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Tonight on Virtually Speaking Mike Stark and I will be discussing what we can learn from the SOPA fight and the Susan G Komen Debacle. Listen live and later on BTR (9 EST, 6 PST)
There will be a billion pixels spilt on these stories that you can read elsewhere by scholars, experts and journalists. What I’m most interested in is what works/worked for the media activists out there.
- How we can replicate this to fight the right?
How can we press the advantage?
Why the left will NOT press the advantage.
- How will the Right defend against this in the future and who will they enlist to help them?
BTW, can anyone else see the fingerprints and style of Ari Fleischer all over Brinker’s media interviews and statements?
(Fleischer personally interviewed candidates for the position of “Senior Vice President for Communications and External Relations” it’s a safe bet that he would approve and suggest someone who mirrors his style.)
- What steps will the PR experts at Ogilvy take to try to repair the brand?
The right has often taken tactics and methods used first by us, discredited them until they have time to become big in them (by throwing money and automating at them) and then using them to serve their agenda.
- How can we defend against it when it is turned on us?
I’ve already seen several stories about the power of social media in breathless posts about the role of Twitter and Facebook in the Komen debacle. It reminded me of the early days of blogs and before that email campaigns.
I will point out one insight that I got after Mike asked me a question, “Why did the SOPA story work and the push for Net Neutrality go down the wonk hole?”
I wondered about this and why the overwhelming response on SGK’s action regarding Planned Parenthood. Part of it is because we on the left know how to respond to overreach. We aren’t as good going on the attack and creating outrage.
Some people have talked about keeping the pressure on SGK, doing oppo research on the board members and using it against them. I think keeping the pressure on is the right idea, but that’s the wrong approach.
There can be exposure, but not out and out attacks. At this point one of the best ways to put pressure on them is by helping them rip themselves apart from inside. Find and expose the people inside who didn’t agree with the board. Show the world how good people inside fought the board. Some resigned. The board will have to attack “themselves” vs. attacking us for attacking them.
After I made an impact on KSFO and got dozens of advertisers to leave, I backed off exposing them in public. I started letting their new parent company management and board know what the hosts who “apologized” were still doing to the brand. I showed them the sexism, bigotry and continuous violent rhetoric that was still coming out of them. I also enlisted the State Department, the Iraq Embassy staff and the internal news staff at ABC to drive a wedge between the hosts and management. I showed ABC Radio management and journalists how Lee Rodgers was attacking them on the air. “Does it bother you that Rodgers is calling your staff liars, Presidential butt kissers and dopes?”
– Lee Rodgers, KSFO/ABC Radio host on Thursday, March 26, 2009 6:43 am (Audio link)
This turned their anger on Rodgers, not me. Rodgers was an expensive embarrassment who would not apologize to anyone for anything, so I helped the management see that in regards to their own brand.
Rodgers got fired. He blamed the Muslims and a management that listened to them. How do you think the management and Muslims found out about his comments? They don’t listen to the show.
I like to fight the right and force an error or overreaction on their part because then I’m the victim. The left knows how to support victims, but we don’t know how to support our warriors. I rarely get institutional support because attacking the right isn’t really in any groups’ mission statement. Even Media Matters is about, “correcting misinformation”
I can’t count how many times I’ve suggested aggressive strategies to groups that would not only expose and defund the right but could elicit an over reaction from them. They don’t like it. They don’t want to fund it. It’s scary, believe me, it’s no fun to be the focus of right wing heat, but what happens is that people will mostly support you after you are attacked. Planned Parenthood got a ton of money and support from this Susan G. Komen story. The right constantly used attacks on them to raise money. “Those liberals are picking on us! Send money!”
INTERFERING WITH THE MONEY STREAM IS NOT ALLOWED
My friend Sara Robinson, now a senior editor at Alternet, agrees with me.
You know why Glenn Beck got fired even when he got good ratings on Fox? Because I pointed out to the shareholders he wasn’t making them the kind of money he should have.
(See my post, Rupert and Me, where I called up Rupert during the NewsCorp quarterly financial call and asked him how long he was going to be subsidizing Beck.)
The focus to investors was on the negative financial impact of this nut. I wanted the institutional investors to know about it, so I talked to them in a language they understand. The bottom line.
“…corporations (both for- and non-profit) [need] to learn that putting right-wing ideologues into places of power is a risky, dangerous thing to do. It Does Not Pay, and no board that takes its fiduciary responsibility seriously should ever consider it.
Cross posted at Spocko’s Brain
44 Comments
Hey Spocko,
you’re brilliant. I mean shining.
if you have the need for domain we should talk.
I’d like to help!
