Who Ya Got, Wilbon or Kornheiser? Google says: Wilbon!

First, the important stuff, for some reason Google adwords values Michael Wilbon more than Tony Kornheiser. And Google LOVES Woody Paige.

Update: Woody like Michael Wilbon, was $1/click out of the gate. Paige is up to $5/click now in that campaign (too rich for my blood) and even Plaschke is $5.

Wilbon escalated to $5 as well. Kornheiser? Still only a dollar. Jay Mariotti? $.50. This could be somehow in Google-ese that Jay is more associated with the rantings of a mad-man and so they gave me a price break. To be honest, some of what happens in terms of results makes a lot of sense on the Google side, but some of it...not so much. Now on with the real piece.

Ted Leonsis wrote a blurb on how the whole deal with the crazy DA that knew that none of the Duke Lacrosse player’s DNA was involved, and yet according to his lawyer “his brain just couldn’t process the information. That’s just the way his brain works.” (that’s a paraphrase, though not much of one). Ted said now the whole thing should be put to bed and that we always have to remember someone is innocent until proved guilty.

While I generally do love that system, I’m really not so sure. The DA got disbarred, and that’s good. But I’m all good with him getting an immediate 5 year jail sentence where he has to actually serve 6-12 months, and I don’t even need the trial. One thing is for sure, barring a miracle, this isn’t going to bed. Certainly if the families of those kids can’t press criminal charges against the former D.A., they will try something in the civil courts (assuming the guy has a couple of nickels to rub together). I hope they press criminal charges. It was criminal what he did to those kids. Losing his license to practice law is a good start, and it’s probably enough for me. But I doubt it’s enough for those kids, and if it isn’t I couldn’t blame them.

I also don’t need a court of law to know that Barry Bonds is lying, that Mark McGwire lied, that Sammy Sosa lied – not just about his abilities with English when he was in front of congress, and not just with the steroids, but oh man, don’t even get me started on the corked bat.

I know for sure they lied, and I don’t need any other information. Also, you can look at what actually happens and absolutely figure out the rest (Dusty Baker knew about Bonds, Tony LaRussa knew about McGwire…But Selig for sure, knew).

It’s the human condition. When the stakes are very high (or in some cases only perceived to be high when they are actually not), we have a tendency to lie our butts off. “I did not have sex with that woman…”

When it comes to kids, or even most people, I am right there with Ted. But when it comes to stuff I have to watch on ESPN every day? No. Rafael “the finger wag” Paliemero wagged his finger while he lied (and a few months later tested positive – then he tried to lie again and blame it on someone else!).

I persist only because I am delusional and actually want to resolve the steroids crisis. I’m a problem solver. If you want cheating in baseball fixed, you have to fix it from both sides. Am I as sure as I can be that Barry knew exactly what the cream and the clear were? Yes, yes I am. Am I sure Giants managers, coaches, Brian Sabean (GM) knew that Barry was up to something? Of course I am. Am I as certain that Bud knew about steroids as I am that Sammy Sosa can absolutely tell the difference between his regular bat and a corked bat with his eyes closed? Of course I am.

Both sides lied because it benefited both sides. This is why I view this vastly differently than I view the D.A. and Duke Lacrosse players. In that scenario only one guy was lying – the D.A. He wanted a juicy case that would get press and get him reelected. With performance enhancing drugs in MLB, everyone is lying because everyone benefited. Worse still, it is perceived by both sides that there is absolutely no upside in telling the truth. I agree with this because the whole investigation is unjust, focusing only on the players. That might make congress happy that MLB did something. But congress is a hypocrite too. MLB is like the only entity in the USA with an anti-trust exemption. If the government really wanted to get baseball to do something, they’d just threaten to revoke that. There has been legislation proposed to do just that, but it’s more of lone gun thing than the congress singing in unison.

I ran the ads calling Bud Selig a liar against the keywords, Bud Selig, MLB, and Barry Bonds. But I threw a little bit of money at it. Less than 1% of what I think it would take to actually make a difference, and if any of you want to send me the other 99% I’ll gladly keep at it. I targeted “Shame on you ESPN” ads against the keywords ESPN! And I was the only ad!

