Google Buys Ad To Explain Offensive Michelle Obama Image

Actually "record unemployment" would be incorrect.

See, unemployment reached 10.9% in late 1982 under a recently sainted President whose names escapes me. That's not the record either, but I presume you don't have much interest in history or facts.

Trolls usually don't stick around here because they too often spark a discussion that not only turns against them, but provides logic and reason for their adversaries to utilize.

Some of them have deluded themselves that their "work" is worthy, but more often than not, they open up a can of worms and their handlers and employers and fellow cons convince them to stop before they embarass themselves further.

Occasionally, a terminally arrogant troll will delude themselves that they have somehow "won" some short string in a thread, but that only goes to show they do not understand blogging.

They are opinions and arguments and attitudes, but never are they "winners" in the ongoing debate.

But your reasons fro reading here are what drew me to TPM in the first place. Then, just after the 2006 elections went south for the R's, we saw an influx of both subtle and blatant trolls, (I think JakeD was the first of the "first with the worst" pattern) and then many more came and went, and that was exacerbated even moreso when Obama won.

But, you gotta give them free speech. No matter how outrageous.

Don't expect the same from the wingnut blogs, especially if you reason with them and use the truth as your guide, they will block you in a nanosecond if they realize you are not in lockstep with their lemmings.

Google doesn't alter the individual results of a particular query. Their results are generated by a very complicated set of calculations based on how how the search terms are used on the web page, how 'popular' the site is, how many other sites link to it (and how popular they are), and dozens of other factors.

Google is mostly concerned that the provide the most accurate and unbiased search results possible because it allows them to continue dominating the search market and makes mountains of money. Despite claims to the contrary by groups on all sides of the political and social spectrum who feel that results reflect poorly on their values, there is no evidence that the have ever 'baked' the results. And frankly given the complexity of their algorithm it would be very hard to alter results in favour or opposition of a particular site without major consequences.

The only particular case that I am aware of where the algorithm was changed due to a particular search result was the George W. Bush 'miserable failure' incident. However the reasoning for that wasn't to conceal that result but because that being the first result was the consequence of a large group 'gaming' the system. Many of the changes made to the algorithm are for this reason so that their results are the most authentic possible and not manipulated by outside parties with massive financial motivations.

Ah yes, because portraying African-Americans as a form of simians has no historical ties to racism or derogatory race-related imagery. There's no reason why folks might find that portrayal inappropriate or offensive because, according to you, there's nothing about that image that could be rooted in a racist context regardless of where it comes from. But wait, it comes from a website that makes lots of people look like apes, so that must be okay, right? So if a website portrayed folks with slanted eyes and pulling rickshaws around rice paddies, Asians would have no right to find that inappropriate, correct?

Nice try, but it doesn't matter if other races are also made to look like apes. Portraying African-Americans in that manner clearly conjures up times when racism was rampant. And this also isn't the first time Michelle Obama has been compared to an ape (by conservatives no less). Thanks for playing though.