[CitizensTruth] Brand Obama

[Geri Perry]

Just to add to the fray,

This is a good article by William Blum, author of Killing Hope, Rogue 
States, etc titled Some Thoughts about Torture. And Mr. Obama:

http://www.killinghope.org/bblum6/aer69.html

gerip

Robin Migalla wrote:

> Hi Andrew, Connie, Kris, Ed, and all other Truth Seekers among our small 

> community,

>

> I must confess, Andrew, when I first opened your initial message, I was 

> overwhelmed by too many words and quickly deleted it without reading it. 

>  The subsequent conversation between Connie, Kris, and Ed piqued my 

> interest.  I have a few thoughts I'd like to share.  Lest we personalize 

> and moralize issues rather than clarifying them, let's try looking at just 

> the facts in Chris Hedges piece.  As far as I can tell the list below 

> summarizes these facts (I put braces around items that could render a 

> statement that might otherwise be known as fact as personalizing or 

> moralizing):

>

> 1) His [Obama's] administration has spent, lent or guaranteed $12.8 

> trillion in taxpayer dollars to Wall Street and insolvent banks in a doomed 

> effort to reinflate the bubble economy...

>

> 2) {Brand} Obama has allocated nearly $1 trillion in defense-related 

> spending and the continuation of our doomed imperial projects in Iraq, 

> where military planners now estimate that 70,000 troops will remain for the 

> next 15 to 20 years.

>

> 3) {Brand} Obama has expanded the war in Afghanistan, including the use of 

> drones sent on cross-border bombing runs into Pakistan that have doubled 

> the number of civilians killed over the past three months.

>

> 4) {Brand} Obama has refused to ease restrictions so workers can organize 

> and will not consider single-payer, not-for-profit health care for all 

> Americans.

>

> 5) {Brand} Obama will not prosecute the Bush  administration for war 

> crimes, including the use of torture, and

>

> 6)  He [Obama] has refused to dismantle Bush's secrecy laws or restore 

> habeas corpus.

>

> 7)  He [Obama] was {happy} to promote nuclear power as "green" energy.

>

> 8)  He [Obama] voted to continue the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

>

> 9)  He [Obama] reauthorized the Patriot Act.

>

> 10) He [Obama] would not back a bill designed to cap predatory credit card 

> interest rates.

>

> 11)  He [Obama] opposed a bill that would have reformed the notorious 

> Mining Law of 1872.

>

> 12)  He [Obama] refused to support the single-payer health care bill HR676, 

> sponsored by Reps. Dennis Kucinich and John Conyers.

>

> 13) He [Obama] supported the death penalty.

>

> 14) He [Obama] backed a class-action "reform" bill that was part of a large 

> lobbying effort by financial firms. The law, known as the Class Action 

> Fairness Act...

>

> 15) While Gaza was being bombarded and hit with airstrikes in the weeks 

> before Obama took office, "the Obama team let it be known that it would not 

> object to the planned resupply of ?smart bombs' and other hi-tech ordnance 

> that was already flowing to Israel," according to Seymour Hersh.

>

> 16) Even his [Obama's] {one vaunted} anti-war speech as a state senator, 

> {perhaps his single real act of defiance}, was swiftly reversed. He told 

> the Chicago Tribune on July 27, 2004, that "there's not that much 

> difference between my position and George Bush's position at this stage. 

> The difference, in my mind, is who's in a position to execute." And unlike 

> anti-war stalwarts like Kucinich, who gave hundreds of speeches against the 

> war, Obama then {dutifully} stood silent until the Iraq war became 

> unpopular.

>

> 17)  Obama's campaign won the vote of hundreds of marketers, agency heads 

> and marketing-services vendors gathered at the Association of National 

> Advertisers' annual conference in October.

>

> 18)  The Obama campaign was named Advertising Age's marketer of the year 

> for 2008 and edged out runners-up Apple and Zappos.com.

>

> Given these facts, I'm not getting a warm fuzzy about Obama, yet.  Can 

> anyone here refute these facts or clear up any confusion I'm having about 

> them?

