Imagine yourself as director of Arizona's tourism office. You might think your industry would've learned a little lesson in the late 1980s, when Governor Evan Mecham rescinded the state's MLK Holiday and all hell broke loose. The boycotts and other lost tourism revenues that followed in the wake of Mecham's decision cost the industry tens of millions of dollars – so much that the tourism community joined with other business and human rights organizations to put the MLK question back on the ballot, where voters eventually passed it.
But here you are in 2010, director of what is arguably the state's biggest industry, and along comes SB 1070. The canceled conventions in Phoenix alone already amount to more than $90 million in lost income, and the statewide losses are sure to be in the hundreds of millions. Couple the boycotts resulting from the "papers please" legislation with the fact that Arizona's budget was already so dismal that the state was closing parks and other attractions, and the economy swirls even deeper into the toilet.
As if that wasn't enough, along comes beheadings! Now I realize Cambodia has made the Killing Fields into a tourist attraction, but Arizona's version of decapitation tourism might be a tad bit too current to capitalize on.
A few weeks ago, the unelected Governor Jan Brewer famously said that "the majority" of illegal immigrants are drug mules, a comment no reputable law enforcement officer would back up.
Then last week Brewer, whose Republican primary campaign is sucking up to the most bigoted wing of the party, made a crazy-ass political ad, calling out Obama for not "securing our borders" (BTW, the borders are more secure than they've been in decades), for allowing crime to soar on the border (BTW, crime is lower on the border and in our cities than it's been in a long time), and for not sending enough guards to patrol the desert (BTW, there are more border patrol agents than there ever were under Bush).
Facts don't get in Brewer's way, however, which she demonstrated in spades when she blabbered on about the "extortion" and "beheadings" taking place here, all of it caused by brown people from the south. Not one law official in Arizona could account for her statement, as there has not been a single beheading reported in the state – anywhere! Again, even when confronted with the truth, the Governor maintained her scary fiction. Turns out, a spokesperson later said, Brewer was referring to cartel activities in Mexico but, hey, it's all one big desert, right?
But you are the state's tourism director, appointed by the Governor, and while your boss's remark about beheadings might scare citizens into voting for her, and you keeping your job, might it also frighten visitors enough to stay away, wrecking your industry's bottom line? Given that tourism is one of the state's largest employers, and the boycotts are already cutting deep into the hospitality industry's profits, branding your state as the nation's capital for beheadings might be the very definition of bad public relations. To the rescue, however, comes Brewer's task force, which just released its report on Arizona's rotten image. Yeah, this'll help.
In an article earlier this week titled "Ariz. panel recommends good PR to deal with fallout," the Arizona Republic reports that "There's no need to rebrand Arizona to counteract negative publicity from the state's new immigration law." What's needed instead is for the state to spend $280,000 to "tell its story":
But after six weeks of work, the task force decided Arizona doesn't need a new marketing campaign, said Sherry Henry, director of the Arizona Office of Tourism. The factors that entice people to Arizona, from its mild winter weather and resorts to the Grand Canyon and recreational opportunities, still exist. "It isn't about rebranding Arizona," she said. "It's about telling our story."
Oh, you mean the story of how Native people were beaten, killed, and robbed of their homeland and culture, never even becoming "citizens" until 1948? Or the story of how Hispanics, who were here long before Europeans, were pushed out of their lands, only to be exploited in the fields? Or the story of how Japanese Americans, who were citizens of this country, were rounded up and imprisoned in Arizona's two internment camps? Or the story of how William Rehnquist, a young Republican Party tool, used to hang out at polling places, trying to keep Blacks and Hispanics from voting? Is that the story you're talking about, because if it is, then SB 1070 is just another sad chapter. I thought we had turned that page by now, but it's the same story. It's just that instead of Wyatt Earp we have Joe Arpaio.
There's another Arizona story, Governor, one that welcomed women, Hispanics, African Americans, and Native Americans, one that celebrated the state's unique cultural heritage. But I fear you have buried that narrative too deep, and all the fancy PR in the world will not unearth it.