Chrysler for World Peace? : Ad Agency Sour Grapes

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Rebranding Chrysler?
U.S. ad agency misses message

By Larry Ray / The Rag Blog / December 9, 2009

A truly uplifting 45 second public service television spot features a new Chrysler 300 breaking through the Berlin wall with the flying stones turning into white doves. No overt sales pitch for Chrysler is made at all, but the fact that an appeal for international peace and freedom is being made by Chrysler may be one of their strongest company messages in a while.

However, their long time U.S. ad agency, BBDO, is crying foul because Chrysler Group's Olivier Francois, the new president-CEO of the Chrysler vehicle brand, hired an Italian ad agency to produce the spot, which is very similar to a Lancia commercial from a year ago. Lancia is part of the Fiat group.

Francois commented in a press release, "For Chrysler, this is a chance to use our brand image to join with others in the fight for peace and to knock down the walls that divide us. We at Chrysler believe in doing the right thing and making a difference."

The Italian cinematography celebrates Chrysler visually while delivering a strong message for achieving world peace. The spot ends with a call for the release of Aung San Suu Kyi, Burma's immobilized pro-democracy leader. She is a Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, who has been in and out of house arrest since 1989.

The Chrysler message supports the 10th World Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates being held in Berlin December 10-11, 200, coinciding with the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall, as well as an international internet campaign to free Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi.

BBDO's contract with Chrysler runs out at the end of next month, and trade publication Advertising Age, had a banner headline today proclaiming, "After Taking U.S. Bailout, Chrysler Hires Italian Agency." A former Chrysler Group marketing chief, Julie Roehm, blasted the international peace message noting that "social causes have a place in advertising," but not this one.

"The message is a disconnect to what matters to people here," she said. Americans are focused now on getting back to work and the economy back on track, she said. "I don't think the vast majority of Americans know who this woman is or frankly care."

To Ms. Roehm there apparently is no greater cause for concern than envisioning out of work BBDO staffers at the end of January being forced to pound the pavement in New York City. An international internet awareness effort, Your Face For Freedom, is raising support, money and global awareness for "this woman" for whom Ms. Roehm, in her narrow nearsightedness exhibits such crass indifference.

If she and her chums at BBDO had been doing a more far-sighted job for Chrysler, BBDO might not be losing their contract and Chrysler might not have had to be saved from collapse which involved getting rid of ineffective executives and replacing them with new leadership.

The U.S. financing was loaned to Chrysler to allow it to reorganize and emerge from bankruptcy, which it accomplished in record time. New robust changes are but the beginning of what could eventually see Italy's Fiat with a 51% ownership of the new Chrysler Group LLC, "if it meets financial and developmental goals for the company." And those goals center upon revitalizing its manufacturing facilities, parts suppliers and work force in the USA as well as abroad.

Starting to make Chrysler a name known and respected in European and other international markets is what this powerful TV imagery is beginning to do. A friend of mine in Italy who saw the spot emailed me saying, "I think it's great and almost enough to get me to buy a Chrysler! ALMOST -- can I trade in my 2003 Fiat Punto???"

Take a look at the Chrysler spot and see what your gut reaction is.

[Retired journalist Larry Ray is a Texas native and former Austin television news anchor. He also posts at The iHandbill.]

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Contempt for Humanity: Increasingly Commonplace

Ad Showing West Bank Barrier Angers Palestinians
July 13, 2009

JERUSALEM -- An Israeli cell phone commercial showing soldiers playing football near Israel's West Bank separation barrier has angered Palestinians who say it is in poor taste and exploits their suffering.

The company behind the ad, Cellcom, said that in showing the soldiers kicking a stray ball back and forth across the wall with unseen Palestinians it wanted to send a positive message about communicating beyond barriers.

At least one Israeli peace group agreed, calling the ad "brave." Some Palestinians disagreed.

The commercial, which began airing in Israel this week, shows soldiers patrolling along the barrier's towering concrete slabs. A football hits their patrol jeep, setting off an impromptu game with people on the other side. "What do we want, after all? A bit of fun," a narrator says.

"It is weird and despicable to use the suffering and occupation as a means of advertisement," said Saeb Erekat, a top aide to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. Erekat said he found the ad "distasteful and sickening."

The Palestinians say the barrier, which runs largely inside the West Bank and leaves about 10 percent of its territory on the Israeli side, serves to sever them from their land, disrupts their lives and cripples their economy. Israel began building the fences and walls that make up the barrier in the midst of a wave of Palestinian suicide bombings targeting Israeli cities, and maintains that it is a crucial security measure.

In a response to the criticism, Cellcom said it did not intend a political message and that its only goal was to "allow a connection between people."

"The goal of the campaign was to get the message across that when people separated by religion, race and gender want to communicate they can, under any circumstances," read a statement from the company. "The campaign has no cynical or hurtful intention and does not take any position."

An Israeli Arab lawmaker called on the company to pull the ad, but the Israeli peace group Peace Now weighed in on Cellcom's side.

"I think the message of this advertisement is that there are people, normal human beings, on the other side of the fence who simply want to play football. For a commercial advertisement it is a brave move and I believe it is welcome," Peace Now's director, Yariv Oppenheimer, told Channel 2 TV.

Cellcom is not the first to make creative use of the barrier. In 2004, the Israeli fashion company Comme il Faut used the cement slabs as a backdrop for a catalog in what it said was an attempt to draw attention to the hardships caused by the barrier.

In the Palestinian city of Bethlehem, which is hemmed in by the barrier, one owner of a seafood restaurant had his menu painted on the wall, saying last year that he was "making something positive out of a negative situation."

Source / AP / New York Times

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Chamber of Commerce Admits Funding Anti-Worker Ads with Bailout Money

Billboards standing 50-feet high in Washington, D.C. support the Employee Free Choice Act. However, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is using bailout funds to finance its newly-launched program of television ads opposing the act.

The Chamber of Commerce is using taxpayer money to fund ads against workers in political swing states.

By Adam Green

[This article was originally posted on Open Left on April 14, 2009.]

Yesterday, I posed the question: "Is the Chamber of Commerce Using Bailout Money to Attack Workers?"