>

> Thanks,

> Robin

>

>

> -----Original Message-----

> From:	Edward Rynearson [SMTP:edward_rynearson at yahoo.com]

> Sent:	Tuesday, May 05, 2009 08:10

> To:	citizenstruth at six.pairlist.net

> Subject:	[CitizensTruth] Brand Obama

>

> I agree with Chris Hedges. 

>  

> Ed Rynearson

>  

>

> --- On Tue, 5/5/09, citizenstruth-request at six.pairlist.net 

> <citizenstruth-request at six.pairlist.net> wrote:

>

>

> From: citizenstruth-request at six.pairlist.net 

> <citizenstruth-request at six.pairlist.net>

> Subject: CitizensTruth Digest, Vol 47, Issue 5

> To: citizenstruth at six.pairlist.net

> Date: Tuesday, May 5, 2009, 1:56 AM

>

>

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>

> Today's Topics:

>

>    1. Re: Buying Brand Obama (Connie Smith)

>

>

> ----------------------------------------------------------------------

>

> Message: 1

> Date: Tue, 5 May 2009 01:56:32 -0500

> From: "Connie Smith" <dimension04 at sbcglobal.net>

> Subject: Re: [CitizensTruth] Buying Brand Obama

> To: "andrew ritter" <aroyboy44 at hotmail.com>,    "truth seekers"

>     <citizenstruth at six.pairlist.net>

> Message-ID: <A4C183765AD547D49A426DD0584D49E1 at InspironConnie>

> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="windows-1252"

>

>

>

> "Brand Obama" my foot.  The article-writer below worked 2 decades for 

> "Brand New York Times" -- while Obama helped poor people and taught 

> constitutional law.  Let's wait and see who turns out to be the better 

> man. 

>

> Given his humanitarian-saturated upbringing, what Obama's probably doing is 

> duct-taping some societal structures for the short-term so that they 

> collapse (as they must) SLOWLY, instead of suddenly and catastrophically -- 

> and maneuvering to prevent his assassination, which would certainly occur 

> if he just fired all the nazis outright, like JFK did.

>

> If you were in office, and if you were smart, you would proceed in the same 

> way.

>

> I myself have been immune to being a fan of ANYBODY.  As a young newspaper 

> reporter immediately out of school, I spent time with celebrities like The 

> Doors and The Lettermen and Robert Goulet and a number of others who had 

> big followings, but it was so clear to me they were "just people" that I've 

> forever been immune to any kind of charisma.  However, I am attracted to 

> good character.  (And that has panned out very well in my life -- I am 

> apparently a good judge of it.)

>

> And I've never been susceptible to brand-names OF or ON anything -- only 

> interested in the quality "of the product."  Obama's character and quality 

> have been clear and consistent (consistent as humanly possible) since first 

> observing him here in Illinois politics in 1997. He is obviously not a 

> product nor a brand, but a well-rounded and highly intelligent human being.

>

> The criticisms of him strike me as short-sighted knee-jerk reactions to a 

> ship's captain who has had to take over AFTER the Titanic struck the 

> iceberg.  The wobbly emergency efforts to keep us from suddenly sinking, 

> and a long, slow turn (instead of an immediate shift of the helm and a 

> tip-over as a result) are scary but possibly wise moves -- possibly the 

> only relatively safe ones that can be made. 

>

> When the pilot headed the commercial airliner for the Hudson River in 

> January, it seemed like a horrible move -- especially to everyone on 

> board!  But he did the best that could be done under the extreme 

> circumstances. There were some injuries, but the job was very, VERY well 

> done.

>

> I predict that Obama's wisdom-beyond-his-years will eventually bring us to 

> the softest landing possible.  And I feel it's really ignorant of people 

> who are not in the cockpit of this out-of-control country to attack him 

> when he's doing all he CAN do -- for this nation and for the world. 

>

> That sense of service is where he came from and that's where he will take 

> us -- with the injuries that do occur obviously being the fall-out from the 

> previous NON-wise, NON-intelligent, NON-service-oriented assholes who ruled 

> and wrecked since the turn of the century. 

>

> Those years of long and horrendous momentum CANNOT just be brought to a 

> screeching halt in only 3 months!