I got some e-mail from Google that one of my ads had been disapproved – but it was because of spelling/grammar! I had spelled Sportscenter as Sportcenter. I fixed it, and put the ad back up. My favorite hour of the day is 2pm-3pm on ESPN, and although I almost never watch it live, I almost never ever miss Around the Horn or PTI. I ran my ads against Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon. Initially, Kornheiser was $.50 and Wilbon was $1!! Tony Reali ($.40/click) initially outranked every member of Around the Horn I ran the ad against except Woody Paige, who like Wilbon went for a dollar. In the end the “quality” (it’s not a complex explanation, but I’ll skip it here) of my ads was so bad that Kornheiser went up to $1 and everyone else went up to $.50.

But Wilbon was $1 out of the gate. I tried my pals Ted Leonsis -- who was actually the only celebrity other than the fictional “Denny Crane – who already had an ad running against his keyword (it was for some kind of speakers bureau for speaking engagements) and Mark Cuban. Like Kornheiser they were original $.50. But one of my campaigns got so bad that Cuban got jacked up to $10/click (too rich for my blood!). I put him back against another campaign and got him back down to $.50. In the campaign where Cubes escalated to $10, Ted Leonsis only jacked up to $1.

Cuban got the most “celebrity“ traffic, about 8x more than Ted. Of the sports shows it was Woody Page, followed by Kornheiser, Wilbon, and “stat boy” Tony Reali , and Tim Cowlishaw. I screwed up and misspelled Bill Plaschke’s and Jay Mariotti’s names and didn’t correct it until too late in the game to be a fair comparison (there were no searches other than my own to make sure the ad was running). I feel bad too because Plaschke was the inspiration for the “Shame on You” ad campaigns. While Cuban got much more traffic than Leonsis, Cuban didn't generate any clicks. Ted got 1 click. ESPN/MLB resulted in ~250 clicks on over 100,000 impressions.

Other than knowing that I was crazy as hell to pay what I did to conduct this experiment, I know for sure if you target a keyword like ESPN with a “Shame on You ESPN” ad, you can generate some clicks! Almost all of them are no good, they see it’s a blog and bolt immediately. Only about 17% of the clicks actually read the article it pointed to.

I was trying to learn how Google Adwords work, and the experience was very beneficial. I was surprised that nobody was targeting ads at keywords like MLB, ESPN, Baseball or Barry Bonds (that ad says “Shame on You Bud Selig” and it is the only ad on the page.

I asked my astute friend Bill G. if he thought there was a revenue opportunity here for Google ultimately where the likes of ESPN, MLB etc will just by sponsorships against their trademarked keywords (you can’t put the trademark in your ad, but you can attach the ad to a keyword that is a trademark). Bill’s reply:

Clearly those folks don't care now. My guess is they will not care until there is an event that rises above the noise of their lives/businesses. That may be you/now. That may be nothing/ever.

I agree with Bill in general. It will not be me now because I was not willing to throw 100x or 1000x against it (and didn't have 1000x to throw at it if I wanted to!). But if someone with a spare million bucks wanted to work at it, I think they could break through the noise. If someone wants to transfer a spare million into my adwords account, I’m glad to do the leg work.

If your goal is to try to make a difference (and like anyone else, that’s my goal too) the time is now. Bonds is at 748, the All-Star game is coming up here in San Francisco and that means more ESPN talking about more steroids but never talking about, “Damn, you know that Robert Seidman is right, this whole thing is bogus. Why don’t they focus the investigation equally on Bud Selig, management and ownership, too or just listen to Giambi, have the 'we all screwed up' speech and move on."

I understand there is the need for all sides to politically maneuver here to protect their interests. You want to fix it, it’ll be a lot easier to fix with: BLOOD TESTS. But the MLBPA won’t go for that. My advice is that the MLBPA go to ownership and say, “We will do everything we can, including some blood work to protect the sanctity of the game, if we can all just move on from here.”

If I was a conspiracy theorist, what I’d believe is that isn’t happening because…everyone really likes cheating in baseball, but nobody wants to admit it. Let me be clear: the MLBPA and the players are NO SAINTS. At all. But they are no worse than Selig and the rest of ownership to me. But both sides are maneuvering to protect their own interests. Let's hope Adam Smith is still right.

I may be the only person who actually really wants to fix the problem, but if you’re with me and have a spare million to throw at the problem, we could make some real noise and time it with the pop-culture epicenter for steroids, which will no doubt be July 12, 2007 at the gem of a ballpark at 24 Willie Mays Plaza.

