Category: media

A Matter of Trust

~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

The catchy headline is that more people trust a guy who talked to an empty chair than the President of the United States, but that’s the Reader’s Digest account of the Reader’s Digest poll on the celebrities we trust the most.

Consider the top five: Tom Hanks, Sandra Bullock, Denzel Washington, Meryl Streep, and Maya Angelou.  This poll is probably fun to report on, but did the respondents really give it that much thought?

If Hanks knocks on your door at 11:00 p.m. dressed in drag and imploring you to help him move Peter Scoleri’s lifeless corpse,  that trust would likely wear off pretty quick.

Calling these people trustworthy is a version of the word association game.  It’s a knee-jerk reaction, and not necessarily rational.  It’s fleeting, but it helps contextualize what we read or ear about them – even the bad stuff – so long as we are distant from it.

On the other hand, 45% seems low for a sitting President, and it seems like a number that could get beaten down – maybe with a steady drumbeat of stories about Benghazi.  Not a deluge of Republican arm-waving and histrionics, but a steady drip of stories about inconsistencies in testimony or incompetencies in strategy will keep the idea alive that the President is not 100% forthcoming.  The reverberations could extend into his legislative agenda and clip his wings as he tries to foist Speaker Pelosi back onto the country.

Benghazi probably won’t drive him from office, but as long as the story has legs it will whittle away the President’s shrinking cache of trust.

J.C. Penney: Remembering The Golden Rule?

~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

After a year and a half of missteps, J.C. Penney may have gotten something right with their new commercial:

Remembering the Golden Rule

Here’s a fun fact: the first store opened by the J.C. Penney company was called The Golden Rule.  The idea was to run a business where customers were treated fair and square.  This could have been a running theme over the past year, as the new “JCP” sought to push low price points.  The disastrous mis-marketing of the last year instead tried to divorce JCP from any connection of the pre-2012.

That was a mistake.  This ad, on the other hand, mixes old images of J.C. Penney stores with modern Instagram-ish clips of young customers.  The final image of the commercial includes the company’s full name, J.C. Penney, rather than the JCP square logo that had punctuated previous ads.

The design is still minimalist, but there is no doubt that the commercial embraces J.C. Penney’s past.

Owning the Mistake

Frank apology ads are usually the domain of politicians.  This ad makes as frank an admission as a company can in a television spot.  Most of J.C. Penney’s failure came from trying to dictate to consumers how to shop; this level of honesty sends a message that the company understands why customers left and won’t insult their intelligence by  pretending like the last year and a half didn’t happen.

Will It Last?

It’s easier to make a good commercial than to save a business that has alienated many customers.  The last 18 months showed that customers do not hold blind allegiances to their department stores, and that their shopping habits are not set in stone.

Those customers might come back to J.C. Penney, but there real challenges remain for a department store still stuck between the discount prices of Target and Wal-Mart and the loftier tags of Nordstrom’s and Macy’s.  Johnson may have been a bad CEO for the company, but there were plenty of others who didn’t know how to turn the rudder, either.

At least they should have an idea about what doesn’t work.

Overreacting to Jason Collins

~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

If you follow sports this week – in particular the NBA – you may have heard in passing that Jason Collins came out.

In the current cultural environment, Collins’s admission is big but not Earth-shattering.  There haven’t been any active openly gay athletes before – and there might not be now, since Collins is a free agent – but most people probably assumed the operative word there was “openly.”  (To hear the enlightened, cosmopolitan Bostonians tell it, the Yankees have fielded a team of 25 fornicating homosexuals each year since 1946.  So brave.)

Now begins the overreaction.

From the right, Peter Roff imagines a double standard, opining that Tim Tebow was punished because of his overt Christian faith, while Collins’s sexual preference is lauded by the media.

Said Roff: “When he arrived at the Meadowlands he was treated more like a circus freak than the guy who helped Denver make the playoffs the previous year and might just be the thing to get the Jets offense in line.”

It’s true, and it’s because Tebow is a circus freak.  Denver’s push to the second round of the 2011 playoffs had as much to do with luck as anything else.  At this point in his career, Tebow can’t throw the ball with enough strength and accuracy to be a viable NFL quarterback, which is why he spent all his time on the bench last year.

(Heck, Ray Lewis talks about God all the time, and the media overlooks a lot of negatives about him.  Two in particular come to mind.)

