(Photo Comparison Exclusive, MUST CREDIT SPOCKO’S BRAIN! Creative commons license)

I spotted this photo of Eleanor Roosevelt on her pistol permit for New York State. I noticed a similarity with Former President Jimmy Carter so I put his photo on the card next to her so you can see it too.

Her getting a pistol permit reminds me that some people hated her. Did they hate her for her ideas or just because she was a woman? My Dad’s family didn’t like her at all. I don’t know why, but ever since I found out I’ve been reading up on Eleanor and her role in helping America get through the Depression with our soul and with new social solidarity systems in place. Systems like Social Security.

On Friday the Social Security Trustee’s report came out. We found out yet again that Social Security is in good shape. So is Medicaid. Yet people like Pete Peterson still think it is a problem. For more detail on just how full of it that the Social Security attackers are, listen to this interesting segment with my friend Alex Lawson of Social Security Works while talking to Sam Seder on Monday. (Sam was filling in for Thom Hartmann)

I was struck by the fact that there are a group of people whose job it is destroy aspects of America that help keep us healthy, fed, housed and connected. Why do they hate other Americans so much? Is it because they want the Social Security money to go to Wall Street or do they also want to see others suffer? Is it because they don’t see their own connection with others? 

This weekend I was reading Noam Chomsky book Power Systems: Conversations on Global Democratic Uprisings and the New Challenges to U.S. Empire. (I just love to name drop this book, yeah I not only read it, but did it at the beach! Look at me, I’m a badass intellectual!) In the book Chomsky talked about this fear the elite have of social solidarity systems like public education and Social Security.

‘[Social Security is] a system based on the concept that you should care for others, that you should care whether elderly people you don’t know can live decent lives. You can’t have that sort of thing. If a widow somewhere doesn’t have food, it’s her problem. She married the wrong husband or didn’t invest properly. In a society in which everyone is out just for themselves, you don’t pay attention to anyone else. ”

-Noam Chomsky Power Systems, p. 157

So how do you position yourself to people if your goal is to destroy the concept of caring for others? You do things like:

1) Downplay the real information.  

So did you hear about this Social Security Trustee report? Was in all over the news you follow? On Twitter? Facebook? Did Fox have on multiple people from the Social Security Trustees to explain how they are doing? Why not?

2) Keep pushing lies. 

FYI. There is not a team of people working for the Social Security Administration actively going out to shoot down the lies spread by the RW belief tanks. I’m not talking about spokespeople “being made available” to discuss Social Security on PBS’ News Hour. I’m talking about an active debunking team in DefCon 1 mode demanding to get on Fox News shows. Maybe someone at Social Security Works does some of this, but not with the kind of PR budget AEI, Cato, Heritage and Pete Peterson’s foundation does.

In today’s media environment the truth is not good enough in the face of active mischaracterization and misinterpretation of information.  Today we have a “The truth lies somewhere in the middle” reporting style. Pete Peterson and his foundations spend millions, ‘educating’ the press (sometimes by paying them to write on the topic they select in special supplemental sections of the Washington Post).

People are “Swiftboating” social security. And the Social Security administration doesn’t feel it is their job to actively go after their attackers. However, if nobody fights back, the lies spread. They become “conventional wisdom.”

3) Encourage people who stoke hate of others.

Read the rest of this entry →

Have you noticed the Cumulus v. Rush stories in the press lately? What makes me crazy is thinking about all the questions that could be asked of the distributors, media corporations and the people who have made money or spent money on right wing media. Sadly they won’t be asked, although if they were asked I suspect the answers would range from, “No comment.” to, “We don’t have to tell you nothin’ Poindexter” and include lots of, ” We are a private company! Now drop and give me 20 stories on missing white women!”

Although public companies like Cumulus will answer a few questions, those answers will mostly be bullshit. I also know that no one in the press will call them on their doublespeak because shut up. But if I was an old timey journalist, wearing a fedora with PRESS in the hat band I would ask ‘em. I know I wouldn’t get any good answers of course, but it would be fun to watch the squirming. Today’s journalists aren’t about making anyone squirm. Not their job. Getting deeper truthful answers? Not their job. Reporting what they say exactly as they say it? That’s their job.

Here are a few questions I would ask of media companies that syndicate Rush or make money from the ads they sell during the show. I’d start with my natural wide-eyed innocence and then proceed to my grizzled, impatient self and finally ask sarcastic, cynical questions.

1) Why don’t you treat Rush like any other poorly performing asset and dump him for something better?
Answer: [mumble mumble.] He’s a fine asset, he still has the highest ratings in the industry! Frumpy, frumpy, frumpy. There is no one better! Next question.

2) Why don’t you renegotiate his contract?
Answer: We aren’t in a position at this time to discuss contract terms.

They will compare Rush to an athlete with two broken legs. He has to be paid even if he can’t play until the contract is over. As we know from the banking industry only the little people can never walk away from an asset that is under-performing. The big boys do it all the time, why aren’t they now?.

