Daily Archives: April 23, 2013

Apr 23

A Few Things to Be on the Lookout For

1. I have an unplanned post for Think Progress going up today, about Hemlock Grove’s two-screen strategy. Mostly points I made here, but with better editing.

2. I’ll have a post at Pith up at some point today about the “Manuel” rebates at Pilot Flying J. It needed a little reworking in light of the fact that I didn’t realize it hadn’t been widely covered (and by “not widely covered” I mean that apparently no one has mentioned it) that Pilot Flying J sometimes called their manual rebates “Manuel” or “Manuel rebates” and that the one group of non-“stupid” people they deliberately targeted for these rebates were Hispanic people, because of the perceived language issues. Hello, Civil Rights Act. Gas stations discriminating against customers based on race is one of the explicit targets of the Public Accommodations section.

3. I just want to state this as plainly as I can. This shit happens because he is, I believe, a sadist. It’s not just that he wants attention (which I also think he does). He wants negative attention. He wants to know that he’s shocked and upset people. That is his goal. I don’t believe that he’s motivated by positive attention, so there’s no use in asking why he does this stuff when only a small minority of people cheer him on. People vote for him because he’s very adept at maintaining access to his victims. If that means that he’s got to knock on doors and put forth a public persona that makes people think that the media must be wrong about him, that’s what he’ll do. He works hard to maintain access to his victims. He’s got a stronger psychological motivation than almost any other politician at the state level for keeping his voters. If he loses his office, his pool of victims shrinks dramatically.