Month: July 2010

Columnist shows us how to indoctrinate children in the ideology of spendthrift consumerism.

Posted on by Marc Jampole

I want to begin with a big bravo to Robert Reich and Nation Magazine for the special July 19/26 double issue on the growing inequality of wealth in the United States and how it is ruining the nation economically, a subject that I have dealt with extensively in this blog lately, including on June 14 and June 15.  I urge all my readers to get a copy of this issue of The Nation, which besides an essay by Reich, includes articles by Dean Baker, Jeff Mandrick, Katherine Newman & David Pedula, Orlando Patterson and Matt Yglesias.  Anyone with a little extra cash should consider subscribing to The Nation, which consistently serves as an accurate and thought-provoking alternative to mainstream and right-wing media.

Speaking of wealth, last Saturday’s New York Times had another exercise in indoctrination masquerading as an advice article, this one by Ron Lieber in his regular column, “Your Money.”

Lieber attempts to answer the question, “Daddy, are we rich?” and other queries that children and teens sometimes ask about the family financial situation.  I want to look at three ways that Lieber subtly infuses his article with the mindless consumerist, keep-up-with-the-Jones values that have so many Americans jonesing on commercial transactions as the only source of satisfaction and the primary means of interacting with the world. 

Lieber’s first trick is one I have written about often: selection of experts.  Lieber quotes four experts, all financial consultants. 

But wait a second.  When a child asks a money question, one of two dynamics is in play:

  • An opportunity to transmit basic family values, which may differ a little, a lot or not at all from the prevailing values of society and the community in which the family lives

OR

  • The necessity to deal with a family trauma (loss of job, for example).

It seems to me that a financial consultant has no standing as an expert in these situations.  Lieber should have instead asked those experts who could provide some help dealing with the emotional issues that really frame most complicated questions asked by children, in other words, a child or family psychologist. 

Child and family psychologists have both the training and the experience to advise parents on how to speak to children about difficult or complicated subjects.  Financial consultants might help in training children about financial matters, e.g., the importance of saving or why not paying off a credit card at the end of the month leads to spending more than you need to on the things you buy.  But the putative subject was not financial education, but communication on how financial issues affect the family.  That’s a job for a psychologist. 

Another of Lieber’s propaganda maneuvers involves his choice of examples, which all assume completely consumerist values.  Here are some examples, after each of which I will provide some interpretive comment in all caps:

  • “My wife handled it better, noting that if we had spent money on a second home, our daughter wouldn’t have been able to go to the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival this year or on a beach vacation.”  BUT WHATEVER WE DO, IT WILL INVOLVE CONSUMPTION.
  • “They may just be worried about running out of money or wondering why you don’t live in a mansion.”  THE ONE EXAMPLE OF A CHILD ASKING WHY THE FAMILY HAS MORE THAN A HOMELESS PERSON IS BURIED AT THE END OF THE ARTICLE (SEE BELOW).
  • “…says he believes that most questions about salary spring from the schoolyard. ‘There is so much comparison going on there…Who is best looking? Who is most popular? And money just plugs right into that system.  Who has the richest parents?’”  THAT’S ONLY IF THE PARENTS HAVE EITHER TRAINED THE TEEN TO BUY INTO CONSUMERIST JONESING OR ALLOWED IT TO HAPPEN BY JUST GOING ALONG.
  • “This may not work as well for teenagers, who care mostly about whether they have as much stuff as their friends.” AGAIN, IF THAT’S HOW THE TEEN HAS BEEN RAISED.  

Lieber does consider voluntary simplicity (although he doesn’t call it that), the way of life in which you live on less and don’t consider buying things and experiences as the sole goal of life and the sole way of measuring and manifesting all emotions.  But he begins this alternative only in the last one-eighth of the article. 

This placement is the third way that Lieber enforces consumerist values.  By mentioning the one example of a family that embraced voluntary simplicity by selling their large house and buying a smaller one, Lieber moves the article slightly towards having some balance, but only if you read to the end.  In the case of the print edition, that means going to another page; online it means scrolling all the way down the page, in some cases after linking from the first paragraph tease to the full story.  And the one example of voluntary simplicity comes after the section on how to tell kids that they will have to do without something they are used to having because the family has to cut back since “mom lost her job.” 

The theory of montage states that the order in which you place information will color how it is perceived so much that this ordering creates a meaning beyond the information itself.  By placing the one example of non-consumer values after advice on what a consumer might say to children when the money runs low, the writer creates the hidden implication that there is a causal relationship between the two that in fact does not have to exist in the real world.

By using these three rhetorical tricks—selection of experts, coloring of quotes and positioning of information—Lieber is able to reinforce the prevailing value system that has sent so many Americans down the road to financial ruin and is taxing the Earth’s resources.

A news story about the expiration of tax cuts becomes a platform for the usual right-wing cant.

