Tag Archives: politics

FISCAL CLIFF STANDOFF: TIME’s Michael Grunwald Says Republicans Negotiating “Terms of Their Surrender”

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In an interview with WHYY’s Radio Times, Time magazine senior correspondent Michael Grunwald says Republicans are “negotiating the terms of their surrender,” characterizes the fiscal cliff as a “manufactured crisis,” and labels his colleagues in the media as “enablers” of Republican hypocrisy.

Listen to the 52-minute interview HERE or see highlights below:

The “fiscal cliff” is really a slope. “It’s not like on Jan. 1st there’s an immediate five-hundred billion dollar austerity hit. Taxes will go up…there are spending cuts that will be phased in [but] over ten years. It’s not like huge chunks of the government immediately disappear. It’s not like the deficit suddenly explodes—it’s quite the opposite. We start to go on this gradual slope towards a lower deficit.”

“The whole point of the fiscal cliff was that these tax increases and spending cuts were supposed to be so unpalatable that nobody would want them, and therefore the two sides would be forced to come to a deal for this grand bargain on long-term deficit reduction.”

“You can already see Republicans negotiating the terms of their surrender.  Everybody seems to want these middle-class tax cuts to be extended. The question is how to let the upper income tax cuts expire without Republican fingerprints, which shouldn’t be that difficult.”

On the role of the media

Grunwald is disturbed by “the media’s enabling not only of Republican hypocrisy, but Republican B.S. Reasonable people can disagree about some of these policy issues, but the facts are the facts.”

“What kind of irritates me is the way my colleagues in the mainstream media–we don’t know how to deal with this. We just sort of dutifully pass along their claims that they don’t want to cut Medicare, and then the next day we pass along their claims that Obama is insufficiently ambitious in cutting Medicare. It’s as if yesterday never happened and every day is a new day in Washington.”

Give an Inch, They’ll Take a Mile: Why Slippery Slopes Lead to Political Gridlock

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We love to celebrate men and women of principle–even more, maybe, than men of action. We engage in rhetorical wars in defense of our principles and values, and we die for them too. Being principled means not caving in. It means being an absolutist. Any concession or even hint of compromise is to be resisted. Even the smallest limitation that Congress might impose is an infringement on our freedom. It will chip away, dilute, and eventually destroy our liberties. The world will basically come to an end.

Slippery slope arguments are being employed in the Fiscal Cliff standoff, and are commonly used as an intellectual basis for opposing gun-control laws, tax increases, and a host of other issues.

The problem with the slippery slope and other absolutist positions is that they are anything but intellectual. They shut down dialogue and make compromise nearly impossible. How can we ever gain consensus if neither party is willing to give an inch? Being an Ayn Rand absolutist may give you street cred with the think-tanks, but the world of politics is messier. It’s hard to be an absolutist and also be a doer.

I am not advocating that either side of the aisle surrender deeply held convictions and principles. But principles should be guidelines for behavior, not holy commandments. Sometimes, in the name of getting things done, you may have to veer off the beaten path; you may, that is, have to repackage, reinvent, and recast your principles for a changing world. If you want to be a conservative activist or align with a liberal advocacy group, then absolutism will serve you well. Just don’t run for congress. Because that’s an institution that requires people from different regions and walks of life to come together and, well, make shit happen. We need leaders who know when to put action ahead of principles, leaders who are guided by big ideas but not slave to them.

As the late William F. Buckley, Jr. wrote in 1974, “Intelligent deference to tradition and stability can evolve into intellectual sloth and moral fanaticism.”

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Hardly the Grinch: Mitt Romney Gave the Gift of Pork

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Romney wants us to believe that Obama won by playing Santa Claus.

And yet, Romney was among the most generous gift-givers as governor, meting out pork to his constituents and interest groups with zest and zeal. Indeed, Romney was the turnaround specialist he portrays. Initially, according to Mother Jones, his administration bemoaned “its low ranking in an annual ‘pork list’ detailing which states brought home the most federal bacon.” But Romney and his team were not deterred. We shall overcome! The administration devised a plan to increase its share of pork, a goal that it would ultimately achieve. “Between 2003, when Romney took office, and 2006, Massachusetts climbed as high as nine spots in the pork rankings.”

Brain Porn Gone Wild

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Recommended reading: Alissa Quart’s opinion piece, “Neuroscience: Under Attack,” in today’s New York Times. It’s a well-written rant against a recent crew of neuroscience popularizers, including Malcolm Gladwell, Chris Mooney and Jonah Lehrer, who, she contends, are giving “vague, undisciplined thinking the look of seriousness and truth.”

Brain porn might provide short-term gratification, but it can be highly addictive. “As a journalist and cultural critic,” she writes, “I applaud the backlash against what is sometimes called brain porn, which raises important questions about this reductionist, sloppy thinking and our willingness to accept seemingly neuroscientific explanations for, well, nearly everything.”

Sounds like intellectual territorialism to me, or just old-fashioned snobbery—not unlike the way that many traditional journalists feel about bloggers. Most interesting is who she cites (and doesn’t cite) to buttress her case. We don’t hear from the Society for Neuroscience, or from voices representing the scientific establishment. Maybe one reason she doesn’t cite opinion leaders like the New York Times’ David Brooks is because he is part of her problem, a self-appointed popularizer of the social sciences, and has been widely criticized for his “reductionist” thinking. Nor does she quote the New York Times’ Paul Krugman – just a hunch, but could it be that he too is a popularizer – in this case, of economics? Or is it because Mr. Krugman was already on the record in support of Chris Mooney’s “The Republican Brain,” which he termed “a survey of the now-extensive research linking political views to personality types.” 

If not the scientific establishment, then who are the voices out front on this issue? Who are her go-to sources? Here’s the answer: the guys who, um, you know, sort of write stuff online, or as she put it: “A gaggle of energetic and amusing, mostly anonymous, neuroscience bloggers.” Yes, the dirty and much despised blogger class.

Hey, if you can’t beat them, join them.

Political Advice From the Grave

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As Republicans pick up the pieces and begin to repair the damage done to their brand, they might recall the difference between principled politics and dogmatic politics. GOP leaders would be wise to avoid knee-jerk conservatism, where their programmed response is to invariably resist change. They might heed the advice of conservative icon William F. Buckley, Jr., who, in 1974, nailed it in the pages of National Review:

“Conservatives pride themselves on resisting change, which is as it should be. But    intelligent deference to tradition and stability can evolve into intellectual sloth and moral fanaticism, as when conservatives simply decline to look up from dogma because the effort to raise their heads and reconsider is too great.”

Pilger on Petraeus: “Absolutely Crap General”

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A lot of what John Pilger says is over the top. I’m not, for example, crazy about the ease with which the Australian born media critic tosses around  “warmongers” or “war criminals,” which he uses to describe everyone and his brother, including Bush, Blair, Hillary, Obama, and now General Petraeus, for whom he holds particular disdain.

However, I don’t let his occasional excesses ruin a good time, because what Pilger has to say about the media is always interesting and usually on target. As we the public are led into our respective ideological-cultural Bubbles, where facts go to die, we need Pilger’s brand of truth-telling more than ever.

On Saturday, Pilger addressed the Media and War Conference in London. Watch it HERE.  If you don’t have time or patience to sit through it, here’s a recap of some of his more tantalizing, insightful, and perhaps inciting quotes:

Pilgerisms – Top 10 List

10. “Journalism, in the mainstream, is not addressing the world as it is.” It distracts the public with side shows like the liberal/conservative narrative, horse-race journalism, and of course the Petraeus scandal.