:)
Kind of goes along with this piece I found in The Guardian.
In other words, the so called Left refuses far to often to confront this kind of stupidity and backwards thinking by either ignoring it or putting themselves above the fray. But it comes off as being elitist and snobby.
OH and recd’
Hi cmaukonen:
Charlie Booker! Wow. I was going to mention his brilliant new short series, Black Mirror. Have you seen it?
http://www.channel4.com/programmes/black-mirror
There are three of them and they really are amazing.
If you can’t watch it on the UK’s Channel4′s site try
tv-links.eu It is like Hulu for shows out of the UK and it is legal to stream or download from them. I REALLY want people to see it so we Can Talk about it.
A lot of issues about social media, the media, politics and the people. The first episode will just blow you away. The third will make you really think about if you should really be updating your face book time line so much.
Check it out the most profound and disturbing SF show I’ve seen in years.
They have such a large head start. How can we ever catch up, esp without money or power.
I love Sara’s comment!
Which brings me back to the right’s way of taking issues too far within a business situation.
O’Keefe has done it again on the voter fraud issue. I was just having a slap around with an Eastern troll today. I told him that I really liked talking about this fraud issue in voting because it will help us to quicker turn off the black boxes and secret vote counting. Ya know, kinda makes me think that Eastern troll might be little Jamie or one of his buds.
Great, Spocko. Will your radio discussion be available later? Don’t think I’ll be able to listen now. At the moment, I’m wanting to do a Komen-size tsunami on the WH trial balloon on backing down on contraception insurance coverage.
Not optimistic, but … and I’m still too sick to think clearly, but interested. Your campaign against those sickos at the radio station was fascinating, especially in its results.
Oops, can’t read clearly either—your link clearly says “listen live and later.” never mind!
Was that here? Just curious…did s/he id self as “eastern?”
The reason the Susan Komen issue was won was because that was a SOCIAL issue, as opposed to an economic issue.
On the important economic issues that matter–health insurance; extension of George Bush tax cuts; cuts to social security, medicare and medicaid; creation of Super Congress; big food versus family farmers; even Internet freedom fights, OWS encampments etc. etc.–the “left” (moderates) lose again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again……On the economic front, the liberals are losers. But on social issues, they are winners–for the past 40 years. Main Stream Media will make sure that is the case.
Haven’t you already noticed??? Don’t you already know this?????
The cultural wars–feminism, sexual liberation, abortion etc.–have already been won by the “left.” That is because the neoliberals like Obama and the millionaires that disseminate the news on Main Stream Media are social liberals and economic conservatives. So there is no “victory” there on the Susan Komen issue. On the economic issues, I guarantee you the left will keep losing–forever–whatever your strategy.
Yes, Here. Today under one of the voting posts, and no it used the name of back east.
Give them a message for me. Tell them I’m not Catholic and thought this country still honored Freedom of Religion.
Ask Scott Walker if he thinks he’s winning?
“On the economic issues, I guarantee you the left will keep losing–forever–whatever your strategy”
Don’t be so sure of that! The economic issues have become social issues. I guess you haven’t been following foreclosure-gate or job-gate much.
This reminds me of Air America in Austin, Texas. Austin is a very liberal town. I mean the surrounding areas are pretty thoroughly red but Travis county isn’t just liberal for Texas, it’s liberal for just about anywhere. Still AA withered there due to lack of advertisers. Local right wing radio was always threatening potential advertisers about how an association with AA would cost them. It was ugly. I won’t be a party to any of those kind of tactics and I’m not saying that you are suggesting it. I like the idea of going on the attack like you describe in your KSFO campaign. I wish I could have the ears of some of these obtuse Democrats because they just have absolutely no idea how to play chess and maneuver your opponent into sacrificing pieces in a vain fight for their very survival.
Recommended and thanks.
Back east is the sockpuppet of Headed West, a known troll until he/she was kicked out (I think) awhile back. Returned as Back East. Don’t feed…
I’m listening. Who is who? One person’s voice is clearer than the other.
Hiya Peg. Happy to see you!
Hey Molly. Ditto. :)
well done spocko (as all of your work is)
tweeted and recommended. congrats on being front paged
How’s the fibula, Suz? Still no cast?
And great post, Spocko. I always love reading them. Recommended!!
Okay, clear voice is spocko. Brilliant.
i’ll have an update on my lln thread tonight msmolly. don’t wanna hijack spocko’s diary. here’s a link to comment i made on last night’s lln thread that is the reader’s digest version
Spocko, great read and kudo’s to Stark for all he does, too.
I read elsewhere, without a link, a stat on a VERY essential measurement you and everyone needs to consider when talking about any national hi profile non profit.
