Brand cameos of the day, from NYT front-page story on “Palin Dudes”:
“I feel like I’m at home,” [Sarah] Palin said, looking out at a boisterous crowd of about 6,000. “I see the Carhartts and the steel-toed boots.”
And further down:
Yes, some men come to ogle the candidate, too. “She’s beautiful,” said a man wearing a John Deere T-shirt in Weirs Beach. “I came here to look at her,” he said, and his admiration for Ms. Palin’s appearance became more and more animated. Sheepish over his ogling, he declined to give his real name (“Just call me ‘John Deere’ ”).
Earlier Murketing post on consumption and political identity here. Consumed on what Palin rocks — Kazuo Kawasaki 704s — here.
POLITICAL SPECTACLES
How Sarah Palin’s glasses fit into electoral aesthetics
Speaking of politics, Consumed this week — in anticipation of the vice presidential debate — is about Sara Palin’s specs: In addition to pondering what it is that’s made people buy Kazuo Kawasaki 704 frames just like the candidate’s, the column puts her apparent style-setting in the context of electoral aesthetics, past and present. Also: Kawasaki’s U.S. distributor suggests a more fashion-forward alternative for Joe Biden.
Read it in the September 28, 2008 issue of The New York Times Magazine, or here.
Consumed archive is here, and FAQ is here. The Times’ Consumed RSS feed is here. Consumed Facebook page is here.
To make a point about Consumed that you think readers of The Times Magazine would be interested in: “Letters should be addressed to Letters to the Editor, Magazine, The New York Times, 620 Eighth Avenue, 6th Floor, New York, N.Y. 10018. The e-mail address is magazine@nytimes.com. All letters should include the writer’s name, address and daytime telephone number. We are unable to acknowledge or return unpublished letters. Letters may be edited for length and clarity.”
What’s the difference between rhetoric and cognitive dissonance?
Both can result in points of view that are so biased that they have no connection to reality. But one involves communicative sleight of hand to mislead the reader/listener, while the other involves a deeper form of dishonesty: Dishonesty with the self.
Murketing.com has no interest whatsoever in influencing your vote. But I think this assessment of last night’s presidential debate offers examples of both rhetoric and congnitive dissonance.
It comes from the Web site of the Weekly Standard, a site I read regularly. It begins with an excellent example of rhetoric: Read more
Following up on this earlier post on “source amnesia,” and the tendency for political (and other) mistruths to “stick”: I guess it’s no surprise the topic is getting attention as the current political season reaches ever-more-absurd levels of frenzy. Braulio sends this item from Very Short List:
Earlier this year, political scientists at Duke and Georgia State described the Bush administration’s claims about Iraqi WMDs to a group of adults, then gave those same people a convincing explanation that Iraq did not, in fact, have a WMD program in the works. How did the people react? Liberals became even more convinced that Iraq had no nuclear or chemical weapons; conservatives became even more certain that it did, with 64 percent of them insisting that Saddam was hiding the evidence.
Basically a classic instance of cognitive dissonance, no? (Subject comes up in Buying In, for whatever that’s worth.)
And today I see Freakonomics links to this Washington Post column on the same subject, mentioning the Duke experiment and others. In one, Yale political science prof John Bullock showed subjects the transcript of a NARAL ad that claimed John Roberts supported “violent fringe groups and a convicted clinic bomber.”
Bullock then showed volunteers a refutation of the ad by abortion-rights supporters. He also told the volunteers that the advocacy group had withdrawn the ad. Although 56 percent of Democrats had originally disapproved of Roberts before hearing the misinformation, 80 percent of Democrats disapproved of the Supreme Court nominee afterward. Upon hearing the refutation, Democratic disapproval of Roberts dropped only to 72 percent.
Republican disapproval of Roberts rose after hearing the misinformation but vanished upon hearing the correct information. The damaging charge, in other words, continued to have an effect even after it was debunked among precisely those people predisposed to buy the bad information in the first place.
The upshot of this and other experiments, The Post’s Shankar Vedantam writes, is that “refutations can strengthen misinformation.” And although I happen to have used an example showing this among Democrats, Vedantam says the tendency is “especially” true “among conservatives.”
