Hitler – Page 2 – St. Eutychus

How to talk to the media without looking like an idiot

This post could, by rights, be renamed "Don’t be Sarah Palin"…

There’s nothing that annoys me more (both professionally and privately) than people botching interviews.

If the media is interviewing you it’s pretty much a free hit. They have a finite amount of time to gather better quotes from other people and your best chance of getting good exposure is saying something usable in a usable way.

Here are some general tips for broadcast interviews (because everyone loves a list):

Don’t wear bright coloured stripes – they’ll bleed on screen and distract people (I’ve said that before I think).
Look at the journalist not the camera – eye contact freaks out audiences.
Don’t use the journalist’s name – you’re ultimately talking to the public, not the journalist. And throwing their name in the middle of your sentence makes the comment unusable.
Have a go at actually answering the questions asked – most media trainers tell you to ignore the questions and regurgitate rehearsed PR guff. Chances are you’re not a politician and nobody really likes listening to that stuff. It’s usually full of weasel words – like “showcase”…

Right, so those are the basics.

The “un”-basics apply to more specific examples that have prompted this post. If you’re a politician holding a media coverage and you may or may not harbour desires to one day run for higher office – don’t bite the hand that feeds you. Particularly – don’t spend your time talking to the media complaining about how the media treats you. It becomes a self fulfilling prophecy – where the attention turns to how badly you handled yourself by complaining about the media coverage you received… you don’t really want this sort of paragraph appearing in any story about you.

“Ms Palin delivered the news from the backyard of her home in Wasilla, in a sometimes rambling 18-minute speech that took 11 minutes to get to the punchline. She veered from pugnacious to bitter as she lamented her treatment at the hands of the media and her political foes.”

This may seem obvious – but don’t do interviews about topics that are likely to create controversy – or things you don’t know anything about. Particularly avoid controversial topics where you might find yourself praising Hitler. That’s never good for your personal branding.

Formula One supremo Bernie Ecclestone has described Adolf Hitler as a leader able to"get things done" in a discussion about dictators during an interview with The Times newspaper.

Asked to comment on accusations that world motorsport chief Max Mosley behaved like a dictator, Ecclestone went on to speak about Hitler, former Iraq dictator Saddam Hussein – whom he said should have stayed in power – and the Taliban.

"In a lot of ways, terrible to say this I suppose, but apart from the fact that Hitler got taken away and persuaded to do things that I have no idea whether he wanted to do or not, he … could command a lot of people, able to get things done," Ecclestone told The Times.

If you know it’s terrible to say – don’t say it. It’s easy.

July 6, 2009

Godwin’s Law of Signage

If your business name evokes thoughts of the holocaust – change it.

From this Flickr set of unfortunate names (some of them are rude).

July 3, 2009

Fun with photoshop

News that Iranian “President” Ahmadinejad has been photoshopping supporters into crowd shots is slowly making its way across the internet.

But making your election results seem more credible isn’t all that Photoshop is good for… you can also:
1. Wipe moustaches off the face of well known cultural figures…

June 20, 2009

The Beginners Guide to Taking Over the World – Historical figures

Some historical figures worth noting

Julius Caesar
Possibly the most successful ruler never to have been immortalised by a major Hollywood blockbuster, Julius Caesar, the man whose surname became synonymous for king, began the ascent of the Roman empire, ending a period of civil war and beginning a process of expansion that would last for centuries.

Genghis Kahn
The East’s answer to Julius Caesar, part of a long dynasty of Kahn rulers. Lead the Mongols on a path of terror and conquest that even Hitler would have been proud of.

Alexander the Great
Took the Greek civilisation to its highest point, famous for his nice curly hair and military prowess.

Attila the Hun
Lead one of the most successful attacks on the Roman Empire, eventually made peace with them and died of a nose hemorrhage (what kind of warrior dies of a nose hemorrhage, seriously, what a soft way to go, imagine him in a post-life meeting with the other famous military leaders, comparing notes over deaths, no poisonous asp, no sword thrust from behind, a nose hemorrhage, how very lame). Attila, or Hunny to his friends – he didn’t have many friends, is also famous for eating a couple of his sons. True story, if you don’t want a family dynasty that may be an option to consider.

