Archive for media
It’s [still] the silly season – which seems like it’s been going on forever, even though it’s only been a little over a YEAR now – and the field of Republicans jockeying for the chance to run against Barack Obama in November is shrinking by the day.
Off the list are Tim Pawlenty, Gary Johnson, and Herman Cain, who all bailed before there was an actual voting opportunity. Michele Bachmann dropped out after coming in dead last in her home state’s caucuses, and Jon Huntsman drop-kicked himself today (Jan. 16, 2012) after a down-in-the-pack finish in Iowa and New Hampshire. Still in the hunt are Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, Ron Paul, Newt Gingrich, and Rick Perry.
My question, driven by what seems to be a very short selection process:
Does voting still matter?
I worry that the answer has drifted no-ward, particularly since the Bloviating Herd (so effectively tagged by Calvin Trillin as the Sabbath Gasbags) shove endless streams of drivel at us 24/7 about projected winners in the days, weeks, and months leading up to a primary or election. The fact that they then, day-of, become so very Caesar’s Wife about not calling anything until all the polls close is … laughable.
The actual citizens I hear talking about voting and candidates often say they vote their wallet. That’s a human reaction. My human reaction is to vote my humanity, not my pocketbook.
I’m sure that puts me in the Crazy as a Shithouse Rat column for many people, but here’s my reasoning: I’d rather vote with an eye on human history – past, present, future, all of the above – instead of for someone who solely promises to put more money in my hands. Or at least take less out of them.
Because the sad truth is they’ll all cost us money in the end, particularly at the national-office level. Whatever they say to achieve office, and whatever they say once they’re in office, I’m not so naive as to think that they’re actually serving citizens. They’re more interested in the Citizens United gold-rush cash that drives the political action committees (PACs) who buy more ad time than the campaigns themselves.
Which brings us back to my vote-human rule. My philosophy certainly puts me in the Don Quixote – or the shithouse-rat-crazy – column, since there’s no way I can outspend GE, or the Koch Bros., or Walmart. I can only participate in groups like No Labels (sanity! who knew?), and march to the polls every time to register my human choice.
And then watch as Citizen Corporate runs off with whoever wins, leaving me jilted. As usual.
That’s my story, and I’m stickin’ to it …
Throw bricks in the comments. Ready … set … GO.
(c) 2011 Walt Handelsman | Newsday
Heaving scrums from coast to coast are occupying public squares to protest what seems to be the greatest concentration of personal wealth since the Gilded Age at the end of the 19th century. Their ire is directed at Wall Street, which does bear some of the blame for the epic meltdown of the US – and global – economy over the last four years.
The biggest share of the blame, however, really belongs on another street entirely: K Street. The street of lobbying dreams, chock full of high-dollar law and PR firms that work Capitol Hill relentlessly on behalf of everything from AARP to zoologists.
Individual taxpayers have no access to K Steet influence, unless they’re members of an interest group – like the aforementioned AARP – that has enough chedda to hire a lobbying firm.
Congress, both the House and the Senate, depend on special interest money to mount successful election campaigns.
The electorate – the taxpayers, we individual voters who head to the polls to hold our noses and do the best we can with the choices offered – are offered those choices for national office based on who can raise the most money, and spend it to get our attention.
And now that corporations are people – thank you, Citizens United – they are under no restraint whatsoever when it comes to political donations.
Have you completed the calculation yet? Here’s what it boils down to:
Corporate $ + K Street (Congress) = We’re Screwed
That may seem simplistic, but it captures the essence.
Do not mistake me – I am a capitalist. I believe that every citizen – including corporate ones – has the right to appeal on behalf of his or her interests to elected officials. Where we find ourselves today, though, is at a very broken place.
Most Americans see their financial futures as, if not stormy, at least cloudy with a chance of bankruptcy. They see their children’s future prospects sinking, since the college degree required for an entry level corporate gig will now saddle those kids with a level of debt that will keep them living on ramen noodles well into their 30s.
