On the one hand, if you’re in business, you know you’ve got to stay in front of your customers. If your customers are using print, you advertise in print. If they watch TV, you need a commercial. If they listen to the radio, you’ve got to have a spot.

 On the other hand, if you’ve been in business long enough, you’ve heard the same promises from all of them. You’ve advertised here and there; some of it worked and some didn’t, but none of it had you ecstatic. Your best deals still involved wearing out shoe leather and shaking hands.

 Ironically, if your best deals are found from personal interactions with your clients, you’re in the best position to use social media to your advantage. What may strike you as a fad is actually a shift in the way that people communicate on a daily basis. Two major technological advancements are driving this societal revolution: Internet speed and internet portability.

 Internet Speed

Back in the mid 1990′s, when people were first getting on the internet the connection speeds were abysmal. Even if the information you wanted was online, nine times out of ten it was easier to look it up in the phone book. Certainly it was a novelty if you could get information online, but when push came to shove most people didn’t have the patience to sit there and wait for everything to load.

 Fast forward to the present, and you see a different picture. Information is delivered almost instantly over the Internet. As quickly as you can type in a search, the answer is provided. Messages, pictures and video can all be shared immediately—not after an hour or so of download time. Because we lived through the “slow internet” period, we’re not really aware of how shocking and transforming this technology is. We now can have a magic box on our desk that can answer our questions instantly, allow instant communication between friends, and give us information about any business that has made itself available via the web. Now if we could only carry that around in our pocket…

 Internet Portability

 And of course you can. Via cell phone technology and advanced computer technology, you can now carry these abilities with you wherever you go. A so-called “smart phone” is nothing less than the super small computer science fiction promised in decades past. People use them at every opportunity—even when a full size computer is within easy reach. It goes beyond mere novelty. This gives people a taste of what it would be like to have Aladdin’s lamp. Whatever you need, you can find in the palm of your hand.

 Social Networking

 This technology has been especially important to social networking web sites. These sites were born in the old, slow history of the Internet. Developed from the classic “bulletin board” concept, people would post whatever public information that their group needed. The party is at Jim’s house at 9. Probably by 7 everyone who used that board would have checked in to see when the party was—on their old computer in the den.

 Now that message appears instantly as soon as it is sent. Whether you’re using Facebook, Twitter, Buzz, or any number of social networking sites, a message sent from one phone reaches everyone in the owner’s sphere of influence instantly and simultaneously.

 The novelty of this ability is not lost on people. They will look for almost any excuse to send a message, and they make sure they know what messages are sent by the people, businesses, and organizations they follow. To be outside this “sphere of influence” is to be out of the loop. You’re not looked upon with disfavor necessarily, but it takes extra effort to reach you. It takes extra effort to be reached by you. Today, the person you want to reach may be too busy to share a cup of coffee or talk on the phone. They will have enough time to check their messages.

The New Expectation

 From a business standpoint, the picture is clear. People expect to be able to access your information at a time that’s convenient for them. They expect to be able to communicate you via whatever vehicle they prefer.

 If you don’t make yourself available via social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, and others, you send a message that you are not willing to cater to your customer’s needs. It is no longer the case that finding your web site or Facebook page or Twitter account is a surprise. If you’re a business, you are expected to have these things as much as you would a phone number. This is as much a measure of your professionalism as having a clean storefront.

In many ways, using social networking sites is a very similar method to traditional marketing. You’re trying to make a connection with a customer. It doesn’t matter if it’s a handshake, a phone call, or a tweet. The point is to connect to the customer and get your message out. Now you can do it instantly.

To go to a conference where every speaker drew my full attention—dare I use the word entertain? I fear I must. This conference was wildly entertaining, and just as informative.

A good percentage of the conference was dedicated to helping aspiring authors promote themselves and their writings. I was particularity struck by the fact that all the speakers who approached the subject had essentially the same mantra: You need a web site, a blog, a Facebook page, and a Twitter account.