The Chamber took to their blog and ambiguously wrote, "No. No we are not."

It's well documented by Sam Stein at The Huffington Post that bailout recipients have been asked to funnel money to groups that are running anti-worker ads like the ones announced yesterday by the Chamber.

So I wrote, "Let me pose a more specific question: Is the Chamber actively rejecting money from bailout recipients?"

The Chamber responded:

Another one quickly answered, the U.S. Chamber continues to accept as members companies which receive both public and private funds. In addition we do not believe that the receipt of taxpayer money abrogates an individual or groups’ rights under the First Amendment.

My original answer to the original question still stands, beyond question.

Actually, it's not beyond question -- and Jonathan Martin at Politico agrees:

Adam Green over at OpenLeft pushes the Chamber of Commerce to say that they're still accepting dues from bailed-out companies.

The goal is to make the case that the Chamber is using taxpayer dollars to help fund their anti-EFCA campaign (of which they have launched new ads targeting moderate Democratic senators).

The Chamber's Brad Peck says they're not using bail-out money for the campaign.

I've asked how exactly they know that to be the case.

A bunch of folks have joined the Facebook group asking the same question, and have used the contact info posted in that group to email Chamber execs directly.

And last night, Anna Burger added SEIU's voice to this issue:

The Chamber of Commerce’s solution for fixing our economic crisis is to use funds from taxpayer bailed-out companies to fight smart economic policies that will restore balance to our economy and help rebuild the American Middle Class.

...American taxpayers have had enough. The Chamber of Commerce must stop accepting taxpayer funds to lobby against taxpayer interests.

It's a pretty cut-and-dry case.

Taxpayer money went to companies so they could rebuild their fundamentals. By the Chamber's now-admission, bailout recipients are giving some of that money to the Chamber (aka, not using it to rebuild their fundamentals). Then, the Chamber uses that taxpayer money to fund ads against workers in political swing states.

We'll now see if the Chamber is as oblivious to the PR disaster that is about to hit them as the Wall Street execs who used bailout money to redecorate their offices and pay bonuses were.

Maybe smarter heads at the Chamber will prevail, and they'll take this issue off the table by publicly rejecting money from bailout recipients. We'll see...

(Join the Facebook group to take action on this issue.)

[Adam Green is cofounder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC), dedicated to helping progressive candidates run progressive campaigns and win. He is also interim CEO of Change Congress, a reform group formed by Prof. Lawrence Lessig and Joe Trippi to reform congressional elections and special-interest influence on Congress.]

© 2009 Open Left All rights reserved.

Source / Open Left / AlterNet

Thanks to Jeffrey Segal / The Rag Blog

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Invasive Procedures : Privacy, and Online Behaviorial Targeting

Privacy advocates meet with Obama's people concerning online advertising and the use of behavioral research.
by Wendy Davis / December 17, 2008

Privacy advocates met Tuesday with members of President-elect Barack Obama's Federal Trade Commission transition team to urge that the government more aggressively regulate the online advertising industry.

"The overall message was that the Bush FTC gets an 'F' on privacy," said Jeff Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy. "We're expecting the Obama team to take a better approach."

Chester, who two years ago filed a complaint with the FTC about online behavioral targeting, is pressing for new laws that would require marketers to seek Web users' permission before tracking them for ad purposes.

Other groups at the one-hour meeting Tuesday with FTC transition team heads Susan Ness and Phil Weiser included the ACLU, Consumer Federation of America, Electronic Frontier Foundation, and World Privacy Forum.

Online ad executives and the Interactive Advertising Bureau have argued that the FTC should not restrict behavioral targeting because the practice does not harm consumers. Ad companies also say that behavioral targeting is often anonymous because they don't collect names, addresses or other so-called personally identifiable information. Instead, companies track users anonymously via cookies as they go from site to site, compile profiles, and then serve ads to users based on their presumed interests.

But privacy advocates have questioned just how anonymous this type of targeting really is. They say that in some circumstances, it might be possible to identify specific individuals from detailed profile information.

In addition, some consumer advocates say behavioral targeting is inherently problematic.

"Behavioral tracking and targeting is actually deceptive on its face because consumers' information is being collected by entities with whom they have no relationship, to whom they didn't give their information, and for purposes of which they're unaware," said Susan Grant, director of consumer protection at the Consumer Federation of America.

Grant added that her organization was concerned that some consumers could face tangible consequences due to behavioral targeting. For instance, she said, companies could potentially use information gleaned from tracking people online to make different offers to different people.

Some of the advocates also criticized the Network Advertising Initiative's new privacy guidelines to the transition team. Pam Dixon, executive director of the World Privacy Forum, said those standards don't adequately protect the privacy of people's medical information.

"To say they're non-starters is an understatement," Dixon said.

The new NAI guidelines call for ad companies to refrain from collecting data about sensitive medical information or serving ads related to such information, unless consumers expressly consent. The prior guidelines said marketers should never collect such data if it was personally identifiable, but allowed them to do so if the information was anonymous and people could opt out.

Source / MediaPost

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New York Times : Is 'Gray Lady' Fading Fast?

Is financial demise of The Times at hand?
By Dr. Denny / November 11, 2008

In 1896, Adolph Ochs bought The New York Times and boldly placed on its front-page flag the slogan All The News That’s Fit To Print. Today, its publisher, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr., may need to rewrite that slogan to Less News And Less Money To Print It.

That’s because The Times has fallen on hard times (forgive me). The faltering business model that has strapped financial straitjackets onto other newspapers (witness the Christian Science Monitor ending its print edition) may have finally knee-capped the nation’s best newspaper. It has significant debt coming due, and insignificant cash on hand.

