Zuckerberg: A View From A Distance: Part 0

Congress, having discharged less pressing duties like managing a budget and indexing their navel lint, have developed an interest in Facebook. It was about time. Not that Zuckerberg’s testimony (not under oath of course) matters at all. I just mean that it’s the proper cyclic time for a good old fashion publicly pointless Congressional bitchfest and media circle jerk.

(Also the following urgent detailed information has been teleported into the future from the media in 2017. “Russia, Russia, Russia! This time we’ve got him for sure!” We now return to your regularly scheduled broadcast.)

I could reflect on the super urgent breaking news that Facebook is a snitch factory and act astounded like the hyperventilating lemmings in the media; but Curmudgeons don’t roll that way. Instead I’m going to put it in a greater context.

You can set your calendar by it. Congress periodically realizes they’re less popular than genital herpes. As a distraction they carefully scour the zeitgeist for something even more unpopular than themselves and use it as a human strawman. They pointlessly question one or more poor bastards about an effrontery du jour. This generates a handful of gotcha’ slogans; ideally ones with an 8th grade vocabulary and short enough for Twitter or a campaign ad.

Then the whole thing fades away because Congress is less a driver of events than a half assed roadblock. The real question is this; why does anybody pay attention?

Is it humanly possible that dumbasses in Congress questioning the droid who runs Facebook is going to teach me anything I don’t already know? If not, why am I listening to human bobbleheads in the media discuss it?

Why? Honestly I don’t know. People pay attention but I can’t see why.

Congressional misdirection is nothing new. For historic reference turn back to my blog in 2010 (that’s six lifetimes in blog years). That summer Congress generated a tsunami of unimportant issues and worked themselves into a righteous lather about it. (Perhaps they had an intuition they were about to get shellacked in the November mid-term elections?)

I vented about Congressional nattering over the important core duty and constitutional issue of baseball. As much as we enjoy hearing noted scholar and baseball pitcher Roger Clemens address our governing body, it seemed an exceptionally stupid orifice into which Congress to stick its snout.

Baseball paled in comparison to the royal shafting our top notch automotive engineers in Congress inflicted on Toyota that same year. I mentioned at the time that Toyota executives Yoshimi Inaba and Akio Toyoda ate shit like champs and Congress had been exceptionally weaselly that year in forcing them to endure punishment. Surprising absolutely nobody, the announcement that Congress’ interest in Toyota’s electronic throttle control was all bullshit came well after the mid-term elections. They insulted and disgraced a good faith trading partner and it was mortifying.

And now it’s Facebook’s turn to get smacked around by an abusive yet childlike Congress. It’s for the public good of course. In the next few posts I’ll handle it point by point until I’ve fully pounded this dead horse into the ground or I get bored.

Also stay tuned because I wrote a poem! That’s right folks, just like the unemployable pierced wonder that serves you a mocha latte at Starbucks, I can let fly my inner English major. There’s a genuine Curmudgeonly six line non-rhyming randomly phrased one beer poem coming up. (One beer means it took less than one beer to write the poem.)

Quality! That’s what you get at Curmudgeon’s blog! Or bullshit. It’s either quality or bullshit, I forget which.