3) Why don’t you find a way out of the contract?
Answer: [ Something, something, pause] At this juncture we don’t have that option.

Translation, “We are trying to figure something out, unfortunately his lawyers are smarter than our lawyers and they removed all the loopholes to get out of it.”

4) Why don’t you demand that Rush find a way to return to profitability? Why don’t you demand that Rush “stop insulting women” so you can reach out to advertisers other than herbal boner pill makers?
Answer: Our conversations with Mr. Limbaugh aren’t subject to public disclosure.

[Behind the scenes with ad sales guys: That fat bastard didn't even return our calls! We've GOLFED with him! I laughed at his stupid dirty jokes! We kept him on when he was popping Oxy like doughnut holes! Oh, his "people" say, "This will blow over. Advertisers will come back." we are tired of waiting Rushbo. Unlike him we have to work and live with real women . Women who put up with him when he made us money but now won't buy our line, "Sure he is a pig, but he's our pig and he's making us a butt load of money".]

If you have to ask you aren’t part of the boys’ club, questions.

The following questions should be asked but the answers are usually unstated. Everybody just “knows” the answer. To even mention them is considered naive. Questions such as:
Read the rest of this entry →

Fired ACORN Worker Wins $100,000 Settlement From Republican Con-Artist James O’Keefe

Former San Diego ACORN worker, Juan Carlos Vera will receive $100,000 in a settlement from federal criminal and professional liar James O’Keefe, after being secretly video-taped in violation of California law by the Rightwing propagandist. The tape was just one in a series of similar videos, all deceptively edited as part of his 2009 ACORN “pimp” hoax series.

The story of the settlement was originally broken by Wonkette, which published the 3-page settlement document [PDF], yesterday.

    -Brad Friedman, Brad Blog

I was listening to the Emmy award winning comedian David Feldman’s show yesterday talking about the great new film “Janeane From Des Moines” and Feldman kept asking questions about the Presidential candidates that the film maker met and filmed during the Iowa caucus.  He wanted to know, “How can they sleep at night?” specifically he wanted to know how they reconcile in their minds their actions and policies they promoted and their proclaimed Christian beliefs. Jane Wilson, the film maker, had a very insightful response.

“People who are quote unquote evil never see themselves as [evil]”

- Jane Edith Wilson, Film Maker Janeane From Des Moines

For years people asked me about right wing radio hosts,  ”Do they really believe what they say or is it just an act for the money?” My response is, “Does it matter? I can’t see into their soul, all I know is what they publicly say, and what they do. And what they say is nasty. I will act to lessen their impact, because I think it is the right thing to do.” Then I proceeded to develop a program to separate them from their sponsors and their money. That was my way to go after an institution and individuals that I believe are bad for our democracy and our country.

If you are someone in power, who believes that a left-wing institution, group or person is bad for your goals there are a number of ways you can go about destroying them.  If you need to act quickly one shortcut is to manufacture “evidence” of wrong doings at that institution or from that person. This is useful when you can’t find any real wrong doings. For a price someone will do this for you. It’s good to get someone who believes in your same cause, so they can think they are doing good. But if you can’t find that person, get an actor who will pretend they are doing good. Another trick is to play the journalism “free speech” card so that you can get support from people who love journalism and free speech.

Last year I attended what I called “James O’Keefe University” to learn his techniques and methods. He talked about his real desire to be an actor and how his editing of videos was just like the editing of videos TV news shows do all the time. He encouraged people to do what he did. He then showed clips from the Daily Show from before they were revealed to be deceptively EDITED.  It was all presented as great fun. Stickin’ it to those hypocritical liberals!  I found the entire seminar profoundly depressing for a number of reasons.

First, the people funding O’Keefe, the Koch’s via Americans For Prosperity, understood just how powerful O’Keefe’s deceptive practices were, especially when teamed with the RW media and the more little O’Keefes they can unleash the better.

Second, AFP easily filled rooms with hard core right wingers whose internal beliefs convinced them they were doing heroic work taking down “bad guys” like ACORN. One of their biggest targets? Unions!

Third, and this was the one that hit me the hardest, there was nobody on the left who would fund me to go after Right-Wing institutions like O’Keefe did ACORN, but in an ethically and legal fashion. I have a track record, I have skills, but unlike O’Keefe, I didn’t have a Koch sugar daddy to support me taking on right wing institutions and media.

The AFP  seminar a.k.a “O’Keefe University” pushed the idea of “Citizen Journalist” while using the O’Keefe’s deceptively edited videos as a model for winning. And why not? As far as the Kochs and AFP is concerned O’Keefe was wildly successful.  As Brad Friedman put it:

Thousands of ACORN workers were left unemployed by the O’Keefe/Giles/Breitbart stunt after the U.S. Congress also fell for it. In 2009, shortly after the deceptively edited tapes were released, they passed legislation, signed by President Obama, that federally defunded the four-decade old community organization which had advocated to end predatory lending practices and helped millions of low- and middle-income Americans obtain housing loans and legally register to vote. The group was forced to shut its doors in the wake of the manufactured scandal.

