Archive: Sep 2009

Notes from north of 49ºN, but at 37.9ºN at the moment.

Regular readers of ThickCulture will recall that I post quite a bit on the topic of Canada from an American expatriate perspective.  Way back in May, I blogged about attack ads being aimed at Liberal opposition leader, Michael Ignatieff, framing him as an outsider.  Recently, the Liberal Party of Canada has announced their intent to trigger the next election with a no-confidence vote in Parliament.  In preparation of this, The Liberals started advertising with spots featuring Ignatieff in a forest.  Earlier last week, the Globe & Mail tried to stir up controversy about Liberal Party of Canada ads featuring Michael Ignatieff in a possibly ersatz forest or a forest that cannot be readily identified.  Quite the sin in a timber-bearing land, eh Globe & Mail?

Here are the ads:: “Worldview” & “Jobs”

In my opinion, this constructed “scandal” is meant to stir the pot to get pageviews for the Globe & Mail by feeding the sentiments that somehow he is not as Canadian as everyone else and there is something less-than-authentic about him.  Perhaps this was borne out of the media frenzy over the Obama “birthers” movement.

Interestingly, in the French ads {I didn’t have time to translate the copy}, there is no forest and no guitar strumming in the background.  Just straightforward delivery::

Strategically, candidates need to think about creating a “positioning” strategy, where they create a meaning system in light of the competition.  With voter data on attitudes towards the political leaders {Harper-Conservative, Ignatieff-Liberal, Layton-NDP, Duceppe-Bloc, & May-Green}, multidimensional scaling can be used to try to create dimensions based on the attitudes and positions for each of the candidates along the dimensions.  Ideally, candidates differentiate themselves from the others on the basis of salient voter perceptions, i.e., tapping into the zeitgeist.  On my other blog, Rhizomicon, I did a post that talked about the increased fragmentation of the Canadian electorate.  While the Conservatives are in power with a plurality, my take is that there are several oppositional positions that are distinct and are differentiated from each other.  The question is whether the positions are salient and resonate with voters, which I think is a tough thing to accomplish in Canada these days.

The key issues now are economic, despite the Bank of Canada announcing the economy is turning the corner.  Crafting powerful messages that resonate on this would be no easy feat for any of the parties.  I think the look and feel of the Liberal Party French ad is more effective in conveying an “ominous” message.  As for the attack ads on Ignatieff, this could be dangerous in a politically fragmented environment, as there are already political faultlines along east-west lines.  A strategy framing Harper as fostering policies that are out of touch outside of the West could erode Conservative support.  Ironically, Harper coined the term “Bloc Anglais” to characterize Jack Layton of the NDP, but that same term could be applied to the particular {Reform Party style} conservatism Alberta and parts of interior BC.

So, what’s next?  Maybe Ignatieff’s a robot from outer space…

Twitterversion:: Globe&Mail strts contrvrsy w/ #Ignatieff in forest ads,but how2frame #CanPoli parties givn fragmntd polity? #ThickCulture http://url.ie/2gxo @Prof_K

Song:: Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots Pt.1 – The Flaming Lips

The New York Times has an article on doing something about the Internet as the scourge of the workplace, being a timesuck of epic proportions.

“During the last few weeks, I’ve been using a slate of programs to tame these digital distractions. The apps break down into three broad categories. The most innocuous simply try to monitor my online habits in an effort to shame me into working more productively. Others reduce visual bells and whistles on my desktop as a way to keep me focused.

And then there are the apps that really mean business — they let me actively block various parts of the Internet so that when my mind strays, I’m prohibited from giving in to my shiftless ways. It’s the digital equivalent of dieting by locking up the refrigerator and throwing away the key.”

The author goes on to talk about the various software solutions, but at the end he surmises that it’s human nature to goof off and waste time.

Why?

Michel deCerteau in The Practice of Everyday Life offers up the term, “la perruque,” where workers steal time for their own purposes as a form of resistance to the surveillance of control::

“It differs from absenteeism in that the worker is officially on the job.  La perruque may be as simple a matter as a secretary’s writing a love letter on ‘company time’ or as complex as a cabinetmaker’s ‘borrowing’ a lathe to make a piece of furniture for his living room.”

