…GOP presidential frontrunners as of this morning, and none of them are Fred Thompson. In other news:
…to the 27 people who attended my li’l book event at the Form/Space Atelier gallery. If I’d known I’d have had a mike and a stage and a desk, I’d have scripted something.
IN SATURDAY’S NOOZE:
How does the Hollywood establishment adapt the Great Atheistic Children’s Novel? By scrubbing all the anti-religious stuff out, naturally. (Link may require paid registration.)
…some less than flattering words about the church that’s moving into Belltown’s Tabella nightclub space. Essentially, Lanham accuses the church and its leader of preaching hatred, homophobia, and misogyny under the guise of a youth-understanding hipster.
…Tabella is selling its space to Ballard’s Mars Hill Church. So, instead of drunken gay-bashers on Saturday nights, Western Avenue will have sober gay-denouncers on Sunday mornings. Yes, that’s an improvement.
IF ANYONE WAS AT the big and costly Hillary Clinton to-do in town Monday night, I’d love to hear about it. I do know the rightist protest scene outside Benaroya Hall wasn’t so big as it had been at her prior visits.
PARKING-LOT CZAR Joe Diamond may be dead, but he’s still a stern taskmaster. Diamond company officials earlier this month said they’d forbid tailgating parties before Seahawks football games on Diamond-owned lots. Now comes a revised edict: Go ahead and party, but don’t be seen with any booze.
SEATTLE’S MOST FAMOUS “We Never Close” restaurant is closed today. A chimney fire has shut down 13 Coins since about 4:30 a.m. Tuesday; it may reopen for tonight’s dinner shift.
IN VANISHING SEATTLE NEWS, the famous Wonder Bread neon sign will rise again, on the apartment building that’s replacing the former Central Area bakery site. Once again, the mark of wholesome blandness will draw motorists to what has traditionally been Seattle’s least whitebread neighborhood.
KUDOS TO 13-year-old Aaron Furrer of Monroe and his Guernsey heifer Dot for winning a big juniors-division prize at the World Dairy Expo in Madison, WI. Buried deep in the hereby-linked article: Furrer’s family can no longer turn a profit on their 46-acre dairy farm; his dad now works as an electrical contractor just to hold on to the land.
OVERHYPED TRAGEDY OF THE DAY: “A jury Monday convicted a former stripper turned Olympia, Wash. soccer mom in the decade-old murder of her fiance. Mechele Linehan, 35, was convicted of first-degree murder for conspiring with another fiance to kill Kent Leppink, who was shot three times in 1996 near Hope, AK. Prosecutors say Linehan wanted Leppink’s $1 million insurance policy.”
IF YOU BELIEVE what you read in the papers (or on the papers’ web sites), Shirley McLaine says Dennis Kucinich once saw a UFO outside Graham, WA. Make up your own comment here.
…of the non-denominational “winter” decorations being designed for display at Sea-Tac Airport this December, they seem to be preparing to celebrate Festivus.
Today’s piece is long and goes all over the place. Consider yourselves warned.
Steven Brant is one of the many commentators who’ve noted the dangerous link between the Bushies’ I-can-do-any-goddamn-thing-I-want sense of privilege and the corporate-motivation side of new age create-your-own-reality philosophy, as particularly realized in the soon-to-end reign of Alberto Gonzales–a tenure which fellow pundit Greg Palast calls “Wrong and Illegal and Unethical.”
By Brant’s line of reasoning, the right-wing sleaze machine has spent the past seven years determined that it can get everything it wants just by believing in it really hard (and, of course, by hustling and dirty tricks and corruption and torture and favors etc.); but cruel reality is increasingly catching up with their fantasies.
I’m getting less sure about this interpretation.
First of all, the GOPpers have remained “successful” at their prime goals–to concentrate wealth upward, to swap favors with the insurance, drug, oil, and weapons industries (even at the expense of the economy as a whole), to turn the entire federal government (with the recent exception of Congress) into an operating subsidiary of the Republican campaign operation, to rig the election process by hook or by crook, to reward friends and punish enemies, to promote a more authoritarian society at home and imperial ventures abroad.
The administration’s simply failed at tasks to which its devotions are shallower–democracy, security, justice, public health, education, economic prosperity beyond the ruling class, and the whole basic spectrum of good-guy goals America used to claim to care about.
But that leads to another question. If us “reality based” progressives are gonna pooh-pooh the right’s positive-thinking shtick, how do we account for the right’s success at so many of its real goals–particularly the goal of persuading and keeping loyal dittohead voters?
This is where a few recent books come in.
The first is Drew Westen’s The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation.
Westen (no relation to ABC News execs Av and David Westin, or to Westin Hotels) argues that the right’s policies may have had a near-totally negative impact on the body politic’s health, but its public messages have been cleverly crafted for optimal emotional impact. Those emotions could be sunny, or fearful, or bigoted, depending on the particular audience “buttons” needing to be pushed; but they were always effectively presented.
Us left-O-centers, in contrast, have had a lousy rep for left-brain, policy-wonk talk that resonates with nobody except ourselves; or for downer everything’s-hopeless cynicism; or for mealy-mouthed, middle-of-the-road wussiness.
To change this sorry state-O-affairs, Westen sez Dems have to show up with some emotionally compelling narratives of their own, and to fearlessly shout ‘em out.
This notion coincides with the premise of Chip and Dan Heath’s new marketing guidebook, Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die.
The Heath brothers seldom mention politics in their book, save for lauding JFK’s “Man on the Moon” speech. Their main target is the business person looking for a way to connect with potential customers.
But their premise, if it works to sell shoes and burgers, would also work to sell policies and politicians.
That premise: Ideas that spread, that “hit” with audiences, all employ six key ingredients: “simplicity, unexpectedness, concreteness, credibility, emotions, and stories,” in various amounts.
Let’s explore how these principles might work in a marketing drive whose “product” is progressive-Dem candidates for public office:
P.S.: Yesterday’s electronic town hall by progressive heroine and Congressional candidate Darcy Burner had a few technical glitches (the video stream went down a couple of times). But it was a fundraising smash. Burner raised over $100,000 from nearly 3,000 contributors before and during the event, which got great write-ups on the national political blogs.