How does the American Dream work in that scenario? How does hard work – to get a degree, to start a career, to start a business – actually work to advance your cause if most of the marketplace is on the ragged edge of broke?
A commitment to re-tooling our educational system to a 21st century model (instead of the 19th century “train factory workers” model currently in place) and a simultaneous commitment to bringing our national infrastructure up to date would be a step in the right direction. Unfortunately, the occupants of Capitol Hill are more interested in bleating about the lack of jobs than actually creating jobs by taking those actions.
We have a broken bureaucratic biosphere, and we’re choking on sewage. The gridlock on Capitol Hill has reached Nero-with-a-fiddle proportions, with no progress in sight on any issue. Congress isn’t actively doing anything other than saying why it can’t (won’t?) do anything, and we’re at a stasis point until the 2012 election … ?
What’s missing here is balance. There has to be a balance struck between totally unrestrained free markets – can you say Enron? – and government redistribution of wealth via the tax system. There has to be a balance struck between “do for yourself” and a safety net for the most helpless among us.
The only path that I see to that balance is term limits … for Congress. They were real good at setting term limits on the occupants of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue: two terms, yer out. Winning a House or a Senate seat, however, can mean lifetime employment as long as you can keep getting re-elected.
Even if you can’t keep getting re-elected ad infinitum, you can take advantage of the revolving door connecting the US Capitol to K Street.
The real problem? The folks who have to draft and pass term limits legislation are … Congress. Yeah, they’d have to stamp themselves with expiration dates. Which they are demonstrably loath to do.
And their re-election ad campaigns – financed largely by their buddies on K Street and their pals in state capitals across the land – will work hard to scare us into the horrors that will befall us should we fail to vote them back in to “finish the job.” Which “job” is likely to be more gridlock, followed by another round of “re-elect me to finish the job.”
A quote attributed to Winston Churchill says that “America will always do the right thing, but only after exhausting all other options.”
I hope we are about to exhaust the last of our options before demanding that Congress actually conduct the business of the people. Let’s occupy K Street to help drive that message home.
That’s my story, and I’m stickin’ to it …
Recent events have led me to believe that the world is populated by blind people. Or at least people who are easily sold on crazy.
One of those recent developments is the unfolding drama at Penn State, where icons of college sports – both the college and the coach – have been revealed to have been, if not active perpetrators, at least willing-to-look-the-other-way co-conspirators in child sexual abuse.
I use the image on the right because (a) it’s one of my favorite ad posters ever and (b) what happened at Penn State happened in a washroom.
If you see something, SAY SOMETHING. Even if you don’t/can’t/won’t DO something, at least speak up. And don’t take “it’s just [insert utterly unacceptable excuse here], don’t worry, I’ll take care of it” as an adequate response.
SAY something to someone who can/will DO something. Not the bishop that the pedophile priest works for. Not the coach who’s the supervisor of the guy who’s raping a child in the shower.
SAY SOMETHING to the cops.
“If you see something, say something” is the tag-line for a current Dept. of Homeland Security awareness campaign, aimed at stopping terrorist activity before it becomes an actual attack.
If rape isn’t terrorism, I don’t know what is. All crimes against persons – assault, rape, mugging, et al – is terrorism on a small scale, leaving marks as deep as surviving a bus bombing. In some ways, these very personal attacks leave deeper marks, because an entire community doesn’t share the victim’s experience. The person is left to deal with the aftermath alone. Just as the Penn State victim – he’s been dealing with the aftermath since 2002, essentially alone. And now the whole world is watching.
If you see something – someone hitting a child, slapping their spouse, raping a child in a freakin’ locker room – SAY SOMETHING. If you see it in your house. If you see it on your street. If you see it in the office. If you see it at your school.
See bullying? Say something. See domestic violence? Say something. See a theft, or an assault? Say something.
Find someone with a badge and a gun – and not just a university/school cop, either – and report what you saw. Keep talking until they listen.