On the other side – and even worse – is MoveOn.org, which is apparently still around.  The erstwhile leading organization of the American left is demanding a suspension of ESPN’s Chris Broussard over his reaction to Collins’s announcement.  (Well, at least they are demanding it as much as one can demand anything with an online petition.)

MoveOn either didn’t listen to or didn’t care what Broussard actually said.  The short version: Broussard doesn’t condone sex outside of traditional marriage, doesn’t live his life that way, but doesn’t judge others who do.  It’s a calm, reasoned explanation that could be a good start to civil discourse.

Or, it could be a flash point for some bottom feeding organization to glom onto a much-discussed topic, bump up their search results, raise some money, and be marginally relevant.

Mel Kiper for Pandora?

~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

Contextual advertising is a good thing.  The NFL Draft is the biggest sports story going on, so the ads Pandora placed on ESPN encouraging husbands to “pick the right gift” is pretty clever.  (And let’s be honest – this is definitely about targeting a guy buying for his wife or baby mama and staying out of the dog house.  There’s nothing wrong with that.)

But the image of Mel Kiper peeking from the bottom?  That’s unnecessary… and maybe a little creepy.

Kiper Ad

If nothing changes, everything will stay like this!

~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

Today, Politico opines that immigration reform will give Democrats a big edge in future elections:

The immigration proposal pending in Congress would transform the nation’s political landscape for a generation or more — pumping as many as 11 million new Hispanic voters into the electorate a decade from now in ways that, if current trends hold, would produce an electoral bonanza for Democrats and cripple Republican prospects in many states they now win easily.

Even Politico admits that this type of projection is “speculative” given that the newly eligible voters wouldn’t be casting President ballots until 2020 or 2028.  It doesn’t keep them from speculating, though.

This sounds similar to the countless pundits on the right who have been wringing their hands for the last six months over the Great Question of What Went Wrong in 2012.  How, they ask desperately, are we ever to win again?  We don’t speak to minority groups!  We don’t use Big Data!  Our candidates are bad!  Our messages are out of touch!  Look at all the support for President Obama in 2012!

Republicans who feel bad about this should review the last several candidates for President produced by the Democratic party before they struck gold with Obama:

  • John Kerry, an aristocrat out of Massachusetts who couldn’t beat a vulnerable sitting President.
  • Al Gore.
  • Bill Clinton, who was likable enough to score a second term but not ideological enough to move the ball for liberalism.
  • Michael Dukakis.
  • Walter Mondale.
  • Jimmy Carter.
  • George McGovern, an unabashed liberal who was thoroughly crushed.
  • Hubert H. Humphrey.
  • Lyndon Johnson, whose most liberal policies didn’t come out until he one re-election on the coattails of John F. Kennedy’s legacy.
  • JFK, a charismatic and media-friendly candidate who was able to ignite the electorate and win wide popular support.

If you’re scoring at home, that’s 48 years between exciting Democratic candidates.  If you want to find another Democratic candidate who helped the party ideologically, you have to go back to Franklin Roosevelt.

You could make a similar list for Republicans, of course.  The point is, political environments are fleeting and not static.  In eight years, GOP messaging could be very different, and the voices delivering those messages will be different, too – while left-leaning activists may be quoting the Great and Powerful Barack Obama the way today’s conservatives wistfully remember Ronald Reagan.

 

 

The Rutgers Mess: 1,000 words x 24 frames per second

~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

Rutgers fired their abusive basketball coach for, as Deadspin notes, being a public embarrassment rather than a private one.

The cynics are right on this one: there’s no doubt that Mike Rice’s firing came only because the video of him verbally and physically intimidating his players was on ESPN.  But that does up the ante for the scandal.  Describing what Rice did to his players might be damning, but having a clickable, watchable, shareable video takes it to another level.

Any players Rice would have recruited in the future would have seen that video, and it would have been the first question any parent asked during those all-important living room conversations with a prospective coach.  Rutgers is already in a tough media market, would Rice have managed to be a darling of WFAN?

As another Rutgers alum knows well, video tells a story like no other medium can.  In this case, it blew up what Rutgers had clearly hoped would be a private affair.

