Madison's avenues through Christian U.S.A.

Just when I was getting ready to post a blog entry on the Ashley Madison hack job, new developments overrode the intended first entry and the fallout still keeps coming hard and fast.

...er...or should I rephrase that?

Ahem.

Anyway, subsequent to that initial revelation came articles about betrayal, monogamy, polygamy, multi-amorous, but at the bottom line, one can conclude that religion just doesn't guarantee morality, as our voting track record in favor of religious political leaders seems to suggest.  I dare say that the old protestant doggerel about how we're all sinners but we're all forgiven isn't going to be viewed in the same way again.

I've seen a map which maps what states were the heaviest providers of Ashley Madison (United States of Ashley Madison) accounts and I've heard never-ending expressions of astonishment how Utah was one of the most heavily tinted. Men seeking additional wives even though that's illegal? Yeah, right.

Face it, people--religions overhype the magical holy benefits of matrimony, after all, pretending that "dysfunctional" families don't exist and when they can't ignore them any more, label them "dysfunctional" even though they're more the rule than the exception, and there are both men and women out there who look at a hasty marriage and, years later, wonder if that grass really isn't actually greener on the outside of the home sanctuary, especially after getting into a routine where the crap you have to deal with is equally as routine and, therefore, foreseeable as repetitive without end.  That shit just gets old.

The rate of marriages have declined in recent years and it's no surprise that more people see through that overhyped racket. I'm happy for those people who have successfully made that institution work for them with no regrets, but it's time we as a society recognize just how rare that actually is.  But it is irrefutable fact that Ashley Madison was such a successful business that Bob Scully's The World Show featured the founder as an entrepreneur success story, and you KNOW how the biggest megachurches out there preach the prosperity gospel.

Aside from the overhyped morality bullshit religion preaches about the sanctity of what they say is a holy thing between one man and one woman, it's not just today's people who avoid marriage that thinks very little of that supposed sanctity--the married just joined the single crowd.  As for me, I don't need religion to know that you don't treat people you care about like that.

Images of public revenge taken on cheaters via SomeECards

Yeah. Two ladies talking in --HEAVEN--.  In heaven. Got that? Heaven.

Gee, gummint officialz found to have accounts...why is anybody surprised at this time honored tradition, actually?

Meanwhile back at a certain chicken ranch in Christian Texas...

The Ethical Hacker re: Digital Locksmiths on Bob Scully's The World Show

P.S.-- I've looked high and low for that specific "The World Show" on which Noel Biderman was interviewed by Bob Scully, and I can't even find it on Scully's own website. I did tape that, and when I find it I'll have to post that snippet here...but that's going to be a long tough row to hoe.

I don't know about you, but it just seems to me that the more sanctimonious a person claims to be, the more sinnin' they've got to bury under that facade.  Morality my ass.  NOW I'm convinced this is a Christian nation--behold our national pro-business Christianity.  Infidelity turns out to be an awesome business model which doesn't involve The World's Oldest Profession.

The principle clearly firmly in place in the City of Enid:

From outside the U.S. looking in, from where ISIS' charge of American lack of morals seems to be sticking: Al Arabiya article on Madison
Silver lining sighted by Crooks & Liars ...who would, going by people in their title.
It begins: EXTORTION. --The Hill
It's a brilliant business model, alright, and now the legal business is cashing in.
Article about Noel Biderman, April 24, and his business model: Business Insider, UK , where he shows that his grasp on gender equality is tenuous at best...

Seriously--this guy pimps out wives.  He's neglected to mention that marriage is skidding downhill, culling his hitched-hooker stable over time.  What this shows, too, is that the gender getting the short end of the stick (so to speak) in the marriage deal is the woman...but I could have told you that.  It's only well-to-do trophy wives who believe a word of what Phylis Schlaffley says. Or any child-abusing preacher/priest, for that matter.  What's striking here is that a man will part with money for tail, and the person who collects money for tail is a madam or pimp, but in this case, the hooker doesn't even get a dime--the pimp rakes in all of it. Respectable businessman, my ass.

Hey, don't lecture me about redneck linguistics/spelling.  I know.

You don't ever pay me enough to do that kind of shit and you're a grown boy. To quote Meatloaf: "I'll do anything for love but I won't do THAT".

Sunday miniUPDATE: Bob Scully's The World Show ran a snippet of the Noel Biderman interview this weekend on OETA, after a different interview for the most of that show. And I'm out of media to record it on, dammit.  It's out there somewhere.

Source:
Our World in Data website, but couldn't find this particular page easily from their front page.
Now this just in from Facebook, cropped for compliance with Blogger rules for a family rating...