Komen, it was said, spends 11% of donor funds on services provided.
That’s eleven cents of every dollar.
The other 89 cents goes to salaries, bonuses, fundraising by contracted ‘buddies’ who likely kick back some of the profits one way or another to the non profit board and leaders who contract them.
11 cents, of every dollar.
Yep, that’s how to measure a non profit, find the ratio of donor money to services/goods provided.
11% is fucking criminal, and as big of a flim flam grifting scam as any 3 card monty table on yer local NY burrough street corner.
THAT, is a stat that needs to be confirmed, and then BLUDGEONED upon the head of SGK, and then that tactic needs to be turned to every single non profit professing to do good that’s got Exec Dir’s and Board members with right wing leanings.
N THAT’S how the left takes it to these fucking asshats.
;-)
This is excellent and subversive in the best possible sense. As cmaukonen rightly if undiplomatically points out the American right is well financed but globally lacking in much actual intellectual or creative firepower. And their funders are likewise seldom more than shallowly clever, competent only within a specific narrow field of expertise or so focused on counting beans they have little cognitive capacity left to think strategically or bigger picture. The business world is mostly an environment that is blinkered in on the short term, the last battle and what worked then and simple arithmetic scorekeeping. Hardly an environment that nurtures or can even comfortably tolerate brighter lights.
We’ve all met these sorts. These are, money heaps aside, honestly not terribly formidable opponents. And better, they are drowning in a hubris brought on by financial success and delusional boilerplate American Exceptionalist mythology and wildly overestimate their own capabilities. If we can set up situations for them that cannot successfully be brute forced by the crude application of large sums of money, or if their funders can be convinced by simple appeals to naked self interest they really likely won’t have the imagination to envision effective alternate strategies.
As for SGK, my hope is that their long time donors will insist on Komen and especially Brinker coming clean on what happened and why. Remember that Handel said that this was vetted and approved by the board and I believe that. How can they move forward with that board in place?
On the Komen For The Cure site there is an option to report misconduct. I’ve pointed out that by politicizing their funding decisions in their attempt to end abortion, they are compromising their tax exempt status. AND today I pointed out, in the ‘misconduct’ section, that Handel was quick to throw Brinker under the bus by pointing out how she lied to Andrea Mitchell that Handel wasn’t involved with the defunding decision. Nothing, Nothing!, could be worse for Komen than to be seen as merely a political action committee. Which, of course, they are now.
Yep. There is a word for a charity that has lost all credibility: “Defunct”.
Yep
Jesus, Spocko, where the hell’s your book already???
The thing about SOPA was that it was really a battle between two sets of big bucks corporate interests- It just so happened that one side was much more aligned with our interests, but that is probably an unusual circumstance in congress these days. Unfortunately, due to the steady corruption of our political process, the battle of legislation in congress is just a surrogate power struggle between various corporate interests. When they are all arrayed against us, we probably loose but at times we can take advantage of the fact that the greater public good might also be beneficial to some of these money players.
Sorry Spocko, did I mention this was a great read and highly rcc’d?
Thanks for all you do, hoss.
Thanks, Suz. I didn’t want to hijack the thread either, but I’m almost never around for LLN and saw you here, so thought I’d ask a quick question. Not happy news, not fun. You’re in my thoughts.
I confess to being a bit confused about SGK (and I’m disgusted by these shenanigans). I saw at Charity Navigator that they have a four-star rating, and that 82% of their funds go to their programs. That doesn’t match the figures I’ve seen thrown around here and elsewhere, that only 11% of their funds go to breast cancer research.
I’m not at all suggesting anyone is lying, I’d just like to see some sources for these accusations that I can verify.
One trick IS to get one corp interest to fight others.
Also you need to help them see that it serves their customers and bottom line.
On of the other tricks is to point out to shareholder when a “political” action is bad for them.
So are they throwing money behind Newt? Shouldn’t that money go to the shareholders?
The level of communicatiOns to instutional investors about abuse of political money is weak. They should all be asking the boards ” why are we spending this money?”
FYI:
Charity Navigator: Susan G. Komen for the Cure
Ok, there WAS a link to the quote I offered regarding Komen a d 11%, etc.
Our own Suz, LLN, had the link in a FB posting that I didn’t read.
Having now read the link, it’s a great read btw from AlterNet, that 11% figure is money spent from donors on research for a CURE!
Overall, Komen spends 53% or more on various research and detection and treatments.
The GIST of it all is this tho, which clearly spells out the corruption and abuse of donor dollars. These are MY words, not from the article:
Here’s the link, Which Clearly Spells Out The Scams.
So, I hope that clears THAT one up.
