Democrats contemplate branding: "No Care" sounds way cornier than "Patients' Rights Repeal," but it's shorter
By Christopher R. Walker
Last week, Greg Sargent reported that Democratic leadership plans to brand the GOP repeal of the Affordable Care Act as "The Patients' Rights Repeal Act." Immediately, media critics like David Kurtz jumped on the length of the name as evidence that their efforts are doomed to failure -- and that emergency help should be flown in from Madison Avenue.
Predictably, the Democrats are scrambling and scattering. Greg Sargent reports that a number of Democrats, concerned specifically about the length of the proposed name, are suggesting an alternative: "No Care."
"No Care" is probably the stupidest slogan ever, since it doesn't actually evoke anything. But is the original proposal really too long? It's worth noting that "Repealing the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act" doesn't exactly roll off the tongue either. But the thing that stands out is the use of the expression "job-killing." Strategists like pollster Frank Luntz have been advising Republicans for years about how to select exactly the right words to move the attitudes of voters -- and Republicans have had enough message discipline to take this advice.
Length need not be a problem. In the end, people will probably just say "Patients' Rights Repeal" anyway. And that's starting to get a little snappy. But, more important, with "Patients' Rights Repeal Act" Democrats have finally found a slogan -- perhaps by accident -- that competes on the same level.
The key is to elicit an emotional response from the listener by activating the mental networks related to the specific words and concepts you choose. The most famous example is Frank Luntz' "death tax" -- used to this day as a Republican alternative to "estate tax." The reason this slogan works is, quite simply, that everyone dies.
Looking at "Patients' Rights Repeal" through the same lens, its power is obvious: rights are central in American values; and everyone will one day be a patient. You can be damn sure that an American wants his rights when it comes time to be a patient. I'd bet a month's salary that "Patients' Rights Repeal" polls better than "No Care." Any takers?
Even before President Obama's speech at the Tucson memorial had ended, the right-wing grassroots was hard at work on the Twitter hastags #tcot and #teaparty trying to figure out what was wrong with it. With the exception of some fair-minded moderates -- probably RINOs now -- who conceded that the tone was presidential despite a raucous audience, most conservative tweeps described the event as tacky at best, opportunistic and manipulative at worst.
But one meme emerged fairly quickly: Someone distributed T-shirts with the name of the event, "Together We Thrive, Tucson & America." In the two hours following the speech, the second most tweeted link with the hashtag #teaparty was this: "They Couldn’t Help It… Team Obama Hands Out T-Shirts at Pep Rally Memorial." Incidentally, the top #teaparty URL was a troll-tagged Funny or Die video.
Interestingly, the most comprehensive version of the story was being spun by Michelle Malkin, even before the event, but never showed up in the top 10 URLs for #tcot, #teaparty or #p2. Nevertheless, the story is playing well on Memeorandum right now. In her piece, Malkin tries to argue that the T-shirts were part of an effort to "brand" the event. Eventually, she begrudgingly adds a disclaimer to the piece:
Update: As noted above, the University of Arizona announced the Together We Thrive event — and a few readers write in to say that the campus initiated the logo/campaign. Given U of A president Robert Shelton’s embarrassing, thinly-veiled partisan cheerleading for Obama tonight, it may indeed be a 100 percent-campus-initiated campaign. Given the Obama White House’s meticulous attention to stage prop details, however, I would say the odds of involvement by Axelrod/Plouffe & Co. are high.
Christopher Walker is an editorial fellow at Salon. More: Christopher Walker
Brandi Favre, quarterback Brett Favre's 34-year-old sister, was one of five people arrested yesterday on felony charges for allegedly manufacturing methamphetamine and generating toxic waste. Police say the group ran the lab from a condominium in Diamondhead, Miss., with one gram of the substance cooking and nine ready to sell when authorities busted the complex. (That's a whole lot of meth, apparently.)
According to Hancock County Sheriffs Major Matt Karl, “She’s always in trouble.” Perhaps Brandi will take a cue from Brett this year and retire from her recreational activities.
Brandi’s bail is set at $40,000. If convicted, she faces 60 years in prison.
Brett Favre had a difficult 2010, what with getting sued for sexual harassment and all. Unfortunately for him, 2011 isn't shaping up to be much better.
Six are dead, six still in the hospital and Americans are struggling to figure out what it all means, but there is another alarming result of the Tucson shooting's aftermath: the surge in sales of Glock pistols, the gun used by Jared Lee Loughner to carry out his crime.
Bloomberg reports that Arizonans are rushing to pick up the $499 semi-automatic. According to one store owner, "We're at double our volume over what we usually do." This was two days after the shooting.
Another stat: one-day Arizona Glock sales jumped 60 percent Jan. 10 compared with the corresponding Monday last year. And it's not isolated to the Grand Canyon state, either.
Michelle Fitzsimmons is an editorial fellow at Salon.com. More: Michelle Fitzsimmons
It's only Monday, but a front-runner for This Week in Crazy has already emerged. Fred Phelps, founding father of the whacko Westboro Baptist Church, posted a YouTube vid thanking God for the "violent shooter, one of your heroes in Tucson."
He's referring of course to Jared Lee Loughner and his murderous spree in Arizona over the weekend. Phelps wants you to know that "God sent the shooter" and that his devout/brainwashed followers, true to form, will picket the funerals of the six victims who died, including the service for 9-year-old Christina Green.
Sorry for making your blood boil so early in the week, but below is Phelp's taped message to the nation:
Michelle Fitzsimmons is an editorial fellow at Salon.com. More: Michelle Fitzsimmons
The 13-year-old murder of the rotund rapper, aka Christopher Wallace, has fostered conspiracy for as long as it's remained unsolved. Now, CNN reports, the cold case has been "reinvigorated" and reopened.
Enough fresh evidence has surfaced to entice the LAPD, L.A.'s District Attorney's office and the FBI to assemble a task force and ask once again: Who killed Biggie Smalls?
Former LAPD detective Russell Poole, who was involved in the 1997 investigation, says Death Row Records' co-founder and CEO Marion "Suge" Knight ordered the killing. But, Poole says, his LAPD superiors thwarted his pursuit of leads because of his conviction that David Mack, a former LAPD officer who also worked security for Death Row, fired the fatal shots.
"I think I was getting too close to the truth," Poole told CNN. "I think they feared that the truth would be a scandal."
Whatever the outcome of the investigation, Big Poppa's legacy as a wordsmith remains:
Michelle Fitzsimmons is an editorial fellow at Salon.com. More: Michelle Fitzsimmons