O’Keefe achieved Koch’s and AFPs goals, and it was cheap.  Based on what O’Keefe has said I estimate it cost 70K for the cross country, illegal-taping tour of ACORN offices, 100K for this current settlement and let’s say 130K for those high-priced Republican lawyers. $300,000 to destroy ACORN. What a bargain!  Of course hopefully this settlement will lead to more.

If you knew you could take down Fox News or the Heritage Foundation for $300,000 would you? What if you didn’t have to manufacture evidence to do it? Would you do it then?

Many of you might remember the Book Salon that I hosted with Martin Hickman who wrote the book, “Dial M for Murdoch” In the book he described how a small team consisting mostly of a politician, some journalists and a lawyer exposed the phone hacking scandal at News of the World which led to it being shut down. They did the work legally using real journalism, the legal system and political pressure on a merger deal. I’m pretty confident that something similar could be used on New Corps properties here in the US.  But will anyone? Since Obama won the election does that mean that we stop focusing on right wing media institutions and get back to helping people? It would be nice, and that is the attitude of a number of funders, they really don’t want to fight the right. I think that’s a mistake, because the RW media and institutions are more vulnerable now than they have been in awhile.  Shall we let them regroup? Did they back off attacking us when they had the White House and the senate?

The right has to fund liars and deceivers like O’Keefe because they know they need to cheat to win. We don’t have to, but we do need the will to fight. One thing that I’ve learned over the years is that the mainsteam media will not go after the right wing media. They hate to cover them, they would rather ignore them. As Cenk Uygur said on The Young Turks the other day, one reason nobody on cable goes after Fox is because they either have friends who work there or they expect to work there some day. 

Here’s the deal, the ideas and attitudes of the right wing media and their belief tanks are killing our country. They are the ones who push the failed austerity ideas. They push cuts to earned benefits as a “shared sacrifice” instead of demanding raising revenue. They push ideas that the economy is a deity who must be sated with the lives of your friends and neighbors to support the profits of the one percent. They attack our values and ideals. They support the destruction of our democratic institutions.  And some of them get rich doing it. It doesn’t have to be that way.

I don’t want O’Keefe’s fine to scare off people who want to do real journalism and activism against corrupt institutions and people. If we have the goods we don’t have to deceptively edit. We also have to be smart about the law. I would hate for someone to have good video that could not be used because they didn’t know the law. Here is a link to “Can We Tape?” put out by Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.

My friend, Angelo Carusone, at Media Matters wrote an article about the impact of the campaign to separate advertiser’s money from Rush Limbaugh one year after his attack on Sandra Fluke. Nobody is going to jail for alerting advertisers about the vile things Limbaugh has said and continues to say.  Dial Global, a radio syndication company, reported roughly $100 million in losses for 2012 and publicly cited Limbaugh as a significant contributing factor.  I celebrate this success. It was done legally and ethically.  Let’s keep pushing our success and learn from their success and failures.  The country is counting on us.

Creative Commons Attribution image by DonkeyHotey 

Starting Monday I’ve been politicizing #Sandy. Specifically I tweeted.

I can almost hear in my head the right wing radio blowhards responding to this comment with their mocking strawman  “The left want you to believe that WE are responsible for hurricane Sandy! Preposterous! It’s like when they blamed Bush for Katrina! My friends, these are “Acts of God! We had nothing to do with it!”

My second tweet was in response to their probably response:

Climate change is an Act of Humans and it contributed to #Sandy therefore #Sandy is no longer just an Act of God.

Monday, Maggie Koerth-Baker, the science writer at Boing Boing, wrote this wonderful post:  Did climate change cause Hurricane Sandy? The answer depends on why you’re asking. It really is a brilliant piece and I encourage you to read it. It addresses the questions that many have as well as the innocent and not so innocent reasons people ask.  (BTW Maggie owes me some Boing Boing swag for a contest I won, if you see her tell her I’m still waiting. Her excuse was she was busy with her book tour Before the Lights Go Out but it’s over now. P.S. I take an XL.)

 Was this [hurricane Sandy] an unavoidable act of nature? Or was this something caused directly by changes to Earth’s climate that have happened because we burn fossil fuels which increase the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere?

Again, there’s not an easy answer. And, again, part of the problem here is that we’re expecting science to operate on the scale of American media news cycles, which doesn’t really work. We want to talk about this while the storm is raging or, barring that, at least immediately afterwards. But scientists aren’t really going to have anything particularly deep to say about this specific storm for months, if not years. During that time, data will be analyzed and compared, and other events will happen, and that’s really the stuff that we need in order to say much of anything other than, “We don’t know for certain.” In some ways, expecting anything else means forcing scientists to speculate and extrapolate in ways they aren’t usually comfortable with and that aren’t a terribly great way to understand the big picture.

[Emphasis mine because that is a really important insight.]