Reports Henry Blodget of the Silicon Valley Insider:

[The company must deliver $400 million to lenders in May of 2009, six months from now. The company has only $46 million of cash on hand, and its operations will likely begin consuming this meager balance this quarter or next. The company has been shut out of the commercial paper market, but has a $366 million short-term credit line remaining that it entered into several years ago, when the industry was strong. It has not yet drawn this cash down, and given the current environment and the trends at the company, we would not take for granted that it will be able to do so. [emphasis added]

Consider numbers we can all understand: In 2002, The Times’ stock price hit nearly $53. On Monday, the last line of a Forbes.com story relayed this telling stat: “Shares in the Times company fell 59 cents, or 6.3 percent, to $8.73 in mid-afternoon trading …” [emphasis added]

The Times‘ suddenly accelerated descent into fiscal disarray has probably irritated Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim Helú. Just two months ago, Mr. Slim bought a 6.4 percent stake of the New York Times Co. at about $14 a share, an investment then worth about $127 million. If he’s still in, he’s lost nearly half his investment.

Recall, please, Mr. Sulzberger’s comment just 21 months ago at the World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland, when asked about the future of the print edition of The Times:

I really don’t know whether we’ll be printing The Times in five years, and you know what? I don’t care either.

Bet he cares now. At the time, he said The Times was focused on becoming an Internet news leader, saying it had doubled its online readership to 1.5 million a day to go along with its 1.1 million subscribers for the print edition. But the problem is simple: It may have consistently high readership online, but that’s not translating into sufficient online advertising revenue to meet the expectations of institutional investors concerned primarily with short-term gain.

Here’s the short-term financial picture for the Times company as constructed by Mr. Blodget based on recent NYTCo. filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission:

What NYTCo. has:
• $46 million of cash
• $366 million owed to it by advertisers
Total: $412 million

What NYTCo. owes:
• $398 million of short-term debt (due in May)
• $161 million of accounts payable (newsprint, travel, etc.)
• $100 million of payroll (salaries)
• $159 million of other expenses
• $50 million owed on long-term debt and rent
Total: $865 million

Bottom line, short term: NYTCo. owes $453 million more than it has.

Other harpies have been snipping at The Times‘ heels. Recall, please, that in January a pair of hedge funds demanded changes at the company:

The trouble, according to Firebrand Partners and Harbinger Capital, is that the New York Times company has moved far too slowly to replace the revenue that is being lost as readership figures come under pressure and advertisers shift their spending from newspapers to the internet. [emphasis added]

Firebrand’s founder, Scott Galloway, wants the Times company to diversify. In a January letter to Mr. Sulzberger, Mr. Galloway wrote: “We believe a renewed focus on the core assets and the redeployment of capital to expedite the acquisition of digital assets affords the greatest shareholder appreciation and creates the appropriate platform to compete in today’s media landscape.” [emphasis added]

Well, good luck with appreciating shareholder value with that acquisition of digital assets. (About.com is highly profitable, so why’s the Times company shopping it around?) Too little, too late. The Times, like virtually every major newspaper company in America, refused to accept the Internet as an effective colleague and instead regarded it only as an ineffective, sure-to-fail upstart. Such arrogance is proving costly.

The news worsens. Nielsen reports that advertising spending for the first half of 2008 declined by 1.4 percent compared with the same period in 2007. Its news on Internet advertising is mixed:

Although overall Internet ad spending, when including paid search and online video advertising, was up by 11% during the first half of this year, image-based Internet advertising declined by 6% during the first half of 2008, compared to the same period in 2007. …

The decrease in image-based Internet advertising was driven by a 27% drop in online ad spending by financial services companies, which decreased their spending from $1.5 billion in the first half of 2007 to $1.1 billion during the first two quarters of this year. [emphasis added]

AFP reports that:

The Interactive Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers said Internet advertising revenues rose 15.2 percent in the first six months of 2008 over the first half of 2007. Online advertising revenue was up 12.8 percent in the second quarter over the same period of 2007 but declined 0.3 percent from the first quarter of the year, from 5.8 billion dollars to 5.7 billion dollars, the IAB-PwC survey said. [emphasis added]

And that’s the problem for the Times company and every other newspaper company that has placed its business-model bet on sure-to-be-profitable Internet advertising. Despite double-digit growth in online advertising revenue in recent years, that growth isn’t paying off fast enough.

“Total advertising revenue for the newspaper industry is expected to decline 11.5% to $40.1 billion this year,” reports Jennifer Saba of industry trade journal Editor & Publisher. Print ad revenues, though declining, still provide the bulk of the industry’s income. Internet ad revenues, though increasing, will not produce sufficient revenue soon enough to stave off drastic, perhaps catastrophic, changes in the newspaper industry.

In February, reported The Times‘ Richard Pérez-Peña, “The Times has 1,332 newsroom employees, the largest number in its history; no other American newspaper has more than about 900.” When The Times said in February it would cut 100 jobs, its stock immediately rose 86 cents to $18.84. Now it’s under 10 bucks.

The Times, in fiscally happier times (forgive me again), bet big on expansion in New England to maximize revenue. In 1993, shortly after Tim Berners-Lee released the World Wide Web for full public use, the Times company bought The Boston Globe for $1.1 billion. In 1999, it bought the Worcester, Mass., Telegram & Gazette for $295 million. Both deals were roundly criticized as too pricey for value received. Both deals have proven to be financial drains on the Times company. (The Times did not significantly embrace the Internet for several years and made poor decisions. Remember the ill-fated, pay-for-premium-content TimesSelect?)

Early this week, Forbes reported that the company “increased its estimates for how much The Boston Globe and other New England newspapers it owns have declined in value because of reductions in advertising revenue.” That drop in value — $166 million — occurred in just the third quarter. The Times company said the fourth quarter will bring further devaluation of the properties.

Prediction I: The Times will initially follow the industry’s formula: Cut expenses drastically (read: jobs). Seek to at least maintain current share price. Prediction II: The strategy will fail. Prediction III: The Times will sell assets. Prediction IV: That, too, will fail, because the company has insufficient assets relative to its debt and declining ad revenue. In September, E&P reported that the Times company ad revenue had declined 14.1 percent compared to the same period a year ago. Total revenue dropped 8.8 percent for the month.

Could the Times company raise enough cash to take itself private? Hmmm. Perhaps that’s why About.com may be on sale.

All this in a tanking economy. The Times and other newspaper companies shouldn’t bet on traditional big-bucks advertisers — Detroit, real estate, and want-ad classifieds — to come to the rescue. They’ve got problems of their own.

