The Men Who Would be President

     An acquaintance in Europe once made an offhand remark to me that America doesn’t have freedom of the press. I looked at him strangely, thinking he was making a joke, but he was dead serious. And dead wrong. America has the freest press in the world. The problem is there’s too much of it, and we are swamped under a daily blizzard of truth and lies. The truth is out there on any subject you care to name – even the Kennedy assassination. The problem is knowing how to find it when deluged by a flood of papers, books, blogs, opinions, interviews, twitters, articles, billboards, and PAC ads all seeming to contradict each other. 

     Nowhere is this more evident than now during the U.S. presidential primaries. To paraphrase an old joke, the process for becoming president is so painful and embarrassing that any man who willingly runs for the office should be considered too dumb to handle the job.  

    With all that said, here is an article by Anne Coulter, a conservative spokesperson and wit comparing Mitt Romney with Newt Gingrich. She does a great job of sifting through the nonsense. I’m not always in agreement with Ms. Coulter's opinion pieces. She’s too unflinchingly conservative for my taste. I like my columnists to fool me sometimes and agree with the opposition once in a while – after all, no one can be wrong on every issue 100% of the time. In any case, I feel that in this article she gave an honest and accurate appraisal of the two leading candidates for the Republican nomimation:   http://www.anncoulter.com/columns/2012-01-25.html

     In my next post, I will discuss one of my proudest moments – I recently set up my new cable converter box and WLAN all in the same day, and they worked. Or maybe I’ll discuss two young adult books I recently read, The Hunger Games and Ender’s Game.  

Best regards,

Jim

Zurich

Political Attack Ads on Female Candidates and Mitt Romney

     I’ve never known anyone to admit that they were susceptible to the siren-like enchantments of Madison avenue advertising – but they are. We all are.  And that is the genius of advertising. It achieves its amazing results, whipping audiences into a frenzy of white hot shopping, and no one senses it happening to them. The sobering truth is that advertisers are extremely sophisticated at manipulating oblivious audiences. In other words, when it comes to any form of advertising, we would be wise to remember the age old saying that if you sit down at a poker table and can’t spot the sucker, chances are it’s you. 

     Is it any wonder then, with so much at stake, that political advertising works just as effectively and scientifically as retail advertising? Here is an example of how a media-savvy campaign would plan a political attack ad if their male candidate were facing a female opponent.  

1.      Using sophisticated polling methodologies, they would first determine which voters would choose their candidate even if he was a paroled serial killer and which ones wouldn’t vote for him even if he was Abraham Lincoln.

2.      Having determined which voters they didn’t have to persuade and which ones they couldn’t persuade, they would then construct their attack ads to appeal only to the undecided voters.

3.      They next would assemble focus groups made up of the same demographics as the undecided voters and ask them to identify the traits they most despised in women. The usual answers are: controlling, overly emotional, hysterical, unfeminine, neglectful of children, ugly, stupid. They might even ask them to identify female characters in movies or books that they most feared, despised or mistrusted.

4.      Next, they would review every speech and peruse every video and picture of the female candidate looking for something she said or did which matched-up with one of the negative traits.

5.      Armed with this information they would create a commercial blending all these traits into a narrative about the opponent. For example, if ‘over-emotional’ were a hot button, they would find a picture of the female candidate crying and then splash over the screen angry, bold letters that said, “Will she crack under pressure?” – forgetting to mention that the picture was taken at the funeral of her mother. You get the idea.

     If you doubt what I’m saying, please check out this excellent article filled with links to real political attack ads aimed at female candidates. It makes clear that in the world of political attack ads, if you are a woman, you are very likely to be attacked in a certain way – regardless of facts or your record. 

http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2011/11/elizabeth_warren_ad_from_karl_rove_s_crossroads_gps_pac_how_political_attack_ads_against_men_and_women_differ.html

     But the same thing goes for men. They attack each other using the same principles. For example, men find it unmanly if male candidates don’t ‘stick to their guns’ on issues. Is it any wonder then that Mitt Romney, over and over again, is accused of being a ‘flip-flopper’ – regardless of the facts? Romney has changed his mind on some issues, as has every candidate with a brain during the course of their career, but Romney’s opponents have worked their “Madison Avenue Magic’ especially hard trying to paint him with the ‘flip-flop’ brush. Don’t fall for it. Check out this link to a non-partisan organization called FactCheck, which looks at 15 issues where Romney is accused of changing his opinion.  

http://factcheck.org/2011/11/flipping-through-dnc-playbook-on-romney/

     My next blog post may be something Christmasy – or it may be a movie review, if I happen to see a movie. Or even a book review. I just finished reading The Honorable Schoolboy by John LeCarre. Or it may be about life in South Africa. If you have a request, let me know.

