Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog

Aaron Rodgers, Most Valuable Comedian

January 8, 2015

Packers
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel did a valuable service for younger readers by reminding them that Packers football wasn’t always as good as it is now:

In fact, fans younger than 30 pretty much know only winning. Seventeen post-season appearances in the last 22 years (including an NFC Divisional Round game next Sunday at Lambeau Field). Eleven division titles since 1995. Three trips to the Super Bowl. Two quarterbacks, both headed to the Hall of Fame.

Yes, Packers fans have it pretty good. After all, they could have been born in Oakland or Cleveland. Worse yet, they could be stuck with Jay Cutler.

“I think us as Packer fans are spoiled rotten,” said Michael Hunt, who played linebacker for Green Bay from 1978 to ’80 and lives in Merrill.

“I don’t think fans understand how hard it is to (win) year after year, and have a chance to go to the Super Bowl every year,” said Gary Ellerson, a Packers running back for two years in the mid-’80s.

They have a point. Perhaps many Packers fans take success for granted. Maybe there’s a growing sense of Titletown entitlement, a smidgen of smugness, an undercurrent of complacency that has ever so slightly dulled passions.

If so, a reminder of the past is in order.

A friend of mine calls the interminable interregnum between Vince Lombardi and Ron Wolf as the “Gory Years.” The Journal Sentinel refers to it as the Sorry Years:

From 1968 through 1991, the Packers had four winning seasons. They qualified for the post-season twice and won exactly one playoff game. They went through more than 30 quarterbacks, some of whom seemingly had no idea how to throw a forward pass.

There were terrible trades and forgettable draft picks. The franchise lacked direction at the top, leadership in the locker room, talent on the field.

“There was chaos in the organization,” Dave Begel said of the three years (1978-’80) he covered the team for The Milwaukee Journal. “It was a time of chaos. They were a lousy team. They were a terrible football team.”

The Packers sank so low that Bob Harlan, who spent 37 years with the organization and now is chairman emeritus, wondered if they ever would find a way out of the abyss.

“I used to go to Super Bowls in the ’70s and ’80s and I’d see those big (inflatable) helmets on the field and I would think, ‘I’m not sure we’re ever going to have this again,’” Harlan said. “It seemed we just could not find a way to be successful.”

From Hall of Fame quarterback Bart Starr to future Hall of Famer Brett Favre, the list of Packer Quarterbacks In Name Only included:
- Jim Del Gaizo, 8 games
- Blair Kiel, 8
- Rich Campbell, 7
- Chuck Fusina, 7
- Don Milan, 7
- Dennis Sproul, 6
- Frank Patrick, 4
- Alan Risher, 3
- Randy Johnson, 3
- Vince Ferragamo, 3
- Bill Stevens, 3
- Bill Troup, 2
- Brian Dowling, 2
- Rick Norton, 1
- Steve Pisarkiewicz, 1
- Willie Gillus, 1
Some of that list have stories attached. Risher and Gillus played on the 1987 lockout team. Campbell was a number-one draft pick despite a throwing motion described by the Journal Sentinel as “unorthodox.” Patrick, who was 6–7 and weighed 225 pounds, was moved by Nebraska from quarterback to wide receiver, then the Packers moved him back to quarterback, only to find out why Nebraska moved him from behind center. Del Gaizo, a left-hander, was traded from Miami for two second-round draft picks, basically because he was the third-string quarterback on the then-NFL champions. Ferragamo got the Los Angeles Rams to Super Bowl XIV, and Pisarkiewicz was a number-one pick of the St. Louis Cardinals (because he apparently was a star at the University of Missouri). Dowling, the quarterback for Yale in the famous 31–31 tie with Harvard in 1968, became the “B.D.” from the Doonesbury cartoon. No, Randy Johnson didn’t later become one of the most intimidating pitchers in baseball.

The Packers also had Scott Hunter, Green Bay West graduate Jerry Tagge, Jack Concannon, John Hadl (of the infamous Lawrence Welk trade fame — he was acquired for five draft picks, and then was traded away with another player and two more draft picks), Lynn Dickey (before and after his broken leg), David Whitehurst, former UW quarterback Randy Wright, Don Majkowski and, when Majkowski held out, Anthony Dilweg.

Happily, now that people who know what they’re doing run the Packers, fans have enjoyed the work of one near-future Hall of Fame quarterback, Brett Favre, and one farther-future Hall of Fame quarterback, Aaron Rodgers. Notice as well they both have personalities. Rodgers’ is more subtle than Favre’s, but, the Wall Street Journal reports:

The only time Rodgers isn’t on the same page with his teammates is when he is telling jokes. Rodgers’s attempts at humor are so layered and dry, those who know him say, that the only thing more common than a playbook in the Packers’ locker room is the clueless comment, Is he joking?

“His jokes are what we call ‘Algebra 2,’ ” said Daryn Colledge, a Miami Dolphins offensive lineman and former Packers teammate. “I think a lot of people don’t get it.”

Rodgers’s sense of humor, though inscrutable, serves as a calming influence in Green Bay. After a 1-2 start this season, Rodgers famously told fans to “R-E-L-A-X”—a statement later backed up by the Packers’ 12-4 final record. In the locker room, Rodgers uses quips and stunts to tell his teammates the same. The comedic results are mixed.

Scenes like the following are common in Green Bay. Last week in a team meeting, Rodgers displayed a photo, randomly, of a figure in American history and asked rookie center Corey Linsley to identify him. There was no apparent purpose to this, but Linsley correctly identified John F. Kennedy.

“What’s his middle name?” Rodgers asked.

“I don’t know,” Linsley said. “Frederick?”

Half the room giggled. Half was confused. It was, teammates agree, kind of weird. (Linsley clarified that he is now aware of Kennedy’s middle name, Fitzgerald.

Then there is Rodgers’s habit of quoting “The Princess Bride.” While the 1987 romantic comedy is widely considered a classic, the allusions are lost on Rodgers’s 20-something teammates. (At 31, Rodgers is older than all but three guys on the team.) His favorite line to blurt out, he said, is from the character Vizzini: “Let me put it this way. Have you ever heard of Plato, Aristotle, Socrates? Morons.”

“They probably don’t get the reference, no,” Rodgers said.

“He does make jokes that fall on deaf ears,” said fullback John Kuhn. “But that’s what happens when you make a lot of jokes.”

Teammates say that Rodgers, during pregame walk-throughs, will stare at players with an angry look until the player expresses concern. Then Rodgers will laugh.

