I LOVE DEMOCRATS! Over the past 24 hours, rank-and-file Democrats have been calling or dropping in to Krikorian headquarters, offering encouragement and volunteer help. They are responding to the most massive swiftboating campaign, run by some party apparatchiks against a front-running Democrat, in state history. Polls are swinging TO KRIKORIAN, as the dirty tricks tactics of the Yalamanchili campaign cause a local pandemic of "Chili"-induced nausea.
It's a fascinating dynamic: the muckety-mucks, who in Cincinnati are especially mucky, celebrate too early that they've pulled off a giant caper on voters. Meanwhile, the rank-and-file is fed up, to extend the metaphor, preparing to deliver a message in one giant collective retch.
Memo to Politburo members Chris Redfern, David Lane, and Tim Burke: Next time you collude with the Republican incumbent to sabotage a popular Democrat, don't do it as a troika. Given last week's betrayal of the public trust, you will forever be known in south Ohio as the Three Stooges of Jean Schmidt!
This is Part V of a series on the swiftboating of David Krikorian, candidate for the OH-02 congressional seat now held by Jean Indeep Schmidt. Parts I-IV can be accessed as the last four diaries in my blogroll. Part II with background on the Three Stooges is here: http://www.dailykos.com/...
If you're just joining us, in the last week we've witnessed a remarkable last-ditch effort to derail a Krikorian primary victory "by all means necessary." Those means included an actual Democratic Primary endorsement of Surya Yalamanchili, the candidate least likely to present any serious challenge, by Republican Schmidt, premised on the invention of a "racial incident" that never happened.
That was followed, with transparent stagecraft, by the coordinated follow-on endorsements of the Three Stooges -- Redfern, Lane, and Burke. (Which one is Moe? I dunno.) Meanwhile, 28-year-old Yalamanchili, a soap salesman and computer hacker by trade, has deluged voters with eleventh-hour mailers, e-mail, and robocalls, reciting BIG LIES about Krikorian, and timed to prevent response before the voting.
As this is election day, let's review the biggest lies being told about Dave Krikorian:
- Krikorian "made fun" of Yalamanchili's name at a VFW event, and this was racially motivated. (Reality: Schmidt made up this incident, citing an unnamed source who has not come forward. Three veterans actually present say it did not happen, and their statements are posted at Krikorian's website. Schmidt herself has engaged in constant race-baiting in the past. In backing Schmidt's false allegation, Burke and Lane first said they had heard it from Democrats, but have not been able to produce one witness. It was actually Democratic party honchos who trashed Krikorian's Armenian heritage when WASP Todd Book was the party favorite.)
- Krikorian "donated to the Republican Party of Virginia" and is really a Republican. (Reality: This charge was fabricated by Brian Hester, blogger unextraordinaire, without stating the date or amount, and it continues to be recited by Yalamanchili and others. When Hester finally produced the "evidence" it became clear that the $250 payment -- not a donation -- in 2004, was a company fee paid for a sales booth at a state convention, not a personal donation. On the contrary, Krikorian has a long record of making major donations to Democrats, including former congressional candidate Vic Wulsin and Ted Strickland.)
- Krikorian is a "closet Republican" and Yalamanchili is the "REAL Democrat" in the race. (Reality: Krikorian has been a life-long Democrat, never a Republican. He worked for Howard Dean in 2004. Only in 2008 did Krikorian run for Congress as an Independent, because Democratic chances in that race were nullified by a brutal primary battle. On the contrary, Yalamanchili has never been a registered Democrat and never before voted in a Democratic primary. Much of his funding support comes from Republicans and he entered the 2010 race as an Independent, trashing the Democratic Party.)
- According to the most recent Yalamanchili mailer, Krikorian is "pro-life" and "anti-gay marriage." (Reality: Krikorian supports choice as a federal policy and always has; he has NEVER identified himself as "pro-life." He supports civil unions, whereas "gay marriage" is not on the agenda for Ohio and is a state not federal issue. These positions are identical to those espoused by Ted Strickland. Yalamanchili has never stated that he supports gay marriage and it would be political suicide if he did.)
- Krikorian is "anti-union." (Reality: Krikorian's father was a member of the postal workers union for 22 years. Krikorian has the only labor endorsement in this race, because he is pro-union. He supports the right of all workers to organize, including public employees. At one event, Krikorian discussed the dilemma of public employee bargaining agreements in an era of severe budget cuts -- this is a dilemma facing all public officials.)
