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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
We were out at Camp David the other day, you maybe saw the video of when he picked up Prime Minister Gordon Brown in his golf cart, which had a Golf Cart One and presidential seal on the front. He drove by the press, waived, sped up a little bit, and then did a 360. It wasn't quite a donut, because he didn't spin out, but he did a little circle right in front of us, just because he could, gave us a little mischievous smile, and a waive, just to remind us that he's there. So that's his mood, and I think Tony Snow reflects that. He is a happy warrior.
A little boy playing Hot Wheels(TM), toy soldiers, and cowboy. These idiots eat it up.
Is this a condition during the fight or in the afterglow of the killings?
Here's quick way to separate actual reporting from ass-kissing shilling:
Use of the word "awesome" constitutes prima facie proof the speaker/writer is either a teenager or a moron, not a reporter.
Steve IS an awesome, intense bulldog.
Mr. Allen, why are you so interested and enthusiastic about the communications strategy of the administration? How does this affect your work in informing your readers/viewers?
And as always - you raise some interesting points, Mr. Greenwald, but really I don't think we should judge these things until Gen. Petraeus delivers his report in September.
It is nice of "those who control our discourse" admit it, but a lot of people knew it from the start.
The USSR was pretty good at propaganda. I bet there are a lot of "media consultants" out of work there who might be cheaper than this Schmidt guy. Is off-shoring still all the rage?
Oh, and with a hat-tip to Dave Berry, I think "Blatant Propaganda" would be a good name for a band.
the U.S. military in Iraq has been devoting far more efforts to all sorts of propaganda campaigns designed to shape American public opinion about the war.
There is another side to the military “controlling the message” that gets out – they need to shut down those in the military who go “off message” and say anything (although it might be perfectly true) that doesn’t go along with the theme of a “glorious victory” unfolding in Iraq. Take what happened to Scott Thomas Beauchamp.
Although anonymous sources are perfectly acceptable for O'Hanlon and Pollack to quote, any anonymous source that is “off-script” needs to be attacked and silenced if possible. That’s why the right achieved “victory” (at least short term) in the Beauchamp brouhaha even though everything every thing they claimed turned out to be false.
As TNR reports:
But, late last week, the Army began its own investigation, short-circuiting our efforts. Beauchamp had his cell-phone and computer taken away and is currently unable to speak to even his family. His fellow soldiers no longer feel comfortable communicating with reporters.
The message to our soldiers is clear: tell reporters what the administration wants the media to hear or suffer the consequences.
In this way, the administration feels it can “control the message” just like Cheney said he could do on “Meet the Press.”
... and it is: Operation Enduring Propaganda ( http://pov-mentarch1.blogspot.com/2007/07/operation-enduring-propaganda.html ).
Are we having fun, yet? ;-)
MA has a well documented history of sucking up to power. He is openly enthusiastic; he is filled with gratitude for the insider's dope. He fawns and he flatters. It is sad when you watch and listen to him. The Politico assidously cultivates the right and makes sure their rep is on a talk show on Sundays (one favorite venue being Face the Nation). Pitiful, really.
The manipulation of public opinion about war is nothing new. During WWII, the War Department (as DoD was then known) and OSS hired some of the most prominent psychologists, sociologists, and political scientists for this purpose. People such asRobert K Merton (probablty the leading 20th centure sociologist), Kurt Lewin (a polymath psychologist with strong progressive political leanings) and Paul Lazarsfeld (a giant in survey work) were part of this effort. The focus group (Merton and to a lesser degree Lazarsfeld were its inventors) actually owes much of its origins to this effort and there were great refinements in survey research.
OTOH, Allen has been trading as "journalist" for years and his yipping and yapping for joy need the kind of attention that Kos, AmericaBlog & others have been lavishing on the hapless Bill O'Reilly. BTW, when I pick up Politico at the Metro, it takes me about 2 minutes to read it. It seems mostly useful as something to ball up as fill when packing valuables.
Glenn Greenwald shows us almost everyday why he is such a terrific reporter. Here he tells us that Mike Allen with Politico in an interview with Hugh Hewitt that O'Hanlon and Pollack of(the surge is working and things are going swimmingly, that the military organized the pairs tour and they even got a chance to interview General Patraeus to boot. Wow, thats independence for you. It's almost as special as Senators McCain and Graham's Iraq tour a couple of months ago. We all know how well that went for Presidential candidate McCain.
Criminy. Not him again. Well. There are lots of layers to what you are reporting, Glenn. That Hewitt apparently doesn't know what's become of Steve Schmidt, Bushevik Hero Extraordinaire, is interesting. That Allen purports to know is fascinating. That neither of them tell what they most assuredly do know is propaganda of the purest Pravda form.
Matt Dowd and Steve Schmidt were sent from the Vice President's Office to California in 2006 to "rescue" the flailing, faltering, and failing gubernatorial regime of one Orange Waxy Austrian and former steroid abuser, Arnold Schwarzenegger. Schwartzenegger had gone totally right wing authoritarian crazy after decisively trouncing the hapless Democrat Gray Davis in the Republican engineered recall election of 2003, alienating nearly everyone (with a brain and a pulse) in the State in the process, especially during his revolting anti-everyone ballot initiative campaign of 2005 that failed completely. Phil Angelides -- a true progressive -- was on track to win the next election for governor, polling double digits ahead of the Orange Waxy Man.
Understand this: Dowd and Schmidt were sent from the White House to prevent that from happening. Within days of their arrival, seemingly within hours, the fortunes of Arnold Schwartzenegger began to turn around. While people still despised him, and despised his contempt for California and its people and especially his contempt for its nurses, teachers, police and firefighters, every single newspaper in California commenced to laud and salute Schwartzenegger and denounce Angelides, and slowly but surely the poll numbers reversed.
And Schwartzenegger was remade for public consumption. Why, he was turned into a clear-headed, forward looking, cooperative, sane, and eager liberal by the ministrations of Dowd and Schmidt. All of his right wing authoritarian schtick -- that had been so carefully curried after he kicked Davis/Democrat butt -- was jettisoned. Now he was soft, warm, cuddly, open, honest, willing to bend over backwards and turn cartwheels to please the masses, and always, always open to cooperation and collaboration with the Democratic Majority in the State Legislature.
So much so, the Democratic Leaders of the Assebly and the Senate, and many of the Democratic Mayors of California cities became Arnold campaign cheeleaders. One of the most astonishing things I witnessed in California politics was the sight of California's Democratic political leaders turning their backs on Gray Davis during the recall. A more astonishing sight was that of California Democratic political leaders openly supporting Arnold's re-election, and turning their backs on Phil Angelides.
It would not have happened, though, had Matt Dowd and Steve Schmidt not come to California from DeeCee to remake Arnold into the kind of character that fits California expectations of gubernatorial leadership. They did it spectacularly. So well, I doubt that more than a handful of Californians even remember Angelides' name any more.
They did it so well that Markos Moulitsas himself declared Arnold a Democrat in all but name.
Of course Arnold is not a Democrat, he is an authoritarian Republican with a strong streak of post-Nazism. But he's an actor, isn't he? Never forget.
And Dowd and Schmidt? They are still masters of the public perceptions game, make no mistake. But what's become of them since their spectacular turn around triumph with Arnold Schwartzenegger? Did they go back to the Vice Presidential bunkers? Why no. No they did not.
We'll save their tale for another post...
(To be continued)
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability
Salon headlines in your mailbox
