“Maybe we’re actually much better than we think,” I mentioned, just recently, in the Daily Post.
I’d written about an Arizonan’s 4,200 mile road trip, and the cross-country traveler’s observations about the good-hearted, welcoming folks he encountered, along the way.
That was encouraging, but there’s still this gnawing concern about the state of the nation… the state of our freedom and democracy, and women’s reproductive rights, and the rights of minorities, and voting rights, and press freedom, to name a few of those gnawing things, in the news so much.
Like the recent headlines about a political leader’s remarks underscoring “Trump’s power,” and a Newsmax host opining that white men are under attack, and the news about Republicans replacing election officials, setting the stage “for future crises”.
And Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene asking if the United States should be divided between Republicans and Democrats.
At least there was one spirit-lifting article, in the Washington Post, one of those ‘how to’ stories for making “toasted ravioli, the crispy, cheesy, St. Louis snack.”
But about all one can say about all that other news, might be… It is what it is.
But why is that? What’s driving such negativity? What’s fueling it?
And I think the answer came to me – from out of nowhere – while I was traveling in the Midwest, in early September.
At a weird time, several hours before dawn, after weeks and weeks of contemplating ‘spin,’ — because ‘spin’ seemed to be a key component in what’s screwing things up — the word ‘calculated’ came from out of nowhere.
As the younger generation might say; It was cosmic!
In the hotel room, I started writing. On my smart phone, on that tiny keyboard that bugs me, because I can only type with one finger. At a snail’s pace. Hitting wrong, little keys, because when I’m typing one-fingered, I’m clumsy and slow. Sometimes, inadvertently, that finger of mine types the same letter 10 or 11 times!
I’m a slow writer anyway, and typing on the phone exacerbated my slowness, but soldiering on, I wrote “Spin or Consequences,” in the Daily Post, in which the words ‘calculated’ and ‘spin’ became ‘calculated spin.’
Calculated spin is different from average, basic spin — the spin that businesses have in their messaging, when they’re hyperbolizing about groundbreaking, innovative products. It’s BS, perhaps, but BS that’s generally fairly innocent, as I’d mentioned in the article.
‘Calculated’ means something is being done with the full awareness of likely consequences. Calculated spin isn’t fairly innocent. Not at all!
When you hear a former U.S. president saying; “They’re making windmills all over the place, to ruin our land and kill our birds… to kill everything.” What’s he getting at? Is he calculatingly spinning something, in his messaging?
When he was urging people rallying just south of the White House, last January 6th, to walk down to the Nation’s Capitol building, and then went on to say; “You will never take back our country with weakness,” was that another example of calculated spin?
What’s happening may be a crisis, of sorts, and you know what we’d do, in the PR business, when there was a looming crisis? We’d do some strategic PR planning, with a situational analysis — that’s what we called it, years ago — and with step-by step strategies for tamping down the crisis, and with timelines — you had to have timelines — and messaging, and other bells and whistles.
What could we call such a plan? You always need a compelling title.
How about ‘SAVING THE NATION!’
Would that get some attention?
Harvey Radin is former senior vice president in charge of corporate communications and media relations, Bank of America Western Region. He makes his home in Redwood City, CA.