dehype

Crazy like Fox

2008-03-24T20:14:00.000-07:00

Everybody knows that Fox News is unfair and unbalanced. But nobody ever said Roger Ailes and company aren't smart. Look how they sucked HuffingtonPost.com right in with staffers making outraged comments about Obama-bashing at their own network. Now, of course, they say it was all a joke. I say, the Chris Wallace thing was, too. Of course, here I am, posting about it. It's all show business, folks.

The Candor Campaign

2008-03-23T12:30:00.000-07:00

How many four-year cycles have we prayed for presidential candidates who speak from their cuffs? From their minds, at least, maybe even their hearts? We have one of each this year: Barack Obama and John McCain. Sorry, Hillary, you haven't done it this time -- not enough, anyway, as Frank Rich asserts.

Now we can see how it feels to hear the truth, unspun. How it makes anything less stick out like a page of typos. How it preempts media analysis, obviates it. How it sends the acid-talk-radio comedians into dithers. I'm talking about Obama's race relations speech, of course. But I also mean McCain's clarity on immigration and other sticky issues, although he's still trying to stick with the war he's stuck with, trying to keep what's left of the Republican core on his side.

We have fine people running for President this year, and we've sorted them out from the others. Nice job, voters. Tune out the punditocracy. There's plenty of evidence that nobody's been paying attention to them anyway, except themselves.

So long, Elliot Spitzer

2008-03-11T13:09:00.000-07:00

Oh, he may not quit, and probably won't be impeached, or whatever you might do to a wayward governor. But he's as gone as if he'd just signed on for a one-way trip to the space station. The most painful thing to watch yesterday was Governor Spitzer's good wife standing by his side as he read his soulless apology to assembled news types. No, she didn't look like the stand-by-your-man type. She looked solid and unbending. She was not presenting the loyal wife face. Still, there she was, showing up for public humiliation. Elliot's stupidity doesn't top Bill Clinton's, only on the basis of rank. Just once, however, I'd like to see one of these bastards show up for his press conference without the wife. She shoulda said no. You're on you own, dude.

Jarvik karma.

2008-02-29T12:04:00.000-08:00

May the phenomenon of metaphysical blow-back that has whisked Dr. (non-practicing-non-rowing) Jarvik out of our lives likewise propel Eli Lilly and Co. and their heart-rending and brilliantly scored Cymbalta TV commercials into deserved oblivion. If traffic on this Website is any measure, people are still captured and intrigued -- haunted, even -- by the quasi-classical music of these antidepressant pitches. All the direct-to-user TV advertising for prescription remedies has so muddied the practice of medicine that formerly important, potent, risk-managed drugs are now sold like Preparation H. All those mumbled voice-over warnings about side effects, including really serious, life threatening ones -- even four hour erections (you don't want to know how they fix that) -- go right past us and we run to our docs asking for them. We take responsibility for our own care, now don't we. So we have only ourselves to blame. And now that studies are saying antidpressants, maybe, work no better than sugar pills against depression, hell, we might as well be swigging Lydia E. Pinkham's. It's at least got an alcoholic side effect to make up for the taste. And has all this made us trust the FDA more? I saw a commercial that used "...and it's FDA approved..." like it was a recommendation. I'd think twice about that. Yes, bring on the karma. This is the way America takes care of problems of misrepresentation and just plain BS. Very Republican. Expose the hype and let the marketplace decide.

Afterthought on Jarvik

2008-02-27T13:43:00.000-08:00

I've been rethinking. They say Robert Jarvik's contract to do Lipitor commercials was two years, and the pay: $1.35 million. Consider, please: that's about $650K a year, for quite a few quite complex film camera shoots, on location in many parts of the country -- he was in attendance at that lake, though he didn't row. Plus all the rest of the accompanying folderol involved in being a celebrity spokesman.

It must have been a fairly intense part-time job. For a guy who's running his own company, that's quite a commitment. He must have imagined the exposure would be worth millions more to him in the development of his company, on the worldwide money markets. So, for all this, he put his medical-health reputation -- which even he must have known was not close to that of, say Michael DeBakey -- on the line. However he must have looked at it, he stood to win big, and couldn't lose. Sadly, I suspect he still thinks so.

Buckley. From the time when conservatives had brains and a conscience.

2008-02-27T12:58:00.000-08:00

Cheap shot? It's mine. I'll miss this conservative. He could laugh.

Yes, there's good hype. See Starbucks.

2008-02-27T09:41:00.000-08:00

Nobody ever called Howard Schultz stupid. Yesterday's very public training shutdown got Starbucks gazillions of dollars in media coverage, as befits an iconic company. He got the full attention of all his employees, in the most positive way possible -- attention being paid to them as first priority. I could crow all day about the brilliance of this move. Above all, it's honest. We've got problems: watch us fix them. Take notice, Pfizer. How about a little candor, double-tall.

So long, Dr. Jarvik

2008-02-26T17:31:00.001-08:00

It only took America two years and millions of advertising "impressions" to end Pfizer's "Jarvik" Lipitor campaign. But we got around to it. Is this a great country or what? Time sums it up here.

MORE HEAT ON JARVIK AND PFIZER

2008-02-06T20:31:00.000-08:00

In the New York Times today, a roundup of the latest rumblings in Congress and the medical profession over Robert Jarvik's role as spokesperson for Pfizer's Lipitor. I'm pleased to note that the Times has been hitting dehype posts for leads lately.

