Reich on mediocrity of middle ground

Gordon Fitch gcf at panix.com
Tue Oct 31 06:53:11 PST 2000



> ``Reich's analysis seems incorrect to me. The application of more
> sophisticated technology should enable one to do more with less. If
> the aim were to get voters excited about the election and the
> candidates, advanced marketing techniques could be expected to use
> fairly modest resources to create passionate responses, leading to an
> unstable electorate and the likelihood of landslides and upsets.''
> (Gordon Fitch)
>
> ``That's assuming that marketing really creates desire and is such a
> good tool for manipulation. What marketing in its modern form most
> allows is finding the marginal consumers/voters who are least
> passionate about their preferences and subtly move them to an
> alternative.'' (Nathan Newman)

Chuck Grimes:
> I think Nathan Newman's view is probably closer to what is
> occurring.
>
> The conceptual frame is consumer products in close competitive
> markets. The basic strategy is to parse the competition very closely,
> and match them point to point, while shifting the criterion of choice
> to some marginal feature that one competitor offers that the other
> doesn't. ....

At least you two read the beginning of what I wrote. That seems to be more attention than I usually get. My conclusion, which was elided, was that the trivial content of the election campaign whined about by Reich (or by Mark Danner in _NYRB_) was part of the design of things, not some kind of unfortunate error. This is why we find a "conceptual frame of consumer products in close competitive markets". In the case of many consumer products it's too expensive to produce differentials of quality, so instead we get Maxwell House and Folgers and a competition of images and slogans which are nearly indistinguishable. Similarly, for obvious reasons, it's undesirable to present differentials of policy and character in the candidates (except for the gourmet brands as noted) and we get images and slogans, again tending toward a soporific same-oldness. It's pretty funny, then, to see Reich and Danner huffing themselves up about the vacuousness of it all, when the election discourse produced by advanced marketing tools of the establishment to which they belong is doing _exactly_ what it was designed to do.

What I wonder is, what produces minds like Reich's? When speaking to us cognoscenti, we who know the score, why doesn't he wink or even crack a smile? On the other hand, if I'm so smart, why don't people read to the end of my stories?

Of course, no one will see that question.... just as well, they might answer it.



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