Way back in the middle of Ronald Reagan’s second term, about the time I started working for a Washington, D.C.-based conservative political organization, a movie came out that made me want to go into campaign media consulting in the worst way.

It was a direct to video flop directed by Sidney Lumet (Network) and starring Richard Gere titled, Power.

In the film, Gere plays a high-powered campaign media guru whose specialty was coming up with devastating television spots and quickly responding to the opponents devastating spots.

For most television-era election cycles, that has indeed been a crucial skill. The right negative ad could be devastating. But the right ad in response, especially if quickly deployed, could neutralize one. This back and forth between the creative staffs and agencies of national campaigns has been the order of the day.

And then came YouTube and a hundred thousand partisans with the basic tools to do video production at their fingertips. Clearly, nothing will ever be the same.

The reality of that hit me last night as I headed over to YouTube in search of a link to Hillary’s “3 A.M. Phone Call” spot so I could imbed it in the “Texas Primary” post below.

The thing was, instead of finding Hillary’s spot, I found 40 or 50 spoofs, parodies and mash-ups of it. Yes, the Obama campaign did quickly produce a response to the Clinton ad (a not very effective one in my opinion—here.) But the real response came immediately from scores of web-savvy, media-savvy Obama fans.  Here’s one example.

The beauty of it is that the Obama campaign didn’t have to spend a dime to create these responses and they can take no flak for them if they are unfair, over the top, or generally vicious. They had nothing to do with them.

The “Power” referenced in that 80s movie title has shifted. The Internet has democritized content creation. I don’t think politics will ever be the same.

Mrs. Blather and I just voted for Hillary in the Texas primary. Yes, for the very first time in my life I cast a vote for a Democrat. Mercifully, there was a sign indicating the line for Dem ballots so I did not have to ask for a one by name.

I’m not sure my mouth would have produced the word. I would have had to grunt, gesticulate and sign my desire for a “D-word’ ballot. But then they’re probably used to that.

My reasons? Three basically.

First, if one of the two leading Dems has to be the next president, I’d rather it be the battle-scarred realist than the love child of Che Guevara and Mr. Rogers. Better someone with her limited charm and powers of persuasion than America’s newest cult leader.

Second, I’m still convinced Hillary is more beatable in the general election, in the highly unlikely event that she should get the nomination. Especially given the levels of bitterness, wailing and teeth gnashing among the Obama faithful that would ensue.

Third, Obama is raising insane amounts of money. By some estimates, more than $70 million in the last few weeks alone. If Obami Wan Kenobi knocks Hillary out of the race today, then he can deploy all that money against McCain in the general election. But if Ms. 3A.M. hangs on to the convention, he’ll have to keep spending tons of that money against her.

Finally, there were no Republican races in my district that really mattered—no good guys in danger

So it was a slam dunk to mark my ballot for HRC. But that doesn’t mean it didn’t feel weird.

Jim Geraghty wonders if Hillary will thank Republicans if she wins.

Michelle Malkin is following the excitement.

Ed Morrisey is backing off his Texas prediction for Obama.

. . .we’re pretty much being bombarded by robo-calls here at Chez Blather.

In the last 24 hours I’ve heard from robo-John McCain, robo-Cindy McCain, robo-Governor Rick Perry (for McCain), robo-Barack Obama, robo-Hillary Clinton, and a variety of lower level candidates.

I’ve also gotten one automated “push-poll” type call from the Huckabee campaign or a surrogate.  

Meanwhile, our television and radio spots are pretty much all Obama and Hillary all the time. I’ve seen Hillary’s widely-discussed “3 a.m.” spot many times. But I have not yet seen the this Obama response aired.

There are a couple of MesmerO spots (like this one) which make a big deal about his refusal to accept contributions from PACs and “Washington lobbyists.” What’s amusing is that the spots are frequently followed immediately by another pro-Obama ad created and placed by the powerful Service Employees International Union.

It does tend to undermine one’s I’m-Holier-and-Cleaner-Than-Everyone message just a tad when it’s consistently followed by good old fashioned Union boss muscle-flexing on your behalf. 

Seriously. Is there anything less fresh, less new, or less change-y than union bosses trying to swing elections with mandatorily-collected dues money?

Here’s the blooming idiot I have in mind:

I mean the one with the statue. Via The Daily Mail:

Actress Marion Cotillard sparked a political row yesterday after accusing America of fabricating the 9/11 attacks.

The 32-year-old French actress, who received an Oscar last month for her performance as singer Edith Piaf in La Vie En Rose, openly questioned the truth behind the terrorist atrocity in an interview broadcast on a French website.

Actually, Mlle. Cotillard, an environmental activist and former Greenpeace spokesperson, has unwittingly done us all a great service with her remarks—at least those of us who value sanity, reason and logic in public discourse.