Napoleon
The last great leader of the French, some say Napoleon is one of the greatest military minds ever to have lived. I differ, if he was a great military mind he would have chosen a different nation to lead. I mean he wasn’t even born French, he was born Italian, Italians make much better cannon fodder… I mean soldiers. Armies of Frenchmen are only ever going to fail in the long term. Napoleon’s eventual exile to Elba was inevitable the French were always going to fail. Rumour has it that while in transit to Elba he offered up possibly the world’s coolest palindrome “Able was I ere I saw Elba” he’s worth noting just for that.

Josef Stalin
Showed that it was still in vogue for dictators to have cities named after them. Also helped transform Russia from international also-rans into international heavyweights. He was instrumental in creating the Soviet Union, which became one of the big powers of the twentieth century.

Adolf Hitler
Proved that it was possible to be taken seriously even with a stupid moustache. It helped that he had a large and powerful army behind him. Also showed that the fashions of evil tyrants become unpopular very quickly after their failure – you don’t see many “square button” moustaches around these days do you.

George W. Bush
Proved that being an international powerbroker did not, as previously believed, require any intelligence or leadership ability. It does help to have a powerful father and a paranoid populace to work with. But these are obstacles that can be overcome with enough hard work and a little luck. Also demonstrated that preemptive defense is the best form of attack.

April 4, 2009

Grammar Nazis

There are a couple of subtitled swear words here – but this is funny. And worth a watch. Does a video comparing grammar pedants with Hitler break Godwin’s Law?

February 26, 2009

Repealing Godwin’s Law

Don't mention the law

I mentioned Godwin’s Law in the last post. It’s an interesting law – originally coined by Mike Godwin in 1990 to address the trend of usenet users throwing Hitler into arguments.

Originally expressed Godwin’s Law read:
“As an online discussion continues, the probability of a reference or comparison to Hitler or to Nazis approaches 1”

The basic application of the law was that the first person to mention Hitler lost the argument.
Godwin has an interesting explanation of his side of the story here.

“Although deliberately framed as if it were a law of nature or of mathematics, its purpose has always been rhetorical and pedagogical: I wanted folks who glibly compared someone else to Hitler or to Nazis to think a bit harder about the Holocaust.”

“I understood instantly the connection between the humiliations inflicted there and the ones the Nazis imposed upon death camp inmates—but I am the one person in the world least able to draw attention to that valid comparison.”

The problem with people blindly accusing people of breaking Godwin’s Law is that they’re going by the letter and not the spirit of the law. This probably only happens to me, because I engage in frivolous discussion with art studenty type geeks people… the kind of people who know what Godwin’s Law is to begin with.

There’s another article on pretty much the same thing here. That argues the repeal on the basis that Hitler should be fair game as a test case in arguments.

“The rules of snippy online debates, though, are nothing compared to public discourse. The Anti-Defamation League has beaten the hell out of anyone who’s dared use a Nazi analogy over the last decade. ”

“Thus, despite all efforts at regulation, the market has repeatedly decided in favor of the N-bomb. There simply isn’t any other tableau, in history or fiction, that offers the same variety of evil and oppressive examples as the Third Reich. Why compare some propaganda to 1984 and some slaughter to Srebrenica when you can double down and link both of them to Nazism?”

December 24, 2008

Rules of Engagement

Somehow our generic work address was added to the Citizen’s Electoral Council spam list. They send out conspiracy theories media releases on world events. I’ve never seen any picked up anywhere – except perhaps in their own newsletters, and in blogs mocking them.

PR rule number one – if you saturate the market with inane media releases you kill your credibility. It’s a “boy who cried wolf” situation – nobody will ever take you seriously if you comment on everything without having established credibility first.

