Tony Wang's Open Salon Blog

My Turn in the Jury Box

Fri, 18 May 2012 20:05:49 -0400

One of the most interesting things about our legal system is that there is a Constitutionally guaranteed right to a trial by jury for any crime that is committed. Essentially, the founding fathers of the country decided that instead of having everyone's fate decided by a judge who is an expert in law, they'd have lay people from all different backgrounds determine the fate of a defendant.

So when I got the summons telling me to show up at the Hall of Justice in downtown San Diego on March 7, 2012, I knew I'd be following in the footsteps of many other citizens who had been asked to take time out of their normal lives to determine whether a defendant was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

I had no idea what I was in for. I had no clue that jury duty would take up much of my life for the next six weeks, and that I with 11 other citizens would be asked to render a verdict on one of the most shocking crimes seen in San Diego. I had no idea that I'd soon know more about DNA trace evidence, fingerprint examination, wiretapping, crime scene processing, homicide investigations, and gangs than anyone who wasn't in law enforcement or in a gang.

But that's what I ended up doing. And even though we've rendered our verdict, we're still involved. I've been asked by defense counsel to meet with them to give them insight into what happened during deliberations. And I'm sure that since defense counsel is contesting the case based on some information they found, the prosecution will want to talk to me as well.

Now that the case is over, I'll be writing about my time in the jury box at department 28 of the Superior Court for the County of San Diego. I hope you find it to be an interesting insight into what goes through the mind of a juror in a very complex case.

Dale Hunter Quitting Is Good for Caps

Mon, 14 May 2012 17:05:41 -0400

Coming just two days after suffering yet another crushing loss in the postseason -- this is something Capitals fans are used to -- another bombshell hits.

Dale Hunter, the man who helped lead the Capitals to within one goal of upsetting both the two seed and one seed in the playoffs, decided to call it quits.

Some Caps fans are taking this hard. If you go to the Washington Post and look at the comments on the news, there's all sorts of gloom and doom. And of course there are the conspiracy theories that somehow, Alexander Ovechkin managed to get Hunter tossed out. Never mind that Ovechkin expressed disappointment at Hunter's decision.

But a closer look at Hunter's admittedly short record shows that maybe he's just not that good of an NHL coach.

Dale Hunter inherited a team that had gone 12-9-1, for a winning percentage of 57 percent. His record, including the playoffs, after taking over for the fired Bruce Boudreau, was 37-30-7. That is a winning percentage of 55 percent. Essentially, Hunter's team won the same number of games under him as they were winning under Boudreau. And Boudreau got fired.

Don't cry for Bruce Boudreau, however. Within a week of getting fired, he left Washington for Anaheim. And what did he do there?

He took a team with a record of 7-13-4 and led them to a 27-23-8 record. The winning percentage before Boudreau got there was 35 percent, and he helped raise that to 54 percent.

Bottom line is that Hunter, for all his accolades, really didn't make the Capitals a better team. On the other hand, the man he replaced made the Ducks a better team.

Hunter's all defense all the time strategy led him to turtle after getting a one goal lead. Instead of putting people on the ice who were more likely to increase that lead, he would play people who played the game like he did on the ice. People with lesser talent were out there instead of the ones who everyone acknowledged had more.

This meant that instead of putting someone whose playoff goal scoring pace is better than Wayne Gretzky, Bobby Hull, and Brett Hull, he would put guys out there who were unlikely to put one on the net.

When the game is on the line, you need your best players out there. It defies logic that you'd keep someone who is very good at making a lead bigger -- Ovechkin -- on the bench in favor of someone who might chip in a goal once every ten games.

Much criticism was directed at Boudreau for his run and gun system. Hunter's all defense, all the time system is just as wrong headed. It is especially wrongheaded when you've got a bunch of thoroughbreds and you want to turn them into plow horses.

Successful teams find a way to balance both. Hunter didn't do that, and that's why I'm glad he's gone.

Limbaugh Advertisers Were Wasting Their Money Anyway

Wed, 7 Mar 2012 18:03:29 -0500

Unless you've been living under a rock, and a pretty big one, by now you know that Rush Limbaugh's latest rants have cost him advertisers. The number of advertisers pulling their commercials from his shows is now up to 46. Some of them are national companies, some are local businesses. But they all have something in common. They don't want to be associated with an individual whose only exercise comes from the exercise of his first amendment right to spew inflammatory and offensive rhetoric.

