Facebook apparently doesn’t know how to behave like an all- grown-up, publicly traded company.
The social-media outfit still hasn’t deleted the “Pedophiles are people too” page from its website despite a torrent of complaints. Facebook says the site — where people have posted comments about having sex with 9-year-olds — is humor.
Let’s see if Facebook thinks this is funny: amping up the battle.
If the protests of some of its 955 million daily users aren’t heard and the site isn’t soon taken down, I’ll start printing the name of Facebook’s advertisers, along with the phone numbers and names of the advertisers’ chief executives.
Remember what I told you recently: When you make a complaint, you have to do it to the right people.
Facebook doesn’t care if you complain to it, or even if (as some readers have suggested) you stop using its site.
But it does care if advertisers are worried.
So make the advertisers worry with phone calls. And I’ll make the first call to each of them.
Remember, Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg loses about $500 million every time Facebook’s shares fall by $1.
If Zuckerberg believes pedophilia is an appropriate topic for a discussion his company says is nothing more than “controversial humour,” then let’s see how much of his wealth he’s willing to forfeit on that nutty view.
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Mitt Romney proudly proclaimed last week that he’s never paid less than 13 percent tax on his income.
The guy who will officially become the Republican Party’s candidate for president next Thursday was goaded into making that statement because the Democrats were spreading lies that he actually paid no tax.
It’s like in the schoolyard when the bully starts bad-mouthing your mother. “She has
not slept with scores of guys, it’s only been 15,” you retort in mom’s defense.
Gotcha!
You really can’t expect a privileged guy named Mitt to recognize an ambush when it’s being laid. OK, he never paid less than 13 percent tax — good for him! The rest of us pay twice to three times that amount.
And when Mitt finally releases his taxes, we’ll undoubtedly see tax shelters (like the inheritance trust I just set up for my kids) and tons of charitable donations (which you won’t see on my returns because I’m not even infinitesimally as well off as Mitt).
Plus, you will see that Romney paid a low tax rate of just 15 percent on profits he made as head of a private-equity company. That tax is called “carried interest,” and it’s been controversial for years — and legal.
Since Romney and his advisers don’t seem to understand what not to say and do, I’ve made a list for the Republican standard-bearer. (Don’t worry, I’ll smack President Obama around in a nonpartisan second.) This is Mitt’s do-not list:
* Do not produce campaign buttons that say, “Rich Like Mitt.” Or, for that matter, tees that read, “Take Your Mitts Off My Tax Return.”
ï®* The campaign’s slogan should not be, “If You Elect Me, At Least One More Person Will Have a Job.”
* “I can put you in touch with my tax adviser” shouldn’t be the answer when a reporter says, “I wish I paid your tax rate.”
* If someone questions Mitt about the inner workings of “private equity,” where he made all his money, he shouldn’t say, “What don’t you understand about the word ‘private’? It’s none of your business.”
* Romney should never be heard saying, “How much is a gallon of gas these days? My driver usually handles that.”
ï®* Even if he is totally exasperated from a long day of campaigning, Romney should never say, “Hey, I really don’t need this job or the aggravation. I’m rich, and if I lose I can pay less taxes next year without you guys bothering me.”
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Let’s take a look at President Obama’s dumbest statement of recent weeks: “If you have a business, you didn’t build that; somebody else made that happen.”
Of course, the Republicans pounced. Romney said this proved that the president was anti-business.
Wait a minute, said the Democrats, that statement was taken out of context. But a politician should know that everything is taken out of context. Context can be taken out of context in the political world.
So politicians should start every sentence — or blurt out in the middle of a sentence — “I don’t want this to be taken out of context.”
But if you look through a history of Chicago business/politics, you’ll see that Obama is right: In his home city, a lot of people do get a hand when they create a business.
And sometimes the help they get is illegal.
USA Today recently reported on one Obama fundraiser, James Reynolds of Loop Capital, who got a nice no-bid municipal contract.
The Chicago Sun-Times, the New York Times and others have also written about the helping hand that politically connected people in Chicago often got from their politicians.
The “somebody else made it happen” theme could get the president into a heap of trouble if people start taking it in the right context.
Maybe this should be the president’s campaign slogan: “If Nobody Has Given You a Handout Lately, Maybe You Should Move to Chicago.”