None of that came as a surprise to me, but the fact that the speakers had pretty much stolen my sales pitch did come as a surprise. I expected perhaps a 50/50 split between classical approaches and more modern methods.

Instead, just about everyone was adamant that the Internet was an absolutely necessary tool for every author if they wanted to succeed. This is how you can interact with your readers, and catch the attention of agents, editors, and publishers. Your potential fan base is using the Internet to manage their lives. That’s where you can reach them. At the same time, this demonstrates to agents, editors and publishers how well you can present your work, and if you can reach people.

How does this affect you if you’re not a writer? The business aspects of writing are no different than any other business. You must attract people who will consume the fruits of your labors. You’ve got to build trust with them. You’ve got to give them enough information about yourself that they can decide they need what you provide. In an age where the most precious commodity is time, you’ve got to make yourself available to your customers on their terms.

What are their terms? They expect you to have a website, so they can research your product at a time that is convenient to them. A web site that includes or links to a web log—or blog—gives them even more information. A well kept blog is a sign of an active, aggressive business. More importantly, your customer will sense that you are taking extra steps to keep them informed. When you inform them, you are empowering them to make a decision—the decision to buy your product.

Hand in hand with this concept is the use of social networking sites, such as Facebook and Twitter. More and more people are using these sites to organize the communication they have with their friends. To a great extent, they are organizing their lives on these sites. When they go out, where they go out, what they buy and what they do is strongly influenced by the information they find on social networking sites.

Think about it. Mary and Bob are married, and both work. Mary checks her Facebook or Twitter account on her lunch hour (or more commonly today, lunch half-hour) and sees a message from Bob. “Hey Sweetheart, want to go out for dinner tonight?” Right above or below that message, there’s a message from their favorite restaurant with the specials for tonight. She clicks the link, heads to their website, and checks out the rest of the menu.

She’s already picking out what she’s going to have, let alone where she’s going to go.

The key to any marketing is putting yourself in front of the customer at the moment the customer is making his or her decision. The internet gives every business that ability.

Scarface School Play

I really can’t comment too much here. Although I like pointing out the obvious as the next guy–probably more so–even I hit that point where I just don’t have words.

I do have to ask one question: what were the other school play ideas that got turned down?

“Apocalypse Now”?
“The Exorcist?”
“The Shining”?
“Showgirls”?

For the time being, I plan to maintain the blog in both places (the other being http://www.shutamultimedia.com/blog.) I could have set up the same ads and links on my local WordPress Site, but I’m curious. It will be interesting to see which blog get’s more traffic, and if having a Blogspot.com page will enhance the search engine placement for ShutaMultimedia.com.

I’ll keep you all posted as this experiment develops.

It’s actually very interesting. You would think that the Vlog would be a quicker and easier means of communication. I suppose if one were to post raw video, this might be true. Once you factor in multiple takes, editing time, adding in the effects, and rendering time on the computer, it takes far more time to publish a Vlog entry versus a Blog entry. With the Blog, once I have my thoughts in the computer, I can publish.

Will there be some overlap? I’m sure it will happen, as there will be cases where I believe a point deserves the coverage of both venues. Am I going to attempt to get 100% coverage of the Vlog in the Blog and vice versa? Hardly: overlap will be the exception to be sure.

Thanks again for checking in, and look for more posts soon!

 http://msn.foxsports.com/nfl/story/Womens-groups-urge-CBS-to-drop-Tebow-Super-Bowl-ad-012510/?gt1=39002

 For those of you who haven’t clicked the link and read it, allow me guess what you’re thinking: GoDaddy.com had another advertisement banned for having too many scantly clad women. (Or, one woman too scantly clad.)

 No this article is about an ad featuring 2007 Heisman Trophy Winner Tim Tebow and his Mom. It seems back in 1987, Tim’s Mom was a missionary and got sick while pregnant in the Philippines. The doctors advised her to have an abortion. She didn’t, and you guessed it, had a Heisman Trophy Winning son.

 It sounds like a story that should leave you feeling all warm and fuzzy. Here’s a kid who’s likely headed to the NFL who almost didn’t exist. Instead, what’s the reaction?