I love baseball, but I hate the hypocrisy and resold my entire seasons ticket package for the Giants' games the last 2 years. Two seats for all 81 home games, lower box, 1st base side -- great seats.

I'm sure as Barry Bonds nears 755 and the All-Star game is in town, my own hypocrisy will be tested. I am not certain I won't try to worm my way back into my seats for a couple of games...

Bud Selig, if you want to blow $500 running a "Robert Seidman is a hypocrite" campaign against the keyword robert seidman, knock yourself out, but I think you'd be better served doing these two things:

- admit what you knew and when you knew it and say you're sorry

- tell the people (the fans) that the only way to have any hope of really testing is with blood tests and put pressure on the MLBPA. Make that case to the fanbase. if you really want to test for performance enhancers, that's the only case to make.

If you don't want to do any of that stuff, then will you do me a favor and just act like you love Barry?

No? I didn't think so.

Honesty and integrity matter to me and I hate to see the message hammered home time and time again that those things don't matter as much as making a buck. That's what's going on. With Barry and Bud. That's the message.

That’s a wrap on my steroid in MLB problem solving, but I wanted to go out doing at least a little something.

Bud Selig is a Liar: Why I love Ted Leonsis and Mark Cuban

A little background for those of you who don't know me is in order. I am definitely in the statistically small group of people who knew who Mark Cuban was before he was a billionaire or knew who Ted Leonsis was before he was en route to becoming a billionaire (he's not there yet, but it's on his list of things to do) and owned all or parts of the Washington Capitals (NHL), Washington Wizards (NBA) and Washington Mystics (WNBA). Both Mark and Ted were very good to me going back some 10+ years now. One thing I love in my recent contact with these guys is that fame and success did not seem to change the overall makeup and drive of these two men.

I am grateful to both of them because at a time when I had a little bit of fire in my belly they took the spark and poured some gasoline on it and for me personally that's an extraordinary lovely thing.

Lying goes on all around us. We're lied to constantly. Interestingly as Ted and Mark both own sports franchises… Well think about this, as of a year ago, Mark had been fined $1.6 million dollars (that's probably more money than I have ever had at once)by the NBA. Why? He was fined for what he said, which was, an honest portrayal of how he felt. He was fined $1.6 million dollars for being honest. The league seems to believe that honesty is NOT the best policy for the NBA. I actually don't have strong feelings on David Stern or the NBA, certainly not in the way Cuban or Leonsis probably would.

I don't really know the inner workings of the NBA enough to comment on the inner workings of it or well enough to comment on whether David Stern is a person who acts with both the best interests of the NBA and integrity. It seems to me like he does, but I don't know well enough.

But I know enough about baseball, it's inner workings, psychology, values, etc., to know the following: Bud Selig is a liar. The owners and the management of the San Francisco Giants are…liars. Bud Selig is lying about Steroids. Yes, I said lying about it. And if he wishes to take me to court for slander, fine. All Selig can hope for is that by the time all of the "what did he know and when did he know it" comes out, that he'll be gone. He's playing the game of "musical chairs" and basically what Bud is probably hoping for is that by the time the music stops he's not around even LOOKING for a chair anymore.

This game works this way. The American public is in denial about how much we really like the results of steroids (I am not in denial about this at all, but sometimes I wish I still was!). The truth is, especially given the costs of attending this stuff, we want our professional athletes to be SUPER human. Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa AND Barry Bonds delivered. We the fans like the results, the owners liked the results, and Bud Selig liked the results. You could say that there was so much covering of eyes, ears and mouths by Selig and ownership (see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil), BUT there was also so much steroid usage that there's no way they got through this period without seeing or at least hearing about someone getting a needle jabbed in their butt. I'm not talking about last year or the year before either. I'm talking 1998-2002 when it was going on, everyone more or less knew it and then looked the other way.

Human nature is that when the stakes are high, people will cheat. This is why Jason Giambi cheated. And why, not only after he got caught (via leaked testimony – and the guy who leaked it is going to JAIL – I'm thrilled about that, probably the biggest smile of the week for me!!!) for steroids, he got caught for amphetamines (greenies) just last year. But Giambi came out with the truth:

I was wrong for doing that stuff. What we should have done a long time ago was stand up -- players, ownership, everybody -- and said: `We made a mistake.' We should have apologized back then and made sure we had a rule in place and gone forward. ... Steroids and all of that was a part of history. But it was a topic that everybody wanted to avoid. Nobody wanted to talk about it."