9. On the BBC: “…the best production values in the world. Some of the finest, most refined state propaganda…that’s, in a way, its function.”

8. It’s quintessential propaganda, according to Pilger, when the Guardian, “at the height of this Stalinist time,” puts on the front page a picture of the Obamas who, he quips, “are forever hugging and kissing each other, we know that.”

7. “The BBC is an extension of power in this country.”

6. “The high-mindedness that you get from BBC journalists…this defensiveness behind a set of principles, of church-like principles, as they tick off their own sort of catechism of how neutral and impartial and so on. This is nonsense.”

5. “The so-called respectable organs of media have, in my view, played a much more important role in promoting all the wretched euphemisms of aggressive war.”

4. The respectable media minimizes “the culpability of our own governments” and teaches “young journalists never to look in the mirror of your own societies. We don’t actually say that but that’s the message: Always see the demons, always see the criminals, and always see the rapaciousness, if you like, not at home but somewhere else. It’s something that runs right through our media colleges. It runs right through a lot of our right-thinking colleagues in journalism. And it needs to change if we’re going to have a world that actually hears the truth, and we tell the truth.”

2. “This man played a very, very important role in setting up a propaganda model that the Pentagon, which spent in five years something like—according to the AP—like $4.5 billion for public relations. Petraeus’ job was, as a public-relations man, to seduce the media, which he did.”

1. The media’s “obsequiousness towards this tenth-rate product of a corrupt military officer class, which is in the United States, which has been sacrificing its young men and women, as well as the civilians it’s assaulted for so many years…The real role of Petraeus is as one who is there to deceive the rest of us.”

Media Wish List: For our Stocking Stuffer

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  • We want a media that provides context and perspective, not a simple transcript of the back-and-forth between interests.
  • We want a media that publicizes LIARS and IMPROPERGANDISTS the way it publicizes child molesters.
  • We want a media that shouts “BALK,” “INTERFERENCE” or, even better, “STRIKE THREE, YOU’RE OUT!”
  • We want a media that doesn’t act like a herd.
  • We want a media that is not politically biased, just biased in favor of the truth.
  • We want a media that refuses to sit there “objectively” and calmly narrate even the most outrageous claims and crap disseminated by campaigns in both parties.
  • We want a media that knows when to say NO.

Watching the Watchdogs: Newsmax vs. Mother Jones

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It is now fashionable for media to decry the loss of fact-based discourse, to bemoan the new world of post-truth politics. Who could disagree with that sentiment? We ask only one thing: That media who cry foul ensure their own reporting is squeaky clean and that they don’t play loose with the truth. Seems reasonable, right?

This brings us to highly regarded David Corn’s recent piece for Mother Jones, which carried this headline:

Franklin Graham: God May Have to Cause ‘A Complete Economic Collapse’ to Save Nation From Obama

It’s a headline that inflames or mocks, however you prefer. Even more troubling — it’s misleading too.

We’re not accustomed to defending Newsmax. But if you read the source material, and watch the clip with Graham, it becomes clear that Corn is misrepresenting the tone, tenor, and, yes, the “truthiness” of the interview. Moreover, we worry that Mother Jones is distorting the substance of Graham’s comments in its eagerness to attract more eyeballs and re-Tweets. In the hyperkinetic world of social media, does traffic trump truth?

IMPROPERGANDA compared the source material with Mother Jones‘ take on it, which we invite you to do below. This was my initiation to Newsmax TV, and the tone of the interview surprised me–more PBS than Fox News. The host repeatedly tried to open the door to partisan attacks, and Graham largely refused to walk through it, though you wouldn’t know it by reading Corn’s piece. So what did Graham actually say and what didn’t he say?

For starters, Graham never said what Corn’s headline purports, nor can that meaning plausibly be deduced from anything said in the interview. Even Newsmax, accustomed to throwing conservatives big chunks of red meat, used a considerably less inflammatory headline in its own coverage:

Franklin Graham to Newsmax: ‘We Have Turned Our Backs on God’

Here’s Graham’s quote that apparently inspired Corn’s headline: “Whether it’s conservatives or liberals, we have turned our backs on God.” Graham’s beef wasn’t with Obama specifically, but a larger issue against which culture warriors have always rallied — secularism.

Is Graham predicting an economic meltdown, and suggesting that only God can save us from Obama? Is he signaling the troops that it’s time to stand up and resist the great Satan that is Obama? Sorry to disappoint. “You don’t have to agree with his positions, but he is our leader,” said Graham. “The president is our president. We need to get behind him.” Granted, the truth doesn’t always lend itself to an eye-catching headline.

And, what of Graham’s rant that over the last four years we’ve taken God out of the public sphere? If you believe in the separation between church and state, like I do, then it can be disconcerting. But you know what? It’s relatively harmless compared to the right’s rhetorical excesses that were on display during the campaign. The idea that there’s a war on Christians– what are you going to do, that’s their narrative. We’re going to deny Graham his culture war? We have our stories and they have theirs. But even here, Graham doesn’t single out Obama or Democrats for blame, concluding that the values crisis is bigger than either Party.

The substance of Graham’s interview, and Newsmax’s reporting on it, were neither inflammatory nor misleading. Can the same, in this instance, be said of Mother Jones?

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Compare & Contrast:

Read the Newsmax story and watch the video clip

Read David Corn’s story for Mother Jones

Is Silver the New Gold? Contrarian Voices Chime In

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Advocates of horse-race journalism on steroids may regard Nate Silver as the new gold, but not everyone is caught up in the media’s worship of Silver. Following are two skeptical takes on the Silver phenomenon. What are your thoughts?

In a well written piece, FAIR.org asks, “Has Nate Silver Ruined Campaign Journalism?” Michael Gerson delivers a spot-on quote:

“The problem with the current fashion for polls and statistics is that it changes what it purports to study. Instead of making political analysis more “objective,” it has driven the entire political class–pundits, reporters, campaigns, the public–toward an obsessive emphasis on data and technique. Quantification has also resulted in miniaturization. In politics, unlike physics, you can only measure what matters least.”

Monkeycage.org features, “Is Nate Silver’s popularity good or bad for quantitative political science?“ In response, Will Jennings writes:

“Nate Silver has done a lot for popularizing the art/science* of election forecasting. Broadly speaking I am pro-Silver, at least when the alternative is a vacuous punditocracy (which the UK suffers from at times too). There are reasons to be cautious about the hero worship accorded him, though. Successful forecasters can, paradoxically, start to become seen as infallible (anti-probabilist) sources of knowledge about elections. And when Silver calls an election wrong (due to data failure or a breakdown in his model), as he surely will if he stays in the game long enough, the scorn heaped on election forecasting will potentially do great damage to the political science profession and its standing. The pundits will jump all over the guy who has been making them look foolish and have their revenge. Indeed, Nate Silver has been wrong before: when it came to predicting the UK 2010 general election. After a fairly belligerent intervention on the merits of ‘proportional swing’ models over uniform swing, Silver’s model performed poorly in contrast to alternatives. A relative lack of knowledge of the UK no doubt was a factor. But still, even brilliant forecasters can get it wrong.

If you’re interested, my colleague Rob Ford’s response to Nate Silver about forecasting the UK 2010 election is posted here:
http://www.pollster.com/blogs/ford_response_to_nate_silver.php?nr=1 ”

Denial is a River…Running Through the Republican Party

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Read more on DENIAL:

Life Inside the Bubble: Dude, Where’d My Facts Go?

