Comment
COMMENT The Fearmonger's Shop National Security Decision Directive 138, which President Reagan signed on April 3, is a secret document. What little we know about it—the fact that we know about it...
...Who will repair the lines when they are down...
...But what's a nice guy like Meyer doing in a job like this...
...support was dramatically detailed last month in these pages...
...Which model works best...
...But rather than fight that monopoly, we should insist that it come under public control...
...Called "privatization of public services," it has attracted the kind of high-minded talk that always accompanies such initiatives...
...The mysterious illness stemmed from Jake, an old herbal cure for stomach aches that became popular during Prohibition because it was 82 per cent alcohol...
...It's all too easy to mock Bernays's earnest campaign, observing that the whole scam is designed to limit competition and guarantee profits...
...one nation's terrorists are another's freedom fighters...
...Terrorism is a real and frightening danger in our time, and a danger that is likely to intensify...
...Since the "break-up" of AT&T, most of us have tried to find answers to such questions—from a relative, a neighbor, a taxicab driver, or from Andy Griffith, the former television sheriff and steak-sauce connoisseur...
...The argument marshaled by the oil companies to justify their mergers—that bigger is better—actually justifies an oil monopoly...
...it will restrict the title of 'public relations practitioner' to those qualified to use it, and ensure that institutions of higher learning professing to teach public relations will conform their teaching to the standards set by the board of examiners...
...Imagine an aide to that candidate threatening the life of a reporter for writing up the racist or sexist comment...
...At the Geneva Conference on Disarmament in April, Vice President George Bush delivered President Reagan's proposal for a permanent ban on all chemical weapons...
...We have a right to know more than we can learn from Andy Griffith's thirty-second television chestnuts...
...Public agencies shake off unionized employees by farming out jobs to subcontractors, whose workers generally receive lower wages and fewer benefits than the displaced government employees—and who are not represented by unions...
...These supporters say that Jackson has the most progressive record of the three Democratic contenders, that he speaks directly and with conviction to the interests of black Americans, who have long been neglected by both major political parties, and that he represents a radicalizing force within the Democratic Party...
...The Jackson Controversy Imagine a white male Presidential candidate who in private referred to blacks as "jigaboos," or who called women "broads...
...intervention on the side of injustice and oppression everywhere is a major factor in the rising tide of terrorism, Reagan offers us his own version of the Fearmonger's Shop, that ingenious enterprise described by Garrison Keillor as one of the mythic sponsors of public radio's Prairie Home Companion...
...Meyer, McDonnell Douglas Corporation's corporate vice president for external relations...
...Compared to the casualties claimed by conventional warfare among nation states, not to mention the catastrophic toll that would be exacted by any nuclear conflict, the injuries and deaths inflicted by terrorists have been minuscule...
...Never has, never will...
...Edward Bernays, the so-called father of public relations, is still trying to remedy COMMENT the situation at age ninety-two...
...within days, they couldn't even hold a match...
...But profession, no...
...COMMENT Supine Indifference While Ronald Reagan skips in his carefree way toward full-scale war in El Salvador, the supine politicians in Congress snooze and snore, scarcely stirring themselves to protest, much less act...
...Or in a journal addressed to "Communicators," whoever they may be...
...Occupation, yes...
...Those still on their feet hobbled slowly, their toes dragging along the pavement...
...It is even more significant, we suspect, as a key instrument in a carefully orchestrated propaganda campaign intended to justify a new wave of official repression at home and abroad...
...It threatens the growth of government unions and endangers affirmative action in employment...
...There is an obvious lesson here, but it is not the lesson drawn by Ronald Reagan...
...Will the United States take the offensive against diehard militants in the Polish Solidarity movement, against Afghan guerrillas, against Contra saboteurs crossing into Nicaragua from Honduras, against the Sal-vadoran Death Squads whose reliance on U.S...
...It has its roots in an inability to accept the cold but simple fact that public relations is not a profession...
...What's more, a rationalized, consolidated oil industry could—under favorable political and economic circumstances—serve us all well...
...The name itself carries no specific definition...
...But if consolidated companies might produce more oil at less cost, there is no guarantee that the consumer would benefit...
...Crossed Wires Is it cheaper to buy or rent a telephone...
...True, true, true...
...Drafted under the aegis of some twenty-six Federal agencies, Directive 138 apparently authorizes such actions as "preventive" raids, retaliatory attacks, and intensified snooping and surveillance efforts within the United States and overseas...
...According to an official White House statement, the shipment of ammunition and helicopters was needed "to prevent unnecessary loss of life...
...The appropriate response to Reagan's version of the Fearmonger's Shop is, "Thanks but no thanks...
...This arrangement may become the public-sector equivalent of the runaway shop...
...No responsibility, no blame—a politician's dream...
...They must know that the alternative to banning them is to face the fact that we're going to build a deterrent...
...Officials familiar with the Presidential document said it lacks specifics," The Post reported...
...A series of ads featuring Griffith is the telephone system's answer to customer confusion...
...As the need for oil increases during a recovery, oil prices will rise and so, too, will oil company profits...
