Have you watched Amy Bouzaglo of  Amy’s Baking Company Bakery Boutique & Bistro on Gordan  Ramsey’s Kitchen Nightmare (Season 6 episode 16)? It was gripping TV which led to a social media disaster. At tomorrow’s press conference we’ll see how good her PR team from Rose+Moser+Allyn Public and Online Relations is at their job. Based on this early story in the Phoenix Business Journal I think they are going to be very successful. Why? Because they will be deploying techniques used by conservative politicians in the media.
UPDATE 5/20 PM: I wrote this earlier today and just found out that the press conference is canceled and the PR firm has resigned.  Here is the story in the Phoenix Biz Journal h/t to @barbinnebraska for the update.

For non-watchers I realize I’ve started in media res and you probably haven’t been following along, so here is video from the episode where Ramsey’s production team films what happens before, during and after the show at ABC Bakery Boutique & Bistro. To compound the problems caught on cameras, someone on their Facebook page started responding to criticism. Here is the Buzzfeed link about that. You will note that they have already taken the first step that politicians take when something terrible goes out on social media. “We were hacked!” Later they might change that message, see my section below, Social media “melt down” on Facebook.

I do not like “reality” TV, because I know that via the editing process you can change almost anything. These shows also have a certain standard arc they go though, all that differs are the characters and how they respond.  This episode is different because Ramsey didn’t follow though on his standard,”Then we fixed things and it’s all better.” The reason he gives for breaking the format is that the owners would not listen to his advice.

Fixing a Meal vs. Fixing a Reputation

I was thinking about the reason I wanted to write about this story. As much fun as it is to watch people fighting, what I really want to look at is the rehabilitation process. Why? Because Dick Cheney. Because Mark Sanford. (Not to mention “wide stance” guy and “has sex with prostitutes while wearing a diaper” guy. )

The rehabilitation process is important because the main stream media will not fight it from happening.  If they actively fought it that would make them partisian. The best they can do is, “he said, she said, the truth lies somewhere in the middle. ” The media doesn’t write the story, “Dick Cheney says, blank” which has been proved a lie.” Why would they? It’s not news. It’s history, everyone “knows” what happened. Meanwhile the RW media can push the new, “Dick Cheney was the hero we needed” story.  History is written by whomever owns the media — and has a good spin team.

The other reason I want to watch this is because Elliot Spitzer.  Because Antony Weiner. Because Jim McGreevey.  But, and this is important, the rehabilitation of reputation is different for the left vs. the right. The public and the press have different expectations and actions following a scandal.

You see I’d LIKE to rehabilitate Elliot Spitzer. I’d like to rehabilitate Antony Weiner. I’d like to stop the rehabilitation of Dick Cheney and Mark Sanford.

Are You Prepared for the Elizabeth Warren Scandals?

I’m preparing for future scandals. I’m trying to help us know how to fight and then if we lose to rehabilitate people targeted by the right.  I’m currently in love with Elizabeth Warren, she is standing up to Wall Street and if history is any guide Wall Street will strike back. Hard. Dirty hard. Clinton “Whitewater” hard.  James O’Keefe faked videotape hard. Leaked identity of Valeria Plame hard.

Now I could advise Senator Warren to not do anything wrong, but she is an imperfect human and we have seen that scandals both real and manufactured are exploited to drive people out of office. But what I want to point out is that our media environment is very different and that WE need to understand it when scandal comes a knocking, both during the first stages and then to help with rehabilitation from real or manufactured scandals. I wish I could educate the MSM about these, but the best we can do it to remind them of times they were punked by the RW.  “Hey, Jonathan Karl of ABC, what is the providence of that video/email? Has it been edited? By whom? Might they have an agenda?  Do you have the whole story? Can you use Google and the phone before you run the story?”

I’ve worked with a lots of executives to help them with messages and dealing with the press, but they usually don’t reach Amy and Samy’s heights of self annihilation. I’ve been brought in after some big mistakes though and there are a couple of considerations. First up is understanding the personality of the company, organization and person and second is which deciding on which narrative you want to activate.

 Amy’s Baking Company Bakery Boutique & Bistro Press Conference May 21, 2013

Based on the Phoenix Business Journal article I’m betting this will be their strategy.

1) Play the victim card. Gorden Ramsey is the bad guy, Amy and Samy are victims. They don’t have to do anything more than show clips of him screaming and swearing at other chefs from Hell’s Kitchen or his other American Kitchen Nightmare shows. The man can easily be shown as a frightening monster.

