"The best lack all conviction
and the worst are full of passionate intensity"

W.B Yeats - The Second Coming

Thursday, March 20, 2008

How many revolutions per minute?

PR Watch is good. they appeal to me.  

Speaking of which, check this out.  

A year ago Elizabeth Lukin, a director of essential media communication (the company that sacked me in 2006), ran for the National Council of my union, the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA). I contacted MEAA national secretary Christopher Warren at the time to voice my displeasure and his defence was that the union wanted more people from Public Affairs (aka turd polishing) involved in the union.  

Now we have the ninth MEAA turd polishers love in - and there's no sign of that carpetbagger Lukin anywhere involved in what you'd think would be the high point of MEAA and the esteemed world of what is euphemistically referred to as as public affairs. Little wonder her relationship with her offspring is a shambles. 

We're talking about people with serious developmental issues here. 

People who shouldn't be walking the streets of society, breathing our oxygen, let alone being a part of the union movement. Which is why we need PR Watch, who aren't just about exposing bottom feeding carpetbaggers like Lukin, as the following report from my contact over at the Wankersphere illustrates:
Now putting aside the obvious bullshit of the whole US election process and the idiots it dishes up to the rest of the world, as well as the level the whole thing is pitched at - to 10-year-olds - I found this analysis very interesting: "Obama's speech is a great test of the following question: Are we still living in the age of sound-bite politics, where the sharp attack line, even taken out of context, can become the 'truth' of an event or a person thanks to the amplifying and distorting effects of broadcast media? Or are we entering the age of sound-blast politics, where a 37-minute speech can actually be watched, read, and digested by millions of people (a million views already on YouTube!) using the abundant spaces of the internet -- and the themes and meanings they encounter and absorb will be not about the 'politics' of a speech, but its actual content? In other words, are we entering an age when politicians can be judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character?"
All very interesting, but methinks that this guarded optimism is exactly that, optimism. I wouldn't go rewriting the rules of engagement just yet. remember, Uncle Barak is pretty light on when it comes to detail. 

As far as the three big issues of our time are concerned: global warming, the imperial war in Iraq and the ability of working people to organise collectively, he continues to be light on when it comes to the detail.  

Maybe they're just super long sound bites, or it's someone tapping into a culture that's now inundated with preachers and loves a good sermon, just so long as it makes the audience feel good, rather than uncomfortable.