- Top Features:
- War Room
- Glenn Greenwald
- Broadsheet
- Joan Walsh
- Camille Paglia
- Since You Asked
- Follow Salon:
Read other letters about this article
This process of declaring incoming Cabinets to be composed of adults reminds me of the way drug companies market new drugs by manipulating FDA labeling requirements. Prozac is a famous case.
Step 1: Develop a new drug
Step 2: Market it with the claim that it has no side effects
Step 3: Deny all rumors of side effects as long as you hold the patent (which expires after a fixed period)
Step 4: Develop a new drug identical to the old one except for a few meaningless molecular differences
Step 5: Claim that, unlike the old drug, the new drug has no side effects; label the old drug with dozens of scary side effects and dump it in Africa and Asia
This is how the media markets each president's Cabinet. Substitute "Cabinet" for "drug" and "the private sector" for "Africa and Asia," and allow discredited "adults" to return once they have spent a cycle making a killing (or destroying businesses) in the private sector, and the resemblance is remarkable.
