Selling the Emperor’s Clothes

Leadership through marketing

© Bryan Zepp Jamieson
2/2/06
http://zeppscommentaries.com/Sociology/spincycle.htm

Everyone knows about the administration paying hack journalists to write fulsome pieces about various aspects of administration policy, such as the “no child left behind” educational train wreck.

There’s those goofy backdrops that came into vogue during the Putsch campaign in 2000. “Reformer with results,” “Compassionate conservative,” and other idiotic phrases that have become the stuff of cartoonist lore. Now that it’s widely seen as a bad joke, Democrats have adopted the practice, which tells you something about the political acumen of Democrats.

There’s the bill names. “No child left behind” was a misnomer from the start (I suggested at the time that is was a politer way of saying “Leave no survivors”), and all the other rape-and-run initiatives have equally inappropriate names: “Clean Skies” and “Healthy Forests” (well, a tree that has been converted into a two by four technically is not a sick tree, I suppose). And of course, there’s that nasty little piece of treason against everyone in America: the PATRIOT ACT.

Photo Ops are a grand old political tradition that dates back to approximately fifteen seconds after the invention of the first camera. But in recent years, it’s been carried to extremes. Politicians, once willing to kiss other people’s babies in public so people would think they gave a shit, now arrange for photographers to be at angles most advantageous to the politician, which is how that shot of Putsch with the presidential seal haloing his head came into being. Or they simply dispense with media photographers altogether, and have their own staff take pictures and give those to the papers. The Clinton administration used to do that about once a month. The Putsch junta does it an average of twice a week, and journalists are beginning to realize that it has gone from spin to flat-out deception. At such events, many of the scandal-plagued Republicans who have, through much fault of their own, become radioactive, simply don’t appear in the images, even if they were sitting right next to Putsch.

It isn’t quite as bad as the old Soviet regime, which was notorious for taking existing photographs of gathered dignitaries and airbrushing out the ones that were no longer quite so gathered. But don’t be surprised if at some point, some reporter sees a picture of a fund-raising luncheon that shows the seat next to Bill Frist to be empty, but the reporter remembers that Jack Abramoff was sitting there.

Administrations strive for favorable coverage in the press, but this one seems to go a step too far.

Part of it is the right wing mind-set. They regard unfavorable coverage as proof that the media has aligned with their enemies, and so have been busy over the past 25 years creating a shadow media that would faithfully convert news to right wing propaganda. More incrementally, the right wing have been buying out the mainstream media and putting editors and publishers in who would downplay unfavorable stories and encourage pro-republican stories.

Then there’s the use of government for propaganda.

One of the most pathetic stunts was the attempt to win the hearts and minds of Moslem youths in Pakistan, our dearest and bestest friend, the one that sells nukes to people who hate us and who is keeping Osama bin Laden hidden and healthy. The admin, out of the kindness of its heart, provided free textbooks to Pakistani schools that included this ode to George W:

“Easy in manner, solid as steel,
Strong in his faith, refreshingly real
Bracing for war but praying for peace
Using his power so evil will cease,
Over and over, he makes his case clear
Reaching to touch the ones who won’t hear.”

The Soviets used to pull shit like that, and we used to laugh our asses off at them for doing so.

What the hell happened to us?

The right have become masters of euphemisms. “Biblical literalists” somehow became “intelligent design” (a judge decided it was still religious twaddle and didn’t belong in a science class). Churches quit being churches, and became “faith-based organizations”, or FBOs. Torture became “waterboarding” which sounds like something you might find on ESPN2 when the college baseball game gets rained out. Or maybe it’s a laundromat. Doesn’t sound like repeatedly drowning a man who is being held without charges and without probable cause, does it?

The propaganda is both expensive and clumsy. Raw Story recently reported on some FOIA documents that show that the Pentagon is spending $100 million to spread “truthiness” around the world. The items are deemed “strategic messages” which is a euphemism for “They aren’t necessarily true.” This includes sophisticated advertising techniques, including focus groups and marketing studies.

The Lincoln Group – the same outfit responsible for the TS Eliot above – is running much of this, and are tasked to accomplish this “Based on market research and analysis, develop and/or validate proposed themes, symbols, and messages that will elicit responses from the recipients that achieve stated goals and objectives.”

Oh, and as Pakistan demonstrates, the US isn’t going to inflict this nonsense just on countries that hate America; America’s few remaining friends will be hit by it, too.

Which means that one day, Canadians will open a copy of McClean’s Magazine and find a full page spread of a hockey player resembling a young Wayne Gretzky who is wearing a jersey with a red maple leaf intertwined with a white star, and he’ll have text below him saying, “I scored 72 goals for the Hog’s Back Thunderball team last year, a league record. I was inspired by the example set, not by those liberal wimps in Ottawa, but by the courage, honesty, valour and steadfastness of President George W. Bush of America. May he reign forever!”

At which point, millions of people will visualize George W. Bush with a hockey puck rammed up his ass, but the Lincoln Group won’t care; they’ll have their money, one bedraggled libertarian from Alberta who will testify that the ad made him want to become an American, and a Pentagon that finally fought a war they could win.

That’s the dirty little secret about propaganda – indeed, all forms of advertising. It doesn’t work all that well. It gets the product out where the public can see it, but it really doesn’t convince anyone the product is superior. So they supplement it with packaging that has appropriate colors and soothing fonts. But if the product isn’t good, all the packaging in the world can’t make you buy it.

American propaganda would work better if America still had the values it discarded in 2001. It still wouldn’t have worked in places like Iraq and Pakistan, but it wouldn’t be a ludicrous waste of money in places like India, or even Canada. People wouldn’t laugh at it the way Americans laughed at the old Soviet propaganda.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to get some cat food. The cat hates the stuff, but it’s got the cutest picture of a kitten on it that looks just like my cat, and a neat logo. The cat? Well, he can go steal food from my neighbor’s cat.

When it does work, that’s how propaganda works. You buy cat food your cat doesn’t like.

But only a complete fool buys it for long.