“It takes a really long time to figure it out,” Linsley said of Rodgers’s humor.

Rodgers’s jokes, teammates say, are almost entirely for his own entertainment. To them, that suggests a confidence that puts them at ease. “He’s about as relaxed and calm in this locker room as you can get,” said Packers offensive tackle Bryan Bulaga. “His demeanor has an effect on us. There’s never any panic in this locker room. Everything about him says, ‘Take a breather; we are going to be all right.’ ”

There is anxiety in the Green Bay locker room, but it is from players dreading falling victim to one of Rodgers’s quips.

During midweek meetings, in between breakdowns of offensive plays, Rodgers will award a “Man of the Week” award, in which he scours Google Images for less-than-flattering photos of teammates. He found one of tight end Andrew Quarless while he played at Penn State and blasted it on the video board in the meeting room. “He spends a lot of time on the Internet, trying to find anything,” Quarless said.

Rodgers spent plenty of time this season making fun of video that emerged of backup quarterback Matt Flynn, who danced on teammates’ shoulders at a Pearl Jam concert in October. “I’m out where people can see me, seeing my favorite band, trying to get the crowd pumped up. Why am I supposed to be embarrassed?” Flynn said. “He’s trying to roast everyone and it doesn’t work on me. Anything people think I’m embarrassed by I am actually proud of.”

Nothing, Bulaga said, compares with the oddness of the Saturday meetings that Rodgers runs with the offense.

“He has these little gigs every Saturday, he has 10 to 15 minutes to do whatever he wants,” Bulaga said. That means Rodgers focuses on football and addressing the entire offense on what needs to be done—until he starts getting weird. In one meeting this season, Rodgers randomly began to show what he called great commercials of the year. Bulaga knew what was coming, even if no one else did. It was all a setup to eventually show Bulaga’s commercial for cellphones featuring coach Mike McCarthy.

“There is no self-doubt in [Rodgers],” Bulaga said.

Rodgers’s eccentric sense of humor can be effective on opponents, too. Tampa Bay Buccaneers defensive lineman Michael Johnson said that Rodgers’s on-field demeanor is so biting and confusing that he compared him with Clive Owen’s mysterious character in the caper movie “Inside Man.” Buccaneers linebacker Mason Foster said that Rodgers is likely to throw for a big play, then calmly walk by you and ask how your alma mater is doing.

“He went to Cal, so he just walks up and asks me how Washington is doing,” Foster said. “In between plays.”

The major flaw in this story is that it includes no mention of Rodgers’ famous photobombs of each week’s team captain photo, which can be found on, of course, its own website:
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A Democrat you could vote for?!

January 8, 2015

US politics
Yahoo! News! has a story! about Democrat! Jim Webb!

“I’m not running against Hillary Clinton,” Jim Webb told me this week, when I tried to draw him out on the presumed Democratic front-runner. “I’m not even running at the moment, and she isn’t, either.”

That’s all technically true, but Webb’s recent announcement that he was taking the first official step toward a 2016 presidential bid nonetheless set off a round of commentary about the contrast between him and his former Senate colleague. On the FiveThirtyEight blog, Harry Enten concluded that Webb could be “the ideal Clinton challenger.” Al Hunt of Bloomberg News said Webb could be Clinton’s “worst nightmare,” while William Greider wrote in The Nation that Webb might become “a pivotal messenger” for the left.

Such predictions are easily made and seldom remembered. They don’t tell you much about whether Webb, who has as varied an experience in public service and foreign policy as anybody else out there, can really mount the kind of semi-serious challenge to Clinton that Bill Bradley did to Al Gore in 2000, or whether he’ll end up being something more like this year’s Wesley Clark.

Webb has some things going for him, starting with unusual courage for a politician. He went through Vietnam, and he loves his second career as a writer of books and screenplays, and those two things have always seemed to make him more impervious to the consequences of conviction than most other politicians, who cling to their seats with a kind of irrational tenacity.

To Webb, there are worse things in life than losing an election or even being drummed out of your party, and that counts for a lot when you have a looming presence like Clinton who’s going to scare away most of her more obvious challengers.

And despite what he may say about not comparing himself to Clinton, Webb has the beginnings of a two-pronged progressive critique. On economic policy, Webb will say the party — personified by the Clintons — has been too much in the grasp of big financial institutions and too little beholden to wage earners. He’s a little like Elizabeth Warren this way, only with more backwoods steel than Cambridge preachiness.

He’s also a sharp critic of the foreign policies pursued by both George W. Bush and Barack Obama, which he says have led us into wars — and kept us in them — without clear objectives or strategies. This puts him squarely at odds with Clinton, the former secretary of state, who was known to be one of the administration’s more ardent interventionists.

All that will sound pretty enticing to liberals looking for some viable alternative, and it should. But then you come around to Webb’s long-held and thoughtful views on the party’s core theme of social justice. And here’s where that whole savior-of-the-left thing gets a little complicated.

Democrats, as you probably know, have been losing white voters, and especially white male voters, by pretty staggering margins in recent elections, particularly in rural parts of the country. According to exit polling, the party’s candidates won only 34 percent of white men last November; the 30-point spread between the two parties was the largest in 20 years.

Go to any activist meeting or liberal dinner party, and chances are you will hear a pretty consistent narrative to explain this trend. Basically, it goes like this: White men, and especially Southern white men, are just inherently racist and afraid of social change, and so they’re easily manipulated by Republicans and have turned their backs on Obama. But that’s really OK, because the demographics of the country are rapidly shifting, and very soon there will be enough black and Latino voters — not to mention women of all races — to tip the balance of any national election into the Democratic column.

Webb finds this theory downright offensive. In his view, Democrats have focused so much of their rhetoric and their programs on racial minorities that they’ve basically forgotten about all those white, working-class voters who face some of the same economic hardships but feel like all the focus is on the poor.

“I think this is where Democrats screw up, you know?” Webb told me. “I think that they have kind of unwittingly used this group, white working males, as a whipping post for a lot of their policies. And then when they react, they say they’re being racist.”

Back in 2010, under a Wall Street Journal headline that referred to the “myth of white privilege,” Webb called for an end to federal affirmative action programs that aren’t need-based, saying they no longer helped African-Americans and only served to embitter white voters. More recently, including in our conversation, he has obliquely assailed “interest groups” that divide the parties by race.

