Author: Jim Eltringham

Political consultant specializing in grassroots mobilization, online media, and public relations.

Black Friday/Cyber Monday: Media Holidays

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As much as Thanksgiving kicks off the Christmas/Winter Holiday season of family, friends, and good cheer, Black Friday and its partner Cyber Monday have become the official kickoff of the unofficial shopping season that turns all that good cheer into stress, anxiety, and insomnia.

But it’s all bunk, or at least it is now.  You’ve heard of “Hallmark holidays” – invented celebrations that exist only because greeting card companies want to sell more cards and trinkets.  Right now, Cyber Monday and Black Friday are “Media Holidays”: They exist only because constant media attention feeds the perception that these non-events are actually events.

The evolution makes sense: for years, Black Friday was the most optimum day to do Christmas shopping.  The day after Thanksgiving is either an official day off or a vacation day for many workers, and after a day of turkey and relatives, people wanted out of their houses.  Depending on where you get your information from, the moniker comes from either retail sales finally going into the black for the year or Philadelphia shoppers behaving like, well, Philadelphians.

The advent of online shopping meant online shopping during Advent, and thus came Cyber Monday – that first day back at work when office workers would get back to their desks and shop online.  Part of it was procrastination for those still suffering a hangover from the leftovers (or maybe a leftover hangover), but part of it was because in the early days of Amazon, the best internet connection many people had was the one at their work desk.  Often, the T1 they plugged their business computer into was exponentially faster than the dial-up NetZero that their family used for limited connectivity at home.

The reality is that advances in residential broadband, smartphones, and mobile networks have made the concept of Cyber Monday ridiculous, especially given that many retailers’ “Black Friday” sales extended from the Monday before Thanksgiving through the weekend and almost all were available online during that same time frame.  And there’s really no reason to go outside at all if most of the sales are available online – you can do just as much shopping in your pajamas watching Christmas movies on Black Friday as you can bundled and waiting in the black of night for some kid making just over minimum wage to unlock the doors at Target.

What keeps these non-holidays going is the media element. Much like many places of business that aren’t selling things, Thanksgiving weekend is slow for many media outlets.  Black Friday deals and images of shoppers camping out make for ready-made content on every news program, from the local news up to the national networks.  Social news helps too: tweets and status updates that come with the voluntarily miserable experience of shopping at some insane hour with family and friends are fun to read.

Black Friday (and Cyber Monday) provide an interesting yearly phenomenon that fills time on the news – so interesting that both days continue to outlive their original purpose.

Weather or not it’s proof of climate change…

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It’s cooled down a bit lately, but the last few weeks have seen the worst of what Summer offers in and around the Beltway.  A massive windstorm knocked out power in Alexandria, and heat indexes made mowing the lawn such and incredibly dangerous activity that it was to be avoided at all costs. (That’s the story we’ll go with.)

What does it all mean?  For some it’s unequivocal evidence of man-made climate change:

During their recent coverage of winter storms, Fox News has repeatedly mocked former Vice President Al Gore and cited the cold and snowy weather to attempt to discredit global warming. Fox News and other right-wing media routinely use snow to cast doubt on global warming, and internal emails from Fox News’ Washington bureau show that in the past Fox employees have been instructed to question climate science.

Wait, wait, no, I’m sorry, that’s an old Media Matters story, back when the eighteen feet of snow dumped on the Eastern seaboard was just “weather.”  There’s a difference, you see, between weather and climate, so a cold winter doesn’t mean anything for those looking to disprove global warming.

Yet this week, the anti-Keystone XL organization 350.org sent an email to their subscriber list highlighting the recent heat wave as evidence that radical environmental change is afoot.  Their leader, Bill McKibben, sarcastically needled global warming skeptics in the Daily Beast:

Please don’t sweat the 2,132 new high temperature marks in June—remember, climate change is a hoax…  On Friday, for instance, Washington set all-time heat records (one observer described it as like “being in a giant wet mouth, except six degrees warmer”), and then shortly after dinner a storm for the ages blew through—first there was five minutes of high wind, blowing dust and debris (and tumbleweeds? surely some tumbleweeds), followed by an explosive display of thunder and lightning that left millions without power.