Although Giambi is a confirmed cheater, he is, in my opinion, absolutely correct about this. Here's how Selig is handling this: he's pressuring Giambi to cooperate with the steroids investigation: name some names or I will suspend you (more or less).

If Hank Aaron wants to be upset with Barry Bonds, I don't have any issue with that at all. But Bud Selig? Please. You knew Bud, and you looked the other way and did nothing. But then you're the kind of guy who would say, "Yeah, I'm an owner, but just go ahead and make me the commissioner!" We already knew right there this is a man lacking in integrity. But it made a lot of people a lot of money and produced a product people wanted to pay for. Everyone was really happy about this: the owners (they made tons of money on this), the players (they made tons of money – and much more with performance enhancements) and the fans, who couldn't eat it up fast enough.

But Bud is a lying hypocrite, so are the owners, and really so are most of the fans. Giambi did tell the truth in that quote above, that's exactly how it is. But once again, your kids are subtley getting the message: honesty isn't the best policy and cheating works – whether you're a player, the owner or the commissioner. It's a bad message to send. Giambi told the truth and the negative reinforcing feedback is, "Whoever told you honesty was the best policy, was lying!"

I love that there are guys like Cuban and Leonsis out there: again, they aren't perfect, but they aren't motivated to cheat and lie due to the stakes being high. They aren't perfect, but in a world massively lacking it at times, these two gentleman have some integrity, and that's something I value very much.

As for steroids, I think this ultimately will hit the NFL hardest of all. We haven't anywhere near begun to hear the last of it. Sorry Mr. Goodell.

The F-Word: The E-Mail to my Brother

Obviously the "Steroids Rant" is a personal passion of mine. My brain is coming back though, this is the clearest articulation of it I've written in 4 years.

From: Robert Seidman
Sent: Sunday, June 10, 2007 11:16 AM
To: 'Steven Seidman'
Subject: the f-word

I have been thinking about this more, and I think I can win you over! (ok, probably not, but it’s worth a shot!)

Baseball has a problem with “steroids”. But steroids itself is not the real problem. The problem is the propensity for cheating when the stakes are very high. You can do whatever you want as far as testing for steroids, etc., but if the stakes remain high there will still remain a problem with propensity for cheating. I honestly do not know if this IS a fixable problem. I believe it is math that is unavoidable. The math of human nature. We may not like the math, but..

The F-word to me is the same sort of thing. It’s indicative of a bigger problem. If you squash the symptom, you do not fix the bigger problem (just like fixing steroids would not fix cheating). The problem I have for now with this logic is this: baseball is to steroids as the f-word is to ______.

I’m not exactly sure what the blank is, but what I believe it probably is: “….as the f-word is to “people who don’t behave taking accountability/responsibility for their actions”.

I think lack of personal responsibility/accountability is the real problem and say a much bigger problem than…obesity. In fact, while I obviously have personal biases here, obesity is just another thing like the “f-word” that is – a symptom of a large national problem with regard to personal responsibility. You can’t really fix obesity without fixing the problem of people not taking personal responsibility for their actions.

Like cheating when the stakes are high, I don’t know if this is something that could ever be completely eradicated. However, I am a solutions/results oriented guy and I do not think any real progress can be made until some much bigger percentage of the population can talk about the real issues in these terms without being polarized by the symptoms (the f-word, steroids, etc).

The Seidman Math: Paris Hilton = Barry Bonds = We’re All a Bunch of Freaking Hypocrites

Except for my brother and his ilk. They don’t care about Paris, Barry, steroids or probably even baseball. So people like that: you are squeaky clean with me. Everyone else…

Everybody is using Paris, even me. Everyone is trying to get in front of the media. The judges, the lawyers, the Sherriff, the DA. Apparently she broke out in hives. As someone who had a chronic problem with hives for about 3 years, I think jail would do that to me too. So they sent her home. Home confinement. Of course she’ll start whining that it’s so unfair because the ankle bracelet they made her wear for her home confinement is giving her another rash. But now, they want to have a hearing to see if the judge who sent her home wasn’t smoking crack. Should Paris go back to jail? That’s really not the point to me, and I don’t care. The point is all of this is going on because all of these sorry ass fools, including Paris, want to be on TV.

