Literal Mayhem

Fuck You Barack Obama

letterhead — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 00:24:27 +0000

I quit you. I’m done. Last night killed it. I have been a registered independent since my first presidential election in 1980, in which I voted for John Anderson.

Yet, I marched for you. I gave money. I handed out posters to my friends. I volunteered. All for you. Because I believed, naively it turns out, that you would deliver on your rhetoric. And that you would do your best to fix what was wrong. The moneyed influence. The injustice. The political horsetrading with people’s lives and livelihoods.

Yes, we all know that presidents have limited powers. (Less limited these days thanks to an ever-expanding executive branch and a neutered Congress that gladly hands over power to their guy in charge.)

But you…. YOU DIDN’T EVEN TRY!!!!

FUCK YOU ON GAY MARRIAGE

You had the time to travel to New Jersey — THREE TIMES — to prop up a failing governor with an approval rating in the low 30%. You sent Joe Biden to fight for Corzine. You even dispatched your own campaign staff to take over the wheel of his flagging campaign.

(Conspiracy theorists could have a field day with the fact that Corzine is ANOTHER former CEO of Goldman Sachs… but that assuredly had nothing to do with it.)

You were clearly so tired campaigning for Corzine that you had not an ounce of energy to lift a finger of help for your gay supporters in Maine… who were in a battle for their rights. Your campaign organization (now an arm of the DNC) went to the trouble of sending out emails to Maine voters reminding them to vote, without once mentioning the marriage referendum, or to Vote NO on 1.

No money. No resources. No support. Not even a whisper… not even a whimper. And this comes after speaking to the Human Rights Campaign just THREE WEEKS AGO!!

When you said:

“My expectation is that when you look back on these years you will look back and see a time when we put a stop against discrimination … whether in the office or the battlefield… I’m here with a simple message: I’m here with you in that fight.”

Really? Turns out. No you aren’t. You are an empty suit spouting empty words. A liar… plain and simple.

So, fuck you on that one.

FUCK YOU ON LAME HEALTHCARE “REFORM”

You got health insurers to agree to take on millions of new customers. Congratulations.

Either we pay into the protection racket, or get whacked by a federal penalty? Thanks a bunch.

The point, once again, is that you DIDN’T EVEN TRY for something better. You bargained away a public option from the get go, and then sought to kill it whenever it raised its stubborn head. You gave the drug company lobby, and the insurance lobby more attention and clout than the average middle class American that you purport to hold so dear.

So now millions more Americans will have the privilege of having what I have as a sole proprietor: expensive health insurance that doesn’t pay for a damn thing except catastrophic care. I have to pay for all my ongoing medical care out of my own pocket. On top of my premiums.

Great. You didn’t reform “healthcare.” You simply expanded access to expensive useless insurance. All from the same people who brought to us the crappy outdated teetering-on-the-brink system we have to day.

All the same warped incentives are still in place… no incentive to keep people healthy, all the incentive is on denying care. And if you think that they won’t, well just look at what the banks are up to.

So fuck you on healthcare “reform” too.

FUCK YOU ON FINANCIAL “REFORM”

On this one it’s difficult to know exactly where to start. So let’s try this. A 63-year old retiree saw her interest rate on her CD get cut in half when her bank failed and her deposits were bought by another institution. A contract, it turns out, is not a contract if you are a responsible, risk-averse retiree on a fixed income.

If you are AIG, then it’s a different story entirely. Treasury Tim spent $32 billion in taxpayer money to retire retire swaps and acquire CDOs from AIG and insisted that contracts be honored at 100 cents on the dollar, even though counter-parties had already agreed to take less than half that.

Like the huge bonuses at AIG and Merrill and elsewhere… a contract is a contract… if you work for Wall Street.

On the foreclosure mess, your own oversight panel rebuked your consumer protection measure as inadequate. Sure lots of people got in over their heads. Wall Street got in over its head to the tune of several hundred percent. Many of the worst offenders in the financial crisis were leveraged 30- or 40-1. But Treasury Tim and Loophole Larry made sure THEY got bailed out.

Goldman even made billions shorting the mortgage market while it was selling tens of billions in worthless securities. Illegal? We’ll never know because there will be no investigation.

But it’s certainly unethical: Say you own a plant business. And some guy sells you a truck load of plants that he swears are perfectly healthy and a good investment. You get them to your greenhouse and not only do they die, but they bring a bug infestation that kills off half your inventory.

Later on, you find out that he was writing on his blog and sending letters to other customers saying that he was pretty darn sure those plants were carrying a dangerous infestation. Then the government gives this guy a bailout and leaves you fighting for your life with half your business destroyed. Sound fair or ethical to you?

And as for your “protections”… a plethora of industries are wiggling out of being covered by your signature consumer financial protection agency, which is being watered down by Barney Frank even as six dozen consumer and banking experts a law schools around the country beg you to preserve its teeth. And what have you to say?

Crickets… I hear… crickets… oh wait… you spoke at an industry event in NYC (a fundraiser was it?) and you “encouraged” Wall Street to cooperate with reform. Forgive me if I’m not impressed.

As for TARP, your own inspector general testified before Congress that $23 trillion could be the total taxpayer tab for the Wall Street bailout and there is woefully little transparency into how that liability is being managed by T-Tim. The proposal to fix what went wrong, put forth by Tiny Tim, has been dubbed “TARP on steroids.” It’s a crime to propose more of the same poison when we’re not going to make any money on our current investment… even as… get this:

C.I.T. declares bankruptcy and Goldman Sachs makes ANOTHER $1 billion at taxpayer expense??!?!!? Excuse me but how the fuck did Goldman make ANOTHER billion dollars when the taxpayer just got screwed AGAIN???

