Friday, January 29, 2010

Massive Government Conspiracy might not involve your dogcatcher, but certainly involves secretive effort to coordinate LinkedIn profiles

A few weeks ago, I noted how right-wing blogger Jim Durbin was declaring that there was a Massive Government Conspiracy to send an army of "union thugs" to an August 6 townhall to beat up random merchandise-sellers, and that Durbin now thought that this conspiracy extended all the way to your local dogcatcher.   In an effort to "establish credibility" with his "honest readers," Durbin has now conceded that his in-depth investigation of the local Animal Control Department has determined that the incident was "inconclusive," (which of course actually means that the evidence proves him wrong).  

Durbin, in an amazing moment of clarity, further appeared to realize that you shouldn't accuse government employees of massive conspiracies without any evidence.  Perhaps he should have thought about that before declaring it a "wrongful termination," before claiming that someone in the County government "overplayed their hand," and before announcing that the firing was intended as a warning message from "monsters that steal our land and rob our people."  And, of course, if he was really interested in establishing "trust" with his readers, he probably would apologize for falsely claiming that Patricia Reddington hadn't looked at Kenneth Gladney's medical reports before filing misdemeanor charges.  

What's really hilarious, however, is that Durbin nearly immediately turned around and declared another Massive Government Conspiracy based on, you guessed it, no evidence.  Here's how it goes: he discovers that McKenzie Lehmann worked for the Carnahan campaign at one time, and volunteered for America Votes at a different time.  Her current LinkedIn profile doesn't list her volunteer time at America Votes, but an old LinkedIn profile does.  Hence, Durbin concludes, it clearly was a Massive Government Conspiracy to do.....something.

Here's Durbin's flawless logic in a nutshell:

  1. Someone changes their LinkedIn profile.
  2. Out of the 186,741 possible explanations for why they would change their profile, one possible explanation is that there is a Massive Government Conspiracy that only Jim Durbin can see because his tinfoil hat protects him from radio waves that interfere with everyone else's thinking.
  3. Ergo, there is a Massive Government Conspiracy.
Of course, when I looked at the two resumes, I noticed that the job underneath America Votes, brand ambassador for Brown-Forman, was also missing in the new resume.  Or rather, the job was changed from a full description in the old resume to a simple mention in a list of clients represented in the new one.  In other words, it seems pretty obvious that she condensed her resume as she added jobs, and didn't include America Votes because it wasn't a paying job.  But this would suggest that there wasn't a Massive Government Conspiracy and that maybe, just maybe, sometimes changing a LinkedIn profile is nothing more than changing a LinkedIn profile.

But on the other hand, maybe I am part of the Massive Government Conspiracy...or did I just blow your mind?

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