Reality and Reality TV

Just like the rest of the world I've have been glued to the T.V. watching the Casey Anthony trial.  Just like the rest of the world I have my opinions and my theories about what happened to a 2 year old little girl.  But in the end, not myself, not Nancy Grace and the rest of the mad dog legal pundits, not the people on the street or on Facebook or in numerous discussion groups know what happened and we never will.  I cannot say for sure that Casey Anthony is guilty or not guilty, but I can say with certainty that I don't feel that the State of Florida proved beyond a reasonable doubt that she was guilty and that in the end is the point. 

In this country unlike in France, England and numerous other countries in the world, the burden of proof is on the people prosecuting the case, not on the accused.  It is the best system.  Without this system the constitutional rights of each and every one of us would be at risk of being railroad by the State.  Ironically enough these jurors came up with this verdict the day after the 4th of July...when the citizens of this country celebrate our individual liberties fought and won and they re-affirmed the idea that all of us have the right to be innocent until proven guilty.  That we have the right to be determined guilty beyond a reasonable doubt and that anything under that designation is not good enough.  So that is done, agree or disagree, everyone of us must be assured that our legal system and a country that is governed by the rule of law provided a system of justice that in the end works. 

At the end of the day I can say this ringing affirmative...nobody was served by this case...not Caylee Anthony, not her mother, her grandmother, her grandfather or her uncle.  The people that had the most to gain by any of this are the media.  For three years they exploited Caylee and the story of her sad demise.  The context of the story had nothing to do with reality.  It bothers me, this idea of "reality" and how we as watchers of this feel like we know these people personally.  That we can judge people, we can judge their motives and their behavior just because they are on our tv screens day after day after day.  We will have to listen Nancy Grace and a plethora of other media types go over this again and again and cry about the lack of justice because of course we try people in this country via the media.  But I want everyone to stop and think about this, we don't know what happened, we don't know Casey Anthony and neither do they and it is with this in mind that we need to let the anger go and judgement go and spend our time and energy regretting the fact that bad things happen to innocent and good people and be sad that in this country that violence against children is a all too common occurrence and despite this verdict will continue to happen, especially in places or to people that the national media don't turn an intense spotlight on. 

Irony it's what's for breakfast lunch and dinner

I like everyone in the world have been following the news of the death of Osama Bin Laden.  Unlike everyone else I don't really have mixed feelings on the subject; I appreciate the fact that he's dead, it was a long time in coming and I don't give a damn if he was armed or not.  I do know this much, I didn't appreciate all the preaching on Facebook about how each person should or should not react to this person's demise.  Don't tell me how to feel about things, I have my own values system and moralistic sense and don't need projection of your moral sense or values system onto me.

As for the Grand Old Pricks party, I was not surprised by their reaction to the news that the Black Muslim guy born in Kenya nabbed the number one boogie man.  You could see that their assholes were puckering up by the pursuing of their lips.  Ironically enough, the man they were trying to give equal credit to for the deed well done was in fact the man who said that Bin Laden was no big deal and it didn't matter if we captured him.  That's right Dubya!! 

Meanwhile, back on the Wall Street Ranch the big boys are complaining because of the excess liquidity in the market.  That's right, there's too much cash out there and that makes the Bernie Madoff's of the world nervous because they fear inflation.  So to mop up that liquidity what do they do?  They speculate on commodities...oil, gold, food, etc.. Why are our gas prices so high when there is an obvious oil glut?  Because the boy with the cash are manipulating the markets and all the little day traders out there gambling away their retirement on gold and silver futures are going to be left with nothing.  Our government will then give these shysters a big tax break and continue to deregulate the markets so that the gap between rich and poor in this country has grow so large that it's comparable to a third world economy.  Where did all this liquidity come from?  The Fed continues to pump money into the economy by buying government bonds.  Big banks like Goldman Saks, JP Morgan are making a ton of money, but guess what folks, it's not trickling down to you and I, because the credit markets are still very tight.  That's why there is no job growth in this economy, because those with the cash are not reinvesting in the American Economy, they are speculating it away making your gas and food prices go through the ceiling.  The big irony here is, that the same people who trashed the system before are still in charge of the system and I don't let the foxes guard my hen house once, let alone twice.

The final irony of the day is all these right wing nut conservatives whose unshakable belief in a great and powerful god that they've never seen nor is there any concrete proof of in the bible or anywhere else...don't believe that the President of the United States was born in Hawaii despite over whelming evidence that he was and they don't believe that Bin Laden is dead until their arch enemy Al Queda tells them that he is.  What does that say about this country?

