Wednesday, October 01, 2003

I know why you're here. Or, at least, I will know why you were here. I check my site stats regularly and see what links people followed to get to this page, and it also shows me what search terms people used when linking here from Yahoo! or Google. Occasionally, I find some odd searches have led to this blog.

Today, one of you found this page by going to Google and typing, "garrett gruener a jew." I take it this was supposed to be a question, not a statement. Perhaps the searcher was considering voting for Mr. Gruener in the upcoming gubernatorial recall election here in California, and for some reason his religion was going to be the deciding factor. Was the voter trying to confirm that Garrett is a Jew as a good thing or as a bad thing?

One of my first thoughts on seeing this search was that the visitor had used the wrong search engine. Yes, I love Google and it's usually my first choice. But, when asking a question as a search, you should go to Ask Jeeves, which, after all, was founded by the Jew - er - I mean, candidate in question. So, that's what I did. But Jeeves is a sly devil. I asked, but he said next to nothing. Is Garrett (and his company) trying to hide something? I began to get suspicious.

Next, I went to his blog - no mention of his religion. Then to his main web site, still nothing. Sure, there's a page called "Ask Garrett", but it's just his answers to the debate questions; there's no way to really ask him about something as important as whether or not he attended Rosh Hashanah services last week, or whether he'll be fasting on Yom Kippur the day before the big election.

I guess we just may never know if Garrett Gruener is a Jew in time to incorporate that into our decision next Tuesday. All we do know is that he'll create jobs through investment in new green technology, that he'll put computers into the hands of all school kids, that he'll raise the emission standards on SUVs to the same as regular passenger cars, he'll direct state resources toward renewable energy, that he'll close the commercial property loophole in prop 13, and few other things. But is that really enough to base a decision on? I really wish he'd just answer the Jew question already.

For the record: I'm a Jew, and I vote. How my site came up in such a bizarre search is a topic for another posting.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Twitter Feed