2) Line up supporters.  An appeal to “the tribe” goes out. They will work to line up loyal customers to talk about their great experiences.  These people will be made easily available to the press. The press might dig up just one former customer, but unless people are actively making themselves available, deadlines loom. Besides, in the face of happy customers, why search for unhappy ones? That is just “piling on” and at this point the press want to give her “a fair hearing” if they dig for bad stories they are being biased, and that is the sin that they never want to commit.

3) Work the “facts.” Note that I don’t say facts. So for example, lots of people were stunned when the owner pocketed the tips of the wait staff. They will point out that it was legal since they didn’t pay them as wait staff, but as hourly employees. However, one of the tricks is that you say even though what you did was legal, for appearances sake, you are going to change what you did. But remember, it was totally legal! (The press aren’t going to look for previous diners who felt that they were being defrauded.  Are any diners going to sue for that? Nope. Legal matter closed. Nothing to see here folks move along.)

4) Social media “melt down” on Facebook. There are a lot of “social media guru’s” out there, but coping with the press takes a different skill. There are a few ways to go here.

 A) Lie. Stick to the lie and keep lying.  The good news is that the media will take you at your word and, because they don’t comment on cases, the FBI won’t comment either. And, they can also get away with a lie because nobody at Facebook is going to come forward and say, “Here is the IP address that these comments were coming from at this date and time.  If they were hacked it was from the computer inside the house of Amy and Samy.”  Nobody at the press conference are going to call them liars since they have no proof it was them. (What if Amy and Samy admit to the PR people they weren’t hacked? Do they counsel she stick with the lie? Maybe they think of themselves like a lawyer defending a guilty criminal. After all Amy and Samy are counting on the PR team to defend them and get them off the hook in the “court of public opinion.”   Of course, there is another way but it might not fight the “I’m right no matter what you say.” personality of Amy.

B) Admit you weren’t hacked, “Yes it was us, but we were under severe emotional strain at the time, our business was being destroyed by Gordon Ramsey and Reddit and Yelpers.” Now I think they could finesse this, especially if they get Amy to cry on cue.  “You don’t know what it is like watching your last six years go up on smoke because of mean internet comments!  It will be very easy for the PR team to show the nasty comments at Reddit, members of the community can be can be very cruel to people they don’t like. They can also be very generous and supportive of others, but Amy’s actions and behaviors turned them off.

C) Play up “cyber-bully nastiness. She might say, “We got death threats! They said terrible things about us!”  Using the death threat card is smart because there is always some idiot who can be found who will say something stupid like that and nobody asks to see the exact email/threat and asks if the FBI is following up on it. Often the wording is , ‘I hope you die.” or “You don’t deserve to live.’ rarely is it, ‘I’m going to come to your home and kill you.”  All these comments work to switch the public’s perception of her from a bully to a victim.  Then her responses were simply her standing up to the online bullies. Nobody likes bullies.

5) “The Marketplace decides” follow up story. There will be the follow up to the press conference, a whole week of dining where the people who can attend are screened. If the press bothered to ask who attended you would find friends, relatives, employees of the owners and the PR firm. Anyone who isn’t a fan will clearly be an enemy who is out to do no good and has a preconceived bias.  We know that many Redditer’s will try and dine there and rate the food and service. Some might actively seek to create a fuss. Now if I was in charge of this phase of the rehabilitation I would first remind the press that anyone who says anything bad about the service or food is just doing it out of malice and to view their comments in that light. This will turn all diners into either, “with us or against us” so that even someone who claims to be “impartial” can’t be. The point is to discredit any criticism in advance.  Once you have split up the dinners into these categories you have the classic “both sides” of the story, yet the negative side has an agenda! (As if the plus side doesn’t but we don’t question them and their providence for being there during the comeback week.)

All these Words are Making me Hungry Spocko. What about Dick Cheney and Mark Sanford’s Rehabilitation?

Now what can we learn from this as it relates to the Dick Cheney and Mark Sanford rehabilitation? One of the ways that the PR firm will want to control the story is to count on the speed of the media and the reluctance of old enemies to just get tired of fighting . They also know about the inability of the press to trust their own memories and truth.  That means that in the ABC Bistro press conference  there will be no new negative Gordon Ramsey comments. Ramsey might decide that he is better served by just staying out of the whole kerfuffle and saying, “They didn’t listen to me so I couldn’t help them, I stand by what I said and I wish them well. “   If he decides to keep harping on them it will play into the narrative, “See, Ramsey is a Bully!”

