Things I Learned at Congressman Berman’s Town Meeting (The SOPA dude)
Last night I went to the Community Town Meeting with Congressman Howard Berman. Congressman Berman is the co-sponsor of the Stop Online Piracy Act. These are my observations of the night.
1. Old white people love community meetings. If you ever wonder why minorities’s and the youth’s issues get left out of the political process, one quick glance at that audience pretty much summed it up.
2. Congressman Berman, a Democrat, isn’t an idiot. Vilify the guy all you want, but it was clear last night that he doesn’t think the internet is just a series of tubes. This is a case of a man that’s protecting his constituency. His constituency (the movie industry and the people of Sherman Oaks that work in the industry) wants someone to stop overseas pirating, which was his continual talking point whenever SOPA was mentioned. He won the crowd over when he compared it to old manufacturing jobs that left Southern California. The old crowd was actually old enough to remember that. He’s smart and was able to deflect and reshape the question to where he wanted it to be. We just need to be smarter than him.
3. If you get a chance to ask a question in the audience, make it a good one that actually challenges the parts of SOPA that so many people are fighting for. I’m directing this to the guy that rambled on about why SOPA is bad because, “sites like Spotify let him discover new music.” Congressman Berman explained he wasn’t too familiar with Spotify, but that he assumed it was like Netflix and Hulu in that they pay the content provider for their works while overseas sites like Pirate Bay make their money advertising while stealing other people’s work. Ask a pointless question and guys like Berman will hit them out of the geriatric park.
4. Hippies will always piss me off*. This is directed at the weird stoner looking dude who stood in the back just shouting out random things whenever he felt like it. He also thought it was appropriate to get mad at the nice old lady who asked him to be quiet while someone else was talking, which prompted him to leave the event early and probably write “this was bullshit” on the internet somewhere.
5. It’s going to be a hard battle to defeat SOPA. That crowd, (Berman’s voters) ate up his argument that the bill is just trying to stop overseas sites from stealing. At one point a retired grip explained how his pension was tied to this industry and, turning to the hippie corner, said, “if you want to steal from Sony, go to Wallmart and steal a TV.” That got the biggest reaction of the night. I think Berman is sold on it. The battle will need to be won with other congressmen.
6. Political girls in pant suits will always give me a boner. Butts look so good in pant suits.
*I use the term Hippie for lack of a better word. Is there a new term for a sorta dirty college educated guy that thinks everything is, “bullshit man. It’s all bullshit man. Everything. Like, everything man”?
