Just because….

There is much you need to know to wisely direct your life. At some point, an event may occur that you cannot personally witness. Suppose the consequences of the event affect you — without first-hand knowledge of the event, will you be aware of it? Will you be able to react to it?

You will want to know what happened. You may not immediately want to know what someone else thinks or feels about what happened. That may come later. You first want someone to tell you clearly and with minimal subjectivity what happened with no opinion or impression attached.

You live in a second-hand world. You need someone to observe the world first-hand when you cannot. Who will you trust to faithfully do that for you?
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Over the past nearly four years, nearly 2,600 posts have appeared on Scholars & Rogues, almost all researched and written by the 15 folks whose names appear on our writers’ bio page. S&R writers have devoted thousands of hours to the task of filling this space.

These are skilled people with diverse interests and even more diverse points of view. Three are college professors. Also writing for S&R have been or are an Hispanic activist from Texas; a foreign affairs writer who specializes in nuclear deproliferation issues and civilian casualties resulting from armed conflict; a gay staff cartoonist; a management consultant specializing in organizational behavior whose clients include 20 percent of the Fortune 500; an ex-pat South African economist; three experts in popular culture; a former director of the Berkeley Stage Company and statistical demographer for the U.S. Census Bureau; a professional stage actor; two stay-at-moms; a photographer; and occasional guest columnists.

However, we all share one trait: We are volunteers. We don’t get paid. We have other lives, other responsibilities, other people dependent on us to make a living. As business models go, ours sucks. Modest ad income and passing the hat means S&R remains a labor of love. But can love be a sustaining force for the online medium in the absence of profit?
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The American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity is running an advertisement at the Washington Post and The Hill websites which makes the following claim: 72% of opinion leaders support coal electricity. The ACCCE touts this claim repeatedly at their various websites, but there is so little information available about the study that produced this claim that it’s literally impossible to verify. However, given the number of inconsistencies in what little information is available, we can make an educated guess as to the accuracy of the 72% claim.

If you click on the “America’s Power” advertisement (screen shots shown at right), you’re taken to this page, where the ACCCE claims “it’s easy to see why 72 percent of American opinion leaders support the use of coal.” On this page, however, there are four links on the page that all go to the same press release that describes the ACCCE study that produced this 72% number. Full Story »

I recently offered up an open letter to America’s progressive billionaires where I noted how much better conservatives have been historically at making best use of their intellectuals and at assuring that those laying the foundation for political action were taken care of. That is, the Daniel Bells of the world didn’t have to slave at two jobs to scrape together half a salary, and as a result they were able to do important work that paid off - and handsomely - for their patrons.

In truth, the problem runs deeper than just “our side’s” billionaires, or so it appears. It started the other day when some prominent Left Blogistanis decided they weren’t going to keep their mouths shut anymore. The first shot was fired in a Greg Sargent piece at Who Runs Gov: Full Story »

In a June 1st, 2003 article by Catherine O’Mahony, published by The Sunday Business Post Online, Joey Mason, founder and managing director of Eumom is quoted as saying,

“This is really going to make us a player. For advertisers, we want to get higher quality interaction with the women they are targeting. We want them to be able to choose when and how they speak to their target customers.” He further says, “We know we are a new kid on the block and that we need to prove ourselves.” (emphasis added)

Where will Mr. Mason’s firm be a player? In 2003 Eumom was awarded a three year contract worth at least €2.4 million to provide promotional materials to Dublin’s three maternity hospitals. Eumom replaced the 25 year veteran Bounty Euro RSCG.

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I admit, I don’t get it. While professional athletes run motorcycles into houses, shoot themselves in the foot with illegal weapons, inject anything that will flow through a syringe and still get a) presumed innocent and b) paid, this goofy kid takes a hit and all hell breaks loose? To my permanently (and voluntarily) sports-deprived mind, Michael Phelps has committed an offense equivalent to “Michael Vick gives pit bull puppy slightly rough head noogies” or “Pete Rose bets nurse two dollars he can run with full catheter bag.”