A campaign without crap? We dare to hope.

2008-02-03T08:59:00.000-08:00

Have you noticed? Even though the Presidential candidates are attacking each other, we haven't seen real dirt yet. Just a little soot around the edges. Only the talk radio side show is truly outrageous, and they're attacking one of their own, John McCain, who's bulletproof. They're realizing it, too. I even heard Michael Savage backing off the other day, 24 hours after he raved that McCain was "in Kennedy's pocket," which was, now that I think about it, a fairly mild epithet for Savage, when you separate it from his ferocious style.

I hear Karl Rove's now on Fox News's payroll, which is as marginalized as you can get. Somehow I don't think he'll be running the Republican nominee's campaign this year. Maybe even he knows another Swift Boat-style operation won't work this year. After eight years of modern Republican rule, we're far from clueless. Even the believers know better than to believe what these guys say. The more the red-faced wingnut screamers attack McCain, the more Republican voters know he's exactly what the party needs in 2008.

So, you think the primary campaigns are rough? The finals will be rougher. But I think the people are saying, and the parties are hearing, Don't even think about putting out stupid, nasty crap. Not this year.

THE CAMPAIGN ISSUE NOBODY'S MENTIONED.

2008-01-31T10:59:00.000-08:00

Today, a new independent report commissioned by Congress is in the news. According to the study, the U.S. military is unprepared for a catastrophic attack on the U.S. This is mainly about what's left of our National Guard since Iraq. But, for me, it's just the latest certification that the vital and important traditional functions of our government have been allowed to deteriorate to a dangerous extent over the past eight years. Maybe longer; maybe there's blame to be shared by the previous administration.

But, it seems to me that the Republican administration of George W. Bush has taken an exceptional ultraconservative glee in throwing sand in the gears of our government structure and vital organs wherever it could. Aside from the military damage they've done, misusing the forces we had, any regulatory or functioning government program or agency you can name has been either allowed to under-perform or actively sabotaged by this administration.

So, I say, fine, let's have the big Iraq debate, though that issue is settled in most minds. Sure, go ahead and prognosticate on fixing health care. Wrestle with immigration; that's a fine time-waster a few of us can get riled up about. But I'll vote for the party and the candidate that understands what awful shape our government is in and rolls out a credible plan for fixing it. Tell me who you'll appoint to head Defense, State, Justice, FDA, EPA, CIA, and the rest of the bollixed up, demoralized, but vital bureaucracies. Give me your legislative and administrative plan for undoing the damage of the past eight years. Don't just badmouth our big government. Make it work for us. Democrat, Republican, or independent. If you get this, you've got my vote.

Dr. Phil to the rescue. Of Dr. Phil.

2008-01-30T08:55:00.000-08:00

Dr. Phil visited Britney Spears’s hospital room, then made a statement. The Spears family called him out on it. He said, if he had it to do over, he wouldn’t have made that statement. Non-apology of the month. On a Christian TV network.

Let me be clear. I’ve been a Dr. Phil fan from the start. Still am. Oprah was right. He’s a phe-nom.

This morning Phil made the rounds of the network morning shows, a phenomenon in itself -- not every superhero gets to do that. I saw his interviews with Diane Sawyer on ABC and Matt Lauer on NBC. I have to assume he made it to CBS’s cellar-dweller, too, since CBS owns his show. He repeated and embellished his non-apology. Nobody out-explains Phil.

Fact is, he flew all the way across the continent to say that this is no big deal. Mainly he wanted to slap down those tabloid lies about Oprah firing him, his wife leaving him, etc. Fine. Done.

But the part that others have been saying for him, that since he retired his psychologist’s license (in good standing, we hasten to add) means he had no legal or ethical responsibility to maintain patient confidentiality -- that fine lawyerly point, that’s a crock, folks.

Having heard Phil thunder countless times at wrong-doers on his show about his professional responsibility to turn them over to the legal authorities unless they clean up their acts, I’m not buying it. Hype wraps itself in all kinds of righteous raiments.

Dr. Phil, you moved to Hollywood. You wear the silk suit well. But your makeup’s looking a little shiny these days. It shows up in hi-def.

This just in: Iraq Ratifies Kyoto Protocol

2008-01-28T15:17:00.000-08:00

New York Times is where you can read about it. Me? I'm speechless.

What to write about...let me see...

2008-01-28T15:02:00.000-08:00

Why should I have trouble coming up with something to write about in an election year? Should be enough hype flying around to keep me in topics the rest of the year.

Actually, it's good that people are now casting actual votes. It's not so predictable as past years, either. I think the stupidity -- Bush's, Congress's, and ours (come on, we elected 'em) -- has knocked something loose. We're all mad enough to pay attention to the process this year. We also, apparently, don't feel so useless as in the past, and have decided not to let nuts and ad people make our decisions for us.

More people will vote this year than in past years. Bravo. And, I think we also have much better BS radar than ever before. No thanks to the pundits and press camp-followers. At least those folks are beating themselves up this time, instead of rationalizing. Leave that to the candidates and their agents. I'm really looking forward to the big Tuesday. I'm actually feeling confident.

This is a great country. The macho presidency is, like all past entourages, winding down. And we're still here.