>

> Connie

>

>

>

>

>   ----- Original Message -----

>   From: andrew ritter

>   To: truth seekers

>   Sent: Monday, May 04, 2009 8:44 PM

>   Subject: [CitizensTruth] Buying Brand Obama

>

>

>   Buying Brand Obama

>   by Chris Hedges

>

>   Barack Obama is a brand. And the Obama brand is designed to make us feel 

> good about our government while corporate overlords loot the Treasury, our 

> elected officials continue to have their palms greased by armies of 

> corporate lobbyists, our corporate media diverts us with gossip and trivia 

> and our imperial wars expand in the Middle East. Brand Obama is about being 

> happy consumers. We are entertained. We feel hopeful. We like our 

> president. We believe he is like us. But like all branded products spun out 

> from the manipulative world of corporate advertising, we are being duped 

> into doing and supporting a lot of things that are not in our interest.

>   What, for all our faith and hope, has the Obama brand given us? His 

> administration has spent, lent or guaranteed $12.8 trillion in taxpayer 

> dollars to Wall Street and insolvent banks in a doomed effort to reinflate 

> the bubble economy, a tactic that at best forestalls catastrophe and will 

> leave us broke in a time of profound crisis. Brand Obama has allocated 

> nearly $1 trillion in defense-related spending and the continuation of our 

> doomed imperial projects in Iraq, where military planners now estimate that 

> 70,000 troops will remain for the next 15 to 20 years. Brand Obama has 

> expanded the war in Afghanistan, including the use of drones sent on 

> cross-border bombing runs into Pakistan that have doubled the number of 

> civilians killed over the past three months. Brand Obama has refused to 

> ease restrictions so workers can organize and will not consider 

> single-payer, not-for-profit health care for all Americans. And Brand Obama 

> will not prosecute the Bush

>  administration for war cr

> imes, including the use of torture, and has refused to dismantle Bush's 

> secrecy laws or restore habeas corpus. 

>   Brand Obama offers us an image that appears radically individualistic and 

> new. It inoculates us from seeing that the old engines of corporate power 

> and the vast military-industrial complex continue to plunder the country. 

> Corporations, which control our politics, no longer produce products that 

> are essentially different, but brands that are different. Brand Obama does 

> not threaten the core of the corporate state any more than did Brand George 

> W. Bush. The Bush brand collapsed. We became immune to its studied 

> folksiness. We saw through its artifice. This is a common deflation in the 

> world of advertising. So we have been given a new Obama brand with an 

> exciting and faintly erotic appeal. Benetton and Calvin Klein were the 

> precursors to the Obama brand, using ads to associate themselves with 

> risqu? art and progressive politics. It gave their products an edge. But 

> the goal, as with all brands, was to make passive consumers mistake a brand 

> with an

>  experience. 

>   "The abandonment of the radical economic foundations of the women's and 

> civil-rights movements by the conflation of causes that came to be called 

> political correctness successfully trained a generation of activists in the 

> politics of image, not action," Naomi Klein wrote in "No Logo."

>   Obama, who has become a global celebrity, was molded easily into a brand. 

> He had almost no experience, other than two years in the Senate, lacked any 

> moral core and could be painted as all things to all people. His brief 

> Senate voting record was a miserable surrender to corporate interests. He 

> was happy to promote nuclear power as "green" energy. He voted to continue 

> the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He reauthorized the Patriot Act. He would 

> not back a bill designed to cap predatory credit card interest rates. He 

> opposed a bill that would have reformed the notorious Mining Law of 1872. 

> He refused to support the single-payer health care bill HR676, sponsored by 

> Reps. Dennis Kucinich and John Conyers. He supported the death penalty. And 

> he backed a class-action "reform" bill that was part of a large lobbying 

> effort by financial firms. The law, known as the Class Action Fairness Act, 

> would effectively shut down state courts as a venue to hear most

>  class-action lawsuits and den

> y redress in many of the courts where these cases have a chance of defying 

> powerful corporate challenges. 

