The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century

This was cross-posted to Tucows Farm.

Remember what life was like before the internet?

(Click the comic to read the whole thing.)

(I couldn’t resist making a Dungeons and Dragons joke in the title.)

We haven’t sparred in quite some time, so her response to my response to her “Food Allergies are a Character Flaw” post feels like old times. Welcome back to the Monkey Knife Fight, Kathy!

(She needed a distraction from The Da Vinci Code, anyway.)

I’m not the only one to comment on Kathy’s entry: there’s also a response over at A Crafty Madness titled When waging war against assholes, it’s important not to become an asshole. It opens with:

Excuse my blunt language, but I am seeing a disturbing, though perhaps inevitable, trend filtering into the blogosphere (insert the usual god-I-hate-that-word disclaimer). It is this: in the various scrims brought about by the “clash of ideas” over current events, people are taking the opportunity to let their jerk flag fly.

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Alas, this exchange probably isn’t enough to land me the cover story of Internet Tough Guy Magazine…

Usually, when a stupid idea manifests itself on the blogosphere, it’s pretty harmless. At worst, following such ideas will either waste your time or leave you feeling a little embarrased. However, there’s an idea that’s been circulated that goes beyond garden-variety stupid and crosses the line into emergency-room stupid.

It started with an entry on Chris Selley’s blog, Tart Cider, on the death of 15 year-old Christina Desforges, who was initially believed to have died of a food allergy and later determined to have died of an asthma attack (coupled with second-hand cigarette smoke, first-hand marijuana smoke and hanky-panky with her boyfriend). The article uses this as a preamble to a polemic about the “allergy police”, a collective name for the groups that are campaigning against peanuts in schools and on airplanes. Kate MacMillan then linked to it in her blog, Small Dead Animals, where she talks about the rules concerning bringing animals on airplanes.

However, we don’t go into the Twilight Zone until the meme goes through the Relapsed Catholic funhouse mirror when Kathy Shaidle links Kate’s blog entry with this statement:

Food allergies are a character flaw.

As they used to say on those late-night TV ads for Ronco products: “But wait, there’s more!”:

Know what’s causing all those peanut allergies?

Bicycle helmets.

You think I’m kidding.

Ever notice how middle class white liberals are the ones with all the allergies and asthma and whatever this week’s “disease” is?

Before I continue, allow me to show you a Venn diagram to show you which space the above statements occupy:

I have a number of relatives, some of whom could not be classified as “liberal” who have some pretty serious food allergies that pre-date the campaigns for nut-free environments by decades. My mom, whom you wouldn’t classify as “liberal” based on many political litmus tests (and wouldn’t classify as “white” either), had an allergy to fish when she was younger that she grew out of. She and my sister — both doctors, by the bye — have noted these reactions in one of my nephews, who exhibits clear physical symptoms, at least according to my lying eyes. Even I, hardly the roll-over-and-die type of personality (and I eat everything; I could probably eat rocks if served with the right sauce) have in recent years developed some kind of reaction whenever I eat fresh cherries.

There is a bit of truth to Kathy’s statements, however: parents do tend to freak out and be overly cautious about their kids. A number do tend to take their kids to the emergency room for very minor ailments, but doctors have come up with all sorts of observational tricks to counter this. The waiting room full of toys at St. Joseph’s Health Centre is a good diagnostic tool; a genuinely sick kid is more likely to ignore them. A little education can fix this, and personally, I’d rather that parents obsess a little over the kids than say, the bottle or the racetrack.

Back to the matter of hand: stating that food allergies are a character flaw is as close to Lysenkoism as one can get without a career in research (or, more accurately, purported research). Lysenkoism comes from Trofim Lysenko, who is most notable for being a poseur whose theories were driven by politics rather than actual science.

While Kathy’s statement about food allergies does have the slight ring of truth to it — some people use “food allergies” as an excuse for culinary cowardice — I will remind you that “Even the Devil can quote scripture for his own purposes”. Taking it at face value may put someone you love in some pretty serious trouble. The best rule to follow is: when in doubt, see a doctor.

As for her statement about bike helmets: if you believe that line, go ahead and bike without a helmet — if you get a head injury, who’d be able to tell?