According to Mr. Blodget, the long-term view for the Times company is equally bleak:

What NYT has:
• $1.355 billion of buildings, real-estate, printing presses, trucks, technology
• $146 million of investments in joint ventures (Red Sox, etc.)
Total: $1.501 billion

What NYT owes:
• $673 million of long-term debt
• $7 million of long-term rent
• $284 million of pension benefits
• $214 million of retiree healthcare and other benefits
• $290 million of other liabilities
Total: $1.468 billion

Bottom line, long term: Balance sheet carrying values can provide a very misleading picture of long-term asset values, especially for things like land and buildings, which may have appreciated (or depreciated) significantly. As a result, there may be significant embedded value in these assets. But assuming the NYT’s land, buildings, and joint-ventures are carried at something approaching market value, NYTCo has only about $33 million more than it owes. [emphasis added]

The Gray Lady badly needs a Green Mistress, but in an American economy this distressed, that’s unlikely to occur. (Oh, Rupert? You interested in a really good deal?)

So what will the Times company do? Sell assets? In this economy, who will buy? Cut jobs? Assuredly, but at what credibility cost to the journalistic product it sells? End its print editions, and not just that of The Times, but of other papers it owns as well? Newsprint and subscriber delivery are costly. Aside from staff cuts, that seems the most likely — and quickest — route to cut costs substantially.

Any change in the Times company’s business model will influence the readership habits and information needs and wants of millions of people. The Times has been the opinion leader of the fabled Eastern Liberal Elite™ for a century and its front page has influenced daily the contents of hundreds of newspapers nationwide.

Perhaps the changes won’t immediately be so drastic, preserving the print edition. Says Mr. Blodget: The Times company’s realistic options have been reduced to:

• Major cost cuts (including dividend)
• Large asset sales
• Sale of equity at fire sale price.

Like most newspaper companies, the Times company has proven to be short-sighted in its adaptation to the Internet, its recognition of changing demographics and readership needs and desires, and its dog-on-a-short-leash relationship with institutional investors.

We should hope The Times survives with the quality of its journalism intact (wrong-on-WMDs Judith Miller, plagiarist Jayson Blair et al. incidents notwithstanding). With nearly 100 Pulitzer Prizes to show to the tourists, it’s still the best journalism gig in town.

As the new year approaches, The Times will surely and frequently editorially instruct president-elect Barack Obama on the appropriate means to reinvigorate the American economy.

In the midst of its own partially self-induced financial decline, The Times‘ advice ought to be taken cum grano salis.

For links to individual references, to to: Source / Scholars & Rogues

Thanks to Roger Baker / The Rag Blog

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American Indians and the CIA : Buying Silence With Advertising

Hopi elder Dan Evehema, sitting on a couch at his home on the Hopi mesa in 1996, warned: "Don't take grant funding, they will control you."
How advertisers like the CIA and FBI use dollars to control and silence people.
By Brenda Norrell

In case you noticed the alarming, large advertisements by the CIA Clandestine Services on the front web page of a national American Indian newspaper this week, or the ad by the FBI as one of the main sponsors of the National Congress of American Indians annual convention [Oct. 19-24] in Phoenix, it is good to remember how advertisers and funders control the media and organizations.

First, for newspapers, there is the outpouring of dollars for large ad spaces in prime sites. For Indian organizations, there is financial backing for events or programs.

When the newspaper, or Indian organization, does something the funder doesn't like, they often threaten to halt the advertising dollars. "We can't go along with that," they say, or "We can't support you if you do this ..."

If it means losing a large sum of money, the publisher or Indian organization is likely to concede to the demands. This may mean refusing to publish an article, firing a staff member, dropping a columnist or speaker, or halting the spread of certain ideas and issues. This is one reason that the media in the United States is heavily censored now, as advertising dollars dry up and sales decline.

Sometimes, the funder doesn't have to say anything, by accepting the dollars, compliance is bought and sold.

Along the US/Mexico border, the threat of the loss of US dollars in appropriations often means that elected Native American officials will not voice the truth about Homeland Security and the construction of the US border wall. The issues of Indian sovereignty, desecration of burial places and the violation of federal environmental laws are silenced.

During NCAI's convention in Phoenix in October, will those border issues be presented? Will the truth be told about the worldwide carbon scam, which offers fictional carbon credits to enrich the World Bank?

Will the assassinations of Indigenous Peoples by mining corporations in the Americas be exposed, or the diseases resulting from mining, power plants, drilling and pollution in Indian country in the US and Canada be addressed?

Will the casino rich tribes in southern Arizona, with the crowds pouring into their casinos, explain why so many of their own members are still living in poverty?

Years ago, one of the Hopi elders, Dan Evehema, sitting on a couch at his home on the Hopi mesa, warned: "Don't take grant funding, they will control you."

Urging Hopi to resist the formation of the US puppet tribal council, Evehema was among the Hopi Sinom that warned if coal mining was carried out on Black Mesa, and Navajos were relocated to make way for the mining, calamities would occur in the world, including natural disasters.

Meanwhile, watch the advertisements for sponsors and financial backers. These will tell you a great deal about who is really in control and why you are reading, hearing and seeing, what is in front of you.

As always, follow the money and resist.

Source / Censored News / Posted Oct. 11, 2008

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Truth: Why Bother Anymore in This Nation?

Evil: It's the New Good!
By Mark Morford / September 10, 2008

Shut up and drink your high fructose corn syrup, sucker

The devil isn't evil, he just has lousy PR.

Examples? They are legion. Here's one the Powers That Be desperately hope you'll swallow, a nasty piece of marketing gall meant to stab at your intelligence and bitch-slap your intuition, but which is nevertheless being force-fed to you as happy environmental manna, a viciously deformed version of something called "progress."

Here is "clean coal." Isn't it beautiful? Truly, the hell-bound ad agency that coughed up that one even had the nerve to film a commercial featuring Kool and the Gang's "Celebrate" playing over perky scenes of manic Americans sucking down electricity like John McCain sucks down extra oxygen, claiming that coal is America's namesake resource and we should therefore kneel before it and worship it like apple pie and horrible sex-ed and Lindsay Lohan's nipples. Did I mention the coal industry's PR people are going to hell for this? Count on it.