Also, you will not see the 100 employees dismissed during the last year of working at ABC Baking Boutique, Bistro and Brasserie. They is not an organizer getting all these people together to reinforce their experience that Samy and Amy are difficult to work with or that they often got complaints about the food.  The absence of victims is a critical part of the success of the rehabilitation. The press can’t report on what they didn’t experience and if the people who experienced it don’t make it super easy to be found and are articulate, well too bad for them.

Imagine if we could have gotten Mark Sandford’s wife to come forward during his press conference and say, “This jerk cheated on me and he will cheat on the public too. He had the gall to break our marriage vows, lie about what he was doing and where he was spending time “hiking.” Do you think he won’t break his promises to the voters? Oh and he trespassed on our yard violating the restraining order, which I still have in force to this day. I don’t trust him in my house, you shouldn’t trust him in yours.”  This didn’t happen because she might be hoping the father of her children  could get another paying job.  Maybe she had a divorce settlement that said she couldn’t talk about anything. I don’t know her reasons and I’m not the injured party, what I do know is that if there are not protestations from the victims to the press during the rehabilitation process, the media often want to give the person a shot at a ‘second act in American life”

Dick Cheney is Creating His own Reality TV show: The Shining Black Heart of Freedom – (coming this fall on Fox!)

Dick Cheney will go to Fox and his own media channels and the co-opted MSM.  I wonder if anyone is tailing him during his rehabilitation press tour? They could demand that they get equal time to refute him. Maybe someone who wrote a book about Dick? Come on PR people at publishers! This is your shot to promote your book author! Sadly, not only won’t the MSM listen, they actively thwart people who might offer expert questions, saying, ” Trust me. I will ask tough questions!”  People who think they could ask Dick Cheney tough questions don’t usually realize just how skilled Cheney is with his answers. He is also skilled in avoiding non-deferring media. Dick is creating his own “reality” for the country. One in which he is the hero and that what he did what was right, and that people who disagree with him are just wrong.

The impact to the nation of Amy and Samy’s rehabilitation is much lower than that of Cheney and Stanford, but if you watch you can learn how it is done. If I was personally injured by Amy or Samy I might act to thwart their rehabilitation, but I’m not. However I was, and am, injured by Dick Cheney’s actions.   If you want to help the MSM and thwart his legacy, now is the time to actively bug the MSM covering him and his new documentary. Get some experts in the mix to educate the media about his outright lies and faulty assumptions he used to lead us to war.

Now I’m off to make some home made pizza!

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 

I’ve been listening to the fringes of talk radio for years. The people running the media companies that distribute these shows usually don’t listen. If they did they would be appalled. The hosts often say things that would never be allowed if that host worked in that company’s office.

What would get someone fired for sexual harassment or bigotry is classified, “entertainment” since supposedly off the air the hosts follow the corporate HR guidelines and their words or actions are different.

While listening to Armed American Radio, carried nationwide by Salem Communications Corporation, (NASDAQ: SALM) I heard the two hosts talk about ignoring signs about no guns in the studio. I got confirmation they did bring their guns into the studio and it sounded like they violated the corporation policy when doing so.  Salem is the top Christian broadcast radio company in the nation and the third ranked radio company overall, but no one from headquarters wanted to talk to me about the policies or consequences for violation so I wrote them one of my patented Spocko letters to ask about the apparent disconnect between their corporate stance on firearms and what their hosts are saying and doing on air.  Some of my questions were:

• How should a corporation act when the hosts both violate and mock a company’s policies about bringing firearms into the company’s office?
• Did your HR people give them permission to violate your policies?
• Have other employees been advised of guns in the office? Do other employees have any rights to safe working conditions?
• Have people who work in the same building as the radio studio been advised of firearms in the building?
• Do workers in surrounding offices have a right to know that some people either got a waiver to bring firearms into the building, or that there were/are no consequences for firearm violations?
• Does the building management have a no firearms clause in their lease? Have they been alerted that it is being violated? Are there any consequences for violation of the lease?
• Have the insurance companies who cover the liability of the corporation been alerted? Do they want to re-evaluate the premiums that the corporation is paying?

It’s been a week and HQ has not responded to my calls and letter, so I’m posting it here publicly. I’ll let you know if they respond.

 

Edward Astinger III, CEO
Salem Communications Corp

Dear Edward:

Do you know that two of your radio hosts bring loaded firearms into your studios? Please listen to the following clip of hosts Mark Walters and his producer/sidekick Sean Young aka “Seanto”  LINK.

They talk about ignoring signs saying “no food and drink in the studio” and ignoring signs that say “no guns.” To determine if they actually had guns in the studio, I contacted Mike Moran, the general manager at your Atlanta studio from which Walters was broadcasting on Sunday, January 25.