Posted on by Marc Jampole

Myths take root as belief only after constant repetition over years.  In the 1950’s, 60’s and 70’s we believed that government could solve many problems, often with the help of the private sector.  Anti-tax sentiment was low, and school districts had no problem raising taxes if need be to support quality public schools.  In the 70’s, majorities were against capital punishment and in favor of stricter gun control laws. 

All that has changed (and to my mind, for the worse), but it took years of hammering home some basic messages to turn the public on each of these positions, years of engraining these messages into the minds of the public. 

To state the obvious, one of the major vehicles for indoctrinating the public is the mass media.  Yesterday’s lead story running under the masthead on page one of the Pittsburgh/Greensburg Tribune-Review is a casebook example of how reporters color stories so that what is presented as objective using the tools of objective reporting is really a piece of propaganda.

The headline mouths a distortion: “Americans may be slammed by shocking tax hike.” Now when Congress passed tax cuts and tax breaks in 2001 and 2003, it wrote into the law that these cuts and breaks would expire after 2010.  To call the expiration of these temporary measures a tax hike is a misnomer.

BTW, I do not question that the expiration of these measures will shock many taxpayers when it hits their pay stubs, because many Americans just don’t routinely follow the news media or keep up with law changes that affect them. 

The writer builds his article on three types of information:

  • Details of the temporary measures that will expire, such as child tax credits,  capital gains tax reductions and the temporary phase out of the inheritance tax (which The writer calls the “death tax,” even though it is not a tax on the act of dying but on the estates of only the very wealthiest citizens once they have died).
  • Quotes from experts at think tanks and associations.  The experts give factual statements with no analysis, but all of them are associated with think tanks that are known to be right wing.  By virtue of having their experts state part of the factual basis of the article, the right-wing think tanks gain credibility.  In a sense, by disengaging them from their typical biased opinion or distorted analysis, the writer “mainstreams” them.
  • Other quotes from other people that begin in the bottom two-thirds of the article.  It is in these quotes that the writer presents virtually all of the right-wing’s decades-old talking points, even when they don’t make sense. 

This chart presents the quotes in caps and small and what the major message is in caps:

Quote/Person Message
“I’m surprised…Obama’s plan was not to raise taxes. He’s said many things and done the opposite.”/Local citizen  THE DEMOCRAT (Obama) IS BAD
“We’re already overwhelmingly overtaxed.”/Small business owner  TAXES ARE TOO HIGH
“Tax breaks are not the problem and should be frozen in place….The rate of spending today is out of control…It’s unsustainable and … it’s going to bankrupt the country.”/Prominent business executive  THE GOVERNMENT SPENDS TOO MUCH
“Someone needs to announce where we’re going and how we’re going to get there…People won’t like to hear it, but they’re better off hearing it rather than speculating.”/Political economist GOVERNMENT (the someone) IS NOT DOING ITS JOB

The writer could have just as easily taken a leftist approach and quoted some experts talking about the need to close the deficit while funding important government programs, or experts saying that we have historically low taxes for any industrialized country after about 1900.  Or, he could have taken an even-handed approach and centered the discussion on what experts are saying about specific tax cuts set to expire, alternating the view of those in favor of extending the temporary cuts and those against it.

My point is that every day now for years, we have been bombarded by these right-wing ideas, not just in the wing-nut media, but in the mainstream news media as well.  Even when the media gets the facts right, as this article mostly does, the underlying assumptions that are conveyed are the same talking points that Ronald Reagan had on the note cards at which he kept glancing in his debates with President Carter in the 1980 presidential election.

The constant beating of these messages into all of us has moved this country to the right.  Sadly, this movement has been correlated with a disintegration of our strong fiscal position, a net transfer of wealth up the economic ladder, a decline in our basic infrastructure, an erosion of civil liberties and a loss of esteem in the rest of the world.

Parade reveals what July 4th means to its publishers: an opportunity to promote mindless celebrity culture.

Posted on by Marc Jampole

There’s no question that Parade, the largest circulation publication in the United States, is going to put July 4th front and center in an issue stuffed into newspapers for Independence Day delivery and use it as a platform for mouthing the most depoliticized platitudes about honoring our country.

But what Parade did this year is quite surprising, because its coverage of the country’s birth by declaration is so devoid of traditional patriotic and militaristic homilies that it transforms the holiday into a mere summer diversion.

The cover and three of the four articles in the issue dated July 4th are about Independence Day.  The cover features two pre-teen girls dressed in the kind of flag costumes and body paint that would have had right-wingers yelling ”damn commie hippy” back in the 60’s when I was their age.  The three articles are 1) a story about a town that has had an Independence Day parade since 1785; 2) an encomium to safe fireworks; and 3) a page of blurbs by famous people on “What July 4th Means to Me….”  The point of the other long article in the issue is to glorify immigrants who came from Ireland in an earlier age. 