Twice I asked Webb which interest groups he had in mind, but he demurred. “I think it’s pretty clear, if you look at the policies of the Democratic Party, how they shape their strategic agenda,” Webb said. I was left to conclude that he was talking about the influence of civil rights or pro-immigration groups (which seemed odd, really, since in reality those groups have about a tenth of the power that teachers, trial lawyers and organized seniors exercise over Democratic politics).

Before anyone on the left attacks Webb as a former Reaganite and closet conservative, it’s worth remembering that he isn’t saying anything all that different from what Bill Clinton told the liberal base on cultural issues in 1992. In fact, as a candidate, Barack Obama made a similar case for winning back white voters.

The thing is, both of those men had the luxury of running after their party had lost consecutive presidential elections, and when activists were willing to hear some hard truths if they added up to a winning strategy. This primary season will be a lot more like 2000, when the party’s liberal base was nearly erupting with pent-up fury from having to endure eight years of governing and all the ideological compromise that comes with it.

The last thing liberals want to hear right now (and especially after the recent uproar over police brutality) is that they’re too focused on racial equality and aren’t being solicitous enough to rural white men.

Breitbart adds:

In a 2010 Wall Street Journal column, Webb noted that affirmative action programs have “expanded so far beyond their original purpose that they now favor anyone who does not happen to be white.”

“These programs have damaged racial harmony. And the more they have grown, the less they have actually helped African-Americans, the intended beneficiaries of affirmative action as it was originally conceived,” he wrote. “Affirmative action was designed to recognize the uniquely difficult journey of African-Americans. This policy was justifiable and understandable, even to those who came from white cultural groups that had also suffered in socio-economic terms from the Civil War and its aftermath.”

When the mainstream press and Democrats were rushing to judgments about Michael Brown’s death and politicizing it before all the facts were out, Webb was one of the few Democrats who said liberals should be very careful about rushing to judgments. Webb also said that Obama’s executive amnesty, another issue Democrats have used to try to gin up the Hispanic vote while dividing the country, would be an unprecedented overreach of presidential authority.

Because salad-bowl ethnic interest groups dominate politics on the left, Webb has no shot at winning the nomination should he enter the contest. But because he was against the Iraq War before Howard Dean and spoke about income inequality long before anyone knew that Elizabeth Warren had claimed to be “Native American” throughout her career, Webb, I argued, would be the candidate Hillary Clinton should fear the most.

Robert W. Patterson adds:

Ten years ago in his only nonfiction book, Born Fighting, James Webb came to the defense of red-state America, standing unapologetically for the marginalized Scots-Irish stock that heavily populates the South and Midwest. On the wrong side of the cultural divide since his Naval Academy days in the 1960s, the decorated Marine of the Vietnam War identified blue-collar workers, the military services, the Bible Belt, and country music as the heart and soul of America.

Two years later, Webb upset Republican Senator George Allen of Virginia. But the moment Webb took his seat in the U.S. Senate, the quintessential Southern partisan lost his William Wallace-like fighting spirit and became a reliable cog in the Democratic machine, pleasing his tony Arlington cosmopolitan neighbors, not his embattled Appalachian country kin. As the Daily Caller’s W. James Antle noted, Webb may have talked like Pat Buchanan but voted like Harry Reid on racial preferences, immigration policy, Wall Street bailouts, and ObamaCare. Perhaps sensing the disconnect, he chose not to run for re-election in 2012.

Now, in the wake of the midterms, Webb seems to be reverting to his better Scots-Irish side, blasting the Democrats last week for turning “into a party of interest groups.” Having just thrown his hat into the 2016 presidential contest, he charged: “The Democratic Party has lost the message that made it such a great party for so many years, and that message was: Take care of working people… who have no voice in the corridors or power, no matter their race, ethnicity or any other reason.”

Webb, of course, is lifting up the Democrats of long ago, particularly FDR, whose New Deal brought the South into the 20th century. As Born Fighting recounts, nation-building initiatives from the Civilian Conservation Corps to the Tennessee Valley Authority delivered good jobs to the region, ending the meager existence that Southern families like his own — his mother was born in “utter poverty” in Arkansas — had struggled with for generations. Especially resonating with Webb: Roosevelt’s transformation of American industry into the Arsenal of Democracy, laying the foundation of victories not only in World War II but also the Cold War, conflicts that needed Webb’s rebel-yelling folk to win.

The consummate patriot surely knows that his economic and cultural populism will send the adversarial feminists, multiculturalists, and environmentalists who hijacked the Democratic Party a generation ago into a collective mass seizure.

Which means that although Webb has little chance of capturing the 2016 Democratic nomination, the winner of the Navy Cross and Silver Star in Vietnam could generate a lot of trouble for Hillary Clinton. As Tony Lee of Breitbart News observes, the former boxer — who battled with Oliver North in the finals of their Naval Academy tournament — could tie up Hillary better than any other Democrat, jabbing her to the right on cultural issues, and to her left on economic ones.

While that would help Republicans, the GOP would be shortsighted to limit the value of Ronald Reagan’s secretary of the navy to sabotaging Hillary. Webb’s voice and message offer so much more to a party seeking to build upon its midterm gains and reverse its muted performance in recent presidential elections. His advocacy for the American heartland, whose families sacrifice a disproportionate number of sons to fight our wars, would resonate not merely with red-state voters but also their kin in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Michigan.

Moreover, Republicans should adopt Webb’s clear preference for New Dealers who valued family-wage jobs over today’s Great Society Democrats demanding more welfare and diversity. Indeed, both Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan achieved their landslides by keeping faith with Americans in Webb’s orbit, whether as part of Nixon’s “great silent majority” or as Reagan Democrats.

The GOP could also learn from Webb’s prescient reservations about the Iraq War. He considered the 2003 invasion a costly blunder pushed by neoconservative intellectuals — sometimes called “chickenhawks”— who ignored strategic military advice, and a distraction from the long-term challenges posed by China, Russia, and Iran. …

Webb seems unaware that the New Deal architects, especially FDR’s labor secretary Francis Perkins, were the original social conservatives, and that the marriage and baby booms that their policies facilitated bolstered the emergence of the high-wage economy during and after World War II in America — and in the South. Nor does he seem to see the links between abortion-on-demand and gender-based affirmative action, articles of faith for Democrats, and the waning of America’s 20th-century golden age.