...Such language, an official of the American Civil Liberties Union pointed out, could easily be invoked "to punish or threaten to punish conduct otherwise protected by the First Amendment...
...They didn't have to go on record lending more support to an unpopular military venture, and at the same time they couldn't be faulted for standing in its way...
...The genie has not yet been put back in the bottle...
...But where do such savings come from...
...In the four years from 1979 through 1982, according to the U.S...
...But we won't...
...Instead of recognizing that U.S...
...Grandiose schemes to improve the image and status of PR people are "pathetic," Meyer continued...
...Painful experience tells us that in times of political stress—the Palmer Raids of the 1920s, the witchhunts of the 1950s—the cause of freedom is swiftly forgotten even by some who claim to be its great champions...
...In addition to promoting the use of that professional title, "practitioner," Bernays is proposing several steps intended to put his trade on the same respectable plane as law and medicine...
...Distrusted by all, dismissed as "publicists" or "flacks," the purveyors of "PR" get no respect...
...And in Butte, Montana, a private concern runs the municipal hospital, with annual savings to the city of about $600,000...
...Only greater public control of the whole industry, which can never be achieved through antitrust legislation, would assure more equitable and efficient oil production...
...What little we know about it—the fact that we know about it at all—is the result of vague White House announcements and calculated official leaks...
...Who would object to the surrender of our liberties when our lives are at stake...
...And so old Jake is popular once more, only this time it has a bit more of a kick...
...The potential for abuse is incalculable...
...they insisted on the people's right to control change, and they demanded that advocates of change demonstrate its benefits before proceeding...
...How did Congress react to this usurpation of its prerogatives...
...It is the last, desperate recourse of those who have systematically been denied redress of grievances through normal channels of political discourse and action...
...Corporate strategists hope his soothing voice and down-home manner-backed by a toll-free "Let's Talk" number—will persuade us that the system is the solution...
...A few found breathing difficult...
...But why the uproar...
...When the CIA is offered as the voice of moral restraint and sweet practicality, Americans are in deep trouble...
...In the same issue of Communicator's Journal, he wrote that the effort to break in the word "practitioner" seems "foolish and doomed...
...The ink on Directive 138 had hardly dried when Secretary of State George Shultz made it known that the United States would no longer pursue a "purely passive strategy" toward terrorism...
...Public Disservice A faddish reform is sweeping the nation— or at least some city streets...
...We'll let another PR person do that—G.J...
...Practitioners of Flackery Pity the poor public relations people...
...It does not belong in the hands of those who know how to craft a good news release or how to parry an unfriendly call from The New York Times...
...Instead, most members heaved a grateful sigh of relief...
...Oil industry officials, it turns out, may be right: Texaco-Getty and Socal-Gulf will be in a better position to analyze information about oil sites and to allocate drilling resources accordingly...
...Who, after all, would want to defend the rights of terrorists...
...It didn't close the legal loophole, nor did it cut off all military aid to El Salvador...
...The Wichita brew came from a bootlegger who had manufactured his Jake with commercial ethyl alcohol containing a chemical compound that blocked the transfer of impulses between nerves...
...Imagine that aide referring to Hitler as "a great man...
...Certainly not...
...the civil liberties—and the lives— of some Americans are likely to perish in the new antiterrorism offensive...
...Just as the Shop cheerfully deals in merchandise that will cater to the pathological phobias of its patrons, so Reagan hopes to profit from the natural and understandable public revulsion against terrorism...
...And past experience demonstrates that such windfalls can just as easily be used to purchase department stores or steel mills as to find more oil...
...Obviously, if this comes to pass, it will give the profession status and prestige...
...commandos, and that list should certainly include the National Archives in Washington, where the Bill of Rights is stored...
...We couldn't have said it better...
...Scottsdale, Arizona, saves $2 million a year by subcontracting for fire protection...
...Should progressives support that candidate...
...There is something so noxious about bigotry—from whatever quarter—that it should rule out support for any candidate who spews or even tolerates it...
...Today, anyone—paper hanger or car salesman-can call himself a public relations practitioner," he recently complained to an interviewer from Communicator's Journal...
...The goal, Bush said, is to "destroy the stocks and facilities and to forswear creating new chemical weapons...
...The only authority, from a historical standpoint, that can do anything about it is the State," he said, calling for the licensing and registration of publicists...
...Nor can they simply be balanced off against the positive aspects of the Jackson candidacy...
...assassination teams...
...Although Pentagon officials had argued in favor of such official hit squads, the Central Intelligence Agency and National Security Council "opposed such tactics on moral and practical grounds," according to The Wall Street Journal...
...The afflicted felt a dull pain in their calves...
...Terrorism is for the powerless what the possession of nuclear arsenals is for the superpowers—a means of achieving ideological or material goals by resorting to violence or the threat of violence...
...Right now, before we are caught up in a spasm of officially inspired hysteria over the menace of terrorism, we must take a calm, rational look at National Security Decision Directive 138 and similar attempts to deprive all of us— not just terrorists—of our rights...
...Reagan had made their jobs easier...
...death toll jumped to 274-because of the casualties sustained by the Marines dispatched to Lebanon...
