Personal Branding - Not Just for People with Gas Stoves and Bent Hangers

Ramsey Mohsen, Kansas City's most recently famous blogger, focused his attention on "personal branding" early, early this morning. In a nutshell, everything you say or do, online or in person, builds a "personal brand", which can be made weaker or stronger by its level of consistency in the delivery of quality, tone and presentation.

It's one of those insights that makes me vacillate between "Duh" and "Wow". Developing a reputation is something we face all our lives, and have for generations. The ability to achieve a heightened level of notoriety, intentionally or otherwise, is broadened in the internet age.

I had an interesting day populated with fascinating people yesterday. I met a guy who has been falsely accused of a crime and is concerned about the fact that a google check on his name will deliver an account of his "crime", and what impact that may have on his future life. I had coffee with a thoughtful politician, who pondered whether bloggers change the "gotcha" atmosphere of life in the public eye, or whether they merely amplify it. I sat and chatted with an up and coming political insider, who thanked me for not directing even positive attention in their direction, because it would have generated more notoriety than is sought.

3 people, each dealing with new media and its impact on their reputations. In each case, the new media seems destined to present a shallow, cardboard version of the truth. In the case of the latter two, much of their success lies in manipulating images, but they struggle with the fact that they don't control their own brand images. In the case of the non-criminal, he just wishes he wasn't a "brand" in the first place.

Ramsey Mohsen writes that "Personal Branding is about building and managing the associations/images the public has in regard to yourself about a specific field(s) or topic(s)." He's wise to focus trying to build and manage your own personal brand, but that is only a portion of the picture. In many, and perhaps most, cases, the building and managing is done by someone else entirely.

Dover Beach and Iraq

I don't know what's going on in Iraq. Neither do you. Each of us must rely on information that is gathered by others, condensed by others, and presented by others. Even if you're visiting this blog from a laptop in the Green Zone, you don't really know what's going on 20 miles away.

For months, though, we've been promised that we will be getting a status report from General Petraeus. While I didn't really have high hopes for the impartiality of a report that amounts to a self-evaluation, I was at least looking forward to a report that would be a military assessment instead of a political argument. After 4 plus years of rightwing cheerleaders telling us how wonderful things are, and 4 plus years of lists of dead American soldiers every week, it would be nice to have someone in command stating his view of where things stand militarily.

We learned earlier this week that the Petraeus Report will not happen. There will be no Petraeus Report. The White House will write the report. And it's even worse than that. The White House will write the report "with inputs from officials throughout the government," which means that we will get a thoroughly vetted and processed version with every spun nuance to be found within the Bush Regime.

This morning, I am as disgusted by our federal government as I've ever been. From Powell's bogus photos of chemical trucks during the marketing campaign to the embedded reporters at the beginning of the war to the suppressed photos of coffins and casualties all the way up to the White House Report (f/k/a Petraeus Report, and any news outlet that refers to the "Petraeus Report" after this news will be playing along with an Administration lie), the American public has consistently been denied access to the unvarnished truth.

I am not an informed citizen. You are not an informed citizen. When you vote, you do so based upon deeply flawed and biased presentation of controlled information. If you're a rightwinger, you might believe that the mainstream media are the source of misinformation. If you're a progressive, you believe that the Bush Administration is lying to us.

We're both correct, and Matthew Arnold comes to mind:

And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

Welcome to Dover Beach.

Hot Gas & America's Conservative Media

Okay, we get it. Drawing upon their memories of grade school science, a few Kansas City Star reporters did a mildly interesting story about gas stations selling gasoline that is warmer in the summer, and therefore less dense, and therefore you get less actual fuel than when it's cold. And they stretched this point out into a series of front-page articles. Now, they're making a big deal out of a few minor legislative nods to the issue, again devoting the lion's share of yesterday's front page to the issue, and a huge chunk of the editorial page today.

Now, I'm as interested in consumer reporting as anyone, but get over it, Star. Thermal expansion is not a front page issue - not once, not twice, and not for a series. Especially not when they can just turn around and raise the price of the thermally contracted gas so they make the same profit, and nobody would even be able to get a letter to the editor published about it.

And that, my friends, is why we do not now, never had, and never will have a "liberal media".

While corporate-employed reporters are trying to shine their corporate reputations by reporting on a tiny, irrelevant aspect of how the average joe is getting bilked by corporations, there is not a single article showing up on the front page about the fact that oil companies are making billions and billions and billions of dollars in "legitimate" profit. The Star and its corporate allies around the United States devote front page attention to frivolous side issues, but would never, ever, address the broader economic realities and inequities in our society. You can get an award for writing about thermal expansion, but a series questioning the underpinnings of our corporate-dominated society, the subsidies thrust upon those corporations by eager politicians, the wars we've entered to protect corporate interests, and the shadowy, incestuous world of corporate directorships is simply uncomfortable to the corporations running the papers.

Has there been a front-page Kansas City Stat article about the Vice President's astonishing claim to be a secret new branch of government? Has there been an article about some of the governmental needs that are going unfunded because of this optional war?

Perhaps all that is too "big" for a reporter to wrap his or her mind around it. How about a front-page article tracking the cost in dollars and cents that we are spending on each individual soldier we recruit, feed, clothe, house, train, equip, transport to Iraq, and expose to the hostile hot lead of angry people who grew up there? How much does all that cost? How much does it cost, in man-hours, to pick his body up and transport it back to base? Did they wipe up his blood with sponges, or paper towels, or simply let it dry on a Baghdad street under the hot Baghdad sun? How much do the body bags cost, and who makes them? The coffins? How much for the ground that we make available for his eternal rest? How much is that flag that they fold up and give to the widow? What's the quality of the cloth and thread? Are we getting a good deal on them - did we buy in bulk?

Gas is a little over three bucks a gallon, hot or cold. America's corporate media wants us to think about the temperature of the gas. In fact, they insist upon it.

I'd rather see a complete tally of the cost of the factors that led to that widow's limo ride to the cemetary than a quibble over the gas in the tank. That might be worth a front page article and an editorial or two.

Top 5 Myths About America

I stumbled across this piece of writing, and I thought it worthy of drawing to your attention. While I would rephrase a few things, these are important points to be rescued from the Right Wing Noise Machine . . .

MYTH 1: The US was founded on Christian principles.
MYTH 2: US Conservatives tend to be patriotic, ethical Americans; liberals tend to hate America and are immoral.
MYTH 3. The US has a liberal media.
MYTH 4. The US doesn’t need improvement compared to other countries; it is the greatest country in the world.
MYTH 5: The US government loves to help other countries.