This probably rings true for many::

In my opinion, people engage in la perruque in resisting the logics of surveillance, but I feel this could be thwarted by developing organizational cultures where people feel motivated to do the work, rather than slack.  In this day and age, employees are often made to feel they are lucky to even have a job and this was before the recession.  Outsourcing and cost-cutting are terms used to “manage” the workforce through fear.  The problem with fear…is that it breeds more resistance.  A vicious cycle.

This is why I always allow students to use laptops in my classes and I don’t even care if they’re updating their Facebook or playing poker.  Why?  Because if I’m doing my job and engaging the students, they wind up using the Internet to complement class discussions, not as a distraction.

Now that I’m a consultant doing my own thing, I find that I still waste time on the Internet.  If it increases, I suppose it’s because I have a jerk for a boss.

Twitterversion:: NewSftware prevnts timesink w/Internet,but is wastng time just”la perruque”by deCerteau. Contrlvs.Motivate?#ThickCulture http://url.ie/2gx8 @Prof_K

Song:: Temptation – Heaven 17

In 1987, ABC launched an hour-long drama called thirtysomething that featured baby-boomers settling down, raising kids, being a part of the establishment, etc.  You know, from fighting “the man” to becoming “the man.”  Part of the storyline was two male friends, Michael and Elliot, working in advertising and sometimes having to deal with their values conflicting with capitalism.  In this episode, the guys, who had their own small agency that went under, are hired by a large agency with a boss {Miles Drentel} who has a penchant for not-so-subtle digs.  This is a long clip, the first 10 minutes of a 1989 episode, “New Job,” airdate:: 11 April.  The whole episode is on this YouTube channel.

Fast forward twenty years and AMC launches Mad Men in 2007.  Unlike thirtysometing’s focus on current issues of values and ideals, Mad Men projects today’s issues in an older period.   The result is a well-polished show that uses the Cold War 1960s that predates the Civil Rights movement, the rise of feminism, and the call for gay rights.  Viewers get to gaze into the workplace with Foucauldian precision, where the official art of capitalism is created like so much sausage in a meat packing plant, in a workplace full of sex, alcohol, and cigarettes, not to mention the occasional firearm.

I take issues with some of the writing on the show, but that’s neither here nor there.  I will say there’s a certain cool detachment that the characters have, as they feed upon opportunism in the workplace, while creating cultural products {ads} that do the same.  On the show, Pete Campbell is a smarmy manor born WASP full of churlishness, ambition, and guile.  We aren’t supposed to like Pete, but it is Pete with his ambition fueling his desire to make a buck for his client who is willing to break the demographic colour barrier, as if he’s the Branch Rickey of advertising.

Here’s Pete, Paul Kinsey , and Harry Crane going over data and finding that urban blacks are buying Admiral TVs::

In the elevator, he does a bit of “qualitative research” by asking Hollis about his brand preferences::

Here’s Pete’s pitch to Admiral, complete with a framework for an “ethnic marketing” strategy::

The client is put off by this, reluctant to engage a strategy that would create black brand associations.  Pete is called on the carpet and Roger Sterling even goes as far to call him Martin Luther King {Jr.}.  This is a few episodes after Sterling donned blackface and sang “My Old Kentucky Home” at a Kentucky Derby party he was hosting::

So, Pete being the übercapitalist is lambasted for not understanding the realities of the economics of branding in the early 1960s.  The implication being “white flight” from the brand.

It is Lane Pryce, a British expatriate in New York, who is the only one besides Pete to see value in “ethnic marketing” strategies.  Pete serves as a metaphor for blind capitalism that serves to take everyone’s money equally.  An idealized capitalism of individuals acting like atomistic agents in the market.  The interesting this is that Pete could have also been in the US music industry in the 1990s, seeing a way to market the unmarketable, hard-edged rap and hip-hop by black artists to mainstream audiences.

So, Pete the weasel turns out to be both the hero of capitalism and racial “equity.”