With her remarks she has put 9/11 conspiracy theorizing right where it belongs, i.e., joined at the hip with other crackpot beliefs like asserting the U.S. moon landings were faked. Enjoy:

But after her outburst, in which she also queried the 1969 Moon landings. . .She said: “Did a man really walk on the Moon? I saw plenty of documentaries on it, and I really wondered. And in any case I don’t believe all they tell me, that’s for sure.”

There you have the disease of the postmodern age in a tidy little bon bon: Skepticism about established historical facts and unquestioning acceptance of nonsense.

The deep-thinking French actress did manage to come up with a new motivational angle on the events of 9/11. Apparently the attacks were faked, not to justify a military grab of Middle Eastern oil fields, as most “Truthers” are wont to assert but as a money-saving shortcut on a real estate development project!

She added that the towers, planned in the early Sixties, were an outdated “money-sucker” that would have cost more to modernise than to rebuild altogether, which is why they were destroyed.

She said: “It was a money-sucker because they were finished, it seems to me, by 1973, and to re-cable all that, to bring up-to-date all the technology and everything, it was a lot more expensive, that work, than destroying them.”

So there you have it. There’s a giant hole in the ground in Lower Manhattan and thousands of secretaries and are dead because it was going to be too expensive to run fiberoptic wires through the building.

And the two other aircraft hijacked that same morning? The one that flew into the Pentagon and the other that crashed into a Pennsylvania field?

Well I hear the offices in outer ring of the Pentagon badly needed new photocopiers. And the Pennsylvania farmer’s plow was broken.

Update: Hot Air’s Ed Morrissey weighs in.

 

Full disclosure. Phil Cooke is a friend and occasional colleague. We have frequently found ourselves at the same conference table working for the same media ministry client. I like Phil and find him a smart, funny and unfailingly stimulating guy to talk to. But our friendship doesn’t mean I can’t review his upcoming book with a fair measure of objectivity. 

Phil’s latest, Branding Faith: Why Some Churches and Non-Profits Impact the Culture and Others Don’t, will be released in a few weeks but I was privileged to receive an advance copy. I looked forward to seeing what Phil had to say about the way ministries can and should present themselves for greater impact in this media-saturated, YouTubed, MySpaced, mobile-messaged environment. 

A big reason for my expectancy was the fact that I know Phil Cooke to be genuinely passionate about the subject. A lot more than I am, to be honest. Even though I’m in “the business,” when I see crappy Christian media I just want to walk away shaking my head. Phil wants to run forward and fix it. 

You don’t have to be around him very long to discover that Phil is genuinely, deeply bothered—grieved may be a better word—by the shoddy, backward and ineffective ways many ministries go about presenting themselves to a world they claim they want to engage and influence. 

I also know that Phil has taken more than a little flak from religious folks over the years for his efforts to challenge ministry leaders to raise their standards (and therefore their production budgets). A sampling of some of the cranky-grams the editors of Charisma magazine receive in reaction to Phil’s regular column there testify to that fact. 

The truth is, there are powerful segments of American Christendom that recoil when guys like Phil use the terms marketing, branding and packaging in a conversation about ministry effectiveness. They are offended by the very idea of applying “worldly wisdom” to the sacred business of carrying out the Great Commission. 

For some in ministry, it just doesn’t matter that what they present looks bad, sounds bad, communicates poorly, and feels utterly irrelevant to the intended target. To them, all that matters is that the presenters love Jesus and that they mean well. They don’t feel the need to be effective. Only sincere. 

But there are others in ministry leadership who know their organizations need to change. They desire to be a more positive reflection on the Savior they serve and hunger to increase their ability to engage the culture for the Gospel. They’re just not sure how. And they’ve heard enough from the old-school religious nay-sayers to have doubts about whether their desires are fully biblical. 

It is for these folks that Branding Faith is a God-send.

In it, Phil Cooke exposes the tension I just described as a false dilemma. He makes a compelling case that we don’t have to choose between being effective marketers and fully biblical Christians—that, in fact, the former is a natural extension of the latter. 

One of the great values of this book is the way it de-mystifies a lot of the branding and marketing jargon that so permeates these discussions. For example, throughout the book Phil—correctly, in my opinion—encourages us to think of effective branding, design and marketing as simply excellence in “story telling.” This is a key insight.

Of all people, a preacher viscerally understands the power of being an effective storyteller. These are guys who work tirelessly on their live presentations. They deploy a variety of oratorical techniques to make sure they hold the congregation’s attention; make their points memorable, touch the emotions and well as the intellect, and pretty much do whatever is necessary to get that listener to act—whether that desired action be receiving salvation, repenting, committing more deeply, tithing or simply reading their Bible’s more. 

And yet some of these same guys will look at you like you’re advocating child sacrifice if you suggest revamping the logo, re-formatting the broadcast, or putting some underlining in their letters—all to accomplish the very same thing. That is, telling the story in a clearer, more compelling way.