The NYT knows not what they do

~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment


530085_178226855660398_337582209_nThe New York Times is catching flack for last weekend’s coverage of the Catholic Church’s Easter Mass.  The passage at issue:

Easter is the celebration of the resurrection into heaven of Jesus, three days after he was crucified, the premise for the Christian belief in an everlasting life. 

The Times caught the mistake later and issued a correction, noting that Easter celebrates Jesus rising from the tomb but not his ascension into heaven.  Newsbusters calls the error “mortifying,” but it’s more revealing about the paper itself.

If you don’t understand the faith, it’s a matter of semantics.  Jesus came back after being crucified, and went to heaven – so being “resurrected into heaven” may seem like an accurate shorthand description to the reporter and copy editors responsible for the gaffe.  Sure, it’s wrong, but understandable for the ill-informed on the topic.

It’s probably not a good idea to get your religious information from the New York Times, anyway.  You don’t get your news at church, after all.

CPAC is bigger than ever – and largely irrelevant

~ Jim Eltringham ~ 1 Comment

Picture it: Arlington, Va., 2002.   It’s my first CPAC, and it’s pretty much the same as most of the CPAC’s before it, based on what I could gather.  There’s a slate of speakers and panel discussions, but I spend most of my time in exhibit hall, working the table for my then-employer, the Leadership Institute.  Most of the attendees are college students, and a fair amount from my territory in the Northeast, so I see plenty of people I know and do business with.  My colleagues at LI, who generally work with non-college students, grouse that CPAC is a waste of their time.

On Friday, I crashed CPAC.  There were slates of speakers and panels, but also breakout sessions, receptions in hotel suites for people pushing products, and a lot more adults in massive conference center which housed the conference.  (I know college students are technically adults, but you know what I mean.)  The speeches, once the fodder for CSPAN’s early morning programming, are now covered live and the political press has been paying astute attention.

The conference which was once a trade association for the conservative movement has grown into… well, pretty much the same thing with more people and more media coverage.

It’s become more notorious in recent years for who isn’t there than for who is, and liberal blogger-activists show up with their pocket cameras trying to be the next Twitter star.  Republican consultants – including both establishment Republican consultants and the Republican consultants who bash establishment Republican consultants – lurk in the wings trying to drum up business.  (That was my role on Friday.)  Rarely is anything of substance said.

This may sound like a criticism of CPAC, but it sure isn’t.  Political activists of any stripe care about something that very few other people really care about.  That’s why online communities like Facebook and Twitter were so readily adopted by politicos.  There’s a real value in seeing and meeting people face-to-face who are mostly like minded and exchanging ideas.  There’s a value in hearing rah-rah speeches about your cause that reaffirm your commitment, especially since most not-political folks will probably think you ought to be committed.

There weren’t major policy discussions.  There was a fair amount of introspection on campaign tactics, but nothing groundbreaking that hasn’t been said before.  Some people in the audiences or walking around exhibit hall probably said stupid or silly things, but the people up on stage kept it pretty vanilla.  It’s a great and fun networking opportunity if you are in center-right politics, but precious little more than that.

Let’s not bill CPAC as a ComiCon for the conservative movement, which is what most media outlets seem to want.  The attention paid to the event doesn’t merit its importance.  Those who make their food money covering politics ought to know that.

How the GOP won yesterday (and why Chris Cillizza is wrong)

~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

filibusterChris Cillizza argues that Sen. Rand Paul’s Freebird routine on the Senate floor last night was not a slam dunk win for Republicans.  (Lindsay Graham and John McCain, both apparently still Senators, agree.)  Cillizza’s points are mostly valid, but also mostly incorrect.

Point 1: Obama is now the tough on terror guy.

The basic point is wrong; President Obama became the tough on terror guy when Seal Team 6 successfully carried out his order to put a bullet between Osama bin Laden’s eyes.  But setting that aside, Cillizza suggests that opposing drone strikes could put Republicans in the same camp as anti-war liberals were about 10 years ago.

Democrats were perceived as weak on terror not just because they opposed the Bush wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, but because they didn’t speak out one way or another for several years.  In 2003 everyone was a hawk except for Howard Dean; Hillary Clinton’s early support of the war was one issue that Barack Obama would use to pry away support during the 2008 primaries.