That’s 350.org, whose big idea was to fund a giant ice sculpture on the steps of the U.S. Capitol spelling out the word “HOAX.”  You see, they were going to disprove climate skeptics by melting ice in July.  That was before they slammed on the brakes – ostensibly because they would appear insensitive to people suffering the heat wave, but more likely because it was just a really silly idea.

You can’t spend the winter preaching that weather and climate are different things, then using the summer heat to support the need for environmental action.  That’s not a scientific argument, that’s political hackery – though, come to think of there’s probably more money in simple hackery.

Kids make bad spokespeople

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Somehow, some way, the political universe will have to come to grips with the mind-melting revelation that Jonathan Krohn is no longer a conservative wunderkind.  With a slow news week n Your Nation’s Capital, this non-story has been getting more digital ink than it’s worth.

Yes, I recognize the irony in that statement, but hear me out.  I’m not kvetching because it’s getting too much attention.

The national conservative leaders invited this story years ago, when they treated Krohn like the second coming of Bill Buckley, a thirteen-year-old in the temple of CPAC, arguing as equals with the elders of the movement.  By propping him up they created a sideshow, rather than provoking thought with a speech on fiscal policy or government regulation.

Then again, those speeches don’t make it onto YouTube – and when they do, no one watches.  So out comes Krohn, the Boy Wonder of the Right, to be a fun and kitschy carnival attraction.  But like any thinking adolescent, Krohn had (and likely still has) a long way to go on his own philosophical journey.

If you are looking to develop a movement leader, he or she would probably be better off listening at CPAC rather than talking.  Krohn himself realizes the exercise was a sham:

I mean, come on, I was between 13 and 14 when I was regurgitating these talking points! What does a kid who has never paid a tax bring to the table in a conversation about the burden of taxes? What does a healthy child know about people who can’t afford healthcare because of preexisting conditions? No matter how intelligent a person might be, certain political issues require life experience; they’re much more complicated than the black and white frames imposed by partisan America.

More than likely, there are folks on the left salivating over the opportunity to use him as a prop just the same as the right did years ago.  Whether the left or the right hand is grinding the organ, they both want the monkey to dance.

That’s not really fair to the monkey, though.  By using a teen as a figurehead, a political movement may score short-term points, but it sure doesn’t help the kid at all – and it isn’t the most dependable basket to drop your eggs in, either.

Clown Questions and the Post-Media Era

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It’s 1951.  Underneath the stands at Old Yankee Stadium, Joe DiMaggio dresses after a game, a gaggle of sportswriters crowding around his locker eager for a nugget of wisdom from Joltin’ Joe.  A cub reporter from the 78 daily newspapers New York City had at the time elbows his way through and asks if he plans will celebrate tonight’s win with a late night rendezvous with Marilyn Monroe.

Joe’s eyebrows raise in a mixture of mockery and disbelief.  “I’m not going to answer that,” he chuckles.  “That’s a clown question, bro.”

As the entire world knows now, that quote didn’t come from the Yankee Clipper but the National Treasure, Bryce Harper.  There were t-shirts for sale by the next morning, there are video mash up jokes, and, of course, tweets-a-plenty.

Mark it down: this is when Washington DC officially accepted baseball.  For all Ryan Zimmerman’s heroics as the franchise’s first home-grown star since the relocation from Montreal and Stephen Strasburg’s at-times otherworldly pitching and always otherworldly hype, nothing feeds this particular home town crowd like a witty retort to the press.  Inside the Beltway Bubble, pundits pondered over whether the quote might find it’s way to the podium at the White House briefing room.

Jokes aside, it’s a valid point.  And one the other Mormon looking to stick around DC might think about. Harper’s disdain for the reporter (if not his word choice) might work for politicians.  Remember the infamous 2008 interview where Katie Couric asked inane inquiries about Sarah Palin’s news consumption habits?  Palin did herself no favors trying to answer what were pretty dumb questions.

When done right, a snarky, off-the-cuff comeback is more powerful than answering a question “the right way.”  That reporter who wanted to know if Harper was going to crack open a cold one might have been put off by Harper’s flippant response, but it didn’t matter.  The rest of the world saw it, and liked it, and unless that reporter is friends with Cole Hamels there isn’t much he can do.  Harper’s message is out.