Gut check.

2008-01-25T17:40:00.000-08:00

First of the year. Seems like a good time to consider what this site's about. Hype is not going away. The question: how to live a relatively sane, sensible life when you're surrounded by it. I think most of us succeed, actually. The early start to our Presidential season actually makes me feel pretty good. Politics don't seem to be nauseating me so much. I think we're a little more awake. Surely, the Republican machine doesn't seem so strident this year. That's smart of them. Even the most jaded of them seem to realize they can't do things the same way as before and expect to command the loyal. Likewise the Democrats. The presence of Obama seems to have changed the tone of their primary campaign. The media people are trying to whip up some fear and loathing, but I think the Clinton-Obama War story is a non-starter. I think they're lobbing macaroons at each other and the voters aren't paying attention to that stuff. I think both parties have learned something from the past six and a half years (Year One being 2001), and I hope the press and TV media do too, eventually. Me, I've slacked off in recent times on this site, though a lot of you come around looking for info on Cymbalta and Dr. Jarvik. Mostly, you're curious, and not much interested in my chronic outrage at drug advertising. It has helped ruin our health care system, but it isn't the only thing. We've put up with it. We share a major part of the blame. Even with all the hooha about all the issues and politics, only about half of us vote. No amount of hype has gotten the rest of us participating in cleaning up our various messes. How about checking your gut. If you spend one minute a year wondering how some of this stuff'll get fixed, shut up. Unless you at least know what's going on, and cast a vote. Thanks for dropping by.

The Jarvik plot thickens.

2008-01-22T17:00:00.000-08:00

Here's a link to ABC's Jarvik-Lipitor story, complete with video from Good Morning America, on which Robert Jarvik, Pfizer's sorta-doc spokesman for its anti-cholesterol drug, showed up and submitted to a gentle thrashing from Diane Sawyer last week. How many years has it taken for somebody in Congress, or anywhere, to get itchy enough with the idea of an apparent MD endorsing a particular drug on TV? Of course, the story behind the story is that Lipitor is slipping; has been since Zocor went generic, as the New York Times reported last November. See, the Zocor generic is much cheaper than Lipitor, which has its patent until 2010, and insurance companies and docs are switching patients to the cheaper drug, which is, by all accounts, just as effective. One little fact reintroduced in all this coverage: only the U.S. and New Zealand allow direct-to-consumer prescription drug advertising. We really need this debate, seriously conducted: is free enterprise always good for our health?

UPDATE 1949 hours 012208: Required reading: a nytimes.com health blog fills us in on the recent Zetia flap. Link.

FINALLY, CONGRESS LOOKS AT JARVIK AND PFIZER

2008-01-11T20:54:00.000-08:00

The House Energy and Commerce Committee has ordered Pfizer to cough up all data on how much they've paid Robert Jarvik, star of their Lipitor campaign for, oh, years, now. Could we finally be heading for a little self-examination here? Our commercial culture has stood there and let pharmaceutical companies sell prescription drugs like sneakers and beer for, what, twenty years? Go see the House's letter to Pfizer at Slate.com.

OUR SOLD-OUT DOCTORS

2007-11-25T18:10:00.000-08:00

This is the link of the day, if you're on the fence about the effects of pharmaceutical marketing. Go visit the New York Times Magazine.

CHUMS: FDA AND PHARMAS

2007-11-22T14:32:00.000-08:00

Not exactly news. But it gets a link from me. The Seattle Times, Thanksgiving Day.

SLEEP WITHOUT LUNESTA OR AMBIEN.

2007-11-07T13:47:00.000-08:00

If you're an insomniac you can go to your doctor and demand a TV pill, or demand sleep counseling. Research shows that, eureka! Simple changes in behavior can put you to sleep better than pills. Read all about it here. And turn off the TV.

DRUG ADS HURT. CONSUMER REPORTS LOOKS AT REQUIP COMMERCIALS.

2007-11-07T12:03:00.000-08:00

Yes, they're still hurting, those high pressure TV campaigns for exotic prescription drugs. It's good that so many of you drop in on this site and others to check out the claims. And now we've got company from that most respected non-commercial consumer watchdog, Consumer Reports. On their newly redesigned Website, CR is featuring an analysis of Requip commercials. That's the Glaxo drug promoted for the relief of Restless Legs Syndrome, which I've written about before -- see the Dehype Hall of Fame links in the right column. You should watch the Consumer Reports video analysis and read their report on this drug. Learn how GlaxoSmithKline repurposed a Parkinson's Disease drug for a bigger market -- people who have...or think they have...Restless Legs. Here's the link.

HOLIER THAN BURMA?

2007-10-19T12:32:00.000-07:00

I'd feel a little more righteous about President Bush's strong statement and sanctions against the Burmese government today (he even has Laura out speaking on the subject) if we weren't so famous now for Guantanamo and "rendition."

THE PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN: MAINTAINING OUTRAGE.

2007-10-14T20:26:00.001-07:00

I believe historians will judge 2007-2008 as a crucial time. The outcome of the crisis now under way is far from known. But I also believe most of us, even those of us who are already angry over how the Bush Administration has distorted and damaged what America stands for, most of us are too comfortable with the situation.