Taxpayers have gotten nothing, and likely will get NOTHING from the trillions we used to backstop the billionaires from bleeding to death. They’re not using TARP money to lend, or finance the real economy. Instead they’re using it to bolster their balance sheets, generate trading revenue, and make acquisitions.

“Too big to fail” has gotten bigger. Loopholes are larger. Banks are hoarding cash. You knuckled under to big business and abandoned your pledge to crackdown on tax havens. Derivatives are still unregulated. Banks rake in tens of billions in profits that are a gift from the government, with NO demands for anything in return.

And now you and Rahmbo are even gutting the post-Enron protections in Sarbanes-Oxley?

Look, we all know that there’s plenty of blame to go around for the mess we’re in. Share the blame. Share the pain.

Except that you have made absolutely no effort… ZERO… to force Wall Street to share the pain. And THEY were the ones who dragged the entire global economy to the edge of utter disaster.

NO ACCOUNTABILITY… ONLY BILLIONS IN REWARDS? All for those idiots who fucked up the global financial system so badly that it’s practically beyond any capacity to measure!

Who gets to share the pain? The average middle class American is getting screwed at every turn, while gigantor corporations use our tax money to stuff their pockets and then turn around and fight protections for the rest of us. (Case in point: squeezing in rapacious rate increases on credit cards before new protection measures go into effect.)

What the fuck are you thinking??? And why does Tim Geithner still have a job?! Maybe because financial industry lobbyists spent $224 MILLION in just the first six months of the year.

On financial reform you’re not even trying. And this is just a small taste of the awesomely skewed priorities of your henchmen at the Fed and Treasury… not to mention the devastating results that are ravaging the have-nots, and even the sort-of-haves, nationwide.

So that gets a double “fuck you.”

FUCK YOU ON… THE DALAI LAMA?

While we’re at it… fuck you for dissing the Dalai Lama. The friggin Dalai Lama for Christ sakes. (Literally)

For the first time in almost 20 years, the Dalai Lama visited D.C. without getting an audience with the POTUS. As theologian David B. Hart recently wrote, it’s easy to romanticize the Tibetan cause, when in reality the country’s history is violent, theocratic and riddled with political intrigue.

But as he says of the current plight of the Tibetans, presidents meet with is Holiness the Dalai Lama as a gesture of conscience, done out of recognition of…

“the monstrous crime of China’s invasion of Tibet on the pretext of some fatuous historical claim to sovereignty over the region… [and recognition] of the rule of terror, torture, imprisonment, and disenfranchisement by which it governs there, or of its systematic policy of cultural destruction.”

It is sheer lunacy to believe that after nearly 70 years of ceaseless and violent repression, that China will somehow be more compassionate toward Tibet because Obama dissed the guy in saffron robes. If anything it marginalizes the Dalai Lama and emboldens the Chinese.

It’s hard to disagree with Hart when he says it was “an act of moral cowardice.”

That gets a big “FUCK YOU”… all caps.

SCREED YES. ANGER? CHECK. DISENCHANTMENT? YOU BET’CHA

David Plouffe can kiss my ass. His defense of Obama rings hollow. On Obama’s major efforts he has been a calculating establishmentarian and corporatist. His actions don’t live up to his rhetoric, plain and simple… on healthcare, or financial reform, or net neutrality, or state secrets, or the Patriot Act, or transparency at the Fed, or NAFTA, or knuckling under to lobbyists, or any number of other issues.

Too many people are getting too screwed while a few rich, powerful interests are munching on federal bacon… or eating cakes with dollar signs written in green frosting. Choose your clumsy metaphor, they’re all apt in describing the clumsy (if not callous) way Obama has downplayed or outright ignored the concerns of the people who elected him to enact “change we can believe in.”

The issue is one of balance. Of shared sacrifice. Of fairness and justice. No president can make everything right. But Obama has made things “right” for the privileged few against whom he railed during the campaign. Somehow making things right for them at the expense of the people to whom he promised change.

Daily Kos has it right:

There will be much number-crunching tomorrow, but preliminary numbers (at least in Virginia) show that GOP turnout remained the same as last year, but Democratic turnout collapsed. This is a base problem, and this is what Democrats better take from tonight:

If you abandon Democratic principles in a bid for unnecessary “bipartisanship”, you will lose votes.

If you water down reform in favor of Blue Dogs and their corporate benefactors, you will lose votes.

If you forget why you were elected — health care, financial services, energy policy and immigration reform — you will lose votes.

Tonight proved conclusively that we’re not going to turn out just because you have a (D) next to your name, or because Obama tells us to. We’ll turn out if we feel it’s worth our time and effort to vote, and we’ll work hard to make sure others turn out if you inspire us with bold and decisive action.

The choice is yours. Give us a reason to vote for you, or we sit home. And you aren’t going to make up the margins with conservative voters. They already know exactly who they’re voting for, and it ain’t you.

READ MY….

I ditto that. You’ll never get another vote. Never get another dime. Never get another minute of my time. I did that once already and what did I get from you and all your promises? Fuck all.

All the ~~empty~~ talking heads on TV say that Obama is the consummate, calculating pragmatist. Well, here, calculate this…

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The White House News War: Forget Glenn Beck. Barack Obama is “Howard Beale.”

letterhead — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 03:00:34 +0000

Teeth are being gnashed. Gauntlets is gettin’ thrown down like warm beers at a tea party. Over what? Beck, O’Reilly, and Limbaugh? Seriously?

Nobody saw this coming? Not since 1976 when the satire “Network” hit movie screens and won four Academy Awards?

More than 3o years ago, the fictional network boss Frank Hackett (Robert Duvall) cringed at the idea of putting a screaming, delusional nut-bag on TV. He said to Diana Christiensen (Faye Dunaway), head of the network’s “Entertainment Division”:

“For God’s sake Diana we’re talking about putting a manifestly irresponsible man on national television!”