There is, of course, no such thing as "clean coal." It's as impossible as a humanitarian Republican, as insulting as Homeland Security. Even Obama gets it wrong in his support of this lethal oxymoron. There are only two options: Brutally pollutive coal extraction and burning techniques, rapacious strip mining and millions of acres of destroyed forest and contaminated water tables and toxified air and one of the most environmentally destructive energy sources on the planet; or new and slightly less horribly pollutive coal extraction/burn techniques that attempt to rein in a few of the more toxic pollutants, but not including carbon dioxide or, you know, cancer and death. That's about it.

Translation: "clean coal" is not only one of the most insidious, repugnant oxymorons -- right up there with "friendly fire" and "conservative think tank" and "Alaskan teen virgin" -- it's also one of the deadliest.

Not good enough? Don't you worry.

Here is high-fructose corn syrup. It appears the corporate whiners down at the Corn Refiners Association, unhappy with the billions they've already made on the staggering rise of their dreadful product and apparently tired of their gunk getting such a bad rap from every doctor and health mag from here to the Mayo Clinic, have launched a sweet little counter-offensive aimed at proving their goop is, well, slightly less evil than you thought.

Here is their cute little commercial: Two generic moms, one pouring her kids a big, fat glass of bright red HFCS-laden pseudo-juice, as the other frowns and says gosh golly Susan, you feed your kids that crap? That has high fructose corn syrup in it!

And the first irresponsible mom just smiles an 'oh you stupid bitch' kind of robotic smile and says hey, HFCS is really no worse than sugar, it's natural because it's made from corn, and it's perfectly OK in moderation, so shut the hell up and drink your nauseating food-colored crap, Marjorie (please note: I might be paraphrasing slightly).

Isn't that lovely? To be fair, they have a meager point. Despite its highly processed nature, HFCS might very well be exactly as bad for you as plain ol' sugar (by the way, thanks to the wishy-washy FDA, "natural" is a completely bulls--t term that means nothing; calling HFCS "natural" is like calling Cindy McCain natural). But its manufacture is simply awful, from the tons of pesticides used to grow all that needless industrial corn to the ridiculous and devastating farm subsidies that force farmers to grow far more of it than our country can possibly use.

Which is why HFCS is everywhere and in everything, from soups to whole-grain bread, crackers to ketchup to pickles to tomato paste. Thanks in part to the violent ubiquity of HFCS, bloated Americans now consume a total of 100 pounds of sweetener a year, per capita. Go read your "Omnivore's Dilemma" or rent the "King Corn" DVD to see just how awful this stuff is. The Corn Refiners Association is praying you don't.

On it goes. Every major oil company has a pseudo-green, false-front "Let's take care of our planet" BS campaign underway, whitewashing their evils so insultingly it's like Dick Cheney wearing a PETA T-shirt to a canned pheasant hunt. Even the king of consumer mediocrity, Microsoft, launched a "Vista: It's not quite as awful as you've heard" campaign to help stifle the low-level groans of 20 million bug-addled users.

And recall, won't you, a couple of years back, when Wal-Mart launched its own ad campaign to counter all the negative press it was getting about its nasty labor policies, the lawsuits and infractions and claims of forced overtime, even lovely hints of sexism and racism and blurry photos of secret underground lairs where 10,000 paunchy middle managers met to skin live kittens and drink the blood of sweatshop workers and sacrifice their dreams as they chant Shania Twain lyrics in their underwear (again, paraphrasing).

Of course, Wal-Mart, rather than actually improve its policies, instead spent millions to make itself merely look friendlier, touting all the (low-paying, often part-time, generally miserable) jobs they bring in to a community, and gosh, just look how happy those cashiers seem to be, and never you mind the vague threats that if anyone tries to unionize, a pale army of sexless managers will follow you home and kill you in your sleep with this 20-pound tub of cheese-coated popcorn. Mmm, wholesome.

But perhaps none of these examples can top the scabrous GOP, suddenly being repackaged and resold to exhausted, Bush-ravaged Americans as "the maverick party," with John McCain desperately trying to distance himself from the worst and most abusive administration in a lifetime, all the torture and warmongering and pandering to the religious right, even as he so obviously plans to continue it all.

It's a rather sickening marketing ploy, made even more contemptible by McCain's choice of VP, not someone of sharp political acumen who will challenge his decisions and offer insight and inspire confidence, but Sarah Palin, former mayor of a piddling, eyeblink of a pee-stop town in rural Nowheresville, a shrill woman of zero political accomplishment clearly brought on board to lure both confused white women and the hard evangelical right, a minor state governor who thinks Creationism is dandy and who just got her first passport in 2007 and who would happily pass a law to force your daughter to have the baby if she'd been raped. Charming.

Truly, Palin is that most dangerous of self-aggrandizing right-wing politico, a potentially very powerful woman full of moxie and nerve and intensely intolerant, extremist views who actually hates women. Really, you can't get much more Republican than that.

And lo, in the spirit of Wal-Mart and the Corn Refiners Association and the clean-coal cretins trying to make their rampant evils seem slightly less, well, evil, we humbly offer to McPalin this new marketing slogan: "The Republicans: An entirely new kind of contemptible you hadn't even thought of yet."

Just trying to help, really.

© 2008 San Francisco Chronicle

Mark Morford's Notes & Errata column appears every Wednesday and Friday on SFGate.com.

Source / San Francisco Chronicle

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Some Web Firms Say They Track Behavior Without Explicit Consent

'Increasingly, there are no limits technologically as to what a company can do in terms of collecting information'
By Ellen Nakashima / August 12, 2008

Several Internet and broadband companies have acknowledged using targeted-advertising technology without explicitly informing customers, according to letters released yesterday by the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

And Google, the leading online advertiser, stated that it has begun using Internet tracking technology that enables it to more precisely follow Web-surfing behavior across affiliated sites.

The revelations came in response to a bipartisan inquiry of how more than 30 Internet companies might have gathered data to target customers. Some privacy advocates and lawmakers said the disclosures help build a case for an overarching online-privacy law.