I experience episodes of outrage. But such a strong emotion is hard to sustain, and we haven't really been required to give up our comforts in the almost seven years since Nine-Eleven. I can have equally intense periods of outrage at the Democratic majority in Congress, who haven't been able to carry out the quality or quantity of correction so many voters gave them clear instructions to effect.

I worry that because we haven't lost access to our toys, or our mobility, or our standard of living, to any meaningful degree, that we'll just doze through the Presidential year and forget to carry outrage forward and decimate the Republican Party, which it deserves, or shape up the Democratic Party, which we require in order to have an alternative to dysfunctional business as usual in our government.

PBS's Frontline, the only serious news documentary series on American television, opens its season Tuesday (10/16) with "Cheney's Law," which, they say, elaborates on how the Vice President and his lawyer manipulated our government system to inflate the power of the Presidency, at the cost of our values and what was left of our reputation. They, the Frontline group, don't put it as bluntly as I did just now. But neither do they flinch at presenting the evidence. I'll be watching Tuesday night, and I hope you will be too, in the interest carrying forward our outrage to November 2008.

CBS POLICY: ANYTHING GOES, IF YOU DISCLOSE, CHAPTER 2.

2007-10-11T14:01:00.000-07:00

I have to admit I missed this one. I saw Rita Braver's interview with Lynne Cheney on CBS's Sunday Morning last Sunday. And I heard her slip her disclosure in--that her husband, Braver's, is a lawyer who did the deal for Ms. Cheney's new book, which of course got a plug on the piece. Happily, many actual working pros in journalism called CBS out on this one. CBS did its usual tap dance about the act of disclosing the connection blowing away the odor of commercial back-patting on this one...same thing they said when I grumped about Ben Stein's piece on the same show in praise of saving for retirement, a subject close to his wallet as national spokesperson for an annuity promotion lobby. It is important to remember when watching that CBS News, once the paragon of rectitude and no-interest-conflicted broadcast journalism, has placed itself in the mainstream of PR-driven Fark News programming. About now, we could use at least one news organization we could trust. I'm afraid I can't think of one.

FARK, NOT NEWS.

2007-10-05T09:21:00.000-07:00

Jack Shafer, Slate's media writer, brings fark.com to my attention in an article this morning--the Website's operator, Drew Curtis, has a book. "Fark" is how Drew classifies the non-news that washes over us daily. I'll have more to say on this on marconidreams.com, if you don't mind.

My new Vista Experience.

2007-10-01T08:36:00.000-07:00

About six months ago I bought a new Sony VAIO notebook -- latest Intel double-whatever chip inside. Came with Vista. Fresh and snazzy look, I said. Of course I was skeptical--or as they say in the UK, sceptical. I have come to believe I was right to be. My long-held belief has been confirmed by my user experience with Vista--that Microsoft has a whole division whose sole task is to slow down the latest Intel chip. I can't prove it, but this division must be Microsoft's most productive and efficient.

These double-something chips are supposed to be screamers. And yes, this machine and Vista are faster than XP was on my old merely-single-doodad HP. But is my Sony running as rapidly as it can with the weight of Vista to carry? I had a nagging doubt. Now I see that many true-blue MS customers are resisting buying new Vista PCs, and Microsoft, ever customer-responsive, has obliged by giving manufacturers six more months of selling XP equipped computers. I wonder how my VAIO would run XP? But what kind of havoc would I cause if I tried retrofitting it? I don't think I can do that. I'm alone here, a reasonably skilled user with no IT geek down the hall.

Well, I finally bit the bullet this morning. I'm a morning person--at my peak when I first get up. (I know, the rest of the day is downhill, but that's life.) I got an idea and went hunting in the Control Panel for those little option lists that let you turn features on or off. I found it. In System, under Advanced something or other, there was a Performance button, and another button under that, called Visual something. (Sorry, didn't write it down. Go explore.) There it all was, a dozen or more little boxes labeled Animate this or that, Slide this or that, Translucent and Transparent the other. And big buttons at the top, including Best Appearance and Best Performance. I chose Best Performance, hit Apply. The screen said Wait a moment, shuddered and zap! What was I looking at, but Windows 3.0. It was amazing. And was it fast! Wow!

So that was it all the time. I had turned the clock back. Microsoft's been improving the plumbing of Windows, of course, over the years. But mainly, as our President might say, Windows is what it is. And, as I've always known, the Division of Chip Speed Mitigation has grown into the biggest and most powerful arm of the corporation, wielding vast power at Microsoft, albeit not very quickly. They worked on Vista for what, seven years?

I have since gone back and found the System-Advanced-Performance menu again and restored some of the settings. I will play around with this newfound toy until I'm sure I have the Vista look and feel that I want and most of the speed I can get from my double-widget Intel computer. And I'll call Sony again about that funny whine in the hard drive on battery mode.

And, next time, I'm buying a Macbook.

TOM FRIEDMAN: WHAT HE SAID, TODAY.

2007-09-30T11:08:00.000-07:00

"9/11 IS OVER." This column says it all for me. And thanks, NYTimes.com, for making your opinion columns free again.

POLITICAL SANITY II -- DIRECT OBSERVATION.

