When I was 17 years old, if I had told my grandmother Susie that someday I would read about a kid my age who knocked up the daughter of a woman governor, then two days later watched the kid and his girl and the governor hugging and shaking the hand of a candidate for President of the United States, Susie would have said, "You're crazy as a loon, boy."
Well, these are loon-crazy times, Suze. Watching TV this week has not been like watching a soap opera, it IS a soap opera. Republican political managers, most famously Karl Rove, are gifted media producers. As a media professional myself, I can't help but admire their work, even as it scares hell out of me. Their work of the last week has been frighteningly inspired, and also lucky.
Media producers use a set of known values to obtain a reaction from an audience. In fact the values taken together are known as a “reaction package.” Among the values are conflict, progress, disaster, prominence, proximity, human interest, novelty, sex, and sensationalism. All of these values are present to some carefully calibrated degree in every media product you see. Ninety-nine percent of Americans are completely unaware of these values at work, and their media illiteracy in the 21st century has become a real danger.
The Republican team's assignment this time: produce a media product for the Republican National Convention that is guaranteed to make news (a powerful way to maximize the product’s profit); to create proximity (an abiding level of warmth and belonging among the conventioneers and the Republican Party); to create conflict between adversaries and the Republicans; to maximize that conflict and turn it on the adversaries; and to manipulate emotions among Republicans everywhere.
How would I do it? The same way any media professional would do it. My convention follows the Democratic convention, with its charismatic star Barack Obama, and as that convention nears, I learn details that I incorporate into my planning. The speech in an outdoor stadium with an audience of 80,000 is a difficult act to top. I am going to need something to snatch away that image quickly, the next day, if possible. I will want John McCain to announce his vice-presidential candidate on the Friday after the Democratic convention ends.
How can the power of that announcement be maximized? Prominence, possibly. Conflict would be nice; people are drawn to conflict, which is why soap operas are successful. Of course sex always sells. Sensationalism could trump the Democratic sensationalism. And then novelty. Something so rare and made such big news that it would snatch away the media from the Democrats, and keep them away indefinitely. A surprise candidate . . . Obama kept people guessing, but then Biden certainly didn’t come as a surprise. What I need is a surprise candidate whom nobody knows.
A nobody lets me control change of the status quo. I want the biggest change possible, which will put me in control of the media. A nobody will generate a frenzy of media coverage, which works for me two ways. It creates curiosity and excitement, creates prominence for the nobody, and after a couple of days of media hounding, we’ll attack the media for its “feeding frenzy,” and the entire constituency will feel good.
Let's see: conflict, sex, sensationalism, novelty, a nobody who will make news. And there sat Sarah Palin. It must have felt like finding Marilyn Monroe sitting on the stool at Schrafft's. It was close; deadlines are hell in the media business, and it came down to the final days. McCain wanted Joe Lieberman, but the poor guy was still thinking that an election was about governing. Media professionals see this all the time. It was a media professional in the 1960s who told the National Football League owners, "Guys, you're not in the football business, you're in the television business." A media pro had to pull McCain aside and explain to him that he wasn't in the governing business, he was in the winning business.
And so "Hockey Mom" went on the air, and it could not have been more successful: 10s for conflict, sex, sensationalism, novelty, proximity, fury at the media hellhounds, and sexism as a torch to stick in the face of any critic.
It's crazy, Susie. Real life isn't a soap opera. Millions of people find themselves troubled by the looniness, in part because they don't understand this has been a media production. But the story isn't over yet. In my profession, I see over and over how fragile novelty is. When the novelty wears off, and there's nothing to talk about but Palin's qualifications, who will she be then? There's an interesting irony lurking in the wings. This week an email is circulating, generated by an Alaska woman who has known Palin since 1992. Reading her take on Palin's governing and management style is startling. If you read the information not knowing who it was about, you could swear it was George W. Bush.
John McCain has done everything possible to separate himself from George Bush. What if he wakes up in October and finds he is joined to George Bush at the ticket? The joke will be on him. What's the difference between George Bush and Sarah Palin? Lipstick.
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