I was once explaining the American media to a Ph.D. in physics I was working with, he got very annoyed with the way the media worked. “But Spocko, in science things rarely are 100% certain, yes there is a high correlation of this cause with that effect, but it is only one factor in a complex system.”   Another creator of high-end technology didn’t like the way his comments about scientific reality got twisted by his competition and picked up by the media. I helped them both find metaphors they felt comfortable with and then helped them switch to teaching mode to educate the different media outlets they were going to talk to.  But they both wanted the media to be something it wasn’t and something they wished it was.

Later in Koerth-Baker’ s piece she quotes Greg Laden, an anthropologist who does some very good blogging on climate science, had a lot to say on this topic — particularly, the fact that even though we can’t say “Hurricane Sandy was caused solely by climate change”, we can say that climate change is probably affecting several factors that probably influence the development, growth, and movement of hurricanes.

She makes the case that weather is complex, “Hurricane Sandy could be both a completely natural occurrence and a product of climate change. Simultaneously. Some of the factors that caused this storm might be nature-made. Others might be man-made. And teasing apart which factors were responsible for which aspect of the storm’s damage is incredibly hard.”

So if scientists can’t  tell you whether Sandy, specifically, was caused by climate change does that mean we just wait for the all the data to come out years from now? No. Because in the mean time the people who want to deny that climate change is real and impacts us will exploit anything less than 100% certainty. That’s what they do. That is their job. That is why they are getting paid millions.

If you knew that a group of people – through their attitudes, actions and policies, led to the death of someone you loved would you want to tell people about this group? Would you want to talk about them and what they are doing right now, when you are feeling the anger and pain of loss? Would you demand change? Or would you listen to the same group of  people telling you, “Now is not the time for recrimination and blame.”

Anger can change the configuration of your thoughts. If moves people. It gets people to change their attitudes, actions and sometimes their politics. And if you are on the other side of righteous anger you will use all sorts of methods to calm the angry people down. Because angry people demand change.

One of the games the right plays is when something happens that they know could lead to change, “in the heat of the moment”  they start screaming.”Let’s not politicize this tragedy!”  I see it after every single mass shooting. Why do they do that? Does it really come from their deep feelings of respect for the family of the dead?  I’m sure there are some who think this way. But I think it is more about using “respect for the family of the dead” as a shield to prevent change.

The other group of people who worry about talking about the root cause of some event are people who think that change happens only with reasoned debate “in the cold light of day.”  They don’t want to be accused of exploiting the tragedy. They believe that it is distasteful and disrespectful or that it dishonors the death of the person.  This works out great for the people who want the status quo to continue.  Personally, if someone can use my death to make changes so others don’t die I say, “Do it! Make it so! Engage!”

So how can we actually politicize #Sandy? I’m starting by calling them out.

 ”Hey right wingers who deny climate change, blood from this storm  is on your hands. This is not a simple “Act of God”. Men and woman who have your attitudes, have taken your actions and implemented your policies have led to this. Changes need to be made.

If you aren’t the kind of person who gets angry and makes demands for change there is still something you can do. Keep linking climate change  to extreme weather events and specifically the human related actions that lead to it.  Because as Maggie concludes, climate change is real and we need to care about it.  I say, let’s do something about it.

(photo: edenpictures / flickr)

Last year I used my time-travel capability to describe what to look for in the Occupy Wall Street movement, how the media will cover it, how opponents will try to destroy it,  with suggestions on how to change the narrative by understanding the media. I’ll do it again this year. So, back to the future, today!

97.3 percent of the time the media are as predictable as Borgovian Land worms*. They are attracted to movement or noise. Like mina birds and toddlers they like shiny objects. Like Klingons they like a fight and conflict. They look for novelty because they are bored. And of course TV media love action – bonus coverage for blood! “Holy crap, the cops are throwing flash bang grenades? Scramble the Action News van, we’ve got our lead story!”

Occupy Wall Street is coming up on an anniversary and the media LOVE anniversaries, they can revisit the action with ‘perspective’ which is often a rehash of their conventional wisdom.  Here are some of stories you will see, and not see.

Overarching Story Line: “What has Occupy Wall Street accomplished?”

On one hand this seems a natural story line, but the problem is that the MSM looks at accomplishments only through certain narrow lenses.  Advertisers and marketing people have drummed into their thin skins and thick heads to only look at certain metrics by category such as:

Numbers and dollars: If you are selling a product they want to know how many cap snafflers were sold. What is the profit per cap snaffler?The media will pick the metrics that they think are important or have been told is important.

Expect stories about how much the Oakland Occupy cost the city in police overtime and clean up.

The media will contact the police and city public information people because they are easy to reach. What they won’t be doing is calling them liars when they exaggerate numbers because they will need to talk to them again in the future. They don’t know if they will ever talk to Ketchup again. 

They won’t be covering how much the financial sector’s illegal activities have cost the city in revenue. For example, how much more money would the city have if the LIBOR scandal didn’t hurt them? How much did the foreclosure misdealings cost the city in revenue? Did they back the state’s Attorney General in cases against banks? How much did the city lose in revenue compared to what the states got back for them?