Me? I don’t want to be on TV. I’ve had horrible skin for the last year and a half. My experiment was to see what generates more traffic through the blog search world over time, Paris, the NHL, or the iPhone. In that trio, unbelievably, the NHL was winning. In second place after the NHL was – and this just makes me sad “Pacific Catch”. There was a Pacific Catch ad in the iPhone commercial, and I wrote about it and got more hits on Pacific Catch than the iPhone for a couple of days.

Then I wrote Still Stinging Over Betamax (Why Sony Still Can’t Help But Suck Sometimes) and for reasons I still am not sure of that blew everything else away by 5x within a few hours of posting it.

Back to Paris. Everyone (other than the people like my brother) is playing a role and using Paris to their advantage, including Paris.

Then there’s Barry Bonds. I’m not going to opine here on his personality and likability. I’m here to talk about the steroids. I wish they would just legalize performance enhancers and be done with it. Ultimately it will come to that I think. We like seeing the ball hit far. Everyone loved Mark and Sammy chasing 61. There’s a lot of revisionist history going on now. Sometimes the media and baseball executives act like nobody was talking about steroids in ’98 when McGwire and Sosa were chasing the record. Once they were at 55, are you kidding me!? They talked about steroids EVERY DAY – at least a little. You can go to the ESPN and Sportsline archives and see the stories about performance enhancers during that time.

Barry Bonds may be the poster child for performance enhancers. If the books are true if it could be shot into you and metabolized and wouldn’t kill you, seems like he took it. But honestly, seeing him hit around 23 of the 40+ splash hits (home runs hit out of the stadium that land in the San Francisco Bay) in person was fun as hell. Those splash hits are the best. All those fools in kayaks clamoring to get the ball (more people capitalizing on Barry Bonds) and if Barry Bonds wasn’t in some 0 for 300 slump, I’d be hearing nothing but Barry Bonds on all my favorite ESPN shows. I’m thankful for the break. It’s going to hit me though right around my birthday in the middle of July. When he’s at 753 Time Magazine and Newsweek will probably have him on the cover to get in on the capitalizing.

We may not like Barry Bonds, but the system loves him because it can capitalize on him (to the tune of a lot of money), he doesn’t care because he’s so talented (and was even without the juice) that he can capitalize on the system, and of course that’s the case with Paris too. It really is exactly the same thing. I don't know if that's "talent" in Paris' case, but there is no doubt she is capitalizing on herself too.

We like steroids and we like Paris Hilton. Ok, you might hate her, but if you do, you LOVE to hate her. ESPN knows just about everyone who doesn’t live in a 94XXX zip code hates Bonds. But those folks LOVE to hate Bonds. Human psychology at the group level, sad as it is -- we’re much more prone to bond together over someone we dislike than over someone we think is the greatest thing since sliced bread. We love, love, love rallying around something to hate.

I’ll tell you what else we love. Performance enhancers. Steroids. Whatever. We love it. You say you don’t, and you want the game to be pure. I believe you and it’s a nice thought. I would like life to be fair, too. But it isn’t. I haven’t decided yet whether capitalism is self destructive, but I’m sure of one thing, Capitalism will produce Barry Bonds and Paris Hilton and steroids and cheating. And this isn’t something that can be eradicated by thinking you wish it wasn’t that way. That’s just denial. This isn’t something that can be fixed. It can be addressed and hopefully "dealt with" and coped with much better, but not fixed. While I was being facetious with the headline of this, it really is a mathematical equation. If you want Capitalism, you get steroids and Paris Hilton. You may not like that, but that’s like not liking your checking account balance or not liking that 1+1+1 = 3. You may not like it, but there’s not a damn thing you can do about it.

So my theory on that is "fine, let’s just start talking about the 1+1+1 = 3" stuff so people can begin to see it.

I’m not all the way through this thinking. I couldn’t tell you definitively that I am never OK with hypocrisy. Currently that is definitely not true. I’m OK with some hypocrisy. That too seems to be part of the unavoidable math of being human if one of the better quotes I’ve ever heard is true: hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue (according to Harvard B-School professor Richard Tedlow’s mother).

I’m OK with hypocrisy. What I am not OK with is being in denial about hypocrisy. I want to be aware of it at least so I can decide whether I am OK with it. I don’t love Paris Hilton’s behavior, just like I didn’t like the behavior of some B-team Lindsay Lohan from my neighborhood. But her and Paris? I'd still be ok seeing both of them naked. I can live with this hypocrisy.