Diana just smiles a creepy, glassy-eyed smile and nods gleefully… as if to say “Um… hell yeah. Isn’t it GREAT!”

The movie is worth watching just for that one scene alone. It is the tipping point at which the network descends into “shrieking nothingness” and hysteria, all in pursuit of ratings.

The relevance to Obama is: just a year ago HE was the “anger candidate.” He got elected because he channeled people’s ANGER.

Whether he wants to admit it or not, it wasn’t hope that got him elected. He harnessed the public’s anger and discontent, essentially saying:

“Throw the bums out and make room for new people like you who understand your needs… and maybe you won’t have to be so scared and angry anymore.”

He promised to take it to “the man”… so to speak. And millions of American’s of all stripes cheered him on his crusade. But once in office he forsook that anger in favor of pragmatism, and he left a huge swath of the “anger contingent” (which includes millions of independents) unrepresented and ripe for FOX to pick it off and gin it up.

“THIS VIOLATES EVERY CANNON OF RESPECTABLE BROADCASTING”

For those who have never seen Network: The nightly news anchor Howard Beale (Peter Finch) gets fired for lousy ratings and completely loses it on the air. He says: “Tune in next week for my last show when I will blow my brains out on national TV.”

The man has clearly cracked up, but manages to convince his producer to let him say a brief farewell on the air the next day. He apologizes to viewers for saying he’d blow his brains, but he’d “just run out of bullshit.”

He hits nerve of popular outrage and the ratings go through the roof. It was, after all, a post-war, post-oil-embargo, post-Watergate world of grinding economic distress.

Hackett, once he starts seeing dollar signs, lets Christiensen put Beale back on the air every night, frothing torment and all. And to whip up the public even more, she lards up the evening “news” with a Soothsayer (Tune in tomorrow to see if she was right!) and a viewer sounding board called Vox Populi (a foreshadowing of CNN’s live audience-reaction graphs).

In short, Christiensen turns the “news” into a viewer-driven three-ring circus. The network’s head honchos revolt against Hackett, lamenting:

“You’re seriously considering putting on a pornographic news show… This violates every cannon of respectable broadcasting.”

A LUNATIC ON THE AIR YELLING “BULLSHIT”

Wolf Blitzer may not be yelling “Bullshit” on the air, but his program might be better if he did. After all, the CNN Situation Room and all those shows like it are fast approaching the dazzling user-driven carnival show of the fictional Evening News with Howard Beale.

CNN’s army of talking-head spokesbots are entirely predictable, rarely saying anything surprising, and usually just spar and whine and accuse each other of not fighting fair. All for the sake of ~~news~~ ~~entertainment~~ ratings.

The network might as well go whole hog and just put “a lunatic on the air yelling bullshit.” (As Hackett says of Beale.)

As for the one-man/woman lunatic sideshows (Beck, Limbaugh, Malkin, et al.) and all the other mouthy anger-merchants, Christiensen nails it when she says:

“The audience out there obviously wants a prophet, even a manufactured one, even if he’s mad as Moses.”

Cue Laura Ingram and Ann Coulter.

THE AMERICAN PUBLIC: SULLEN, LIMP, AND ANGRY

Dunaway gives the following speech that could easily come from a FOX news programming meeting (or CNN, or CNBC, or MSNBC for that matter):

“The American people are turning sullen. They’ve been clobbered on all sides by Vietnam, Watergate, inflation, the depression… they’ve turned off, shot up, and fucked themselves limp and nothing helps.

“So this concept analysis concludes that the American people want someone to articulate their rage for them.

“I’ve been telling you that I want ANGRY shows! I want counter-culture! I want anti-establishment!”

Replace “Vietnam” with Iraq (now Afganistan). Replace “Watergate” with illegal domestic surveillance and Justice Department scandals and a host of other ills. Replace “inflation” and “depression” with foreclosures, bank bailouts, unemployment… you get the idea.

These shows are playing to an audience. A rabid and hungry one. Even among independents.

MEDDLING WITH THE PRIMAL FORCES OF NATURE

In the end, Beale turns his anger on the very network that made him a star, and the CEO of the network holding company turns on Beale:

“You have meddled with the primal forces of nature Mr. Beale… and I-WILL-NOT-HAVE-IT!!!”

Beale is charged with telling his audience the truth about corporate control of their lives — that they can’t escape it. Not a happy message. And one that kills his ratings.

In response, Christiensen uses the cast of her terrorist reality show (The Mao Tse-tung Hour) to assassinate Beale in their season opener.

So in the end, what have we?

- A network that cares not a whit for anything other than its own corporate agenda

- An irascible public on a hair-trigger

- Young, conniving, bloodless whores who will put anything on the air as long as it will make a buck

- A powerless old-guard with no spine and even less influence

- A growing appetite for violence as a way of expressing political and economic discontent

And the Obama White House has waded into this firestorm carrying a #2 pencil and a legal pad, attempting to school the nation in “respectable broadcasting.” Yeah… OK… Obama is right about FOX ~~News~~ Noise. (Good summary here.) So what?????

FOX has successfully co-opted people’s anger in part because the Administration handed it over to them. The Administration pandered to big money in Finance and Healthcare and Big Business and many people — who once saw Obama as an ally — now see him as the enemy. Those who saw him as simply the enemy now see him as the anti-Christ.

“Americans are fed up,” says Real Clear Politics. Independents are bolting the Obama big-tent faster than you can say Wall Street Bonus. “What does all this portend? Very possibly a Ross Perot moment — the emergence of someone with serious charts and serious language that angry Americans will see as more authentic than ‘hope and change.’”

IS OBAMA HOWARD BEALE?

