September 12, 2009
Posted by Jay Livingston
“Remember how the whole country seemed united?” someone asked yesterday, referring to the months following Sept. 11, 2001 and implicitly comparing the mood of the country then to what we have now.
Yes, it seemed only natural that when we felt that the whole country was under attack from the outside, we would forget internal differences. But now I’m wondering about the counterfactual:
What if Obama had been elected in 2000, and it was Obama who had been in office nine months when the attacks occurred. How would the Republicans, those in office and those in the media – the Joe Wilsons, the Limbaughs and Coulters and Fox TV – as well as the birthers and other good citizens who have been showing up at town hall meetings, how would they have reacted?
Poverty, Income (and Virtue?)
September 11, 2009
Posted by Jay Livingston
Here’s a brief follow-up to the previous post about changes in income and poverty. First the news.
And then the longer view.
(Click on the graph to see it larger.
It makes no sense to talk about these economic facts in terms of “virtue” as David Brooks likes to do. Virtue is nice. I’m all for it. But it has nothing to do with what’s going on in the economy. Those 2,600,000 people who fell into poverty in 2008 (and the data for 2009 will be still more grim) are no less virtuous than they were in 2007.
(HT: I got the Census Bureau graphs from Brad DeLong.)
Posted by Jay Livingston
Here’s a brief follow-up to the previous post about changes in income and poverty. First the news.
And then the longer view.
(Click on the graph to see it larger.
It makes no sense to talk about these economic facts in terms of “virtue” as David Brooks likes to do. Virtue is nice. I’m all for it. But it has nothing to do with what’s going on in the economy. Those 2,600,000 people who fell into poverty in 2008 (and the data for 2009 will be still more grim) are no less virtuous than they were in 2007.
(HT: I got the Census Bureau graphs from Brad DeLong.)
David Brooks Doesn’t Get It
September 9, 2009
Posted by Jay Livingston
David Brooks’s persona, the character he plays in print and on TV, is the reasonable conservative – fair-minded, with ideas based in fact rather than ideology. He also likes to play the sociologist, offering broad pronouncements on society and culture. Especially culture.
Look at yesterday’s column, a puff piece for a new magazine, National Affairs, which he sees as the successor to The Public Interest. Brooks briefly summarizes the articles in the current issue.
Brooks loves virtue, which he usually subsumes under “culture” – the ideas people live by. But he ignores structure. He also forgets the basic insight of Sociology 101, week one – Durkheim: explanations of individual facts (like who gets ahead and who doesn’t) often aren’t much help in explaining social facts (like the overall degree of inequality and poverty in a society).
In explaining suicide at the individual level, sadness is a pretty useful concept. People who commit suicide are, no doubt, sadder than those who don’t. The surest way not to commit suicide is to be happy, not sad. But does knowing about these individual differences help us understand why the US has a rate of suicide nearly triple that of Greece? Are Americans three times as sad as Greeks? And within the US, are whites twice as sad as blacks?
Levels of income and degrees of inequality have as much to do with “virtue” as rates of suicide have to do with sadness.
From 2000 to 2007, median family income in the US fell by 5%. (Don’t look for the data on 2008 and 2009, when it comes out, to reverse this trend.) Can we conclude that Americans became more self-indulgent and irresponsible? That they threw away their degrees, broke up their families, and quit their jobs?
Since January 2008, over six million people in this country have lost their jobs. I guess the Bush administration wasn’t very good (and Obama, so far, no better) at “promoting virtuous behavior.”
Someone should suggest to David Brooks, that maybe, just maybe, when we consider income and inequality and unemployment at the national level, those individual–based explanations don’t help. It’s not a matter of culture or virtue. It’s the economy. Stupid.
Posted by Jay Livingston
David Brooks’s persona, the character he plays in print and on TV, is the reasonable conservative – fair-minded, with ideas based in fact rather than ideology. He also likes to play the sociologist, offering broad pronouncements on society and culture. Especially culture.
Look at yesterday’s column, a puff piece for a new magazine, National Affairs, which he sees as the successor to The Public Interest. Brooks briefly summarizes the articles in the current issue.
Brooks loves virtue, which he usually subsumes under “culture” – the ideas people live by. But he ignores structure. He also forgets the basic insight of Sociology 101, week one – Durkheim: explanations of individual facts (like who gets ahead and who doesn’t) often aren’t much help in explaining social facts (like the overall degree of inequality and poverty in a society).
In explaining suicide at the individual level, sadness is a pretty useful concept. People who commit suicide are, no doubt, sadder than those who don’t. The surest way not to commit suicide is to be happy, not sad. But does knowing about these individual differences help us understand why the US has a rate of suicide nearly triple that of Greece? Are Americans three times as sad as Greeks? And within the US, are whites twice as sad as blacks?
Levels of income and degrees of inequality have as much to do with “virtue” as rates of suicide have to do with sadness.
From 2000 to 2007, median family income in the US fell by 5%. (Don’t look for the data on 2008 and 2009, when it comes out, to reverse this trend.) Can we conclude that Americans became more self-indulgent and irresponsible? That they threw away their degrees, broke up their families, and quit their jobs?