"Increasingly, there are no limits technologically as to what a company can do in terms of collecting information . . . and then selling it as a commodity to other providers," said committee member Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), who created the Privacy Caucus 12 years ago. "Our responsibility is to make sure that we create a law that, regardless of the technology, includes a set of legal guarantees that consumers have with respect to their information."

Markey said he and his colleagues plan to introduce legislation next year, a sort of online-privacy Bill of Rights, that would require that consumers must opt in to the tracking of their online behavior and the collection and sharing of their personal data.

But some committee leaders cautioned that such legislation could damage the economy by preventing small companies from reaching customers. Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.) said self-regulation that focuses on transparency and choice might be the best approach.

Google, in its letter to committee Chairman John Dingell (D-Mich.), Markey, Stearns and Rep. Joe L. Barton (R-Tex.), stressed that it did not engage in potentially the most invasive of technologies -- deep-packet inspection, which companies such as NebuAd have tested with some broadband providers. But Google did note that it had begun to use across its network the "DoubleClick ad-serving cookie," a computer code that allows the tracking of Web surfing.

Alan Davidson, Google's director of public policy and government affairs, stated in the letter that users could opt out of a single cookie for both DoubleClick and the Google content network. He also said that Google was not yet focusing on "behavioral" advertising, which depends on Web site tracking.

But on its official blog last week, Google touted how its recent $3.1 billion merger with DoubleClick provides advertisers "insight into the number of people who have seen an ad campaign," as well as "how many users visited their sites after seeing an ad."

"Google is slowly embracing a full-blown behavioral targeting over its vast network of services and sites," said Jeffrey Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy. He said that Google, through its vast data collection and sophisticated data analysis tools, "knows more about consumers than practically anyone."

Microsoft and Yahoo have disclosed that they engage in some form of behavioral targeting. Yahoo has said it will allow users to turn off targeted advertising on its Web sites; Microsoft has yet to respond to the committee.

More than a dozen of the 33 companies queried said they do not conduct targeted advertising based on consumers' Internet activities. But, Chester said, a number of them engage in sophisticated interactive marketing. Advertisers on Comcast.net's site, for instance, are able to target advertising based on "over 3 billion page views" from "15 million unique users."

Source / Washington Post

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Obama : Running While Black

McCain campaigners Paris Hilton and Brittney Spears, named in one poll as the two worst celebrity role models.
'Spare me any more drivel about the high-mindedness of John McCain'
By Bob Herbert / August 2, 2008

Gee, I wonder why, if you have a black man running for high public office — say, Barack Obama or Harold Ford — the opposition feels compelled to run low-life political ads featuring tacky, sexually provocative white women who have no connection whatsoever to the black male candidates.

You knew something was up back in March when, in his first ad of the general campaign, Mr. McCain had himself touted as “the American president Americans have been waiting for.”

There was nothing subtle about that attempt to position Senator Obama as the Other, a candidate who might technically be American but who remained in some sense foreign, not sufficiently patriotic and certainly not one of us — the “us” being the genuine red-white-and-blue Americans who the ad was aimed at.

Since then, Senator McCain has only upped the ante, smearing Mr. Obama every which way from sundown. On Wednesday, The Washington Post ran an extraordinary front-page article that began:

“For four days, Senator John McCain and his allies have accused Senator Barack Obama of snubbing wounded soldiers by canceling a visit to a military hospital because he could not take reporters with him, despite no evidence that the charge is true.”

Evidence? John McCain needs no evidence. His campaign is about trashing the opposition, Karl Rove-style. Not satisfied with calling his opponent’s patriotism into question, Mr. McCain added what amounted to a charge of treason, insisting that Senator Obama would actually prefer that the United States lose a war if that would mean that he — Senator Obama — would not have to lose an election.

Now, from the hapless but increasingly venomous McCain campaign, comes the slimy Britney Spears and Paris Hilton ad. The two highly sexualized women (both notorious for displaying themselves to the paparazzi while not wearing underwear) are shown briefly and incongruously at the beginning of a commercial critical of Mr. Obama.

The Republican National Committee targeted Harold Ford with a similarly disgusting ad in 2006 when Mr. Ford, then a congressman, was running a strong race for a U.S. Senate seat in Tennessee. The ad, which the committee described as a parody, showed a scantily clad woman whispering, “Harold, call me.”

Both ads were foul, poisonous and emanated from the upper reaches of the Republican Party. (What a surprise.) Both were designed to exploit the hostility, anxiety and resentment of the many white Americans who are still freakishly hung up on the idea of black men rising above their station and becoming sexually involved with white women.

The racial fantasy factor in this presidential campaign is out of control. It was at work in that New Yorker cover that caused such a stir. (Mr. Obama in Muslim garb with the American flag burning in the fireplace.) It’s driving the idea that Barack Obama is somehow presumptuous, too arrogant, too big for his britches — a man who obviously does not know his place.

Mr. Obama has to endure these grotesque insults with a smile and heroic levels of equanimity. The reason he has to do this — the sole reason — is that he is black.

So there he was this week speaking evenly, and with a touch of humor, to a nearly all-white audience in Missouri. His goal was to reassure his listeners, to let them know he’s not some kind of unpatriotic ogre.

Mr. Obama told them: “What they’re going to try to do is make you scared of me. You know, he’s not patriotic enough. He’s got a funny name. You know, he doesn’t look like all those other presidents on those dollar bills, you know. He’s risky.”

The audience seemed to appreciate his comments. Mr. Obama was well-received.

But John McCain didn’t appreciate them. RACE CARD! RACE CARD! The McCain camp started bellowing, and it hasn’t stopped since. With great glee bursting through their feigned outrage, the campaign’s operatives and the candidate himself accused Senator Obama of introducing race into the campaign — playing the race card, as they put it, from the very bottom of the deck.

Whatever you think about Barack Obama, he does not want the race issue to be front and center in this campaign. Every day that the campaign is about race is a good day for John McCain. So I guess we understand Mr. McCain’s motivation.

