Privacy? Forget About It

Most of us have learned to be very careful when we're online. We don't give out our social security number or any private information that we don't want others knowing. As a result, we're safe from strangers knowing all kinds of things about us that we want to keep private, right? Wrong.

I was googling something the other day when an ad on the right side of the page caught my eye. It was a service that could search for people and find out all kinds of things like where they lived, their emails, their birthdays, the names of their spouses and children, and much more.

I wasn't tempted to check out someone else, but I was curious about how much this company knew about me. For free, they gave me the names of my wife and kids, and promised to give me more information if I used a paid service. Since my primary job is saving my readers from doing anything foolish, I checked the box and committed to a small fee. They listed my age and date of birth, and my address and phone number. They also told me I didn't have any liens on our property, they did a criminal check, and gave me the names of neighbors. It seems that it would be a lot more neighborly just to introduce myself to my neighbors in person, but I'm obviously not living in Cyber Space 2010.

They had my correct age and date of birth, and, if they want to send me a birthday present, they've got my address. They know how much we paid for our house, and the size of it. Actually, they were somewhat short on the house size. They didn't count our finished basement. Maybe their electronic spies missed it when they made their cyber visit. And they gave us an extra bedroom. I hope this doesn't mean that they think there's an extra room that they can use for one of their people to spend the night.

They said I had no criminal record, so I guess they don't count parking tickets. They claim there are no registered sex offenders in our neighborhood. In terms of other crimes, burglary and vehicle theft are listed as "average." I don't know if this means that the crooks do an average job when they steal something, or if we have the average number of thefts in our area. They had all kinds of statistics including the claim that a whopping 52% of my neighbors have masters' degrees. If they're so smart, why can't they remember to put on their turn signals?

I immediately realized that if I can find out so much about me, so can everyone else in the world. And no, I still wasn't tempted to check out anyone else. The whole thing made me feel like I'd be peeking in someone's window, going through their garbage, or tracking down their old math teacher. So I called the company to cancel everything. I asked the woman on the phone, "Don't you feel like this whole thing is a bit creepy?"

Not surprisingly, she did not, and said she's a customer as well as an employee. She touted the ability to check out a possible employee like a nanny. She also said you could find an old friend whom you had lost touch with. My feeling is, if I've gotten along this well without them, I can stay out of touch. I added, "Aren't you concerned about that annoying kid from elementary school tracking you down?"

She answered, "If you're worried about somebody like that finding you, you can check the box that doesn't allow your records to be public."

I responded, "I'm not worried about the annoying kid from school finding me. I was the annoying kid." I was just using that as an example.

So, I resigned my membership a few minutes after I had joined. However, we all know that there are many companies like this that can tap into our computers and find out all kinds of things about us: what products we buy, whom we e-mail the most, and probably if we picked up after our dog this morning (I did). It doesn't seem to matter how careful we are, "they" will find out more about us than they should. In fact, it wouldn't surprise me if I get an email in a few minutes from one of these companies saying something like, "Who are you kidding? Those socks you're wearing don't go with your pants."

Treehugging Bartenders

In these days of overwhelmingly serious issues, every once in a while we need a break from them. That's why some people exercise, or read, or send text messages like, "I'm texting now." People need diversions. So I have a gift for you: a question to ponder that is just something interesting that caught my attention: Why are there so many more liberal bartenders than conservative ones?

Sociologists Neil Gross and Ethan Fossey came up with some research recently that was reported in The New York Times. They investigated stereotypes like "university professors are liberal and bankers are conservative." They found that liberal and conservative stereotypes are self-perpetuating. Young people hear all their lives that journalism is a liberal field and running a corporation is something conservatives do. So it's not surprising that liberal young people might want to be journalists and conservative kids might be drawn to business.

Even when the researchers dealt with the labels that people gave themselves, many stereotypes held up. While the majority of people in most fields called themselves, "moderates," the professions that you would probably label "conservative" generally had more people in them that identified themselves as "conservatives" and vice versa. More artists, authors, and social workers identified themselves as "liberals," and more religious workers, physicians, and law enforcement officers called themselves "conservatives." No big surprises so far, right? But then we come to the statistic that caught my eye: more than five times as many bartenders consider themselves liberals than conservatives. Is there a liberal bartender stereotype that I just didn't know about?

What is it about bartending that makes it a "liberal profession?" Until now, I guess I believed in the stereotype that bartenders must be conservatives. My image was of a tough-minded guy who goes hunting on his day off and has a tattoo on his chest that reads, "If You Weren't Born Here, Go Home." As you can see, I also believed that bartenders have very big chests. But the statistics proved me wrong. More bartenders are liberal than conservative.

So how do bartenders fit into the liberal stereotype? What do they have in common with other liberals? Maybe the stereotypical liberal love of egalitarianism is represented by the fact that bartenders can be men or women. Customers don't care who pours their drinks as long as they keep coming. And interestingly enough, I think the typical bartender has much in common with the sports jacket wearing, pipe smoking, latte drinking university professor. The bartender is the professor, and the bar is his classroom. He or she is in complete control. Like the professor, a bartender can kick people out of his "classroom." Like the professor, the bartender can share his worldly wisdom with those around him. Like the professor, the bartender feels he is underpaid, considering the public service that he performs. Maybe their desire for "one world" and their liberal love of other countries is shown by their serving drinks like White Russians, French Connections, and Australian Virgins. Maybe they demonstrate their liberal disdain for tradition by mixing up concoctions like the Pineapple Martini.

Regardless of how bartending came to be in the liberal column, it's there. So I guess there must be many children who grow up in liberal homes, wondering if they should feed the hungry or serve the thirsty. There are probably scores of college students who can't decide if they should go into sociology or mixology. And I feel bad for all of those young liberals who go through the gut-wrenching choice of, "Should I work for Greenpeace or at the Green Grass Lounge?"

Once word gets out about these lefties who serve beer and cocktails, I assume outraged right-wingers will rail against them: "It's unnatural for someone to be able to pour four drinks at once without spilling a drop." "The liberal agenda includes serving all kinds of fancy drinks instead of just straight Bourbon." And can't you just hear Rush Limbaugh decrying, "Liberals are appropriating everything that was once ours. They've taken over the bars. What's next? Are they going to start foreclosing on people's mortgages?"

On the other hand, those on the right might not be upset about liberal bartenders at all. Let's face it. Just now, I was guilty of using a stereotype.