Listening to the future.

I am reading Rick Perlstein's new book, "Nixonland," a history of the 1950s-present. Basically, the story of the lower-middle and middle-class transitioning from getting more to keeping what they have. (Getting more is a New Deal-ian attitude, keeping is essentially conservative, xenophobic and racist.)

Early on in the book, Perlstein transcribes the first televised debate between Nixon and Kennedy. Here are some of Kennedy's words:

"I am not satisfied, as an American, with the progress we are making...This is a great country, but I think it could be a greater country. And this is a powerful country, but it could be a more powerful country...I'm not satisfied to have fifty percent of our steel mill capacity unused...I'm not satisfied when many of our teachers are inadequately paid...I think we should have an educational system second to none...it is a fact that through most of the last twenty-five years, the Republican leadership has opposed federal aid to education, medical care for the aged, development of the Tennessee Valley, development of our natural resources."

Instead we talk about McCain's war record (which dates back 40 years--Obama was 12 when McCain was released from captivity.) Or lapel pins.

Obama has not shown a vision. McCain has not shown a vision. We speak of phone tapping and ugliness. Where is hope? Optimism? The future?

What does this mean?

I just saw this company description on a former colleague's linked-in profile:

"A Strategic Research, Analytics and Planning Consultancy for the Liquid Marketing Age."

I consider myself fairly smart. I've been around the ad business virtually my whole life. I am a keen observer of new technology, trends and media.

That said, WTF is the 'liquid marketing age'? Does it mean its purveyors use language that make you puke liquid in your mouth?

Losing one of our own.

Larry Harmon (left) died on Thursday. Some years ago, he bought the rights to Bozo and over the last 50 years, Harmon trained more than 200 Bozos. (Or is it Bozoes?)

200 Bozos. Sounds like some agencies I've worked at.

Big flags.

There's an article in today's New York Times about the proliferation of big flags-- flags as long as a 15-story building is tall--at sporting and other events across the United States. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/04/sports/04flags.html?hp=&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1215180053-uyEdptUvEtLCyoD+fCWPnw

Since it's Independence Day, since we are in an election year battle, and since we are nearing the close of what will likely be regarded as one of the worst three presidencies ever, this article made me think about brand America.

If you you go to http://www.brandtags.net/browse.php you'll find an assortment of logos. Viewers are asked to respond to a logo by typing the first word that comes to mind. Responses are weighted by popularity. The more popular the response, the larger the type. So if you examine "Blockbuster," the words that "pop" are "bankrupt," "cinema," "dead," "dvd," "crap." (Netflix on the other hand, yields "awesome," "fast," "convenient.")

My post, though, pertains to big flags and brand America. What does our brand mean today? If a big flag was found at brandtags.net, what words would "pop." What words would pop among Europeans, Africans, Asians, South Americans, Muslims, the poor, the environmentally conscious? What words would pop in different regions of the US? What words would pop among the 63,000 Americans who lost their jobs last month? What would Ray Hunt, the Bush crony, Halliburton board member, and war-profiteer whose oil company manipulated the State department for profit have to say?

In other words--what does America mean?

How will Obama answer that? How will McCain?

Warming up by chowing down.

To get ready for the festivities at Coney Island tomorrow, I just ate 37 hotdogs (with buns) in eight minutes. I'm skipping dinner to be in top form for tomorrow's contest.

Ogden Nash in my office.

When it gets hot outside and the air-conditioning in my hyper-hip yet crumbling workspace is on the fritz, I think of Ogden Nash's brilliant poem: "Ode to a Baby."

A bit of talcum
Is always walcum.

0% financing.

No money down.
Sign and drive.
No payments for 72 months.
$2500 off.
Sale-a-bration.
Red-tag sale.
Employee pricing for everyone.

Detroit tactics. And now, what agencies do when they attempt to get or keep an account.

We're practically giving them away.

As we spiral ever-deeper into what seems like it will be an infrastructure-shaking recession, news comes from Detroit that something's rotten in the state of Motown.

Chrysler sales dropped a whopping 36%. Ford was down 28%. GM fell 18%. Even Toyota's sales dropped 18%.

According to The New York Times: "Mark LaNeve, GM's vice president of North American sales, said it was not possible to figure out how much GM's month-ending three-day sale boosted June sales."

Note to Mark LaNeve: do you really think anyone will buy a GM vehicle unless you pay them to do so?

My prediction: after the short-term sales heroin of daffy dipshit dollar daze wears off, GM's sales slide will accelerate. It's simple, they make a product no one wants that serves a need no one has. They promote that product with marketing no one likes and sell it through a channel people despise.

PS: The chart above is GM's stock price over the last decade. On Monday, GM's share price hit its lowest point in over half a century.

Civil disobedience.

I just read that we (you and me) under the aegis of our government have adopted wholesale and used torture techniques first employed by the Chinese against American prisoners captured during the Korean police action. As The New York Times reports: "China Inspired Interrogations at Guantánamo"

"WASHINGTON — The military trainers who came to Guantánamo Bay in December 2002 based an entire interrogation class on a chart showing the effects of “coercive management techniques” for possible use on prisoners, including “sleep deprivation,” “prolonged constraint,” and “exposure.”

What the trainers did not say, and may not have known, was that their chart had been copied verbatim from a 1957 Air Force study of Chinese Communist techniques used during the Korean War to obtain confessions, many of them false, from American prisoners."

Read the entire article here: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/02/us/02detain.html?hp

My prediction is that this morning millions of Americans will turn on the "news" and hear more about Leona Helmsley leaving billions to her dog.

That's not trivia or gossip culture. That's mind control. And we're falling for it, hook, line and sinker.

Disobey. Read.

What does "patriotism" mean?

Just recently John McCain questioned Barach Obama's patriotism. I wonder what patriotism is code for--what signal the word sends out to people that transcends the philological essence of the word.

Go ahead, call me a conspiracy theorist. But I believe that linguistically when the "Liberal Media" is assailed, liberal media, or Eastern Liberals or pointy-headed Ivy-Leaguers is populist patois that translates roughly to "Jew." In the old Soviet Union, the code used was "rootless cosmopolitans." Today, high oil prices are being blamed, not on Exxon-Mobil (who tallied $13 billion in profit last year) but on speculators. Speculators = Jews.

So, back to patriotism and its meaning. Questioning Obama's patriotism during the 2008 campaign means one thing--the same thing "elite" means. It means "nigger." It means he's not one of us.

To learn more about this psychological inversion, read Richard Hofstadter's "Anti-intellectualism in American Life." In this book, Hofstadter traces the social movements that altered the role of intellect in American society from a virtue to a vice. The "vice" of intelligence gave us twelve years of Bush (including four with Dan Quayle as vice president.) Eight years of Reagan. Will it now give us four of McCain?