I can live with Barry Bonds and legalized steroids too. As for the people who hate him, I do understand -- totally. But I also understand Barry Bonds a little bit too. Going back to around 2000 when it was clear to anyone who had eyes that Bonds had bulked up a LOT in the last couple of years, I always blamed that on “us”. We did that to him in a way, and the only way his psyche could respond to it was to do what he did. Throw out how he acts (and he acts like an idiot sometimes) he still is actually human and he saw us loving on Sosa and McGwire so much that summer and thought, “OMFG, if I cheated like those guys, I’d hit 70! At least!” In 1998, if you looked at the ‘90s, Bonds already was the player of the decade. He had to think, “Wow, America doesn’t really value any of that. They value the long ball. All right.”

I’ll tell you something else – there were people on every team in Major League Baseball that year who felt the same way and did the exact same thing. Bonds was just the person with the most natural talent to ever do that. With the world hating him, leaked grand jury testimony, a Federal Prosecutor (another schmuck trying to capitalize on Bonds) with no case, the eyes of a nation on him, fans throwing plastic syringes at him. With all that, he was still amazing. He could still step in the batter's box and display amazing focus and plate discipline. I’ve been watching baseball since I was a kid. I’ve never seen anything like it. He may have cheated, but he was still the most talented hitter I ever saw.

I think the important thing here is to accept that stuff like this happens in Capitalism. You can’t change cheating in professional sports any more than you can change cheating and lying in politics. You can’t. Whenever the stakes are that high, given human nature, it’s pure math. What people want to do is to deny (or worse, think they can change it) human nature. The desire to do this results in an awful lot of BS in this world. To quote Elvis Costello, "I used to be disgusted, now I try to be amused."

What you could do, if it really mattered to you, is vote with your wallet. I unloaded all my Giants seasons tickets off on a friend. I don’t want to contribute financially to the hypocrisy with my wallet at least not to the tune of $5000 -- i'd rather by more ipods with it -- no hypocrisy with the iPod!

Would I prefer the owners and Bud Selig to just admit the truth: that they knew what the hell was going on and looked the other way because they were laughing all the way to the bank? I would prefer it, but I don’t expect to hear them say it. I don't need them to say it though, any more than I needed Clinton to tell me he had SOME KIND of sexual relations with...that woman. I didn't need him to tell me. I don't need the owners to tell me either. It's as obvious as Jason Giambi admitting he used steroids without actually using the word steroidsIt’s obvious it’s true. Independent of how I feel about Mr. Bonds’ personality, I don’t find how he handled himself any more offensive than how the Giants organization handled itself in this matter. They did what they did because it was worth a lot of money. Barry did what Barry did…I don’t think it was about the money, I think he wanted to be the greatest of all time. Plus, because of it, he made a lot more money. But if he would’ve been a likeable public persona – even as a cheater. I mean Sammy Sosa is a dual cheater AND a liar. Steroids, CORKED BAT, and when he was at Congress, all of the sudden his English wasn’t so good. But we LIKED Sammy. He has a nice smile. A nice smile can overcome dual cheating and being a liar with the American public. Barry Bonds doesn't smile anywhere near as much as Sammy did. Sammy's English was always very good on ESPN. And don’t even start me on Rafael “the finger wag” Palmiero.

I mean come on. Who the hell didn’t know this guy wouldn’t cheat his ass off for more money? The guy did the VIAGRA ad for money when he was in his 30s. What kind of man, who was already rich, who wasn’t just a complete whore for money would do the Viagra ad at that time? I hear Viagra is an in drug now with people who don’t really need it, but at the time a lot of people made fun of him. He laughed all the way to the bank because, you know, that’s the kind of “man” he is. But he can’t sell newspapers and so you won’t hear about him. Bonds you’ll be hearing a lot of when his bat gets back on track.

These things are just byproducts of the system we live in. Unless we vote with our wallets, nothing will change and on this kind of stuff (Paris Hilton, Barry Bonds, steroids) we just don’t really care all that much. I think the first step is to get out of denial that these things are natural byproducts of our particular system of doing things. When that happens some good conversation can begin, but right now there aren’t enough people who are aware of the hypocrisy.

Denial is a good defense and survival mechanism. I think if all you want is for your civilization to “survive”, it’s a great mechanism to keep around. But if you wish to progress, awareness is the path. It’s a math problem, but not enough folks are comfortable with the math yet.