In a credible alternate reading of the Howard Beale story, Glenn Beck isn’t Beale. O’Reilly isn’t Beale. Limbaugh isn’t Beale.

BARACK OBAMA IS HOWARD BEALE. (Of course, minus the ranting and frothing and mental instability.)

Obama ran for president crisscrossing the USA yelling “BULLSHIT!” He did it an an ever-so-gentlemanly way, of course. But that was essentially his message. Enough of the bullshit. Enough of the scamming. Enough of the taking advantage of the little guy. You’re mad as hell and if you elect me you won’t have to take it any more. “Yes we can!” was as much a metaphorical pitchfork and battle cry as anything else.

But Obama was meddling with the primal forces of nature. And America’s corporate overlords quickly put the kibosh on it. Now Obama seems to preach an immutable corporate cosmology. Like he’s placating the forces of corporate control… ceding to them control of government and the national commonweal. The audience hates it. And like Beale, the president’s ratings are dropping.

If he continues down this path, his show will get resoundingly canceled in 2012.

I pray not. (And I especially pray not violently.) I campaigned and voted for the guy and want him to succeed. But entertainment is an unforgiving business. While America loved the pilot, it is showing little patience for the well-worn lines that the White House is trying to pass off as something genuinely new. And it’s not just the FOX tea-party anti-government types who are seething. Even dyed-in-the-wool capitalists (e.g., Dylan Ratigan) are coughing up hairballs every night on cable “news.”

Obama used to understand and channel the public’s anger quite well. He re-directed it from cynicism into hope. “Yes we can.” It’s OK to be angry; but you don’t have to resort to complete cynicism because you CAN do something about it.

But for some unknown reason, the president has given up trying to channel people’s anger. Where is the champion? Where is the righteous outrage? Where is the “take it to them” spirit?

People are in pain, and feel like they really are just cogs in a corporate wheel. Contrary to the “Yes we can” mantra, it’s looking more like, in fact, we probably can’t. And that is even more cause for cynicism.

Criticizing FOX for giving voice to the very anger he used to champion, but now seems to ignore, only makes Obama seem more out of touch, and more of a sell-out.

Turns out the whole “green shoots” mentality and turn-toward-the-positive message program of the White House may have been a mistake. He should have stayed on the anger train for a while longer.

But he got off too soon and gave away that platform. That’s the real danger here. And the White House seems deaf to it.

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“Safe Sex”…. is there such a thing?

letterhead — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 03:49:21 +0000

As LiteralMayhem is very interested in language, and its potential to wreak havoc on human civilization, we offer some thoughts on the quintessential “hot” topic: sex. And more precisely “safe sex.”

Nowadays, at least in much of the Western world, the term “safe sex” is tossed off as easily as one might say… “a side of fries with that?” It’s a given for most sexually active people. And for those who don’t subscribe, it’s a conscious choice, an opt-out. That’s how taken-for-grated the notion has become.

But for millions… maybe even billions… there is a deeper sense in which sex itself will never ever ever until Hell freezes over… be “safe.” As a topic. As a biological function. As a form of intimate personal expression. As a questions of legality and regulation. As a Platonic essence. As absolutely anything.

PUT A LOCK ON THOSE NAUGHTY BITS

Take the following, which at first reads like a skit off Saturday Night Live: earlier this month, Egyptian legislators went ballistic over the sale of an artificial hymen… a device that allows women to fake their virginity. From the company’s website:

No more worry about losing your virginity. With this product, you can have your first night back anytime. Insert this artificial hymen into your vagina carefully. It will expand a little and make you feel tight. When your lover penetrate [sic], it will ooze out a liquid that look [sic] like blood not too much but just the right amount. Add in a few moans and groans, you will pass through undetectable.

According to the UK Telegraph, Egyptian politicians said it would be a “mark of shame” to allow the sale of the product in Egypt. A “prominent Islamic scholar” called for importers to be “punished.” (article) All because religious men — through the police apparatus of the government — would no longer have a lock on women’s nether parts. (Quite literally.)

An Egyptian’s women’s rights activist, however, said: “the Artificial Virginity Hymen ’sticks it in the face of every male hypocrite’ in an Arab culture that condemns women’s sexuality but turns a blind eye to male promiscuity.”

IS IT REALLY “SEX” IF IT’S WITH MYSELF?

At first blush (literally) the artificial hymen story kinda makes you titter. But consider this story from the underbrush of our own backyard. Alabama continues to enforce a ban on sex toys, as do Mississippi and Virginia. (Divine Ca roline has a good write up.) And ReasonTV has a hysterical video here:

In January Coweta Count, GA got into the act with its own sex toy ban, one that includes “perhaps even the sale of some condoms and lubricants.” (Times-Herald)

Sex toys are illegal in India, though a government-owned company is involved in the manufacture of a vibrating condom, which some say should be classified as a vibrator and be banned. (BBC)

In China, the government took a wrecking ball to the “Love Land” sex theme park before it even opened (AP via IndianExpress). The government “banned television and radio ads for push-up bras, figure-enhancing underwear and sex toys in the communist government’s latest move to purge the nation’s airwaves of what it calls social pollution.” (AP via Huffpo)

Sex toys are illegal from Malaysia to the Dominican Republic. Hell, sex toys are even illegal in Thailand of all places… where the sex trade is perennially booming.

GETTING A LOAD OFF MY MIND

Why for Heaven’s sake does something so simple… a person alone in a room taking three and half minutes to get their rocks off… provoke an enormous global law enforcement effort?

Clearly when we’re talking about “sex,” were not talking about “sex.” We’re talking about religion, morality, ethics, spirituality, psychology, tradition, mores, personal baggage, guilt, prejudice, anger, chauvinism, cultural taboos, simple habit, education (and a lack thereof), control issues (big time), personal insecurity, commerce, power, autonomy, repression, oppression, nature, nurture, transcendentalism, materialism, and about ten gazillion things OTHER than “sex.”