Q: Which presidential campaign has “has sent at least one dozen researchers and lawyers to Alaska to pore over Palin’s background,” according to the AP?
A: McCain’s!
Note: Murketing.com is nonpartisan. It’s in my contract.
Via: Chris Orr at The Plank.
I have no further information. Via Hipster Runoff.
Some time back PSFK linked to this essay, The Participatory Decepticon, which I’ve only now gotten around to reading. Basically, Jamais Cascio muses on the possibilities that arise from not just ubiquitous video technology — but also increasingly ubiquitous video-manipulation technology: “The crafting of political videos documenting candidate insults and errors that never happened.”
There are more than enough audio recordings out there of most major political candidates to allow political pranksters/”dirty tricksters” to make that candidate say just about anything; the cameraphone and flash video media offer insufficient clarity to be able to see if a candidate’s mouth is truly saying the words he or she seems to be saying.
Imagine a faked “Macaca Moment,” for instance.
“Such a deception wouldn’t stand for very long,” Cascio writes, “but would almost certainly last long enough set off a wave of furious blog posts and mainstream media attention.”
This reminded me of an NYT op-ed piece not so long ago titled “Your Brain Lies to You,” on the subject of “source amnesia,” and why it is that 10 percent of Americans somehow still believe that Barack Obama is Muslim. “Even when a lie is presented with a disclaimer,” the authors write, “people often later remember it as true.”
A false statement from a noncredible source that is at first not believed can gain credibility during the months it takes to reprocess memories from short-term hippocampal storage to longer-term cortical storage. As the source is forgotten, the message and its implications gain strength. This could explain why, during the 2004 presidential campaign, it took some weeks for the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth campaign against Senator John Kerry to have an effect on his standing in the polls.
Even if they do not understand the neuroscience behind source amnesia, campaign strategists can exploit it to spread misinformation. They know that if their message is initially memorable, its impression will persist long after it is debunked. In repeating a falsehood, someone may back it up with an opening line like “I think I read somewhere” or even with a reference to a specific source.
In other words, if it does turn out that someone manages to get a phony video “out there,” debunking it might be more problematic that we’d assume.
And while I generally take a dim view of predictions, when I think about this one, it’s hard to imagine that it won’t happen before too long.
If you’ve somehow managed to miss the endlessly repeated conventional wisdom about “Obama as brand,” Ad Age has a recap, without a hint that anybody might question it — but with a new twist.
Neil “Millenials” Howe pops up to reiterate the assertion (noted here, and met with skepticism my Murketing readers) that he made in a recent Brandweek interview: Gen Y digs a big brand. And Obama is a big brand:
According to Mr. Howe, Gen Xers required niche marketing: “If too many people liked something, it wasn’t cool.” But mass brand experiences, from the iPod to Harry Potter, appeal strongly to millennials, who have been shown to be a more communal, pro-social generation than their predecessors.
While critics see Mr. Obama’s penchant for mass gatherings as arrogant, Mr. Howe finds it perfect for millennials: “They’re more civically connected, and they find strength in numbers.”
As we know, not everybody sees Obama as the antichrist. So here’s a more prObama bit of news following up on the subject of the candidate as muse (per April 13, 2008 Consumed):
The Obey blog announces Manifest Hope:
It’s a new Obama art contest for 2D and 3D art, from painting to photography to sculpture. The winners will be shown at the Manifest Hope Gallery online and in Denver during the Democratic convention alongside works from dozens of established and influential artists.
And, via this meditation in The Stranger on the Obama-as-muse phenomenon, I am now aware of a blog dedicated to the subject: The Obama Art Report. Worth a look.
Not sure if there’s any scripture linking the rapture to art, design, and stylish product, but if so — oh, never mind.
This Wall Street Journal article sums up the “controversy” over a McCain Web ad (on YouTube, here) that some say suggests Obama is not just aloof and full of himself and naive … he’s the antichrist! A highlight is expert commentary from Left Behind * co-author Tim LaHaye:
[He] said in an interview that he recognized allusions to his work in the ad but comparisons between Sen. Obama and the antichrist are incorrect.