Nonetheless, Webb’s bold defense of the neglected working-middle class amid roaring stock markets would make good chapters in the GOP playbook for the 114th Congress — and the 2016 presidential contest. Indeed, if the party of Theodore Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan listened more to fighting Scots-Irish patriots than to libertarian and neoconservative policy wonks, Republicans would discover that reclaiming the red-blooded Americans that James Webb once identified as the “secret GOP weapon” could re-create a center-right governing coalition that would seal their political power for a generation.
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Presty the DJ for Jan. 8

January 8, 2015

Music
The Beatles had the number one album, “Rubber Soul” …

… and the number one single today in 1966:

(more…)
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Two Republicans’ self-generated bad press

January 7, 2015

media, US politics
A new verb has entered our language: To “Delauter,” as in, according to the Fredericksburg (Va.) News–Post:

Frederick County Councilman Kirby Delauter wrote on social media that he plans to sue The Frederick News-Post if his name or any reference to him appears in print without his permission.

In a Facebook status posted Saturday, Delauter said he was upset with reporter Bethany Rodgers for “an unauthorized use of my name and my reference in her article” published Jan. 3 about his and Councilman Billy Shreve’s concerns over County Council parking spaces.

“So let me be clear…………do not contact me and do not use my name or reference me in an unauthorized form in the future,” Delauter, R-District 5, said in a Facebook status update.

The post had garnered more than 45 “likes” and roughly 50 comments by Monday night. Rodgers responded to Delauter’s post Sunday afternoon, stating she will continue to contact the councilman for comment as well as print his name and reference in the newspaper.

“First of all, there is no requirement to get a person’s authorization in order to mention them in the paper, particularly if that person is an elected official,” Rodgers wrote in a comment below the original post. “It is not just our right but our responsibility to report on people like you, who occupy positions of trust in our government, and I make no apologies for doing that.”

Delauter said he would pursue legal action if his name or reference were published again.

“Use my name again unauthorized and you’ll be paying for an Attorney,” Delauter wrote. “Your rights stop where mine start.”

Delauter did not respond to multiple calls for comment Monday.

Terry Headlee, The News-Post‘s managing editor, said the newspaper typically does not seek permission or authorization to publish a person’s name or reference, except in the case of children.

“Kirby Delauter can certainly decline to comment on any story,” Headlee said. “But to threaten to sue a reporter for publishing his name is so ridiculously stupid that I’m speechless. It’s just a pointless, misguided attempt to intimidate and bully the press and shows an astonishing lack of understanding of the role of a public servant.”

Shreve, R-at large, told The News-Post in a phone interview he supported Delauter taking legal actions.

“I did not see his post, but I think The News-Post is extremely biased and someone should sue them,” Shreve said.

When asked if news media outlets should obtain permission to publish an elected official’s name or reference, Shreve said, “I think media outlets are cowards and they hide behind the label of journalists and that’s a bully pulpit to expand their liberal (agenda).”

At the risk of getting “sued” because I’m not asking his permission either: Here is Delauter’s message to the reporter, passed on by Eugene Volokh, who didn’t ask for permission either:

Volokh adds:

Uh, Council Member: In our country, newspapers are actually allowed to write about elected officials (and others) without their permission. It’s an avantgarde experiment, to be sure, but we’ve had some success with it.

Red Maryland adds:

Needless to say, Kirby Delauter doesn’t seem to understand that this is not how any of this works. We have a right to freedom of speech in this country, a right that was created expressly to allow for criticism of elected officials and those who are in the political world. I’m not entirely sure how Delauter made it this far in political life without recognizing that basic and fundamental aspect of American society, nor am I particularly aware as to how he ever won elected office as a Republican without the most basic understanding of the Bill of Rights. Delauter has every right in the world to not talk to Bethany Rodgers (or anybody else, for that matter), but to say that he has legal protection from having his name mentioned in the newspaper is bizarre and chilling.

Kirby Delauter needs to do the right thing and apologize…..

Actually, Delauter probably needs to resign. He is violating his oath of office to uphold the U.S. Constitution with this theory of the First Amendment that even politicians who hate the media wouldn’t advocate.

Maybe Shreve should too. At least he should refrain from providing legal advice, since bias isn’t grounds on which to successfully sue the news media, or, without some sort of action, anyone else.
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The Democratic war on the poor

January 7, 2015

US politics, Work
Stephen C. McGuire:

For the past two election cycles we have been barraged with the claim that the Republican Party is waging a war on women. While that campaign tactic fell flat this year, there is a war being waged that we should all take note of. It is the Democrats’ war on the poor.

This war is years in the making and is composed of a well-intentioned but hapless series of failed liberal social engineering experiments.

The forced busing of school children in the 1970s was intended to foster integration and better race relations. In reality, it led to the massive migration of middle-class whites and blacks to the suburbs. The result was urban decay and struggling public school systems.

Urban renewal programs were another attempt at government-directed neighborhood transformation. Within a few decades, many of the housing projects developed under these programs devolved into crime-ridden, gang-infested, high-rise ghettos that were ultimately torn down.

One need not even mention our massive, soul-crushing welfare system that so often traps recipients in a cycle of poverty.

All told, more than $16 trillion has been spent by the federal government over the last 50 years to try to coax people out of poverty by ladling them with government largess. The Democrats’ massively expensive War on Poverty was fought — and poverty won.

Today’s misguided initiative is a move by Democrats across the nation to legislate a massive increase in the minimum wage. Like the progressive policies of the past, this is viewed as a compassionate measure, helpful to the poor.

In reality, the current minimum wage proposal would cut off the lowest rungs of the economic ladder, pricing many unskilled workers out of the market. It would continue a move toward automating labor-intensive activities and bankrupt small businesses that would be unable to pass on the higher labor costs to their customers. How deep is the market for a $10 Big Mac?

The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that increasing the minimum wage to the levels currently under discussion would result in a loss of 500,000 jobs.

The fundamental flaw in the Democrats’ approach to the alleviation of poverty is that it rests on a government-centric approach. They view wealth as a static fixed pool that just needs to be divided up more “fairly.”

Not only do the Democrats’ policies for serving the poor actually trap many of the poor in poverty and dependency, but the policies also have a divisive effect on society. The natural reaction of those who receive voluntary private charity is gratitude toward their benefactors. It can engender a desire to work hard to become self-sufficient.

With government-sponsored welfare, taxpayers are often frustrated by being compelled to pay into programs they believe to be ineffective, if not harmful. The recipients view their benefits not as charity but as an entitlement. This is highly corrosive of the social cohesion.