It’s doubtful that the communications firms in town are prepping an office for Communications Strategist Bryce Harper after his playing days are over – he may be a whale of a ballplayer, but his wisecrack was just a wisecrack.  Maybe there’s a second lesson there though: that if you have to overthink your response to a question, your answer will suffer.

Or as Yogi Berra put it, you can’t think and hit at the same time.

Interesting Reading: The Ballot Box Office

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This is a two-month-old article that’s worth the read: Sean B. Hood, one of the screenwriters for last summer’s Conan the Barbarian, talks pretty candidly about what it’s like to watch a movie you’ve worked on flop at the box office.  Specifically, Hood compares it to working on a political race:

The Friday night of the release is like the Tuesday night of an election. “Exit polls”are taken of people leaving the theater, and estimated box office numbers start leaking out in the afternoon, like early ballot returns. You are glued to your computer, clicking wildly over websites, chatting nonstop with peers, and calling anyone and everyone to find out what they’ve heard. Have any numbers come back yet? That’s when your stomach starts to drop.

Check out the full post here.

Careful what you wish for…

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Politico points out today how the Obama 2012 machine has been thrilled with Rick Perry’s attacks on Mitt Romney, occasionally piling on to wound the erstwhile Massachusetts governor.  The reasoning goes that Perry (or anyone else from the GOP field) would be easier for the President to beat in the general election.

That may sound familiar.  In 2008, with their own nomination pretty much decided, some Republicans went to the polls in late primary states intending to affect the Democratic ballot.  In Texas, a vote for then-candidate Obama was a way to put the final nail in the coffin for the Clinton Era.  In Virginia, some Republicans insisted on voting for Obama to encourage the Democrats to nominate an inexperienced, first-term Senator as their nominee.

Whether as part of an “Anybody But Hillary” movement or whether they believed that Obama was the weaker candidate, would those Republicans vote the same way if they could go for a spin in Doc Brown’s DeLorean?   If they had a hot tub time machine, do you think the 2007 Patriots would have rooted a bit harder for the talented-on-paper Packers or the Cowboys to come out of the NFC for Superbowl 42?

Similarly, Team Obama may think Rick Perry, with his low poll numbers and early campaign missteps, would be a more attractive opponent in November 2012.  It certainly looks like that match up would favor the President prohibitively – and the President looks good up against any of the other GOP hopefuls, too.  It isn’t even November of 2011 yet, though – and a year is a long time.

The Googlization of Government

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Rep. Tim Huelskamp has been banging the drum on a proposed Health and Human Services rule that would mandate insurance companies share patient data with the federal government.  The purpose of the program ostensibly noble – the administration wants to collect as much data on health care as possible to determine.  But Huelkamp correctly notes that data is not always secure.  Companies and governments lose personal data on customers and citizens periodically.

In a related story, Google revealed that the US government asks the search company for more user data than any other government on the planet.  In fact, there were more requests for Google data than there were wiretaps on phones last year.

While Google may look skeptically on the government requests for information, the HHS program sounds like something out of Google labs – aggregating data about users of the health care system to ensure better future outcomes.  Just as Google has multiple touch points where it meets its users (search, YouTube, Android, Gmail, etc.), so does the government.  What if they started connecting the dots?  We send tax returns in each year, so the IRS knows how much we make, where we live, whether we own or rent, what we do for a living.  On a state level, readily available voter registration data tells them how often we vote and may even give them a good idea how we would vote, based on primary voting history.  That doesn’t even get into people who participate in federal programs for medical help, student loans, social security, or public assistance.  And it doesn’t take into account the possibility of government looking elsewhere for data.  Today it’s Google, but a host of other companies are out there looking at what you but, what magazines you subscribe to, how often you gas up your car, and what TV shows you watch.

Eventually, other government agencies could follow the same model as HHS, expanding their data points on each citizen.  That’s when it could get really interesting, especially if some enterprising staffer in some agency realizes all the information that’s pouring in.  Imagine if the roadblocks between executive agencies came down, all the data was in one big pile?  The administration could be an even more voracious consumer of data, and use if to create detailed analyses of national trends, attitudes, and issues.  Here’s a video representation of how this might look:

A campaign or company wouldn’t use available data to recruit new customers or make life better for existing ones.  When I go to Amazon or Best Buy’s website, they look at what I’ve bought in the past and make recommendations; it’s simply good business.  An executive agency, which is supposed to strive for efficiency, would pick up on this trend as a way to streamline government services.  The difference, though, is that if you’re creeped out, you can always shop somewhere else.

