Kate said...Fair enough. We do try to be responsive and we'll reluctantly admit there is a world outside basketball, so we checked out the website and instead of making a persuasive case for changing the future of the country, the most compelling thing they do is provide us with 7 Ways To Undermine An Argument.
Enough about basketball. (Though I am prepared for a post regarding the games you are going to). This is what I want to read commentary about: http://taxthechurches.org/
1. Fall In Love With Your Own Prose
Maybe taxing the churches will end poverty or maybe it will doom us all to an eternity of suffering. Damned if we knew before spending 15 minutes of our precious time slogging though this disaster of overly complicated writing. Next time, just go with something simple like "Taxing churches is good!" We're dumb and lazy, we don't want to be challenged wit this:
It will be obvious to rational people that exempting religious organizations from paying any taxes is a clear case of government "respecting an establishment of religion." But throughout history we have seen many otherwise-lucid thinkers insist otherwise, including Supreme Court justices who uphold biblical views when their taxpayer-funded jobs explicitly require them to uphold the Constitution of the United States of America.
Clarity is so cliche.
2. Fonts, Fonts and More Fonts
1.
Randomly using all kinds of italics and bolds and quotes doesn't work if you want to be taken seriously.
YOU'RE TRYING TO START A MOVEMENT!!!!
Not sell us penis pills.
3. Quote James Madison and Jesus, too.
We get it. They were great dudes. One of them helped set up some fancy type of government that still kinda works 200 years later. The other might even have been the Cris Angel of his time. Still, it's better resist the urge to cut and paste from Wikiquote. You need to know that your audience. The kind of people who are spurred to action by poorly constructed arguments on bad websites aren't going to be able to decipher what they hell they were talking about anyway. We're not scholars. You're better off G.I. Joe. And know you know ...
[If you instinctively said "And knowing is half the battle" feel free to high five yourself or jump off a bridge. Whatever you feel is best.]
4. Tell Us You Don't Want Our Money
Why would you want our money? If you hadn't brought it up we would have had no reason to suspect that might be trying to put your hand in our pockets. Now you've made us even more paranoid than usual and we're watching you. Like a hawk.
5. Under Construction is Underwhelming
Do you have an FAQ? UNDER CONSTRUCTION
Want to contact us? Try again later.
Not quite the type of professional presentation we were looking for. Just a though, maybe you finish the website before you start the campaign.
6. Get Cute
Normally, we're all for the irreverent little sidebar. They tried one that allows you to click for a personalized argument. Are you a student? Well, taxing churches will provide money for schools. Are you a republican? You're an evil liar. Democrat? Grow some balls. Working woman? Nevermind, we thought they were talking about prostitutes. Are you gay? Well, the church hates you anyway so why not tax their asses. Are you Oral Roberts? Wait, what? That's where they lost us. First of all, if your Oral Roberts you're dead and probably unconcerned with the taxation of churches. Secondly, the name Oral is just too damn funny to be taken seriously and it's entirely possible that everything Mr. Roberts accomplished in his esteemed life was done as revenge against his parents for their horrid naming decision. His Oral Empire includes, of course, the unfortunately self-named university that we always imaged as some elite dental school of something when we'd write ORAL on the second round line of our NCAA bracket and root like heck for the "Fighting Hygienists."
8. Site By Pixelbitch
We're quite sure that Mr. or Mrs. Pixelbitch does fine work (with the obvious exception of TaxTheChurches.org) but, again, if you're trying to be a reputable website that encourages people to vote and write their representatives to convince them to change tax laws so that all the ills of the world will be ended, maybe you should go with someone like CyberPro or UnoffensiveWebPageNameGuy as your web designer instead of Pixelbitch. The same goes for all websites by CodeDick and FontFucker.
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