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Clean coal does not exist, contrary to what coal giants Peabody Energy, Arch Coal, and the coal-industry group American Coalition for Clean Coal Energy (ACCCE) claim. The Reality campaign is trying to cut off the clean coal disinformation beast at the knees, and they deserve a great deal of credit for facing it head-on. But I was only luke-warm on their first TV ad, although their first print ad (same link) was better. They’ve recently released a comparison of the ACCCE’s lump of coal with sunglasses to the iconic cigarette-smoking Joe Camel that’s a little more pointed and, IMO, more effective.

But their (new?) ad at the Washington Post was a stroke of genius, because they put the ads up on every “Page does not exist” page that the WaPo puts up when you mistype a link or find one that’s out of date. Full Story »

The I-80 corridor in eastern Iowa, for those motorists interested only in hastening their way between Des Moines to the west and Iowa City to the east, may appear empty save for fields that produce part of the state’s 2 billion bushels of corn each year.

But north and south of I-80 lie many small towns, populated by only a few hundred or few thousand Iowans. Towns like Belle Plaine, Brooklyn, Benton, Marengo, Montezuma, North English, Williamsburg, Parnell, Homestead, Oxford and Holbrook. These are towns whose median household income is less than the $47,000 statewide average.

The people who live in those towns need information to effectively make political and consumer decisions. They need it just as much as people in big cities do. But come Monday, local news may not flow quite so freely in Benton and Poweshiek counties.
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For 20 years, I was a newsman. A damned good one. I learned the craft from good newsmen who learned it from other good newsmen before me. No steenkin’ journalism school for me.

I learned to parse cop code by making daily phone calls to the cops to get the police log — and often walked to the cop shop and read it myself when the damned desk sergeant wouldn’t read it to me. I learned by paying attention to details. I listened to what sources said — always more than one, y’know — and wrote it down. I had a newsroom godfather who taught me well: “Get it right. Period.” I only used anonymous sources three times in 20 years.

One day Editor Bob said he’d heard somebody was going to build a nuclear plant up river. “Find out,” he said. I did. I had to learn how nukes operated in less than two hours before going to the presser for the announcement. I was the only newsman who asked: “Will this be a boiling water or pressurized water reactor?” Hell, the PR types didn’t know. I did. I knew the in’s and out’s of each. Score one for me. I learned the beat quickly. I reported what the utility and the government didn’t want my readers to know. I wore a button given to me by my news editor: “Question Authority.” I found facts — so my readers found out something they needed to know.
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The first domino has fallen.

The Tribune Co., publisher of what used to be some of America’s best newspapers and operators of 23 television stations, has filed for bankruptcy, citing nearly $13 billion in debt compared with $7.6 billion in assets.

Let’s make book: Who’s next?

Could it be McClatchy, the nation’s third-largest newspaper chain, which is looking for a buyer for its flagship, the Miami Herald? Or the New York Times Co., struggling with debt and trying to cop a $225 million mortgage on its year-old grand edifice of a headquarters in Manhattan to get more cash on hand?
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In 1896, Adolph Ochs bought The New York Times and boldly placed on its front-page flag the slogan All The News That’s Fit To Print. Today, its publisher, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr., may need to rewrite that slogan to Less News And Less Money To Print It.

That’s because The Times has fallen on hard times (forgive me). The faltering business model that has strapped financial straitjackets onto other newspapers (witness the Christian Science Monitor ending its print edition) may have finally knee-capped the nation’s best newspaper. It has significant debt coming due, and insignificant cash on hand.
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The mainstream media is reminding me more and more of football announcers struggling to keep viewers from changing channels.

Bud:  Well, the Bumblin’ Bombers are down by 15 with just under two minutes left, Clint, but the game is far from over.

Clint:  That’s right, Bud.  They have no time-outs left, but if they run their two-minute drill effectively, they can certainly move the ball down the field, get the touchdown, make a two-point conversion, then cover an onside kick, drive for another touchdown, and send the game to overtime.

