faux liberal?

If you know me, you know that for a long time, I've had conservative political views. And, nothing has happened recently to influence that position in any way, shape or form... unless you judge the book by its cover, which is what America's Marketing Machine™ does.

If you made a list of the things that would "tag" me as a liberal, they might include:

• Watching "The Daily Show"
• Blogging
• Blogging from the coffee shop that I'm currently sitting in (an independent local shop with prominent posters for the upcoming local "Kids 4 Kerry" event.)
• Listening to more of NPR than just Car Talk
• Being 18-34
• Owning an ibook
• Working in the music business
• reading slashdot and fark
• Driving a Corolla (although not as much an indicator as driving a Prius)

Of course, he must be a liberal.

This really struck me when I went to amazon.com and simply pulled up the page for Jon Stewart's America (The Book) : A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction. I read the description, watched the promo video, and checked out the audiobook version. The next time I went to amazon.com, the homepage was filled with suggested titles like Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them, Blinded by the Right, Stop Bush in 2004: How Every Citizen Can Help and Against All Enemies. Amazon thinks I'm a liberal!

Luckily, with amazon.com, all you have to do is go to your "suggestions" page and rank their suggestions from one to five stars or "not interested" and it resets your profile. Whew.

However... watch the bottom of this blog. I bet in a couple of days, once Google visits again, there'll be all kinds of liberally-slanted ads there at the bottom of the page. Just watch!