If you see someone with a badge or a gun perpetrating a crime, call the FBI. Use your cellphone camera, and take it to the media.
See something? SAY SOMETHING.
All that it takes for the triumph of evil is for good men (and women) to do nothing. That’s always true, and never more true than in the situation where both the Catholic church and Penn State find themselves. An institution that’s trusted with the care and education of children has no excuse: if you see something, say something. Otherwise you’re approving the act.
It’s that simple.
That’s my story, and I’m stickin’ to it …
photo credit: Toby Harnden|Daily Telegraph
The quadrennial silly season known as the US Presidential race has been in full cry on the Republican side for about six months now, with some highly entertaining spectacle already on display. Unfortunately, a popular favorite, Herman Cain, who had built up quite a head of steam as a leading contender, has been somewhat sidelined by accusations that have put his campaign in PR-crisis-management mode.
First, let me make it clear that I have no dog in this fight. I’m still waiting for the Logic Party to form, and meanwhile am a member of the No Labels movement – in other words, I’m apolitical outside the voting booth. Inside the voting booth, I hold my nose and do the best I can under the circumstances.
My purpose here is to point out the three simple, yet critical, steps Cain and his campaign communications team should have taken to, if not 100% avoid this epic mud-fest, at least keep it at small-mud-puddle level.
- Vet the candidate fully. Pretend you’re on the oppo research team of another candidate and vet the bejabbers out of your guy. Or gal. Go after anything that could possibly lurk as a Nannygate, or sexual harassment, or financial/business ethics challenge. The Cain team is steeping in a big bucket of #epicfail right now, because according to London Daily Telegraph US editor Toby Harnden, oppo research leakage was what led to the Politico piece that started this mud-fest.
- When you know the worst, plan the response. When you’ve got all the skeletons out of the closet and into the living room, start figuring out how to make them look less threatening. In this instance, simply putting the story out themselves would have taken much of the power of it off the table. “Allegations were made, this was the result, the candidate denies that there is any truth to them, but the decision was made at the time to settle the suit/issue/whatever” and move on. Never, ever let a big story about you get out there, unless you’re the one putting it out there. If one does, particularly at this stage of the game, you’re in crisis-response mode at the cost of core-message mode. Cain will now have to talk about this every day, or look like he’s dodging talking about this … every day. Not a path that’s likely to wind up at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
- When caught out, make a full statement and then move on. Cain is caught in a cycle of no-comment/denial/bimbo-eruption/feeding-frenzy. This is a really bad place to be, because at this point pretty much anything he says will be discounted as reluctant disclosure. If his campaign had rigorously acted on Tip #1, Tip #2 would have been pretty easy, and Tip #3 might have been completely unnecessary. He’s now going to be chewed on daily until the bimbo eruptions subside. He can keep up the no-comment/denial protocol, but that will keep him in the feeding-frenzy box for the foreseeable future.
I feel for the guy. I covered every Presidential race from 1980 to 2004. As I put it in my bio: I covered wars, Presidential campaigns, and Presidential campaigns that turned into wars. Politics is a rough, nasty, no-holds-barred business – the higher the office, the sharper the knives and the bigger the guns you’ll be up against.
Failing to recognize that, and failing to get in front of any negative information in your past by revealing it yourself first, guarantees painful war wounds.
That’s my story, and I’m stickin’ to it …
I’ve noticed a huge increase in friend requests on Facebook and invitations to connect on LinkedIn that come from logos, not faces. I don’t accept any of them, and here’s why: the word “social” precedes the word “media” for a reason. Social media is social. My Oxford American dictionary defines social thus:
1. of or relating to society or its organization; 2. concerned with the mutual concerns of human beings or of classes of human beings; 3. living in organized communities.
Nowhere in that definition do the words corporation, brand, or enterprise appear. It’s all about human beings: their activities, their concerns.
