August 29, 2008

Are You Kidding?

Anyone who knows anything about marketing to women is either chuckling or dumbfounded or downright angry at John McCain's pick for vice president.

Can't you just see a bunch of well-intentioned white guys sitting around saying, "Hey, those Hillary women are upset. Their dreams have been shattered. Why don't we put a woman on the ticket and scoop them all up onto our side?"

Nice try.

Earth to well-intentioned white guys: women don't make decisions that way. Women are so much more thoughtful and considerate and painstaking in their buying decisions than men. Women seek information. They dig deep. They want to know more. They want to see more.

Governor Palin may be terrific. But beyond her native state of Alaska, she's an unknown. And women are not going to get to know her and be comfortable with her and vote for McCain based upon her with less than 10 weeks to go before the election. It's simply not going to happen.

If you're for McCain, you've got to be pulling your hair out wondering what the heck were these neanderthals thinking. If you're for Obama, you've got to be deleriously happy. And, if you're into marketing to women, you've got to be stunned that so many people still don't get it.

One More for the Bloggers!

The power of the blogging community is really amazing. In July, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy's majority opinion in a Supreme Court case relating to whether the rape of a child should be a capital offense in the military was based in part on the conclusion that because child rape was a capital offense in only six states, and not under federal law, the death penalty for the crime did not meet the "evolving standards of decency" by which the court judges capital punishment.

In fact, child rape in the military is a capital offense under federal law. And that was pointed out not by any of the government lawyers who most certainly should have known that fact, but instead by a civilian Air Force lawyer Daniel Sullivan on his military law blog.

And now a computer security specialist Mike Walker has revealed on his blog the results of his hacking into Chinese records to discover the true ages of those miniscule Chinese gymnasts.

It's tremendously exciting to see this democratization of journalism and the incredible ingenuity and curiosity of individuals in the pursuit of knowledge and truth.