tate & stevens or puppet master

Neatorama reprinted a classic article from Mental Floss about the founding father of spin and public relations, an Austrian-American marketing executive and nephew twice-over of Sigmund Freud by the name of Edward Bernays, who used his uncle’s techniques to influence public sentiment in his clients’ favour. Bernays was active from the 1920s but spent much of his later years in the 1970s recanting and trying to undo some of the more unwholesome beliefs he’d peddled. Planting suggestions with third party authorities, like politicians and the medical establishment, Bernays was able to bewitch the public with guiling arguments touching health, sanitation and patriotism that are still mostly intact and sacrosanct today.
Initially, Bernays was under contract of government and social organizations and helped promote better race relations with the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP) and helped make venereal disease a less taboo subject and got people to practice precaution and seek treatment. This same manipulation, however, stoked public fears over the Red Scare and communists witch-hunts, arguing that Machiavellian controls and enlightened despotism were necessary for managing a democracy, and successfully propagandized the creation of so-called “banana republics,” contributing to the over-throw of governments in Hawaii and throughout Central and South America to create a business environment more friendly towards US fruit exporters. What was done specifically for business interests, though, has become an unbuckable legacy and tugs on the marionette strings of the individual as a consumer and civic animal. At the behest of certain cigarette manufacturers, Bernays tied-in marketing with the underswell of women’s liberation, convincing suffrages that smoking in public were “little torches of freedom” and would only help their fight for equality. Enlisting doctors and dentists, he managed to persuade Americans that a hearty breakfast was essential (for a flagging other white meat industry, maybe giving a foothold some fastfood chains to come as well) and that tap water should be fluoridated for healthy teeth (for mining concerns that were at a loss what to do with the fluoride by-product of making aluminum and steel). General notions about whiter-than-white hygiene and overly aggressive sanitation probably proved good for the chemical and pharmaceutical companies too.

Witnessing the rise of fascism in Europe, however, Bernays realized that propaganda could be just as easily turned from promoting harmony to subvert order and later that shilling for the tobacco companies had negative consequences for a lot of people and worked to rectify (with a known patron base of over four hundred political figures and industrialists, it seems selectively) some of those wrongs. Many of these grounding beliefs refuse to be disenchanted and I wonder what clientele may not have been disclosed and by holding onto misconceptions, who else might be using the same effective manipulation tactics presently.

tie-in campaign

As far as I can tell, a unique and original phenomenon is taking place on the constellation of web comics and social commentary of toothpaste for dinner and equally clever cadet websites—that of fake banner advertisements. These are not interstitial pieces that don’t mask but sometimes accompany actual paid advertisement. I think I might try making a few of my own made-up ads, if I get inspired.
My real sponsorship, from my perspective at least, seems to tend towards the tedious. It’s not really intended for me, however, and I suppose involves not just a reading of what’s on my blog but also a good pry at my browsing habits as well. I guess further it’s a bit too much of a marketing challenge (at least in this league) to find well-matched backers. Where ever they are, I am sure most people grow weary (or immune) over the same old cash of flyers. What fake, sacastic ads would you like to see?

(ad)mirality or përkthyes

Philology and the classifications of grammar were naturally invented long after languages developed and drifted apart and are imperfect disciplines trying to fit foreign tongues to a framework of rules whose theory and practice maybe go unnoticed to native speakers. Constantly struggling to translate and parsing my own words, I think I have gained an appreciation for mood and tense and try not to take such parts of speech for granted.
English has managed to shed the need for most conjugation and only has a limited spectrum of grammatical cases, exclusively constructed by other means than declension, while many others rely on a linguistic quadriga of the not unfamiliar nominative, accusative, genitive and dative cases to express ownership, location, motion, agency and action.

Still other highly inflected languages, like Finnish, Basque, Turkish or Hungarian, use a dozen or more cases to express subtleties and precision in a wealth of mincing ways: a changed suffix can denote reversion, privation, association, similitude, coming-into-being, frequency, number, affinity and whereabouts. It is hard to imagine what kind of dialogue it took to impart these elements in an exacting and scientific way from a native speaker to a foreigner and what sort of media were available to bridge the linguistic gap. What’s mostly rendered in English as a prepositional phrase—across the room, in the company of strangers—can be summarily expressed by changing the endings. Include verbal moods and the situation becomes more complex.
Whereas in English mood is caught up in wishes—“if and only”—in other cases can even be used to master the tone of sarcasm and surprise. That is quite amazing and that its counterparts recognized in other tongues impressive, I think.  Albanian (Shqip) and a few others admit of mirativity and alter verb endings to express admiration, shock or disdain in an otherwise non-nuanced declaration. This sense exists, of course, and one could assume that there are many routes of getting to astonishment outside of punctuation, a shrill or droll tone or context but I wonder how those distinctions were ever translated and categorized. It must have been quite a revelation to first get the difference between “ai flet shqip” (he speaks Albanian) and “ai fliske shqip” (he surprisingly speaks Albanian or apparently he speaks Albanian or yeah—he speaks Albanian). Translation quickly becomes a lost cause without the art of interpretation and the admission that correspondence does not always have direct correspondence.

