Archive for December 11th, 2005
Fist
Posted by Bob in How Things Work on 12/11/2005
I have had amateur radio license since I was twelve years old. Back then amateur or “ham” radio was almost entirely in morse code unless you had a lot more money than a twelve-year-old working on a brick plant had on hand.
My maternal uncles and granfather were all professional telegraphers for the railroad. When you do code a lot you begin to recognize the other person by his “fist.” Just as each person writes differently from other people, each person hits the code key a little diferently. Each of my uncles could tell if the signal he was getting was coming from another member of the family. Since the person tapping out railroad code seldom identifies himself– there is no station identification — this was useful.
I have often wondered if my practice in recognizing morse code “fists” helped me in recognizing when my specific ideas were taking hold in political commentary. I have an ability to recognize that I was the reason a particular comment or approach was used on national television or on radio.
This is a hell of an advantage. One of the big problems with allocating the giant sums of money companies spend on advertising is being able to tell WHICH high-priced advertisement is bringing in the business. I don’t have that problem.
So I am invaluable to YOU. I can tell what is working better than the most expensive advertising department. When I was in my teens, the television set often needed adjustments to get a good picture. You know how much trouble people have today in adjusting their computers and back then people would try and try and just make the picture worse, so most TVs were not tuned right or had any of a dozen other problems and people would just leave them taht way.
I would just walk in the door, see the problem, and fix it. My family would call me in to fix anything wrong. Never once did I fail to spot exactly what was wrong with a quick look. I’d turn the right knob and the picture would be maxed.
This ability is not easy to describe. It is like the expert mechanic who asks you to start up the engine and then tells you exactly what is wrong with your car. I am an expert mechanic in my field. And I can’t explain it, any more than an expert auto mechanic could.
Respectable conservatives are getting just a little nastier and more effective all the time. The progress is slow and probably only noticable to me.
I used to be big time and I used to be a regular source on real, long-term, POWER strategy. I was also on the outside of respectability, just on the edge, so people USED my stuff in their own wayand remained INSIDE respectability. After decades of this you get an uncanny ability to tell the “fist” of your own work.
And they STILL use my stuff. A lot of this is YOUR work.
You would be astonished if you realized how short the chain of ideas is. You are hypnotized by the fact taht Big Names only QUOTE big names. But something good gets repeated in South Carolina and gets repeated elsewhere and, if it is an idea somebody can USE, which is what I got paid for, it ends up in New York and Washington with somebody who needs ideas to make a living.
It is a real shame you do not realize how effective you are the way I do.
On The Washington Gang they were discussing the choosing the next Face of CBS News after Cronkite and Rather.
Cal Thomas just said, “It doesn’t matter. It’ll just be another standard and packaged liberal with standard opinions.”
And then he QUIT.
Full stop.
No more comments.
It hit the other commentators like a bomb.
No respectable conservative before ever knew how to drop a bomb like that and QUIT.
That is pure Whitakerism.
They kept trying to get more comment out of him and he just kept saying what he had said. The last thing in the world a professional commentator wants to be told is that everything he says is predictable and standard, and Thomas just left it at that.
Like Shari’s one-sentence statement we discussed below, that statement caused our enemies, including the respectable conservatives, more grief than any five hundred page to me by William Buckley.
Congratulations, gang. We won one.
You Owe Me Something for Reading Bob’s Blog
Posted by Bob in Coaching Session, How Things Work on 12/11/2005
I don’t need money, so the fee for reading this blog is in another currency.
Comments are good, but they are not enough. What you really owe me is a real effort.
First of course, you owe it to me to spread the thoughts you get from this blog.
Second, you owe me some advertising. If you feel you benefit from my writing and the financial cost to me of
this blog, you owe me advertisement. This is a debt of honor.
At least once a week, you should make a real effort to get someone who may like or benefit from my work to read this blog.
This means a REAL effort, not just a passing token mention. I do not ask money, but advertising and sales represent the sort of effort that people get paid for. Think of yourself as someone who is getting PAID to sell a product. This is WORK.
A real advertiser must find a target audience. He must check regularly to see if the target has indeed read the blog. He will talk to that person about things in the blog. A good salesman or advertiser does not hesitate to drive the target up the wall with repetition.
How many times have you seen the same advertisement for a product?
That is what you owe me, and it is not easy. Most of you would rather have to send money.
Don’t take the target’s “I looked at it” for an answer. In the first place they are probably lying. In the second place they just looked to keep you off their back and won’t look again.
