I can't be the only loyal Olbermann watcher to have noticed this. Starting (I think) sometime last week, I started noticing 30-second spots for Amway/Quixtar during Countdown. I may have missed them if they aired before a couple of weeks ago - I usually TiVo KO and zip past the commercial breaks. However, I was on vacation and watching from a TiVo-free location.
"Oh, crap," I thought, "are you freaking kidding me?" The company whose name is synonymous with multilevel pyramid scams is sponsoring KO? That one of the worst of the MLM rackets, those predatory cult-like schemes that have destroyed the lives of millions with false promises, gets to show its face anywhere near the hour of nightly goodness and rationality that is Countdown - well, it was enough to leave me more than slightly annoyed.
"Well," I thought, "TV, be it cable or otherwise, is in business to make money. Maybe if I were running the advertising department at MSNBC, I would be looking to take what I can get. Likely that KO has little or no say over what ads run during his show anywhay, and that assumes that he even knows anything about Amway or MLM in the first place."
I let it slide, annoyed but newly vigilant for what else might show up.
Then I saw Wenesday night's broadcast.
And right there about halfway through the hour was a Dianetics commercial. (For those who don't follow these things, Dianetics was the 1940's-50's precursor to Scientology, and is still used as a pitch to lure people into that cult without having to get into the religious particulars that would otherwise send new recruits into hysterical fits).
Look, it's late, I'm tired, I just got back from vacation today and have neither the time nor the inclination to put up a bunch of links to make the case that ought to be obvious to most of the denizens of Daily Kos anyway. So here's the Cliff's Notes version:
Amway/Quixtar is a pus-filled noxious lesion of the face of humanity. Multi-Level Marketing (MLM) schemes are predatory, exploitative, and worthless to the overwheming majority of people who get sucked into them. (Most people lose money by becoming involved. I'm one - and I know of what I speak.) Their methods are unscrupulous, their business model a joke, and the level of cult-like devotion that they require is way beyond creepy. Amway is one of the oldest and largest, scraping by on the narrowest interpretations of FTC regulations that prohibit pyramid or Ponzi schemes, but there are others who do business the same way with similar effect. (I'm looking at you, Herbalife.) These companies destroy people's lives every single day, making promises about "unlimited earning potential" by working from home, making emotional appeals to distract the unwary, the uninformed, and the financially desperate from the fact that their "business" model CANNOT work the way it is advertised, by virtue of simple arithmetic.
The REAL MLM business model is that the few at the top who got in early make millions, and everyone else from then on in "buys in" to get in on the action, only to lose it when the business doesn't work as promised. The mark then slinks away, still convinced that the failure was their fault rather than a built-in feature of the scheme, and out of embarassment and shame at the money lost and at being swindled, neither complains to authorities nor even usually mentions having been involved ever again.
Virtually every ad you see, from late-night 90-minute infomercials, to 30-second TV commercials, to radio advertising (I even hear this garbage on AAR affiliates now), to the cardboard signs on lightpoles on every street about earning $1200 a day working from home, to the cheesy little pulltab flyers on the ATM machine with the same pitch - everytime you see one of these, you are looking at the fruits of a multibillion dollar industry built on lies, exploitation, and manipulation. Their crap clogs as much as half of the employment section of the classified ads in your hometown newspaper on any given day, because one of their primary recruitment tactics is to prey upon those who are out of work and financially desparate for anything that looks like a job. (In other words, the ones who can afford the exploitation the least.)
AND THAT DOESN'T EVEN BEGIN to get into the connections, well documented here and elsewhere, between Amway/Quixtar, the Devos family at the top of it, extreme-right GOP politics, Dominionist theology, and Blackwater. I refer the reader to the search box to find this stuff - or just plain old Google will do.
Scientology? Do I even need to explain this? Dianetics and Scientology are inextricable from each other. Dianetics is the pitch that sucks you in, a new recruit for Scientology is the desired end result. A horribly exploitative mind-control cult responsible for ruining lives, destroying families, and even deaths, now advertising on KO. Again, Google is your friend if you're not up on this. See Operation Clambake for a primer, click around for an afternoon. If you don't get up out of your computer chair outraged, you're beyond help.
Both the Church of Scientology and Amway/Quixtar have ad buys in rotation on Keith Olbermann, right now.
Why do I care? Why should you?
If you're like me, you are outraged by exploitation and driven by the quest for greater social justice. I'm inclined to believe that KO himself shares those viewpoints, though I won't presume to speak for him. If so, understand that together, Amway and Scientology are two of the biggest agents in modern history operating in opposition to those principles. What they share is the way they do it. The sophisticated techniques of manipulation and psychological coercion employed by both religous cults and MLM's are nearly identical - they rely on converting people into "true believers" and ruthlessly supress any critical thought among their membership. Those new believers then make up the foot soldiers who go out and recruit more, by any means necessary. THAT is what makes both Scientology and MLM's so abhorrent - the people pitching it to you are themselves not lying, that they know of. They really believe what they are selling you, even as they rationalize to themselves why the promises made to them have yet to come true.
My BA is in Psych. I start a doctorate program in Clinical Psychology in the fall. I have, on my own initiative, also followed issues of cult recruitment and indoctrination, mind control and coercive persuasion, for many years. From that perspective, and as a former MLM victim myself, I can only tell you that once you understand how these organizations operate, the outrage comes as easily as breathing. Everyone thinks they are too smart, it could never happen to them. BULLSHIT. Getting sucked into a cult, or an MLM, can happen to anyone, because they are very adept at getting around your critical faculties and getting you to think with your emotions. They have DECADES of practice at it, across MILLIONS of victims, and nothing in the experience of the average or even above-average person prepares that person to deal with the recruitment tactics.
And if THAT doesn't get you thinking that maybe this subject is worth a 5-minutes diversion from the oh-so-fascinating FP diary on the latest poll numbers out of Bumfuck, West Carolina, consider this:
Our legal system affords you, and your loved ones, more protections from the predations of a slick used-car salesman, than it does from those of any cult or MLM, even though the latter are demonstrably better at it and have a greater documented track record of actual harm to real people.
That being the case, it's my view that MSNBC do a disservice both to their viewers and their own reputation by allowing Amway and Scientology to advertise - especically during their best and highest-rated show, hosted by a man whose own principals at least appear to contradict what those organizations represent. Maybe Keith Olbermann doesn't know much about Amway or MLM's. He certainly bags on Scientology from time to time, but I wonder if he's really aware of the damage they are responsible for and continue to inflict. I think we should encourage him to find out, and to exert some influence. The advertisers chosen to sponsor a show reflect on the show itself, and as Keith himself has made clear, on Countdown, the buck stops with him.
You know what to do.