Diary of a mad dog

Sarah Elizabeth Cupp

Marketing paradigms of old were pretty straight forward. A Val-Pak coupon obviously is geared to generate business for the advertiser. The Tide commercial on TV builds and reinforces brand awareness: buy more soap. Vehicles for marketing are evolving thanks to this web-machine we call the internet, and I doubt that many cyber junkies give it a second thought that YouTube links and assorted cyber-based news clips are indeed geared to persuade and build traffic for our new non-manufacturing economy. If you have followed my random thoughts at this site you know I’m very much tuned-into political issues. I watch and read the news, and enjoy being fairly well informed. I stay in touch with a handful of political websites of all sorts – liberal, progressive, even conservative. Many of the news and political sites include lots of links to various video news clips, like therightscoop.com, which is essentially an index of video links related to the news of the day…campaigns, comments, interviews, scandals, and more. All the topics at “rightscoop” seemed to be cut from the same cloth so I wondered: who’s behind a website that indexes video clips and articles that espouse only the conservative “viewpoint”….as if being conservative means you have to believe in and/or agree with a particular set of opinions on a certain, specific subset of topics. Doesn’t that notion strike you as being a bit strange?

It does to me. While visiting the “rightscoop” site I noticed a plug for an “author” S.E. Cupp. I’ve seen her on Hannity’s TV show and always wondered why Hannity had her on as a guest (more than a few times) because none of her comments ever seemed all that remarkable – and figured she was on the show simply for eye-candy appeal as many folks may consider Sarah Elizabeth Cupp to be physically attractive. More than a few web monkeys and web developers identify her, and her images, as “hot”, but she says it disgusts her that some men look at her with lust. (Seriously.) Cupp’s website has a link to a CSPAN book reading “event” at the National Press Club, where the self-proclaimed Atheist proceeds to vocalize her very thin, shallow critique of the “main-stream” liberal media’s attack on Christianity. Not much is offered in the way of evidence or proof to the charge, and the whole premise of an atheist defending Christianity seems a bit absurd. Even CSPAN’s brief descriptive summary of the video clip say Ms. Cupp “tries to hold the liberal left and liberal media accountable for what she says is an assault on religion and the nation’s heritage.” Tries. Unconvincingly.

Media and culture critique is an industry all by itself. A radio or TV program like those hosted by Limbaugh, Levin or Hannity can profit very nicely with average ratings. The highest rated broadcast TV shows for the week of May 30, 2011 captured less than 10% of the viewers – which is quite typical for top-rated programs. In this case the leaders were the NBA finals, certainly not conservative or liberal talkshows or news programs. Leading cable TV shows capture 3.1% of the audience. Attract three people out of 100 and you’ll fulfill your “champagne wishes and caviar dreams”. Reruns of Judge Judy: 6.3%. Oprah rocked the world with 5.9%.

My point is, the ratings do not have to be huge for a show to be successful and very profitable. So, like any industry that generates profits there are bound to be others who want a piece of the action. It’s all about money. If you build it they will come. (Though the actual quote from the movie was “if you build it he will come”.) Say something provocative and audiences will tune in. The key is to build traffic – generate interest. That’s where your favorite blog comes in – they’ve become one of thousands of tiny points of light that lure viewers, that attempts to generate interest – to build an audience, which generates profits. As a viewer you become a pawn…a piece part in the equation that funds the political game.

Rinse and repeat.

Americans had jobs last year

Newspaper headline in cartoon reads: “nearly half don’t pay income tax”.  Anytime I’d hear that stat repeated on news shows I’d cringe.  Just doesn’t seem right, does it?  Then the other day there was an article in USA Today that went slightly deeper into the point than just a sound-bite.  Turns out there are lots of good reasons for that statistic and while the actual percent of citizens who do not pay taxes varies year-to-year, it’s been in that general range (+/- 10 pts) for decades.  The overall population has too big segments on both ends that factor into this equation: kids and seniors.  Children should be learning at home or in school (and not in sweat shops like in the far east where we keep shipping our manufacturing base).  Senior citizens should be enjoying life and hopefully good physical and mental health…not standing at a big-box store greeting customers.  So after those to big chunks of population are subtracted from the base, “only 45.4% of Americans had jobs last year — the lowest percentage of citizens working in 27 years, back to 1983 when only 40.4% of Americans were working,” says Bruce Walker of the New American magazine (http://www.thenewamerican.com/economy/commentary-mainmenu-43/7125-lies-damned-lies-and-unemployment-figures).

So, it seems to stand-to-reason if less than half of the country are working, less than half of us are paying income taxes.  Realizing that was one of those “duh” moments….thinking of decades of trivial news clips my brain had absorbed over time that built in this auto-cringe response.  “Waaaah – unfair!”  Maybe it was Walter Cronkite reading the evening news, or Roger Mudd, Eric Sevareid, Mike Wallace.  The source makes no difference – over time my head was conditioned to think this situation was totally unfair (especially since those were my prime income generating & taxation paying productive adult years).  Yet, it turns out that number is not substantially different today than it was 40-50 years ago.

Cut the theatrics. The budget is out of whack for a reason: 8-years of Bush/Cheney policies drove the country to the brink of disaster and only massive reinvestment by the Federal government was going to save the country from another great depression. Refresh your memory banks: in late 2008, early 2009 everyone was freaking out – everyone was worried, savings were being wiped out, housing values tanked and no one knew when we were going to hit “bottom”. Mr. Bush and his Treasury Secretary, Hank Paulson were scrambling…incoming President Obama was handed a complete financial mess to resolve. Even Mr. Boehner cried on the House floor pleading with Republicans to vote for TARP.

So now we flash forward a few years – and extreme the radical right-wing-nut conservatives and Tea Party act as if they have amnesia and have calculated that Americans will buy their brand of repackaged history – blaming Democrats for all that ails the world. Its balderdash. Simply put, George W. Bush squandered a budget surplus built during the Clinton administration. Nixon, Ford, Reagan, Carter, and G.H.W. Bush all had budget deficits. 1998-2000 was the first period in 40 years or more where the government did not spend more than it collected. Enter George W. Bush who spent like a drunken sailor – and his Republican Congress allowed it to happen. If we were to take all the cash Bush spent on two illegal wars, unfunded Medicare prescription drug plan, and unfunded tax cuts for rich and wealthy – and apply those dollars to the deficit, and subtract dollars President Obama had to invest in the stimulus package (to save the country’s bacon) and we’d likely have a no budget deficit and we’d be paying down the national debt. You can scream all you want at the progressives, calling the union workers Thugs and blaming the Democratic Congress for the mess we’re in. But the facts don’t agree. The deficit we face today is the responsibility of George W. Bush, and the GOP, and citizens need to stop paying attention to the radical, extreme right-wing nuts who are systematically ruining America. Consider the chart below.

Admittedly with the Baby Boomer generation approaching retirement age, the current medical costs associated to Medicare plan will continue to mount. My analysis above is not meant to say we don’t have problems – or that the national debt is not a major issue. I’m just saying: do we pay attention to the party who got us into this mess, or the party who have, thus far, proven to be not only more interested in solutions, but also have demonstrated a track record of success.