Note to Moderate, Electable Democrats: You’ve Gone Too Far Right

I’m a Massachusetts Liberal, so I know I’m to the left of most electable politicians. It may be the stereotype, but I’m basically the sort who thinks it would be cool to double the tax on gasoline and use the money to build trains powered by unicorns and rainbows. So when moderate electable Democratic politicians disappoint me, nobody’s surprised. They never do what I want.

When they disappoint and infuriate my mother-in-law, that’s news. She’s a middle-of-the-road moderate Democrat who lives in suburban Atlanta. She’s Catholic, married once and still married—to a military man no less—so she’s hardly what you’d call a fire-breathing liberal. She’s been voting for moderate, electable Democrats since JFK, but without being involved in any activism, boat-rocking, or any of that. She’s practically the definition of a mainstream Democratic voter.

And this entirely sensible woman, who appreciates compromise and knows the difficulty of policy-making in Washington, is absolutely furious. She is enraged that the President and the legislature are failing to stand up to defend the social safety net. She’s angry about threats to everything, not just the things that benefit her, like Medicare and Social Security. She wants to know why more people aren’t outraged, aren’t warning the world about what will happen if we cut early-childhood programs, women’s health, nutrition, education, the environment, Medicaid, and food stamps.

She called me on a tear this week, and wanted to know how she could get a message to Washington that she and everyone she knows want Democrats to fight back harder against Tea Party-led destruction of the good that government can do in this country.

Reasonable grown-up Democrats, this is a warning: My mother-in-law is your base. She has been your reliable vote since the middle of the last century. If you’ve moved so far to the right that suburban Atlanta housewives are angry at you, you’re just following the Tea Party over a cliff.

Eating the Future

Krugman’s editorial awhile back noted that the Republican majority in the House is pretty much dedicated to eating the future. That is, they’re cutting everything that won’t hurt until later. So, they’re cutting nutrition for children, because children don’t vote, and malnourished adults won’t be a problem for another 15 years.

And they’re cutting youth sports and after-school activities. In response, we’re seeing a surge in boxing as parents try to find a cheap alternative to letting the kids hang out on the corner after school being recruited into criminal mischief. We’re likely to see more crime from the kids who can’t stick with the parentally-sponsored sports, and more brain damage from the kids who do, but neither one will hurt for five or twenty years. And a crime wave isn’t even a problem for Republicans, it just feeds into the narrative of undeserving criminal classes that need to be punished.

The Problem of Communications Careers

This article in GQ, of all things, makes me kind of upset. The killer graf:

Marketers revere the idea of brands, because a brand means that somebody, somewhere, once bought the thing they’re now trying to sell. The Magic 8 Ball (tragically, yes, there is going to be a Magic 8 Ball movie) is a brand because it was a toy. Pirates of the Caribbean is a brand because it was a ride. Harry Potter is a brand because it was a series of books. Jonah Hex is a brand because it was a comic book. (Here lies one fallacy of putting marketers in charge of everything: Sometimes they forget to ask if it’s a good brand.)

That’s the real danger, the real problem, with working in marketing and communications. As a person, I’m inclined to want to find out useful stuff and tell people about it. It’s what makes me good at my job, which is… well, marketing and communications. But who’s going to pay me to do that? All too often, it’s someone whose product or idea can’t really make it on its own.

There are more people with bad products than good products, and there are more jobs putting lipstick on pigs than there are jobs just breaking through the noise for something that deserves to be communicated. If you’re a believer in the Gospel, whether it’s the gospel of Apple Computer or Google or Jesus, that’s all well and good, but good luck getting a job promoting it. There are plenty of people who love that shit so much they’re going to do it for free. If you’re lucky, or clever, you’ll find a cause that’s got a bit of a budget. (I count myself in that number; I’m not going to strike it rich marketing financial sanity, but I’m not going to sell my soul either).

There are, of course, exceptions: A friend of a friend is a brand ambassador for Moët Hennessy, which involves drinking fine wines with sommeliers in top-tier New York restaurants. It’s as though Charlie Sheen were paid by drug cartels to hang out with hookers and do blow. Or as though a couple of clever bastards happened to make a career out of drawing comics about video games. Which they would do whether there was money in it or not.

So what do those of us who have the unfortunate distinction of calling ourselves “Marketing Communications Professionals” do? All too often, we find ourselves selling the wrong thing, distorting the truth, or creating the noise that other people have to break through.

If only we all lived in Seth Godin’s universe of people only marketing ideas and products that are worth the effort. If only moviegoers were motivated by art and not wanting the kids to shut the hell up for 90 minutes.

I might as well wish for a pony too!

First Draft: History Lessons

History Lessons
The myth of the good tsar misled by his advisors persisted for centuries, but was finally shattered in 1905 when workers carrying a petition to the Winter Palace were slaughtered by palace guards.

I forget who told me once
all of Russian history has just two lessons:
Life is a choice of guns or butter,
and the Cossacks work for the tsar.
Simple lessons, but not easily applied.

We can’t much blame the weightless corpses of the famine years,
the trampled peasants at the Winter Palace,
the tattooed flesh thawing with the tundra in Kolyma,
but is it our fault alone that we don’t know want from need,
nor know when we act the Cossack,
and when the unheeded dead?

What could possibly go wrong

My current favorite blogger, the guy over at Gin and Tacos, has a wonderful description of how much he wants Haley Barbour to win the Republican nomination for president. Not because he supports the Republican party, of course, but because it would be entertaining:

Haley Barbour is like Central Casting’s version of a Republican presidential nominee: a fat, sweaty racist from Mississippi with a Boss Hog drawl. Short of exhuming and reanimating George Wallace to run on a ticket with Orval Faubus, Barbour is the best thing that can happen to this election. I need entertainment value to get through an 18 month election cycle; it won’t get much better than seeing Obama debate Foghorn Leghorn.

Well, that’s one way to look at it, I guess.