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.