Peter, I believe it is, keeps saying he is hooked on this Blog. But to hook them on it, you have to keep after them. Outside of crack cocaine I don’t know of any addict who has been hooked by just trying a narcotic once. Keep discussing what I said or, more important, what I said and what it made YOU think of.
If you could make comments about your missionary efforts in comments here, it would help enormously in reminding others of their obligation.
This is a debt of honor. I have too much pride to BEG you to do it.
If you want to let down a tired old man who is spending his last days trying to spread the truth, I am far too proud to try to make you feel guilty about it.
Simon Says
Posted by Bob in Comment Responses on 12/11/2005
You know, it’s odd to use the words in the title in something besides the children’s game.
Anyway, Simon says,
“I don’t understand? If an university is anti-semitic, my guess is that they don’t want Israel to exist (I don’t know if they ever have published articles writing this, but let’s assume they do). Now ADL/Sharon wants the university to shut down. Bob seems to think that it is ok for a university to react, but if Israelites are reacting it is suddenly wrong??! I hereby deny Bob the right to react on my post.”
Simon has forbidden me to react to his post. Naturally I will honor his wishes. You have my word as a person who has spent his entire career in politics.
In other words, I lied like a dog.
But Simon’s point is correct. Under our established relgiion of Political Correctness one of the thuosand or so Commandments is, “Thous shalt never argue if somebody calls you an anti-Semite.”
But I (and I suspect Simon) still adhere to the old religion, which says you have a right to react to anwer any insult.
It’s a shame, all that missionary work at public expense and we still haven’t been converted.
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Elizabeth and Mark
Posted by Bob in Comment Responses on 12/11/2005
As Mark would agree, ladies first.
In contradition to this, the remarks I am replying to come at the bottom of this piece.
Both Elizabeth and Mark were replying to “Power” below.
Please note that often my “replies” are not replies but what your comment made me think of. That is what I want Bob’s Blog to do for you.
Elizabeth talks about Steve Forbes as an example of my statement that, despite what silly people say, power is NOT all about money.
Elizabeth a professional political advisor like me says things that no other person would utter.
When Forbes began his campaign for the presidential nomination I was asked what his chances were.
I replied, “He doesn’t have a prayer. He’s too ugly.”
Now that is the sort of comment that would be beneath mention by anyone else. But my objective was not to be well thought of. My living depended on being RIGHT.
You met him and he was not a nice guy. Many a candidate has survived that handicap. Many a congressman has been elected who would make a horse’s rear look like a pinup.
There have been fat presidents. But there has never been a president who was just plain ugly the way Forbes is.
You’re right, Mark, charisma and power are not interchangable items. Charisma is a quality but it does not automatically translate into power. Like any other quality the whole thing depends on how the charisma is used.
Charisma can be used to make money. It can be used to gain office, which is miles away from having power as I explained in the article.
A war hero who leads his men into battle personally has charisma. But few if any of them have ever made the slightest difference in the way the world developed. They make history books different and more interesting, but they seldom change history iself.
Keynes did say one thing that was true. While Great Leaders are making headlines, it is the scribblers who make the world what it is.
As to Mark’s second point, Forbes did not have a policy because he didn’t want POWER. He wanted to be president.
Someone who was no admirer of Reagan made a very, very important distinction. He said that Nixon ran for the presidency because he wanted to BE something (President of the United States). Reagan ran for president because he wanted to DO something.”
Nixon just carried out the policies a liberal would have carried out.
Whatever bad you may say about Reagan, he made a break with the past on many fronts that no one else would have made.
Reagan had charisma, and he USED it.
That is POWER.
I wonder if charisma and power are interchangeable items? If a person has charisma that usually means that he is the one who is doing and saying what everyone else wants to do or say but doesnt have courage enought to carry out. If power is making policy instead of following everyone else’s lead, does that naturally mean the powerful person has charisma? I wonder if you can have charisma and not power?
Comment by Mark — 12/10/2005 @ 12:34 am | Edit This
The powerful person doesn’t necessarily have charisma.
I’ve met Steve Forbes. Lots of power, very pleasant fellow, no
charisma.
Comment by Elizabeth — 12/10/2005 @ 2:34 pm | Edit This
I don’t know if I’d say Steve Forbes has power though, outside of his employees. He never made it in politics and hasn’t made any policy that I’m aware of.
Comment by Mark — 12/10/2005 @ 7:26 pm | Edit This
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