch lawyers fighting about who gets to take control of the body of a now 2 week dead Anna Nicole Smith. Never mind the fights over custody, inheritance or support, this is just over who gets the body. Do we really need a video camera inside this hearing?
At some point, doesn’t the pubic’s right to know lose credence against the public’s right to get things done effectively? The issue I have is that TV coverage of the hearings makes everyone money, but takes away from the lawyer’s ability to litigate without having every word analyzed by pseudo law journalists pretending they are legal John Maddens.
I can’t beleive a British Paper doesn’t have a "Page 6" type section updated daily with the caption, "How Crazy are the Americans…"