Moran spoke to Walters who confirmed that he had in fact brought firearms into the studio that day. Additionally, Walters admitted to the GM he had brought firearms into the studio(s) in the past. I haven’t yet confirmed if Young was also carrying that day, however I am copying John Peroyea, VP of Operations & GM for your Dallas/Ft. Worth station on this letter. He may be able to determine when and how often Young carried while in your Dallas studios.

Moran believes Salem has a strict policy that does not permit employees, independent contractors, customers and/or their guests to bring weapons onto your premises. Can you confirm this, and does the policy apply to your properties and leased studios nationwide? I attempted to get a copy of your firearms policies but neither Christopher Henderson, your VP of Legal and HR, General Counsel and Corporate Secretary nor Russel Shubin, Director of your National News and Public Affairs responded.

The reason I want to know your policies on firearms is because many of your company’s hosts and our nation are engaging in a national discussion on public safety. Specifically we are looking at the causes of, and solutions for, violent gun deaths. As a leader in the Christian and conservative communities, your corporate policies on this issue and how you respond to people violating your own policies regarding firearms is important.

Moran told me that Walters assured him that he won’t bring his firearms to the studio again, however, I wonder about the reliability of someone who has flagrantly disregarded your rules in the past and who ends every show with, “Carry on, carry off, carry everywhere. NEVER leave your cave without your club.”  Can Walters be trusted to put the safety of others and compliance with your policies ahead of his own “carry everywhere” brand?

I’m not sure why your staff didn’t respond to my questions or why your policies aren’t published on your website. Perhaps you consider it a private internal matter, however, considering you are the co-creator of the petition site Support Second Amendment  which you and your SRN hosts plan to present to congress, I think the public has a right to know your views on firearms in your own offices and studios.

I know you can’t oversee all your employees or contractors who rent out your studios, that’s why you set up policies. I look forward to hearing back from you or your staff.

Sincerely,
Spocko

Cross posted at Spocko’s Brain

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.

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 →

Last Saturday, Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre of the National Rifle Association finally addressed the Trayvon Martin shooting— by attacking the media for covering the case, claiming they are “manufactur[ing] controversy for ratings.” Link to story with audio of speech

LAPIERRE: But the media, they don’t care. Everyday victims aren’t celebrities. They don’t draw ratings, don’t draw sponsors. But sensational reporting from Florida does. In the aftermath of one of Florida’s many daily tragedies, my phone has been ringing off the hook. Now, the National Rifle Association will not comment on any story without a full understanding and a thorough understanding of all the facts. But if I were to answer a call from Diane Sawyer or Chris Matthews or Brian Williams or Rachel Maddow, let me tell you right now what I’d ask them.

Where’s your outrage? Where’s your outrage about Willie Brewer III from Akron, Ohio? Or Derrick Linkhorn from Decatur, Georgia? Or Daryl Adams from New York City? Or what about Antonio Duff? Just this past Monday afternoon, about the same time I got here into town, he was killed and murdered. And he’s not the only young man murdered in this city this past week. You reporters, you don’t know their names. You don’t care about those people. You manufacture controversy for ratings. You don’t care about the truth, and the truth is the national news media in this country is a national disgrace, and you all know it. And so do Americans throughout the country, and it’s getting worse every single day, and your dishonesty, duplicity, and moral irresponsibility is directly contributing to the collapse of American freedom in our country.

Here is my response from my human half, because as coolly analytical as I normally am, his inane remarks need something extra.

Yes, LaPierre, it’s all the media’s fault. You had NOTHING to do with those four dead black teens. Were they killed in car crashes? Because cars are a tool just like guns! Isn’t that what you always say? Maybe you are going to suggest we will want to ban cars because they kill people too, right? You know, the usual strawman crap your groupies try to put into our mouths every single time we suggest some reasonable, non-insane regulation. You know, like not legally selling guns to terrorists on the no-fly list.

And those dead black teens you suddenly care about, how did the killers get their guns? What policies did you push, or regulations did you block that gave them easy access? Will we see an, “I’m Outraged by Black Gun Deaths” twitter feed from the NRA? (@NRAHoodieDeathNews?). Do you really care about those teens? Or do you push the fear of shooting deaths because it sells more guns? My money’s on selling guns, and speaking of making money from guns…

Year after year you make up some imaginary crap about Barak Obama taking your guns so you can raise money to give your racist members an excuse to spend another $320 on yet another small penis compensator. You WISH Obama said a word about taking your guns. Amno-net already calls him “The greatest gun salesman ever“. The guns and ammo manufacturers would happily pay him millions for the billions in revenue a single “gun grabbing” comment from him would generate, but that would cut you out as the middleman. Read the rest of this entry →

When Kansas State’s point guard Angel Rodriguez (who’s Puerto Rican) went to take foul shots some in the crowd started chanting “Where’s your green card?” – Color Lines Jorge Rivas
Think Progress with more details:

Now it looks like the chants were coming from the Southern Mississippi band. The President of Southern Mississippi, Dr. Martha Saunders, has issued a statement about student behavior already, regretting the remarks and promising disciplinary action.

