n 1957 the hula hoop was reinvented by Richard Knerr and Arthur “Spud” Medlin, founders of the Wham-O toy company.
Hula hoop
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Hula hoops were the first fad I can remember. Hula hoops were news and the news sold Hula hoops. They were fun, good exercise, and for the most part entirely meaningless capturing the relief from War. The big one, WW II, was one and the baby one, Korea had a lid on it. Eisenhower was in office. Sputnik went up in the fall. Yet, after considering all that happened I remember the Hula hoop most of all.
Fifty years later and the campaign for the presidency reminds me of 1957 and hula hoops.
So much of the campaign is about, as Seinfeld might say nothing or hula hoops. Take for example the Soprano’s parody.
This and the American Idol like contest that selected You and I
are about nothing. Not quite true. They are about emotion. Stephen Colbert is fond of saying we have a second brain in our guts, which I interpret as a polite way of saying our second brain is really between our legs. Advertising, hula hoops, and sex are all about this second brain which rules the first brain with what is known as Emotional Intelligence.
Let us return to when emotion started to take hold over intellect, the Kennedy Nixon debates.
The debates made Kennedy look like a winner. His practice of looking at the camera when answering the questions — and not at the journalists who asked them, as Nixon did — made viewers see him as someone who was talking directly to them and who gave them straight answers. Kennedy’s performance showed not only that he was a knowledgeable and credible elected official, but also that he just plain looked better.
The Great Debate: Kennedy, Nixon, and Television in the 1960 Race for the Presidency
by Liette Gidlow
Associate Professor of History, Bowling Green State University
When looking at the importance of emotion consider that:
The often repeated story — which is in fact true — is that polls taken after the first debate showed that most people who listened to it on the radio felt that Nixon had won, while most who watched it on television declared Kennedy the victor.
ibid
The most powerful commercial I have ever seen came four years later.
While most people attribute Johnson’s sweeping victory to Kennedy’s assassination, there is little question that this commercial reached all of our emotions. This was not about Goldwater’s proposed use of nuclear weapons:
During the 1964 president campaign, Barry Goldwater versus Lyndon B. Johnson, the problem of nuclear weapons became central to the debate, after Goldwater asserted 1) that he would use low-yield nuclear weapons for defoliation purposes in South Vietnam, and 2) that senior NATO commanders should have predelegated authority to use tactical nuclear weapons in an emergency.
Special Collection:
Some Key Documents on Nuclear Policy Issues, 1945-1990
but rather reaching between the legs to get to the emotions.
News has changed in the past 50 years from those days. No longer is TV news delivered in a flat monotone of an Edward R. Murrow, a Walter Cronkite, a David Brinkley, or a Chet Huntley. News is now a profit center and must be sold and sales is about grabbing those emotions between our legs. Jon Stewart may make fun of the necklines of women correspondents, but consider Lou Dobbs who uses his show not to deliver the news in a dispassionate, reasoned way, but rather as a show to promote his personal agenda in a way that grabs us between the legs. Rupert Murdoch makes a habit of promoting his personal agenda 24/7 and Fox News is the result, better called the Fox Follies.
Star Trek‘s three leading characters represented emotion, intellect, the right blend of emotion and intellect with Dr. McCoy, First Officer Spock, and Captain Kirk. Kirk had the emotional intelligence to act in time and the intellectual intelligence to analyze to determine how best to act. Many of the shows were about the conflicts between McCoy and Spock or balls and brain. Captain Kirk always had it right.
Democrats have lost the ability to grab people between the legs. We can call it framing, language, or almost anything else. The answer to the question Why Do Democrats Keep Losing Presidential Elections? [VIDEO] (Why is this not on YouTube?) is simple, they don’t appeal to the emotions either because of lack of money or lack of smarts.
Worse and what started this whole line of thinking is our top journalists also are becoming less capable of doing the job of using their intellect to analyze the news. This was readily apparent on the July 1 Meet the Press. The time was discussion time and the discussion was about how Hillary and Obama did in the last debate. The conclusion was
MR. SMILEY: Essentially, this multiracial group that you saw, about 30 people were assembled, came in overwhelmingly prepared to support Barack Obama. They left feeling that Hillary Clinton, as evidenced by the line you just heard her deliver so well, they left feeling that she had hands down won the debate. That’s the bad news for Senator Obama. The good news for Senator Obama is that most of those persons had not yet decided, based upon her winning that one critical debate, in their minds, that they were prepared to vote for her as yet. What that raises, though, is this question, though, Tim, as to why Senator Obama is polling even as high as he is. Most polls indicate that Hillary Clinton is out front 47-42, 45-42 inside the black community. Marginally, though, she is leading him inside of the black community. The question, though, is how does he move beyond that and can he win the nomination without his base, African-American voters? And the problem is that he’s holding on–how might I put this?–he’s holding on to the margin of hope in black America. People, out of a hope for what he represents, recognizing the symbolism of this, but they’re longing for some substance, and they apparently got that from Mrs. Clinton the other night and did not get it from him, so he’s still got some work to do to pick up in the African-American community.
But now let’s take a look at what Meet the Press used so we understood this outcome.
(Videotape)
SEN. BARACK OBAMA, (D-IL, PBS/All-American Presidential Forum with Tavis Smiley): The problems are poverty, lack of health care, these are–lack of educational opportunity–are all interconnected. And to, to some degree, the African-American community is, is weakened. It has a disease to its immune system. When we are impoverished, when people don’t have jobs, they are more likely to be afflicted, not just with AIDS but with substance abuse problems, with guns in the streets, and so it is important for us to look at the whole body here and make absolutely certain that we are providing the kinds of economic development opportunities and jobs that will create healthy communities.
(End videotape)
MR. RUSSERT: Now I want to contrast that style to Senator Hillary Clinton, who was also part of the debate. Here’s Senator Clinton.
(Videotape)
SEN. HILLARY CLINTON (D-NY, PBS/All-American Presidential Forum with Tavis Smiley): Let me just put this in perspective. If HIV/AIDS were the leading cause of death of white women between the ages of 25 and 34 there would be an outraged outcry in this country.
(End videotape)
The journalists utterly failed to realize all Hillary did was grab us between the legs with an applause line. Obama gave a thoughtful answer that really addressed the problem and did so by telling his audience they bore some responsibility. Emotion vs. Intellect and the news media said emotion was the preferred course.
I don’t want to swing all the way back to First Officer Spock. I want the balance of Captain Kirk. But, republicans have truly taken us to the hula hoops of the fifties. Hillary is just following their lead. We need to add some intellect to the campaign. Sex Appeal loses over the long haul. Just look at Iraq – sex and violence; no intellect.