Republican Dysfunction: When Message and Product Conflict

Karl Rove and the Politics of Victimization

The Erosion of the Republican Brand: Dude, where’d my core competencies go?  

Republican Dysfunction: When Message and Product Conflict

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Are you excited at the thought of hearing Republicans’ “Big Ideas” on how to grow their shrinking market? I can’t wait. It’s not just a matter of re-positioning and repackaging their brand, or is it?

A strong brand creates an emotional bond with its constituents. When politicians say one thing, but do something else entirely, they undermine their brand credibility and risk severing their bond with voters. Republican IMPROPERGANDISTS may think it’s a game, but their disregard for facts and empty rhetoric is killing them. As Frank Rich writes in New York Magazine, Republicans are still deluding themselves, and stubbornly so.

I speak from experience. Once I announced that I “love” doing dishes, and then proceeded to let them pile up. Let me tell you, I faced one pissed off constituent.  My brand, at least for a day, was destroyed. My term for it: Brand dysfunction. If Republicans listen to Laura Ingraham, who recommends Republicans change “the language of dealing with Latinos,” they will face not only the prospect of brand dysfunction, but brand erosion. Their problems are bigger than their message or messenger.  You don’t become a more inclusive party by saying you’re a more inclusive party, and you don’t become a national party by saying you’re a national party. You have to change your product first.  Change never comes easy, especially for a Party passionately devoted to resisting it.

Karl Rove and the Politics of Victimization

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Karl Rove says Obama won because he went negative. His ads had the effect of “suppressing the vote.” It’s not minorities whose voting rights were being suppressed — white people were the real victims. Don’t you love it when Republicans play the victim card.

Told that the American way of life was at stake, voters responded by staying home on Election Day. Rather than fight the encroachment of socialism, they ordered Papa John’s?

 

The Erosion of the Republican Brand: Dude, where’d my core competencies go?

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Tarnishing Democrats as “weak on defense” is no longer the walk in the park for Republicans that it used to be. That’s because Republicans lost more than an election — they lost ownership of a core issue that is essential to the GOP’s brand identity.

Barack Obama has been as an effective Commander-in-Chief who, in spite of criticism from the left, has maintained a strong defense and security posture—so effective, in fact, that the Republican Party might consider suing for infringement of their—dare I say—“intellectual property.” Dr. Shanto Iyengar, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and director of Stanford’s Political Communication Laboratory, told Improperganda: “Obama’s record as Commander-in-Chief and the killing of bin Laden have probably contributed to a whittling away of the Republican advantage.”

The“weak on defense” charge, as political weapon, grew out of the Vietnam War. This narrative, I would wager, is lost on most voters under 40, who don’t reflexively regard Democrats as an anti-war party, which is how Republicans quite effectively branded them from roughly 1968 to 2008. Republicans have viciously mocked Michael Dukakis, attacked Bill Clinton for being a bearded “draft dodger,” assailed John Kerry’s character and massacred his military service.

That was then. Over the past 12 years, voters’ perceptions of the Party’s respective strengths–those “core competencies” for which they have reputed expertise and credibility–have been changing. A recent ABC/Washington Post poll gauged the Barack Obama and Mitt Romney brands, evaluating their “reputational” competencies. (For a company, an equivalent inquiry would be, do we compete on price, service, quality, or distribution?) The poll showed that Romney scored higher in handling the deficit, and that voters were more trusting of Obama to protect Medicare. Most telling, voters were significantly more trusting of Obama to handle a major crisis; said another way, they preferred that Obama be the guy in the White House to answer the storied 3 a.m. phone call.Voters were also more trusting of Obama to manage international affairs. Obama’s encroaching on Republicans’ turf. He’s in their grill.

What’s at work here? In short, eight long years of Bush, during which he squandered Clinton’s surplus in favor of unnecessary wars and, in the process, also squandered his Commander-in-Chief credibility. The IMPROPERGANDA campaign waged by the Bush Administration tarnished the Republican brand, and chipped away at the Party’s ownership of the “strong on defense” message.

In the 2008 election, voters responded by electing a black “community organizer” to keep them safe instead of former POW John McCain.

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They trusted Barack Obama, one-time editor of the Harvard Law Review, to manage our obligations in Afghanistan and Iraq over Pentagon insider John McCain.

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For Commander in Chief, they trusted a guy who never served over a guy whose family had Admirals growing out of its ass.

This summer, Republicans predictably tried to make hay out of Obama’s defense budget, claiming that it put the country at risk. What was unusual about the fearmongering was, well, that this time it didn’t work, didn’t resonate, didn’t stick.   We see a similar phenomenon with Benghazi. Sean Hannity was beside himself, convinced it was a homer when it was just a deep fly-out to center field. You could hear the disappointment in his voice, his exasperation over the scandal that refuses to stick. Whatever voters may think of Obama, the majority don’t assign evil motives to his actions or decisions. He’s not trying to pull a fast one, or at least they don’t perceive him that way.  In order to work, a smear narrative must, at some level, reinforce voters’ preconceptions about said smear subject. Voters, it turns out, largely trust Obama in international affairs and are more likely to give him the benefit of the doubt. Therefore: no scandal. Sorry Sean.

A few words of caution: I don’t want to suggest that Republican operatives are done playing the “weak on defense” card. Wishful thinking, right? They will still taunt Democrats, but at least for the time being, the “weak on defense” charge will continue to see diminishing returns. It is too early to know if Democrats have neutralized the Republican advantage on this issue, temporarily hijacked it or indeed own it.  My preference is for a term coined by the University of Missouri’s John R. Petrocik, who argues that political parties can “lease” an issue from the other party.

If that’s what Obama and the Democrats are up to, I hope they have an option to own it.

Election 2012: Chris Christie Bromance + Confessions of a Flip-Flopper

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For Election Day, IMPROPERGANDA had a big zinger planned:  Chris Christie’s head superimposed on an image of a very large female opera singer, with the headline: The Fat Lady’s Singing.

That was before Barack Obama seduced the governor of New Jersey, setting off a Laurel and Hardy bromance. Suddenly Christie is now the best friend of liberals, who earlier dismissed the Bruce Springsteen fanatic as an opportunistic blowhard. And IMPROPERGANDA is no better than anyone else: After jeering Christie, we cheered him. And today, when my fiancé and writing partner tapped me on the shoulder, I realized the ramifications of said flip-flop. “Looks like we better scrap the Pavarotti-Christie thing,” she said. And she was right. How could we mock this guy now!?

It got me thinking. Why did I dislike Chris Christie so much to begin with? Am I just a
flip-flopper devoid of any cohesive intellectual framework, like Mitt Romney?

Remind me, what were my policy gripes with Christie, and why are they no longer compelling? Or maybe my turnaround is simply a case of hyper partisanship. We’re told repeatedly that voters yearn for issues-based campaigns. Yet many of us can’t cope with intellectual disagreement, because our emotional attachment to our respective partisan teams gets in the way.  Allegiance to team and turf trumps issues; emotion trumps reason.

We like to think that we are separate from or above animals, and that our ability to think differentiates us. Perhaps with the stock market, that is true. But when it comes to politics, we behave like territorial, instinctual animals. Campaign operatives are masters at using emotional wedge issues to define us and divide us into either of two camps. Campaign messages are designed not to intellectually engage voters, but to emotionally activate them, to rile them up. Campaigns are not, at their core, about issues; they are an exercise in group identity politics, in the manufacture and manipulation of group resentments. Political party affiliation is like membership in other groups, gangs, or Bubbles: it gives our lives a sense of connectedness, purpose, and common identity.

