Earlier this morning I was clicking around HuffPo and I saw that they had a diary by Frank Luntz. I know, I should have known better, and I did, but the title, "Why Moms Are Mad", piqued my interest, and against my better judgment I clicked through. Mistake! What followed was an exercise in shameless commercialism and heavy-handed comment censorship that the good people at HuffPo should want to exorcise from their site post haste.
Luntz's post starts, reasonably enough, with this:
These are tough times for America's parents. Many of them are out of work, others are working more hours for less money, and a majority of them fear that their current financial hardship will last years, not months.
Agreed. Maybe he is going to advocate for more jobs? Better wages? More progressive taxation? (Stop laughing). He goes on:
Now add to that the stress and strain of raising a family and you can easily understand why so many Americans are anxious, annoyed and angry about their lives today. But what is most distressing to me, a pollster, is the loss of confidence in the future and the fear among parents that their children will not achieve the same quality of life that they or their parents achieved. Only 12 percent of parents say they are living in worse conditions than their parents, yet 44 percent believe their children will have it worse than them.
The only thing surprising to me, in that passage, is that only 12% of people believe that they are worse off than in their parents generation, considering that their parents had better wages and job security, lower expenses, and tax policy was fairer, with CEOs making about 16 times more than the average worker rather than hundreds of times more, but otherwise, no surprises.
Luntz then gets into some more specific numbers as to why parents are "worried":
* 78 percent are "concerned about the values and behavior of the children who interact with my child."
* 49 percent say "my life is filled with stress and anxiety."
* 42 percent acknowledge that "my kids are exposed to negative influences in their personal relationships."
OMG! Hold the presses! Parents are worried about their children's friends!
But it gets worse. Parents are frightened by the impact of modern technology on their children, and they feel almost hopeless to protect them. Consider these results:
* A majority (54 percent) believe their kids "are exposed to negative influences on the web, email, and texting."
* A majority (53 percent) conclude that "what I don't know about their daily life could cause them harm."
We've all read stories of predators surfing the web in search of unsuspecting kids to prey upon. More recently, several students have taken their own lives after being "cyber-bullied," and child protection organizations have concluded that "sexting," which doesn't yet qualify as a word according to spell-check, is growing at epidemic proportions among America's youth.
That damn Rock-and-Roll music!
But then the purpose of his post becomes clear:
A number of firms have made a pretty penny offering parents the technology to protect their children from the web. Enter Mousemail.com, the first company that gives parents full control over their children's texting.
Blah blah blah.
It's time for the rest of Silicon Valley and the new tech community to step up to the plate. You've created an incredible world of possibilities for kids and their parents. Now spend just a little more time, effort and resources making that world safe, and a lot of moms won't be quite so angry.
Get it? Just buy Mousemail and all your troubles will vanish and you won't be so angry any more. And Luntz can make his own pretty penny too.
Dr. Frank Luntz is a pollster and communication's advisor to a dozen Fortune 100 companies, an advisory board member for MouseMail.com, and is a regular contributor to Fox News.
No great surprise that someone like Luntz uses the forum given to him to shill a product that he has a personal financial interest in. No surprise that he uses the old "some people think" to do so. The big surprise, to me anyway, is the site that gave him that forum, and that the site will not allow comments that mention Mousemail by name and delete any references to it through their moderated comments policy.
I tried numerous forms of the same essential comment, like this one:
Big surprise, Moms are worried about their kids. Just like their mothers, and their mothers mothers and...
Shorter Frank Luntz - Buy Mousemail! Buy Mousemail! Buy Mousemail! Buy Mousemail!
Shame on you HuffPo for allowing such crass commercialism in the form of a "Moms are worried" post.
No, I didn't swear. I didn't call Luntz the many choice and derogatory names that came to mind. Just what I wrote above. Then, POOF! it was gone.
Next I tried just the middle section. No shame on you. No Moms are always worried. Just the "Shorter Frank Luntz. POOF! Gone as well.
Now I'm wondering what, exactly, I could get past them. I tried "Shorter Luntz - Buy the product that can not be mentioned by name without being deleted by moderator" POOF! Gone!
Next, I used search to go through the five pages of comments, and even though there were a few references to shameless commercialism, Mousemail was mentioned by name only twice - in five pages. And only in all lower case. (Maybe that is how they got it by?).
I finally got one single comment by them when I tagged onto one of the two mentions to ask them how they were able to reference "the product that we dare not name by name", and finally, at last, one of my comments makes it past the police! Hollow victory indeed.
I have had problems with the HuffPo moderation system before, particularly with any comments tagged onto any post about Sarah Palin, but this is a new level of ridiculousness. I have commented there for many years now, and have never had a problem like I've had with their new moderation system and "Badges".
I would do a GBCW on HuffPO - but it would never get past the moderators.