Who is impacted? Say you are a TV show like Leverage, it’s good to have lots of people watching but it’s better to have the “right kind” of people tuned in.  Expect the media to categorize the Occupy attendees as “real Americans” with jobs vs. hippies in a drum circle. 

They won’t be explaining how the Wall Street financial crisis impacted employment. I was asked by one reporter. “How many of the Occupy people are unemployed?”  The MSM has this idea that “real Americans” with jobs protesting trumps students or unemployed. You don’t become less of an American when you lose your job. Unemployment driven by the financial lawbreaking and misdealing of Wall Street is an essential part of the protest. How lucky for the protestors that economic destruction has lead to having “free time” to protest! Read the rest of this entry →

News Flash! 50 advertisers have pulled their ads from the Rush Limbaugh show. Updated list here.

Everyone wants to know, “What will happen next?” Some people want to know how to “fix the problem” (i.e. lost sponsors) others want to know, how can we make,”the problem” worse.

I am of the metaphorical mindset, “When your nemesis is drowning, throw him an anchor.”

There is, and will be, tremendous pressure to keep The Limbaugh Zeppelin afloat.  Lots of people are scrambling to find the right words, strategy or actions to get back to the status quo. What might be surprising to some, but not to me, is that the MSM will help keep this gasbag in the air. Why? A few reasons:

1) The “They could do this to me!” fear. They might remember that Lou Dobbs is gone and Glenn Beck if off TV, not because of what they said, but because of “market forces.” The progressive left made those “market forces” happen by alerting advertisers and asking them to stop allowing these people to taint their brands.

2) Rush gives them the language for ideas that are easy to describe. One stop shopping for what “the Right” thinks. (His ability to articulate the worst impulses of the right and make them seem noble is a real talent.)

3) The MSM have to make sure to run, “Rush’s side of the story.” Rush is, of course, the real victim in all this. Their stories can cover ad experts to answer questions about the economic impact of this on Rush or Premier.  Political experts to discuss the ramifications of this on the Presidential race. Social media experts on why this movement got traction vs others.

What they all know is that there is an entire community (LimbaughSphere?) that needs Rush to stay on the air.

One of the big questions that will be raised is, “How can Rush stay on the air without advertisers?”

Surprise! Rush doesn’t actually need advertisers. The people in the radio industry want and “need” that revenue stream, but not Rush. Like Glenn Beck while at Fox, he still has his contract if he has 2 or 200 advertisers.  Additionally the people who want him to continue could subsidize him for months if not years if they want.

What people forget is that massive long term subsidies have propped up the Right and movement conservatism for years. Fox lost money for years. NewsCorp is so big and Murdoch’s control so strong he could hide the money losing ventures from shareholders, until they could pay off financially. Here is a link to me asking Rupert how long he will keep subsidizing Beck) In the mean time their subsidies was paying off in Right Wing messaging and political wins.

The expectation that directed messaging efforts should also make money is fairly new. The Right mocked liberal radio for “not making money” from the comfort of their money losing belief tank jobs.

When was the last year the Washington Times made money? Never. As of 2002 Moon and his businesses have plowed about $1.7 billion into subsidizing the Times, say current and former employees. (Story from the money losing Washington Post.)

Rush’s Brand is Now Bigger Than Sponsor’s Brands

What is different now is that Rush’s “brand values” have become more important than his consumer product sponsors’ brand values.  His agenda has become more important than their needs. He will taint the advertiser’s brand rather than retreat from some horrific statements that advance his agenda.

This is huge problem for people who make money on Rush such a:

Radio stations, sales reps, and radio execs

Companies who get revenue sells products or services to his listeners

This is NOT a huge problem for folks who use Rush to push the movement conservative agenda. People like:

Koch, Scaife, Olin, Moon and others funding money losing papers, RW belief tanks like Heritage and American’s For Prosperity.

Brent Bozell of the non-revenue generating group, the Media Research Council who will use this as an opportunity to raise money on Rush the Victim. Of course that will be pennies vs. what he gets from his funders, Exxon, Scaife, Olin and other tax exempt right wing foundations.

However, one of the problems will be the perception problem. How do you explain keeping Rush on the air without commercial advertisers? They might admit that they support money losing shows all the time and admit that generating revenue was just a happy accident of the true goal of the show, making the extreme right’s views “normal”. Janeane Garofalo  used to call it “Giving people permission to bring out their inner Archie Bunker.”)

I expect multiple methods will be deployed to change the subject from the financial consequences. I discussed some of them in my article here.

As various techniques are used I’d like to remind people of the insights that I developed when I created The Spocko Method. There will be a need to keep dogging the LimbaughSphere’s attempt to make this problem go away.  I talk about some of this on Angie Corio’s In Deep Radio show, broadcast tonight, March 9, at 8:00 pm  on KRXA in Monterey and March 10th broadcast in Washington D.C. at 10:00 AM on WPWC 1480 AM DC Progressive Talk Radio, @WeActRadio. Also you can listen to the Podcast of Mike Stark and I discussing this and Andrew Breitbart’s death and his impact on the media on Virtually Speaking.

