Attendance at BeerTrek, pictured: Jeff's hands, Sara (doing the same thing as Jeff is with his hands, weirdly enough), Davia, Trevor, Jason, Emily P, and of course Steph W. Not pictured: Ben, Emily G, Josh (actually he's back there in the kitchen), Me.
Before BeerTrek I had my first ever oral arguments in a real courtroom. It was for Legal Writing and Research, of course, and I was giving the arguments to 2Ls, but it was still a very neat experience. The judges were kind, as well. I spent most of my argument trying to win with math (based on time, walking speed, and the location my client was stopped by the police) and the judges seemed to like that. I hadn't prepared very well so my opening statement was shaky, but they said I did the best at never giving any ground and refusing to be boxed in by hypotheticals, so I felt good about that.
This morning I went to the Federal Maritime Commission for an interview. If I get a position there, I would be doing alternative dispute resolution dealing with international freight-by-sea... which is actually a lot more interesting and exciting than I can make it sound. Regardless, it's my second interview for a position in DC, and I would really like to be in DC, so that's a win. Roommate Ben was awesome and got a job with the New Jersey DA's office, but also went in to the FMC today for an interview for an externship for this semester or the next one. There is a small chance (if my interview went well- I'm not sure if it did or not...) that we could be working together, which would be awesome. To celebrate our joint interviews, we had Bojangles for lunch. I can't believe that, just a few months ago, Ben had never experienced Bojangles. I am honored to have fixed that for him.
Tomorrow morning I am off for NYC with some of my favorite people (I'm sure their identities would be a huge shock). I'll be sure to take lots of blurry cameraphone pictures, as is the tradition. Then by Monday I'll be at the beach, relaxing and rewriting my brief and trying to teach myself property law.
Speaking of Property, our professor gave us an assignment over the break. Within the assignment she named all of the stakeholders after characters from TV shows. Problem two lists Malcolm Reynolds conveying property to Zoe Washburne and, given a certain condition, then to Badger. Obviously my professor is the best kind of nerd. This only compounds the great love I felt for her after, in the last class, she gave out a hypothetical featuring "Spencer Hastings," to which a student said "well, he would have to (insert legal solution here)" to which the professor responded "yes, but for the record, Spencer is a girl.... you guys don't watch Pretty Little Liars?" Other references have included Alias and 24. I thought to myself- if I were a teacher, this is exactly the kind of thing I would do. Then I remembered that I was and I did. But I didn't keep a blog so I can't remember anything I did. At least I'll always have this.
Finally to the title of my post. You may have seen lately some news about a Georgetown Law student. She was invited to testify in front of congress about the issue of birth control being provided in insurance plans by non-church religious affiliated institutions. Then she was uninvited. Then she was invited to testify again by representatives who were pissed off about her being uninvited to the first panel (and about the first panel being made up entirely of men). She gave a civil and reasonable argument in favor of allowing birth control to be a part of a very complicated bill that deals with a very complicated set of issues that I'm not going to get into. Both sides, of course, have created a narrative which makes the answer seem entirely obvious based on which initial framing of the elements you choose to believe. That is good marketing. If I were to try and lay out the arguments on both sides it would take me many hours. (Ultimately it's the balancing test of allowing someone to participate in ritualistic human sacrifices due to their religious beliefs vs forcing a kosher deli to sell pork- obviously neither is desirable.)
Then a certain radio talk show host (you probably know who) got her name wrong, called her a Georgetown co-ed (not true- law student), called her a slut and a prostitute, offered to buy her all the aspirin she wanted (as contraception- you know, to put between her knees), and paraphrased all of her comments as suggesting that students at Georgetown were having so much sex and they wanted taxpayers to pay them for it.
His account basically gets it right, except for how he ignores her entire testimony, a large part of which had to do with her friend losing an ovary because she couldn't get the birth control she needed to control a medical condition. Many women that I know, in fact, have non-sexually related medical conditions which can be improved or maintained only by birth control- so this isn't a rare phenomenon. I'm not going to argue the facts, though- many others have already done so. The outrage over his words and the solidarity of students and faculty alike on the law campus has been pretty high. What no one is talking about, though, is the possibility that we're all just feeding the troll.
This radio host is certainly intelligent enough to understand how birth control works, and yet he is willfully misrepresenting the mechanics of it to make a hyperbolic point. He certainly is intelligent enough to have read the actual testimony, and yet he repeatedly ignores almost every point made. He is certainly intelligent enough to make a well-reasoned argument against this student relying, perhaps, on concepts of religious freedom or on medical statistics.... but he does not. He is certainly intelligent enough to know that calling someone a slut and a prostitute and asking for videos of her having sex (since he would be paying for the birth control- get it?), even in a joking way, was going to bring down a mountain of anger on him.
And that is exactly what he wants, because he is a troll. What does not destroy the troll will only make him stronger. Unless the outrage over this gets him forcibly removed from his show (which it will not) then, in my opinion, everyone expressing outrage is just doing exactly what he wants. He hasn't been in the news in a while, he needed something to rev up his base (you market to your super-users, because they account for 90% of your revenues anyway), and this is how he decided to do it. Trolls are of the same mindset as the admen who believe that all publicity, even bad, is good. It's a calculated risk, yes, but one I think he is going to win.
His base, in fact, will only grow stronger. There are several psychological principles at play (definitions stolen from wikipedia, in turn stolen from somewhere else):
- The Backfire Effect- when people react to negative evidence by strengthening their beliefs.
- Confirmation Bias- the tendency to search for or interpret information that confirms one's preconceptions.
- Hostile Media Effect- the tendency to see a media report as being biased due to one's own strong partisan views.
- Subjective Validation- the perception that something is true if a subject's belief demands it to be true.
This is just a prediction, of course. I may be wrong. But here's the thing- he has to know that doubling down on his words, as he is currently doing, is going to turn everyone who isn't of his extreme conservative beliefs against him and (as a halo effect bias) towards the liberal side of this entire issue. Perhaps it is because he doesn't care about the issue... he cares about his brand... and in order to help his brand he is willing to sacrifice his own side as collateral damage.
So yes, he lowered the level of civil discourse. Yes, his remarks were purposefully mean-spirited and asinine. Yes, he is a total jerk.
But...
Calling on congressmen to denounce him, calling on his sponsors to remove their ads from his program, wishing his swift and painful death on Facebook, etc.... will probably see some effect in the short term, but in the long term will only serve to strengthen his base and increase his revenues.
We think that the solution is to engage the troll so as to demonstrate to the people listening to him that he is wrong. This makes intuitive sense, but it isn't how his listeners, in all likelihood, are going to respond. It is irrational, yes, but predictably so.
An easy narrative on either side sounds nice and gives one the comfort of being right. The troll, by removing the issue from its facts, makes the narrative (again, on both sides) that much easier. I don't know how to best go about not feeding trolls, but I felt the need to type down my own thoughts simply because I hadn't heard anyone yet suggest the possibility that in our outrage over the troll we are only making him grow stronger...
Jealous of your spring break plans... and your BeerTrek. And I really, really miss Twilight Zone Tuesday.
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