Why Does This Smell Like A Hoax To Me?

Did you hear the one about the guy who recorded his telephone conversation with a distraught cable provider representative who pleaded with him to keep his business?

I saw it on the internet, so it must be true!

I’ve been on the phone with cable, phone, internet, credit card, and myriad other companies and I can assure you that no telephone operator has ever held me on the line for twenty minutes. Ever! It’s a waste of their time. …and yes, you do have to return their equipment in person. It’s stupid, but thems the rules.

PLUS…  Those conversations are “recorded for quality assurances”.

 

Other things about this call bother me…

• Block strings this guy along rather than finding ways to end the call. After three minutes, any normal person would have asked for a supervisor.
• The representative is emotional and stumbles through the conversation. No representative I’ve ever talked with was that emotionally invested in our conversation.
• Why is he recording this in the first place? – Sorry, I don’t buy the “I started recording after ten minutes” story.
  

UPDATE: Since writing this story, Comcast announced an apology to Ryan Block, who claims to be an AOL VP,  for the representative’s aggressiveness. There’s no further information available about the fate of the operator. Apparently, Comcast isn’t contesting the validity of the call. I imagine it would be a public relations nightmare to do so.

The bottom line is that I still don’t have enough information to remove doubt. Even if the call is real, the fact remains that Block used the representative for his own private game which, to me, puts as much of the responsibility on him. I’m not defending Comcast. They and Verizon have all but created a monopoly in the market. Sure, there’s TWC and a few other small companies. But the biggest share is Comcast and Verizon.

In the big scheme of things, this is just light entertainment for me.

What do you guys think? Is that call real? Fake?

Do you even care?

George Takei: A defeat for DOMA — and the end of ‘ick’

by George Takei (Thursday June 27) Washington Post Op-Ed

George Takei, an actor and activist, played Mr. Sulu on “Star Trek” and is the author of “Oh Myyy!: There Goes the Internet.” Follow him on Twitter: @GeorgeTakei.

 

Forty-four years nearly to the day after drag queens stood their ground against a police raid on the Stonewall Inn, sparking rioting in New York City and marking the beginning of America’s gay rights movement, our nation’s highest court at last held that a key section of the Defense of Marriage Act is unconstitutional. Amazingly, since Stonewall, the question of LGBT rights has evolved from whether homosexuals should have any place in our society to whether gay and lesbian couples should be accorded equal marital stature.

Whenever one group discriminates against another — keeping its members out of a club, a public facility or an institution — it often boils down to a visceral, negative response to something unfamiliar. I call this the “ick.” Indeed, the “ick” is often at the base of the politics of exclusion. Just this March, for example, a young woman at an anti-same-sex-marriage rally in Washington was asked to write down, in her own words, why she was there. Her answer: “I can’t see myself being with a woman. Eww.”

Frankly, as a gay man, I can’t see myself being with one, either. But it’s usually not gays who write the laws. If this woman were in Congress, her personal discomfort might infect her thinking — and her lawmaking. Gays kissing? Ick.

The Supreme Court may be the ultimate interpreter of the rules, but it is still the court of public opinion that matters. And public opinion has shifted — 51 percent of Americans now favor same-sex marriage, according to a recent Pew Research Center poll, and 42 percent oppose it. Reflecting this slim majority, Wednesday’s 5 to 4 ruling made clear that “ick” is not a proper basis for constitutional jurisprudence. Justice Anthony Kennedy, in his opinion, warned against this specifically, noting that when “determining whether a law is motived by an improper animus . . . ‘[d]iscriminations of an unusual character’ especially require careful consideration.” Kennedy was not prepared to allow the “ick” to remain law, knowing that the result is often embarrassing when judged by history.

For more than 70 years, I’ve watched the “ick” infect American life in a variety of ways and concluded that it’s little more than a function of unfamiliarity. Once upon a time, you never saw two men kissing — for that, you’d have to visit an adult video store.

Even I was taken aback the first time I saw two men being affectionate in public. The “ick” runs deep, instilling unease even in those for whom an act is natural. When I was a child, I knew that my sexuality was not something I could reveal to others. Later, as a young actor, I knew I could not be open about it without serious consequences for my career. It wasn’t until 2005 — when I was in my late 60s — that I came out.

read more at The Washington Post

The Proposition: An Open Letter to Mainers

The Proposition: An Open Letter to Mainers.

This well though out plea to Mainers applies to the rest of us as well. It’s a calm rational perspective at a moment in our history when calm and cool are desperately needed.

It’s worth the read.