This expression of hubristic cluelessness comes from comes from the Media Decoder blog in today's New York Times. It's a discussion of the actions groups like Anonymous are taking to oppose SOPA, and it comes from a person described as "a 25-year-old aide for the House Judiciary Committee" whose photograph was superimposed onto pornography by a group akin to Anonymous. If this doesn't show a greater problem with Congress than we imagined, I don 't know what it does.
Okay. This starts out as a post about SOPA/PIPA. We know who supports it -- the congresscritters who receive their financial support from Hollywood and the publishing companies -- and we were surprised last night when 7 PIPA co-sponsors, including 6 Republicans from, well, states that are known for downloading porn (my apologies, Senator Grassley) asked Harry Reid to cancel the vote scheduled for January 24. We know that Reddit.com and mozilla.com will go dark (I can't find the link and Google is pretending it can't either), among other sites, and it will be fun to watch in a strange way.
But really. Hire their own lobbyists. I can't even imagine what prompted that from a Congressional aide, and given the coalition that's backing SOPA/PIPA, I can't even be sure what party the aide is attached to, although it's probably a decent bet he or she is attached to the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Lamar Smith (R-Texas). Oblivious of any of the lessons #Occupy tried to teach us, the aid assumes that the opponents have to be among the 1% by thinking the opponents can mount their own lobbying effort.
THEY CAN'T, DOOFUS.
Consider this an open thread to complain about the cluelessness and stupidity of Congress, especially the complete disconnect between what the country needs Congress to do and what Congress is doing.
UPDATE: According to Jeff Jarvis at Huffington Post, we became our own lobbyists as a result of our activity on Tuesday and Wednesday, and our lobbying efforts worked! Now, if we can link this activity to #Occupy by the summer, we might have amazing results.