Nevertheless, it’s frustrating to watch John McCain calling out Barack Obama on race. Senator Obama has spoken more honestly and thoughtfully about race than any other politician in many years. Senator McCain is the head of a party that has viciously exploited race for political gain for decades.

He’s obviously more than willing to continue that nauseating tradition.

Source / New York Times

Thanks to Carl Davidson / The Rag Blog

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Obama's Mariachi Ad : What Were They Thinking?

Manny Ramirez: The great guapón as Obama spokesman?
Obamarama, Latin Style
By Lisa Sanchez Gonzalez / July 26, 2008

Have you seen the Barack Obama mariachi ad?

It's on YouTube if you want to check it out. [See it below.]

In a word? Ay fao.

Really, it begs the question: What on earth is his campaign's brain trust thinking about Latino voters?

Now, first I have to say I admire the Senator from Illinois. I thought his speech on race in the United States was the finest political speech I've heard in my lifetime. A big part of what I admire about him is that sometimes his ideas are complicated, which is unusual for a político. No tidy 3-second monosyllabic sound bytes here. No "read my lips," no "just say no," no "I'll be back." Though his syntax is simple, he still expects a lot of sophistication from his audience. I even have one friend who is convinced that, if Obama wins the election, Americans will start reading more; he interprets the mass's toleration (and admiration) of such eloquence as a sign that Obama will help the publishing industry rally.

Hmm...

There was another Democratic candidate this campaign season who also has sophistication and a whopping vocabulary, Senator Chris Dodd. But I knew he wouldn't get far in his campaign. His syntax is too complex, which I appreciate, but most don't. And on top of that he speaks English the way a Cuban speaks Spanish, wicked fast. I don't mind that either. I've actually heard Senator Dodd speak Spanish with the same speed and fluency. Amazing. But most people have no patience with language woven into an elaborate web at warp speed, especially when the speaker is very articulate. I think it makes them somehow feel stupid.

Of course, that was probably the appeal of a certain ex-Governor of Texas. No one on the planet could feel stupid listening to him speak. Just maybe a little perplexed. What language does he speak anyway?

Which brings me to this mariachi ad. It's stupid dope tacky, mega rasquache. Zip zero nada in the way of production values. There's this group of musicians, donned in full mariachi regalia, walking down a street in a run down neighborhood, singing a praise song about Obama. Spliced between close-ups of the musicians in action (well, as close-up as the camera can get without clipping their enormous sombreros) are still photos of Senator Obama. The final photo has our hero wearing a ten-gallon hat!

Watching this video, I thought about Jessie Jackson's frustration with the timbre of Senator Obama's approach to some Black audiences, which he considered condescending. I don't know how Senator Obama plays to Black audiences, but if his performance in those venues resembles the mariachi ad's in low expectations about the audience's intelligence and aesthetic tastes, then I think the Reverend Jackson may have a point.

The whole thing is fascinating, really. The core issue, for me at least, is how the Obama camp is conceptualizing discrete audiences. Ultimately, their aim is to "sell" the idea of a President Obama to voters, kind of like convincing people to place a bet on their horse in a race. So they craft different messages to inspire different groups of people to think he can and should win. In the process, it seems to me, they've given the Presidential hopeful a split personality. In English, talking to the "mainstream," he is a sleek Harvard-trained thoroughbred with immense potential. In Spanish, he is a humble little brown burro from TJ.

Please don't get me wrong. I adore burros. Eeyore is my all-time favorite character in the books I read as a child. But I would never ever bet on him to win a race against Seabiscuit.

There is the possibility though that I'm appalled by that ad because I am as much an elitist as any ivory tower academic. But I want to believe that, if the rest of the country is going to move on up the intellectual evolutionary ladder on the heels of Senator Obama's lofty rhetoric and even loftier aspirations for the future, as I cautiously hope it does, Latinos will also be part of it.

Or perhaps this merely points to a bad translation, a failed effort to make a visual and cultural statement that would make this imaginary Latino audience feel good about Obama. Though I think the better strategy would be to find an ally from the ranks of Latin celebrities to speak to this audience, nationally, in Spanish, on his behalf. An ally like Oprah; outrageously popular among all sorts of people, at the top of her own game professionally, whose credentials as the best of the best and perhaps the best ever in a quintessentially American field is beyond a shadow of a doubt.

How to translate Obama into Spanish in precisely that way? That's difficult given the huge diversity within this demographic. But there are heroes in this community whose popularity transcends ethnic, racial, cultural, linguistic and even national borders.

How about Manny Ramírez? The great guapón himself. Everyone loves him, no? He's ever-so-easy on the eyes, and charismatic, and part of the magic that made it possible for the Red Sox to win the world series. He's an all-American hero, Latin style. A trigueño, like Obama, like a lot of us, who represents, like Obama, unlike most of us, an unlikely team triumph for the least likely to succeed.

That's it. Dump the mariachis. Go Little Papi instead! But please, please, please make the ad eloquent, sleek, and hopeful.

Source / Lisa's Blog

VIVA OBAMA 2008


Thanks to Mercedes Lynn de Uriarte / The Rag Blog

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Snickers : 'Get Some Nuts'

New ad encourages drive-by shootings of unmanly men

See video below.

Via Towleroad comes a new spot for Snickers which appears to endorse violence against the effeminate, or at least against speed-walkers. In the spot, a yellow-shorts-sporting butt-shaking speed-walker is attacked by former A-Team star Mr. T (?!) with a Snickers-shooting machine gun, for being "a disgrace to the man race." Ga-wha? The ad was created by AMV BBDO, a subsidiary of the retro-futuristically named Omnicom, which turns out to be the company also responsible for a Dodge spot and another Snickers ad that inspired claims of homophobia. Ad Age critic Bob Garfield has written an open letter to Omnicom calling the spots "simply sick."

I've been a vocal proponent of everybody chilling out over fictional portrayals of LGBT people and the gender non-conformist, but this is appalling, and also completely unfunny: making fun of racewalkers is so, like, 1993. Watch the offending ad after the jump. What do you think, Riffers, does it make you feel like "getting some nuts" and having a Snickers?



