just yesterday in the new york times, paul krugman wrote about our ailing health care system and he wasn't talking about medicare. judging by the letters sections of monday's paper, the bully boy's 'nothing but paper' scam didn't play out with readers of the new york times.
so yesterday i'm on the ferry and i'm standing there when a woman with 1 of those mcpapers comes over to chat.
after she's done talking about the pope, she wasn't catholic, and michael jackson, she gets around to social security. and i ask her what she thinks.
she responds 'well the president says social security is in trouble.'
freeze frame right there.
bully boy wins via a lack of information.
this is an important point.
this doesn't mean that she's in need of talking points.
when i addressed social security awhile back, i did it without talking points.
i'm not a social security expert, i've never pretended to be.
but at the time, if you'll remember, we were being flooded with facts, numbers and factoids.
now in advertising, you get 1 fact or 'fact.' for instance, '4 out of 5 dentists.' that's about all some 1 new to the discussion can handle.
so when people were listing off facts, which hopefully they'd come to on their own and weren't cribbing from some 1 else, i was watching that play out and thinking, 'they are going to lose a lot of people.'
here, i'm communicating. i keep it basic and simple which may be a reflection of my knowledge base but it is a reflection of what i learned doing public relations.
there's a phrase we've all heard: keep it simple, stupid.
there's a reason we've all heard it.
people listing facts and factoids (people on the left) did a great job reaching out to people who were able to conceptualize what was being discussed. but readers at this site often complained about feeling like those presentations were beating them over the head or over their heads.
the early battle was won, but if the left wants to win this war bully boy has declared on social security, they might move on to other methods. and i was thinking about that on the ferry.
remember where we left off? let's roll tape.
the friendly woman in her mid-to-late 30s has said to me that the bully boy says there's a problem with social security. i'm about to ask her a question when some 1 invites themselves in (butts in) on our conversation.
pushy man starts lecturing her (hectoring her?) with various facts and figures.
on the 1 hand i'm thinking 'uh, who invited you into this conversation?'; on the other hand i'm thinking, 'you are losing her.'
i don't know if pushy was an economist or if he'd just learned the talking points but you couldn't look over at the woman and not notice her eyes glazing over.
pushy finished his lecture and then stormed off looking quite pleased with himself.
i asked her what she thought of what pushy had said.
'my head is spinning,' was her response.
the left needs to realize what the bully boy already does. the 'it's just paper!' stunt wasn't aimed at the people following the details, it was aimed at the people who haven't paid attention or who
weren't able to follow the ins and outs of economic theory.
think about it a minute and you'll realize most people in this country didn't take economics. if you're lucky, you'll find some that took accounting in high school.
i'm calling on my readers not to deliver talking points or speeches but to sound the people out.
a lot of them are interested but you're going to need to tie it into their own lives or find some other way that they can relate.
this woman, like many of us, couldn't visualize trillions and you're going to lose her if you're not careful.
krugman's column was fresh on my mind because i'd just read it that morning. and i'd read his other columns where the topic was social security. so it would have been really easy to just launch into that.
do yourself and our country a favor, sound people out.
i spoke with her and the thing she got from pushy's lecture, the only thing, was that at some point in the future (2042) social security will face a 'shortfall.'
here's the first tip, don't use 'shortfall.' if your average person knows that term, they know it as something they hear from their municipal government or their state government whenever it's time to raise taxes or cut services.
put it in simple terms. for every dollar that social security pays now, if nothing's done, then by 2042, they'd be paying 75 cents instead of a dollar.
3 quarters she understood. she grasped that. 'so this isn't a crisis, just belt tightening.'
from there, you can talk about how reversing the tax cuts for the very rich will take care of the problem right away.
but you're not going to get to that point by overwhelming people with figures.
and we need to be working on putting a face on the issue if we're wanting to expand beyond the people who are already in the know.
we have won the first battle. but bully boy knows that. what was laughable to many of us was
serious to people who have been left out the conversation. lecturing won't work, you need to engage and you need to use a method other than reeling off facts and figures.
right now we've probably got a slight lead in the debate and it would be very easy to grow overconfident or think we don't need to reach people who haven't been paying attention. but bully boy's doing p.r. 101. and while we laugh about it because we know the 'facts' we need to realize that others don't.
if you think about it, some of our biggest mistakes have come from expecting that every 1 would grasp the facts. afterwards, we're left scratching our heads and wondering how so many people could have fallen for whatever lie.
we have to move the conversation to an area that includes every 1. a defeat for the bully boy is great. an overwhelming 1 would damage his future proposals. so put on your thinking caps and if you find something that works, e-mail me at sexandpoliticsandscreeds@yahoo.com. tomorrow we'll talk about danny schechter and media channel but if you've got a story you want to share, we can do that too. friday, we'll talk some more about the patriot act and i'm leaving thursday open right now.
i'll add that if you haven't read the common ills this morning, don't miss c.i.'s post on how the times still can't bring themselves to inform readers of the full truth about what happened at the protests against the gop convention.
