What the heck happened on Tuesday?

A nugget from my friends at Statcounter.com:

On Tuesday, I got 70 page views, a high for the week. It appeared to have something to do with Don Draper quotes, which I can't really take any credit for. Those are just picked from unlikelywords.com, who had the patience to collect them all.

Oh well, traffic is traffic I suppose.

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According to former radio and TV host and current podcasting titan Adam Carolla, ESPN has issued an edict that none of its employees (namely, his pals Bill Simmons and Dave Damechek) may henceforth appear on his very highly rated podcast. Carolla unleashed a colorful, profane rant about this decision on his podcast, to the effect that ESPN is making a grave mistake here.

Carolla is a colorful personality, with a standup's wit and timing, but is also profane and almost scatological at times. Like a lot of other hosts, he is more or less a Howard Stern clone-and if you asked him, he would probably admit as much.

Carolla's point was that, even if ESPN (or Disney) did recieve complaints about Simmons and Damechek appearing on his show, which seems dubious, so what? The proper response for ESPN would be to simply say, "What Bill Simmons does on his own time, as long as it is legal, is simply none of ESPN's business or concern." Carolla's audience is much, much larger than either Simmons' or Damechek's, and they are largely the same demographic-as Carolla puts it, white alcoholic men with gambling problems. Every time a listener downloads an ESPN podcast, ESPN makes money, because it can sell advertisements on it. Anything ESPN can do to increase listeners is good for ESPN-and if even 0.1% of Carolla's audience samples Simmons or Damechek because of their appearance with Carolla, ESPN wins.

Does ESPN have a responsibility to make sure its product is family friendly? Surely. But does anyone seriously believe ESPN faces a boycott threat? If a group of moralistic bluenoses somewhere wants to try to bring down ESPN because of ESPN personalities appearing on a non ESPN property, well, as Spongebob Squarepants once said, Good Luck With That.

It makes an interesting parallel to the Glenn Beck affair. Apparently, organized online campaigns have convinced some advertisers to pull their spots from Beck's program. The reason why he is still on the air is simply the fact that Fox News still sees it as a win for them-as long as the dollars keep rolling in, Beck will stay on the air. When they don't, he won't.

I forget where I saw it, but I saw a reference somewhere to an interview with Rupert Murdoch, the publishing titan and majordomo of Fox News, where he explained his financial support for Hillary Clinton during the 2008 primaries simply-he is a broadcaster, and he goes where the money leads him. He may have private views that are conservative, but in terms of a corporate philosophy, Fox News is the way it is because it makes financial sense for them to be that way. Similarly, at the time he was supporting Clinton, it made sense for him to do so-not so much because he liked Clinton's policies, but because it makes sense for the Fox empire to have friends within a potential presidential administration.

I'm not sure how I ended up here, but since I'm here-corporations (and unions, and other pressure groups) having such an outsized voice in our political system is the roots of the poisoned tree that creates so much of the dysfunction we have in our political system.

But there isn't any way to limit their impact without frankly violating the Constitution-the Supreme Court has said that in politics, money is speech, and Congress cannot limit speech.

If I keel over because of an aneurysm, circles of thought like this will be the reason why.

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Also, aneurysm is a really hard word to spell.