Many have written about how advertisers jumping ship shows that companies don't want to be associated with those who offend large segments of the population. I won't go into that, because it's been covered extensively.

What I will go into -- and this is something I know about as someone who's worked in the media field for decades -- is why it was a bad marketing decision to go on Limbaugh's show in the first place.

Successful marketing is all about reaching the right people with the right message so that when they need your product, they think of you. Think about the Super Bowl ads. How many people gawked at Candice Michelle when the first GoDaddy ads were released and thought nothing about domain names? But when you need to register a website, what's one of the first places you think about? That's marketing that works.

That ad worked because it was reaching a big audience across all demographic groups, and with the explosion of personal websites, GoDaddy needed to reach everyone.

I don't have the demographics for Limbaugh's show, so I went to the data for his website. And what did I find?

Not surprisingly, his audience skews old, skews white, and skews male. What is interesting is the degree to which this is true.

Only 21 percent of Limbaugh's audience is between 18-34, versus 29 percent for the internet as a whole. His audience of 34-54 year olds is 48 percent, versus 36 percent for the internet in general.

And his audience for 55+ listeners is 28 percent, which is way above the 16 percent internet average.

When it comes to the gender split, it's a total sausage fest. I'll bet you there are parties at MIT and Caltech that have a better women to men ratio than Limbaugh's show does. It's about two-thirds men.

Finally, Limbaugh's show is as segregated as the old South. More than nine out of ten of its listeners are white. Three percent are black, four percent are Hispanic, and Asians and others comprise one percent of his audience.

So why is advertising on his show a horrible marketing decision? For many reasons.

First, think about people's life cycle. When you're 18-34, you're just starting out, so you need to buy insurance, a car, a house, and all the things that go with being an adult. When you're 34-54, you're in your prime earning and spending years, as you're making more money and buying things with that money. And as you get to 55+, your thoughts generally turn to retirement and saving for it or living it. You're not spending as much. Plus, most of your spending decisions have been made.

Second, women make 85 percent of the spending decisions and influence 95 percent of them. The days of women just wanting to choose the color of a car are over. Now they're the ones telling their husbands what they can and cannot buy or most frequently, buying it on their own.

Finally, the country is getting much more diverse -- something that Limbaugh's listeners don't like. And the fastest growing segments of the population are the non-white ones. If you're only reaching tiny portions of them with your advertising message, you're spending your money foolishly.

Let's take one of Limbaugh's advertisers, Sleep Train. Who would you think is their typical customer? Someone who's 18-34, and needs to buy a mattress when they move into an apartment of their own for the first time? Or someone who's over 65, and already has one?

You can make similar cases for many of Limbaugh's other advertisers. Why would you want to reach an audience that's old, white, and male? Yes, they have more money, but do you think they're spending it on products you sell? Even brokerages would be well advised to avoid Limbaugh. Sure, older people have more money, but they've also probably got a financial advisor who they've worked with for decades and grown old with. Guess what? They're not switching.

There are a few products that would fit Limbaugh's audience, though. One of those products is something that Limbaugh himself is very familiar with.

It's the little blue pill older men turn to for help all the time and the same one he got busted with during a trip to the Dominican Republic.

Viagra.

Pfizer, you can buy advertising for cheap and reach an audience that needs your product. Make the call.

An Epic Fail in Nashville

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 13:02:04 -0500

Nashville is known for many things. It's got the Grand Ole Opry. It's known as the home of country music, although I'm not sure that's something to brag about. It's also the capital of Tennessee.

And since 1997, it's been the home of the Nashville Predators. This team is another one of the teams that the NHL has put into non-traditional hockey cities. From all indications, it's a pretty well supported team and they've broken a few attendance records this year.

But there's a problem with all this.

Whenever the home team scores, a goal horn goes off, and then a song plays. These songs generally come from the sports rock genre. There's Chelsea Dagger by the Fratellis. You also hear Zombie Nation's Kernkraft 400. If you want to go a little old school, you can go with Blur's Song Two, with the woo hoo. And there's no way to screw up with a classic, Gary Glitter's Rock and Roll Part Two.