 Various women’s organizations want CBS to drop the ad. I suppose they could have argued that this is a sexually oriented topic, and wasn’t appropriate for a family hour, but they didn’t go there. Here’s a quote from the above referenced article:

 The protest letter from the Women’s Media Center suggested that CBS should have turned down the ad in part because it was conceived by Focus on the Family.

 ”By offering one of the most coveted advertising spots of the year to an anti-equality, anti-choice, homophobic organization, CBS is aligning itself with a political stance that will damage its reputation, alienate viewers, and discourage consumers from supporting its shows and advertisers,” the letter said.

 That’s a lot to absorb in one shot. Even assuming that everything the Women’s Media Center said is true, I wonder what ever happened to “The views expressed in this commercial do not necessarily reflect those of this station or its affiliates.” Did they throw that line away? What makes it null and void?

 The argument actually deteriorated from here:

 Terry O’Neill, the president of the National Organization for Women, said she had respect for the private choices made by women such as Pam Tebow but condemned the planned ad as “extraordinarily offensive and demeaning.”

 How do you make that argument with a straight face? “I respect your choices, even thought I think they’re offensive and demeaning.” “I like this beer, even though I think it tastes like elephant urine.” It’s a direct and transparent contradiction. I know that the greatest sin of all in American society is being close minded, but you can’t look open minded by saying stuff like this.

O’Neill continued:

“That’s not being respectful of other people’s lives,” O’Neill said. “It is offensive to hold one way out as being a superior way over everybody else’s.”

Really?

In America?

Does Terry O’Neill really want to break out the duct tape and silence anyone who doesn’t agree with Terry O’Neill?

Duct tape is great stuff folks. It doesn’t care where it’s applied. It’s cheap. Anyone can get it. If you can put it across Tim Tebow’s mouth, you can put it across Terry O’Neill’s mouth…and my mouth…and your mouth.

Perhaps that’s the goal. Get society where you like it, and tape everyone up so it can’t change. It’s not a new concept. The founding fathers were wise when they included the First Amendment in the Constitution, but they weren’t clairvoyant. They knew that societies will oppress when allowed.

The funniest part about all of this is that the article was actually censored after it was posted. They took out a comment made by Gregg Doyel of CBSSports, which is how the article originally ended. He called Super Bowl Sunday, “the holiest day of the year” and stating that “February 7 is simply not the day to have that discussion.” I didn’t get a chance to write my blog until after that pristine comment was deleted from the article, and I had to Google the comment to find it again:

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2010/01/pc_double_standard_on_abortion.html

Lewis Black has a Skit to the effect that he has no religion, but he always watches the Super Bowl…and it’s on a Sunday, so at least he’s trying. This sounded so much like that skit, I thought perhaps at first Lew might have cried copyright infringement.

 What was the original purpose of ending the piece that way? It sounds like this was the paragraph that was supposed to include our opinion—as if most people are running around like children with their hands over their ears saying “La, La, La, I can’t hear you” over and over.

 This leaves us with another question: Why did they delete the comment? Was Doyel being profound and illustrating the insanity of the whole thing? His remarks imply that the everyday man wants to remain ignorant and enjoy his pastimes. Did he slide this by everyone at first, until the editors realized what he really meant?

 Or did he really believe that ignorance is bliss and people only want to be ignorant right now?

 If he’s wrong, he’s merely insulting his readers. If he’s right, he might accidentally shake people out of their bliss.

Either way we can’t have that. Someone might be offended.

http://msn.foxsports.com/mlb/story/Morosi-mcgwire-confession-comes-too-late-for-Hall.

Let me say first that I don’t disagree with him on his specific points about steroids. McGwire stated he only used steroids to stay healthy. Translation, he was trying to keep the performance levels that he had in his twenties going for a bit longer than the abuse of professional sports will normally permit. That window is really how records are set. How many home runs can you hit before your body wears out? If you stretch that window in some unnatural way, then you’re cheating pure and simple.

