I now see the key to success: development of my Brand. I have heard this word over and over recently in public discourse; for example, watching "60 Minutes" on Sunday, and its segment on Olympics swimmer Michael Phelps. Phelps has an agent devoted to promoting the Michael Phelps Brand. As an aside, I can offer Michael, who seems like an honest-to-goodness nice guy, a leg up on the whole brand thing. A blogsite name: OlympicSwimmer. What will I think of next?
Arianna Huffington appeared on "The Daily Show" with Jon Stewart and talked a lot about blogging. She has a book out now called just that: Blogging. She noted that 50,000 new blogs are launched each day. A stat like that gives me a headache. Arianna also suggested that a blogger write about "private passions" and matters of public interest, not necessarily the same thing, of course. Arianna's MegaBlog, the HuffingtonPost, is a mishmash of mostly pro-Democrat hype and offbeat humor. The quality of the writing and the writers has been in steady decline for about a year now. The Post openly takes sides, naturally, which is the beauty of internet news reporting and commentary. There is no need to pretend to any kind of "journalistic" neutrality. The Republicans are bad news and the Democrats are somewhat better news: that seems to be the overriding message. Liberal talk radio uses the same approach. Semi-hysterics like Randi Rhodes and Mike Malloy attack Republicans mercilessly, are generally much more supportive of Democrats, but manage to convey their essential "radicalism" by trashing the institutions of government in a more generic way. You know, by talking about the failures of "Congress" without specifying which Reps or Senators they're actually referring to.
That's all part of their Brand strategy, I guess. The HuffPost's Brand is progressive liberal Democrat. Randi & Mike are leftist Democrats, unless that's a contradiction in terms. The identification with a Brand is essential, I think, in order to command a broad audience. If, for example, Randi or Mike or the HuffingtonPost were to take the position that the entire Congress, indeed the entire federal government, was in some sense merely a conspiracy of like-minded careerists who play at attacking each other but were all devoted to one purpose, and one purpose only, the getting and keeping of powerful jobs, then their Brand would become tarnished and they would lose their listenership, if that's a word (Blogspot apparently thinks it is - no wavy red line). You can't just complain; you also have to have a rooting interest, a group you champion as the answer. The world of politics and the political commentariat have, in my view (my Brand view), degenerated into something a little along the lines of professional wrestling. Currently, the Republicans are the Masked Avenger type bad guys, who wear black tights and knee boots, have big bellies, and cover their heads with executioner's hoods. The American public is hissing and booing at them now, and the Democrats are the fair-haired, clean-cut wrestlers in red, white & blue Speedos who never cheat and manage to crawl back from a brutal (illegal) pummeling by the Avenger to win at the last minute with a devastating, patented set of moves which thrill the crowd.
My Brand, I'm beginning to see, is a little cynical. The problem I have is with the entire system: the ossified, two-party apparatus which has dominated American politics since the end of the Bull Moose Party in the first decade of the last century. For over a hundred years now. There are essentially 545 people who control the basic economic, political and legal framework for the country, and they are drawn almost entirely from these two parties. These two Brands. 435 Representatives, 100 Senators, a President and 9 Supreme Court justices. They establish policy for everything. So how did the United States wind up in the shape it's currently in, slumping toward a Depression and enshrined as the great environmental outlaw of the world? As the only modern industrialized country in the world without guaranteed health care for all its citizens? As the only advanced Western democracy which refuses to sign the Hague Treaty for the International Criminal Court? As the country which neglects health care, education and mass transportation so that it can spend more on defense than all other countries in the world combined? As the high fructose corn sipping world champions of obesity?
I suspect it's because the Republicans and Democrats lack any competition. The system has frozen up, become nonresponsive to actual problems in American society because we've got Coke and Pepsi and that's it. The Democratic Brand works if the Republican Brand is in disfavor, regardless of whether the Democrats are actually dealing with that long list of societal ills above. They don't have to do anything, really, because the default reaction to one party's demise is the other party's ascension, and the Powers That Be know it. Yet it's impossible to advance any new party, any innovative Brand, because the public visibility for such a party depends on the cooperation of a media which also plays the Two-Party Game, including the so-called "rebel" commentators who use the Democrats as their substitute for creative thinking.
All this is toward, you know, a further definition of my Brand. My Brand is sort of being sick of Brands and the limitations on constructive engagement with social problems caused by the channeling of all thinking into one of two Brand-determined modes. And this recent past is just prologue to how bad things are going to get as this Depression gains momentum, even as the Masked Avengers and the Clean-Cut Speedos madly print money and throw it in all directions in a vain effort to cover up the misallocation of resources and fatal policy mistakes made over the last 50 years. The General Motors Brand, you see, may show us the future of the American Brand.
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