2007-09-23T12:09:00.000-07:00

I watched Hillary Clinton on CBS's Face the Nation this morning--live, unedited, the whole twelve-minute interview. I found her clear, cogent, and convincing in her answers and positions. Much as I found George Bush when I watched his latest news conference, the other day. I wasn't predisposed to like her. She's not my candidate. Nobody is, yet. I'm trying to stay away from pundits and true believers alike from now until November 2008. I think it's the path to the making of an informed and intelligent decision in the next presidential election, and to sanity. Today, Bob Schieffer, the best CBS has, helped me immeasurably, by displaying no need to be a bigger star than his guest, yet asking the key, tough questions a good reporter should ask. Our confused country needs to promote calm and sanity in the process of changing our government in the next year. I'm trying to do my part.

KEEPING MYSELF POLITICALLY SANE.

2007-09-20T09:09:00.000-07:00

I watched President Bush's news conference this morning (9/20) on NBC. I found the President clear, cogent, and convincing in his answers and positions, even those regarding Iraq, which I still believe was a blunder. I say this because I, like a lot of people I'm sure, tend to stay in a zone of anger about the Bush administration. I think it was good to watch a news conference live and suspend my attitudes for an hour; to try for something like objectivity. Or at least fairness. Media marketers provide us with abundant opportunities to stay in our comfort zones, reinforcing our rifts. Pandering. Fairness is not in style. I tried it for an hour this morning and I feel better. It was a good workout. I recommend it.

YO, APPLE. WANT MARKET SHARE? HOW ABOUT OSX FOR PCs?

2007-09-17T15:32:00.000-07:00

Hobbyists and hackers have done it already, many times since Apple introduced its Intel-based Macs, which can run Windows. And I couldn't be the only person who made the mental connection when I saw this article on nytimes.com, which posits that Apple's missing out on an opportunity to eat Microsoft's lunch after Redmond released the less than extraordinary Vista OS. The NYT article suggests Apple ought to be loosening up and signing more retail chains to sell Macs. I say, a much better idea would be to offer MacOS as a download to PC owners. What better way to get in front of millions of frustrated PC users? I'm sure, Apple guys, you could come up with a properly profitable price to charge us for the privilege. But you'd be smart to make it cheap enough to be irresistible. It'd be a lot easier, too, to sell CDs of MacOS off racks than take orders for Mac hardware through Best Buy or whoever. Heck, you could sell CDs at Costco. The frustrated PC users would get used to MacOS, fall in love, and when they were ready to buy a new computer, what would they do? Buy a Mac, of course. I know this would be hard to sell Steve on -- it's against the purist Mac religion. But, gee, aren't you tired of having a three percent marketshare, no matter how big a deal the iPod is? I'd love to have Jaguar, or even the version before that, on my Sony Dual Core VAIO. Just say you'll think about it, OK?

WE COVER THE WORLD.

2007-08-17T16:10:00.000-07:00

What’s going on? The other day the earth shook in Peru. I saw it on NBC’s Today show. They went to a correspondent, monitoring the situation…in London. They showed late-breaking video – from Al Jazeera International – the new English-language TV news channel that no American cable or satellite company will touch with a ten-foot dish.

What’s this all about? Why is Ned Colt narrating a report about Lima, Peru, from London? Well, I assume it’s because NBC has no employee based south of Dallas, Texas, who could cover the story on the scene. So, we get pictures gathered by an employee or correspondent of an Arab-owned, Emirate-based news operation, and the voice of nobody in Lima.

American news organizations, even newspapers, have cut their overseas staffs to the bone. I won’t presume to guess at the business motives that have resulted in the shrinkage of on-the-spot staffing of whole swaths of the globe by U.S. news media. My question for today: why shouldn’t I rely on BBC, NPR, and Al Jazeera for international news, when NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN and Fox are focused on domestic ambulance chasing, political shouting matches, and celebrity hijinks? Is this our fault? Are Americans so disinterested in the rest of the world, except to complain about, that we don't want our reporters telling us about it?

SIDE EFFECTS? POOF! THEY'RE "TREATMENT EFFECTS."

2007-08-07T08:04:00.000-07:00

On July 19 I published a post about the new GlaxoSmithKline over-the-counter drug alli (they're pronouncing it like "ally," and modestly presenting it without an initial capital letter), which is promoted as the first non-prescription weight loss medication approved by the FDA. I think the theme of my post bears repeating for emphasis. Hype? This is what I'm talkin' about.

Alli's main effect is to prevent your body from absorbing and retaining some of the fat you eat. It, in effect, flushes some fat through your body. As you can figure out for yourself, this produces some unpleasant and potentially uncontrollable experiences. Pretend you're a marketing-advertising professional. How do you sell something that does that?

Well, I'll tell you. The brilliant marketers of Glaxo and other pharmas are the best in the business. They have to be; they daily zig and zag through the minefield of semantic hazards and actually make you want to buy their clients' products.

With Alli (I'm not going along with the no-cap style), the immediate user experience is going to be nasty. So, the marketers had to turn this "side effects" problem into a plus. Well, if not a plus, how about just presenting it as a feature? Thus, "treatment effects" was born. Believe me, this is a breakthrough in the long and storied history of weasel words. But it's not the first, so it can't be thought of as a virgin birth.

When the marketers of Lilly-Icos' erectile drug Cialis decided to include the potentially disastrous side effect, priapism, in the side effects disclosure portions of their ads, I doubt it was because they were deeply concerned about the long-term health of their customers. I think they wanted to use the phrase "erections lasting more than four hours" in ads for a drug many men see as a sexual enhancement aid. No one at the FDA could effectively question their motives. That's what weasel words are all about, folks. (George Carlin noticed the paradox.)