What is not acceptable is a song about a man who has been whipped and likes it. And that is the case with Tim McGraw's I Like it, I Love it, I Want Some More of it. In the name of Gordie Howe, Wayne Gretkzy, and Lord Stanley, what the hell are they thinking? For real?

Seriously, did the Predators front office check out the lyrics to the song before they chose it? There's a line in there about how the singer hasn't seen the Braves -- a team in Atlanta, by the way -- play a game all year because he's whipped. And that's what you chose for your celebration song?

Unacceptable.

Songs about hookers? Fine. Songs about rampant commercialism? Okay, that will work. Songs with words that make no sense, and just give the fans a chance to scream "woo hoo?" Check. And a song by a child molester? We'll accept it.

But a love song at a hockey game? A song sung by a man so whipped he doesn't watch sports anymore?

Hey, when I'm chest bumping and high fiving with the buddies I go to the game with, I do not want any pussy whipped bullcrap playing on the speakers. Especially when I'm celebrating.

I'll make a bold prediction here. As long as the Predators continue to use that wussy song about a guy who is happily whipped, they will never get a chance to hoist the Stanley Cup.

The Truth About Unemployment

Wed, 8 Feb 2012 15:02:48 -0500

If you listen to certain types, the unemployed are lazy people with no education and no skills who just want to sit around their house and collect their benefits tax free. The unemployed, you'll hear, don't really want a job.

The truth, of course, is nothing like their lies. As Jack Nicholson's character said in A Few Good Men, "you can't handle the truth!"

First, the maximum unemployment benefit in California is $450 a week. That works out to around $23K a year. In order to collect that, you need to have earned around $48K a year on the job you lost through no fault of your own. How many people do you know who would take a 50 percent paycut just so they could sit around and collect unemployment? How many people do you know that would trade the lifestyle a $48K a year job could buy for one that a $23K a year check would buy?

In my brief stint on unemployment, I went from a $16 an hour plus commission job to around $11.50 a hour. Think I wanted to keep scraping by on that income?

Oh, and by the way, that income is taxable.

Second, the lie is that those who are unemployed are lazy. Uh huh. Is that why they held a job and met the minimum compensation requirements for unemployment?

In my case, for their lies to be true, you'd have to believe that someone who started delivering papers when he was a 13 year old kid and who held part time jobs through high school and college was lazy. And that someone who consistently exceeded quotas didn't work hard.

And remember, you need to have been fired due to reasons that weren't your fault. If you didn't do the job because you were lazy, guess what? It would be your fault, and you wouldn't be able to collect unemployment.

Then there's the no skills and education lie. Okay, maybe I don't have the skills of a doctor or a rocket scientist. Sales doesn't require geniuses. What it does require is people who know how to read others, what questions to ask to determine their needs, and how to get information out of people that they may not want to disclose. It also requires a certain amount of tact, because you can't just blurt out, dude, you can't afford what you want to buy as much as it may seem obvious to you.

There's a certain skill set that you develop if you do it well. And believe me, lots of people don't do it well.

And while my job doesn't require a college degree, it's always something that's stated in the preferences. I've got two of them.

So it's clear that anyone who says that only the unskilled and uneducated are unemployed is lying.

The one thing the liars are correct on is that many people on unemployment won't take the first job that comes their way. If all I can get is an eight buck an hour job at Starbucks, why would I take that over collecting $11 an hour in unemployment? Remember, the insurance that I'm collecting was paid for through years of hard work. And if I'm going to take a pay cut, I'm going to try to minimize it.

But is this really a bad thing? There's a reason the rules of unemployment state that you must take the first suitable job you are offered. If an engineer gets laid off because they ship his job to India, should he take a job flipping burgers? Is that really a good use of his training and skills?

Or should he take unemployment, and find a job that best uses his talents? What's better for the country and the economy in the long run? An engineer flipping burgers or one who collects unemployment until he can find another job that uses his engineering skills?

Truth is, many of the unemployed are hard working, smart, and skilled workers. They lost their job through no fault of their own, and they're looking for another one. To pan them as lazy, unskilled, uneducated leeches that want to just suck off the government teat is a lie.

Talk about kicking someone when he's down. Only the lowest of the low would do this.