However, there is one aspect of this that never seems to get discussed. More and more it seems that just about every player from the era was taking steroids. To quote Morosi:

I’m not currently a Hall voter. But if and when I join the electorate, I will apply a different standard to hitters who played during the Steroid Era. That’s the period that roughly coincides with McGwire’s playing career (1986 through 2001).

It pains me to say this, but the sluggers who played during that time are guilty until proven innocent, at least when it comes to the Hall of Fame. Through the reports and the books and the Mitchell Report, an overwhelming amount of evidence points to the same conclusion: A lot of players took steroids.

If that is the case, then one has to ask why. I’m not absolving anyone of their individual decisions, but Major League Baseball is as much a company as any other. They were rewarding players that used steroids with huge contracts and essentially punishing the utility men batting .230, making it harder to get on the team and giving them less pay. All during the “Steroid Era” there were calls for testing, and it wasn’t until Jose Canseco came out with his book and brought the wrath of congress down on MLB that anything was done.

How much money did MLB make during 1998, when McGwire and Sosa were dueling for the home run title? I know I wasn’t going to be watching the Cubs or Cardinals otherwise. Heck, at the time I hadn’t properly followed baseball since Mike Schmidt was slugging for the Phillies. To say they made millions from McGwire and Sosa’s abuse of drugs is both chilling and an understatement.

And yet, there are those such as Mr. Morosi, who believe that McGwire and his ilk should be kept out of the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Listen folks, I don’t want to reward cheating, but I don’t want to reward exploitation either. If we keep these men out of the hall of fame, this allows MLB to sweep this period of history under the rug.

What we need is a “Steroid Era” wing of the Hall, that lets people remember the most cutthroat years of baseball. Induct McGwire, and track his health progress. When he passes, note if he had cancer or heart damage from the steroids.

Have a specific display that describes the long term effects of steroids, and another that describes what MLB does to discourage their use. (To do that, first they have to discourage their use in some spectacular way. Otherwise they’ll look as lame as they are.)

The NFL went through a similar period, before the effects were understood. Those players became object lessons for athletes of every sport, as so many of them died from health problems related to steroids. They were guinea pigs that demonstrated both the upside and downsides of the drugs: fame, fortune, and an early death. There were shades of Faust in every story.

The NFL, hardly the perfect example of an organization that cares for its people, began testing for steroids in 1987. Note how close this was to the beginning of baseball’s steroid era as quoted by Morosi. Surely the NFL had more to gain by not testing than baseball did. With access to the same body of knowledge, why did MLB wait until 2004? It’s almost as if when the NFL announced they were going to test for the drugs, MLB said, “What’s that? The stuff works? Hey, I got to get some of that.”

If inducting such players sends the wrong message, then we need something else—so that this era is not forgotten. Perhaps we need to build a memorial in front of each hall of fame. We could inscribe on it the names of all the players who sacrificed their careers and life spans so that the fans could have high scoring games and sports leagues could make gobs of money from them.

Before you get high and mighty on Big Mac or anyone else, remember they did it because they knew you’d be watching.

 It happens all the time really. So many people have been caught taking steroids and other chemical enhancements that we don’t even get shocked anymore. “Oh, another one cheating to get ahead.” It doesn’t really hit us anymore. And we don’t really feel any empathy because they’re cheaters who got caught. Everyone loves the stories from yesteryear about NASCAR racers trying to find “an edge” with illegal modifications to their cars. But let a modern day guy get caught a quarter of an inch too low after the race, there’s an uproar.

No I don’t entirely understand the psychology of it, but that’s a blog entry for another time.

What I saw this week did not involve cheating. Instead, it allows us to see something of the culture of professional athletes, which I think we will find is a far more intense place than any fan realizes.

I’m a huge Pittsburg Steelers fan, and one of my favorite players is Hines Ward. He’s inspirational. He goes out, does his job, gets hit really hard, and comes up smiling—consistently. He gives it as good as he gets it, and blocks for his teammates as hard as anyone in the game. He’ll do anything for the team. Corporate managers should have posters of him in the hallways, getting up from a brutal hit smiling, or helping one his teammates with a maximum effort block.