 

 

Presidential Power Rankings: 10.22.2011

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Every major professional sport except college football has an entire system to determine the best team. That doesn’t stop those covering each sport from postulating who the best team is on a week-to-week basis. Since the Presidential race has become an odd mix of reality television, sports, and horse racing, why not do the same?

Here’s what my white board looks like this week:

1. Barack Obama. Dean Wormer: Dead! Niedermeyer: Dead! Gaddafi: Dead! The President looked Presidential this week, and American Crossroads polling indicated his “tax the rich” rhetoric has a chance to resonate.

2. Mitt Romney. The sheen of inevitability was nicked in the last debate, but Romney continues to line up endorsements.

3. Rick Perry. The signs of life Perry showed in the Nevada debate should re-energize supporters, donors, and the rest of the campaign infrastructure for a short time. His points on domestic energy development, which he has been bringing up in debates consistently, give him a positive issue to run on that no other serious candidate is talking about.

4. Herman Cain. Cain is driving the Republican discussion with his 9-9-9 plan. The row over his pro-life beliefs won’t be a deal-breaker because there is no meat to it, but may be indicative of a more serious problem with message discipline. His ability to do the blocking and tackling it takes to build an election-winning organization is still suspect. Still the front-runner for the Vice President slot on the GOP ticket.

5. Ron Paul. Paul is still the life of the party. The troop withdrawal in Iraq will give him another chance to tell the rest of the party he told them so.

6. Michelle Bachmann. Her staff in New Hampshire wasn’t all that important, anyway. Iowa is Bachmann’s make-or-break playing field.

7. Chris Christie. Despite denials and endorsements to the contrary, still more likely to be President in 2013 than the last two people on this list. On the outside chance that Romney and Perry wind up in a brokered convention stalemate in August 2012, Christie looks like an obvious choice to unite the party. Sure, it’s a long shot, but still more likely than…

8. Rick Santorum. Santorum looked shrill and childish going after Romney in the Nevada debate, but he made his points. He could wind up as the kamikaze of the debate season.

9. John Huntsman. Still waiting for his mojo. His candidacy is tough to define, though his shots at Herman Cain in the previous debate were witty and clever.

Romney’s online ads and offline issues

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Last week, Mashable and David Weigel both noted that Mitt Romney has been investing in web ads, but that he has yet to run an actual TV commercial in the early primary states (or any other states, obviously).  Mashable chalks it up to a money-saving move that has the added benefit of appealing to young voters:

It’s possible the candidates are waiting to amass more funds to pay for more-expensive airtime. Or, they could be engaged in an informal standoff for who will try to rule the airwaves.

On the other hand, web ads are a smart move. They are relatively cheaper to make and broadcast and naturally appeal to younger, web-savvy voters — traditionally a weak spot for Republicans.

After the criticism he took in last night’s debate, though, a web-focused strategy makes perfect sense for Mitt Romney.  The video which spawned last week’s round of coverage chided the Obama Administration on trade and intellectual property rights, which isn’t exactly a front-page-news-making issue.  It does, however, speak to some key audiences.  It’s one thing to say you appeal to philosophical conservatives who view government as an instrument to protect citizens’ rights and voters whose views align with business and commerce; but Romney’s ad deals brings up a niche issue that demonstrates an understanding of these voters’ motivations and concerns.

These are also the types of voters who are probably still deciding whether or not a Romney Presidency would be better enough than an Obama Presidency to be excited about a Romney candidacy.  Despite the fireworks of last night’s debate and this morning’s conventional wisdom that the other candidates put him on the defensive, Romney still carries the mantle of inevitability as the 2012 Republican nominee.  He still has plenty of people to convince to avoid being an also-ran in the same category as former inevitable nominees Bob Dole and John McCain.  He won’t be able to explain away his Massachusetts health plan, but online video gives him a medium to show conservatives he understands other issues.