Dispose of the canard that Democrats care deeply about the poor and Republicans are hardhearted misers who care only for the rich. A large body of academic research exists demonstrating that those who self-identify as “conservative” donate substantially more of their time, talent and treasure to charitable causes than do those who self-identify as “liberal.” Even excluding donations to religious institutions, conservatives give more generously to secular causes than do liberals.

We all care about alleviating poverty. The crucial question is determining what set of policies will be most effective.

The trillions of dollars that have been spent on the War on Poverty, it is written, have accomplished exactly as much as spending nothing on that so-called war would have accomplished. When people refuse to improve their behavior — personal habits that succeed in the workplace such as showing up on time for work and working hard, or not getting yourself pregnant when the father is nowhere in the picture — nothing government does will improve things for the poor.
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Presty the DJ for Jan. 7

January 7, 2015

Music
The number one single in Britain …

… and over here on my parents’ wedding day in 1961:

The number one single today in 1977:

(more…)
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Offense! Offense! Offense!

January 6, 2015

Culture, US politics
No, Andrew Klavan is not writing about football:

For American artists, writers, thinkers, moms, dads, coaches, teachers, and other human beings, the work to create a counter-culture to end and replace the poisonous culture of the left continues. As our government and academies and entertainers try to sell us on slave values like Equality, we have to rebuild and promote the concept of Individual Liberty, the central value of free men and women. In place of the whining, manipulative Victim Power of feminists and race-baiters, we have to lift up the idea of Power through Personal Responsibility, the only path to dignity. And in place of the cushioned chains of government-sponsored safety Obama and his corrupt minions try to push on us day after day, we have to teach and defend the fearful glory of Independence.

And so we will have to offend people. A lot of people. A lot of the time.

I mention this because I notice the idea has grown up recently — especially among the young — that offending people is wrong per se. This idea — taught at universities and in entertainments and in the media — is wholly false. Rudeness and unkindness are very often unnecessary — much less necessary than many counter-cultural warriors suppose — but offending people is unavoidable. It is a natural outgrowth of telling the truth.

Speaking generally, people don’t like the truth. It tends to be less flattering than pretty-sounding falsehoods and far more challenging than relativistic blather. Simply to declare the good — liberty, personal responsibility, independence — better than the bad — equality, victimhood, slavish safety — makes people more conscious of their shortcomings and moral failures. That thing that happens where you fearlessly tell the truth and people carry you on their shoulders in thanks and congratulations? That’s a movie scene, not real life. In real life, the aftermath of truth-telling looks a whole lot more like the crucifixion than Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.

But if we’re going to rebuild American culture… in the arts, in the history books, in schools, at home… the truth is the only place to start. Dramatic truth, comic truth, historical truth, moral truth. None of it goes down easy. And so you’re going to be hearing “I’m offended,” all day long and into the night. It’s not a sin to offend people. It’s not even a problem really. Getting offended is just one of the ways people react to reality — it’s the way American culture has been teaching them to react for the past forty-five years.

I feel strongly that a new American culture is already on the way. I read it in books, see it at the movies, read it online and find it in everyday life more and more. My work — and my love — is the arts, but the new culture won’t just be built there. It will be built in the way we treat our spouses, the way we raise our kids, and the way we tell the stories of our country and our lives. For myself, I plan to do all this as honestly as I can, as morally as I can, and as fearlessly as I can.

If any of what I say or do or make offends you, take a number. And when your number is called, pound sand.

I don’t believe I have ever said “I’m offended” in response to something someone has said to me. When I make dueling pundit appearances and someone says “I’m offended” about something I said, I assume I’ve won that point, because those who take offense take offense instead of making a counterargument.

Part of this is our culture’s stupidity about feelings and self-esteem. In an adult world no one would care about your feelings, because your feelings are something you control, not anyone else. Perhaps the answer to hearing “I’m offended” is something along the line of “Good!” or “Ask me if I care about your feelings.”
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When journalists are confused as spies

January 6, 2015

International relations, media
Columbia Journalism Review printed this opinion, which probably should be prefaced with music:

The Interview is a dangerous movie. The first victim was Sony, which had electronic files hacked in an intrusion that revealed shocking details: like the fact that one of its executives wanted to cast a black actor as James Bond, and that many people at Sony can’t spell. But another more serious group of victims haven’t yet been mentioned: journalists who work in dangerous parts of the world.

The film, which was released over the Christmas holiday, depicts two goofy journalists, played by Seth Rogen and James Franco, who score an interview with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, and who are recruited by the CIA to kill him. Rogen’s character, the producer of a television interview program, was supposedly educated at my alma mater, Columbia School of Journalism, but seemed to have no qualms about crossing what I recall was one of the most indelibly-inked lines of journalism ethics: don’t do the bidding of the CIA.

Why make a big deal of a movie that’s clearly fiction? Because it plays right into the farcical notions of the world’s tyrannical leaders – that journalists are secretly working for the CIA, an assumption which carries tragic consequences.

Reporter James Foley, who was beheaded by ISIS earlier this year, was accused of working for MI-6. Newsweek correspondent Maziar Bahari was arrested in Iran on suspicion of being a spy. Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian is still in an Iranian prison, accused of espionage. Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl was accused of working for the CIA before his execution. The history of kidnapped journalists—from Terry Anderson in Beirut, to Bob Simon in Baghdad, to David Rohde in Serbia—is filled with tragic tales of reporters being mistaken for spies.

It doesn’t help when pop culture reinforces the false image of reporters-turned-special agents. Or agents posing as reporters. The critically acclaimed TV show Homeland this past season had the CIA station chief in Pakistan, Carrie Mathison, pretending to be a reporter in order to convince a young man to reveal information about his terrorist uncle. Mathison is a rogue agent, and the mission is not authorized by Langley, but the perception of spies posing as reporters is there for viewers all over the world to see.

There is good reason for the confusion, since CIA agents did, indeed, use the journalism cover for many years, posing as agents using fake media credentials. And throughout several decades of the Cold War, the agency recruited hundreds of journalists to do their bidding as well. The cleverly-named Operation Mockingbird was run by top agency officials, including Richard Helms, the future CIA director who started his career as a reporter and famously interviewed Adolf Hitler at the 1936 Olympics. There’s no doubt that Helms and others at the CIA realized how the work of journalists is similar to that of spies—getting close to important sources and gathering information from them. In the hyper-patriotic post-war era, it was apparently easy to recruit some of of the top news organizations in the US to participate.