Unless “sex” actually IS all those things… and always has been, and always will be, making the word itself an armed linguistic nuke. That’s the power of language. It is not an empty vessel. When it’s loaded up and shot into those soft, moist, glistening folds… of the BRAIN you low-life!… get your minds out of the gutter… it vibrates reality… like plucking a guitar string or tapping a kettle drum.

Those of us in the wordsmithing profession tend to forget the power of words. But they are intensely personal. And the reality they vibrate in the listener is nothing but intensely personal. People’s response (i.e., their behavior) on the other hand, affects everyone and everything.

And it’s the echo of our wordsmithing (the action of the listener) that ought to haunt us. When we purposely use words to unleash that kind of power, we are responsible for what we wreak… just as if we had learned how to control the weather.

It is into this, the tenderest part of the public mind, that we insert ourselves every day of our careers. So let’s do it gently, wisely and above all… safely.

As for “sex,” it’s soooo heavily charged it’s no wonder people all over the world want to ban the damn thing. Something that fraught with stress and complexity is surely a load on the mind that needs to be relieved somehow.

Now… if we could only think of a safe, practical way to alleviate all that pent up frustration…

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Brain-Dead PWC… Maybe I'm Not Cynical Enough

letterhead — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 23:13:12 +0000

After my last post on the total impotence of PR, I felt a twinge of guilt. “Am I just too cynical? Too bitter? Surely there are flacks with integrity out there. Surely someone somewhere in the dark corners of the profession cares about it. Somewhere, surely, some company takes it seriously.”

Then I did some reading up on the recent PriceWaterhousCoopers (PWC) debacle — i.e., the AHIP study. What a mess… and so instructive as to the points made in my last several posts, which spanked the PR profession for being so constantly impotent and wrong.

For those living under a rock, the issue is that PWC authored a report for the health insurance industry lobby (AHIP) — released on the eve of an important vote in the Senate — that claimed insurance costs would rise under the proposed legislation. (WaPo story here)

Since the report was released, it has backfired on AHIP and PWC. The report has become a rallying point for the bill’s proponents who decry the report as a biased hatchet job. (It was… CNBC story by way of Motley Fool here.)

And PWC is now backing away from the report, saying that — AT THE REQUEST OF AHIP — PWC only analyzed a small slice of the bill’s measures to come up with its conclusions. Politico has a good brief on PWC’s backtracking, but the ever humorous Donkelphant says it better than LiteralMayhem even could:

Allow me to translate, “AHIP asked us [PWC] to conduct an intellectually dishonest study and we did it because they paid handsomely. But we didn’t realize they were going to act as if this was iron clad evidence that premiums would skyrocket. That’s why we’re stepping in and calling BS on them so they don’t destroy our credibility.”

A SEEMING NO-BRAINER… EXCEPT FOR THE BRAIN DEAD

Imagine, as a PR pro, a business team lead at your firm comes to you — in the middle of the most bitter, vituperative, mud-slinging fight over government policy since Medicare — and says that he wants you write a press release touting the firm’s work on a report (sponsored by health insurers) that could scuttle the entire legislative process. You say:

a) “Why sure. Let me just get my handy guide to superlatives so I know how to make it sound really super-important.”

b) “No problem. I don’t care about having a job, or a career.”

c) “Alrighty then. Is this report accurate? Has this been vetted by legal, regulatory affairs, and compliance?”

d) “You’re a moron get the fuck out of my office.”

WHAT COULD THEY POSSIBLY HAVE BEEN THINKING?

The PWC affair illustrates a crucial point about the limitations of PR as it is currently practiced: business people don’t care about it and don’t even think about it until it’s too late.

One has to wonder what the fuck the “executives” at PWC were thinking. What could the head of PWC’s healthcare practice have been thinking… to take on an assignment like this in the first place?

The assignment… to assess the cost impact of an isolated number of provisions in an enormous and complex piece of legislation… is by definition biased.

Presumably a person with decades of experience in healthcare should have a teensy weensy inkling that such a report would be not just be explosive in its implications, but create a political firestorm with PWC right in the center. And where were PWC’s armies of legal experts, regulatory experts, communications people (internal and external), marketing gurus?

Anyone with three functioning neurons could see that AHIP was looking for third-party corroboration of it’s own selective calculations. Yet, not one of PWC’s in-house geniuses had the foresight to see this freight train coming from miles away?

Were the PR people at PWC involved in any of the deliberations about the release of this material? Did they see the report before AHIP released it? Were they involved in the decision to take on this assignment in the first place?

Here’s a thought… by way of analogy… before putting your foot on a landmine, call in a landmine expert to tell you if it’s armed.

The brain trust at PWC makes their living instructing people on how to run their businesses. They presumably OUGHT TO KNOW HOW TO RUN ONE THEMSELVES! What they have clearly showed here is monumental incompetence.

At the very least they have demonstrated a tin ear to the issues of reputational risk, and how to “integrate risk mitigation seamlessly into the business process”… to put in consultant-speak that even PWC can understand.

PR IS THE FOOTMAIDEN TO PROFIT

We see it time and time again. We’ve written about it time and time again. Honestly it gets exhausting.

Businesses are about business. They don’t give a flying fig about anything except business until the consequences hit them in the wallet. One would think with the demise of Arthur Anderson still visible in the rear view mirror, PWC would have been a bit more cautious. But no, sadly and predictably, they weren’t. The client got what the client wanted.

PWC signed on to disastrous piece of business, let it wend it’s way through weeks (if not months) of research and writing, editing and approvals, and not one person in authority had the sense to kill it before it saw the light of day.