Since January 2008, over six million people in this country have lost their jobs. I guess the Bush administration wasn’t very good (and Obama, so far, no better) at “promoting virtuous behavior.”
Someone should suggest to David Brooks, that maybe, just maybe, when we consider income and inequality and unemployment at the national level, those individual–based explanations don’t help. It’s not a matter of culture or virtue. It’s the economy. Stupid.
Lone Star Litter . . . and Values
September 6, 2009
Posted by Jay Livingston
Claude the brand consultant was consulting with me – i.e., he was picking up the cappuccino tab at Starbuck’s. He was about to start teaching a course called something like “Communications and Public Affairs,” and not being an academic (though he’s a really good teacher), he wanted some advice on the syllabus.
We finally got around to the idea that Messages about Issues had to be tailored for specific Audiences or Publics, particularly their Interests and Values. (Those capitalized words were possible major headings in the syllabus.)
I immediately thought of the example of Texas and litter. How could you convince Texans to
be more respectful of public places and not toss all that crap out onto the roads they drove on? The Ladybird Johnson approach – “Highway Beautification”? Wrong audience. The people who were littering obviously didn’t care about highway beauty.
The guy you were trying to reach was Bubba, the classic red stater – fiercely individualistic, anti-government, macho. Bubba was also a slob, and probably proud of it. You couldn’t appeal to self-interest since it’s in Bubba’s self-interest to chuck his garbage out the window. Even hefty fines (and they are hefty) would work only if you could catch litterers often enough – unlikely on the Texas highways.
The best way in was Values. But how? “Don’t be a Litterbug, Keep Your Community Clean” would be too nice, too feminine or babyish, and, like “Pitch In” too collectivist. Instead, Roy Spence and Tim McClure at the Austin ad agency GSD&M had the Texas DOT go with chauvinism – Texas chauvinism. Spence and McClure were the ones who had distilled the target audience down to the Bubba stereotype, and the idea they played on to reach Bubba was not that littering was ugly or wrong or costly, but that it hurt Texas. And thus in 1985 was born one of the most famous and effective campaigns in the history of advertising.
With its double meaning of “mess,” it captured Bubba’s patriotism and pugnacity. The bumper stickers were soon everywhere. The TV ads featured famous proud Texans. One of the early ones (so early, I can’t find it on YouTube) featured Too-Tall Jones and Randy White, two of the toughest dudes on the Cowboys defense, picking up roadside trash.
Posted by Jay Livingston
Claude the brand consultant was consulting with me – i.e., he was picking up the cappuccino tab at Starbuck’s. He was about to start teaching a course called something like “Communications and Public Affairs,” and not being an academic (though he’s a really good teacher), he wanted some advice on the syllabus.
We finally got around to the idea that Messages about Issues had to be tailored for specific Audiences or Publics, particularly their Interests and Values. (Those capitalized words were possible major headings in the syllabus.)
I immediately thought of the example of Texas and litter. How could you convince Texans to
be more respectful of public places and not toss all that crap out onto the roads they drove on? The Ladybird Johnson approach – “Highway Beautification”? Wrong audience. The people who were littering obviously didn’t care about highway beauty.The guy you were trying to reach was Bubba, the classic red stater – fiercely individualistic, anti-government, macho. Bubba was also a slob, and probably proud of it. You couldn’t appeal to self-interest since it’s in Bubba’s self-interest to chuck his garbage out the window. Even hefty fines (and they are hefty) would work only if you could catch litterers often enough – unlikely on the Texas highways.
The best way in was Values. But how? “Don’t be a Litterbug, Keep Your Community Clean” would be too nice, too feminine or babyish, and, like “Pitch In” too collectivist. Instead, Roy Spence and Tim McClure at the Austin ad agency GSD&M had the Texas DOT go with chauvinism – Texas chauvinism. Spence and McClure were the ones who had distilled the target audience down to the Bubba stereotype, and the idea they played on to reach Bubba was not that littering was ugly or wrong or costly, but that it hurt Texas. And thus in 1985 was born one of the most famous and effective campaigns in the history of advertising.
With its double meaning of “mess,” it captured Bubba’s patriotism and pugnacity. The bumper stickers were soon everywhere. The TV ads featured famous proud Texans. One of the early ones (so early, I can’t find it on YouTube) featured Too-Tall Jones and Randy White, two of the toughest dudes on the Cowboys defense, picking up roadside trash.
JONES: You see the guy who threw this out the window, you tell him I got a message for him.Litter in Texas has been reduced by 72%, the campaign is still going strong a quarter-century later, and McLure and Spence have a book about it. My source was Made to Stick by the Heath Brothers (no, jazzers, not those Heath brothers), Chip and Dan.
WHITE: (picks up a beer can): I got a message for him too.
OFF-CAMERA VOICE: What’s that?
WHITE: (Crushes the beer can with one fist). Well, I kinda need to see him to deliver it.
JONES: Don’t mess with Texas.
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