Commenting on everything is a legitimate strategy – but only if a) you’re running for office, b) you’re not a loony, or c) you’re saying something about something that people vaguely care about.

Today’s CEC missive is about the Mumbai terrorist attacks. It wasn’t Pakistan. It wasn’t Islamic militants. It was the British.

“On Nov. 28 Lyndon LaRouche stated that it is absolutely clear that the British are behind the terror attack in Mumbai‚ India. Early press reports originating in India indicated that at least two of the terrorists captured alive by Indian security forces‚ and possibly several in total‚ were British-born Pakistanis. LaRouche commented that this phenomenon is suggestively similar to the number of Saudis who were involved in the 9/11 attacks in the United States in 2001.”

Comparisons to 9/11 must surely be the new Godwin’s Law. In fact, 92 articles on the CEC website mention Hitler. They’ve jumped the Godwin shark.

PR rule number 2 – don’t mention Hitler or 9/11 in your articles if you want to be credible.

The Citizen’s Electoral Council get their inspiration from perennial American presidential candidate Lyndon LaRouche.

His Wikipedia bio says:

“There are sharply contrasting views of LaRouche. His supporters regard him as a brilliant and original thinker, whereas critics variously see him as a conspiracy theorist, an anti-Semite, a fascist or neo-fascist, and the leader of a political cult. The Heritage Foundation has said that he “leads what may well be one of the strangest political groups in American history.”^[2]^[3] In 1984, LaRouche’s research staff was described by Norman Bailey, a former senior staffer of the National Security Council, as “one of the best private intelligence services in the world.” In 2008, Russian economist Stanislav Menshikov described LaRouche as being “among those few economists who look at the root causes, and therefore see what others cannot see.”

One of the CEC’s big pushes is to introduce a new financial world order – based on the failed Bretton Woods System.

The chief features of the Bretton Woods system were an obligation for each country to adopt a monetary policy that maintained the exchange rate of its currency within a fixed value—plus or minus one percent—in terms of gold and the ability of the IMF to bridge temporary imbalances of payments. In the face of increasing strain, the system collapsed in 1971, following the United States‘ suspension of convertibility from dollars to gold. This created the unique situation whereby the United States dollar became the “reserve currency” for the nation-states which had signed the agreement.

Here are some recent highlights. These are from a recent email titled “Religious Right swaps neo-con crusade for global warming crusade”

“The Flagellants whipped each other to atone for their sins, calling on the populace to repent,” Mr Isherwood said. “Today, we have the Global Warmers whipping our sick economy to death, even during the worst financial crash since the 14th Century! How insane can you get?”“As Executive Intelligence Review magazine has documented, the Religious Right is financed by huge sums of government money laundered through ‘faith-based initiatives,’ with which it has engaged in extensive social engineering to shape elections, etc.”

“Financier Maurice Strong, the Secretary General of the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development, laid out the real intent behind the financial oligarchy’s crusade on global warming in his query: ‘Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialised civilisations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about?’

“What we have here, is a financial oligarchy which intends to destroy the economy via draconian measures—such as shutting down farming in the Murray-Darling Basin—to stop a problem which doesn’t exist in the first place, the pre-calculable effects of which will be genocide. Does that count as a sin in Rev. Cizik’s bible?”

And this one ominously titled “Rudd be warned — only LaRouche’s ‘New Bretton Woods’ will avert a dark age”:

“Kevin Rudd had better support Lyndon LaRouche’s prescribed New Bretton Woods measures at the G-20 conference on 15th November in Washington D.C., or he’ll be guilty of contributing to the collapse of Australia, and the world, into a dark age,” CEC National Secretary Craig Isherwood declared today.“If Rudd intends, as it appears, to support Gordon Brown’s British imperial scam to empower the IMF as a world financial dictatorship, but exempt from regulation the largely-British offshore tax havens and their associated hedge funds and derivatives—the cancer of the financial system—it will be a betrayal of Australia’s true interests, to further the City of London’s.”

PR Rule number 3 – Don’t be crazy.

December 5, 2008