Frank Luntz Memo on Health Care

EVERYONE NEEDS TO SEE THIS – regardless of how you feel about health care reform.

Frank Luntz is a GOP strategist. His job is essentially to help the Republican party use the media to coerce/persuade/convince/etc. people to be on their side (a.k.a., public relations strategist, propagandist, strategist, etc.). He put out this instruction on how Republican leaders and politicians should go about “Stopping the Washington Takeover of Health Care.”

Luntz took polls done on the American people and crafted this memo to help his people to say EXACTLY WHAT YOU WANT TO HEAR and to push your buttons on the issues you fear the most. He says things like “Use this to your advantage” and one of my favorites:

They don’t want to hear that you’re opposed to government healthcare because it’s too expensive (any help from the government to lower costs will be embraced) or because it’s anti-competitive (they don’t know about or care about current limits to competition). But they are deathly afraid that a government
takeover will lower their quality of care – so they are extremely receptive to the anti-Washington approach. It’s not an economic issue. It’s a bureaucratic issue.

It’s public relations at its worst, frankly, and quite honestly…it disgusts me.

It reads like call center script manual — it’s an, “If they say this, then respond with this” type of thing. And the funny part? Since this memo came out, the words and phrases documented in his memo have skyrocketed in frequency by politicians as well as radio commentators such as Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, Dave Ramsey, etc.

So in case you didn’t catch it before, here is the memo. Now THAT…THAT is scary stuff.

Further info:

Frank I. Luntz (born February 23, 1962) is an American conservative Republican political consultant and pollster.^[1] His most recent work has been with the Fox News Channel running focus groups after presidential debates. Luntz’s specialty is “testing language and finding words that will help his clients sell their product or turn public opinion on an issue or a candidate.”^[2] Luntz formed The Luntz Research Companies in 1992, and maintains an office in Alexandria, Virginia. (Wikipedia)

Propaganda is communication aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position. As opposed to impartially providing information, propaganda in its most basic sense, presents information primarily to influence an audience. Propaganda often presents facts selectively (thus lying by omission) to encourage a particular synthesis, or uses loaded messages to produce an emotional rather than rational response to the information presented. The desired result is a change of the attitude toward the subject in the target audience to further a political agenda. (Wikipedia)

For the record.

Just wanted to be clear (I went back through all my posts to be sure), the word “redneck” isn’t used ONCE on my blog…especially not to refer to someone just because of a certain opinion they have about something one way or another.

Hell, half my family is a bunch of rednecks (and proud of it), and I’ve been called one myself from time to time. So, before you accuse ME of spewing out “vile crap,” you anonymous commenters need to take a step back and look at yourselves.

FURTHERMORE, anonymous blog comments are one of the most cowardly things you can do, IMO. Thanks, hotmail@hotmail.com. I ‘preciate it!

Atheist Billboards and Such

There has been a lot of chatter on Twitter lately about atheist billboards that have been going up around the country. And since I got into a discussion about them yesterday with a friend of mine, I wanted to take some time to share my thoughts on the subject. (You all know that if it has to do with religion, I probably have some opinions.)

Here’s the deal. There are Christian billboards all over the place…at least, in most of the places I’ve lived and traveled in the US. Here are a few examples:

Now, I don’t take too much issue with the fact that these billboards are up. Yes, they are annoying and they make me snicker (I hate billboards in general – but that’s another blog post), but they don’t bother me any more than the ones for laser hair removal or low interest rates. The problem, however, is that these billboards DON’T DO A DAMN THING.

Seriously. Do you really think anyone’s ever driven by one of the signs and said, “Oh my gosh, I really want to accept Jesus as my savior and change my life!” No. I can guarantee you they haven’t. So even if the signs are put up with good intentions, the perception by non-Christian is that they are put up out of spite. The perception is that Christians need to make others feel bad about their lives in order to con them into becoming more like them. And the perception is that Christians are gratified by others joining their group and making them feel more secure in their decision to follow God.

I’m NOT saying that’s what Christians are intending with these boards; I’m simply saying that’s the PERCEPTION.

Now, on to another point. Several atheist and humanist organizations have begun putting up their own billboards to counter the Christian ones. And what has happened?! Protests, news articles, angry people screaming, defamation of property, you name it. So I’d like to know, what’s the difference in an atheist billboard and a Christian one? What gives Christians the right to put up a billboard and expect it to be respected and left alone, but not atheists?

Furthermore, what if a Muslim, Hindu or Buddhist group put up a billboard? What if, when driving down the interstate, you saw “You need to meditate today. –Siddhartha.” Or, “Please stop eating cows.–Vishnu.” I’m being somewhat humorous here, but the point remains. You can’t expect to be respected for your beliefs if you don’t respect others. And you certainly won’t change any minds by being combative and defensive.

Who the hell cares about Miss California?

Yesterday, I was listening to Sean Hannity (as I often do, just to get out some aggression by screaming and arguing with him while driving down the highway), and he happened to have Miss California, Carrie Prejean on the show. This is the beauty queen who recently was “fired” from the Miss America Pageant by Donald Trump (well, she was kept on, but then ultimately fired because of her unwillingness to show up at public events).

First of all, who the hell cares about this woman? Why is she suddenly an important political/public figure? All she’s ever done in her life is looked hot in a bikini, walked well in a formal dress and won a few BEAUTY pageants. You know who else wins beauty pageants? Little girls in too much makeup and skimpy outfits who are being taught they should only be valued for their looks and “poise.” (That, however, if a whole different blog post.)

Her supporters say they like her because she’s standing up for her morals and yadda yadda yadda, but most evangelical Christian, conservative, LDS (Mormon), Republican, etc. people share her opinion (sorry to generalize, just trying to make a point that she is no different than all these other people who share her beliefs; she just happens to look pretty).

To top it all off, Hannity was talking about how close-minded liberals are for disagreeing with and criticizing her. Seriously? SERIOUSLY? How do you think all the homosexuals feel?

Bottom line: Sean Hannity is stupid. And so is Carrie Prejean. And even more stupid are the people who idolize them. If you agree with them, fine…but don’t make them into heroes.