So why should I be “friends” with a logo? I’ve ignored friend requests from restaurants, insurance companies, car dealers, and a host of other branded personal profiles. I’m looking for a human connection, and only then will I consider adding a connection to a brand represented by that human connection.
On LinkedIn, this seems even more egregious. I understand that many small business owners are solopreneurs, and their company brand and their personal identity can seem to be inextricably intertwined. However, I want to see and connect with the person. And then, based on my assessment of their talents/value/contributions, I might choose to follow their company.
But they have to convince me that they’re human first.
Major brands make the same mistake on a larger scale, and have since the enterprise emerged after the Industrial Revolution. That’s been the subject of both humor – “what’s good for General Bullmoose is good for the USA!” from Al Capp’s L’il Abner was inspired by Eisenhower SecDef and former GM CEO Charles Wilson’s Congressional testimony that included “what’s good for GM is good for the country” – and rage. The rage includes everything from the Motrin Moms mess, to the #epicfail that was the BP Deepwater Horizon spill aftermath, to the continued cluelessness of Wall Street and Washington about the ultimate betrayal that is “too big to fail”.
Corporations are made out of … people. Building are full of … people. People do business with … people. Brand loyalty is really driven by the actions of humans on behalf of their human customers. It doesn’t matter if you’re B2C, slinging sandwiches from a food cart, or B2B, slinging enterprise-level cloud services to Fortune 5s. You’re a human being, doing business with other human beings.
Lose sight of your humanity, and that of your customers, and you no matter how big you are, you’re destined to fail.
And please stop wasting my time with “friend” requests from logos. Be human, then be a brand.
That’s my story, and I’m stickin’ to it …
I don’t care what being in love means regarding saying you’re sorry. Personally, I think Erich Segal’s book sucks, but I digress.
If you’re in business – running one, managing one, working for one – you’re in the apology business. In fact, being human puts you in the apology business 24/7/365. And business always needs a good dose of human, particularly in the age of the 24-hour news cycle and the Facebook Fan Page wall post.
Not being human, and being willing to admit you made a mistake? #fail.
In a great post on INC.com, Tim Donnelly gives very solid tips on how to approach the brand apology when your business screws the pooch. His #1 tip: just say it. “I’m sorry.” Simple … so why is it so hard for a brand to do that?
I think the root cause of brand cluelessness is that businesses forget that they are, after all, human. They may own skyscrapers in cities around the world, but guess what? Those buildings are full of … people. Doing business with … people.
When your spouse, or your buddy, or your kid do something to hurt you or your feelings, they apologize. You do the same thing when you screw up. (If you don’t, let me know. I know some terrific divorce attorneys.) Same rules apply if you’re J.C. Penney, the example that Donnelly uses in his piece.
Be human, don’t be a brand-droid.
You don’t have to literally fall on your sword, or drape yourself in sackcloth and ashes (I still have random PTSD episodes from 12 years of Catholic education) to apologize. You don’t have to take responsibility for every goof since the beginning of your brand’s recorded history, either. Just say you’re sorry, and then you can move on.
If your factory releases a cloud of toxic gas that kills a few thousand people, you’ll have to do a little more than say “sorry” – just ask Union Carbide. Oh, right, you can’t ask them, because they never actually said they were sorry about poisoning Bhopal. Which explains why they WENT OUT OF BUSINESS.
See how powerful an apology could be? And how not issuing one might literally kill your business?
Use words that convey regret without taking responsibility for every hurt the offended party has ever suffered. Just saying “I’m sorry” can completely defuse a brand revolt. Couple that apology with a clear outline of how you plan to remedy the hurt: priceless. Really. Try it.
We all make mistakes. We’re human, that’s part of the journey. A business that recognizes its own humanity, and that of its customers, by making a sincere apology when they screw up will ultimately drive more loyalty for their brand than a business that’s 24/7 shiny-happy-people. ‘Cause shiny-happy will eventually fog up, or blow up. Trust me on that one.
