“Confessions of a Phone Solicitor” is the title of Gail Collins’ column in today’s New York Times. Here are some excerpts.
[A] telemarketer named Ted Zoromski quit his job this week over John McCain’s message. Zoromski was prepared to interrupt people during their dinner hours to encourage them to vote Republican. But when he got the script saying “you need to know that Barack Obama has worked closely with domestic terrorist Bill Ayers, whose organization bombed the U.S. Capitol, the Pentagon, a judge’s home and killed Americans,” he packed it in.“Even though I was paid to do it, I didn’t feel comfortable,” Zoromski told WKOW-TV.
This story … struck me because I once worked as a telemarketer, and it is an occupation so soul-numbing that it is hard to imagine that anything could make it worse. I woke up people on the overnight shift who had just managed to fall asleep for the first time in six days. Sometimes, when there was clearly nobody at home, I would just let the phone ring and ring in order to avoid having to call anybody else. …
So truly, if you can come up with something that would send a telemarketer over the edge, you have really overachieved on the offensiveness front.
She then goes on to give a vivid description of all the vile mud-slinging being done by McCain, Palin, et al. My issue is with the first part of the article. Here is the comment I posted.
Once again Collins has missed the mark. Telemarketers make nuisance calls. That's what advertising is all about. It is not unethical for them to do their work. No one told Collins to let the phone keep ringing when she was a phone solicitor. Ted Zoromski quit his job because he was asked to deliver a dishonest and hateful message. Now that Collins is a Times columnist, after having been a Times editor, she feels free to trash those in her earlier line of work. This is true elitism.
Collins plays fast and loose with the facts and often fails to reason properly. This is a lot more harmful than disturbing people at dinner. The Times has a Doctor Jekyll-Mr. Hyde combo (Dowd-Collins). Maureen's brilliance is matched by Gail's dalliance. Too bad more of your readers don't catch on to this. Perhaps it is because Collins’ column causes so much ringing in their ears.
Getting back to the main point of her article, here is the front page and an inside page of a recent RNC mailer.
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