Word: knowingly
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Ricky Gervais must know he's cute. Cute like the grinning kid in the back row of a sixth-grade classroom, smiling at the teacher as he mutters a rude observation about how she looks from behind. He's cartoon-animal round and ingratiatingly impish. Yet Gervais, in films and on TV, keeps harping on his diminutive stature and lack of a heroic jawline. He might almost be begging for the viewer to reply, "No, you're not at all tremendously unattractive. The word for you, Ricky, would be cute...
...much for the internet as a marketplace of ideas. As Cass Sunstein sees it, the Web is largely an unregulated playground for rumormongers who understand that a titillating lie often outpaces a mundane or complicated truth--especially if such gossip reinforces what we think we already know. Which explains why some Americans still believe Barack Obama is Muslim (he's not) or that Sarah Palin thinks the continent of Africa is one country (she doesn't). As for those who believe more rumors will produce more skeptics, Sunstein warns, Don't underestimate the natural human tendency to believe what...
...opinion shifted after New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg banned smoking in bars. At the time, I believed having a scotch in one hand and a butt in the other wasn't just essential to the pursuit of happiness but a necessary means for Jersey women to let people know that they weren't going home alone. I was outraged by Bloomberg's hubris. Was he also going to outlaw short skirts, hair spray and singing along to "Livin' on a Prayer"? (See what dictators do after they are deposed...
...Congress and the major television networks whenever he wants them. Instead of ignoring people's objections until they get socialized medicine and realize they like it, as England's leaders did, Obama is worried about seducing Olympia Snowe so he can say his health bill is bipartisan. Do you know how long it takes to charm people from Maine? They're uptight white people coated with a hard exterior made from other uptight white people. While Obama negotiates on climate change, the Chinese government has forced China's entire tech industry to focus on energy efficiency, and soon...
...haircuts. But also because instead of an actual dictator, I think what we need is to recognize that social mores require government nudges like the ones Bloomberg creates and Obama adviser Cass Sunstein advocates. We live in a connected age in which our liberties bump against one another. I know this is all easy to say since I'm not a smoker, a soda drinker or a columnist whom politicians listen to. But in an age of overwhelming choice, some dictatorial direction would help. Plus, then Obama wouldn't have to be on TV so much...