Innumerate Stupidity

[koganbot]

Talked about this over on Blackbeard but decided I should here as well, since what my lj has been missing recently are posts that are purely negative, that serve no purpose but to remind my readers of the stupidity of others. So, even though this is old news, here goes:

Mark Penn and E. Kinney Zalesne wrote an imbecilic piece ("America's Newest Profession: Bloggers for Hire") for the Wall Street Journal that had Brad DeLong sputtering and Clay Shirky debunking, but Shirky, unlike DeLong, failed to point out the most astonishing, incomprehensibly idiotic part of it. In the main body of the piece itself, Penn and Zalesne write (emphasis added by me):

It takes about 100,000 unique visitors a month to generate an income of $75,000 a year.

This raised eyebrows, as you can imagine, so in response Penn elaborated by saying (emphasis is added by me):

As far as the $75,000, the Technorati report says that of those bloggers who had 100,000 or more unique visitors, the average income is $75,000. True, it's not the median, but it is the average. We can quibble about how easy it is to make this kind of money - but the point is, the huge potential is there.

Utterly astonishing, inexplicable, absurd. DeLong's response: "Words fail me. The innumerate stupidity - IT BURNS!!!!" One of his commenters added this useful elucidation: "More good news for Mark Penn: According to the most recent CBO report, for all people who earned $100,000 or more dollars, the average income is $366,000. True, it's not the median, but it is the average, so clearly it only takes about $100,000 per year to earn $366,000 per year."

According to Wiki, Penn is "the worldwide CEO of the public relations firm Burson-Marsteller and president of the polling firm Penn, Schoen and Berland Associates." And, of course, "He was Hillary Rodham Clinton's chief strategist for most of her 2008 presidential campaign, for which his firm received $13 million, until he resigned on April 6, 2008."

Astonishing!

That's the third time I've said "astonishing." Let's make it four: Astonishing!

Comments

[petronia.livejournal.com]

He was Hillary Rodham Clinton's chief strategist for most of her 2008 presidential campaign, for which his firm received $13 million, until he resigned on April 6, 2008.

From what we now know about the account-keeping capabilities of Hillary's campaign, not so astonishing. XD;

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

I measure the average income of my blog in Kogan Comment Currency, which is a valid form of monetary exchange in parts of Tunisia*.

*According to less than 2% of respondents.

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

i think the best thing you can say about penn is that obama is president thanks to him

and even this claim is a giant huge exaggeration obviously

[koganbot]

Yeah. I'd say that Obama is president thanks to Obama - though of course there were plenty of factors that helped him, most critically being the widely perceived incompetence of the Bush administration. And my guess about Clinton is that whatever she said and however she campaigned, her running against a competent disciplined campaigner who stayed on message with "change" was going to be hard, since even if she herself genuinely wanted change, that's not what she represented. I actually know very little about Penn; my guess is that if he were grossly incompetent the Clintons wouldn't have used him for all these years. My guess also is that he wasn't there to provide intellectual nuance, however.