That, I’m afraid, is what’s at the center of Democrats’ love affair with Chris Christie.  It’s not that he saw the light; it’s that he saw our light. We identify with people who agree with us, who see the world like we do. When they cease to agree with us, the Bubble’s IMPROPERGANDISTS like Limbaugh or Maddow are brought in to assault their character and question their commitment to “the cause.” This, of course, is happening to Christie now. It’s the price he pays for going against the herd, for taking one for the wrong team, and for having the audacity to laud the president on Fox  News’ dime.

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Election 2012: Ayn or Atticus — YOU DECIDE!!

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“…man must live for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself. To live for his own sake means that the achievement of his own happiness is man’s highest moral purpose.” – Ayn Rand, from The Virtue of Selfishness

“As you grow older, you’ll see white men cheat black men every day of your life, but let me tell you something and don’t you forget it — whenever a white man does that to a black man, no matter who he is, how rich he is, or how fine a family he comes from, that white man is trash. – Atticus Finch, from Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird

Election 2012: Does Mitt Romney Pass the 3 a.m. Test?

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Is Mitt Romney a take-control kind of guy in a moment of crisis? In 2008, he attended an emergency meeting to piece together a plan to address the spiraling economy. In his piece in the New York Times Magazine, Robert Draper describes it as a serious, somber gathering of economists and elected officials, a 3 a.m. phone-call moment if there ever were one. For all of Romney’s smack-talk about fixing the economy and creating jobs, he shrunk like a violet. When the pressure was on, Mr. Harvard MBA had nothing to contribute—just sat there, I imagine, nodding at the others with false sincerity oozing from his eyes.

Maybe I’m being too hard on him. It’s not that Romney didn’t have a clue how to fix the economy – maybe it’s just that, back in 2008, he was afraid they’d steal his Big Ideas, you know, his 5-point plan that he would later “borrow” from McCain.

That Romney sat silent during an urgently called meeting should not be surprising. In fact, a recent ABC/Washington Post poll found that a solid majority of voters believe Obama would be better than Romney at handling an unforeseen crisis. Try this on for size: If the White House phone were to ring at 3 a.m., voters would rather have the black guy answer it. What’s more, this poll was conducted prior to this week’s ravaging of the East Coast; Obama’s near flawless response to Hurricane Sandy, we can only assume, has further solidified this impression.

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Obama/Romney Election: TGIF

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Happy Friday! Time to take a deep breath, smile big, and kick back!

Now is the time to enjoy your weekend respite, but if the relaxing gets too much to bear, and the election calls your name, you can FOLLOW us at TWITTER: @improper_ganda. :)

From your friends at Improperganda.com

2012 Election: Mitt Romney and the Erosion of Truth

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There is no God higher than Truth - Mahatma Gandhi

“A judgment is said to be true when it conforms to the external reality.”

Ya think?

That statement is attributed to the 13th century philosopher/theologian Thomas Aquinas.  Tommy, you are so old school! Get out of here, dude, with that kind of talk — it belongs in the middle ages. In the 21st century, our notions of truth are much more enlightened.

As Annie Ball writes in The Atlantic: “The auto rescue may or may not have been good policy. But Ohioans seem to think it worked, and they give Obama credit for it. Having cycled through so many arguments against it, all of them unsuccessful, Romney appears to have concluded the only way to win on the issue is to mislead voters about its effects.”

Read more on the erosion of truth:

http://improperganda.com/2012/10/01/life-inside-the-bubble-dude-whered-my-facts-go/

http://improperganda.com/2012/10/02/life-inside-the-bubble-a-glossary/

The Politics of Sucking Up: From Sandy to Soup Kitchens

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Paul Ryan Soup Kitchen Fail

First Paul Ryan cleans a perfectly clean dish at a soup kitchen, for which he is rebuked by the charity president.  Ouch! Now Mitt Romney makes a plea for donations to the Red Cross in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, even though its website states explicitly:

“…the Red Cross does not accept or solicit individual donations or collections of items. Items such as collected food, used clothing and shoes must be sorted, cleaned, repackaged and transported which impedes the valuable resources of money, time, and personnel.”

Mitt Romney, you are not president of the United States, at least not yet. You have not won the election.  If you try to usurp, compete with, or otherwise one-up the president for personal gain during a natural disaster, you look like the also-ran that you are.

Read More:

http://www.addictinginfo.org/2012/10/29/romney-botched-hurricane-sandy/

Election 2012: Romney’s Race & Revulsion Tour

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Again we turn to the great American political writer, Garry Wills, whose elegant essay on the election is featured in the current issue of the New York Review of Books. In it he argues that Romney is operating at two levels. The economy is his main focus, but that’s just on the surface. Wills suggests there’s something else, something scarier and more worrisome, brewing and bubbling beneath the political ground on which Romney walks.

In Wills’ own Words

Romney could explicitly voice only one aspect of this revulsion, Obama’s economic performance. But under the vague general feelings about Obama—reports to pollsters that he is not quite one of us, perhaps not a citizen, not a Christian—there were radioactive centers too hot for a candidate to handle directly. He could, nonetheless, profit from their broader toxic waves, an unconfessed (sometimes, perhaps unconscious) force. It was rightly said that a historic boundary had been crossed when a black man was elected president. That breakthrough partly escaped but did not cancel a long sad record of historic American racism…

…a lot of people are digging in their heels even more firmly against where the nation is going. As I say, there is no open racism in the Romney campaign. But it has to be fiercely concentrated on other things (like the economy) to turn its eyes from what sizzles below the surface, and sometimes not very far below…

…Romney, of course, does not cultivate these voters. He does not have to. He does not denounce them, either. He needs them…He cannot disown a third of his party—and those are only the hard-core Obama revulsionists. Who knows how far the penumbra of soft-core revulsionism has spread among the less candid or more cautious harborers of it…Under all the other hidden things, the Mystery Box is hiding a lethal level of radioactive racism.

Our Analysis

On which level does Romney operate? In the post-Atwater world, overtly racist appeals are no longer part of the Republicans’ propaganda arsenal. Romney’s challenge is to maintain the appearance that he is a man of substance and civility while his boys work behind the scenes to emotionally activate their base’s most base instincts.

Romney would prefer to put a lid on the Tea Party activists, but if pressed by aides, he will open the lid, just a crack, so the fanatics can be paraded about before they’re returned to their container. Romney needs the hard-core activists, but he prefers to keep “the help” at arm’s length; in a similar way, George Bush senior, like a good northern aristocrat, acted on the counsel of Lee Atwater as long as he didn’t have to share the same air with him.

NOW IT”S YOUR TURN

  • If Mitt Romney believed his campaign operatives were exploiting race for political advantage, would he put a stop to it?

  • Did you see Boogie Man, the documentary about Southern bad boy Lee Atwater? He, of course, was employed by the elder George Bush as his campaign’s Master of Wedge Issues and Supreme Race-Baiter.
  • Do you find Atwater despicable or merely tragic?
  • Would his tactics be successful today?

2012 Election – Stealth Politics: What’s Inside Mitt’s Mystery Box?

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Historian and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Garry Wills, whom I read in college many years ago, has a great piece in the current issue of the New York Review of Books.