And still, to those doubters, the measure of a non profit is the measurement of their donor dollars to goods/services provided ratio.
Once that’s well established, the evidence is clear as to the intent of the org and it’s TRUE mission . . . ;-)
I have to seriously doubt the reliability of that 82% figure and how it was calculated.
Please read the link Suz posted on FB, that I just commented about. I admit my 11% was based on just reading something, before i read the article in question.
However, my experience with nationally based hi profile non profits, my schooling of them (PR classes in early 90′s) and general reading tells me most are scams or one sort or another and on one level or another . . . with very low donor dollar to services/goods ratios.
This is well known by those who analyze these things, but you’ll have to research that . . . I dont’ have links on it all. They should be easy to find . . . ;-)
Thanks, Larue. But I would posit that at least some of the funds spent on research and detection and treatment ARE part of the mission, regardless of “for the Cure” in the name.
Planned Parenthood isn’t really specifically about “planned parenthood” either, given their range of other services.
I am just leery of totally trashing an organization that does good for women’s health, I think they need an overhaul and to kick out the reichwingers and quit focusing on abortion and get back to finding a breast cancer cure. And I don’t plan on giving them any money until I see some evidence they’re doing that. In the meantime, the small amount of money I can afford to give will go elsewhere (like my $50 to PP last week).
@ msmolly February 7th, 2012 at 7:23 pm:
One of SGK Foundation’s corporate sponsors is the Koch Brothers.
Air America in Austin, Texas had a really crappy signal that was hard to receive & would frequently drop out. I dunno about the internal politics but they initially had a lot of local ads and they failed in no small part to their weak crappy signal.
“I like to fight the right and force an error or overreaction on their part because then I’m the victim. The left knows how to support victims, but we don’t know how to support our warriors.”
I’m continually struck by the fact that the left doesn’t have much of anything going on, in the way of warriors, that goes after corporate Dems. Where are the warriors that demand that both the Democrats and Republicans apologize for doing away with Glass-Steagall? Obama was caught stabbing us in the back wrt healthcare, but who demanded an apology for that?
Do you have any thoughts on going after Democrats? Going after Glen Beck – which I don’t expect will have any effect on his core demographic – and leaving the Veal Pen untouched and unknown to both left-leaning and independent Americans – seems awefully dumb, to me.
Let’s put this another way. Let’s say that Rachel Maddow is a spokeswoman for some company, and righties mount a campaign to have her fired. (Make up your favorite excuse.) That might make a bunch of righties feel that they’ve accomplished something, but compare that to the likely results of a campaign to have, say, Bill O’Reilly terminated as a spokeman, because he was too soft on mortgage fraud.
I think such an effort would be less likely to have the desired overt effect (O’Reilly getting the heave-ho, because he’s still one of ‘us’), but more likely to get O’Reilly to focus on mortgage fraud.
I commented, often, during the height of Tea Party coverage, that the left blogosphere was focusing on the wrong thing. Not to mention smearing Tea Party participants. But at least if the smearing had been accompanied by an organized political response, targeting reform and accountability by their more likely (and susceptible) ‘champions’ – the Democrats – some political good, for the left, could have come of it.
Instead, the Dem rank-and-file will be stuck with Obama, again, with no challenger of any significant visibility, who recently signed NDAA, is pretending to be a populist (helped by bogus “job gain” reports, which were actually yet more job losses; see PHONY DATA: America’s “January Jobs” are Statistical Artifacts).
If the left had “warriors”, they’d be going after Obama for the true, crappy jobs picture, and tying it to his failure on taming healthcare costs, not to mention the lack of a jobs plan. Needless to say, they could blame the Republicans for these things, also.
To clarify: by “mortgage fraud”, I mean the aspect of it that was top-down. I don’t listen to O’Reilly (don’t have a TV), but I gather the usual right-wing talking point is to blame the liar participants in liar’s loans. I.e., blame the little guy, exclusively, and ignore the people who got fabulously rich, at the top, by so enabling the little guys who were enticed to play the game.
Even if I’m wrong in the details, people who actually follow O’Reilly can pick many of their own examples of O’Reilly myopia, I’m sure.
About getting the far right to feed on each other on the inside, this is right on.
For an example in miniature: my local weekly newspaper was running wicked essays on the op-ed pages by a far right freak. I just waited for the right time to send a letter to the editor, admitting they could not print me because it was a personal attack (ignoring my knowledge that the editors are right wing idiots too), pointing out the oh-so-sad disservice to their readership and advertisers (their bread and butter) and practical suggestions for helping the essayist to get an education on his topics (with specific references to his essays) at a local community college.
True, they did not print my letter, but that essayist never appeared again either.