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Mad Men 2.0

America is experiencing a PR revolution that promotes outraged denial over fact-based persuasion.

By David Sirota

It’s difficult to know exactly why AMC’s Mad Men has become such a hit, but it is a safe bet that its popularity is not merely a product of the television show’s smooth writing, superb acting and retro-cool clothing. What has taken the program from Law & Order-watchable to Sopranos-style phenomenal is its exploration of advertising and public relations—the psychological manipulations… return to article

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    This article nicely makes its own contributions to our inability to separate fact from PR, an outgrowth, I think, of the poor factual content of too much political discourse.

    For example, like much of the press, the author oversimplifies the position of those with whom he disagrees:  “Tea Party protestors vehemently deny that patients will be given a choice of insurance provider under universal healthcare proposals that statutorily preserve said choice”:  Tea Party protestors are not denying what is in the current spate of densely worded bills making their way through the system (since it is unknown what the final law will be); their concern is with the slippery slope history suggests such bills are taking us down, which concerns are reinforced by Obama’s, Sibelius’s, and Frank’s public statements about the desirability of a single-payer system (which will, in fact, eliminate choice). Unlike the left, Tea Partyers don’t trust the Democrats, who have not, historically, been the most forthright about where their agenda is leading nor much understood the consequences of the laws they pass.

    And like the Democrats, the author seems unable to understand consequences: “Democrats deny that a filibuster-proof majority in Congress means they have any power to pass legislation”: The Democrats came to their majority by running Blue Dogs in a sizable number of historically Republican districts. It was predictable in 2006 that many of those so chosen were not going to toe the Dem-left party line; they want to be re-elected, and they have their own perception of what makes effective law. Party ID is less important these days, both to voters and politicians, than ideology and solutions to specific issue. The Democrats supermajority has limited political reality, whatever the author might wish.

    The (if I may) outraged tone of a piece so full of opinion and interpretation stated as fact exemplifies the sort of cynical and moralistic political analysis that contributes to public distrust of public pronouncements. From this distrust springs the confusion that makes truth hard to identify.

    United States Posted by Eric L. on Oct 7, 2009 at 4:57 AM

    A few years back Fox news fired two on air reporters for refusing to read lies to the audience regarding the safety of the growth hormone used to make cows produce more milk. I believe this hapened at an affiliate in Florida. The fired employees fought the termination to the supreem court, and lost. The supreem court in all it’s wisdom, ruled that Fox news (and all others) have NO obligation to tell the truth in their news brodcasts. Perhaps this has something to do with the truth being so hard to differentiate.

    Germany Posted by Reggie McMurdo on Oct 7, 2009 at 3:14 PM

    I agree with the overall point of this post:  That PR has replaced fact very aggressively in recent history and that we are so swamped with propaganda that we barely even see it anymore (even with our media-literate cynicism).  It’s like the air we breathe.

    That being said, I strongly disagree that we can pin our hopes on places like Talking Points Memo and the Huffington Post or on the re-emergence of an independent media that seeks truth.  The blogosphere is largely given over to people who are in the thrall of the Mad Men 2.0 PR, including the sites mentioned above.  Glen Greenwald manages to escape it quite a bit, but he is atypical when compared to the rest of the blog population.  And, moving on to concerns about an independent, truth-seeking media, has there ever been a time when the media acted in this manner?  Sure, we can say that its less independent and honest now than in the past, but was there ever a time when it really sought the truth and wasn’t pressured by more immediate concerns with money, political posturing, status, etc.?

    Also, Eric L. (in the comments), I’m afraid you’ve fallen for the PR vs. fact switch that you complain about:

    “...public statements about the desirability of a single-payer system (which will, in fact, eliminate choice)”

    Single-payer health insurance simply means that everyone pays in to a large common pot for insurance.  Health care can still remain private and, in many countries with single-payer, does remain private (e.g. Canada’s government contracts care out to private providers, while the UK’s generally does not).  Of course, the government has some say in what is treated and how, but the extent to which choice is restricted is entirely in the details of the system agreed upon.  It is not a foregone conclusion that single-payer will restrict choice to any appreciable extent (or at least to any extent greater than the current system, where I am limited by the options presented by my employer and am screwed if I am unemployed). 

    However, you decided to use the phrase “eliminate choice,” which I can guarantee you is PR.  If choice of doctors and care facilities is in fact “eliminated” under a single-payer system, it is because that system is poorly constructed.  And choice of private insurance providers is not necessarily eliminated either—plenty of countries with single-payer systems still have private insurance that can be purchased for additional coverage beyond what the government offers.

    United States Posted by Robert Meyers on Oct 8, 2009 at 12:42 AM

    To Robert Meyers, point taken about my “elimination of choice” remark: I fell into the sloppiness of conflating health care with health insurance, although I am not sure “single-payer” means what you say it does. “Public option,” I would agree, could mean multiple sources of insurance, but to use “single-payer” to designate a system in which there are multiple payers to health-care providers is to further confuse the discussion.

    I guess it is a legitimate use of the phrase to say that the single government payer funnels money to multiple insurance entities (profit or non-profit), who then provide coverage for patients and payments to providers. But the phrase suggests otherwise, on the face of it. The use of “pubic option” at this stage of the discussion would be less confusing.

    And how such a structure could possibly be more efficient escapes me: to send money to DC and then to an intermediary and THEN to the provider is bound to be more bureaucratic (hard as that is to believe). It is a canard that “Medicare is more efficient than private insurance” and that “medicare has reduced costs.” Medicare has shifted costs, forcing health-care providers to charge the fully insured more to make up for what Medicare doesn’t cover; once everyone, in effect,  is under Medicare, there will be no one to shift the costs to. And medicare’s administrative costs are less than those of private insurers, I believe, because it’s fraud rate is much higher.

    There is a lot of bad information on both sides of this complicated subject, which is why it is so contentious (or vice versa). But there is little in the history of the US government that inspires much faith in me that it can carry off a centralized health-payment system.

    United States Posted by Eric L. on Oct 8, 2009 at 1:40 AM

    One more point: the capacity for choice under the public option should not be measured only against the current system. There are proposals afoot to increase individual options for securing health-care coverage, but single-payer, of any form, does not seem like one of them.

    United States Posted by Eric L. on Oct 8, 2009 at 2:17 AM
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