This is my first diary and, recognizing that one can be ejected from the Beaver Club for failing to toe the Beaver line, it may be my last, but I feel a duty to teach. Occupy failed because Occupy, and many of its adherents and supporters, studiously violated countless well-established rules of public relations, press relations, and politics.
Occupy’s biggest error was not only failing to understand, but having contempt for the principle of public relations that you cannot simultaneously antagonize and influence. From the early foolishness of occupying the Brooklyn Bridge, to playing drums at night at the mayor’s house, to the weekend annoyances of shoppers at stores, Occupy has done all it can to antagonize and influence the public adversely.
Occupy failed (or refused) to exercise message control. Even a rural county political party organization decides what goes on handmade rally signs and how it’s written. By letting any damn fool carry any incoherent, uncoordinated sign, Occupy did itself no good. On a highway billboard, you can get, at most, 6 words before it becomes unreadable. At most, your sign is going to get 3/4 second on television. Make it no more than 4 words, in block letter black on white; no photos, no sketches. No fun? You can have fun, but not at the price of being unintelligible and ineffective.
One element of message control was that Occupy had no standard for personal appearance. Occupy failed to demand of men that “this is not 1972. Shower and shave, get a standard haircut and wear a clean sport shirt.” If you want to influence the middle class, the 99%, you have to look like you are or you want to be part of the middle class. Dirty hippies and kids in clown makeup don’t influence anyone. Sure, absolutely, you’re at your liberty – wouldn’t want to interfere with your life – but if you have a crop of facial hair and stringy, unkempt head hair and you choose to wear a tie-died T-shirt that says “Eat the rich,” just don’t expect to win any converts to the cause.
More important that the fact that Occupy lacked message control was that Occupy had no message, no objective, no goal. One cannot achieve an objective until one declares an objective. Failing to declare an objective kept Occupy from winning political support for its objective. Until a politician can answer the questions, “what do these people want me to do and what’s it going to cost or gain me?” no competent politician is going to take any meaningful position or provide any significant assitance.
Occupy failed to understand the news business. The news business requires conflict, controversy, and debate. The news business can do little with mere revelation that 1% of Americans control X% of the nation’s wealth. Occupy failed to understand that there are six elements which must be in every news story or the story falls apart: who, what, where, when, how, and so what. “And we don’t like it” is not sufficient answer to “so what” to maintain producer, viewer, or reader interest. For any more airtime, a remedy had to have been proposed. Occupy choose not to define a remedy for what it observed. There ends the interest of the news business for whatever the message might have been. Occupy refused to meet the need of the news business for a snappy newspaper quote or an 8-second sound bite which carries the message. So what it got were published quotes from random unprepared dumbasses.
Occupy failed to understand that there is only one political party in the United States, the Property Party (with two contending but non-threatening subdivisions), and that the news business is not only the servant of the 1%, it is the 1%. Any conflict between the rights of the holders of property and those who interfere with those rights will always be portrayed in favor of the property holder. Any conflict between law enforcement authorities and those who attack private property in any way will always be portrayed in favor of private property. When protesters challenge the police, the news report will not be in the protesters’ favor. In the echo chamber of Occupy, there may be merit points awarded for refusing to obey police orders to move, with extra credit for being pepper sprayed; it won’t be reported that way. As Walter Cronkite used to say, sorry but “that’s the way it is.”
In failing to understand today’s news business, Occupy failed to recognize that this is not Gandhi’s 1948 and not Dr. King’s 1968. We aren’t restricted to Gandhi’s newspapers and radio coverage and we aren’t restricted to TV images of Dr. King provided by a100 pound RCA TK30 tripod-mounted black-and-white camera that required a kilowatt to operate. In today’s news business, in which a helicopter camera can isolate and identify one or two people in high definition and a handheld camera can send a satellite signal instantaneously across the country, in today’ fragile economic and severely-divided political climates, civil disobedience is worse than useless. It draws no adherents. It frightens people. In our current climate of terror fears, in the public mind, the police are always right. Wes Craven can frighten the public and win its support. Occupy could not.