Archive for mighty casey media
New Golden Rule: See something? SAY SOMETHING.
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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 …
Raising Cain … then lowering him. 3 tips to avoid that mistake.
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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 …
Why is business expected to pay for healthcare in the US?
Posted by: | CommentsI’ve asked this question frequently over the years, starting in the ’80s, continuing to today … and I’ll keep it up until someone realizes that it’s a failed paradigm.
What we have here, kidz, is what happens when a society decides that socialism is anathema, but doesn’t empower and educate its citizens about how to take responsibility for themselves in ways that will keep them healthy, productive community members.
Business started picking up the tab for healthcare during World War II, when stiff wage controls made it impossible for defense plants to give their employees raises. In place of more money, they started to pay for health insurance – which state and federal government were more than happy to turn into mandated employee benefits over the next 20 years.
What happened then was predictable: three generations have been out of touch with the true cost of healthcare, and the true cost of their choices about their health. If you’re a good little American consumer, you do whatever your television tells you to do: eat this. Buy that. Otherwise the terrorists win!
Three generations of disconnection from the real costs of our medical care have delivered us an epidemic of obesity – thanks to plentiful empty calories, courtesy of agri-business, and our willingness to beach ourselves on our sofas, in our SUVs, or at our computers, the better to receive more messages about what we should buy and eat.
Health insurance costs have skyrocketed as we’ve become a nation of couch potatoes. Companies are scaling back their employee health benefits as those costs continue to rise, putting more and more people in the un-insured or under-insured bucket.
Here’s a suggestion: sell health insurance like auto, home, and life insurance are sold. Put consumers in charge of shopping for, and purchasing, their own insurance. Let business help their employees, if they choose to do so, as a true benefit rather than a mandate. Help every consumer set up a Health Savings Account for their healthcare expenses. And stop the state-by-state divvy-up that lets health insurers essentially gerrymander the health insurance marketplace.
Put consumers fully in charge of their insurance, and their care. Turn the health insurance market into a car-insurance model. People can buy minimum levels of insurance, and assume the risk of that choice. They can opt out completely, and assume all the risk for their healthcare costs. Make it a true marketplace, rather than the giant mess that we currently call health insurance.
Radical? Perhaps. Necessary? I’d say it’s essential.
Until we’re put in touch with the costs of our healthcare, we won’t be encouraged/empowered to take control of our health. As long as we’re using other people’s money to pay for healthcare, we’re stuck where we are.
Which is a very bad place to be.
That’s my story, and I’m stickin’ to it …
Healthcare: It’s time for us to #arabspring this b*tch
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I had the opportunity to speak at a digital pharma marketing conference – DTC Perspectives’ Marketing to the Digital Consumer – last week. “DTC” is Direct To Consumer, by the way. I was representing the patient voice, at the invitation of my friends at the health activist community WEGO Health.
It was terrific for several reasons – connecting with other healthcare social media peeps in pharma, meeting and mingling with some powerful voices in pharma leadership, learning more about the regulatory environment that pharma marketers work in – but the biggest “wow!” that day happened between my ears.
I realized that pharma – and healthcare in toto – is desperate for its own #arabspring. A complete re-alignment of the entire system, driven from the bottom up, that will benefit all players: pharma, health systems, clinicians, researchers, patients … people. All of us.
This epiphany arrived courtesy of a combination of factors.
First, I felt a little like a zoo animal, since I was the only one at the conference wearing an Official Patient sign. I found that amusing, since everyone in the room is a patient at some level, even if they’re only seeing a doc once a year for a check-up. I’m not even a pharma consumer who’s on a buffet of drugs, although I do take a fat handful of supplements every morning. Why are patients seen as exotic creatures by pharma, and by most of the healthcare industry?
Patients = people, people. Treat us like … people.
Second, since I also wear a PR/media/content-creator hat, I saw that they were making a real effort to understand how they could take advantage of social media as a direct-marketing tool. They were approaching this as an industry with a huge regulatory oversight burden, from the FDA to the US Patent & Trade Commission to the host of regulatory bodies in other countries where these companies sell pharma products to doctors or direct to consumers.
Some of the regulatory step-on they’re struggling with they brought on themselves with “me-too” drug formulation and disease-mongering (“restless leg syndrome”? Really?). In conversation with a couple of high-level folks from big pharma, I learned that they routinely hear “we’ll have to run this past sales” when they want to try a new approach to communicating with their market. Why does sales drive communication? If pharma wonders why they’re seen as a scrum of hucksters, look no further than “running it past sales” when it comes to new ideas.
That combination of being seen as an exotic because I was a patient, and recognizing that, as an industry, pharma is an inverted pyramid crushing itself under the weight of heavy regulation caused, and continued, by a run-it-by-sales communication model, led me to the idea that people (a/k/a “patients”) need to #arabspring this b*tch.
People – patients – need to examine their relationship(s) with healthcare, and pharma, and ask what value they are getting from those relationships. Tell those that help how they’re doing, and tell those that aren’t to either clean up their act or take a hike.
Don’t fall for disease-mongering.
Don’t settle for less-than-full disclosure from any of your healthcare providers – in other words, ask why your doctor is prescribing a name drug, if a generic is available.
Act as if your health is YOUR responsibility. Get off the couch, call a halt to drive-through nutrition, examine your habits and ditch what doesn’t serve you, and your health.
Engage with pharma companies who provide you or your family with drugs that work, and tell them so.
Rabble-rouse the FDA to stop standing on innovation, and to start freeing up both farm AND pharm to help us eat better, and help researchers bring new drugs that actually help to market.
Take to the the streets by visiting your local farmer’s market and buying/cooking local. Boycott processed cr*p disguised as food.
The presentation deck I used at the conference, with added narration, is linked here.
I welcome comments, arguments, suggestions.
I recommend that you read my buddy Phil Baumann’s take on “we are all patients”. (He’s right, BTW – which is why I say patients = PEOPLE, people.)
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 …