We’ve all been “blindsided” by one situation or another. How important is it to get up smiling?

And again, what manager doesn’t want his employees giving their all, even when another team member will get the glory?

We, the fans, never really give a thought to what’s driving Hines to be such a good football player. We just accept that he is just that, and enjoy the game. Well, we got a little glimpse of that this week, and it was a bit startling to the uninitiated.

In the last game, Ben Roethlisberger took a knee to the head. He was tackled, and one of the defensive backs accidentally bumped him in the head with his knee. I’m not sure what it’s like having a couple hundred plus pounds of muscle run at you as fast as he can and smack you in the side of the head with his knee unintentionally. I’m not guessing it’s any kind of fun.

At any rate, Ben got a concussion. It wasn’t an obviously bad concussion, and the next day he felt fine. He was asymptomatic. He planed to play against the Baltimore Ravens. Later in the week, he started getting headaches after practice, and the doctors decided that the concussion wasn’t healed yet—hence, no football for young Ben.

This wasn’t decided until the day before the game, which seemed to annoy a certain percentage of the Pittsburgh players. In a way I can understand that. My initial reaction when Ben got hurt was that no matter how he felt, he shouldn’t play against the Ravens. The odds of getting another concussion when playing the Ravens are always good, and getting a concussion on top of a concussion is not conducive to a long, happy and productive life. Even from a football perspective it’s a bad idea, because Ben could be lost for the season—or forever if the hit is career ending.

What was somewhat surprising to me is that Hines seemed to say that Ben should have lied to the doctors about how he felt so that they would let him play. Hines says he’s done it, and other players do this all the time. For all we know, Hines had a concussion in the game as well.

Consider that we’re learning more and more about concussions, largely as a result of the increasing number of retired NFL players developing serious brain maladies. I’m sure Hines does. He’s not unintelligent or unaware I’m sure. He’s just operating at a level of competitiveness that goes well beyond the comprehension of the average fan (like me.) 

You see, I love to see the Steelers win, but I’m still a fan if they lose. I’m a fan of the players, the coaches, the history, the work ethic. I’m not just a fan of the wins. I don’t want to see the players hurt, because I’m a fan of them. I don’t want to see the future of the current team mirror the fate of the Steelers from the 1970’s. A lot of those guys ended up dying young or with permanent physical or mental problems because we didn’t understand certain dangers in the game. Back then we didn’t know better. Now we’ve got no excuse.

I know players like Hines want to win. They’ve got an incredible drive, or they wouldn’t be competing at that level. It’s just that simple. However, someone has to start reinforcing the fact that if they damage themselves it’s bad for them, their team, and the sport. If you’re hurt, be honest and sit out. If you don’t care about your own health, then consider this: at some point there is going to be a body of data that the NFL is destroying all the players that fans like me care about, and then you’ll hear calls to Congress for regulations. From there, it becomes “If we can’t make it safe we should do without it.” Eventually, stories of our favorite players—like Mike Webster dying at 50 (http://espn.go.com/classic/obit/s/2002/0924/1435977.html)—will sour the game for people, and it will lose popularity. I grew up watching Mike Webster—those teams helped forge me into a Steelers fan. I can’t help but feel bad and almost guilty. I cheered him on while he was used up like a commodity.

By saving yourself, Hines, you’ll be saving your sport in the long term. If I start reading obits of current Steelers within the next couple of decades, that’s really going to turn me against a game I love to watch..

If the nature of the games is going to destroy people, and there’s nothing we can do about it, then perhaps it’s time for a new game. If we’re going to keep playing the game, it’s going to require participation from the players to make the game safe enough to play.

 http://www.gallup.com/poll/118399/more-americans-pro-life-than-pro-choice-first-time.aspx

 So I know that 51% of you agree with me. That’s pretty good backing. To the other 49%, I thought I would make an appeal. I don’t expect to convince too many people to change their views on such a hot topic, but I would like you to understand how I’ve come to my conclusions. (If you haven’t written my off as a radical religious conservative wacko, then I have a shot at this. If you have, well, I can live with that too, but I’ll still give it a shot.)

