Posts Tagged ‘obama’

What is Nicolas Sarkozy’s problem with his height? He can’t seem to go a week without turning up in the press reportedly wearing a pair of stacked heels and standing on tiptoe in an effort to make himself feel taller – be it next to Barack Obama or factory workers in Normandy.

His latest stunt, being widely reported on in the press at the moment, is the photo opportunity he took at a Normandy factory last Thursday, in which the workers he was photographed with were all shorter than he was.

Sarkozy stands at either 5’5” or 5’6”, depending on which journal you read – it’s abundantly clear that he is constantly kept on his toes trying to obfuscate on the issue of his height – but this latest venture, where volunteers shorter than the French president were called for to stand behind him as he made a speech, takes his problems with the state of his limited verticality to new heights. He seems to be developing a Napoleon complex. This is not an attractive trait in the French president, as history has shown.

The fact that the Élysée Palace spinmeisters haven’t taken the issue in hand, and instead seem to be actively falling in step with Sarkozy’s wishes, only adds to the Napoleonic complexity of the matter. They need to do something if they want to stop him becoming a laughing stock. One simply cannot be a global leader and not be able to deal with one’s height – or lack of it – in the 21st century.

It’s a PR disaster to be seen as so self-obsessed when there are much bigger issues in the world that need much more urgent attention. Sarkozy needs to get over his personal issues, throw out his Cuban heels, realise that he has an attractive trophy wife and that some people envy him for that (this seems to be the sort of recognition he’s craving) and, most of all, recognise that the whole world is watching – and laughing at – his methods of projecting himself.

This footage is from the original Belgian report that broke the news that Sarkozy was actively seeking people his height or shorter to stand behind him on the podium…

A week has passed and it amazes me that there has been as much surprise at – and media condemnation of – Damien McBride’s attempts to slur the opposition as there has been. Surely this sort of thing, in one form or another has been going on for years? I’m not suggesting I approve of McBride’s attempts to dismantle the reputations of the Tories, but this is far from the first time that it’s happened.

Gordon Brown may have expressed his apologies, may have “ensured that there are new rules so that this cannot happen again” but Westminster is a notorious whispering gallery and the press have been pecking up the strands of scandal dropped there for years to feather their nests. That is surely going to continue, outside official channels, as it has in the past.

It occurs to me that this frenzy of outrage is more an expression of fear on the part of the traditional media; fear that their sources may be decamping to the ultimate whispering gallery that is the internet, where rumour, conjecture and slander can live with considerably less fear of court action.

Bloggers like Guido Fawkes and Ian Dale are getting to the meat of a story more quickly, more effectively and with a wider reach than the analogue media; they must be chilled to the bone at their inability to lead the story. The papers are losing control and trust, hence their vicious reaction. If they can help halt the tittle-tattle’s flow towards the net, they will.

And this sort of diatribe has been part of the political mix forever. The metropolitan dinner party and lobby circles in Notting Hill, Hampstead and Westminster lap it up but, hypocritically, publicly disown it when outed.

The sad thing is that this latest round of technological, net-based spin and whisper is borne out of Barack Obama’s positive and hugely successful campaign to become President of the USA. But Britain’s political thinkers are so ingrained in negativity that they have inverted Obama’s campaign tactics and made something poisonous with them.

Consider the net a wire service, a huge, powerful story feed where everyone who wants it can get the message at high speed – delivered to their mobiles the moment it goes up if needs be. Psy Ops campaigns on the net are simple and easy to run, but it’s ludicrous and hypocritical of the media to suggest that this evil propaganda device is a new phenomenon. It’s just running at the speed of thought now.

The key soldiers in the Psy Ops political war on the web are ex-newspaper men and women and there are plenty of PR people sticking their members into the swill pit. But politics has always been a dirty, ruthless and cynical game and the only way out of this mess is for people is to stop glorying in the ruthless gossip and disinformation and take a more positive outlook on life, political or otherwise.

I’ve seen friends destroyed by the sort of tactics that McBride proposed to use – they haven’t been in public life for years and won’t be coming back unless a new attitude comes to the fore. They just don’t have the recourse to justice that the seriously wealthy have. There are a lot of casualties out there who’ll never get a fair crack of the whip despite the PCC.

What we need is a realignment of thought, not a few rules that are little more than sticking plaster placed over a crumbling dam.

I was sent a beautiful and astonishing graphical representation of the cost of the bailout of the American economy yesterday – one that made my jaw tap my laptop’s keys and type out an expressive gasp of consternation when I saw it.

The pie chart in question, below, was posted on the voltagecreative.com blog and is an aesthetically-pleasing version of statistics drawn up by the economist Barry Ritholtz.

Click on the image for a larger version

Whilst one can question the way the dollar prices were adjusted for inflation, there is no denying that this statistic shows explicitly just how much the American economy has been propped up on hope in the last 30 years, and the enormity of the task facing Barack Obama.