If this article has become tl;dr (too long; didn’t read) you can go now.

Below is background for people who want to understand The Spocko Method and why it works vs. boycotts, appeals to the FCC or radio management. If you want to do a quick action you can go to my friends at FreePress, Media Matters or Credo who all have ways to act on this.

The Spocko Method

I learned a lot and and established a lot of principles during my early work on KSFO hosts, then advising Hate Hurts America on Michael Savage and Color of Change on Glenn Beck.

When I started my advertiser alert campaign in 2005-06 I did a lot of research on what worked and didn’t work when engaging the Right Wing media. Based on that research I determined that the leverage point was the station’s revenue stream. If you had great ratings with no advertisers, you are screwed.  If they didn’t have a sugar daddy, they needed advertisers.

I looked at and discarded going to the FCC, like the Right did with Howard Stern. I looked at and discarded appealing to management since they could position themselves as, “supporters of free speech” even if they disagreed with it. Also, they easily could ignore efforts that weren’t widespread, since the audience who is offended doesn’t usually listen, therefore they didn’t really care what they thought.

My solution was to show the advertisers that the hosts of KSFO were tainting their brand.  This involved finding email addresses and the right people to contact showing them the clips and letting them decide. Twitter and Facebook weren’t as pervasive as now.

My special perspective on this is a deep understanding of how to talk about the action and how to communicate to the corporations. My background is in helping companies and people tell their stories to the press, their investors and customers. I’ve media trained the top executives, founders and funders of major tech companies and consumer firms. I know what they care about. I work a lot with the marketing, PR and internal communications people.

Based on this I did some important things different.

I didn’t go to the FCC, they don’t care. (that is what the right did with Howard Stern, Brent Bozell’s Media Research Council is always happy to use Big Government to get what he wants).

Based on the liberal criticism of that action I made it clear I never wanted to silence people or get them fired. I just wanted them to be less profitable.  If they modified what they said on the air or are let go because they have become unprofitable, well so be it. I explained this to other groups who then used them on Michael Savage and Glenn Beck.

Then there are some instructions I gave to my followers, basics like be polite, but also how to frame the request.

It’s NOT a boycott. Don’t write the sponsors and say, “I’m going to stop buying your product if you don’t do this.” That is a threat and advertisers don’t like to be threatened. Instead get them to see the disconnect between their own values, brand or policies and this person.

Get the corporations to see how the comments aren’t “in-line with their values.”
I did this by showing them their own policies on discrimination, violence or sexism. Then I  linked them to the audio clip that aired right after the horrific comment. Imagine being Pro-Flowers after the, “women using birth control are sluts and prostitutes” comment.  With KSFO they had HR companies advertising. I sent them links to sexist comments about Dana Perino and women they wanted to work in the office naked because they had “a great rack”.

Make it clear you aren’t trying to silence anyone.  This is because that is censorship and there are people on the left who don’t want to have anything to do with any kind of censorship, even of someone like Rush.

They are the, ‘I’ll don’t like what they have to say, but I’ll defend to the death their right to say it.” people. They need to see that this a MARKET-based action, that way they don’t have to defend Rush under the 1st Amendment. It’s not about the host’s rights, it’s just business. The companies have a right to not advertise on a show. Nobody has a right to get rich saying horrible things.

Help the corporations explain why they are pulling their ads.
“You aren’t censoring him or silencing him. You are just removing your financial support because what he says doesn’t match with your brand image. Someone else who doesn’t have your good values can pay to be associated with him.” This information is then used by companies so that they can explain it to their customers and internal marketing people when they ask, “Why aren’t we advertising on the show with the highest ratings!” They can respond “Because, hating Muslims, gays, and vicious sexism isn’t what our company and brand are about.”

Keep your followers aware of how the other side will fight this and keep adjusting your messages to counter them.
So if they say, “Rush apologized!” point out all the other instances where he didn’t. “This is a pattern of behavior, not a one time thing. Do you want to be associated with him when he says the next horrific things?”

Avoid Media Boredom. As the campaign for Color of Change got boring to the media people wanted to “move on.” I suggested that they take the results to the next level. That was when I took it to the financial journalists and NewsCorp Institutional investors. That was a new and  different story for the media. “What is the economic impact of advertisers leaving? Why was Murdoch still subsidizing him?”

(BTW that was the question I asked Murdoch during the May 2010 financial conference call. That pushed the story back into the news and got Murdoch to comment on it, which the media needed to quote on the issue.)

Prepare for Dishonest Reframing and Strawmen
You will see that in the response to defend Rush they create strawmen. “They want to silence Rush! They want to bring back the Fairness Doctrine!” But since I was very careful to never talk about firing them or bringing back the Fairness Doctrine I could easily show that this was a lie.

I think the advertisers should have a choice, and they should be able to work within the market to decide if they want to make this purchase. When they pull their ads they aren’t censoring anyone, just making him less rich, nothing wrong with that.

This is how the free market is supposed to work, but the right actually wants a monopoly. They don’t want to give companies a choice, especially if , through media consolidation, they make their guy the only game in town.

