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Random commentary and senseless acts of blogging.
The first Republican president once said, "While the people retain their virtue and their vigilance, no administration by any extreme of wickedness or folly can seriously injure the government in the short space of four years." If Mr. Lincoln could see what's happened in these last three-and-a-half years, he might hedge a little on that statement. Blog critics Gryffindor House Slytherin House Ravenclaw House House Elves Beth Jacob Prisoners of Azkaban Muggles
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Friday, December 12, 2003
A Mysterious Ailment This Matthew Yglesias item misses some fairly obvious points about offshoring call centers. It is simply ridiculous to assert, as Matthew seems to, that racism is the only reason a customer might prefer to deal with American call centers. Millions of people prefer for perfectly good reasons to patronize companies that provide American jobs. As Matthew's own article shows, the offshoring companies understand this and go to great lengths to deceive customers into believing they are calling an American facility. Quite apart from the perfectly legitimate concern for preserving American jobs, there is an even stronger reason for customers to be nervous about offshoring service calls. In many cases, sensitive financial and medical data is being sent to these facilities, and there is little or no protection for the customer's privacy, since the people and companies handling this data are not bound by American laws.
Combined with Matthew's insistence that Howard Dean has already won the Democratic nomination, I'm getting concerned over whether Matthew's move inside the Beltway is dulling his impressive analytical skills. Is Matthew in danger of becoming an assimilated Beltway pundit, matching quips on MSNBC with Ceci Connolly to see who can more loudly praise how manly George Bush looks in a flight suit?
Whatever has gotten to Matthew also seems to be affecting Michael Kinsley, who for years has been probably the best political columnist and editor in the country. Suddenly, he writes drivel like this:
The only presidential candidate with a truly coherent position on President Bush's Iraq policy is President Bush. He supported it before the war started, he supports it now and he thinks or pretends to think it's working well. You remember Bush's clear and coherent position on the war. We had to invade Iraq to Since I believe Kinsley is still living in Redmond, my earlier theory that something in the DC water was killing Matthew's brain cells probably won't work. Perhaps the only sure way to solve this mysterious epidemic of silly punditry is to bring in the world's leading specialist on mental ailments of Democrats, the great Dr Charles Krauthammer. |