There’s another side to it, too: If you are going to oppose the policies of the War on Terror as a government official, you can hold press conferences, ask pointed questions at committee hearings, speak out at in-district town meetings, or engage in a host of other tactics that involve you talking.  While a sitting President and his administration can talk about their policies while killing terrorists, a sitting Senator can basically just talk.  So if talking is your only weapon, it has to be some pretty dramatic talking or you seem wimpy by default.  A filibuster works because it is definitely not the same as pointed hearing questions or town meeting blather.

Finally, while Cillizza correctly notes that drone are popular, they are popular because they Americans out of harms way.  There’s some space for moral high ground in saying those drones should not be aimed at Americans.

A definitive and unique stand like Paul’s is not a wishy-washy or knee-jerk opposition to the concept of war, but a strong and considered statement against a policy that infringes on civil liberties.

Point 2: Republicans are (still) afraid of the primary electorate.

After starting out on his own, Paul had some friends join him on the floor – including Republicans up for reelection in 2012 and a couple of 2016 Presidential contenders.  Was this a matter of pandering to tea partiers?

It’s hard to call it pandering when most of the people who joined Paul – such as Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, and Mike Lee – were elected on the wave of conservative activism that has marked Republican primaries of the last three years.  Primary voters have favored candidates who stood up for individual rights and limited government.  Is it a big surprise that these people oppose a government killing its own citizens without a trial?

The continued fundamental misunderstanding of so-called “tea party conservatives” is amazing, especially from political press that ought to know better.  Voters of any stripe want strong leaders – people who can stand up for strongly-held values without sounding crazy.

Point 3: It’s the economy, stupid.

First off, can we retire this now 21-year-old phrase?

Second, this quote makes this point a bit flawed:

And, in case you forgot, the [Republican] party still lacks a big-picture vision on the way forward regarding the country’s debt and spending issues that goes beyond simply saying: “No new taxes”.

That’s funny, because Paul Ryan’s 99-page Path to Prosperity isn’t just the words “no new taxes” written over and over like the manuscript in The Shining.  Also, terms like “reducing spending” and “entitlement reform” have been bandied about by Republicans.  Conversely, Democrat solutions seem to hinge on “new taxes.”

Point 4: DC process = not good.

That’s true – but a filibuster is hardly routine DC process.  Voting against cloture is a process.  Supporting a poison pill amendment is process.  But some dude talking for 13 hours to kill time and eating a Kit Kat bar?  It’s probably not the most interesting thing in the world, but it sure isn’t ordinary.  Jimmy Stewart’s filibuster was the climax of Mr. Smith Goes To Washington (just as it was in Mel Gibson’s remake).

It was a public, and coherent, display of a small government school of conservatism that helped the Republicans take the House in 2010 and will be the bedrock of future success.  It won’t win him the Presidential nomination in 2016, nor will it solve all the Republican party’s electoral problems of the 2012 cycle.  But Paul’s rant might help the party start to find it’s voice again – which is a big and important step.

Why do I hate Michelle Malkin’s dancing so much?

~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

After Michelle Obama’s homage to suburban Mom dances on Jimmy Fallon on Friday night, Michelle Malkin responded with this on Sunday.  You don’t have to watch it, because for the most part it’s painful:

Malkin’s response time is great perfect – her video was up before the original had a chance at Monday morning virality (which was a lock because it was actually kind of funny).  That’s good, but it’s where the good stops; Malkin’s video is kind of lame.

[Note: It’s still better than my video, which is linked here.  Oh, that’s right, I didn’t make a video.  Duly noted.  Back to the cheap shots…]

The problem largely stems from the word “liberal” in Malkin’s title.  While factually accurate, it raises the immediate flag that this is speaking only to a political audience, the kind that will descend on the National Harbor for CPAC in just a few weeks.  There’s nothing wrong with rallying the troops, but Malkin can probably do better.

“Better” might be a mock video response that substitutes the First Lady for the President himself, bringing Michelle Obama’s decidedly non-political and self-deprecating bit into contrast with her hyper-political, self-aggrandizing husband.  It would definitely drop the political labels, focusing more on DC versus regular voters, rather than conservatives versus liberals.  And it would have to emphasize humor more than scoring week debate points, because in videos like this funny is most important.

Malkin tallied over 65,000 views at press time.  That’s impressive, but if her audience wasn’t so narrow, she might have tripled that.  There’s nothing wrong with rallying the troops, but real advancement of center-right ideas isn’t going to come from overtly political videos that preach to the choir.

[Still better than my video.]