The Gerbils in the Henhouse

Ahh, the Gerbils are at it again. Got this in my inbox on Wednesday, the day before we’re all out of there for the holiday…

Announcing Company Wide Internet Content Filtering

To protect the Company’s business interests and our employees, the Company has implemented a tool that provides for increased security of our systems. With the participation of various departments, selected categories of Internet content that create risks to the Company and our systems were identified and will be restricted from access. This new product will protect our electronic world from harm caused by Internet searching and related activities and help to ensure a safer computing environment.

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Sophie The Bat

I took the girls to the Turkey Trot today, which stops up at the elephant pen at the zoo. They ended up taking an hour to walk the place after the race, during which time I was sound asleep in the car.

When we all finally reconviened, I asked Sophie what she liked about the zoo. She recounted the usual: elephants, girraffes, meerkats … she even picked up a lesser kudu this time. Then we got to the bats.

“What were the bats doing, Sophie?” Kira asked her when we got settled in the car.

“They were eating fruit and apples.”

I said, “Wait a minute. Does Sophie eat apples?”

Sophie thought hard for a second. “Yes.”

“And bats eat apples too?”

“Yes, dad.”

“Sophie, I think you’re a bat!”

She looked at me, then at her hands, then up at Kira.

“Mom. I think… I’m a bat!”

Happy Thanksgiving.

“Shoutworld vs Thinkworld”

Blogging USA: Thinkworld vs. Shoutworld

Here’s a nice post-mortem on the election by an old j-school prof of mine from back in the day…

Media

More on Bush Administration VNR Strategy

I’m not up on the history of a presidential administration use of video news releases to the scale of our current custodians, but they’re following up on their latest medicare chapter with one on education.

The VNR process seems just crazy to me these days, as we’re all trying so hard to balance the competing intersts of mass communication and rebuilding customer trust. Yet, the communciations office has chosen to flood the markets with these things once every couple of months, generating more meta-press on the act itself than root press on their target issue.

The Meaning of Life

Clearly, I’m on a “kid’s say the darndes things” kick. Acknowledged. Let’s move on to tonight’s tale.

Curt’s over for family dinner. We’re eating Yumm’s (cause they rock) and discussing how cool child development it. Sophie is talking about all the water we’re all drinking “… and Curt has water and mommy has some water and Sophie has water and so does Curt have some water…” etc.

Curt leans over and says to Sophie, “Sophie, what’s the meaning of life? What does it all mean?”

Sophie tilts her head to the side. She says “It means…” and holds us there, pregnant pause. I think she made eye contact with each of us in the span of about eight seconds. “It means… Curt’s house.”

So there we have it. Curt’s house is the meaning of life.

Amazing. Because of Pizza.

Right now, Kira is eating a wonderful Russian soup with beef and beets and onions — all good stuff. It’s wonderful, but not so much for 2-year-olds. So, I came in and whipped up a tortilla pizza with pepperoni and cheese and mushrooms and tossed it in the toaster oven. I gave it to Sophie and after one bite she says to Kira:

“My dad is just amazing.”

“Why is he amazing, Sophie?”

“Because of pizza!”

Most days, being a dad is fun. Some days, it’s simply exceptional.

Demographics and Segmentation

We’ve been talking a bunch about targeting and marketing and segmentation lately, all in an effort to determine what it is — at least in part — that led the democratic party astray over the last year. Here’s a little basic marketing/PR to frame this part of the discussion from my point of view.

First, when you’re putting together a PR plan, you have to have a goal in mind. What is it you want to communicate? What is it that you need to do to effect change in process or thought? Once you have a specific goal in place, you can move into defining who it is you need to talk to.

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SNL Presidential Debates

I just watched the Saturday Night Live Presidential Debate special that was on Monday night this week and I’ve discovered another reason for us to feel ashamed of our collective selves. If SNL is to be any sort of bell weather for our life and times, we’ve been re-living political history for at least the last 30 years without even knowing it. For example:

1. In the ‘76 Debate spoof, Belushi’s Rolling Stone reporter accuses Dan Ackroyd’s Jimmy Carter of being a “flip flopper”
2. In ‘88, Dana Carvey’s Bush stumbles over himself horribly, yadda yadda yadda, something about a “thousand points of light,” at which point what’s-his-name’s Dukakis says, “I can’t believe I’m losing to this guy.”
3. In ‘92, Bush-Clinton-Perot, well… Carvey’s Perot is almost funnier than Ralph Nader, playing himself, debating puppets.

Media

November 3, 2004

We went to bed at 10:00 last night, long before the final states were called by the networks. Fascinatingly difficult night, that.

My folks moved to Wales this year. Just before they left my dad called and told me that if Bush won a second term, they weren’t coming back. Yeah, yeah, he was joking, but this morning I had this waiting for me in my inbox:

My sincere condolences on the loss of your country for another four years. As we seek asylum here in Europe, we want you to know we’ll be in constant touch. Should you be driven from your home by fundamentalist Christians under the rule of “Bush” for watching “The Simpsons” or some other violation against the State, you’ll be able to reach us immediately and we will try to get to you and save you.

We’re both involved today in an emergency underground here in the UK. We were simply hoping for the best and preparing for the worst. We have good intelligent leaders who we believe will offer us the best resistence to the American sprawl should they venture to this island in the North Atlantic.

Until we meet again. Our love to little Sophie. Tell her we’ll send for her as soon as things cool down.

Dad

It’s starting to remind me of the hit series “V,” or, you know, the Holocaust. (Here, I’ll be busted for likening our current political situation to war crimes and other atrocities, but I can’t help but feeling this eerie parallel between the early popularity of Hitler’s propaganda with the German conservative right and the blood red that covered the electoral map last night. If Germany, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, N. Korea et al have taught us anything, it’s that regimes must all start somewhere.)

Media, Public Relations

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