Notice that in the July 4th features there is nothing substantive on our founders, nothing on sacrifice for country, shared values, the long road to freedom that started in 1776 and is ongoing, or even the current arguments about the relevancy of the ideas of the late 17th century to today’s post-Industrial society.  

I want to pay particular attention to the article titled “What July 4th Means to Me…” The secondary headline limits what the celebrities say to “Celebrities share their favorite holiday memories.”

And that’s just about all they do:  Seven actors, all of whom have their photo showing and an imageless Buzz Aldrin (second human to walk on the moon) tell us what they used to do on July 4th as kids.  All but three give nothing but memories of a celebration that could be for any summer holiday, or even just a summer family picnic.  The five whose published statements make it seem as if they believe July 4th is just that three-day holiday that kicks off the sunshine season include four actors in faddish hot entertainments directed at teens and young adults, two from “The Twilight Saga,” one from “Glee” and one from “Gossip Girl;” the other is the aging actress Doris Roberts who has played supporting roles in situation comedies for decades.

The three celebrities who in their memories provide at least some comment on what the holiday means beyond “fun in the sun” represent left, center and right political views, but in ways that either conceal the opinion or drain it of all controversy.  Interestingly enough, the three tepid views are presented in a diagonal, from lower right for the “right-wing” view to upper left for the “left-wing” view, with the centrist in the middle:

  • Buzz Aldrin (lower right), astronaut, ends his memory of fireworks with “Our country is a guardian of liberty and freedom,” a vaguely militaristic and slightly right-wing statement because it is one of the excuses we always use when going to war, even a war over resources or geopolitical maneuvering.
  • Jimmy Smits (center), actor, mentions that “Dad and mom were very mindful of passing down the fact that coming to this country was an opportunity…”  It’s certainly a pro-immigration statement, but like the story on discovering Irish roots, non-threatening since Jimmy’s family comes from Puerto Rico, a long-time U.S. possession whose residents are considered citizens.  Virtually everyone living in the United States is the descendant of immigrants, and I think the centrist view is that’s okay, as long as your family has been here awhile.
  • Josh Brolin (upper left), actor, references A People’s History of the United States, lefty Howard Zinn’s wonderful history of the U.S. from the perspective or the poor, minorities and women. “It made me feel a sense of patriotism…” Brolin gushes.  Well done, Josh, to bring this important historian’s most accessible work to the millions who peruse Parade.  It is the only moment of real content in Parade’s coverage of the 4th.  As a statement from the left, however, it is as innocuous and as easy-to-miss as what Smits and Aldrin said, so plays into one of the ideological messages in the subtext.

What then does Parade communicate in the ideological subtext of this article and its broader coverage of the 2010 version of its July 4th coverage?  Two ideas, I think:

One of Parade’s hidden messages is that the only truly newsworthy celebrities are (white) actors.  It’s amazing that not even an athlete or pop musician makes the list, although I imagine that Kevin McHale of “Glee” does something musical.  What if instead of all these actors, the celebrity list included one or two elected officials (or the first lady or even Michelle’s mom), a scientist or two, a chief executive officer of a technology company, a classical or jazz musician and a popular literary writer such as Don DeLillo or Michael Chabon?  Maybe even add an unknown like someone who just won a “teacher of the year” award.  The selection of experts to use is one of the most important ideologically-tinged decisions that any writer or editor makes.  Parade could have made the statement that great novelists, scientists, economists and elected officials are celebrities to revere and follow.  Instead it chose to state that only the opinions of mass culture actors are important.

Parade’s second hidden message is that the current purpose of the July 4th holiday is neither to commemorate, celebrate nor debate shared values, but to have a good time at a barbecue and see a parade and some cool fireworks.  We have no way of knowing everything the celebrities said to Parade’s writer(s); the only statements that make the story describe the fun that was had by all.  

None of the articles focus on things you can buy on and for the holiday, so Parade doesn’t wallow explicitly in mindless consumption.  But its message nevertheless supports the mindless consumer culture by focusing on hedonistic fun that somehow gains undefined higher meaning because it occurs collectively in the family or community.  All meaning is once again embodied entirely in the hedonistic fun—in other words, in consumption and consumption alone.    

In the past, Parade has taken the patriotic or issues route in its celebration of Independence Day.  For example, I remember one cover from more than 10 years ago in which then-First Lady Hillary Clinton earnestly and proudly saluted a flag with two fine upstanding white young people.  That this year’s coverage is so devoid of real content only reflects the current news media trend towards triviality and away from serving as a forum for discussing issues or increasing knowledge.  Someone might argue that at least there isn’t any war-mongering or militaristic propaganda, but in a real sense, all Parade has done has been to replace one set of myths and manipulations with another.