The Church Commission hearings in 1976 put an end to these practices, and that year then-CIA director George H.W. Bush announced: “Effective immediately, the CIA will not enter into any paid or contract relationship with any full-time or part-time news correspondent accredited by any U.S. news service, newspaper, periodical, radio or television network or station.”

That would mean that Rogen and Franco’s characters, with their plot to poison the North Korean leader, would have been subverting the law.

The FBI hasn’t helped matters. In 2007, an agent posed as a reporter with the Associated Press and emailed the teenaged suspect in several bomb threats at a Seattle high school. Appealing to the bomber’s narcissism, the fake reporter asked him to review an article, and by clicking on the link, the high school student revealed his location, leading to his arrest.

In The New York Times, FBI director James Comey wrote a letter to the editor arguing that the tactic was legal and appropriate, since it did not result in any actual work of journalism. But Comey missed the point. By blurring the line, the FBI added fuel to future suspicions that any journalist could be an undercover agent.

It is a sad fact that there will surely be more detentions, kidnappings and executions of journalists in the future, and some will likely be accused of being spies. The blame for those attacks will be squarely on the terrorists, but there is no reason for Hollywood to give them any more reason to be confused about what reporters do abroad—report, not spy.

The list of journalists accused of being spies, including the deceased Foley and Pearl, seems unbelievable. There’s not a single spy skill other than observation that a reporter would seem to possess. A government can use an accusation excuse for whatever ends it feels like, including, in Pearl’s case, executing a Jewish American.

To suggest that North Korea’s Kim Jong Un will cause problems for journalists because of a movie portrayal of journalists as assassins (pause while I collect myself after amusement over those last three words) requires belief in Kim’s rationality.

There is, however, the case of Wisconsin’s own Austin Goodrich, as one commenter points out:

Austin Goodrich, an American spy who used credentials as a journalist, including from CBS News, to establish his cover during cold war postings abroad, died on June 9 at his home in Port Washington, Wis. He was 87.

The cause was Alzheimer’s disease, his daughter Kristina Goodrich said.

In the 1950s and 1960s, Mr. Goodrich was far from the only journalist doubling as a secret agent. Several who did so, along with some top news executives, later said that during the cold war the separation between the news media and the government was considerably more negotiable than it subsequently became. However, it was not until the 1970s, after the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence investigated the Central Intelligence Agency, that reports by Rolling Stone magazine and The New York Times revealed that journalists from myriad news organizations had served the agency in various capacities, sometimes with the full knowledge of their employers. Mr. Goodrich became one of the first examples of a journalist-spy to be publicly disclosed.

The Times reported that at least 22 American news organizations, including CBS News and Time, Life and Newsweek magazines, as well as The Times itself, “had employed, though sometimes only on a casual basis, American journalists who were also working for the C.I.A.,” and that “in a few instances the organizations were aware of the C.I.A. connection, but most of them appear not to have been.”

That comment was preceded by a comment that half-engaged in paranoia but made one good point:

If journalists don’t want to be identified as stooges for the state, maybe they should stop acting like it. Be more hostile to authority — government, collaborators, bourgeois sensibilities, and last but not least editors — instead of cozying up to them and glorifying them.
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Presty the DJ for Jan. 6

January 6, 2015

Music
First: The songs of the day:

The number one album today in 1968 was the Beatles’ “Magical Mystery Tour”:

The number one single today in 1973 included a person rumored to be the subject of the song on backing vocals:

The number one British single today in 1979 was this group’s only number one:

(more…)
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The year on wheels

January 5, 2015

US business, Wheels
If you have any interest in cars, or one of the biggest industries in the U.S., you have to read Peter De Lorenzo’s Autoextremist blog.

A writer like De Lorenzo is important in any field worth studying because it’s important to read someone who’s not impressed by anyone. Cynics are not popular, but they’re at least as often right as they are wrong. And as you read De Lorenzo‘s 2014-in-the-automotive industry tome, the impression you get is that De Lorenzo is impressed by no one:

Welcome to this “thing” called the automobile business. Like a Dead Air Circus twisting in the wind, the automobile business writ large here moves in fits and starts in a two steps forward, three back pirouette of ignominy, one that provides a constant thrum of mediocrity, a sinister Motor City soundtrack of “dark noise” if you will that is always there, looming in the background.

Is it all tedium? Thankfully, no, not by a long shot.

We are enjoying the finest cars and trucks in automotive history, and at every price point too. We’re also bathing in a golden era of performance, one that few thought would sustain itself as we march ever forward to a No Fun culture that pillories the automobile at every turn.

The looming societal storm clouds can’t dampen the inherent goodness and level of technology found in the average cars of today. It’s simply staggering to contemplate the advanced technology, fuel efficiency and general level of excellence available in even the most mainstream of automobiles available. If you had predicted the level of technology and efficiency that would be available in a typical Ford Fusion, Chevrolet Impala or Toyota Camry even as recently as ten years ago most people would have scoffed at the notion.

There are no bad cars anymore because the price of entry in order to compete in this, the most competitive market in automotive history, goes up with each passing quarter. Combine that with the ever-escalating regulatory demands for more safety and more efficiency, and you have a never-ending upward spiral demanding even more overall excellence that consumes this industry’s every waking hour. And all of that is wonderful and a reason to be optimistic about this business.

But, well, there’s always a “but” when it comes to the car business.

Once again we were blessed or haunted (depending on how you look at it) by an assortment of crackpots, a few actual visionaries, hordes of recalcitrant twerps, legions of spineless weasels, the obligatory egomaniacal dictators (with special emphasis on the first syllable), an unfortunately high quotient of unmitigated hacks, and of course the True Believers, because if it weren’t for their diligence, this business would implode on itself all over again.

This was the Year of the Recall, the Year of Sergio, the Year of Horsepower, the Year of Mary and for a lot of reasons, the Year from Hell.

How can that be, you say? Everyone’s making money hand over fist as the national frenzy for crossovers, SUVs and pickup trucks seems to know no bounds. It’s all good, right? Yes, until it isn’t that is.

Don’t let those supercharged sales numbers go to your heads, because in typical Detroit fashion what goes up like a rocket comes down with a resounding thud. It always has and it always will. And just as the executives at the car companies here in the Motor City begin to believe their press clippings and start to think that maybe, just maybe this blissful state of soaring sales is going to stay hot forever, well, things are bound to get weird.