snowball

Those who criticized and ridiculed the Occupy Movement as something disorganized, unfocused and undisciplined are already getting a good dose of evidence to make them want to retract that statement through their help for the displaced by Super Storm Sandy and other charitable works. The cynics, however, might learn soon not to underestimate the power of the people through their latest venture. It goes without saying, I think, that there’s no revenge or getting back at the powers that be motive behind such projects—getting even is hardly hopeful or affirming and I think such objectives pull down the whole enterprise to the same sort of thinking, characterized by greed and insecurity, that got all of us in this mess to begin with.

Next week, beginning with a gala, old-fashioned fundraising telethon, the Occupiers will launch Project Rolling Jubilee. Taking a cue from the business plans of the worst loan sharks, bounty-hunters, repo-men and usurers—the practice of selling or unloading loans and mortgages that have the potential of becoming risky or going into arrears amongst each other at a discount, the organizers plan to buy up distressed debts from the lien holders for pennies on the dollar and forgive the car loans, medical bills, student loan debt and underwater house payments. Occupy owns the loans and liability and can discharge with them however it sees fit.  An outlay of $25 translates to about $600 worth of debt loans, and cumulatively that can add up quickly and rescue a lot people from a burden that they could not hope to dig themselves out of otherwise and do things more productive with their time and resources than worry and work to enrich a system that has avalanched so far afield from fair commerce as to be alienating. This cause sounds like an unbeatable and most sustainable return on investment.

the mask of doctor kühlmanschette

We have this awesome insulator and ice-pack that one can keep in the freezer to help keep white wine cool. Initially, I never quite bought the idea that there was an ideal temperature range for different types of wine, and not just because I am impatient, but more because I thought it was a consumer ritual, which are important as well, like limes in Coronas that the company frowned on at first as ruining the taste but then incorporated it into their branding or the unnecessary eggs on box batter recipes, retained so people think that they are baking something. The name is a combination of German and French terms (Kühlmanschette) that I have trouble saying properly so I call it (generally just in my head) the Fu Manchu.

laïcité

The separation of temporal and spiritual powers presents some unique challenges for any government, and many nations have codified warrants and limitations to protect the public from religious influence—or at least profess to do so. Politicians strive to approach the matter carefully, eschewing endorsement or favouritism while enshrining (or at least staying out of) personal freedom of expression.

France and Turkey have acceded to a special form of separation of Church and State, called laïcité (Laisizmus, laiklik), which is contested by some as overstepping neutrality into the realm of interference, both for formative traditions and the integration of new traditions, interpreted by some as the undermining of educational and charitable institutions or encroaching on private liberties. Only a country and people without history would not be challenged with this delicate balancing act, and the methods of France and Turkey do not aim to dismantle glory and censure alike. France especially has some notable exceptions, due to treaties and concordats, however, and still honours these unique arrangements: the president of the Republic shares, along with the Bishop of Urgell, the title of co-prince of the condominium of Andorra, the president also is charged with formally appointing the bishops of the Alsatian cities of Metz and Strasbourg (the only secular authority in the world today with such powers—albeit, the tradition has continued uninterrupted in part because all French presidents have been both male and Catholic).

The French nation also has five peculiars, “regional” churches in Lateran Rome, which the government maintains through its mission to the Vatican. The president is also created as the canon of this legation but sends a vicar to occupy the office in his stead. Aside from deep respect for its rich and mixed heritage, I don’t think that the Turkish government is party to anything like France’s entanglements but it would be interesting to research more into it. The tenets incorporated with devoutly crafted language into America’s founding documents, interesting though, saw its first diplomatic test and application in a treaty (DE/TK) between US mercantile interests and the Barbary Pirates, assuaging fears of enmity towards a Muslim nation. Tradition is not necessarily bias and these lovely distinctions, I think, are the exceptions that make the rule.