Tuesday, December 01, 2009

Little Green Footballs leaves the right

Another former partisan leaving his fold. Not that this is so notable in and of itself. We've seen plenty of Congress-critters cross the aisle in recent years.  Reading the comments of this post made me think, however, how inclined we are to magnify what we disapprove of in a public figure, and ignore what we might agree with, or at least would give us reason to think for a bit. Seth Godin gives us some of the reason for this. Media outlets, including bloggers, get more of our attention by pushing what are essentially our gossip buttons. And we are inclined to come to a swift judgement based on what we have already been presented. Human nature takes over after that. We have an inherent inclination to only see what matches our beliefs, so that any new information inconsistent with those beliefs tends to be unconsciously ignored. Ah, the importance of first impressions.