Hasta La Creative!

The Senate has been holding hearings on privacy and online advertising. This begs a question: What do these political types have to hide, anyway? I decided to find out by Googling, because I can’t bring myself to search using MSN or Yahoo! until they do the deal. Do the damn deal, already! Googling Sen. Byron Dorgan, FTC consumer protection chief Lydia Parnes and other key players yielded eerily similar results: their Web pages, speeches and appearances on Fox News. OK, in each case I only looked at the first page of results. Well, the top half of the first page. Like all good Americans, I’m pretty darn lazy. My point: These Beltway bozos are obsessed with controlling people’s online profiles because they’re afraid we’ll all learn how God-awful boring their own lives really are. Being stalked across the Web by marketers is probably more excitement than they can handle. Frankly, I’d feel lonely if Denny’s messages didn’t pop onto my screen every now and then. They can serve me ads any time; just not their food.

—Posted by David Gianatasio