Marginalizing Perry Eidelbus

I spend a good deal of time reading other blogs, both for my own edification and entertainment. One of the bloggers I read is a young lad named Perry Eidelbus. He focuses capitalism and on debunking economic fallacy - favorite subjects of mine. Anyway, I had a little altercation with him last week that was actually precipitated, of all things, by a debate about American Idol.

First you have to read his post, click here (It's quite short).

Now below is that post's comment thread.

CaptiousNut said...
Correct me if I am wrong, but isn't the voting audited by an independent firm? Wouldn't that debunk the "we don't want three male finalists" conspiracy theories?

Perry, I love your blog, but you are a pure socialist when it comes to American Idol.
9:56 PM, May 18, 2006

Perry Eidelbus said...
I'm not sure who, if anyone, is auditing the results, but I find it meaningless. After all, Arthur Andersen was auditing Enron.

I don't follow that you think I'm a socialist when it comes to AI. I simply point to the voting results as another failure of democracy. After all, look at how many Americans were stupid or otherwise duped in 1992 and then 1996.

In fact, to expand upon Podhoretz's analysis, Paris' departure was like Ross Perot's 1992 candidacy. Though they're different in that one left the competition and the other entered, both involved a split in the vote. Podhoretz made sense to say that with Paris gone, her supporters probably went more for Katherine and Elliot than for Chris.
3:03 AM, May 19, 2006

CaptiousNut said...
Oh my God, you are so off the deep end on this it is scary.

I call you a socialist and you respond by using a socialist ruse du jour.

They use the outlier Enron (one of 17,000 public companies) to blanketly inveigh against capitalism and Wall Street. You use the same analogy to try to discredit auditing.

How about this, 99.9% of public companies are audited and ARE NOT frauds.

Yeah the show was fixed to avoid "three male finalists", but then was it fixed when Chris got voted off too? You can tell by Seacrest's immediate and repetitive comments ("by your votes America"), that Idol was shocked.

Personally, I liked Chris the best. But just because the result isn't to my liking it doesn't mean that the process is unfair or fraudulent. When you start nit-picking McPhee's high notes and cynically questioning both the integrity and implementation of the voting, you sound like a typical socialist unhappy with the price of oil or the market wages of teachers and journalists.

The winner is not for an elite (you or me) to decide.

American Idol is making hundreds of millions this year, do you really think they'd risk the integrity of the show to fine tune the outcome? As far as I can tell, they don't need to.

The only thing I don't like about the voting contest is that you vote "for" people rather than against them. Obviously they get more votes under the current system, but often times I think it is easier to see who should be voted off than who should continue.

Of course I see the flaws in democracy and often rank stupidity of the masses. That's the entire basis of my blog.

8:12 AM, May 19, 2006

Anonymous said...
THE KAT MUST STAY! SHE IS HOT AND THATS ALL THAT MATTERS IN THE MUSIC INDUSTRY. YOU THINK BRITNEY SPEARS CAN SING? WHO CARES - I SAY MORE TATTAS AND LESS WHINING ABOUT CHRIS WHO SOUNDS LIKE EVERY OTHER PSUEDO ROCKER OUT THERE.

LORD BONER HAS SPOKEN...

12:41 PM, May 19, 2006

Perry Eidelbus said...
CN, you need to take a breath and realize the false assumptions from which you've proceeded. If you're going to insult me by claiming something I'm obviously not, let alone saying I've gone off the deep end, then your comments will no longer be welcome. I don't come over to your blog and start acting like a horse's ass, do I? So really, dawg, chill.

I cannot help but wonder how convoluted your definition of "socialist" is. You accuse me of being one, then compare me to those who want regulation of prices and wages? You of all people should know that's a pile of shit, so knock it off. Or do you resort to cries of "Socialist!" the way others throw around "Nazi"?

You claim to know about the dangers of pure democracy, yet you cannot see that that's my major complaint. Am I a "socialist" because of that? No more than the Founding Fathers were "socialist" for distrusting what they called "mobocracy." Idol voters apparently chose Katherine over Chris, but a plurality of the American people chose Bill Clinton. Twice. These people are presumably the same electorate who continually elect 534 members of Congress who effectively lay waste to our country. (I say 534, but if anyone else is like Ron Paul, let me know and I'll adjust accordingly.)

I never said an elite should select the winners, so you can stop putting words into my mouth, thank you very much. However, the last two weeks showed that someone can turn in a lesser performance and be selected over a better competitor. Even Katherine, and you could see this from her body language and facial expressions, expected to get booted. The process definitely needs some tweaking.

What you call "nit-picking" is factual, substantial criticism from someone who knows what good vocals are. It's not even a matter of Katherine's high notes. There are plenty notes that should be within her range that she nonetheless screeches. There's no polish or real power, not if she has to do that. She sang "Someone to Watch Over Me" well, I suppose, but that's the only decent performance I ever heard from her.

Now, I never even said there's cheating. I simply said that that accuser's point was well taken. You point out that 99.9% of companies are not frauds, but most companies aren't of such prominence. Ever hear of "21" and its scandal? Remember the allegations some years ago, which were quietly swept under the rug, of Jeopardy!'s anti-male favoritism? I used to enjoy the show until Trebek got so obvious.

I've been checking Technorati since last week, and some people, though it's a "friend of a friend" thing, say that they called in to vote for Chris, only to be thanked for voting for someone else. I wouldn't be surprised at a glitch like this, or that a standard audit wouldn't catch it.

Would AI's producers risk distorting the outcome? At first I thought that the show would lose a lot of viewers, but the American people do have a short collective memory. This will be largely forgotten by next season. I don't see that there was much to lose, if there really was something fishy.

