Will It Never Cease?!
No, not the incessant squabbling of my upstairs neighbors. They’re in it for the long haul. I’m talking about the endless parade of political calls made by call-o-matics and volunteers begging me, pleading with me, to vote for the candidate. If I answer the phone one more time and it’s Tim Kaine or Jim Webb or George Allen or John McCain or So-and-so from the Webb/Moran campaigns, I’m going to let forth a stream of invective I will not be responsible for.
My temper was swollen yesterday when the woman from the Webb/Moran campaign asked me if she could count on my vote for her candidates. She was a sweet old lady with a 202 number, so chances are they weren’t “her” candidates by a long shot, and I said “Maybe for Webb, Never for Moran.” There was a shocked silence. “er, okay then” she responded to the empty air as the phone was already arcing down the parabola into the cradle from whence it had been plucked far too often. Do these things really work? Do they annoy more people than they get votes out of? There has to be a way to put a stop to these damn calls.
There’s just 24 hours to go here, just a day left, and I’ll be out for most of it. If you need me today, I’ll be on my cell, there’s no way I’m answering the house phone.
House phone? You still have a house phone? Don’t you know they’re so 20th Century – the cool kids do cellular or IP telephony these days.
Get with it Tom, kill the house phone. Hey, you can even get DSL without the land line:
Oh take a pill, Wayan, house phones are still perfectly acceptable. While I have a cell for day to day use, it’s nice to still have a landline (even if it’s VOIP via Comcast) for the pizza guys and chinese food delivery, not to mention if your cellphone gets crummy reception in my ground-floor apartment against a hillside.
I am with it, Wayan, and I have good reason to have a landline.
Be happy you don’t live in a district like this!
http://www.philly.com/mld/dailynews/news/local/15898729.htm
…Campaigns are sending out annoying robo-calls to give the impression that it’s their *opponent* who’s calling their house repeatedly! This is reportedly a national trend.
The faux support call isn’t new to this season. There were claims that calls went out in 2004 purporting to be from the Kerry campaign encouraging people to go out and vote for him in order to preserve gay marriage, etc, though I don’t know of any verification of that. It’s an undisputed fact that there were “push polls” done in the 2000 primaries that asked people if they would be less likely to vote for McCain if they knew he’d fathered a child out of wedlock.