SOPA Debate… Or High School?

Politics

from the you-tell-us dept

James Temple, for the SF Chronicle, has finally found the perfect analogy for what the SOPA debate is like: your everyday high school teen drama “replete with name calling and a stubborn refusal to let the nerds talk.” He covers, of course, the angry fight between Reps. King and Jackson-Lee over whether each other was boring or offensive:

Late last week, Reps. Steve King, R-Iowa, Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, and their colleagues managed to grind the session to a halt as they exchanged taunts that boiled down to: You’re boring. Yeah, well, you’re offensive! Nu uh, you’re out of order!

But, of course, the bigger deal is the refusal to hear from the actual experts — which Congress repeatedly referred to as “the nerds.” Temple extends the analogy even further, to figure out why Congress is so quick to take Hollywood’s side on this bill, despite the concern of actual experts, and the widespread outcry among the public:

Here, we come back to our tween picking out that smart phone. In the case of Congress, the media industry seems to be playing the dual roles of influential friend and paying parent. And they’re willing to splurge on that shiny new iPhone 4S while the tech industry is only coughing up enough for last year’s Android.

When it’s difficult to distinguish the details between high school spats and Congress, it seems like something pretty serious is wrong.

Filed Under: congress, copyright, sopa