Bud:  Though the Bombers have been held to only 42 yards in total offense in the second half, this is an explosive team, and they’ve come back from situations like this, before, right Clint? Full Story »

Today’s polls, so far, show McCain tangibly making up ground nationally.  While methodology has given us very wide spreads on polls to date, the average has been around five to eight points in Obama’s favor for the past two-to-three weeks.  Real Clear Politics, which gathers polls and smooths them over time, has dropped Obama’s lead from just over 7 points yesterday to 6.8 points, today.  There are some oddities in the new poll numbers, however (all of which reflect opinion prior to last night’s debate).  Zogby and GWU/Battleground, both of which have tended to lean towards McCain, are actually showing increases in Obama’s lead to six points.  Gallup, which has generally been leaning towards Obama, has closed from a high of 11 points a few days ago to six points today, or only two if you accept their “traditional” likely voter model.  Rasmussen, on the other hand, which has been very steady, has reduced Obama’s lead to four points, 50% to 46%. Full Story »

The polls and the debate

Today’s morning polls are out, including the Gallup daily tracking poll.  Overall, it appears that the race may be tightening a bit.  As expected, initial reaction to negative campaigning usually works against the attacker, but continued attacks tend to soften support for the victim.  Negative advertising works and both campaigns know it.  The issue is timing.  McCain may have waited too late, after most people had committed, to launch his attacks.  But maybe not.  Obama has a funny name and he’s black.  It’s possible that white people, who make up the majority of voters, will be more likely to turn on him than they would on a white candidate.

We shall see. Full Story »

We may be witnessing the absurdly quick end to the Millennial Generation.

This coming Monday, September 29th may take care of it all.

For years:

• we had the advertising world getting a handle on the Millennials at a huge cost and professional upheaval of all it once held true
• we had the world of employment turning itself upside down to accommodate the Millennials’ justified lack of employer-loyalty, work performance on their own terms, and the quick-shift from employer-to-employer they represented Full Story »
  

In some grand Rovian afterlife, the late Michael Deaver, Republican image machinator extraordinaire, is smiling, even laughing.

You remember Mr. Deaver, don’t you?

As the White House deputy chief of staff during the first term of the Reagan presidency, Deaver orchestrated Reagan’s every public appearance, staging announcements with an eye for television and news cameras. From a West Wing office adjacent to the Oval Office, Deaver did more than anyone before him to package and control the presidential image.[emphasis added]

Were Mr. Deaver with us today, he’d be overweeningly proud of whoever’s handling — abusing, actually — the press for Gov. Sarah Palin, the Republican candidate for vice president.
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Y’know, these days, so many people with so many different motives are trying to tell me in so many ways what the “truth” is that I wonder whether I’d recognize a “truth” — any “truth” at all.

I give up. I’ve collapsed under the oppressing weight of lies, prevarications, deceits, “policy adjustments,” rhetoric, no-longer-operative statements, attack ads, Perino-isms, cunningly packaged spin, and Rovian stump speeches with the rhetorical content equivalent to the unflushed contents of a toilet bowl.

Would someone please make possession of a Teleprompter a federal crime, punishable by listening to Rush Limbaugh 24/7 for life? Or Al Franken, for that matter? Can we stop the incessant harangue so reminiscent of “Father Knows Best” or, in the event Sarah Palin is speaking, “Mother Knows Best”? Or Hillary or Bill: “We Know Best”?
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John McCain’s campaign advisers have made a potentially election-changing, tactical error.

They’ve started lying.

Lying in campaigns isn’t new, of course. The GOP has made big lies central to their campaigns since Nixon and Harry Dent, refining the technique with Reagan and his campaign manager, Lee Atwater, and have since kicked it up 20 or so notches in the Rove era. Most of us know about Rove, but he learned at Atwater’s knee, and it’s Atwater who accused Kitty Dukakis of burning an American flag and Dukakis, himself, of being treated for mental illness.

Generally, campaign lying works. The GOP knows that. The Democrats know it, too, and they’ve done some lying of their own. Unfortunately for them, they’re just not as good at it as the Republicans, so their lies tend to be smaller and less prolific, aimed at a constituency that is very different from the GOP one. In other words, lying doesn’t work as well for them. Full Story »

by greg stene

Two things happened over the last 18 hours that have forced me to go back to a book about advertising that I wrote in 1997. I’ve done a bit of updating over the years, but the sense of the book is from that time. It’s aged well. That’s unfortunate, as you’ll see.

The event of 18 hours ago was a live presentation by a visual digital artist that I attended. Some incredible on-the-fly work with the video images of the candidates for the presidency and VP. Quite reminiscent of Max Headroom. Yet, quite original. And about 15 minutes long. The artistic/political point could have been made in 5 minutes. Full Story »