And what of PWC’s handling of the mess? If you do a search for “AHIP” on the PWC website you get… nothing! If you search “America’s Health Insurance Plans” you get nothing more recent than July 2008. If you go to the “Press Room” there is no mention of the study or the statement that was issued on Oct 13. So much for transparency and values in PR.

Thank goodness for the bloggers in pajamas who keep track of such things. You can see the PWC statement at Firedog lake here.

All of this makes PWC’s corporate responsibility statements (here and here) sound like baloney, especially the statement onPWC’s global site:

Today, many people believe that business has a positive responsibility to operate in ways that benefit society and foster its well-being on a sustained—and sustainable—basis.

DEJAVU ALL OVER….

PWC, like so many companies before them, will likely have to spend millions more on repairing their reputation than they earned on one stupid project in the first place.

It will cost them gobs of time, money, energy and indigestion to overcome a perception that every piece of PWC business advice now comes with an automatic disclaimer: “We’re greedy idiots.”

So much for the value of PR as a corporate conscience…

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Whatever Happened to “No Comment”?

letterhead — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 01:21:33 +0000

Imagine if, a year ago, you had asked a PR pro about the response of the financial services sector to the meltdown, and you had gotten the following answer:

They will do a mandatory mea culpa and then dig in to defend their turf, not giving one inch on anything. They’ll torpedo all efforts at market reform while protecting their balance sheets — taking advantage of every nickel of federal money they can get their hands on while squeezing fat margins and fees out of broke customers, or inflating the value of shitty assets, or bellying back up to the derivatives craps table, or all of the above. In the end they will have to be dragged kicking and screaming to a new way of doing business, and that’s only after a noisy, ugly battle to pry their white-knuckled grip loose from the throat of the economy.

Personally I would fall on the floor if I heard anything remotely like that, because any PR person who said anything remotely close to that would never ever have another financial services client ever again. Might never ever have any clients, or any job, ever again.

With consequences like that hanging over your head, who wouldn’t drink the Kool Aid?

THE TRUTH?… WHAT’S IN IT FOR ME?

In reality, PR people hardly have any incentive to be real. All their incentive is geared toward spewing hokey PR pablum.

Looking back on what PR pros said about the crisis a year ago, it’s hard to imagine them burping up anything other than happy talk about values and authenticity and brand greatness.

It’s the vocabulary of the profession, and it conjures up the old saying that “to a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” What else could they say?

But let’s be generous for a moment and assume that they really believed it. Why?

Gigantor financial services companies are businesses. Big ones. Their loyalty is to the bottom line. They have zero shame. They have proven themselves addicted to risk, allergic to responsibility, arrogant to the extreme, and heedless of the public’s pain. The executive ranks of the entire industry grew up in this culture; they’re steeped in it; it’s all they know; and they all still in charge.

Moreover, whenever any industry has felt deeply threatened it has always doubled down — from big tobacco, to big oil, to big auto, to asbestos makers, to drug makers… the list goes on.

So why on earth would any rational observer expect anything other than a doubling down on what we’ve already gotten from them?

PR 101: KNOW WHEN TO HOLD YOUR TONGUE

The reality is that PR people have almost no influence on the corporate agenda. And very few companies, much less entire industries, really care about brand or reputation, until after they’ve made a boo-boo and it is hitting the bottom line.

When PR bigwigs prattle on about being the conscience of the corporation… about values and transparency… the enormous gap between the talk and the reality makes all of us in the profession look like liars or fools.

So do us all a favor. Shut up, do your job, protect the company and its agenda, collect your check. And when you get a call from a reporter asking about the ethics and values of the PR profession, just say say “no comment.”

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Flashback: P.R. Pros on the Financial Meltdown… Impotent and Wrong

letterhead — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 04:50:05 +0000

Flashback!

We are now just a week or so past the one-year anniversary of the financial bailout. And as I was sorting through some old files over the weekend, I came across an issue of O’Dwyer’s from October 1, 2008… the week of the TARP vote, which was held on Oct 3, 2008.

In that issue, there was an article titled Wall Street Meltdown Rattles PR. In it, several p.r. heavy-weights discussed the affect of the crisis on clients. They also offered thoughts on how the financial services industry would react.

The titan who was most wrong in his prognostications was Manning Selvage & Lee CEO Mark Hass, who said that, “The economic crisis… will accelerate the trend we’ve been seeing among companies to be more authentic, and that’s a good thing.”

Hmmm… ‘authentic’ you say? Looking back on the past year, can anyone say that they have seen a single industry be more consistently and disastrously tone-deaf to public outrage than financial services in 2009?

From outrageous sales junkets, to executive pay, to bonus madness, to lack of financial transparency, to their opposition to consumer protections, to exorbitant fee hikes, to their cavalier return to business as usual in the derivatives market, to spending taxpayer money lobbying Congress to thwart regulatory reform, to a dozen other thumb-in-the-eye fiascos… the industry has been Exhibit A in bad corporate behavior.

OK YOU GOT ME ON THE VALUES THING

Where Hass was actually right, though unintentionally, was in his comment that, “The financial crisis will lead many companies to re-examine their own core values and further align those values with their business practices.”

In fact, they did. They brought their values down into the gutter where their business practices have long resided.

I leave it to the esteemed reader to evaluate Hass’s claim that in times of crisis, “… great brands and companies fall back on the values that defined them and made them great.”

Perhaps these are the values that made them great…

NAIVETE? OR AN INTENTIONAL FOG OF OPTIMISM

Michael Robinson, of Levick Strategic Communications, claimed that clients effort to “fine tune their messaging” will come “once the initial political uproar over the Bush Administration’s to bail out Wall Street subsides.” He attributed the uproar to the “blame game due to the political campaign season.”

He was assuming, of course, that the uproar would subside… assuming that the industry itself would not keep sticking its big swingin’ you-know-what into the hornet’s nest of public outrage.