Now, with the Alli campaign, Glaxo's selling diarrhea as a cure for obesity, and because the commercials are dead straight about the effects and offer...no, virtually demand that the user enter the drug's "program," they're expecting us to love the ordeal.

Of course, you don't have to follow the Alli program -- this is an over-the-counter drug, so you don't have to get the authorization and advice of a doctor to buy it. How many Alli users will consult their doctors about it? How many will join and rigorously follow the drug company's laudable instructions for its use?

What we have here is a drug marketing campaign--for a product that significantly distorts normal physical processes--that bypasses medical supervision. How tough was it to get this drug and its marketing past the FDA? Stay tuned.

THE GREENING OF BLOGGERS CONTINUES.

2007-08-06T10:39:00.001-07:00

Here's a nifty AP dispatch (via the Buffalo News): "Bloggers Consider Forming Labor Union." Now, was that inevitable, or what? Pretty soon, if not already, blogging will be considered a mainstream activity. There are already blogger conventions. Last week there was the KOMO-TV-LockerGnome meetup in Seattle, one of the tech hotbeds, hailed by many flattered folks as a true breakthrough in the acceptance of bloggers by the current Mainstream Media.

No doubt there'll soon be a guild, or a union--there'll be a wide range of entities to join, large and small. Some will seek, like the reported effort under way, to just get group health insurance.

And then there's the talk of raising standards. This makes me smile. All human pursuits spawn efforts to create elites. The anarchic among us -- I must be one of them, because I almost didn't use the word "us" for fear of appearing to join something -- are already bristling against organization of any kind. And no, I'm not joining the anarchists association, either.

Remember me? I'm the dude who said he wouldn't go to the KOMO event because I wanted to remain unaffiliated and unschmoozed, to preserve my fragile claim to impartiality. I hear I missed a fun time, and, I'm sure, some yummy hors d'oeuvres. And the thing was well-attended. I'm fine with that. Only a little wistful at missing connecting with a lot of nice people.

I'm happy to trade links with you to broaden the audience for blogs--I suspect bloggers mostly are ending up writing to the blogger audience, thinking wrongly that they're speaking to all the world of civilians.

I don't want to join trade organizations or unions, brotherhoods, or PACs, or whatever you end up calling them. My experience is that such orgs standardize practices in fields where being different is the right path.

Bergman yesterday. Today, Antonioni.

2007-07-31T10:14:00.000-07:00

Do you doubt the Twentieth Century is over?

Bergman. Antonioni.

THANKS, CHRIS PIRILLO. I GUESS.

2007-07-25T08:51:00.000-07:00

Now, I'm not trying to be snarky. That said, my post on the KOMO Seattle blogger meetup drew a comment from Chris Pirillo, the apparent promoter of the event, and the popular Seattle blogger conference, Gnomedex. Chris said of my carping over KOMO's PR schmoozing of bloggers:

You shouldn't stop complaining... in fact, I'd say you should be complaining even louder now. :) Unfortunately, that's the only way companies listen (in reaction to PAIN points).

I'm trying to understand what he meant. I think he's encouraging me. Always dangerous. Anyway, thanks, Chris. You seem to get that I'm not attacking you for promoting. I'm exposing the normal, legal, process of schmoozing communications people to obtain positive coverage. KOMO-TV has a perfect right to do this, and since most bloggers are not journalists, or not professional, or both, there's nothing in their upbringing to preclude their swooning over any attention from anybody important. I come from a conventional old-time broadcaster background, so I'm not available for schmoozing. That's all.

And for this, Mr. Pirillo has earned a genuine dehype link (see sidebar).

CONTEMPT OF US.

2007-07-21T16:44:00.000-07:00

It is now clear that only prerecorded voices looping gibberish are speaking for the U.S. Executive branch. I can only conclude that we all have access to privileged information and our government officials do not.

Administration spokesmen sound like nothing so much as Muhammad Saeed al-Sahhaf, Saddam Hussein's last Information Minister, who called a press conference as American tanks rumbled by outside, announcing there were no American troops in Baghdad. In fact, the Americans were committing suicide by the hundreds at the city's gates. Comical Ali, they called him.

Our government's latest slapstick communication, as reported in this NY Times editorial, a faceless minion answered Senator Hillary Clinton's direct question to Defense Secretary Gates about planning for troop withdrawal with this drivel:

“...premature and public discussion of the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq reinforces enemy propaganda that the United States will abandon its allies in Iraq.”

No wonder even loyal Republican lawmakers are looking green around the gills. Never mind Contempt of Congress. This is Contempt of Country.

They're not an attractive bunch, I admit, but I believe Congress is the only branch of government that may be able to turn this brain-dead administration around. Keep up the pressure on your representative to keep the heat on the Bush administration to change Iraq policy. www.house.gov - www.senate.gov -- just enter your state or Zip code to find your Senator or Representative.

It also occurs to me that a general slowdown by the bureaucracy could help stop this nonsense. I call upon all loyal career professionals in our national civil service to stand up to the political appointees and for the people. I'm not sure we can wait another eighteen months to change direction.