Keep up the good work everyone!

LLAP,

Spocko

Cross  posted at Spocko’s Brain.

@spockosbrain follow me around on twitter

People everywhere have written about Rush, his comments and the actions taken to convince advertisers to leave. I could analyze which actions will and won’t work with Rush but I won’t. I’d bore myself writing that, what I want to do is talk about what is happening right now and in the next few weeks so we can prepare and act.

How will the Right Get its Revenge for Hurting Rush?

I’m going to slingshot around the Sun and go into the future and tell you what I see happening the weeks of  March 4-18th, 2012 around this issue.

1) Three bazillion pixels will be turned on defending Rush. They will tell us that he is “an entertainer” who has “apologized” and we should just “move on.” Besides he never technically called her a slut and, something something something, yargle bargle why should I pay for a woman having sex, especially if it’s not with me?”

2) Groups will decide to get Revenge for Rush with a boycott. Probable Targets?

• Rachael Maddow
• Keith Olberman (or Ed Schultz or any male in the ‘liberal media’)
• Ellen Degeneres
• Rosie O’Donnell
• Oprah
• Sandra Fluke, her university, her future employers
• The advertisers who pulled their ads from the Limbaugh show.

3) Other actions? Buycott! Rush will show advertisers who stuck with him how good that stance is for business. He will tell everyone to go buy something made by a sponsor. So since ProFlowers left he will get 1-800-Flowers as a sponsor and tell his listeners to use them for Mother’s day. Listeners response: See, you mess with Rush we go to your competition! Buycott! (I wonder what the slogan will be, “Buy flowers for your slutty mother!” Nah, maybe something like “Your mothers is a saint and never had sex except to create you! Show her your thanks with flowers!”

They will use forwarded email, talk radio, Facebook and maybe Twitter to organize these campaigns. Read the rest of this entry →

The National Gun Victim’s Action Council (NGAC) has announced a Starbucks boycott

A nationwide boycott of Starbucks stores and its products will be launched on Valentine’s Day 2012. Its goal is to eliminate the risk of guns in public places and ultimately to bring sane gun laws to the U.S.

(image: Fuzzy Gerdes, flickr)

So if you need an excuse to not go to Starbucks, there you go. I’m not involved in this action although I’ll support it.

My problem with boycotts is that it’s not always made clear to management why sales have dropped unless the boycotters can make it clear they are the reason for the drop in sales.  Additionally there is a chance for competing boycotts, for example Starbucks didn’t respond to a boycott by a Christian pastor because they supported a bill to legalize gay marriage in Washington State. So if you are going to boycott Starbucks tell them on Twitter with an @starbucks each time you don’t go into a store and why. Right now pro-open carry people are posting photos on Facebook of their guns next to Starbuck logos thanking Starbucks of “not backing down to bullies.” (which I find hilarious, who’s the bully here? The people with lethal force strapped to their hip or people with petitions, emails and flyers?)

I like to remind people that my actions to defund KSFO hosts, Michael Savage and finally Glenn Beck, were not boycotts. They were designed to convince advertisers that these people were tainting their brand. Then, after the advertisers stopped supporting the hosts, we went to the media company investors and pointed out that their “asset” was actually a liability (see my world famous call to Rupert Murdoch asking why he was subsidizing a money-losing Glenn Beck).  Sara Robinson called this process “getting Spockoed.”

Since Mike Stark and I now talk about activism on Virtually Speaking once a month I’d like to share with the folks some specific local actions I did around the Open Carry issue in 2010 in Northern California that wasn’t a standard press release or physical protest that also didn’t involve Twitter or Facebook but did involve the media and educating local businesses and national chains around Starbucks to understand their rights when it came to Open Carry participants.

Below I’m going to lay out my actions. I’m not going to get into the issues of Open Carry, the 2nd Amendment or gun violence because then an army of “pro-guns everywhere” activists will show up to tell me how wrong I am and demand I respond to their well researched talking points coming out of the NRA (with their $250 million dollar budget). I’ve already had those discussions and I have my position on the issue.  This is about my process working my side of the issue. Read the rest of this entry →

This week I helped produce a segment on ALEC for Angie Corio’s new radio show In Deep the show airs Friday night in Monterey KRXA 540am http://krxa540.com 8-10p, tomorrow (Sat)10a-12noon in DC WPWC 1480am http://weactradio.com.
Listen to the podcast
here

What if you are so outraged at ALEC’s hidden activities with corporate lobbyists that a simple call, click or letter though the usual channels isn’t enough? I’ve got some ideas for you.

One thing I’ve found in my years on your planet is to recognize people’s unique talents when you ask them to help you. I’m a communications guy with an understanding of media, technology and corporations so I use those skills for the causes I support. But there are lots of different activist methods for people with unique skills they can use to fight the right.  So let’s match some skill sets and interests to ways you can get involved.

1) Are you the performer type? Do you enjoy speaking in public? Do you run to the microphone to ask questions at lectures?
You can be the “talent” who is the focal point of a citizen activist team’s video story.