Following are key excerpts:

All the things Romney treated as “distractions”—women’s rights, gay rights, citizenship for undocumented immigrants, the 47% percent of moochers—Obama treated as if they were indeed distractions…When Romney gave the right wing its preference for his running mate, there was an expectation that Ryan would pop out
like a jack-in-the-box, filling the air with numbers like confetti. He was the party’s great thinker; he would make the campaign serious and nerdy. He would blind with sheer intellect his Elmer Fudd vice-presidential rival. He would turn his Ayn Rand death ray on him and Biden would evaporate. But as soon as Ryan was asked for his great specific plans, he was told that he could not violate his master’s secrecy campaign, and Jack was stuffed back into the box.

We have seen this kind of mystery election before. In the elections of 2010, we were told that the Tea Party candidates arriving on the scene would eliminate the deficit and shrink the government, somehow. Other issues were set aside. Abortion, gay rights, religion in politics—those were all part of the old religious right, now supplanted by the deficit purists. But in a great bait and switch, the first things the new people in Congress, the state houses, and state legislatures did was introduce a flood of bills to limit, stigmatize, or eliminate abortions, and the flood has not abated—944 provisions on abortion or contraception were still being introduced into state legislatures during the first three months of 2012.

The mass of voters did not choose that. There was no way it could. No one knew what was in the 2010 version of the Mystery Box. In the same way, if we vote for “the economy only” Republicans, the old causes will again race to the top of their agenda—challenge’s to women’s rights, gay rights, global warming, religious education, and Supreme Court nominees. All of a sudden, other things will not be distractions from the bad economy.

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Obama/Romney in Today’s New York Times

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Two campaign pieces of interest in today’s New York Times. First, a big-ass article on Romney’s management style.  We came to the same conclusion a couple weeks ago; if you’re on a time crunch, you might prefer our pithier take:

“But, largely, Barack Obama and Mitt Romney are cut from the same material: Both are Ivy League guys and, unlike George W. Bush, proud of it. Neither is an ideologue nor sits comfortably with his party’s extreme wings. They’re both rational, data and analysis guys and both are cautious, methodical decision makers. Bush, by contrast, was a gut instinct guy. Obama and Romney are dead-on Left Brainers. Both are temperamentally conservative: Reserved, serious, shy, decent, cautious, moderate, exceedingly civilized —and yes, both have unusually high regard of themselves….”

And here we have Gail Collins chiming in on the politics of guns. And here is our take.

The New York Times: Beers, Binders, and Bandwagons

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When Mitt Romney’s binder gaffe went viral, it provided partisans with a virtual bonding experience. Improperganda.com joined in the fun, commemorating the moment with a humorous graphic.

However, the substance of Romney’s comment – that he acted affirmatively to create a more diverse cabinet — was in fact rather benign, if not praiseworthy. The collective mocking of Romney should be considered, therefore, a sort of guilty pleasure among Obama supporters, something worthy of a chuckle but with the understanding that the line of attack is perhaps unfair. It may be appropriate to have humorist Gail Collins rip Romney in today’s column, but when the Editorial Page, that venerable voice of reason, weighs in on the issue, it seems to be engaging in a lower form of political communication, namely, pandering. By jumping on the Binder Bandwagon, the Editorial Page inadvertently underscores another troubling trend: That the media is gradually losing control of its agenda-setting power; increasingly it exists merely to amplify what is already out there.

I say, let us partisans on the ground floor have fun with the Romney gaffe machine. Let us handle the mocking.  Maybe I’m just old school, but I prefer an editorial board that appeals to our better halves rather than a Page of the People. The New York Times’ editorial voice, like too many presidential candidates, wants to be the guy you can have a beer with. This raises an issue for those who consider themselves rationalists: If it’s drunk with partisan fervor, who can we count on to drive us home?

Debating the Debates: Do They Matter?

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We read with interest David Carr’s column, “TV Debates that Sell More Than Just Drama,” in today’s New York Times. It’s not just Carr’s headline, it’s also his main point—that the televised debates are fulfilling another, perhaps loftier, purpose.  We have a need to feel part of the great democratic experiment that is America. Carr almost makes it sound like televised debates are more akin to a group civic bonding session. The Obama-Romney debate was:

“…a rare instance in which the body politic was all looking at the same thing.”

But not seeing the same thing. The American people are more divided than ever, and let’s not pretend otherwise. Carr attaches himself to that old-fashioned idea–of community and connectedness, common purpose and civic pride—that we all, supposedly, long for. It’s the idea that, despite our differences, we’re all in it together, we’re all Americans united by our common interest in, well, turning on the TV.  A bit trite, isn’t it, especially coming from grizzled David Carr.

Carr’s theory is based on ratings – the fact that 67.2 million voters turned in for the first debate. This occurred, he says, despite the rise of social media and a more fragmented media landscape. It shows us that “television can tilt the rink like no other medium.”

Carr says televised debates give voters insight into the “inner workings” of the candidates. He must have meant the inner workings of programmed machines. Who in his right mind would want to delve the inner depths of a machine?  Oh, you mean her, ABC’s Martha Raddatz, who pitifully tried to engage Biden and Ryan in a Dr. Phil moment:

“And, please, this is such an emotional issue for so many people in this country… please talk personally about this, if you could.”

Do TV debates still matter? What Carr really wants to know is if HE still matters, whether the mainstream media still matters. Carr is nostalgic for a time when the mainstream media were the sole guardians of “the truth,” the noble gatekeepers who stood between you and the IMPROPERGANDISTS. Once accustomed to driving the news agenda and news cycle, now the high-minded media establishment must share the stage with bloggers, Tweeters, and social media sites for which they largely hold disdain. As the traditional media hierarchy is flattened and fragmented, the gatekeepers and middle men are being cut out.  Media may feel there’s not a level playing field, that the new guard doesn’t play by the same rules as more formally educated journalists do. The old guard has been holding on for dear life, weathering and responding to the changes in the media landscape as best it can. Carr sees the ratings and thinks, Maybe it’s not as bad as it looks. Could it be that voters have realized they need us more than they knew? In Carr’s view, it’s a battle between traditional media and the scrappy social media kids. Carr asks:

“…have the hundreds of millions spent on political ads and social media outreach been dwarfed by a single unpaid media event?”

Carr says there’s more at work here than just drama, but fails to convince us. Jeff Zucker, former chief executive of NBC Universal, essentially told Carr that it’s all about the drama.

“Television is about drama, whether it is the Olympics, the Super Bowl, or ‘Homeland,’ and these debates have provided incredibly great drama…”

This notion flies in the face of another, conflicting piece of conventional wisdom: That televised debates are tightly controlled, artificial constructs featuring mechanical recitation of rehearsed campaign messages.

Do voters tune in to the debates because they’re a can’t-miss “event” like the Super Bowl? Do we tune in because we want to witness a train wreck—a debate moment that might be equivalent to a heinous hit on an unsuspecting receiver? Carr doesn’t seem troubled by the fact that the mainstream media is a partner in creating a “product” that appeals to voters’ most base instincts —to see a good fight.

“Audiences watch to see who wins, which is about as primal as the news media get.”

The anticipation of drama, of gaffes and other “game-changing events,” drives ratings. And said ratings convince members of the media like Carr that the old guard still matters.

Carr ends his piece sounding like a boxing promoter: Stay tuned, there are two debates left, and they “…may yet yield game-changing events.” Oh, goody. Like when Obama nodded his head or kept looking down in consternation, or when Biden flashed his smile a few too many times…are those the game-changing moments to which Carr refers?

I can hardly wait.

Tourism Tip: Visit the Museum of Moderate Republicans

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The passing of Arlen Specter was a tremendous loss for his friends, family, and constituents, but it was also a loss for the Republican Party, as its few moderate voices continue to vanish from our political landscape without being replaced–or, in Specter’s case, are compelled to flee the Party. It’s a reminder that the moderate Republican is becoming a relic, a near extinct species that future generations of school children will study in The Museum of Moderate Republicans.