Though I’ve often written about the good things going on in this business, the constant misdeeds and missteps that seem to dog this industry and its players at a relentless cadence consume most of my time. That there are three dumb moves for every two smart ones in this business is a given and has been proven out over time. And to the industry honchos who are absolutely convinced that it won’t happen – or is not happening under their watch – I’ve got news: You can’t really control it; you can only hope to contain it.

De Lorenzo writes about Chrysler, now owned by Fiat …

The name is Sloan. Alfredo Sloan. The all-knowing and all-powerful leader of the Fiat Chrysler enterprise has been anointed The Altruistic Savior of all he surveys by the bootlicking hordes in “the media,” portrayed as the man who pulled the doddering old Chrysler out of the depths of despair while giving its huddling, downtrodden masses who were facing a certain death sentence a reason to live. And it’s all unmitigated bullshit too.

Marchionne is a shrewd, make that brilliant deal maker who happened to be in the right place at the right time and who was able to abscond with the car company formerly known as Chrysler lock, stock and barrel for the staggeringly paltry sum of $6 billion, all in. And in one fell swoop he gave the idle aristocracy who inherited the Fiat “empire” – and had almost run it into the ground once and for all – another lease on life. For that he has been granted career canonization the likes of which has never been seen before in this business, sort of an Alfredo Sloan for our times.

But then again there’s another side to Sergio that isn’t sexy, glamorous or all knowing, which is why it continuously goes unreported.

Marchionne’s brilliance when it comes to putting together big picture deals is unquestioned. Let’s face it, anyone who can walk away with the Jeep brand for the above-mentioned sum and get the rest of Chrysler in the bargain is a frickin’ genius.

But The Other Sergio is a plodding, micro-managing maniac who believes that Fiat Chrysler employees – no matter what the level – should be happy that they’re allowed to be in his presence. And for that, and the occasional opportunity to be bathed in the warmth from the glow as The Great One passes them in the hallway, they get a shockingly head-in-sand management approach – a time-tested legacy of the Fiat “empire” that’s unwanted and unwarranted – yet shoved down the throats of the Auburn Hills faithful with astonishing regularity.

The ingrained backwardness with which the Italians approach everything actually has the denizens in Auburn Hills reeling from having to dumb down the way they do things to appease their Italian handlers on a daily basis. Sergio’s espresso-swilling minions regularly ignore hard-earned and hard-won lessons that have stood the test of time in this business in favor of doing things “their” way, even if it jeopardizes the company’s competitive standing in the market or it costs the company millions in do-overs and start overs.

The arrogance of the Italian overlords running Chrysler now rivals the arrogance displayed by the German overlords back when Daimler had its crack at the keys to the Jeep-Truck kingdom. Combine that with their openly hostile attitude, which states that every supplier who brings an idea or a product to them can, as they often say, “cut your number in half and then we’ll talk.” It’s a wonderful way to build trust in the supplier community and an even better way to ensure that FCA misses out on leading-edge technology and thinking across all disciplines.

And Sergio’s latest management brainstorm is to jettison anyone over 50 (no, you won’t read this anywhere else) because they’ve become liabilities and are not forward thinking enough. Top-notch, seasoned executives are being shown the door in favor of young, inexperienced replacements with the inevitable result: The young hires are being blown out and replaced by similarly young and inexperienced people and guess why? They can’t do the work because they don’t have enough experience. It’s a revolving door of mediocrity that just keeps doubling up on itself. Meanwhile, the senior-level managers, sensing the tide, are gathering in droves at the door clamoring for a way out.

… Government — I mean General — Motors …

Pardon me for thinking that we’d heard the last from Dan Akerson, that loathsome and now legendary carpetbagging tool who held the reins of GM in his hands for three-and-one-half excruciatingly painful years. Forgive me for thinking that the Unctuous Prick would take his leave and quietly retreat to the friendly confines of Washington, D.C., so he could regale his cronies how he survived his near-charitable stint in the hinterlands, trying to impart his wisdom to the poor unfortunates who toiled away in such a pathetically backward business that it’s a wonder it functioned at all before he got there. And please cut me some slack, because I thought that after such an embarrassing run at the top of what was once America’s industrial showpiece, where he was simply reviled and despised at every level of the corporation, that Akerson would keep his mouth shut, especially in the midst of the biggest crisis in the company’s history (other than the bankruptcy, of course).

No such luck, however.

Safely ensconced back hard by the Potomac, the former CEO gets his chance to obfuscate, deny and continue his game of self-entitled outrage at GM’s so-called “culture” laced with his usual cloying air of superiority – his M.O. for three-and-a-half tedious and tiresome years while at the helm of GM – in an interview by David Shephardson in Monday’s The Detroit News. Why Shephardson thought it would be a good thing to let Akerson pontificate once more is questionable but in the end he did us all a great service, because the depth and breadth of Akerson’s gift of self-delusion is there for all to see. I view the interview now as yet another important entry into The Historical Document of Bullshit marking Akerson’s Reign of Terror at General Motors.

Playing his Sergeant Schultzian “I know nothing” defense to perfection, Akerson blamed GM’s culture and didn’t own up to anything, except that he was a genius for promoting Mary Barra. In one particularly telling passage, Akerson railed at Internet chatter calling the suggestion that GM could soften criticism of its mishandling of the recall by promoting the first woman to lead an automaker ridiculous, adding, “fools can say anything… We have four women on the board. You’d have to be so cynical. You’d have to be a terrible person to even (think it).” Akerson called the suggestions “hurtful.”

Well, boo-fricking-hoo, Dan. Do you really want to know what’s hurtful? Having to listen to you bob and weave and pretend you knew nothing. Having to sit there and listen to the relentless stream of unmitigated bullshit that comes out of your mouth, with you operating under the assumption that if you’re saying it, we must believe it to be true, because after all, you’re the great Dan Akerson, and we’re not.

Instead, it’s an outrageous insult to everyone’s intelligence who ever played this game (except to those you favored and promoted, of course).

That’s right, Dan, you, the Unctuous Prick who openly loathed every last inch of this business to its core, and who regularly regaled your buddies on how just backward, unseemly and pathetic the auto business really was.

You, the guy who insulted the hard-working people of GM on a regular basis and in such condescending fashion that the common refrain I heard from seasoned, talented individuals throughout the corporation was that you were an abject embarrassment that they wished would just go away.

You, who had so little respect for the history of this business or the people who came before you that you dismissed it all with a wave of the hand as being inconsequential and irrelevant, that you and your Telecommies had more smarts in your fingernails than anyone in this town or in this business would ever accumulate.