 Don’t worry; I’m not going to take a religious approach with this. Yes, I am a Christian, but if I have to convert you to a religion to convince you of a policy, then I’m probably not going to get very far.

 Instead of approaching this from the vantage point of a Christian, I’m going to approach it from the vantage point of an engineer. Enough people group us in with the scientists that we can go to most of the same parties. Thus I claim the right to discuss things from a scientific perspective.

 It’s well documented that the genetic structure is defined at the moment of conception, and this is not a new concept. What has developed is our understanding of how much that means. People used to think of this in terms of eye color, hair color and height, and that’s about it. Now we’ve learned that the genetic structure influences almost every aspect of a person. When people say “he got that from his grandfather,” it has a real scientific meaning now.

 So when we are dealing with a fetus, we are dealing with a person. That much people understand. The fact that we can use ultrasound to watch this person grow inside the mother aids in this understanding. Everyone has seen these pictures. Yeah, it’s a tiny baby, but it’s a baby none the less.

 One of the oldest arguments for right to choose, is that if the fetus cannot survive outside the womb, then it cannot be considered a person. This always confused me, because a newborn baby can’t survive all that long outside the womb on its own. Heck, let’s go further. How many parents would feel comfortable leaving your kid home alone for a week? True Macaulay Culkin did fine, but it was obviously a questionable thing. If self sufficiency is our measure of whether a person is a person or not, then a parent can kill their child as long as they’re living under the parents’ roof.

 If that seems like a silly line of argument, then let us look for the line of demarcation. Obviously a one celled child can’t make it on his or her own. However, babies are born radically premature almost every day, with a fantastic survival rate. So somewhere between point A and point B, we have a survivable human being. Where is that point? When does a child really become a human being? Is it determined by the ability of our doctors to keep the kid going? Is our definition actually based on our level of science?

No, when you come down to it, the growth of the fetus is such a progressive and variable thing, that it is totally unpractical to say “at two months, thirteen days, and seven minutes, this is a person.” At best with this method, you would need to have a medical panel approve each abortion, after evaluating the child’s development.

So we’re back to conception or delivery, as the line of demarcation. Using the moment of delivery as the line has produced such horrors as partial birth abortion, where you have a baby that could be delivered any day stabbed in the head with a sharp instrument. As a line of demarcation, it works from a point of setting up paperwork, but fails rather miserably in dealing with reality.

The truth of the matter is, everyone inherently knows that the moment of conception is a big deal. Pregnancy is a big deal. Ask any mother if they didn’t start learning about their child’s personality from the moment they were pregnant. Ask my wife about what foods she craved that are now my son’s favorites, or about the time we got caught in traffic and he started punching her in the bladder. As a father, I got a deep sense during my wife’s pregnancy that this was a person we were dealing with here. It truly struck me.

“What about women’s rights,” you ask. I am totally for women’s rights. I think they have the right not to be subjected to the devastating trauma of abortion. I feel very strongly that every woman who has had an abortion has been in some sense tricked to hurting themselves very deeply. Society has told them that this is ok, but internally they know that it is not. Studies have shown on numerous occasions that women who have abortions suffer increased rates of mental illness afterwards. http://www.drwalt.com/blog/?p=1003. Once you accept the definition of a person as coming at conception—which I would argue is the only logical place to call it—this becomes an argument about one person having rights over another. Once you allow that, you open up a huge Pandora’s box.

Actually, if you look at the science of things, abortion amounts to granting one person the right to kill another outside the context of war or self defense—and by self defense I mean that the preservation of life is at stake, as most abortions are not performed in his circumstance. Again, science and medicine have developed to the point where a necessary abortion is an extreme rarity.

