(This post is in response to a twitter argument I got into that was tipped off by an inane and glib tweet from a Bloomberg opinion writer. The gist of the tweet was that a Chomskyan analysis of the media coverage of a political campaign was useless. The results of an election merely reflects voter preference.)
Manoush finds herself staying in a hotel in a small city that’s not her own. One evening she is deciding where to go for dinner. She really has a craving for burgers, so she looks for some burger places in the vicinity and finds only one that’s open: Maria’s Burgers.
Being unfamiliar with the the area, Manoush asks at the hotel front desk about Maria’s. The desk clerk hesitates and gives a non-committal answer, “I don’t eat there, but to each their own.”
Manoush is perplexed. “Is there something wrong with Maria’s?” she asks.
The clerk then proceeds to give a litany of negative facts about Maria’s: It had a health code violation last year; Maria has a reputation of being a demanding boss; The head cook quit last month; etc. After listening to this, Manoush decides that she shouldn’t eat at Maria’s and goes to Sal’s Seafood across the street from Maria’s.
What can we say about how Manoush’s choice reflected her preferences? Did she really not want a burger? Did the desk clerk convince her that she didn’t want a burger after all?
Assuming everything the desk clerk said was factually correct, did Manoush make the right decision for herself? What if there was another side to all of those facts: Maybe, for instance, the health code violation caused Maria to completely rethink her cleanliness standards and since then, Maria’s is routinely the cleanest restaurant in town. What if Sal’s Seafood had similar issues that the clerk didn’t mention for some reason? Perhaps Sal was related to the hotel’s owner and had a fierce rivalry with Maria, Or Sal was in the habit of letting the hotel desk clerks eat for free?