In that museum you would also find the likes of, well, George W. Romney and Prescott Bush, along with a long forgotten Senator, jurist, and diplomat from Kentucky who IMPROPERGANDA has uncovered: John Sherman Cooper, who passed in 1991.

A few highlights from this moderate Republican’s storied life:

  • His father’s parents – staunch Baptists – were active in the anti-slavery movement in the nineteenth century, and the elder John Sherman Cooper (called “Sherman”) was named after the Apostle John and William Tecumseh Sherman, a hero of the Union in the Civil War.
  • Cooper earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Yale in 1923 and enrolled at Harvard Law School later that year.
  • During his first term in the Senate, Cooper voted with the majority of his party just 51% of the time. Ohio Republican Robert A. Taft once snapped at him: “Are you a Republican or a Democrat? When are you going to start voting with us?” Cooper responded, “If you’ll pardon me, I was sent here to represent my constituents, and I intend to vote as I think best.”
  • He accepted an appointment by President Harry S. Truman as a delegate to the United Nations General Assembly and served as a special assistant to Secretary of State Dean Acheson during the formation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
  • Cooper soon became an outspoken opponent of Johnson’s decision to escalate U.S. military involvement in the Vietnam War, consistently advocating negotiation with the North Vietnamese instead. After Cooper’s re-election in 1966, he worked with Idaho Democrat Frank Church on a series of amendments designed to de-fund further U.S. military operations in the region.

And, get this, when current Senate minority leader Addison Mitchell McConnell was out of college, who gave him his internship? That’s right, moderate Republican — and Kentucky’s shining star — John Sherman Cooper. Mitch, of course, is the same guy who single-handedly and unilaterally destroyed any hopes of bipartisanship when he declared in 2010 that the overriding goal of Senate Republicans would be to make Obama a one-term President.

Read more on Senator John Sherman Cooper:

More on Arlen Specter:

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Flip-Flop…Rolling out the New Romney

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Robert Draper’s piece in Sunday’s New York Times Magazine provided a fascinating before-and-after assessment of Mitt Romney. His tilt to the right—“veer” might be more accurate–had its genesis in 2004 when political consultant Beth Myers assumed responsibility for managing and fulfilling Mitt Romney’s presidential aspirations. Myers had been around the Republican block, working in Reagan’s 1980 presidential campaign where, overseeing voter I.D. programs in rural Texas, she became a protege of Karl Rove.

Myers gets the credit, or blame, for constructing and rolling out the “new” Mitt Romney, and continues to serve as a key strategist. Reading the article, what struck me was the ease with which Mitt Romney reversed core beliefs, a process that he innocently refers to as changing his mind, which others term flip-flopping, and which I euphemistically call adopting Newly Cultivated Positions, or NCPs.

In 2004, the Romney Repositioning Campaign began in earnest, as Myers sought to transform him into a product more pleasing to the palate of conservative primary voters, activists, and donors — the Republican Party gatekeepers

Draper shows that Romney’s arc was not a thoughtful transformation but nakedly calculated, not the result of deep soul searching but transparently political.

Myer’s single-handedly squashed Romney’s alignment with the climate change movement, in which he was playing a leadership role. At Myer’s urging, Romney met with a number of opinion leaders in conservative circles, who helped him craft rationales and shape messages to explain his mounting list of policy and position reversals. Featured on his collection of Greatest Hits: the environment, abortion rights, stem cell research, gun control and, of course, healthcare reform.

Romney’s political transformation was conducted efficiently and routinely, not unlike a baseball player who shows up to work and is told he’s been traded. He packs his bags, catches the next flight, and by the time the first pitch is thrown, he’s already in the dugout, decked out in a new uniform and with new teammates.

These days players change teams so frequently that it no longer shocks the fans, the same way flip-flopping on core principals no longer shocks the voters. The ease with which players change teams and loyalties has contributed to cynicism among fans who are reluctant to grow attached to players they once considered heroes. Likewise, in American politics, flip-flopping–and the loss of credibility that goes with it –has contributed to a growing sense of alienation and indifference among many voters.

Draper leaves me with the feeling that Romney’s transformation was wholly and entirely political, as carefully calculated as it was flippantly fabricated. It was as if he were trying on a suit. If it didn’t quite fit, well then, he would simply make it fit…nothing that a little tailoring can’t fix.

The question remains:  Can voters tell the difference? And do they care?

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When Presidents Stray

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Media Training 101: Don’t wander beyond your area of expertise.

“Stay in your lane: If you’re not the expert on a military topic, don’t comment like you are.”

This is an excerpt from the U.S. Army’s spokesperson guidelines. The Army gets it.  More presidents and presidential aspirants should follow this advice. When candidates stray from their expertise, they are more prone to making gaffes and other ill phrased comments that can damage, if not destroy, a campaign.This isn’t so much about straying from message as it is straying from topic, from a candidate’s knowledge base and comfort zone. A few examples:

  • In July 2010, Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. was arrested in his home. At a news conference, a reporter asked President Obama what the incident meant to him. Here’s how he responded:

“…the Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home…there is a long history in this country of African-Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately. That’s just a fact.”

Obama, you’re not an urban sociologist — you’re President of the United States. Don’t stray. It was as if, after aligning himself with Wall Street, he wanted to restore his street cred with the liberal elites of Harvard. Or was he having a flashback from his days as a community organizer?

  • According to Mother Jones, Mitt Romney recently told a gathering:

Dude, you’re not Stuart Stevens. That’s what you pay your lead strategist for. But poor Romney couldn’t help himself; after all, he loves crunching numbers and analyzing data and, like Obama, fancies himself the Smartest Guy in the Room. When a presidential candidate takes off the policy hat and puts on the consultant hat, he looks bad. When he recites demographics and slices and separates voters into target segments, the impression is that he is running for President of the Divided States of America. And so we get: “…My job is not to worry about those people. “

  • At a San Francisco fund-raiser in 2008, President Obama speculated about why white working-class voters in Pennsylvania may appear to vote against their economic self-interest:

Okay, Obama, big deal, so you read “What’s the Matter with Kansas.” Voters don’t need a book review from their president or your ever thoughtful insight into the cultural, socio-economic and religious fabric of Pennsylvania. I know you hate to delegate to others whom you deem inferior, but there are plenty of capable academics who are on top of this issue. No need for you to speculate; stay in your lane, my man.

  • It may seem counter-intuitive, but George W. Bush’s strength was that he said very little. In this sense he was a disciplined, message-driven politician. In his case, the less said, the better. Bush looked his worst when he ventured into unknown territory, as he did here in 2004:

 ”Too many good docs are getting out of the business. Too many OB-GYNs aren’t able to practice their love with women all across this country.”

Bush, you’re not Dr. Ruth or even Dr. Drew. You’re not even Marcus Welby, even if his son played you in the movie W. Stick to your area of expertise: baseball.

  • And finally, we have Mitt Romney giving NBC’s Brian Williams his assessment of England’s event planning skills:

“The stories about the private security firm not having enough people, the supposed strike of the immigration and customs officials — that obviously is not something which is encouraging.”

Here again we have a candidate paying a huge price in world opinion for a gaffe that could have been avoided had he not strayed from his expertise. Romney, you might be the former governor of Massachusetts and a “hunter” of varmint, but an Olympian you are not…Huh, you say Romney was past president of the winter Olympics and is by definition an expert in that area?

