Fox, F-O-X

Just skimming along in another Media Matters takedown of first degree Murdoch, I found this nugget of bullshit:

The Wall Street Journal's current arrangement with CNBC -- wherein CNBC reportedly receives advanced [sic] access to certain original financial reporting from WSJ and all Dow Jones business outlets as well as other perks -- expires in 2012.

While many observers assumed that Fox Business would inevitably form a partnership with WSJ once the CNBC deal expired -- News Corp. owns both Fox and the WSJ -- Journal managing editor Robert Thomson told Media Matters that partnering with FBN would "not necessarily" happen.

Fox's first priority at all times and in all ways is the Fox brand. Whether or not the medium is the message, the brand is the message for Fox. At every level of the Fox media empire, pimping the brand comes first - witness the constant tie-ins and mentions on sports broadcasts. Pimping the brand comes even before fellation of conservatives.

Rebranding

Rogue is the new maverick!

Click image for full Mike Keefe/Denver Post cartoon.

All the same deck chairs

You think Newt and Sarah are trying to get on board?

The Republican establishment is ossified, schlerotic. Now they're going to slap a "New Improved" sticker on the packaging and launch a campaign to convince the weak-minded that the same tired formulas are different - because they have a "New Improved" sticker on the package.

Getting and selling

If restoring America's commercial branding after the Bushist debasement is the highest ambition the media talks about, we've clearly lost sight of what's really important in our national conversation.

How about this: Obama is trying to restore America to our most sacred founding ideals? Would that not be mercantile enough?

Put money in the purse.

Counting on gullible fools

Only a gullible fool would be convinced by McCain photo ops of anything, much less that the Republican attitude toward competent federal disaster assistance is anything more than a PR problem. Unfortunately for America, our citizenry has proven again and again to be heavily leavened with gullible fools. We did after all re-elect Duhbya.

Time is on board though with warmed over Republican bullshit. Oh, sure, there are some obligatory slaps at McCain, but on the key point, setting a low bar for McCain, Michael Scherer is front and center.

Scherer has no sense that this contradicts itself:

[John McCain's] campaign is determined to make the most of [Gustav] by using it to rebrand a new generation of Republicans as leaders who govern effectively and rise above partisanship.

This exercise in rebranding is itself a craven political act of desperation, about which there is nothing "above partisanship." Yet, here's the standard:

Whatever happens to the Gulf, however, there is no doubt that the McCain campaign will continue to use the aftermath as a way to demonstrate the candidate's superior leadership qualities. From the early primaries, McCain has run as a candidate best able to deal with a crisis, though the focus has mostly been on national security challenges. Now, in a circumstance at home he would never have chosen, he has a chance to deliver on that promise.

What McCain is doing for the cameras and their reporters is pure theater. It has nothing to do with leadership, superior or otherwise, and it's a mark of the corruption of our media that they think it is.

Corporatism

If you work for a large, publicly traded corporation, you're going to have to get sent to re-education camp from time to time. Hell, I've had to wear Spock ears at a kick-off meeting for a small corporation. Executives believe that all their serfs should love the brand just as much as they profess to.

I'm sitting though a bit of propaganda today, shields up, trying to let only enough through that I can pass the assessment at the end and stay out of dutch with HR. I'm doing this six months late, so I just know that Catbert, evil HR director, is waiting to nail me if I even think of stepping off the one true path (until the next executive shows his impact by changing it).

But what I just saw turned my stomach too much to let pass uncommented: The brand evangelists asked various people from the business side what brand they identify with, and they managed to find ordinary-looking, non-insane people who would admit that they identify with Disney, Coca-Cola, Google, Starbucks, BMW, Apple.

Think about that. These people are proud that advertising has worked on them, that their self-images are bound up with a corporate image created for the express purpose of extracting money from their wallets!

So now the corporation I work for is asking me to identify with its brand, to go to war with its logo on my chest and to return with my shield or on it. But the executives know enough at least to identify with third party brands, since the only brand that really matters to them is their own brand, as represented as well as possible by their résumés.

Brother, can you spare a dime?

"The change America deserves," according to John Boehner and the craven Bushist Republicans in Congress.

In Congress at least for now...

Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.

Lipstick on a pig

If the GOP succeeds at this lame attempt to whitewash the damned spot of its culpability, those of us who again remain sane will need some serious antidepressants (not just something to give us better boehners). The change we deserve is much, much greater than anything the Republicans would ever be willing to deliver.

Key to Mitt Romney

There is only one thing you need to remember about Mitt Romney: His every public act is about brand positioning, not anything that would imply real commitment.

Politics is just another form of business for him, and that requires the ability to discard his past like the cheap suit he has never had.

Counterbranding

America needs this:

why aren't Democrats doing more to aggressively discredit the Republican candidates?

This need has been obvious since Duhbya "won" in 2000. Democrats should be on this message all the @#(*$ing time: You can't believe a single goddamn word the Republicans say.

"Stand there and bleed"

stand there and bleed is a great counterbranding of the Bushists' insane war strategy.

(Originally here.)

Sounding popular

Originally a comment on this post on DailyKos.

Polls repeatedly show that our policies are more popular than the Republicans'. We just haven't developed the right branding. (By the way, Carville's still aiming too high. What we Dems need is simple branding, not something as windy as a narrative.)