Now what if the auditors did catch a huge blunder in the voting system, or fraud? That would finish the show. Have you already forgotten my blog entry where someone pointed out that even Ernst & Young is so desperate for business that it will reverse its findings and suddenly assert its client's lies?

Maybe it's my fault for treating the show like a singing competition, which a reasonable person would think it purports to be. Boner is right. The show is all about overall appeal, and Kat sells better than Chris. Kellie worked for a while, but I guess she didn't want to show much skin.

Boner is completely wrong about Chris' style, though. His "Have You Ever Really Loved a Woman" was great. His "A Little Less Conversation" was also great, true to Elvis' style. He's not just another rocker.5:05 PM, May 19, 2006

New comments have been disabled for this post by a blog administrator.





Devil's Advocate: Wow C-Nut, he called you a "horse's ass" and slapped you good there...

Did he now? I was somewhat taken aback by the vitriol of his response. But mostly, my wife and I had a good laugh at his apoplectic fit. Calling him a "socialist" really struck a nerve right through his paper-thin skin. It wasn't until later on that I realized he closed the comment section.

Could he be any more childish? He was apparently afraid of my response (or anyone else's for that matter). I had to copy and paste the comment thread because he'd probably delete them all if I just linked to it.

Well, not one who's easily muzzled, he got my response anyway via email. Here it is below:

Perry,

First of all, I do use the term "socialist" quite liberally. For instance, I have complained that the illegal defense rule in the NBA is a socialist attempt at regulating play.

I don't think you can equate excessive use of "socialist" with with excessive use of "Nazi" for the simple fact that we don't really have Nazi's ruining our country but we certainly have socialists throughout the power structure of the country. I am sure we agree on that!

Anyway, I started off by calling you a socialist, as a joke. Anyone who looks at your blog for a millisecond knows that you are capitalism incarnate. Furthermore, even from the paucity of comments I have posted, you should have an inkling that I generally don't act like "a horse's ass" and have a pretty good understanding of economics and its terms.

Sarcasm doesn't transmit well over the internet. Yeah, I could have characterized you as a "whiner" or even a "sophist" because at root, I found your reasoning uncompelling. I even could have appended "sarcasm" parenthetically as I have done often times.

Sure it's a stretch to liken anyone who complains about outcomes to a socialist, but it's no more a stretch than using a popularity contest decided by the multiple votes of 9 year old girls as a vehicle to illustrate the failings of democracy.

It's all theoretical. It's all good. And it's all innocuous.

Yeah, I ripped you with that Enron analogy. But that is what I do, remember "captious" - my name is its own disclamer. If you had said 2+2=4, but had shoddy reasoning I would have pointed that out as well.

There were several ways you could have responded to me: ignore my comment, delete my comment, laugh it off, or engage in further argument. And I am quite disappointed in the tack you chose. Your last comment didn't need the invective-ridden first two paragraphs to make its point. I have some pretty thick skin so that doesn't bother me at all. For years I stood in a trading pit all day, fighting with the biggest scumbags around.

As I said in my first comment, I am a fan of yours. But quite frankly, you overreacted. I guess you thought my comments were making you look bad or something. They weren't - at least not nearly in the degree that you discerned.

However, your response, replete with profanity, a toothless threat, and the closing of comments, doesn't behoove you one bit.

If I didn't care what you thought, I would neither read your blog, comment on it, or spend my time with this clarifying email.

If you still think I am crazy, then I would encourage you to have some of your friends/family read your original post and our dialogue (including of course this email) and render their opinions.



Now I consider that email I sent to be just what I said, clarifying and mostly on the conciliatory side. Perry had another chance to show some maturity. Sadly he dropped the ball yet again.

Here was his response:

I deleted your message without reading

I'm really not in the mood for arguing, all right? Especially with someone who improperly uses "socialist." to label those with whom he disagrees.

Thanks.

Now I don't think there is a person with a 3-digit IQ that believes he didn't read my email. And then he padded that transparent lie with his remark about my usage of "socialist". Really Perry, is that supposed to somehow incontrovertibly prove that you didn't read my email that clearly explains my liberal usage of the term?

Further proof is Perry saying that he doesn't want to "argue". How does he know my email response was argumentative if he didn't read it? It could have been an apology or a simple "bleep you".

However, he was partially honest when he said, "I'm not really in the mood for arguing..." I can't really blame him for that. After all, he spent all day Friday writing his last comment and the best he could come up with was "horse's ass" and "pile of sh*t".

Now I have read quite a bit of his blog and I have learned that Perry styles himself quite proudly as a Christian. A simple google of "Christian" on his blog currently yields 3 pages of search results.

I am not quite sure how he can reconcile lying, cursing, and "take my ball and go home" tantrums with his conspicuous moral superiority.

Anyway, I had to Marginalize Perry because as I said earlier, I don't like to be muzzled AND because he needed to be taught a lesson. This is just the type of benevolent service I am adept at providing.

Everyone should be starkly aware that any email they send or comment they post on a blog may likely linger on the web forever. Who knows how long this post of mine will be on web? Or how high in the search results it will be for "Perry Eidelbus"? Perhaps his grandkids will one day find it.



By definition, my wife is a smart cookie. She wanted to offer her more succinct analysis of this episode:

C-Nut's Wife: Perry is just plain nuts and probably has a man-crush on Chris Daughtry.

Perhaps.

Perry's blog is well-worth reading - he is great at monologue but obviously needs some work on dialogue.

UPDATE - Perry has blocked my direct links to his posts. So to get to his blog from here, one must right-click on my links, copy the shortcut, and paste into another browser tab or window. For more on this childish tactic of his - click here.