I could go on, but how ’bout we take this to the comments? Parents, doctors, cyclists: speak your mind!

Today is Victoria Day, a national holiday in Canada. The day is marked with the lighting of fireworks, drinking beer (hence its other name, “May 2-4“), the opening of cottages for the summer season and the start of white pants season. Have a good one!

Here’s a little gedankenexperiment I’d like to try out on you, Gentle Reader:

I propose that it be called “Republican Marketing” instead of “Pinko Marketing”.

“Okay, Accordion Guy, now you’ve really lost it,” you might reply. I ask that you bear with me for a moment as I introduce you to Chuck DeFeo.

I met Chuck and saw him speak at the 2004 Internet + Society conference (whose subtitle was “Votes, Bits and Bites”) at Harvard, which Wendy coordinated. He participated in a panel in which the 2004 elections — which had taken place only the month prior — were the topic of discussion. At the time, Chuck held the position of eCampaign manager of the Bush-Cheney 2004 campaign, and he now works at Salem Communications, a media group of talk radio stations and online media such as sites like the Townhall.com, a favourite in the conservative blogosphere.

Now let me toss you a mind bomb: Chuck is a master of so-called “Pinko Marketing”. He understood it better than Zack Exley, his counterpart at the Democratic Party.

The Republican Online Campaign: “Pinko Marketing” Well Before the Term Was Coined

Chuck’s strategy was simple: get people talking to each other and get volunteers for the Republican campaign to recruit other volunteers. The idea was to have the message delivered by the campaign’s biggest fans rather than campaign headquarters. He organized events like “Walk the Vote”, “Neighbour to Neighbour” and “Parties for the President”, which gathered people who lived in the same neighbourhood but didn’t necessarily know each other that well. These events were held more often in homes rather than public places, as Meetup events are.

He said that these gatherings proved to be more powerful than a TV or print ad. He said that there was nothing so convincing as someone in your neighbourhood promoting by saying “I live near you, our kids go to the same school, I share your values.”. He also said that these events had an additional benefit: “You know your neighbour now.”

The Democratic Online Campaign: “A Disaster”

The Democratic online campaign was, by Zack Exley’s own admission, “a disaster”. There was no plan, and there were no trained volunteers. “It was as if they did not see an election coming”, he said.

The closest they came to engaging the constituents was to solicit stories from people about how the Bush government affected them. 100,000 submissions were received, and they were stored in a database and made available online. In the end, although they were using testimonials from the people, their campaign was still a top-down one, with all the messages coming from Democratic campaign headquarters.

At the panel, Zack said that the Right is beating Left at what used to be the Left’s game: grassroots campaigning. The Left thinks that grassroots politics is “doing neat stuff”, but in fact, it’s still talking to people. It fundamentally comes down to a cultural problem: the Left don’t have trust in ordinary people. “We don’t know how to talk to ordinary Americans,” he said, adding “I agree with Chuck — our best campaigners aren’t paid staff people, but real people!”

Republican Marketing: Trusting the People

At one point in the panel discussion, an audience member asked about what role fear played in the 2004 presidential campaign, remarking that President Bush said the country would be in great danger if he were not re-elected.

Chuck’s response was “The American electorate is incredibly samrt and know how to form their opinions.” He said that voters are able to decide for themselves from the different sources of information, capping it with “I think we are the better choice”.

Zack then responded in a surprising way. “What Chuck said was very important,” he said. “When was the last time you heard a Democrat say that the electorate was smart? Did they, the last time we won, say ‘this country’s dumb, I’m moving to Canada?'”

My Conclusion

DeFeo’s online campaign, was — even by the admission of his opponents — a far superior campaign. It is a textbook example of “Pinko Marketing”, having embraced its five principles (see this entry for the principles) and could be used as a prime example of a Pinko success story. As such, it is more directly applicable to marketing than Marx and Engels (whose marketing typically boils down to either tanks or scruffy social maladroits selling the Socialist Worker on street corners).

Hence my modest proposal: Let’s call it “Republican Marketing”! (Or hey, maybe “Bush Marketing!”)

(I’ve donned my flame-proof suit. Fire away in the comments!)