Ah, I found it--a clip of the movie, The Chocolate Soldier, that I did post elsewhere but removed it.  It's certainly apropos, but I'll not explain the context this time--take it as you will.

Thursday miniUPDATE:
This just in via Glenn Greenwald, via The Intercept---a letter from a female client of Ashley Madison...in part below...

...and THIS just in via BBC World although the article doesn't say what the US broadcast said about how a lot of the female accounts were just made up by staff.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I get the bit about being trapped in terrible marriages, but what I don't get is how a spouse coming down with cancer makes her needs some kind of priority to her, as if he wasn't a family member she cares about. Bottom line is that she just doesn't care.  What she's committed is a cruelty to somebody who really needs her and she's having none of anybody else's needs but her own.  Glenn Greenwald comes off as sympathetic to this point of view and I don't get why, quite frankly.  She deserves sympathy and the cancer-stricken husband is what?  Just so much chopped liver.  Sorry, but he's not the one who made that marriage terrible, the way I look at it.
And yeah--I submitted a comment reflecting that, and the fact that she's just a pimped out housewife who ain't getting paid by the company she's servicing.  Sucker.

And this just in, now that it's Friday: Noel Biederman is stepping down from running things.  Well well well.

Being the consummate asshole is certainly one of the options.

Now the L. A. Progressive weighs in (screenshot):

Turnabout is fair foreplay.

Sunday UPDATE, Viacom Edition:
Jon Stewart left The Daily Show and Stephen Colbert is about to debut on CBS and traffic to my blog has picked up on the entry Dear Viacom, Suddenlink: Sincerely, the Audience, posted when the aforementioned cable provider wouldn't pay the higher fee that Viacom was demanding, and as we know, Viacom packages The Daily Show.  So yeah--no Suddenlink customer was able to see Jon's Big Goodbye.  But I did mention, in that earlier post, that Viacom's stock value had dropped considerably, too, and there was the matter of Viacom's obvious inability to raise revenue by advertising from advertisers who spend big money depending on the size of the audience their ads get for their money.  I further observe that large portions of Stewart's regular audience got cut off and, now that he's left, he's also free to reconnect to the audience Viacom lost, by means outside of Viacom.  Same is true for Colbert, although John Oliver's audience overlapping both of those remain restricted by HBO's unavailability to a general, wider audience.  Of the three, Colbert is the one who, in terms of audience availabilty, "hit the big time".

Sure, Jon's replacement deserves a fair hearing, but Viacom will remain a barrier to that, alas, as is true of what I expect to be a stellar presentation in The Nightly Show.  As was the case with CBS getting in the way of Robin Williams, it's Viacom that stands in the way--not any failure on the part of the talent.  Investors in either or both CBS and Viacom also keep analytical eyes on other cable content organizations, too, and notice the growth of TBS and a few others, pretty much at the expense of Viacom's stable of brands, and will take their investment money where the audience growth is...even if it means investing in a non-cable content provider like Netflix.

That earlier post about Viacom is a very old post, without a doubt, but Viacom hasn't noticed, and hasn't moved on, as evidenced by screenshots of its Comedy Central website I took just today:

This comes up where an advertiser's ad should be, but isn't.  Instead of clicking on the Close button, I clicked on the ad, and the following came up:

Those buttons at the bottom are partially displayed in that screen shot, so next I'll post a shot of the complete buttons:

The text calls on you to change provider, but Suddenlink is the only provider in many rural areas and even in medium sized cities like Enid.  Get a refund?  Get real.

At the bottom of the text area, right below where they proclaim that you should switch providers today and get your channels back, is a row of 4 circles.  The blue circle indicates the current page you're on, and there are 4 pages...the next one of which proclaims that you'll be missing out on the launch of a new program, King Tut or some such, I forget (it's forgettable). Third page goes back to Spongebob, who gets repeated billing because he's Viacom's big moneymaker, apparently (guffaw).

All four pages have a little blurb like what you see on the left of this image: "WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW  LEARN MORE".  That blurb is a link which sends you to another screed about a whole lot of things you're missing when you don't get Viacom, but each page sends you to different pages.   One of those links sends you here...

...but on the last of the four pages, which looks like this...

...provides you a link to LEARN MORE...which goes to this li'l gem...

Yeah.  The link is "brocken".  You don't get the customary Error 404 Page Not Found.  You get curiously spelled pseudo-English.

And I'm sure Viacom investors have noticed by now.  Ya think?

And there's an update on the City of Enid's hostile take over of the corporation of PEGASYS and its destruction of PEGASYS intellectual property in the form of recorded and produced content: a city cannot claim copyright rights over city council/city commission recordings--only an independent corporation like PEGASYS can do that. Although this is a ruling for California, it's a legal case that is useable in any future argument on that subject matter.