SORRY, KOMO, THIS BLOGGER DOESN'T WANT TO BE YOUR BUDDY.

2007-07-20T19:20:00.000-07:00

I just got an "Evite". Quote:
"KOMO-TV and its owner, Fisher Communications, has graciously agreed to serve as host for a blogger meet-up at 6:30 p.m. on Thursday August 2nd. [...] KOMO-TV is interested in getting to know bloggers in the [Seattle] area, and what better way to do that than helping facilitate this meet-up? Fisher Communications recognizes the significance of the personal media revolution, and they want to listen and pay attention to what you're saying. I think this is a good way to start."
The "I" above is Chris Pirillo, blogger, geek, Internet entrepreneur, etc. -- you can read his complete list of self-appellations on his blog. He's also founder-operator-promoter of Gnomedex, an annual schmoozefest, ahem...conference for the bloggerati, also held in Seattle. In fact this year's event, the seventh, begins just a week after the above party, which will be held at KOMO-TV's shiny headquarters near Seattle Center.

I think I read on Pirillo's site that Gnomedex 2007 is already oversubscribed, though his post seems to imply that he could be talked into opening up an overflow room and graciously accepting more registration fees.

But getting back to the invitation. I'm flattered that I made a list of Seattle area bloggers, but not starry-eyed enough to accept the invitation to come and be cooed over by the TV people, no matter how sincere they may seem about recognizing my significance. See, I have been, and plan to continue, commenting upon and sometimes criticizing KOMO-TV, and many other media organizations. So, I prefer not to drink their booze and eat their hors d'oeuvres, thanks all the same. I guess I can't help thinking I'd have a harder time blogging about them afterward, and that they--KOMO-TV and Mr. Pirillo, the self-styled self-promoter--would like that very much.

Bloggers have not build reputations for journalistic anything in the first years of the phenomenon, and, as a matter of fact, I think I want to stand over here, away from blogger trade conventions and PR stroking parties and remain free to comment on my blogger brethren, too.

So, enjoy the pop and pupus at Fisher Plaza, boys and girls. Just remember, you don't get to be universally believed if you drink the KoolAid.

P.S.: I'll use the Pirillo-prescribed tag for this post, hoping some of my fellow bloggers drop in, read it, come to their senses, and buy their own drinks.

IS ALLI YOUR ALLY?

2007-07-19T14:56:00.000-07:00

Have you seen the ads for Alli? They tout it as the only FDA-approved, over-the-counter diet pill -- that is, you don't need a prescription.

With the rollout of this new product, we see a whole new way of talking about side effects -- those pesky problems that may crop up in the course of using a medicine. In the Alli materials, "side effects," which carries a rather negative connotation, is replaced after one use of the words by "treatment effects." There, isn't that much nicer?

The FDA, which may stand for Friendly Drug Approvals, is well accustomed to approving drugs that cause varying levels of trouble for patients. In this case, since Alli works by inhibiting your body's ability to digest fat, the problem can be, oh, just...frequent, oily, difficult to control bowel movements. You can go read the other unpleasant details for yourself here.

For the promised upside -- 50% more weight lost than a low fat diet alone -- and, excuse the expression, the downside, of Alli, you can click right over to drugstore.com and pick up a month's supply (90 caps) for only $59.99.

In fairness, for the desperate and untherapied overweight person, this drug, with its sensible diet advice, is at least a miracle pill that apparently works, as certified by our government, and so may be worth the discomfort.

I can't help wondering how many people will be inspired to eat more healthily by Alli's marketing. And then there's the gnawing suspicion that this is the FDA as retooled and defanged by the Bush years. What have they protected us from lately? Caveat dieter.

Links: Glaxo, the manufacturer; FDA's Alli label information; drugstore.com's price page

THE SENATE'S ALL-NIGHTER.

2007-07-19T11:52:00.000-07:00

Yesterday on the Today Show, Lindsay Graham admitted he didn't lose any sleep--he went to bed. What can we say about the Democrats' marathon filibuster buster? I guess the question here is, how shall we structure our time between now and January 2009, when a new President and Vice President and, thus, administrative branch, are sworn in?

George W. Bush thinks he's winning. He's going to go down with his ship and he's trying to take us with him. For better or, more likely, worse, it's the way our system works. I wonder who could convince him and Cheney that they could be remembered as wise Americans who came to their senses before it was too late? Is there time for an impeachment trial?

Congress can't get anything done. They. Can't. Get. Anything. Done. Can anyone hear me?

In other, less ~~mature~~ comfortable countries, this would be the moment the Army steps in. In Gaza, one political party ran the other out of town. Thank God we don't do that in the U.S.A.

Ahem, well, here's my voice: Wake up, Senator, Congressperson. Get together on passing a law against George Bush's brain. And make sure you've got the votes to override a veto.

FEET TO THE FIRE.

2007-07-11T10:18:00.000-07:00

I just wrote emails to my Senators, to make sure they keep the pressure on the Bush Administration to change direction in Iraq. Despite the smoke the President and his lieutenants--not to mention his generals--blow about how much progress they're making with the "just started" surge, they still act as if everybody's asking them to pull out of Iraq tomorrow or the next day. That's never been the case, and it's time we got the message through to Bush and Cheney that we're not buying that. We need to see a real change in direction, in the interest of our security and the health of our troops. You don't have to have top secret clearance to sense that we're in World War III (Pakistan, London, to name two current fronts outside of Iraq) and we're tied down in Iraq. Not that sending conventional brigades on classic invasions is going to work against this enemy. Republican, Democrat, or whatever, write your representatives today.