Be human.
That’s my story, and I’m stickin’ to it …
Forget Wall Street. Occupy K Street.
Posted by: Mighty Casey | Comments (0)(c) 2011 Walt Handelsman | Newsday
Heaving scrums from coast to coast are occupying public squares to protest what seems to be the greatest concentration of personal wealth since the Gilded Age at the end of the 19th century. Their ire is directed at Wall Street, which does bear some of the blame for the epic meltdown of the US – and global – economy over the last four years.
The biggest share of the blame, however, really belongs on another street entirely: K Street. The street of lobbying dreams, chock full of high-dollar law and PR firms that work Capitol Hill relentlessly on behalf of everything from AARP to zoologists.
Individual taxpayers have no access to K Steet influence, unless they’re members of an interest group – like the aforementioned AARP – that has enough chedda to hire a lobbying firm.
Congress, both the House and the Senate, depend on special interest money to mount successful election campaigns.
The electorate – the taxpayers, we individual voters who head to the polls to hold our noses and do the best we can with the choices offered – are offered those choices for national office based on who can raise the most money, and spend it to get our attention.
And now that corporations are people – thank you, Citizens United – they are under no restraint whatsoever when it comes to political donations.
Have you completed the calculation yet? Here’s what it boils down to:
Corporate $ + K Street (Congress) = We’re Screwed
That may seem simplistic, but it captures the essence.
Do not mistake me – I am a capitalist. I believe that every citizen – including corporate ones – has the right to appeal on behalf of his or her interests to elected officials. Where we find ourselves today, though, is at a very broken place.
Most Americans see their financial futures as, if not stormy, at least cloudy with a chance of bankruptcy. They see their children’s future prospects sinking, since the college degree required for an entry level corporate gig will now saddle those kids with a level of debt that will keep them living on ramen noodles well into their 30s.
How does the American Dream work in that scenario? How does hard work – to get a degree, to start a career, to start a business – actually work to advance your cause if most of the marketplace is on the ragged edge of broke?
A commitment to re-tooling our educational system to a 21st century model (instead of the 19th century “train factory workers” model currently in place) and a simultaneous commitment to bringing our national infrastructure up to date would be a step in the right direction. Unfortunately, the occupants of Capitol Hill are more interested in bleating about the lack of jobs than actually creating jobs by taking those actions.
We have a broken bureaucratic biosphere, and we’re choking on sewage. The gridlock on Capitol Hill has reached Nero-with-a-fiddle proportions, with no progress in sight on any issue. Congress isn’t actively doing anything other than saying why it can’t (won’t?) do anything, and we’re at a stasis point until the 2012 election … ?
What’s missing here is balance. There has to be a balance struck between totally unrestrained free markets – can you say Enron? – and government redistribution of wealth via the tax system. There has to be a balance struck between “do for yourself” and a safety net for the most helpless among us.
The only path that I see to that balance is term limits … for Congress. They were real good at setting term limits on the occupants of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue: two terms, yer out. Winning a House or a Senate seat, however, can mean lifetime employment as long as you can keep getting re-elected.
Even if you can’t keep getting re-elected ad infinitum, you can take advantage of the revolving door connecting the US Capitol to K Street.
The real problem? The folks who have to draft and pass term limits legislation are … Congress. Yeah, they’d have to stamp themselves with expiration dates. Which they are demonstrably loath to do.
And their re-election ad campaigns – financed largely by their buddies on K Street and their pals in state capitals across the land – will work hard to scare us into the horrors that will befall us should we fail to vote them back in to “finish the job.” Which “job” is likely to be more gridlock, followed by another round of “re-elect me to finish the job.”
A quote attributed to Winston Churchill says that “America will always do the right thing, but only after exhausting all other options.”
I hope we are about to exhaust the last of our options before demanding that Congress actually conduct the business of the people. Let’s occupy K Street to help drive that message home.
That’s my story, and I’m stickin’ to it …