Snickers TV Commercial - Get Some Nuts - video powered by Metacafe

Source / The Riff / Mother Jones / Posted July 22, 2008

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Dems Just Love That "Big Bad John"

Ride 'em Corn Dog : Already a Classic

Cornyn video is campaign gold mine;
Race in virtual dead heat
By John Moritz / June 27, 2008

AUSTIN — The sight of U.S. Sen. John Cornyn wearing cowboy threads while an ol’ boy with a Lone Star twang sings his praise was designed to fire up his party’s base.

There was only one hitch in Cornyn’s get-along: The wrong party got fired up.

Turns out the video bio of Cornyn shown at the state GOP convention this month was panned as corn pone by more pundits, bloggers and other smart-mouthed know-it-alls than could fit in the Fort Worth Stockyards.

And it’s the Democrats who are making sure that anyone with a laptop has a chance to see and hear the campaign clip they call "Big Bad John," complete with a takeoff on Jimmy Dean’s classic song with the same name.

The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee posted the video on its Web site and suggested it shows that the urbane and courtly Cornyn is, well, all hat and no cattle.

Here’s a sample of the lyrics: "He rose to the top, in just one term. Kept Texas in power, made lesser states squirm. Big John."

"We figure it helps our cause more than his," the Democrats say on their Web site.

The posting came on the heels of Comedy Central’s The Daily Show spoofing the spot, with host Jon Stewart suggesting that Cornyn’s outfit might have come from a store for oversize kids.

Some left-leaning Web sites have called the video Cornyn’s "Michael Dukakis in the tank" moment, recalling the blistering reviews drawn by the 1988 Democratic presidential nominee when he wore a helmet and stood up while riding in a military armored vehicle.

The then-Massachusetts governor ended up looking more silly than soldierly.

Cornyn, a former Texas Supreme Court justice and state attorney general, is in what one poll shows to be a tight race with Democratic state Rep. Rick Noriega of Houston.

A poll of 1,000 likely voters by the nonpartisan Texas Lyceum, a statewide leadership group and think tank, showed Cornyn leading Noriega 38 percent to 36 percent.

The remaining 26 percent of respondents were undecided.

The margin of error was plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.

Daron Shaw, a pollster at the University of Texas at Austin, said he made an extra effort to ensure that the random sample was reflective of the state’s demographics.

Other polls have shown Cornyn with wider leads.

The same poll showed Republican presidential hopeful John McCain to be running ahead of Democrat Barack Obama in Texas by 43 percent to 38 percent.

If the senator was worried that the video’s reviews would make his campaign more difficult, he wasn’t letting on.

"I think it’s hilarious," he said with a laugh during a conference call with reporters Thursday.

"This was a good-natured introduction we did at the Houston convention a couple of weeks ago."

When the video was shown at the convention, Cornyn told delegates: "My staff convinced me that it would be a good idea. Maybe I need a new staff."

Source. / Star-Telegram

Also see Ride 'em, Corn Dog! / The Rag Blog / June 17, 2008

Thanks to Harry Edwards / The Rag Blog

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Clear Channel Bans Ads For Harry Shearer's CD Over Anti-Bush Image

Clear Channel, the radio station and billboard powerhouse, has banned an ad for Harry Shearer's new CD "Songs of Bushmen" because it depicts George Bush with a bone through his nose, the New York Post's Page Six reports:

The outdoor advertising arm of notoriously conservative Clear Channel has banned signs for "Songs of the Bushmen" because the cover depicts the president with a bone through his nose. "Their tone turned from genial salesperson to angry schoolmarm - 'This is unacceptable,' " Shearer, the voice of Mr. Burns and Flanders on "The Simpsons," told Page Six. "And it's not like this is a dangerous time to criticize George Bush."

Last October, Clear Channel's Palm Beach arm refused to air an ad for VoteVets during Rush Limbaugh's show because the ad "would conflict with the listeners who have chosen to listen to Rush Limbaugh."

[Disclosure: The ad is running on the Huffington Post, and Harry Shearer is a regular contributor to the site.]

Source. / The Huffington Post / June 27, 2008

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Ride 'em, Corn Dog!

Are you ready, boots? Sen. John Cornyn's personalized/emblemized black leather cowboy boot. Courtesy Michael Weiss / Wonkette.

"Big John" Cornyn. Now that's a big one, all right. The junior senator from Texas with the ultra-conservative voting record -- known to Dubya as "Corn Dog" and to the rest of us as the president's "lap dog" because he faithfully does his master's bidding -- may be meeting his match when he faces soldier-statesman Democrat Rick Noriega in the general election.

In the meantime, let him think he's "Big John." Just hope he doesn't fall off that horse.

Thorne Dreyer / The Rag Blog

Texas Senator Cornyn Backs Away
From Wild-West Themed Campaign Video
By Jason Linkins / June 16, 2008

"My staff convinced me it was a good idea...Maybe I need a new staff."

Those words were spoken by Texas Senator John Cornyn after his staff produced the attached video. Intended as an introduction to the Republican Party of Texas state convention, the video, featuring awesomely overwrought voice overs and the most stoned gospel chorus ever assembled, basically depicts Cornyn as a dull-witted rodeo clown who never descends from his horse or stops dressing like Jon Voight in Midnight Cowboy.

The Austin-American Statesman finds Cornyn gamely attempting to defend the terrible video, saying, "It's actually an attempt to bring a little humor to a subject I take very seriously. We're going to have to think differently this year, work smarter and harder, and bury the 'same-ole, same-ole' politics of the past." By which he means: do everything in super, super, super, super slow-motion, apparently.

Source. / The Huffington Post.

Holly Shulman, press secretary to Rick Noriega, the Democratic nominee challenging Cornyn in November, responded: “Cornyn’s call for change today is ironic given his long record of serving Washington special interests instead of Texas families. Texas families are demanding real change - and real solutions to their every day problems. Texans need a senator who will take action, not just be a rubber stamp for the Bush administration’s failed policies as this junior senator has been for the entirety of his time in office.”

Judge the cowboy — uh, video — for yourself.

W. Gardner Selby / Austin American-Statesman / June 16, 2008

See the video at The Huffington Post

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