Dave Senay, of Fleishman Hillard, was equally upbeat. And about as counter-intuitively correct as Hass:

“Smart companies know this is a transitory period and are using it to develop or extend a competitive advantage. [FH] is spending a lot of time helping clients seize the opportunity for greater separation. This is an era that rewards initiative. Rewards fall to the bold.”

Transitory? Here we are a year later and from an image stand point things have never been worse, except maybe in 1932.

And to the “bold?” Given the industry’s antics over the past year, “ballsy” would be a more appropriate word.

THE IMPORTANCE OF P.R. TO MOST CORPORATE EXECUTIVES

We hear a lot of noise in the p.r. profession these days about “authenticity” and “transparency” and “ethics” and “values” and a whole lot of other uplifting whimsy. We hear how these things are the driving force of the profession and that p.r. pros are the anointed speakers of truth to power within the corporation.

Back around October 2008… as the financial services business was imploding, and taking the entire world economy down with it… PRSA chair-elect Cherenson was quoted in O’Dwyers saying that the p.r. pro is “the antenna, conscience, and voice of an organization.” He said that p.r. pros are “keepers of the corporate DNA” and that we have to “fight to own a part of the corporation” because we are “trust-builders whose role is to forge collaborations.”

Yeah… that’s oh so clearly the role that p.r. pros have been playing at banks, brokerages, and investment houses for much of the past year. All their assumed entreaties to authenticity, transparency and ethics have had exactly ZERO impact. (If this were a “green” competition, such a zero-impact lifestyle would win them top honors.)

And if Cherenson is, in fact, counter-intuitively correct, and p.r. pros are the keepers of the corporate DNA, then the profession’s failure to influence corporate behavior one iota speaks volumes about p.r. pros’ impotence. Stubborn, tone-deaf, rapacious self-preservation has won out, as it so often does; it’s the defining strand of corporate DNA and in most instances p.r. pros are powerless to change it.

Most of the time all our happy talk doesn’t amount to a hill of beans.

It may initially make for tasty sound bites, but when mixed with corporate bile, it’s decidedly less flavorful on the repeat.

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Hair on Fire: Banks Fight Consumer Protections (Again)

letterhead — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 01:35:15 +0000

Way back in the mists of time… somewhere around the end of the 20th Century… America’s banks were up in arms about pending consumer protection regulations. The issue was ATM safety. And how they handled the issue should be of interest to consumers, legislators, p.r. pros, and banking industry execs alike.

A headline in EFT Report, an industry newsletter, blared… “Beware of ATM Security Legislation: You May Be Next” (12/9/91). And indeed, ATM safety legislation soon sprouted from coast to coast, in cities big and small.

One might wonder what horrifically onerous demands were being made on behalf of customers.

Well, the most horrific and onerous demands were being made in New York City, the epicenter of the ATM safty movement. NYC was about to destroy the fabric of the American banking system by mandating “expensive safety features” at ATM terminals. Features like “surveillance cameras”… “adequate lighting”… “mirrors and reflective surfaces”… and “locking devices” that only allow cardholders to enter.

All of these safety precautions we take for granted today. And in no way have they dented the banks’ ability to profit from their ATM networks. In fact, ATMs are a robust profit center: according to bankrate.com, banks haul in more than $2 billion annually from ATM charges.

BANKS’ PR STRATEGY: PULL OUT YOUR HAIR, DOWNPLAY THE PROBLEM, AND ACT LIKE A VICTIM
The idea of questioning the need for ATM safety precautions may seem like a fool’s errand today. But at the time, the industry was running around like its hair was on fire… like it was the end of the world. According to the industry publication, ATM & Debit News: “a black cloud continues to loom over ATM deployers.” (9/12/93)

A mushroom cloud no doubt.

John Byrne, who at the time was senior counsel to the American Bankers Association (ABA), tried to wiggle out of the issue by blaming the media and downplaying the significance of ATM crime: “The national statistics suggest that the incidence of ATM-related crime is very low, but if you read the papers you’d think exactly the opposite is true.”

The same article in the American Banker had this to say: “To place the statistics in an anecdotal context, one banker compared ATM crime to airplane crashes. Both are attention-getting, he said, but not particularly common.”

Wow. Somebody was really off his talking points that day. What do you suppose would happen to an airline that tried to fight passenger safety regulations with a claim that crashes are too rare to be worth the effort?

RAISE FOOT… POINT GUN… PULL TRIGGER

What’s most instructive about the banks’ approach to messaging is not how lame it was… it’s the fact that it was entirely self destructive. It was, of all people, an industry consultant who hit the proverbial nail on the head with this insight:

“It is as important for customers to feel safe as it is for them to be safe. You can throw around all the numbers you want, but studies show that threats to safety — whether real or imagined — can curtail transaction volume.” (American Banker, 12/7/92)

So there you have it. If people don’t feel safe using your product, then they won’t.

Banks were faced (as they are today) with a classic perception problem: one of their own making that couldn’t be solved except by embracing an enlightened approach to doing business. Unfortunately (and with futility) they stuck to their guns and refused to see how doing business differently might actually HELP them.

Instead, they chose simply to deploy lame p.r. messages to defend the status quo.

It didn’t work then and it won’t work now.

EVENTUALLY BANKS LEARNED (AND PROMPTLY FORGOT) A VALUABLE LESSON

Several years into the ATM safety movement, the banks finally started to figure it out.

In Chicago, the local ATM network operator worked directly with the City Council to head off mandates. In Florida, the president of the southern AMT network (HONOR) actually lobbied in favor of statewide rules — he was afraid of a patchwork of local rules that truly would would make compliance difficult and costly. In Georgia the same lobbying trategy was implemented, successfully.