>   While Gaza was being bombarded and hit with airstrikes in the weeks 

> before Obama took office, "the Obama team let it be known that it would not 

> object to the planned resupply of ?smart bombs' and other hi-tech ordnance 

> that was already flowing to Israel," according to Seymour Hersh. Even his 

> one vaunted anti-war speech as a state senator, perhaps his single real act 

> of defiance, was swiftly reversed. He told the Chicago Tribune on July 27, 

> 2004, that "there's not that much difference between my position and George 

> Bush's position at this stage. The difference, in my mind, is who's in a 

> position to execute." And unlike anti-war stalwarts like Kucinich, who gave 

> hundreds of speeches against the war, Obama then dutifully stood silent 

> until the Iraq war became unpopular.

>   Obama's campaign won the vote of hundreds of marketers, agency heads and 

> marketing-services vendors gathered at the Association of National 

> Advertisers' annual conference in October. The Obama campaign was named 

> Advertising Age's marketer of the year for 2008 and edged out runners-up 

> Apple and Zappos.com. Take it from the professionals. Brand Obama is a 

> marketer's dream. President Obama does one thing and Brand Obama gets you 

> to believe another. This is the essence of successful advertising. You buy 

> or do what the advertiser wants because of how they can make you feel. 

>   Celebrity culture has leeched into every aspect of our culture, including 

> politics, to bequeath to us what Benjamin DeMott called "junk politics." 

> Junk politics does not demand justice or the reparation of rights. Junk 

> politics personalizes and moralizes issues rather than clarifying them. 

> "It's impatient with articulated conflict, enthusiastic about America's 

> optimism and moral character, and heavily dependent on feel-your-pain 

> language and gesture," DeMott noted. The result of junk politics is that 

> nothing changes - "meaning zero interruption in the processes and practices 

> that strengthen existing, interlocking systems of socioeconomic advantage." 

> It redefines traditional values, tilting "courage toward braggadocio, 

> sympathy toward mawkishness, humility toward self-disrespect, 

> identification with ordinary citizens toward distrust of brains." Junk 

> politics "miniaturizes large, complex problems at home while maximizing 

> threats from abroad. It's also

>  given to abrupt unexplai

> ned reversals of its own public stances, often spectacularly bloating 

> problems previously miniaturized." And finally, it "seeks at every turn to 

> obliterate voters' consciousness of socioeconomic and other differences in 

> their midst." 

>   An image-based culture, one dominated by junk politics, communicates 

> through narratives, pictures and carefully orchestrated spectacle and 

> manufactured pseudo-drama. Scandalous affairs, hurricanes, earthquakes, 

> untimely deaths, lethal new viruses, train wrecks-these events play well on 

> computer screens and television. International diplomacy, labor union 

> negotiations and convoluted bailout packages do not yield exciting personal 

> narratives or stimulating images. A governor who patronizes call girls 

> becomes a huge news story. A politician who proposes serious regulatory 

> reform, universal health care or advocates curbing wasteful spending is 

> boring. Kings, queens and emperors once used their court conspiracies to 

> divert their subjects. Today cinematic, political and journalistic 

> celebrities distract us with their personal foibles and scandals. They 

> create our public mythology. Acting, politics and sports have become, as 

> they were during the reign of

>  Nero, interchangeable. 

>   In an age of images and entertainment, in an age of instant emotional 

> gratification, we do not seek reality. Reality is complicated. Reality is 

> boring. We are incapable or unwilling to handle its confusion. We ask to be 

> indulged and comforted by clich?s, stereotypes and inspirational messages 

> that tell us we can be whoever we seek to be, that we live in the greatest 

> country on Earth, that we are endowed with superior moral and physical 

> qualities, and that our future will always be glorious and prosperous, 

> either because of our own attributes, or our national character, or because 

> we are blessed by God. Reality is not accepted as an impediment to our 

> desires. Reality does not make us feel good. 

>   In his book "Public Opinion," Walter Lippmann distinguished between "the 

> world outside and the pictures in our heads." He defined a "stereotype" as 

> an oversimplified pattern that helps us find meaning in the world. Lippmann 

> cited examples of the crude "stereotypes we carry about in our heads" of 

> whole groups of people such as "Germans," "South Europeans," "Negroes," 

> "Harvard men," "agitators" and others. These stereotypes, Lippmann noted, 

> give a reassuring and false consistency to the chaos of existence. They 

> offer easily grasped explanations of reality and are closer to propaganda 

> because they simplify rather than complicate.