“The antichrist isn’t going to be an American, so it can’t possibly be Obama. The Bible makes it clear he will be from an obscure place, like Romania.”
The story also notes that “suggestions that Sen. Obama is the antichrist have been circulating for months in Bible-study meetings” in some towns, and also that the ad’s imagery is suggestive in ways that will be obvious to anyone versed in what an expert calls “apocalyptic popular culture.”
I’m hoping that this draws a Paris Hilton-style response video from the actual antichrist.
UPDATE: Here is barackobamaantichrist.blogspot.com. “Hello. You have stumbled upon this site by searching ‘Barack Obama Antichrist’ which was in the back of your mind, you were curious if anyone else had thought about it, so you gave it a google. Welcome. You are not alone, explore the site.” Be sure to view the poll results. [Thx to extra-special adviser E for that.]
[If you’re not a big apocalyptic pop culture follower, Left Behind was discussed in the November 13, 2005 Consumed.]
“Barack In the Day,” the most amusing of many selections at DemocraticStuff.com. I’m not sure what it has to do with his actual candidacy, but as long as he’s a pop culture figure, why not recontextualize Obama as a sort of campy 70s TV figure? Via On The Ground Looking Up.
The WSJ weighs in today on a topic familiar to Murketing regulars, noting the Obama art of Shepard Fairey and others, the Obama stuff on Etsy, the Obama sneaker, and Obama-art backlash art.
Two bits in their piece worth noting:
It is far from clear that the value of the Obama works will hold up. Prices have fluctuated, driven by news and events throughout the campaign season. For example, prices for Obama-related items on eBay dipped in March during the controversy over the candidate’s pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, according to Ken Harman, a collector and art blogger.
That said, it still looks like a better financial bet than the anti-Obama art:
In Texas, Austin-based designer Baxter Orr, an Independent, created “Dope,” a parody of Mr. Fairey’s posters that makes sport of Mr. Obama’s cocaine use as a young man. The posters are still available for $30 on the artist’s Web site, and sales are slow. Mr. Orr says that buyers only want posters glorifying Mr. Obama. “If I [had] followed the herd and created pro-Obama posters,” says Mr. Orr. “I am certain I would have made more money.”
Since I’ve addressed links between political behavior and consumer behavior in the past (here and here) I may as well pass along this Salon piece about the Obama campaign’s data mining:
He’s got a decent estimate of your household income and whether you opened a credit card recently. He knows how many kids you’re likely to have and what you do for a living. He knows what magazines and catalogs you get and whether you’re more apt to get your news from cable TV, the local newspaper or online. And he knows what time of day you tend to get around to plowing through your in box and responding to messages.
That last bit — the time of day you check your email! — is a new one on me.
So I’m clawing my way back from a computer snafu that’s cost me a lot of time the last two days (and that may have cost me a few lost emails, just so you know).
But somehow I got sucked in this morning to spending half an hour watching Jimmy Carter’s “crisis of confidence” speech from 1979. It’s been getting some attention lately because of his comments about the energy crisis. But the whole thing is kind of fascinating — the passion of his tone is pretty startling, he seems flat-out pissed sometimes. (On the other hand, his fist-pumping is pretty ineffectual.)
Anyway, one little sound bite:
In a nation that was proud of hard work, strong families, close-knit communities, and our faith in God, too many of us now tend to worship self-indulgence and consumption. Human identity is no longer defined by what one does, but by what one owns. But we’ve discovered that owning things and consuming things does not satisfy our longing for meaning. We’ve learned that piling up material goods cannot fill the emptiness of lives which have no confidence or purpose.
Cut to: The 1980s!
Anyway, the energy stuff is interesting, not so much because of his specific policy proposals, but because of the force of his argument that it’s a real crisis, “a clear and present danger,” etc. He’s practically yelling at that point.
Quite a performance. But let’s face it, Americans didn’t want to be lectured in 1979, any more than they do today.
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