Opinion: Ever gotten a robocall? Here’s one for McCain right now

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Hello.

We’re calling on behalf of The Ticket.

Have you ever received an automated phone call from a credit card company, Blue Cross or the like?

Impersonal. You’re responding to a distant machine that decides to invade your privacy and summon you to listen. Kind of annoying, isn’t it? (Unless it’s from your child’s principal about the school bomb threat.)

Anyway, it really doesn’t matter whether you like robocalls or not. You’re gonna get ‘em. From politicians too. All campaigns do it in one form or another.

Imagine the efficiencies of time and costs reaching thousands of people one after the other with the very same message following the time zones for decent calling hours across the country. No office space. No wages. No tardy, whiny volunteers who need bathroom breaks.

Just thousands of calls going out with the exact same message hour after hour. Sure, some people hang up in protest. Even anger. So what? The machine doesn’t care. A lot listen. Mission accomplished.

That’s why every campaign does them, some more openly, some more negatively.

Ever heard one? Here’s one going on right now as you read this for John McCain and the Republican National Committee. (It may take a minute to load.)

This call wants you to think less of Barack Obama because of his past association with ‘60s Weather Underground radical William Ayers. You may not like it. Or believe it. But the message has already been tested. It works.

This item was written for The Ticket, which approved it.

--Andrew Malcolm

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