MAIN EVENT. A Good Place to Get Started --- a.k.a "Table of Contents"
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MAIN EVENT. A Good Place to Get Started --- a.k.a "Table of Contents" |
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Helping Create the NEXT GENERATION of the Web: GENERATOR 21: The World's Magazine
American DreamsAmerica's Greatest Living Inventor Tells Allby Robin MillerG21 Irregular
Al Gore claimed he invented the Internet. In (tongue-in-cheek) retaliation, Trent Lott claimed he invented the paperclip. These guys are amateurs! I'm a real inventor. I know this because I took the sign-up quiz at Electric Minds and it said so.
But none of you seem to think of me as an inventor in the same class as Al Gore or Trent Lott. It's time for me to set the record straight. While I'm at least as humble as Bill Gates (at least, I try to be), I am a little rankled when I see these losers getting all kinds of kudos while I languish in obscurity.
You see, I am the person who invented the most civilization-changing concept of twentieth century America: The large-scale political campaign contribution.
When I was a child, people who wanted to run for office relied on volunteers to hand out brochures and host little get-togethers where the candidates could meet voters. Once those candidates got into office, they rewarded people who had worked for them with government jobs and contracts, and often with a little "wink-wink" at small-time illegal activities engaged in by their supporters.
Sometimes, back in the old days, a politician would do an extra favor for a friend in return for a small sum of cash. If you needed a building permit, but didn't want to wait six weeks for it, you slipped five or six $20 bills into the pocket of your City Councilman, and got the damn thing the next day.
But I realized that, in a country where labor was in short supply, this retail approach to politics couldn't go on, so I developed a plan to bring politics into the modern world.
My first move was to invent the computer-generated, direct-mail campaign solicitation letter.This eliminated candidates' dependence on hordes of volunteers to get word of their existence out to voters.
My second move was to get rid of the stupid idea that radio and TV stations should give free air time to political candidates just because the airwaves were owned by the public. As part of this plan, I arranged to have the public airwaves auctioned off so that they were no longer public property at all. (I must, however, give Rupert Murdoch credit for this part of the plan.)
My third move was to lobby, successfully, for laws that outlawed traditional politics entirely.
That's right! I made it illegal for politicians to take cash from constituents and do favors for them in return. Suddenly, anyone who wanted to get into (and stay in) office was forced to turn only to big companies and rich individuals for help.
Some of the old-line pols resisted this move. They were happy in the warm comfort of neighborhood political clubs and living rooms, where they could interact one-on-one with voters and learn their needs and come up with solutions to their problems. But those oldsters either adapted to the new way or were replaced by younger candidates who understood that a good hairdresser and a competent TV producer -- paid for by rich contributors -- were worth more in campaign terms than 1000 old-fashioned door-to-door visits to meet potential voters.
Look at the efficiencies my methods have brought! Only a generation ago, 80% of all registered voters were forced to go to the polls in order to make our electoral system work. Now we manage to hold perfectly valid, legal elections with less than 40% of the electorate turning out.
By targeting rich individual and high-end corporate contributors, instead of holding "beef and beer" $20 fundraisers, politicians have increased their hourly money-generating capability at least ten-fold. Talk about an increase in productivity!
The time saved by cutting hour-long political speeches down to 30 second sound bites has given TV stations billions in extra revenue from playing endless "The Simpsons" reruns in place of boring, public service "Meet the Candidates" and "What's Happening in Government" shows.
The Internet? I spit upon it. Paper clips? Staples have made them obsolete -- and take less metal to make. No, the recent wild surge in the U.S. economy was created almost entirely by my enlightened approach to politics, and the money and time it has freed up for other, more important purposes.
Not that I expect all the credit for this. But the next time you need a $10,000 speaker for a corporate function, I am available -- and I'm more fun than Al Gore and Trent Lott put together, even though I don't own a blow-drier or a designer suit.  GET INTO A G21 FRAME OF MIND. THE MAIN EVENT |
BACKGROUNDS BY JEFFREY ZELDMAN PRESENTS!
On the surface, this whole system seemed to work out just fine. You needed the politician and he needed you. If he did you a favor, on election day you'd drive housebound voters to the polling place. If you hosted a neighborhood political meeting for him, later he'd make sure your deadbeat nephew got a job sitting by a door aand looking important down at City Hall.