For years, James Ware drew a cloak of gravitas around his rising legal career with the story of a dead child; the child, to complete the picture, had shared the storyteller's own blood. The often-repeated tale of civil-rights-era violence soared to the heights of archetype: 1963, Birmingham, a boy on a bicycle, his 12-year-old brother on the handlebars. A shot rings out; a child falls. Washed in the blood of an innocent, the survivor of the shooting - the brother peddling the bike - grows into more than a man: He becomes a brave survivor of history, a symbol of the life that emerged from a period of death, an individual beam of light rising from our collective darkness. He becomes a federal judge, stopping by the trial court on his inevitable journey to at least the appellate bench - maybe higher. In shorthand, he is, being blessed with a great bio, a player.
But then, pretty much inevitably, he gets caught. A man named James Ware lost his brother to gunfire once upon a time, but - whoops - wrong James Ware. The James Ware who wears a black robe to work turns out to have borrowed the story.
Which, in general terms, is not such an uncommon story. Call it lying if you really need to, but the disingenuous discourse taking place in the heights of power is better understood as something else entirely, something that people go to college to study. Something as American as apple pie and black ops. The reality is often noted in other arenas, but not so often applied in our understanding of this one: We've gone through meaning and have come out the other side. Politics, in the marketing era, becomes not so much a matter of ideology as of gullibility - not so much a matter of what we believe in as of what we are willing to believe.
One nicely illustrative story is set in suburban Los Angeles in late February and early March. The Pasadena City Council placed a measure on the local ballot, Proposition 2, that would extend a temporary tax meant to sustain the city's library system through a purported budget crunch. The March election approached; campaign literature began to flow into mailboxes.
"Some things are too important to leave to the politicians!" warned one mail piece. "Voting YES on 2 on Tuesday protects the library from politics!" The piece didn't mention that "the politicians" had actually placed the measure on the ballot, a reality that would have tended to make the argument a bit, well, circular.
Two days later, another mailer landed in the same mailboxes, addressing the same issue, sent by the same campaign. This later piece was a classic, a four-pager that opened out to show pictures of dozens of little children who wanted Prop 2 to pass. The message - You don't hate babies, do you? - was accompanied by a more interesting argument. Along with the ideological kiddie-porn shots of all those absolutely adorable little rug rats were the pictures of two members of the Pasadena City Council, who strenuously urged voters to pass the tax measure.
The measure passed with close to 90 percent of the vote.
Follow the thread, and the outcome of the election is anything but surprising. The advertising hit all the target demographics. The tax measure was a perfect choice for voters who didn't trust politicians and wanted to stand opposed to them, and the tax measure was a perfect choice for voters who respected politicians and took them at their word. Spread broadly, the message was just meaningless enough to work: Fight the politicians. Follow your political leaders. Did somebody say McDonald's?
More recently, voters in Colorado's most crowded counties were faced with a stark question of something very near to life-vs.-death - a chance to save a city or to lose it. Once again, the sales pitch accelerated; in the days before the election, supporters marched downtown with signs meant to clarify the stakes: "4A or LA." That is, approve ballot measure 4A - a tax increase that would fund a new, multibillion-dollar light-rail system - or see pretty little Denver turn, pretty much overnight, into the metastasizing hell of sprawling, dirty old Los Angeles. If the choice was generally fair - decent public transportation vs. eventual gridlock - the pitch itself sounded a bit more Book of Revelations than Public Policy 101.
The voters said no to 4A.
Two weeks later, those same voters got a surprise: Roy Romer, the governor of Colorado, announced a plan to use state and federal money to build one of the very same light-rail lines that 4A had been created to fund. Another week, and the chairman of the regional transportation agency that had put 4A on the ballot offered his own plan for building a second line that was to have been funded by the defeated measure. Both men had apparently forgotten to mention to voters, before the election, that the tax increase 4A would have created wasn't the only way to fund new light-rail lines; as it turns out, the choice wasn't quite so simple as "4A or LA."
As always, a few complainers talked to reporters in the old language of truth vs. lies. But they were missing the point. Of course the people elected to run government didn't mention that alternatives to the tax increase they'd brought to market existed: Does Netscape take out ads to tell you that Microsoft makes an excellent Web browser? Do Ford salesmen whisper into your ear, as you wander the lot, that Chevy makes a hell of a solid truck?
Consumers have money in their pockets; the trick of marketing is to transfer as much of that money as possible into the hands of the corporation. The difference between a cigarette that makes life more fun and a government that makes your morning commute more fulfilling is, played by current standards, the difference between Camels and Kools. It's morning in America; Alive With Pleasure; I feel your pain; You've Come a Long Way, Baby.
The truth usually manages to slither to the surface sooner or later: Cigarettes don't really soothe your T-zone and aren't really recommended by doctors; Patricia Moore was just running for office, and Lyndon Johnson was caught on tape - and Erwin Griswold acknowledged, a couple of decades later, that the national security had never really been at risk. And US arms manufacturers helped to build an army for old Mr. Worse-Than-Hitler himself. But so what? A pitch that falls apart after the customer has written the check is a pitch that worked. History can't be returned, even with proof-of-purchase.
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This article appeared originally in Suck.