Oh well, never mind.

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Mitch and Mitt

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Who stands to be the biggest loser if Obama wins re-election? You think it’s Mitt? Try Mitch. That’s right, Addison Mitchell “Mitch” McConnell, the Senate minority leader from Kentucky, who announced in 2010 that the overriding goal of Senate Republicans would be to make Obama a one-term President. Republicans’ success, he was conceding, will be measured not by Republicans’ ability to keep our streets safe or to revive the economy, but by a wholly political agenda: Ousting Obama.

McConnell has the appearance of a thin-lipped, powder-faced mortician sitting in judgment high upon his throne. Whether Obama’s healthcare enhancements will save American lives and contain rising healthcare costs is of little interest to him. That it’s the morally right thing to do is not even an afterthought. The rabid opposition to Obamacare is not based on rational policy differences but instead on a favorite conservative caricature. Obama must be defeated at all costs, because, if not, he will transform Americans’ fundamental character, making us more like “them,” those vacation-taking, Volvo-driving, healthcare-entitled, Socialist-Europeans.

We are told by Mitch and his cohort that Obamacare is un-American. Free market capitalism is what makes America great and anything that smells of socialism must be defeated. A healthcare system that is more equitable and efficient is un-American? Water-boarding and wire-tapping are consistent with American values and will not alter the American character, but healthcare reform will? Come again?

How to account for the outrage, or fake outrage, on the right? It has everything to do with trying to resuscitate and inject energy into a conservative soul that is empty and aimless and a conservative movement that is bereft of ideas. Republicans’ propaganda arsenal has been significantly reduced. They can’t play the fear card against Obama, as the administration’s track record on fighting terrorism effectively shields him. Addison and company are using Obama and Obamacare as symbols to emotionally activate their base, just like Reagan’s “Welfare Queens.” The War on Obamacare is conservatives’ pitiful attempt to come up with a wedge issue when their tried and true approach, race baiting, has been taken off the table. It’s the only wedge issue that Addison has at his ready. That and, of course, Obama’s birth certificate. Pity the Republicans.

Will Addison Mitchell McConnell and Senate Republicans achieve their overriding goal, their gnawing obsession, of defeating Barack Obama? As the results are being announced Tuesday night, we will be looking for profuse perspiration on Addison’s pasty forehead.

“Gunning” for Obama

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Who can be trusted to safeguard 2nd Amendment rights? Barack Obama. Come again?

That’s what the record shows. Consider:

  • Romney was a prominent Republican voice for gun control, and even imposed restrictions on assault weapons while Governor of Massachusetts. Gun-right advocacy groups, like the Gun Owners Action League of Massachusetts, responded with a news release proclaiming:

“Romney Takes Opportunity to Betray Gun Owners“

  • Romney acknowledged, and even bragged about, being no “hero” of the NRA.
  • Romney is not naturally aligned with gun owners. He was raised in an elitist Ivy League culture where sneering at gun owners was acceptable. He is not a gun enthusiast and has never been a real hunter. In the 2008 Presidential Debate, Romney told moderator Juan Williams:

“I’ve always been a rodent and rabbit hunter. Small varmints, if you will.”

If you will…did he really say that? Brings to mind John Kerry’s “Who among us doesn’t love NASCAR” comment (which was actually a paraphrase).

  • There is also talk of Mormons’ history with guns. When President Buchanan sent troops into the Utah Territory, the Church of Latter Day Saints refused to fight. The Church of LDS has an anti-gun policy for their churches. How might this translate to the future of concealed carry laws across the country?

As President, will Romney turn on gun owners, like he did as Governor? Given his flip-flops, gun owners understandably find it hard to trust Romney.

Obama, on the other hand, is too frightened to rock the boat and take on the NRA, which has scared off and effectively muzzled most Democrats, even on the heels of the shooting of former Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords.

Who is more likely to protect gun rights? It may seem counter-intuitive, but Obama’s track record has been more clear and consistent than Romney’s.

Life Inside the Bubble: A Glossary

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We are entering a surreal world of post-truth politics, where the masses are segregated inside tightly sealed cultural and ideological Bubbles. A new vocabulary is needed to make sense of the madness. I’ve prepared a glossary to help us navigate this new world.

Bubbleonics

When the Bubble’s inhabitants recite and repeat false messages as gospel, they are engaging in Bubbleonics.

Truth Bearers

Old-school inhabitants of the Bubble who resist Bubbleonics at great risk to themselves.

Laissez-Faire Lying

The practice of lying without interference from others. Politicians used to pay a steep price for lying or making absurd claims. But inside the Bubble, anything goes. The more politicians lie and get away with it, the more emboldened they become.

Factual Relativism

Facts are not objective or absolute. They are social constructs based on the subjective perspective and perception of the person proving or falsifying a given proposition.

Truthiness

Coined by Stephen Colbert, it’s used to describe people who claim something is true simply because they feel that way. They trust their gut more than they trust reason, and certainly more than they trust the mainstream media.

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Editor’s Note: Read “Life Inside the Bubble: Dude, Where’d My Facts Go?”

Life Inside the Bubble: Dude, Where’d My Facts Go?

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Welcome to what Bill Maher has coined “The Bubble,” where facts are assailed and go to die, where Laissez-Faire Liars reign supreme and the truth has no teeth. Welcome to the surreal and scary world of Factual Relativism, where nothing is what it appears and everything is open to interpretation and obfuscation.

How’d we get here?

When political consultants started slicing and dicing the electorate into segments and subgroups, the nation became divided and lost sight of the Common Good. Into our respective Bubbles we were led: the realists into one Bubble and the anti-realists into the other. Group wisdom trumps, and ultimately replaces, inconvenient facts.

The Bubble has its own culture, language, symbols, and rules; its storied villains and heroes; an us-against-them, take no prisoners mentality, and yes, its own set of facts and take on reality. You swear allegiance to the team. You get your gospel from the Bubble’s propagandists like Lawrence O’Donnell and Sean Hannity. They provide the Bubble’s inhabitants with their very own biblical verses — “Obama’s a Socialist,” “Romney’s Gordon Gekko”– to recite and spread throughout the Bubble. Every resident is always on message. His identity is inextricably linked to the Bubble: his self-esteem, his sense of belonging, power, and meaning–all his needs are satisfied in and by the Bubble. Once you’re in the Bubble, it ain’t easy to get out.

A Bubble is the perfect environment in which to wage an IMPROPERGANDA campaign. When you’re sealed off from the rest of the world, like Nazi Germany was, you can get away with a lot.

Inside the Bubble there is no pretense paid to the Objective Truth. The truth is not the province of the earthly, fallible inhabitants of the Bubble. Truth is a man-made construct — only God knows the Absolute Truth. So why lose sleep over the facts?

There used to be one big group, the United States of America. We arrived at consensus primarily through the national mainstream media. Consensus is still shaped by The Group, but now there are two autonomous groups sealed off from each other in their respective Bubbles–or fortresses, as the case may be. In one Bubble there is a particular consensus and an entirely different one in the other Bubble. Group Leaders Maddow and Limbaugh spread the Weltanschauung to their Bubble inhabitants. The IMPROPERGANDISTS have convinced both sides they don’t much like each other, another construct or fiction.

We’ve heard of Moral Relativism, where there’s no absolute right and wrong. This is Factual Relativism, where there is no absolute truth, just one’s perception of the facts; no objectivity, just one man’s opinion. Every opinion is of equal merit. People who believe in a singular truth are elitist pencil pushers.