Reading George Monbiot’s comment, in today’s Guardian, discussing the flurry of misinformation about climate change, I cannot help but think that the biggest global budgets, for corporations whose profit-making capabilities are threatened by the need for change, are thrown at secret briefs to the global PR giants, whose only remit is to sow confusion and thus stultify change.

“We all create our own reality,” writes Monbiot, “and shut out the voices we do not want to hear. But there is no issue we are less willing to entertain than man-made climate change. Here, three worlds seem to exist in virtual isolation. In the physical world, global warming appears to be spilling over into runaway feedback: the most dangerous situation humankind has ever encountered. In the political world – at the climate talks in Poznan, for instance – our governments seem to be responding to something quite different, a minor nuisance that can be addressed in due course. Only the Plane Stupid protesters who occupied part of Stansted airport yesterday appear to have understood the scale and speed of this crisis. In cyberspace, by contrast, the response spreading fastest and furthest is flat-out denial.

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When I first visited New York 32 years ago, I was strongly advised against walking through Harlem. 40 years ago, Martin Luther King was assassinated for daring to dream about racial integration. 13 years previous to that, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white woman on a bus and tipped the balance, beginning what has become, of late, an avalanche of change. Now, after decades of struggle, what was previously unthinkable – despite Jesse Jackson’s valiant attempts to stand for the presidency in the 1980s – has actually happened; a black man has been elected President of the USA and it feels good. 

Or at least it felt good for a little while, in the wake of John McCain’s gracious concession speech and Obama’s stirring acceptance speech. Now, only 12 hours later, the internet has started to breed colonies of bile and cynicism, hatred and demagoguery, which is spreading fast and picking away at the euphoria and hope, at that sense of history being made that anyone, of whatever political persuasion, must surely have felt when they woke to the news of Obama’s victory this morning.

It seems that the honeymoon is over almost before it started. Are people so cynical, in the wake of the Blair effect that came, eventually, to be seen as nothing more than spin and puffery, that they cannot even bask in the hope Obama offers for a little while? The internet opens us up to an endless array of opinion, and can be a great agent of change, but have the spinmeisters hardened us so much that we cannot see a good thing for what it is without having to rationalize it to death?

The most interesting detail in the Obama speech by far was when, in passing, he characterised the global economy – only in passing, mind you – as being in its worst state for more than a century. This strikes me as a genuine breakthrough and although it was only one sentence, it was clearly the product of much sweat in the back rooms of the Obama campaign. It is the sort of idea, surely, of a man prepared to try to do what he has pledged to do – change the world for the better. He has seen the problems the American people and the world face

The world should be focusing on these details, on the gracious pledge of help offered by John McCain, on the positivity that Obama’s election has engendered. If we listen to the haters, the people who booed the mention of Obama during McCain’s concession speech, the cynics who wonder, bitterly, if Obama can do anything he has promised so soon after the election, the Twitterers who compare his victory to the walk Blair took to 10 Downing Street which lead inexorably to the Iraq war, surely all is lost before it has a chance to be won.

Surely now is not the time for a PR backlash. Should we not all be hoping that Obama will live up to his promises, deliver change and fail to give any traction to the poisonous prophecies of the web’s anonymous nay sayers and doom-mongers?

The Borkowski poet in residence’s reaction to the American election.

I don’t want a White House,
I want a light house, a right house.
I don’t want a White House,
I want a beacon ‘gainst the night house.

I want a dream in every heart house,
a no one kept apart house.
I want a truth house, a youth house,
an open not uncouth house.

I want a hope house, a joy house,
a no lies to deploy house.
I want a trust house, a just house,
a proactive and robust house.

I don’t want a White House,
I want a freedom walking tall house.
I don’t want a White House,
I want a no colour at all house.

 

 I Don't Want a White House: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

“I want you to get out in the real world and marry a rich man,” Joan Rivers told Big Brother contestant Emilia Arata earlier this year, when she took part in the show’s Celebrity Hijack. “If you’re smart, get a man with a heart condition, walk behind him, go ‘boo!’ and you’ll be set for life.”

It remains to be seen whether or not Arata will take the acid-tongued comedian’s words to heart, but the advice has rung home for Sarah Palin, who has become part of the celebrity hijack of American politics that is the latest Presidential election. Not that she plans to marry John McCain, of course, but she is certainly stands a strong chance of becoming the American President if the 72 year old keels over at some point during his time in office, should he and Palin win the election.

Her rise, like that of Barak Obama before her, has been spectacular. She filled a hole in a certain part of the American psyche that requires even their leaders to be pretty and young and adept with a gun, but she has become so rapidly overexposed that she is now facing satire and ridicule at every turn.

This is what happens in the world of celebrity, of course – you reach giddy heights of fame, everyone talks about you, everyone’s exited and people even make dolls in your image. Then, before you know it, the same people who were so enthusiastic are lambasting you and sticking pins in the dolls. And so it has been with Palin, who is learning that with every giddy high comes a huge and unnerving plunge.

