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Tuesday, 14 August 2007

Advertising to Journalists from the Side of a Bus

Advertising is an expensive commodity for political parties during an election campaign and has the disadvantage that people tend to be skeptical about all those claims and counter claims. Far better to have the message carried on the news pages and in the news bulletins which have the credibility of independence. Thus it is that those playing the political game spend considerable time and some modest expense on advertisements designed for no other reason than prodding journalists in to giving free exposure.

In its way, this story proves the system works. So you readers can understand what I'm writing about I have to mention the Labor Party's latest mobile billboard resplendent with its message featuring John Howard saying "working families in Australia have never been better off".

The Melbourne Herald Sun had a picture of it this morning with an accompanying story explaining that Labor research shows people hate the PM's claim and believe Mr Howard keeps repeating it.

"In fact," said the story, "it is the Labor Party which keeps reminding voters that Mr Howard said it and its frontbenchers repeat it ad nauseum. Research shows even those who are better off don't like politicians reminding them of it."

The billboard itself is unlikely to appear for long. If it can make the television news tonight, its job will have been done and the truck prepared for its next advertisement for journalists.

When Cruel Death Appears

Tommy Makem might have been a life long teetotaller but when he sang of wine and beer and spirits, as his obituary in this week's Economist magazine put it, "no man had more feeling." What better epitaph than these words he sang with his folk singing partners the Clancy Brothers?

When I am in my grave and dead

And all my sorrows are past and fled

Transport me then into a fish

And let me swim in a jug of this.

Being chosen as the subject for The Economist's weekly obituary is a tribute in itself. From all the world's deaths in a week but one is chosen for what is always one of the most beautifully written pieces of journalism; certainly better words than I am capable of. Tommy Makem, who found a new audience in his last years through the wonderful Scorsese biography of Bob Dylan now on DVD and recently seen on SBS television in Australia, deserved all of the magazine's words of tribute but let me quote but a few of them:

'Tommy Makem picked up those legends too and, in 1955, took them to America , together with his bagpipes and a suitcase patched up with tape.

'He meant to work in a cotton mill and do a bit of acting, but one St Patrick's night he was paid $30 for singing two songs in a club: "and I thought, by God, this is the land all right. Gold growing in the streets." 'By 1958 he had teamed up with his friend Liam Clancy and Liam's brothers Paddy and Tom, who had come from Tipperary to America before him, and the gold continued to accrue. The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem, all kitted out in Aran sweaters knitted by Mrs Clancy, triumphantly rode the wave of a folk revival that was turning Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie into stars.'

As a wine lover, the words of his song "CRUISCIN LAN" have always appealed to me as a third or fourth bottle brings on a little melancholia

Let the farmer praise his grounds, let the hunter praise his hounds,

Let the shepherd praise his sweetly scented lawn;

But I, more blest than they, spend each happy night and day

With my darlin' little cruiscin lan, lan, lan

Oh, my darlin little cruiscin lan.

.

Chorus:

Gra-ma-chree ma-cruiscin, slainte geal mavoorneen

Gra-machree ma cruiscin lan lan lan,

Oh! gramachree ma cruiscan lan

 

Immortal and divine, great Bacchus, god of wine

Create me by adoption your own son.

In hopes that you'll comply, That my glass shall ne'er run dry

Nor my darlin' little cruiscan lan lan lan

My darlin' little cruiscan lan

 

And when cruel Death appears, in a few but happy years,

To tell me that my glass has run,

I'll say, "Begone, you knave! For great Bacchus gave me leave

To take another cruiscan lan lan lan

To take another cruiscan lan lan lan

But melancholy was hard to maintain when Tommy and the Clancys sang even about death as in "Isn't it grand to be bloody well dead." Do yourself a favour. Listen to this funeral song here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BJskIx7Xxw

Let's not have a sniffle

Let's have a bloody good cry

And always remember

The longer you live

The sooner you bloody well die

We should all drink to that!

A Slow Learner But a Good One

The man who gave us core and non-core promises might be a slow learner but he is a good one. John Howard, with all those years of political experience behind him, now concentrates on the unbreakable promise - the bold assertion that is by definition impossible to disprove or, for that matter, prove.

Mr Howard came up with his innovative form of words during the election campaign of 2004. I can promise, he said, that interest rates under a Coalition Government will always be lower than they would be under Labor. It worked so well for him in creating an impression that his government would always keep interest rates low that he is still using it and will go on using it while ever the media are slack enough to keep reporting this untestable nonsense.

If proof was needed of the value of the unbreakable promise, Mr Howard was reminded of it recently when Labor Leader Kevin Rudd kept flashing copies of the Liberal Party advertisement, also from 2004, proclaiming that the Howard Government would keep interest rates at record lows. That kind of promise suffers from being testable and subsequent events have proved how broken it is.

No doubt the Liberal Party advertising agency has been briefed about not making that kind of mistake again so look out for more and more Howard unbreakables as this election campaign moves in to its final stages.

Keep an eye out for them and report any you spot to The Owl.

And if there are any would-be copy writers out there, why not give the PM a hand with some suggestions he can pass on to the agency. Perhaps, as those weapons of mass destruction were never found in Iraq , the Government might rephrase things along the lines that there would have been weapons of mass destruction if Iraq had not been invaded.

Your suggestions please.