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Step 1:
Michelle Malkin blogs about "a new study" showing that hiring takes a jump after a Republican president is sworn into office. On the Huffington Post, someone who's not getting paid makes a post about a study saying the same thing about Democratic presidents. They both say "drop in unemployment" rather than "rise in hiring," though the two concepts are not identical.
These two posts each get around seventy thousand hits in two days. The individuals whose prejudices they vindicate do not know about the opposing post; they don't read those sorts of blogs.
Step 2:
A Libertarian/Green Party/Canadian/otherwise-more-thinly-partisan blogger complains that they're both talking about the same study, which was in fact conducted in 1998. It says that hiring goes up after every presidential inauguration. This post gets very few hits.
The Republican-slanted version of the story has by this point hit Fox Business News, in between a couple of ads for gold, and Rush Limbaugh stretches it out to about ten minutes of armchair psychology regarding the deep wellspring of emotional reassurance which conservative officeholders represents to business - sort of like a blankie with yellow ducks on it. Chris Matthews pulls roughly the same tactic, but keeps it down to five minutes because he's got a couple of actual journalists coming on; he needs to be sure to waste every second of their time trying to coax them into supporting some other unrelated narrative he's come up with, in the manner of a college freshman desperately attempting to fit his primary texts to his ill-thought-out thesis when the paper's already written.
Step 3:
An economics professor who's felt a migraine coming on for the past nine hours writes a post impatiently explaining that hiring typically gets a bump in January and early February, when businesses are putting into action plans devised in the previous year. S/he points to a 2007 study suggesting that business owners in the UK might hire more after the inauguration of a prime minister of their own party, possibly due to a slight associated bump in self-confidence and optimism. The study's results haven't been replicated, though. S/he then shuts the bedroom blinds and collapses.
Ta-Nehisi Coates links to this, but no one clicks through because they just enjoy hanging around in his comments section so much. The econ professor acquires a troll in his/her own comments, who over the next few weeks will go on to sporadically haunt his/her posts about the euro before fading away.
Step 4:
Somebody at the Motley Fool, less thorough than the economist but with a better instinct for those qualities that inspire linking, posts a pared-down version of the economist's observations unattributed (s/he took out the part about the study being British - too confusing). S/he adds that, for any given city, a larger hiring bump is associated with a Super Bowl win. This statement is also unattributed, because the blogger made it up.
This post is widely-linked (Kottke's probably an early vector) by less-politically-partisan blogs because it fits in with a less-politically-partisan narrative. Still, it gets fewer hits than either of the two original posts, the emotional high achieved through party-identity vindication being more viscerally satisfying.
Step 5:
Cat macros.
(Note: I made up all the economic stuff in this post. I mean, it sounds kind of plausible, so some of it might be accurate! I just haven't bothered to check. The Huffington Post should offer me some unpaid work immediately.)
Michelle Malkin blogs about "a new study" showing that hiring takes a jump after a Republican president is sworn into office. On the Huffington Post, someone who's not getting paid makes a post about a study saying the same thing about Democratic presidents. They both say "drop in unemployment" rather than "rise in hiring," though the two concepts are not identical.
These two posts each get around seventy thousand hits in two days. The individuals whose prejudices they vindicate do not know about the opposing post; they don't read those sorts of blogs.
Step 2:
A Libertarian/Green Party/Canadian/otherwise-more-thinly-partisan blogger complains that they're both talking about the same study, which was in fact conducted in 1998. It says that hiring goes up after every presidential inauguration. This post gets very few hits.
The Republican-slanted version of the story has by this point hit Fox Business News, in between a couple of ads for gold, and Rush Limbaugh stretches it out to about ten minutes of armchair psychology regarding the deep wellspring of emotional reassurance which conservative officeholders represents to business - sort of like a blankie with yellow ducks on it. Chris Matthews pulls roughly the same tactic, but keeps it down to five minutes because he's got a couple of actual journalists coming on; he needs to be sure to waste every second of their time trying to coax them into supporting some other unrelated narrative he's come up with, in the manner of a college freshman desperately attempting to fit his primary texts to his ill-thought-out thesis when the paper's already written.
Step 3:
An economics professor who's felt a migraine coming on for the past nine hours writes a post impatiently explaining that hiring typically gets a bump in January and early February, when businesses are putting into action plans devised in the previous year. S/he points to a 2007 study suggesting that business owners in the UK might hire more after the inauguration of a prime minister of their own party, possibly due to a slight associated bump in self-confidence and optimism. The study's results haven't been replicated, though. S/he then shuts the bedroom blinds and collapses.
Ta-Nehisi Coates links to this, but no one clicks through because they just enjoy hanging around in his comments section so much. The econ professor acquires a troll in his/her own comments, who over the next few weeks will go on to sporadically haunt his/her posts about the euro before fading away.
Step 4:
Somebody at the Motley Fool, less thorough than the economist but with a better instinct for those qualities that inspire linking, posts a pared-down version of the economist's observations unattributed (s/he took out the part about the study being British - too confusing). S/he adds that, for any given city, a larger hiring bump is associated with a Super Bowl win. This statement is also unattributed, because the blogger made it up.
This post is widely-linked (Kottke's probably an early vector) by less-politically-partisan blogs because it fits in with a less-politically-partisan narrative. Still, it gets fewer hits than either of the two original posts, the emotional high achieved through party-identity vindication being more viscerally satisfying.
Step 5:
Cat macros.
(Note: I made up all the economic stuff in this post. I mean, it sounds kind of plausible, so some of it might be accurate! I just haven't bothered to check. The Huffington Post should offer me some unpaid work immediately.)