Before I read her remarks I wondered what the response that might have been if the band and fans were Rush Limbaugh or the audience in a GOP debate. Here is what I dreamed up based on previous “apologies,” lame excuses and BS.
— let the spin begin:

I’m sure it was an isolated incident.

They apologized for the words they used, twice.

This is really about statehood issues for people from Puerto Rico! Don’t you believe in state’s rights? Or do you want the Federal Government to exploit the people of Puerto Rico?

This was just a helpful tip to non-US citizens who are attending Southern Miss that they can get their help for renewal of their form I-551,(commonly called the “Green Card” )

Of course this is just a handful of peoples comments, why don’t you notice all the fans who DIDN’T say anything? This minority doesn’t represent the overall values of the Southern Mississippi community, the silent majority do!

Their two words “green card” were already condemned by Presidential candidate Mitt Romney. “I wouldn’t have used those words.”

Southern Miss hired an independent expert to do an audio analysis of the video and it turns out that what the students were really saying was:

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 →

Now some of you might laugh and consider this a silly reason for Mitt’s loss.  I disagree. This is a very important thing to note. It is so important that it was the subject of the mainstream political press just five short years ago during the last Presidential campaign. Only that time the person not wearing a flag pin was Sen. Barack Obama. On Oct 4th, 2007 the Drudge report ran the story, “Obama Drops American Flag Pin.” It was then picked up by the national main stream media.

The exact same thing should happen here with Romney and Paul not wearing flag pins.

Matt Drudge, ABC’s Good Morning America and ABC’s World News, host Charles Gibson should all cover it (BTW, must credit Spocko of Spocko’s Brain) at the same level as the coverage of Obama’s flag pin story.  This time it is not a Democrat but a Republican skipping the flag pin, shouldn’t they know better?

I look forward to Sean Hannity saying the same things about Mitt Romney and Ron Paul for not wearing a flag pin as he  said about Obama. It shouldn’t make a difference if the person is a Democrat or a Republican or if he is a black man or white man.  Hannity himself gave the reason why all Presidential candidates should wear flag pins:

HANNITY: Why do we wear pins? Because our country was under attack.

Hannity attacked Obama during the October 4 edition of Fox News’ Hannity & Colmes, with Kate Obenshain, the former head of Virginia’s Republican Party,  identified on the show as being affiliated with the conservative Clare Boothe Luce Policy Institute:

HANNITY: Let me ask Kate. Kate, this is the point: Barack Obama accused our troops of killing civilians, air-raiding villages, when there’s no evidence. We’ve had a series of incidents: They’ve been compared to Nazis by leaders of the Democrats. [Senate Majority Leader] Harry Reid [D-NV] said the troops have lost the war and the surge has failed. And what’s bothersome to me here is the American flag on your lapel ought not be politicized.

OBENSHAIN: It ought not to be. And regardless of how you feel politically about the war, we are at war. Our men and women are in harm’s way. Somebody wants to be commander-in-chief should have pride in our country enough to wear the lapel, continue to wear the lapel pin on their jacket during this campaign.

If conservatives really care about this issue, and they certainly sounded like they do, they should care just as much about it when it comes to Romney and Paul.  The media who reported on this controversy can cover it exactly the same as they did with Obama. Eventually someone from a local media outlet will ask Romney and Paul why no flag pin and they will have to provide an answer. Then all the mainstream media will report on the controversy. That is how this works. And the reason that it works this way is because answering the really hard questions is difficult and often complex.

You want a short cut to not like Mitt? Blame it on his lack of a flag pin and not his job destroying views of the economy.

These kind of political stories are designed to entertain. It is fake outrage for many, real outrage for a few. The smart people behind the development of these stories know that their first job is to entertain and their second is to destroy. I wish that the smart people on the left understood this and knew how to play this game. I’ve been trying to help them understand it for years, but they don’t get it.  Maybe its time for me to go back to helping the private sector and help them.  In the mean time you will see me with my blah, blah, blah pin from the Di Rosa collection.

Cross posted to Spocko’s Brain, Why Did Mitt Lose to Newt? No Flag Pin!