2) Are you a filmmaker and knows how to put together a short edited video with a few titles and load it up on YouTube?
You can be the “director” who films the “talent” and preps a video to go viral.

3) Are you a researcher and writer? Do you know exactly what to say when someone is “answering” a questions with words that are clearly a dodge, a lie, or an obfuscation on a topic that you know something about? But would you rather write these pithy, witty responses down on your computer than say them out loud to someone in public?
You can be the “screen writer” who educates the “talent” on the issue for their questions in a public forum and ensures the “director” has a solid narrative and a point of view.

4) Are you a connector? Someone with lots of friends and followers on social media. Do you know how to throw a good party to support a cause or fight back?
You can be the “producer” who introduces the “talent” to the “director” and “screen writer” and suggests they work together.

I’ve been training small teams like this to go to town halls and other locations. It really can be an amazingly powerful group. As you can see, I use the terminology of Hollywood because in our current environment so much of what gets covered by the media is theater. Politicians are always performing, saying what they think the audience wants to hear. Their people know how to stage manage events. They know what people like to see, they want to “control the box” by dictating the venue, the attendees, and if they are pretending to be open, only the “right” kind of media are allowed in. They will use all the methods at their disposal to block teams like this because they have the potential to create Macaca Moments.

There is a huge opportunity for teams like this in all sorts of situations, not just the events that are scheduled and stage managed by organizations like ALEC. ALEC has a hilarious “media policy” which, if actually enforced equally, even Fox News couldn’t attend.  If you are interested in training sessions for people who want to participate in these teams contact me at spockosemail AT gmail. com.

But what if your talent isn’t in any of these areas and you still want to help?

Corporations donate millions of dollars to ALEC. They often hide their donations. What kind of methods can you suggest that can uncover these donations? Has a company revealed info in a quarterly document that nobody noticed? Might you suggest a method of questioning of the corporations in shareholder meetings about these expenditures? Sure some institutional shareholder fund managers understand that buying politicians and legislation has a great ROI for the long term, but maybe they want that cash this quarter. Maybe they are a corporation that says one thing in public, but funds the opposite in private by giving to ALEC. Shouldn’t the CEO be asked about the apparent disconnect between their stated mission statement and where they are spending the shareholders money?

Two of my favorite financial writers are William Black and David Cay Johnston but I’m sure there are other people working in finance (or retired) who could educate someone enough to know what to look for and ask about in a forum where it can’t be ignored. Maybe you need to team up with some “talent” and a “director” to get the story out there after someone asks your questions. This is necessary because you can be pretty sure that the financial press or the main stream press aren’t going to ask those questions.

The title of these two Florida “Education” bills are designed to be misleading. They play on parent’s feeling of loss of control over their kid’s education while taking any semblance of local democratic control away.  They do this because not many people would vote for the:

“We Will Steal Your Kid’s School, Remove Your Local School Board and Replace them with Unelected for-profit Corporate Executives Who Have A Fiduciary Responsibility to Enrich The Corporation Bottom Line Instead of Provide a Quality Education To Your Kids While Setting Up A Potentially Worse Performing School that Your Kids Probably Can’t Get into Anyway Because of Their Low Test Scores” bill.

So they call them House Bill 1191, or the Parent Empowerment Act — and HB 543, or the Parental Involvement and Accountability in the Public Schools Bill.
Now right now these bills are at the stage where they are supposed to get public comment. That’s you! So if you are in Florida, call your legislator now.
And I’ll bet there are ALEC Bills coming to your state too! Follow @ALECexposed for updates or go to ALECexposed.org for more details.

All of these skills can be used if you actively want to challenge, defund and hamper the funders and leaders of an organization like ALEC.

Good luck.
LLAP,
Spocko

@spockosbrain

spockosbrain.com

Spocko is a media activist who trains people to tell their stories to the press and public.

At the GOP debate on Thursday will Wolf Blitzer ask Mitt, Newt, Rick or Ron any question with the tenaciousness we see on display in this video at a European Central Bank press-conference in Ireland?

I doubt it, but it could happen. It should happen. After all, Blitzer is an Emmy award-winning anchor for CNN and is also a recipient of the Peabody award for his Hurricane Katrina coverage, the Alfred I. duPont Award for his coverage of the tsunami disaster in Southeast Asia and an Edward R. Murrow Award for CNN’s September 11 coverage.  Let’s hear his own words of advice to CNN iReporters (their citizen journalist program) on asking questions:

Q: What tips do you have for getting people to get comfortable and open up?

A: My rule of thumb is to be polite but firm in asking the questions and trying to make sure I get the answers.

Q: What is the one piece of advice you wish you were taught about interviewing that you had to learn on your own?

A: The most important thing is to listen to the answer and follow up when appropriate.

Why shouldn’t we expect Wolf to listen to the answers and follow up? After all, the man is paid two million dollars a year by CNN. We don’t expect it because the people who pay him and selected him for this moderator position don’t really want journalism. Read the rest of this entry →