Enron: Patron saint of Bush's fake news.

[stray cat]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/20/arts/20Rich.html?th

The enduring legacy of Enron can be summed up in one word: propaganda. Here was a corporate house of cards whose business few could explain and whose source of profits was an utter mystery - and yet it thrived, unquestioned, for years. How? As the narrator says in "The Smartest Guys in the Room," Enron "was fixated on its public relations campaigns." It churned out slick PR videos as if it were a Hollywood studio. It browbeat the press (until a young Fortune reporter, Bethany McLean, asked one question too many). In a typical ruse in 1998, a gaggle of employees was rushed onto an empty trading floor at the company's Houston headquarters to put on a fictional show of busy trading for visiting Wall Street analysts being escorted by Mr. Lay. "We brought some of our personal stuff, like pictures, to make it look like the area was lived in," a laid-off Enron employee told The Wall Street Journal in 2002. "We had to make believe we were on the phone buying and selling" even though "some of the computers didn't even work."

If this Potemkin village sounds familiar, take a look at the ongoing 60-stop "presidential roadshow" in which Mr. Bush has "conversations on Social Security" with "ordinary citizens" for the consumption of local and national newscasts. As in the president's "town meeting" campaign appearances last year, the audiences are stacked with prescreened fans; any dissenters who somehow get in are quickly hustled away by security goons. But as The Washington Post reported last weekend, the preparations are even more elaborate than the finished product suggests; the seeming reality of the event is tweaked as elaborately as that of a television reality show. Not only are the panelists for these conversations recruited from administration supporters, but they are rehearsed the night before, with a White House official playing Mr. Bush. One participant told The Post, "We ran through it five times before the president got there." Finalists who vary just slightly from the administration's pitch are banished from the cast at the last minute, "American Idol"-style.

[fasttense]

1. And the corporate media reports on these shows as if they were real.

[cliss]

2. Thank you for bringing this up, D.

As I was cleaning a bedroom the other day, I found an old crumpled Time magazine from 2002. There was an article about Enron's demise. I sat down on the bed and read it.

It said: "This administration (meaning the Bush administration) is the closest thing to having Enron in office".

Meaning, Bush was heavily financed by Enron during his first election campaign. Ken Lay was good friends with Bush (I believe he still is). The Bush administration was essentially an extension of Enron. And look at what happened to that company, rotten to the core. We need to remind ourselves everyday of this.

"Washington is Enron in action".

[stray cat]

3. You are right - Bush running the gov. like Enron with similar results.

[cosmicdot]

4. I wish Mr. Rich's article wasn't in the 'Arts' section of the NY Times

it's an informative piece imo
it's more than a review of the documentary "Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room"

and deserves a larger readership

~snip~

The administration cycled the Ryan and Williams paychecks through the PR giant Ketchum Communications. Ketchum was also one of the companies hired to flack for Andersen, the now-defunct Enron accounting firm that shredded a ton of documents. We don't know what, if any, role Ketchum is playing in the White House's Social Security propaganda push, though we do know the company has received at least $97 million from the government, according to a Congressional report.

That $97 million may yet prove a mere down payment.

~snip~

USA Today reported this month that the Department of Homeland Security, having failed miserably to secure American ports and air transportation from potential Al Qaeda attacks, has nonetheless shelled out $100,000-plus to hire "a Hollywood liaison": Bobbie Faye Ferguson, an actress whose credits include the movie "The Bermuda Triangle" and guest shots on television schlock like "Designing Women" and "The Dukes of Hazzard." She will "work with moviemakers and scriptwriters" to give us homeland security infotainment - which is to actual homeland security what the movie "Independence Day" is to an actual terrorist attack.

Another propagandist with a rising profile is Susan Molinari, the onetime CBS News personality who appears regularly on news shows like "Hardball" and "Capitol Report." As she bloviates from the right about Social Security or the fake newsman Jeff Gannon, she is invariably described as "a former Republican Congresswoman" or a "CNBC political analyst." But her actual current jobs remain mysteriously unmentioned: C.E.O. of the Washington Group, Ketchum's lobbying firm, and president of Ketchum Public Affairs. Were the Ketchum link disclosed, perhaps some real NBC reporter might find the nerve to ask her what other Karen Ryans and Armstrong Williamses might be on the Ketchum payroll. Or not.

~snip~

[libodem]

5. Everything is fake

Fake meeting, fake audience, fake questions, fake reporters, fake news agency, fake marketing, fake production, fake editing, fake distribution, fake management....fake, fake, fake,...sold as the president has a town meeting with the people....ick