...There is no free lunch in the privatization scheme...
...Ultimately, the benefits of technological development will trickle down to all of us, the corporate planners say...
...The ongoing and oncoming changes in communications—in word processing, computers, and the good old telephone-will surely change our lives...
...In legislation submitted to Congress on April 26, Reagan called for harsh measures against individuals who "provide any logistical, mechanical, maintenance, or similar support services" to "any foreign government, faction, or international terrorist group" named by the Secretary of State...
...When news of this toxic reaction spread, German scientists began experimenting with the compound, and soon they produced one of the deadliest demons of all time: nerve gas...
...Reagan circumvented the constitutional process—after all, Congress, not the President, is supposed to appropriate funds—by availing himself of a loophole in the Arms Export Control Act while the legislators were away on their Easter recess...
...some died of respiratory failure...
...We aren't buying...
...State Department, fewer than forty American citizens lost their lives in terrorist incidents anywhere in the world...
...Even without White House sanction for official assassins, Directive 138 threatens to serve as a charter for the very evil it supposedly addresses—freewheeling terrorism on a massive and menacing scale...
...He carted out an all-too-familiar rationale: "If we're going to have a chemical warfare ban, you've got to have something to bargain with...
...In business those are the people who know how to build the cars, know how to write the contracts, know how to negotiate the loans, finally those who control the money...
...Public service workers are getting stuck with the tab...
...But there is more: "Power belongs in, and inevitably flows to, the people responsible for substance," Meyer wrote...
...Jackson's anti-Semitic remark and his failure to dissociate himself from the vile invective of Louis Farrakhan cannot be shunted aside or swept under the rug...
...The Pentagon has already begun preparing a "menu of targets" for possible assault by U.S...
...Competition would do what entrenched bureaucracies cannot do—slash the cost of service delivery...
...It's just the same as it is with the other weapons...
...Such lassitude was on display in mid-April, when Reagan authorized the expenditure of $32 million in additional military aid to El Salvador...
...For all the good it's doing, maybe Congress should go on permanent recess...
...We would—we should—we must, if we are to preserve any semblance of liberty, safety, and sanity...
...Who would recoil from any measure, no matter how deadly or extreme, that is directed against the depredations of terrorists...
...Why Bigger Is Better When the oil industry recently went surging along another wave of mergers, petulant liberals in Congress got their dander up and clamored for new antitrust regulations...
...From now on, he said, the Government would resort to "preventive or preemptive action against known terrorist groups...
...To question these assumptions is to risk being dismissed as a modern-day Luddite determined to smash the instruments of emancipation...
...A statement issued by the acting Presidential press secretary, Larry Speakes, referred to Directive 138 as a broad charter for "taking the offensive" against international terrorism...
...Though attractively highfalutin, the word is just too redolent of cotton swabs and tongue depressors to work...
...It is significant, they said, as a 'decision in principle' to use force against terrorism and as the authorization for detailed policymaking and planning to follow...
...What kind of phone can be linked to a home computer...
...Respectable line of work, yes...
...Should progressives support that candidate even after he refused to repudiate his aide...
...It's tempting to ridicule the quest for professional dignity, and to recognize it as a sign of gross insecurity on the part of flacks...
...The concept is simple: Instead of using public employees to provide services, government hires out to the private sector, thus eliminating fraud, abuse, inefficiency, and other bureaucratic bugs in the system...
...At the Federal level, the President's Private Sector Survey on Cost Control claims that $37 billion can be saved through privatization...
...And why not...
...Pious rhetoric notwithstanding, the Administration's proposed treaty is little more than a smokescreen for modernizing America's chemical arms stockpile...
...Griffith's banter is designed to ease fears of change, but AT&T's new look is, in fact, supposed to spur rapid technological progress, according to those who have urged reshaping of the industry...
...This from the man who has twice cast the tie-breaking Senate vote in favor of resuming production of nerve gas...
...Of course not...
...But the Luddites, victims of one of history's great misconceptions, were not out to block progress...
...Proponents say the idea can save the taxpayers some money, "depoliticize" budget decision making, and ease the fiscal crises facing America's municipal, state, and Federal governments...
...An official who has read the Directive told The Washington Post that it makes no attempt to define "terrorism...
...This is absurd...
...Old Brew, New Bottle At the height of Prohibition, a debilitating paralysis seized hundreds of people in Wichita, Kansas, where Carry Nation had first launched her campaign against demon alcohol thirty years before...
...public bodies have traditionally been more susceptible than businesses to union organizing and to pressure for equal opportunity...
...In 1983, the U.S...
...But in the real-life parallel, some progressives are rallying behind the Presidential candidacy of Jesse Jackson...
...Then their fingers tingled and grew numb...
...At an April press conference, the President called for renewed production of chemical weapons...
...The largest chunk apparently comes out of the pockets of service workers...
...After all, antitrust laws have repeatedly failed to slow economic consolidation and to foster worker and consumer interests...
...By way of small comfort, the Administration's spokesmen offered assurances to the press that the contemplated "preventive or preemptive action" did not encompass the appointment of U.S...
Vol. 48 • June 1984 • No. 6