Candidates for political office understood that if they were caught lying, they’d lose their most valuable asset — their credibility with the voters. That was then. No longer, it seems, is there a price to pay for intentionally deceiving the voters. It’s unregulated. I call it “Laissez-faire Lying.”

As the New York Times’ Charles Blow wrote:

“This is just an extension of the Republican war on facts. If you find a truth disagreeable, simply deny it. Call it corrupt. Suggest that it is little more than one side of a story — an opinionated, biased one — and insist that there is another explanation. The base will buy it.”

Facts that don’t jive with the party line are easily disputed, and the messengers or sources are ostracized, ridiculed, and thrown under the bus. That’s what happens when facts enter the Bubble — they get massaged, manipulated, and marred for life. They never come back the same. Sometimes they’re never heard from again.

Dude, that’s where your facts went.

Negotiating the Truth

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“The one sure way to conciliate a tiger is to allow oneself to be devoured.”

- Dean Acheson

I’ve been following the quote approval controversy — the Jeremy Peters story in the New York Times and his colleague David Carr’s follow up piece.

Carr refers to the interview process as a negotiation or transaction. We have a reporter on one side, and on the other a source, typically a campaign or corporation. Negotiations are based on how much leverage the respective parties bring to the table; they must give up something to gain something else. By agreeing to quote approvals, Carr seems to think reporters are selling their souls, or at least their independence:

            “But inch by inch, story by story, deal by deal, we are giving away our right to ask a simple question and expect a simple answer, one that can’t be taken back.”

First observation: Carr is using the same slippery slope argument that the NRA uses every time Congress wants to impose minimal regulations,like banning assault rifles.

As the NRA might say:

          “Give an inch, they’ll take a mile. WE ARE GIVING AWAY OUR RIGHT TO BEAR               ARMS, A RIGHT THAT CAN’T BE TAKEN BACK!!! It’s a slippery slope, man!”

Second observation: If the reporter’s giving up his “right” to receive a spontaneous, ill-phrased answer (GOTCHA!), then what is the source giving up by agreeing to the interview? His right to privacy, his right to be left alone, his right to protect the integrity of his words, i.e., not to be misquoted or taken out of context.

But inch by inch, story by story, deal by deal, the SOURCE is giving away his right to control his WORDS, REPUTATION and IMAGE, which can’t be taken back once mangled.

In this negotiation, the source has built-in leverage, because the reporter cannot force him to do the interview. It may seem obvious, but it’s worth repeating: There’s no law stipulating that I have to take time from my day to be interviewed by a reporter. I do it because I want to do it, or because I fear the consequences of not doing it. I do it because my PR advisor convinces me I need to increase my visibility. I do it because I want to be positioned as an opinion leader, or because I want to share knowledge with the world. It’s a completely voluntary undertaking.

Public officials, of course, have an obligation to be more accessible and to provide the public with timely information. But that’s not a mandate to give the press everything they want, especially when you’re dealing with an adversarial media that views an interview as a negotiation. Media are more interested in narrative and storytelling than factual recitation. Any good story has conflict, escalating obstacles, and a well-defined protagonist and villain. If a conflict-seeking reporter pegs you as the villain, wouldn’t you want to ensure that the reporter at least gets it right? Against this backdrop, quote approval may seem like a no-brainer; likewise if you’re a publicly traded company, where one ill-chosen word can send a stock into a nosedive.

Quote approval is not exactly an earth shattering, paradigm shifting phenomenon. Press releases, speeches, and statements are replete with pre-approved quotes and sound bites from which on-deadline reporters may routinely, and perhaps regretfully, borrow. It’s also practiced on the broadcast side, where news stations in smaller markets run packaged stories — including pre-approved sound bites, b-roll and voice-over. These so-called Video News Releases are distributed to new outlets by PR firms on behalf of their corporate clients. How’s that journalistic independence working for you now?

The negotiation of ground rules between reporters and sources is one thing. What’s new is that top-tier media are now getting into the act, accepting quote approval as a cost of doing business.

And those sources who insist on quote approval as a precondition for an interview — what is their case? Are they simply tired of seeing their words mangled by careless or imprecise reporters? The New York Times‘ David Carr suspects that this line of reasoning may be a guise — what sources really want is to exert greater control over their message. He may well be right. Power is beginning to shift from the reporter to the source, enabling campaigns and corporations to negotiate more aggressively with traditional media or bypass them altogether. In the Beltway, the reporter-source relationship has always been based on mutual dependence.

By ceding to quote approvals, the traditional media are tacitly acknowledging that they have lost considerable leverage: Corporations and campaigns no longer need them, not to the extent they once did.

A few factors are driving this change:

  • The Internet and Social Media have flattened the Information-Media Hierarchy. The Internet tore down the wall, leveled the playing field and gave expression to more voices and viewpoints. Meanwhile the traditional voices in print and broadcast media are shrinking via consolidations and mergers, vanishing into thin air or migrating online. The traditional gatekeepers and opinion leaders are disappearing, losing relevance, or being replaced by new gatekeepers and influencers. Consumers are more likely to get their news from Jon Stewart than Brian Williams–from bloggers, niche news sites, Facebook and Twitter than PBS.
  • Campaigns have more avenues to reach voters than ever before. With the Internet, Social Media, and Mobile Marketing, campaigns can communicate directly with voters without their message being filtered–and their quotes being mangled–by the media. This is also happening in the corporate world. Companies are bypassing media altogether and building their own branded in-house publishing divisions. In many cases, serious-minded (but out of work) journalists who once sneered at PR types are running the show, fleeing in droves to the “dark side.” The euphemistic “Brand Journalism” was coined to describe this corporate mode of propaganda.
  • The rise in adversarial, Gotcha-style journalism. Credibility and believability will always be the media’s Unique Selling Point. As they erode, so does the media’s authority and relevance. Carr quotes David Von Drehle, a writer for Time:

 

 ”But we are not blameless. Sound-bite journalism that is more interested

                 in reporting isolated ‘gaffes’ than conveying the actual substance of a

 person’s ideas will naturally cause story subjects to behave defensively.“

 

How can the media regain the edge in the reporter/source negotiation? Do what the New York Times did – forbid the practice. Carr cites author Buzz Bissinger, who thinks the journalism community can nip this one in the bud if everyone’s on the same page:

“No newspaper should do it,” he said. “If we all said no, they’d

still talk to us, because they need us. We’re not dead yet.”

What price will campaigns, public officials and corporations pay if they continue to bypass or shun traditional media? Elitists would argue that, without the gatekeepers to protect them, the public will be misled. It’s pretty much the same argument that convinced the Founding Fathers to opt for a representative democracy instead of a direct democracy; they feared the latter would give too much power to the people, who they distrusted. Wise middle men, legislative representatives, were needed to counter the people’s passion with reason, their emotion with logic, and their ignorance with enlightenment. Are today’s voters intelligent and well versed enough to receive political messages without the filter of an independent media? An elitist would be dubious.

The idea of journalistic independence has always been something of a myth. In a similar vein, no one really believes that the nine justices of the U.S. Supreme Court are independent and objective in a literal sense. In both scenarios, independence seems more like a vision statement than a mission statement, an ideal to strive for. The real world is more messy than that.

You can’t be an absolutist in the real world. As Donald Rumsfeld might put it, you work with the sources you’re given, not the sources you wish you had. And, in the real world, if a source insists on approving a few quotes, will our fragile democracy be harmed in the process? It wouldn’t seem so.

But don’t quote me on it.