Twitterversion::  newblogpost:: Clips of #MadMen showing #PeteCampbell’s #ethnicmarketing pitch for a TV brand in 1963. #ThickCulture  http://url.ie/2gwu  @Prof_K

Song:: Brown Sugar – The Rolling Stones

Why is belief that President Obama wasn’t born in the United States and thus ineligible to be chief executive stronger in the South than in other areas of the Country? I know the racism thing is an attractive explanatory reach, but could it be better explained by levels of political polarization, education or political culture? It would be interesting to compare this data with regional breakdowns of the belief that the Clinton’s killed Vince Foster and were running a drug cartel out of Arkansas.

HT: Washington Monthly

Update

Via Tech President...the top ten states in Google searches for “Obama birth certificate”

A look at Google Trends is certainly illuminating. The top ten states where people are searching on the phrase “Obama birth certificate” are:
1. Louisiana
2. Mississippi
3. Colorado
4. Oklahoma
5. Alabama
6. Tennessee
7. Arkansas
8. Missouri
9. South Carolina
10. North Carolina

Political Science super blog The Monkey Cage introduced me to a book by Josiah Ober, a Political Scientist at Stanford entitled Democracy and Knowledge that provides a defense of Athenian Democracy on the grounds that it’s participatory rule-making processes (for example, the Athenian Council of 500 were chosen by random lot rather than election) provided a greater breadth of perspectives on social issues than our current representative democracy.  The argument is that citizens can provide the local knowledge needed to make effective decisions and that social networking technologies might help organize citizen input in effective ways.

Here’s a sample chapter of the book.

Peter Bregman in the Harvard Business Review suggests that to Get What You Want, Don’t Go With Your Gut.  Rather than let your emotions produce a reaction to an event that affects the outcome, you should pause and let your assessment of the preferred outcome guide the reaction.  Solid, Jedi Master stuff.  However, the more I read about moral psychology, the more I question this premise.  Joanthan Haidt at Virgina has done some interesting experiments asking students their moral evaluations of these scenarios in which no harm comes to subjects:

a son who promises his mother, while she was on her deathbed, that he would visit her grave every week, and then reneged on his commitment because he was busy.

a man buys a dead chicken at the supermarket and then has “relations” with it before cooking and eating it.

Most of the students responded with an strong “ewww” factor guiding their evaluations, but had difficulty coming up with rational explanations for why the behavior was morally wrong. The logic for its moral appropriateness, or inappropriateness, resided in “the gut” or the emotional brain. I wonder if better advice to those in the business world and, from my perspective, the political world would be to become skillful and knowing when to listen to your gut and when to listen to the rational brain that sets goals. It would seem that there are times when your gut is telling you that your outcomes need to change. Personally, I’d be ecstatic if more politicians listened to their gut when voting on legislation.

So people pick cockiness, or to use contemporary urban parlance, swagga’ over actual competence.  So says a researcher:

The research, by Don Moore of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, shows that we prefer advice from a confident source, even to the point that we are willing to forgive a poor track record. Moore argues that in competitive situations, this can drive those offering advice to increasingly exaggerate how sure they are.

The piece goes on to describe other ways in which people are more drawn to those who present themselves as self-assured.  Isn’t this something Jay Z, or Erving Goffman, already knows.  What does this fact of human behavior say about our politics?  It sure explains the appeal of a Glen Beck or Rush Limbaugh.  Maybe that’s the problem with the progressive left, it lacks swagga’… I mean Amy Goodman?  Al Franken?  Lovely people, I’m sure, but c’mon.  Even Chuck D couldn’t make Air America cool!

An interesting thought experiment would consider how you could operationalize cockiness?

HT: orgtheory.net

Here’s a good ethical puzzle for a social problems or public policy class.  Is it morally acceptable for New York City to address their homeless problem by providing them a one-way airline ticket.  Apparently, the city has saved thousands of dollars by giving indigent residents the option of moving to another city or state.

On one hand, this seems to meet the conditions of market exchange — two parties engaged in a voluntary transaction.  And with the city’s unemployment over 10 percent, perhaps helping the homeless move addresses a jobs/labor spatial mismatch?  On the other hand, it seems as if the city is “giving up” on its residents.  It is presuming that providing social services is an economic drain rather than a human capital investment.  More importantly, it is signaling that some residents of the city are more valuables than others.

HT: Planetizen