In the rapidly emerging world of 500 television channels; hundreds of radio micro-formats,; downloadable, portable media; and ubiquitous wireless connectivity—just how are 21st Century ministries and churches supposed to breakthrough the clutter so they can do their thing? 

In Branding Faith, Phil Cooke offers us some timely answers. 

[Available for pre-order here]

Today Iran’s Blusterer-in-Chief declared:

“Everybody has understood that Iran is the number one power in the world.”

This makes one suspect the man may be operating with a different definition of the term “everybody,” than the rest of us. The same goes for the words, “understood,” “number one,” “power,” and “world.”

The goofy new blog I launched on a whim the other day has apparently gone a little viral. “Chris Matthews’ Leg” has received several thousand hits in the last few hours.

It started this morning when Michelle Malkin designated the “Leg” site,

 “Best New Blog Name of the Month.” A little later the closely-affiliated Hot Air blog mentioned it as well. Both sites generate huge traffic so not surprisingly other sites begin to mention and link, too. Like this one. And this one. A bunch of others.

Now I’m feeling all this pressure! People are staring! Quick…say something clever! Um . . . O’Swami!

 

I can tell you the precise the moment I became aware of the existence of William F. Buckley, Jr. I was a kid in the late sixties watching the Ed Sullivan Show and Frank Gorshen (who was an impressionist before he was The Riddler) did an outlandish impression of him—head thrown back, lips pursed, tongue flickering, and pen as prop and surrogate cigarette.

I had never heard of William Buckley but the audience clearly had. They roared.

Now that I think about it, how remarkable that an intellectual conservative with a dry interview show on PBS should become such a national icon that comedians “did him.”

It is not hyperbolic to say that Bill Buckley changed the course of this nation. He almost single-handedly created an intellectually respectable way to be anti-communist and anti-collectivist without having to join the ranks of the conspiratorial and paranoid John Birchers.

He was scary smart, a great novelist, but also self-deprecating.

Once, during Ronald Reagan’s second term, I heard Buckley recall a mid-70s organized debate about the controversial Panama Canal Treaty (remember that?) with Buckley and George Will teamed up on the pro side, and former governor Ronald Reagan and Pat Buchanan on the con side.

WFB said something along the lines of, “Will and I trounced them so soundly, Reagan was never heard from again.”

I started reading National Review in my latter college years and it was huge in helping me crystallize a conservative (classical liberal) grid.

Thinker. Spy Novelist. Sailor. Celebrity. World Changer. From here, it looked like a life well lived. Very well lived indeed.

WSJ’s obit here.

National Review’s Symposium here.

 Here’s one for the “Wow. Didn’t See That Coming” file. Friend-of-Blather Fergus in the UK points me toward this fairly stunning report from the BBC.

The Turkish government has deployed some Muslim theologians in an attempt to save Islam from its rapid descent into medieval barbarism and spark what amounts to a Reformation—one that hopes to make the religion compatible with modernity.

How? By pulling the Koranic rug out from under the Luddites and jihadists:

The country’s powerful Department of Religious Affairs has commissioned a team of theologians at Ankara University to carry out a fundamental revision of the Hadith, the second most sacred text in Islam after the Koran.

The Hadith is a collection of thousands of sayings reputed to come from the Prophet Muhammad.

As such, it is the principal guide for Muslims in interpreting the Koran and the source of the vast majority of Islamic law, or Sharia.

Lots of outsider voices have been calling for an Islamic equivalent of The Great Reformation  of the 17th Century. But until now, I haven’t seen any credible evidence that any forces within Islam were interested in trying. Until now.

For decades now, Saudi-centered Wahhabism has been spreading like a cancer to mosques all over the world. It looks like a counter-force within Islam may be trying to rouse itself.

But is it too late?

The super-smart James Q. Wilson struggles for an answer in City Journal.

An excerpt:

Evangelical Christians have a high opinion not just of the Jewish state but of Jews as people. That Jewish voters are overwhelmingly liberal doesn’t seem to bother evangelicals, despite their own conservative politics. Yet Jews don’t return the favor: in one Pew survey, 42 percent of Jewish respondents expressed hostility to evangelicals and fundamentalists. As two scholars from Baruch College have shown, a much smaller fraction—about 16 percent—of the American public has similarly antagonistic feelings toward Christian fundamentalists.

Wilson is clearly writing for a secular audience that needs some orientation on who evangelicals are and what they believe. But it’s refreshing to hear a non-evangelical make the case he does.

He closes with a word of advice to Jewish Americans who value the continued existence of Israel:

Whatever the reason for Jewish distrust of evangelicals, it may be a high price to pay when Israel’s future, its very existence, is in question. . . .When it comes to helping secure Israel’s survival, the tiny Jewish minority in America should not reject the help offered by a group that is ten times larger and whose views on the central propositions of a democratic society are much like everybody else’s.

I’m not hopeful that many are going to heed that counsel.