You be the judge

Just recently I had an "interaction" with the lesbian web site Afterellen.  It was confusing and seemed extreme in my eyes, but I think I might be too close to the situation.  I will relay the events as they unfolded and you be the judge and let me know if you think I was out of line.  Let me state that I don't think I was, but then I'm not always the best judge.  

In December I became an affiliate for a lesbian webseries called We Have To Stop Now.  As an affiliate I would put a link to my affiliate page in my signature line and people could sign up for We Have To Stop Now from there, if they clicked on the link.  As part of my affiliate campaign I picked Afterellen; first because they are the most visited website for lesbians and second because this huge lesbian site had never mentioned anything about this very prominent lesbian webseries.  So on December 11, 2011 I developed a catchy tag line and placed the link in my signature on AE.  The results were fantastic, I received a ton of hits and even had some people subscribe to the webseries.  Things went along swimmingly until February 11, 2011 when I received the following message.  (please note that this person says they sent me a message on January 19, but I did not receive that message) 

AE: Hi- I sent you a PM on Jan 19th asking that you remove the advertising link in your signature. Again, please remove it. This is site policy against advertising pay sites. Here is what I sent last month: Hi- I'm writing to ask you to please change the link in your signature that is promoting Wehavetostopnow's page that charges readers for access to content, which is something we prohibit on our site. I understand you want to promote the series and that's completely fine, but since the link goes to a page that asks for credit card info we cannot allow it. Do they perhaps have a Facebook page you could link to? That would be fine since it does not directly link to a pay site. Thanks.

My response:   Sorry I did not see your previous message. I will stop sending it in as a link to the pay site and send it to their facebook page. I apologize. 

  

Since AE did not allow a link to my affiliate page because it asked for credit card info I decided to link directly to the WHTSN website.   This was done on February 11 and on February 24 I received this message from the AE moderator:

AE: Hi again- I had to check with Karman whether or not your link is okay because it doesn't point directly to the credit card info page but your link still points to a site which is asking for money to view content. This isn't our policy but MTV and Logo Networks since the link is basically advertising for free on the site. Can you change it to their facebook page or another fan page? I know a few months back I had to contact someone else asking them to remove the link and I think they replaced it with their facebook link. Sorry for the confusion, I needed clarification myself on it.

Again, I did as they requested and put the facebook page for WHTSN in the signature line.  

Then on April 12 I put a link to The Gloves are Off live video blog into my signature line at AE and changed my avatar to a picture of the stars of the video blog.  TGAO is not something that has to be payed for and the link was not to a pay site but to vockle where the live feed was going to take place.  I thought that these rules only applied if something was asking pay for content.  I received the following message:

AE: I've asked you 4 or 5 times to stop linking a pay site in your posts. I'm not sure what the problem is with you using their facebook page or some other page, but once again please stop. I shouldn't have to be tracking you and editing the link out of your posts. I will revoke your posting privileges if you do not stop. You are not the first person I've asked to not link to pay sites, yet you are the only one who chooses to ignore my multiple polite requests. AfterEllen is owned by Mtv Networks and this is their policy. Neither they, or I, care what site your linking to -- If it's a pay site it is not allowed.

I had been asked 2 times previously about posting a link to two seperate places and had complied with the requests.  My understanding was that they did not allow the links to the pay site, I had not done that.  Also note the extreme defensiveness in the response.  The following is my response.  

Me: I am not linking to a pay site. TGAO is a free program that appears at a free site, that is what I am linking to. They do not have to pay to watch or engage in anyway. So...Next

To which I received the following response.  

AE: Okay, I'll make it more clear then. Do not link to wehavetostopnow.tv. Using the excuse that the video page you linked to was not a pay portion of the site is a moot point -- The site itself requires payment to view all other content. Therefore it is a pay site. Use their facebook page like you were doing before. It's quite simple.

I was extremely confused at this point.  It seemed to me that they kept moving the goal posts and coming up with more and more rules than were originally stated.  I sent this response to the most recent request.

Me: You bet, I won't link to it anymore. By the way, bit defensive much? Wonder why?  

I received this final response. 

AE: Defensive? No. You've been rude throughout the entire time I have been politely requesting you to not post that link. There's no reason why I should have had to ask you so many times. Not to mention you even added an avatar with the link in it. So no, I am annoyed, not defensive. I have enough to do on the site without having to monitor whether or not you're doing as you said you would and not post the link.

You be the judge, was I rude at any time during any of those exchanges?  Does she seem a bit defensive?  Does it not seem as if the position on what could be linked to was changed several times?  Does there seem to be some hidden agenda? Am I totally out of line?  Let me know what you think.