Admittedly the economic crisis riddling America has put paid to much of the pettier sniping in the campaign, but it is this that has put paid to Palin’s appeal too. She is too much of a blank slate and too little is known about her political record. Obama, who has come in for similar criticism in the past, has at least had many months to put himself and his ideas across. Palin is left shivering in the economic climate, propping up an emperor whose clothes have been built on the shares in companies like the Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch.

“Most people have this image in their heads of tobacco executives jet-setting around the world on private planes, eating foie gras as they count their money. Not me. I like to ride with the people. Know your clients. My people cram themselves into a tiny seat, pop a Xanex, and dream of the moment when they can stuff their face with fresh tobacco. If I can convince just one of these kids to pick up smoking, I’ve paid for my flight. Round trip.” Nick Naylor, Thank You For Smoking

The hype surrounding the world’s sexiest politician – one Sarah Palin – has scaled dizzy heights for the Republicans just as they were beginning to falter. It was a tricky time for them ten days ago as the Obama bandwagon was picking up pace. The triumphant, choreographed theatrics of Denver were a work of art. But this was thoroughly turned around with the launch of the ex-beauty queen and all American ” ordinary Hockey Mom” -  tweaked to appeal to the media and the public. Sarah Palin is the embodiment of a photogenic and sexy local librarian and her down-home appeal has rallied the troops and bewitched the US.

So what is the back-story to this PR triumph? The chief alchemist cooking up the formula for her success is Steve Schmidt. Look carefully and his shadow can be spotted lurking in dim recesses of the nightly TV coverage. He is a shaven-headed strategist who earned his spurs as the helmer for Karl Rove’s war room in 2004. How can we forget him Frenchifying and castrating John Kerry?

An arch-strategist, Schmidt and his magic pixies have quickly isolated McCain’s weaknesses and prefabricated the presidential candidate. They worked out that the key problems were his age, lack of energy and stumbling charisma. They went in search of a fix and the came up with a political Viagra pill. They found one. After sugar coating it, they branded it ‘Sarah Palin’.

Before the Palin factor came into play, Schmidt had tried to construct a bold campaign focused on undermining the Obama bandwagon and pulling it apart. Friends in the US who have been briefing me were quick to point out that his crude spin, trying to destabilize Obama, was coming unstuck. The transparent sloganeering, suggesting that Obama was an egotist who was running for purposes of self-aggrandizement rather than the good of the nation, was rough and ready to say the least.

Schmidt helped McCain pump out sound bites positing that Obama: “would rather lose a war in order to win a political campaign”. There was a negative forums claims that Obama, while in Germany, “made time to go the gym, but cancelled a visit with wounded troops – seems the Pentagon wouldn’t allow him to bring cameras.” The final attempt was the clever mash-up ad featuring intercut images of Obama in Berlin, Paris Hilton, and Britney Spears. The strategy: drive up Obama’s negatives and give the impression that he was undesirable to critical voting blocs and little more than an empty celebrity, portraying him as too young, too weak, and too cosseted to be a hard, decision-making president.

While this gerrymandering was taking shape, Schmidt caused a stir with the Hall of Mirrors trick. In almost every shot in the McCain ads, Obama is smiling flashily, whereas McCain is pictured as gnarled, restrained and staring hard into the distance – a clever bit of image twisting which tried to use Obama’s good looks against him in an attempt to make him appear self-infatuated and effete.

One blog declared: “Only celebrities like Barack Obama go to the gym three times a day, drink gallons of a hard-to-find organic brew-Black Forest Berry Honest Tea’ and worry about the price of arugula,” The accent on Obama’s rock-star persona, designed to engender envy and contempt among the swath of Middle America for which hipness is no virtue but a sign of pretension. Obama noted his opponents were trying to make voters “scared” of him how can we forget ” he doesn’t look like the other presidents on the currency.”

The hard-working Schmidt, briefed by the pollsters, realized that his team’s spin was unravelling. So he regrouped and came up with an impressive Plan B. The Palin project seems to have galvanized the right wing rump of Middle America. The brilliant introduction of Palin as VP allowed McCain to interrupt the news cycle. The announcement was intelligently set up. It was put around that there would be “a leak that there’s going to be a leak”. Reportedly, the McCain camp began whispering in the ears of reporters that there was going to be a leak about Mr. McCain’s selection either right before or after Mr. Obama’s speech. That leak never came, but it had the pundits guessing and waiting for most of the night.

It was a very stylish double-leak strategy that took a lot of the energy and impact out of Obama’s speech; you have to hand it to Schmidt and his henchmen, they played it brilliantly. It was a pragmatic plan that telegraphed to the hardcore that their prayers have been answered; they have been provided a turbo-charged VP. Yesterday’s electrifying speech by Sarah Palin, attacking Obama, which was very Thatcher, proved this beyond measure.

Meanwhile, in the shadows, Schmidt’s team continues to underplay Palin’s readiness for the media stresses. All this under-promising is doing is giving her permission to over-deliver. So far, she has done so in spades.