Confessions of A Naughty Girl

Nothing Worse Than Bad PR For Your Bush

And now, a break from your regularly scheduled programming for some political commentary. (And for more thorough, accurate coverage, I would urge you to check out a few links on my sidebar.)

I don't know much about politics. I willingly admit this. Like most of the rest of America, I read the headlines, form my opinions, and foam at the mouth - silently. I tend to shy away from fact-driven debates, if only because I'm a total smartass, and I only love to argue when I know that I am accurately citing facts...but I always second-guess my political accuracy. However, I had a very long discussion with my Dad this weekend, who stated that he is worried about my generation and the generations after me. He said something that really stung me, shook me to the core. At the end of our conversation, he said, "Your generation will be the first to not have a better quality of life than those before them. My parents had better lives than theirs, your mother and I have had a better life than our parents, and I had hoped that you and your sister would have a better life than we do. But with all that's going on in the world, I fear that this won't be the case."

Anyone who knows me personally - who knows my educational background, my career, my interests - knows that I can talk media and advertising for days. I am probably not the best person with whom to ask a quick question, because with that one little question regarding how I buy an outdoor billboard in a market, I will have your head spinning with TRPs and DMAs within five minutes. I can't help it - I love my work, I find it totally engaging, and I just assume that everyone else thinks it's as interesting as I do.

To that end, my graduate program background is in both public relations and advertising. In school, we always had the die-hard PR people and the die-hard advertising people. They are two very different disciplines, nevertheless very competitive with one another. I have always believed in the importance of PR as a supplement to a larger-scale marketing effort, but have never been of that crazy ass school of thought that some progressive scholars in my field proclaim, which is that advertising is dead. But when I come home at the end of a 10-hour work day, having busted my ass on a plan that will probably be revised, or shot down, or worse yet - nixed entirely - at least I can sleep tight knowing that my field isn't f*cking up a nation.

The fact of the matter is, public relations has become so pervasive, and used so manipulatively in this Administration, that I'm not sure anyone truly has their facts straight. I have a lot of conservative friends - friends who have served in the military, or have had family members who had...people who have made fantastic arguments in favor of going to war, of protecting national interests, of granting tax cuts, of deferring judgement to the states...people that I love and respect very much, and who have every right to their opinions. But in spite of all of this, I can't help this nagging feeling that I have in the pit of my stomach. I can't shake this feeling that tells me that our world is very different now than it was six months ago, a year ago, five years ago. I don't feel "safe" in it - at least not in the way that I used to - and I don't think anyone else does, either. And it's not just because I'm an adult now - financially independent and more forward-thinking than I ever have been. It's because we are surrounded by frightening circumstances, and governing bodies who care more about pointing fingers and shifting focus off of the real issues in the name of "maintaining good public relations". And I learned that public relations is about maintaining honest, mutually-beneficial communication with every group that you ever come into contact with, not smiling and waving to the cameras. PR is about being proactive, not reactive.

There are a number of factors that come into play in what has shaped our world today - Court retirees and deaths, Islamic extremists, more destructive hurricanes in the past year than in the past 10 combined - but none of these factors can be attributed to the actions of one person, or one Administration. I truly believe that George Bush is an emotional, compassionate person, but a very misguided, unlucky President. And when he is giving the media cookie-cutter, optimistic soundbytes in the midst of a national tragedy, and when America is watching Oprah in the hopes of some empathic-inducing truth about what is really going on in New Orleans and Mississippi - well, you have a problem. We have a problem.

Please check out the link above - it's a very interesting editorial from this week's Advertising Age discussing the government's misuse of public relations. Let me know what you think. I'd appreciate any thoughts or comments that you have.

posted by KA @ 10:40 PM