Regards,

Jim

Umhlanga, South Africa.

They Burn Witches Don't They

The famous conservative pundit and long time host of Firing Line, William F. Buckley, once said words to the effect that the reason we don’t burn witches at the stake anymore is because we no longer believe in witches – not because we are better people. I have to agree. Which leads me to a few comments on Mitt Romney’s run for the U.S. presidency. In some circles, Mr. Romney is taking a fair amount of flack for being a Mormon. Some of the attacks are subtle – such as suggestions that good Americans should only vote for ‘true’ Christians. But other attacks are blatant appeals to religious intolerance. How strange for this to be happening in America.  

Many people immigrated to America in the 16 and 17 hundreds to escape religious intolerance and outright persecution in Europe. The Thirty Years’ war between the Protestants and the Catholics was fought mainly in Germany from 1618 to 1648 and took the lives of approximately 8 million people. This was, of course, only a few decades after the French Wars of Religion from 1562 to 1598 where an estimated 3 million were killed. No wonder so many people risked life and limb to come to that savage new continent called ‘America.’

I wonder what those early pioneers would think if they could see the current presidential race. I suspect they would be shaking their heads in dismay to see that same old prejudice at play – the one they voted against with their feet by making the long and dangerous journey to America.

As a digression, let me say that I’ve recently read two Michael Connolly thrillers:  The Lincoln Lawyer and The Fifth Witness, both about ace defense lawyer Mickey Haller. Dang, they were good. The Lincoln Lawyer was made into a very good movie with Matthew McConaughey – in fact, the movie screenplay changed the plot around a little at the end and did a good job of it – in my opinion. The Fifth Witness had some great courtroom scenes. I highly recommend both – for mature readers.

In my next post, I will give a little more information about my sequel to Einstein’s Trunk. Have I mentioned before that I’ve changed the title and am now calling it “A Thousand Suns.” I’ll tell you why next week.

Best regards,

Jim

Zurich

Born in the U.S.A.

Communication is a wonderful thing. But sometimes it can leave you speechless. I’m doing a little rewriting these days of the sequel to Einstein’s Trunk, and I’ve inserted a scene where the Bruce Springsteen song ‘Born in the U.S.A. is mentioned. In doing so it prompted a memory and I did a little research.

Now, for those of you who don’t know that song, it was released in 1984, and even today is still well thought of and rated number 275 on Rolling Stone’s list of top rock-n-roll hits. The song is about a working class guy who gets “in a hometown jam and has to go serve in Vietnam”. He has no idea what the war is about, loses a friend there and comes to see the war as senseless and the promise of America as unfulfilled.

In other words, the song was not particularly positive about America’s direction at the time – though the title could make you think it was. But here’s the communication angle: In 1984, conservative columnist George Will saw Springsteen in concert, complained the music was too loud, obviously couldn’t hear the lyrics, but loved the title and sound of Springsteen’s hit song – Born in the USA – and decided that Springsteen must be a real, true-blue, supporter of conservative values. Will  mentioned this to his friend, Michael Deaver, Ronald Reagan’s chief of staff. Deaver later mentioned it to Reagan’s speech writers, and the next thing you know Reagan is talking about Springsteen in his campaign stump speech. Reagan said, “America’s future rests in a thousand dreams inside our hearts, it rests in the message of hope in the songs of a man so many young Americans admire: New Jersey’s own Bruce Springsteen.”

In fact, Born in the USA told a completely opposite story. But thanks to the office of the president, the ‘branding’ stuck despite the obvious contradiction provided by the lyrics. As a side note, Lee Iacocca, who obviously never listened to the lyrics either, offered Springsteen $millions to use the song to promote Chrysler, but Bruce turned him down.

But I digress: I received an email a few weeks ago enlightening me on the origin of the name “Yohaba Melekson” – the heroine of Einstein’s Trunk. It turns out that Melek means king in Hebrew and Melekson means ‘son of the king’. Also, the name ‘Yohaba’ has connections to the Hebrew name for God. And it turns out that Rulon’s name also has a religious connotation. I originally chose the name ‘Rulon’ because it was an old Idaho pioneer name that stirred up notions of someone who was straight-laced but perhaps a bit of a hick – remember, Rulon likes to be underestimated! Well, it turns out that Rulon as a first name is a native American name that means ‘Spiritual’. So both Rulon and Yohaba have a name with a spiritual side to them – albeit unintentional.

My next post will either be on Mitt Romney’s chances of being president or a review of mystery writer Michael Connolly’s book – The Fifth Witness. Let me know if you have a preference.