>   Pseudo-events-dramatic productions orchestrated by publicists, political 

> machines, television, Hollywood or advertisers-however, are very different. 

> They have, as Daniel Boorstin wrote in "The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events 

> in America," the capacity to appear real even though we know they are 

> staged. They are capable, because they can evoke a powerful emotional 

> response, of overwhelming reality and replacing reality with a fictional 

> narrative that often becomes accepted truth. The unmasking of a stereotype 

> damages and often destroys its credibility. But pseudo-events, whether they 

> show the president in an auto plant or a soup kitchen or addressing troops 

> in Iraq, are immune to this deflation. The exposure of the elaborate 

> mechanisms behind the pseudo-event only adds to its fascination and its 

> power. This is the basis of the convoluted television reporting on how 

> effectively political campaigns and politicians have been stage-managed. 

> Reporters,

>  especially those on televisi

> on, no longer ask if the message is true but if the pseudo-event worked or 

> did not work as political theater. Pseudo-events are judged on how 

> effectively we have been manipulated by illusion. Those events that appear 

> real are relished and lauded. Those that fail to create a believable 

> illusion are deemed failures. Truth is irrelevant. Those who succeed in 

> politics, as in most of the culture, are those who create the brands and 

> pseudo-events that offer the most convincing fantasies. And this is the art 

> Obama has mastered.

>   A public that can no longer distinguish between truth and fiction is left 

> to interpret reality through illusion. Random facts or obscure bits of data 

> and trivia are used to bolster illusion and give it credibility or are 

> discarded if they interfere with the message. The worse reality becomes-the 

> more, for example, foreclosures and unemployment skyrocket-the more people 

> seek refuge and comfort in illusions. When opinions cannot be distinguished 

> from facts, when there is no universal standard to determine truth in law, 

> in science, in scholarship, or in reporting the events of the day, when the 

> most valued skill is the ability to entertain, the world becomes a place 

> where lies become true, where people can believe what they want to believe. 

> This is the real danger of pseudo-events and why pseudo-events are far more 

> pernicious than stereotypes. They do not explain reality, as stereotypes 

> attempt to, but replace reality. Pseudo-events redefine reality by

>  the parameters set by th

> eir creators. These creators, who make massive profits peddling these 

> illusions, have a vested interest in maintaining the power structures they 

> control. 

>   The old production-oriented culture demanded what the historian Warren 

> Susman termed character. The new consumption-oriented culture demands what 

> he called personality. The shift in values is a shift from a fixed morality 

> to the artifice of presentation. The old cultural values of thrift and 

> moderation honored hard work, integrity and courage. The 

> consumption-oriented culture honors charm, fascination and likability. "The 

> social role demanded of all in the new culture of personality was that of a 

> performer," Susman wrote. "Every American was to become a performing self."

>   The junk politics practiced by Obama is a consumer fraud. It is about 

> performance. It is about lies. It is about keeping us in a perpetual state 

> of childishness. But the longer we live in illusion, the worse reality will 

> be when it finally shatters our fantasies. Those who do not understand what 

> is happening around them and who are overwhelmed by a brutal reality they 

> did not expect or foresee search desperately for saviors. They beg 

> demagogues to come to their rescue. This is the ultimate danger of the 

> Obama Brand. It effectively masks the wanton internal destruction and theft 

> being carried out by our corporate state. These corporations, once they 

> have stolen trillions in taxpayer wealth, will leave tens of millions of 

> Americans bereft, bewildered and yearning for even more potent and deadly 

> illusions, ones that could swiftly snuff out what is left of our diminished 

> open society.

>

>   ? 2009 TruthDig.com

>   Chris Hedges writes a regular column for Truthdig.com. Hedges graduated 

> from Harvard Divinity School and was for nearly two decades a foreign 

> correspondent for The New York Times. He is the author of many books, 

> including: War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning, What Every Person Should 

> Know About War, and American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on 

> America.  His most recent book, Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and 

> the Triumph of Spectacle, will be out in July, but is available for 

> pre-order.

>

>

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