You, who professed your “love” for this city while not once living here, instead parachuting in to the Westin Book Cadillac Hotel when you had to be here while having your Chief PR Bagman, Selim Bingol (aka Unctuous Prick Jr.), try to paste together the story that you were a “car guy” who was just trying to do what was best for the company, because clearly the “little people” laboring there didn’t have a clue.

You, who held such little regard for the complexities of the business that you once bragged to an underling, “You could run product development, hell, I could run product – it’s not that hard.”

You, who followed that up by promoting Bob Ferguson – GM’s Chief lobbyist, of all things – to run the Cadillac Division globally, even though he had not one shred of perspective or qualification to do so, saying in not so subtle fashion that he was a smart guy and he wasn’t one of “them” – meaning one of the poor unfortunates who make up the backbone of this business who were toiling away at the company while you preened and pranced before them spewing insults in their direction.

How did all that work out for you, Dan?

The High-Octane Truth of the matter is that the company survived in spite of you. Those people whom you insulted and treated so condescendingly on a daily basis? Those True Believers are solely responsible for the product hits that GM has in the market today.

It certainly wasn’t you, Dan, not by a long shot. Let’s not forget that you were plucked from boardroom obscurity by the most incompetent board in corporate America because you had the temerity to raise your hand in a board meeting when the subject of running the company came up, and you deluded yourself somehow into thinking that happenstance was a mandate of some sort that simply didn’t exist.

That “Accidental Tourist of a CEO” moniker? You earned it and everyone knew it. You’re just lucky that GM’s board was so singularly incompetent, because if a boardroom coup could have been properly mounted, you would have been toast and you know it. You had only a handful of supporters and even fewer defenders. The rest? You misconstrued those smiles as meaning people actually liked you. No, Dan, they loathed you, and they did what they had to do to get by, which meant marking their desk calendars daily with big a red “X” praying that this would be the day that you would finally leave.

You were a walking-talking embarrassment from the get-go, simply a ridiculous spectacle fueled by a maniacal, runaway ego that knows no bounds, a Captain Queeg for a new age, couching everything in juvenile, bombastic, militaristic banter that had Navy people writing me embarrassed that you were dragging your naval background into the proceedings.

You are the quintessential definition of a carpetbagger. You had no affinity for the business or the people who worked in it whatsoever. You dismissed this industry as a backwater embarrassment and you were just biding your time until you could find something better, hoping there was a huge payday at the end. Instead, you made your escape back to Private Equity before the shit hit the fan. Nicely done.

“Terrible person”? That moniker happens to fits you to a “T”, Akerson.

Now, please do us all a favor and shut up. (“THE UNCTUOUS PRICK RETURNS FOR ONE LAST HURRAH.” – July 30, 2014)

… Ford Motor Co. …

When you live around here, it’s not uncommon to hear people talk about “working at Ford’s.” You’ll never hear that when people discuss working at the other car companies, and that is because “working at Ford’s” means working directly or indirectly for the Ford family, who still retain control and very much a vibrant interest in the family business, which, lest we forget, is one of the most important industrial legacies in America and part of the very fabric of this nation.

In the global automobile business as it is defined today the Ford Motor Company remains a unique operation, a family-owned and run business that stands out among the faceless corporate entities that make up the rest. Yes, there are family legacies at some of the other car companies around the world, but Ford is different and will always be different.

And that is because the Ford family cares. They care about the company’s role in providing for so many families in the community, they care about the family’s historical legacy, and they care that the Ford Motor Company continues to deliver a kaleidoscope of effective transportation choices for people all around the world.

And the fact that the family does care has endeared the Ford Motor Company to people around here in a way that the other car companies in town never will.

The members of the Ford family work in and around the company in various capacities, too, with William Clay Ford Jr., executive chairman, the most visible. It is simply extraordinary that the family has remained engaged and involved in the company for 110 years, and that’s due to the fact that they have never slacked off or “phoned it in” but instead have kept the flame and the family legacy alive for generations to come.

The passing of William Clay Ford does mark the end of an era, as he was the last living connection to the very beginnings of the automobile business.

But it’s also a reaffirmation of a most remarkable legacy, one that William Clay Ford Jr. and the other members of the Ford family will now proudly carry on. (“A MOST REMARKABLE LEGACY.” – March 10, 2014)

… the apparently crazy world of automotive PR:

PR brawlers, really? It may be surprising to some who are new to the whole Public Relations game, but the inner workings of big-league PR are usually in direct contrast to the rigidly controlled, politically correct images that PR handlers so carefully craft for their CEO charges.

Behind the scenes it’s a back-alley brawl stopping just short – but not always, I might add – from fisticuffs. Depending on the day, PR handlers in the car biz fight with journalists, editors, TV news show producers, other PR handlers from rival car companies, professional company irritants, pitchfork-wielding anti-car safety advocates and environmental groups, and an assortment of “vermin” – as they see it – who come out of the woodwork to threaten their boss, or the company, or both.

The modern PR handler’s array of weaponry includes scathing email diatribes and verbal threats, political maneuvers and story plants carried out through mainstream and social media platforms, and good old-fashioned finger jabs to the chest delivered in person, just to name a few. (“SHARP TONGUES AND SHARPER ELBOWS, THE ROUGH-AND-TUMBLE WORLD OF MODERN PR LIVE AND IN COLOR.” – October 22, 2014)

… and the industry in general:

There aren’t? You gotta be frickin’ kiddin’ me! I caught a lot of car companies chasing their tails at the New York Auto Show, ignoring the two most enduring tenets of the business, which are:1. It’s about The Product. It always has been and it always will be too.

2. Design is still the Ultimate Initial Product Differentiator. If you don’t have it, you can’t hide it. And if, as a manufacturer, you go all vanilla hoping to offend the fewest people, you’ll probably end up attracting the fewest people as well.

And if there’s a third, it’s this: There are no Magic Beans to be found in this business.

Instead it’s about designing, engineering and building fundamental product goodness and having the focused consistency not to waver from that mission.

It’s about creating products that are emotionally compelling to look at, fun to drive and rewarding to own.

And it’s about adhering to the core competencies of the brand. In other words, whatever you’re good at and whatever your reputation is based upon, you better deliver on that promise. Anything less and you will get lost in the shuffle, or just get lost, period.And of course it’s about not veering into niches or segments that you don’t belong in, no matter how enticing they are.
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