Beer or Ballots Tomorrow - Poet Willie Yeats Gives His Answer

ritehook · 11-03-08, 12:00 PM

I sometimes will clip print articles - usually on financial matters - but rarely save them much past a year.

Here's an extract from a piece that appeared in Penthouse Magazine almost 30 years ago, which I saved. It's titled "The Vote Business," and is about political huckster Hal Evry. (Who I think later went on to write a book, The Selling of the President, something like that)

In the Penthouse article, Evry declalres that selling a politician running for office is the same as selling any other product.

You do market research, to see how voters in each district have voted in the past. You do polls to see what concerns them. Then, you market your product (candidate) to appeal to their biases.

"It's just another marketing job," he told Penhouse. "We pinpoint the people with whom we're concerned --- and those are the voters who will choose between the candidates. I'm not interested in anyone else."

Evry futher explained that every single thing, with zero exceptions, that a candidate does during a campaign is contrived.

He once managed the campaign of Ivy Baker Priest for treasurer of California. He told her to go to the Sacramento River and, on Washington's birthday, try to throw a silver dollar across it.

"That's undiginifed," the lady replied.

He insisted she do it, she agreed, and he alerted the press. They all came. When the dollars only travelled a few yards and fell into the water, he had her say: "See, a dollar doesn't go as far today as it used to."

The press covered this piece of showbiz and it made every mjaor media outlet in the land.

A winning slogan is important. He once handled the campaign for a guy in a local election. He kept his inarticulate candidate totally out of sight, and simply plastered the area with billboards saying:

THREE CHEERS FOR PAT MILLIGAN

That was it. And Milligan won big.

Evry's people went out then to interview his voters. One said:
"We thought he'd already won [because of the billboard] so we went ahead and voted from him."

Other voters said: "It sounded so American."

And others: "We figured he was the best man. That was why he was being given three cheers."

So much for "the collective wisdon of the people."

It's all a scam. The voters are morons. It's all a crapshoot. They voted in Jefferson, they voted in GW. They voted in Madison, they landslided in LBJ.

" . . . so stay at home and drink your beer and let the neighbor's vote."

ritehook · 11-03-08, 12:12 PM

I suspect the winning campaign of Obama was likewise crafted by sharpies and cynics.

"CHANGE." That was their winning slogan. So to the point that the abysmal loser McCain tried to copy it. "Maverick" sounds stupid, it didn't make it.

With Obama, all the high-falutin' rhetoric, the grandiose plans, the echoes of "hope," ---- it was, I'm sure, all crafted by political cynics like Evry.

After the smoke clears, tho, the same power brokers, much the same lobbyists, and surely the same lobbyists and imperialists will be in control.

We would have bought the product, thinking it was new. But it was the old one with a bright new wrapper.

I udnerstand the great revulsion to GW Bush. Just seeing an image of the guy makes me regurgitate. The Republic won't recover from his antics untill he is put on trial for treason (using American power to actualize the foreign policy of another country is treason).

But I'm not expecting much of President Obama. A lot of high-flying rhetoric, yes, a la Jack Kennedy (who, by the way, was the first to send troops to Vietnam,it wasn't LBJ).

But real substance? Doubt it. Let's see him re-write NAFTA to insist that Mexico raise the minimim wage of its workers -and make sure the new ruling is enforces - and I may start believing.

This is what Europe insisted Portugal do before lettting that slave wage land join the Common Market.

The odds on Obama actually doing this?

+100,000