Point Made

There are some things that we love to hate. Sports stars and movie stars, in general, can make normally nice people have strong, irrational feelings. I'll admit I have a strong aversion to Tom Brady and Tom Cruise. Politicians make it their business to cultivate the “We v They” atmosphere around their campaigns. But politicians, sports figures, and movie stars are people. They have press agents and handlers that control the access to them and the image they want to create. That all works well until one of their husbands sneaks out and has an affair with another woman. Or, they decide a threesome with two underage girls is appropriate. In many ways, they can earn our anger and disrespect. But what about brand names? In a recent article in the NY Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/24/technology/24apple.html?hpw columnist) , Miguel Helft writes that success, Apple has now become the bad guy in the technology sector. This is after being the company you loved because they w...

If you are an online reader, like I am, you undoubtedly read the reader comments attached to almost any article, whether it’s the New York Times or a local site like OnMilwaukee.com. What is amazing to me is the stuff the website editors allow to be published under their banner. I guess it’s because I’m of a generation that remembers the Letter to the Editor section of the paper where often well-written and thoughtful arguments about the day's issues were printed. I’m not saying from time to time, the editor wouldn’t throw out a weird response to an issue. You vacillated between thinking his junior high school kid took over the job of vetting the letters for a day, maybe the editor the letter would promote circulation. The publication policy of the “Comment” section of today’s press varies. Most of them state that your comments will be looked over before publication. Often you read the comments posted, and you wonder what you’d have to write before they wouldn’t pub...