I do not with to minimize the hardship of an unwanted pregnancy. I do believe that a mother who endures the pregnancy, even if it results in a child being given up for adoption, will endure less suffering than a mother who aborts her child. Every person hold vast potential. And now matter how many logical structures we build up, Reality beats them down and presents itself—the result is an enduring pain.

To be pro-choice, you’ve got to be willing to say, “The child’s entire life is not more important than the mother’s wishes.” The mother has to truly believe this in her heart to survive the abortion unscathed. Even if you believe the first statement, statistics have shown the latter doesn’t happen frequently enough to allow the process to continue.

 “So!” he asked brightly. “What do you think of the health care legislation?”

 I sighed and closed my book, and gathered my thoughts in the same way that a person might carry an armload of M and M’s.

 “I’ve got to say, it has me a bit confused.”

 “I’m glad I happened by then! Let’s talk.”

 “Well, what are the goals of the legislation? Let’s start there.”

 My representative beamed with pride. “Our goal is to make sure everyone has healthcare, to lower costs, and to make sure everything is fair!”

 “Worthy goals indeed; how are you going to make it happen?”

 “Well, first off, we’re going to punish anyone who doesn’t have health care! To be honest, I’m not sure why this hasn’t been tried before. It’s worked very well with car insurance. I mean yes technically you don’t have to have car insurance if you don’t have a car, but since most people do it’s practically the same thing.”

 “So, what about the people who can’t afford health insurance—in the same way they can’t afford a car?”

 “Oh that’s easy! We’ll have a public option so that everyone can afford health insurance. The government will pay for it.”

 “And this insurance will cover less than normal insurance?”

 The rep looked shocked. “That would be cruel! Do you think our poorest members of society deserve less than the wealthy?”

 “Oh not at all! I merely was wondering why anyone would pay more for the same insurance coverage.”

 “Oh people do it all the time! That’s like asking why anyone would shop anywhere else but Wal-Mart.”

 This point I had to concede, but still I pressed on. “Even so, you have to be prepared for the possibility that everyone will want the public option. What then?”

 The representative beamed. “Well then! The government could hire all the people that used to work at the HMOs and such, and manage the entire healthcare system! It would be fantastic, because then we could really control costs!”

 “Really? I would think trying to manage healthcare for nearly three hundred million people would get a bit unwieldy.”

 “On the front end, sure there will be some increased costs, but we can more than make up for it on the back end.”

 “The back end?”

 ”Yes! Doctors and hospitals, and especially pharmaceutical companies! Have you seen the cars those people drive? Can’t they buy something that isn’t made in Germany for once?”

 “I don’t know too many nurses who drive Porches.”

 “Never mind the nurses. We’ll try to cut them some slack I guess. But there is a lot of money being made in healthcare! Why should people try to profit off of other people suffering?”

 “Well, there is a lot of school involved here. It takes a tremendous amount of work to become a doctor or a biochemist or anything like that. And it’s not like the jobs are easy once you get there. We’re talking long days and life and death decisions! Even the managers have to manage properly or people will die. If they all can make the same or more money doing something easier, with less pressure, why wouldn’t they?”

 “Altruism!”

 I stared blankly at him for several seconds. When I realized he had nothing to add, I continued. “Aren’t you claiming that the whole problem is that all these people are greedy?”

 “Well, these people are obviously! But given the right people we can have them working for a song!”

 “Where are you going to find these people? The next generation will have been brought up thinking medical people are all money grubbing evildoers, out to scam the sick. Why would they even consider entering the field?”

 “My dear man,” he replied. “We don’t need to worry about the next generation.”

 “We don’t?” I said, incredulously.

 “Not at all—we only have to make it to 2012.”

 ”What, are you talking about the Mayan prediction about the end of the world?”

 “What? No not at all. I’m talking about the next election. Anyway, what’s that you’ve been reading?”

 “A book on homeopathic cures for common ailments—it looks like it might come in handy.”

 All characters in this story are fictional and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental…and disturbing.

Incidently, I submitted the above story to the Scranton Times/Tribuine, and got the following response: ”