The latest in a long series of volleys

03-Sep-2006 1509Z

Predictably, but frighteningly impressively, even to me, Dick DeVos' game of ideological hardball gets even harder.
Orchestration of the two genres of television programming known as 'campaign advertising' and 'issues-based advertising'
(i.e. 'astroturf') is absolutely old hat, and both of the political parties allowed non-marginal status are absolutely
prostituted to it. But wait! A third genre enters into the system of force vectors, the PR spot. PR spots are
common as hemeroids, and unlike the carefully concocted witches' brews of candidate-spam and soft-money astroturf,
they aren't "seasonal." But this is the first time I have seen one explicitly and transparently woven into
an election barrage. In the true spirit of "objection neutralizing" described in those motivational tapes that
folks in the salesier workplace cultures consume by the kilogram, the PR spot for the company that makes the products
sold by Amway™ representatives is literally a spoken "bulleted list" addressing the short-form laundry list of
objections to the Amway business model (let alone its cultlike reputation), as articulated ad nauseam on biz.mlm.misc,
or wherever exactly that newsgroup was/is in Usenet's Byzantine namespace.

I don't know whether there's truth to the rumor that there's a strong negative correlation between those understandably
ubiquitous "no peddlers, etc." signs on houses, and assertiveness with the word 'no.'
Predictably, though, the disappointment of the less gifted of gab among us in finding out Granholm's Google jobfeast
consisted 100% of sales jobs is clearly not lost on the CEO of the only company that (predictably but nevertheless sadly) actually goes
looking for
me on monster.com. Actually, now that I think about it, there's another one, that ducky AD&D firm that Ehrenreich warned me about.

I've never worked in manufacturing, at least not on the shop floor where they do the manufacturing part.
Perhaps this is my chance. And they even do R&D (cutting edge, so they say) here in Michigan.
I've always wanted to be involved in R&D. Hypothetically speaking, given the astonishingly rare
(remember, I'm an unrepentant introvert) "two offers on the table," I would of course take an R&D job in
academia over one in 'industry' (literally without even bothering to ask about salaries) but I would with even less hesitation choose
R&D at (sp?)Amway (including the dreaded nondisclosure agreements that now indenture virtually every job
that requires even a modicum of intelligence) over virtually any job in the resolutely Hobbesian military intelligence sector,
or even in some of the spookier parts of the private sector, such as data mining (e.g. Google) or
so-called wealth management (e.g. Bearing Point, formerly KPMG, although they don't qualify for my definition of private sector).

This doesn't change the fact that I don't relish the idea of having Amway's army of "stealth conversationalists"
(don't even try to tell me you haven't also been thus ambushed) as my particular
'rainmakers,' but it also doesn't change the fact that the pursuit of cheap Chinese labor, if it's a sin at all,
is categorically a lesser evil than offering to help engineer China's (or anyone's, IMNSHO) version of total information awareness,
as Google is doing. DeVos, despite my misanthropic mental picture of what the capo of an apparent MLM might be like,
seems to have my voter demographic nailed to a degree that's scary-smart, as if he actually uses advanced
data mining for market research or something. Jen better hope he doesn't seal the deal by declaring himself
against discrimination against queer folk; not likely based on what I've heard so far, but true to her infuriatingly
DLC self, Granholm hasn't exactly been assertive in her promotion of queer rights, merely hinting at nonsense
concepts like "cool cities" instead of, say, doing something actually meaningful like unequivocally supporting ENDA.

Jennifer Granholm had better the hell get her ass in gear if she's to stand a chance at even MY vote,
and I'm left of Conyers and Kucinich combined!