Roger Ailes made his public debut in the early pages of Joe McGinniss’ landmark book The Selling of the President 1968, a brilliant first-hand study of how filmmaking and advertising techniques permanently altered the political landscape during Nixon’s landslide election that year. McGinniss argues that the postwar, television-era thinking of Marshall McLuhan and other pioneers […]
Politics
It worries me that the speech was “a success” because it reminds me of experiences with publicity/promotion types for whom “success” is a non-negotiable perfect attribute, like the speed of light, so that even products that everyone knows became bestsellers because of shrewd advertising or clever placement or well-arranged (or bought) endorsements are, afterwards, used […]
What’s absolutely infuriating me right now, more than the daily psychic blows of the Trump era, is the way that my own (and others’) expectation that Hillary would win the election is being turned into a blunt-force rhetorical weapon against us—against myself personally and others who think like I do, as recounted everywhere, daily—not just […]