How can a word convey a wonderfully positive sense in one context but mean something immoral and hateful in another? If you’re an archetypal right-winger, it can happen if the word is “choice,” which for some reason means a good thing to people on the right when it comes to education, but not when it […]
The lead story on the front page of today’s New York Times floats the idea that states enter bankruptcy as a means to avoid paying retired state workers the pensions that the states promised them. Currently, states are not permitted to seek bankruptcy protection from their creditors. As is usual for Times articles that float […]
Once we have established an individual or event as an American myth, marketers, the news media, politicians and others slowly hollow out the person or event of its content, so that it can come to represent anything—and everything. I analyzed how the hollowed-out myth can be used as a symbol of anything when the new […]
It seems as if no matter what time of day it is, whenever I turn on my local ESPN AM radio station, I hear an ad from the American Legion chiding us about the dangers illegal immigration poses to our economy and society. The stern announcer imbues each word with ominous notes of fear, as […]
Legal immigrants in upstate New York taking a class to help them prepare for the test to become U.S. citizens… Senior citizens in rural North Carolina in the middle of an exercise class at a rehab center… A loving extended family celebrating a housewarming in Santa Clara, California… 32 students at a major university in […]
About six months ago, I defined 15 specific propaganda techniques routinely used by the mainstream news media to distort the coverage of news. Staring in my face—or perhaps hiding in plain sight is a more appropriate phrase—all this time has been a 16th technique. The newly identified technique is the complete disregard of a fact, […]
The New York Times rang in the New Year by trying to connect a few statements in a paragraph and create a greater meaning that runs counter to reality. It was buried on the page A3 continuation of the first page story, “Boomers Hit Another Milestone of Self-Absorption: Turning 65.” Read the following paragraph very […]
Words or phrases often acquire values that most people or a specific group of people find attractive or dislike. When the word or phrase is associated with a number of sharply distinguishing values it enters the lexicon of labels and brands. One of the tricks of propaganda and marketing is to label an idea, product […]
Christmas is over and we’re rolling towards the New Year, which means that once again Subway, the fast-food sandwich chain, is running one of the most deceptive television commercials of the past several years. The background music—The 1812 Overture by Tchaikovsky—drives the commercial. That’s the light classical piece in which the drums sound like cannon […]
Read More… from Why does Subway persist in telling the old lie about how to lose weight?
I’ve been reading an excellent history of the Tang Dynasty, which ruled most of China from 618-907, during which time China experienced a Renaissance in literature and the arts, especially poetry. It’s China’s Cosmopolitan Empire: The Tang Dynasty by Mark Edward Lewis. Many books pad their pages past the direct subject to one degree or […]
Read More… from One lesson from the Tang Dynasty: the wealthy always find a way to control things.