Yalamanchili's campaign strategy has been premised on Big Lie Theory, a communications theory that Yalamanchili learned as a marketing director at Procter & Gamble. So a little history of that theory is in order.
Big Lie Theory is the idea that people will believe a big lie before they believe a smaller one. It was easier to sell people on the huge lie that Krikorian is a Republican, rather than convince them that he's just untrusted by party leaders.
The theory is often attributed to Adolf Hitler and his propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, who employed the theory to create public hatred of Jews and other minority groups (including Armenians). It was popularized by George Orwell in the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four.
But historically, the roots of Big Lie Theory are actually in Cincinnati, at the offices of P&G, long before the many German chemists and marketers of "Zinzinnati" exported the concept back to the fatherland.
Relevant question: Why is Procter and Gamble based in Cincinnati?
Answer: Because Cincinnati was the early western center for hog butchering and pork rendering, giving the city its nickname of Porkopolis. ('Pork-barrel politics' has its etymological root in Cincinnati, too, for reasons that should be obvious.)
With the pork industry came lots of pork 'scrap' -- the hides, hooves, hair, fat layers, and other parts of the animals considered inedible or unsellable. It was Cincinnati's great contribution to world industry, and the origin of Procter and Gamble, to invent a process for turning animal scraps into soap.
Tallow makes good soap stock, without any technical problem. The challenge was in public relations -- how to get consumers to pay good money for packaged pig fat, hooves and hair.
I know some P&G chemists who once explained in gory detail the tremendous effort involved in perfuming P&G tallow products, so that the final product doesn't smell as rancid as it is.
After the chemists work their magic with perfume, the second stage is marketing, and that's where Big Lie Theory was invented and deployed. Don't call it "Packaged Rancid Pig Fat," call it "Ivory" or "Camay."
"Ninety-Nine and Forty-Four One Hundredths Percent Pure" was brilliant marketing, because it misled consumers into wondering about the other fifty-six one-hundreths, rather than ask "Pure what?" "Pure pig renderings" would have been the true answer. The .56% was the better part --perfume.
Devices for perpetrating the massive commercial fraud were also P&G inventions. That's why we call political gamesmanship "getting on your soapbox." When television came along, P&G invented the soap opera, to sell its lard to housewives held captive at the screen.
Oil of Olay, the brand that Yalamanchili managed at P&G, was perhaps the epitome of Big Lie marketing theory, because the product itself was vapid, like the Yalamanchili candidacy.
As I've previously said, but it bears repeating, Wikipedia says this about Oil of Olay:
Nowhere on the packaging did it say what the product actually did. Print adverts used copy such as "Share the secret of a younger looking you" and talked about the ‘beauty secret’ of oil of Olay. Other adverts were written as personal messages to the reader from a fictitious advice columnist named Margaret Merril.
Packaging and selling a lie. Keith Olbermann last night admitted the charge first made here -- that Oil of Olay brand is an advertising sponsor of MSNBC.com, which aired Olbermann's shill piece for Yalamanchili last Friday.
Of Yalamanchili's top seven donors, two are his cousins, Surya R. and Madhuri Yalamanchili (I misidentified them as his uncle and aunt -- apologies), and another three are top P&G managers. Yalamanchili, the candidate, has been said to tell numerous seasoned political activists in the area that he sees this campaign as a "test run," a "game of marketing." All he thinks he has to do, is perfume, package, and sell the something he is as something he ain't.
It's Big Lie marketing strategy. It's a terrifying notion of politics, befitting of Orwell's Nineteen-Eighty Four. Jean Schmidt is assiting it, and the Three Stooges of the Ohio Democratic Party -- Redfern, Lane and Burke -- are playing along.
Be scared. Be very scared. Get out and vote for David Krikorian. http://ilikedave.org
UPDATE: Links to the lies as they appear on Yalamanchili's website are unkindly provided by the troll who uses the name "Ohiobama1" below. As you will note. Yalamanchili's campaign rests almost solely on attacking Krikorian, without defining himself.
Vic Wulsin, the Democratic nominee in 2006 and 2008, has issued a statement today directly to the candidates and copied by her to me, responding to the attacks. Her statement reads in part (removing some personal notes):
I want to go on the record in saying that I eschew negative campaigning, especially between Democratic candidates in the primary. I will not condone any ad hominem attacks. Schmidt has a lengthy record of taking the wrong side on important issues, and I hope that whoever wins the primary will clearly and forcefully contrast his policy priorities against hers.