In New England, then-president of the YANKEE-24 ATM network, Richard Yanak, said: “It makes sense to be proactive to the extent that we can take responsible steps to put in place a framework that protects the consumer and is not overly burdensome.” Despite the mangled syntax, it’s a nice thought.

And John Bannion, then president of the HONOR network admitted that while most areas of [ATM] operations should not be regulated, “It makes sense for ATM safety.”

Lessons: sometimes the critics are right; some things that look purely like perception issues are revealing fundamental flaws in your business; sometimes fixing them (as opposed to fighting them) can actually create new opportunities and improve your business.

DEFENDING THE STATUS QUO: THE BIGGEST MENTAL BLOCK OF ALL?

As Washington debates new consumer protections, the financial services industry has forgotten some key lessons of the past…

Take the credit reporting agencies for example: they fought transparency tooth and nail, claiming that they owned all rights to consumers’ credit histories. Yet, after a bruising p.r. battle that lasted more than a decade, they lost. And guess what: now they make oodles of money selling consumers credit reports, identity protection products, and other types of services that would never been possible if they had not lost that war.

The same can be said of the ATM safety movement. ATMs are now more profitable and plentiful than ever.

The US auto industry successfully fought fuel efficiency and other regulation for decades; it ended up entombed by its own negligence and poor strategy.

Right now, banks and other financial services companies are in a similar mess. Their reputations are in tatters, and deservedly so. They are getting pummeled in the press, and deservedly so. They are being hit from every angle to provide consumers more help, and take a breather from fleecing them for every possible nickel and dime — e.g., having to roll back overdraft fees.

They are losing the war. But if they were smart, they’d admit the limits of “messaging” and address the weaknesses in their business model. They’d also take a lesson from the past and see that “threats” to their way of doing business might actually be opportunities in disguise.

The odds of that happening are pretty slim. But one can always hope…

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I Fixed My Heart and Moved to San Francisco; Then Larry King Broke it All Over Again

letterhead — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 04:57:17 +0000

To the 3 -4 people who once read this blog with regularity… I apologize for going AWOL. It was a pretty tough year, including minor heart surgery… if such a thing could be said to exist.

It also entailed a cross-country move. After 20 years in NYC I’d had enough and needed a rebooot. Just felt like it was time to hit ctrl+alt+del and start fresh.

So here I am out in SF… land of super crunch. In truth I’m finding it a nice change. Not that I don’t have my withdrawal symptoms. But I don’t miss NYC. (I do however miss NY’ers.)

The view from my living room window (below) is unlike anything I’d ever get in NYC no matter how much the cost.

I hope to be back blogging again soon… within the next week or so. But in the meantime… did anyone catch Larry King’s interview with Levi Johnston? He of the famed Palin-daughter-pregnancy-shotgun-engagement-that-wasn’t-scandal?

Well… in the midst of his interview with the intrepid Mr. Johnston, Larry King dropped the following bombshell. Oh, and this one was a PR doozie for all time. I was not sure whether to laugh or cry…

We told the Palin camp that Levi Johnston would be our guest tonight and asked for a comment. We got this response today from Megan Stapleton, the Palin family spokesperson: “Bristol is focused on going to college, raising Tripp and advocating abstinence.“

YOU CAN ALMOST HEAR LARRY: “Say WHAT?? She’s promoting what?? Holy guacamole batman they left a big ‘ole pit in that one. I think I broke a tooth!”

Abstinence. My goodness gracious how convenient… I mean, appropriate.. aw heck you know what I mean.

Just shows to go ya that no matter how long you break from our wonderful business of PR, there’s always some crackerjack spokesperson saying something completely idiotic to give you a nice warm welcome home!

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Taxpayers Choking on Detroit's Free Market Malarkey

letterhead — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 01:19:18 +0000

So Detroit wants a bailout. Wonderful. The question is, why?

Yeah, they’re waving the red flag of economic catastrophe to blackmail taxpayers and steamroll Congress. But let’s take a quick trip down memory lane and review the industry’s recalcitrance over the past few decades before we bite off a big chunk of what they’re now selling.

Detroit is on a PR tear, using the latest tools like web-based video, and old-fashioned media outreach. It was amusing to see a recent NY Times piece on the Chevy Volt, and how GM is trying to pump up the car’s mileage to 100 mpg. Presumably we should assume that Detroit has turned over a new leaf spring and is committed to a new way of doing business.

Um. Not so fast. Here is what the Volt article made me think of: the “Supercar.” (more…)

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Ballsy Little Squirrels: McCain Campaign Stumps LiteralMayhem on Ghost Writing Ethics

letterhead — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 16:25:59 +0000

One of the more popular posts on this site is one I put up on ghost writing ethics. It’s still getting lots of regular hits even after several months.

But yesterday I saw a posting on Salon about a squirrelly little ghost writing project by the McCain campaign. And I was actually kind of stumped as to whether it’s unethical, or just one of those things that feels totally wrong, but isn’t technically unethical.

It goes like this:

an intern writes a “letter to the editor” in whatever assumed identity she wants

she makes up all the details, none of which are true… for her

the details would technically be “lies” if the letter was signed either by her or with a fictitious name

But here is the squirrelly bit:

the campaign shows these letters to actual real people, and if the letter sounds like something they would have written themselves, then they sign it and send it in

[the article does not say whether any incorrect details are corrected to reflect the truth of the new “author”]

but in fact, there is now a real person willing to put his or her name to a piece of fiction, to drag it back into the realm of “truth”

So, my dear friends in PR land… assuming that all the “facts” square with the “author’s” reality, is this ethical?

My gut reaction is that as long as the person is real and there are no lies in it, relative to the real life of the signed author, then it’s not unethical.

Squirrelly? Yes. Cheap? Yes.

But technically unethical? No.

And you would say… ???

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