WHITE HOUSE SURGE IN PRESS CIVIL WAR.

2007-07-09T12:33:00.000-07:00

Don't doubt for a minute it's a civil war. Today's exchanges are typical. This morning the New York Times reported that White House occupants are debating new Iraq war policies. A few hours later, Reuters reports, Tony Snow denied it. Count yourself fortunate. You live in America, where it's legal to challenge a secretive President. Begin to worry when the press stops reporting everything they hear, immediately. And keep demanding to know why.

NEXT?

2007-07-05T08:36:00.000-07:00

Our industrial-strength presidential campaign marches along in full cry, as if thinking ahead could relieve the frustration of watching a failed government--reduced to binding up its self-shot feet, snatching loyal operatives from deserved jail time. I'm not feeling better yet, and I'm an optimist.

Our choices so far are many, but more of the same--they're either members of the party that's shopping for a new soul, or the one that was taken over by a fake-Christian corporate War Department with an allergy to responsibility.

But then, when each of these crippled organizations can claim about half the population that bothers to vote, which is about half the total population that could, do we even deserve to be led?

The same old poll-raise-and-spend game is not going to produce an answer. All of us need to drop some weight, get a makeover, turn off the ads, and learn to think all over again. Save America. Start with yourself.

[Afterthought: Inconsistency Watch -- I guess, in retrospect, I've given up on the promise of Bloomberg, too.]

PARDON ME?

2007-07-03T16:53:00.000-07:00

Look. Jerry Ford pardoned Richard Nixon, before he was even charged with anything. George H.W. Bush pardoned the Iran Contra guys. Bill Clinton pardoned Mark Rich, one of his bigtime money people. If we want to change this odious practice, we have to get serious about helping our Senators and Representatives enforce the laws they make. So, look to yourself, not at the hype. We're all to blame for putting up with it. So, get off your duff and do something about it.

[AFTERTHOUGHT: Actually, I should have said, If we want to change this odious corruption of this much-needed clemency power...]

CURB YOUR PARANOIA. BUT WATCH OUT FOR HYPE.

2007-07-03T08:25:00.000-07:00

I don't think most people care much if big media companies control the news. Journalism is terribly upset right now at the probability that Rupert Murdoch will soon run the Wall Street Journal. This may surprise you, but I don't hear my friends bringing it up over coffee.

I mean, how upset can you get, when lobbyists control Congress. What harm can a little self-serving news-stacking do?

Let me give a small but significant example: MSNBC is a joint venture of NBC and Microsoft (though MS may have fully phased out their equity position by now). NBC is owned by NBC-Universal, which is owned by General Electric. NBC News has always been a good, clean news source, and still is. But it's harder for broadcasting companies, which aren't in the news business, to keep their hands off editorial content. Here's a feature story on the MSNBC Web site (last time I checked, it was the top rated news site on the Web) on "The Future of Business" (LINK), about how Boeing's spectacularly successful new aircraft, the Dreamliner, has revolutionized the industry.

Note the photo caption at the top of the page:

"Extensive capabilities in electronic and mechanical technologies are being deployed to support aircraft systems integration through deliveries by GE Aviation for the Boeing 787 Dreamliner."

For me, the eagle-eyed media pro, this translates to: "This slathering puff piece is an example of how a great manufacturing company keeps its clients happy. Do you really think, as the owner of a major cable-Web news operation, we wouldn't use it for our own business purposes? Duh!"

There are other clues in the story. Like the mention that the 787 rollout is coming up soon, and that Boeing has "rented an entire football field to simulcast the rollout, which will be emceed by broadcaster Tom Brokaw [Major General, NBC, Ret.]." No doubt GE's helping pay for the party. I didn't find the usual meaningless disclosure line on the Web page -- "MSNBC is owned by GE."

I bet I can find plenty of examples of corporate hype-news without working my mouse too hard. Except, maybe, in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, or the Washington Post, none of which are owned by companies in other industries. Shall we write our Congresspersons? I don't think so -- believe me, you don't want the FCC regulating news either. I think I'll write GE and NBC. Do you care if NBC thinks GE hype is news. Hope so. Maybe if we stop being passive consumers, news-as-hype could be made to go away.

WHAT IS IT ABOUT STEVE JOBS AND APPLE?

2007-07-02T13:03:00.000-07:00

Genius? Magic? How is it that one company out of all the tech companies builds the really cool stuff, and the rest, while O.K., don't? Why didn't somebody come up with a better phone before the IPhone, which wasn't exactly a secret. It must be Steve; that seems obvious. But Steve didn't exactly set the world on fire with NeXt. Pixar, O.K., but not exactly fast and not with something that went into everybody's pocket. Sure, he proved he could be the neXt Disney, but somebody would have done that with computer animation. And, of course, we're talking about a developing phenom over a period of twenty years or more. Jobs at 25 wasn't Jobs at 40-something.

So is it Apple? Or Apple designers and engineers with Jobs behind them, whip-cracking? Or encouraging? Samsung's cool, but not that cool. Sony? Still makes cool things, but the mojo is pale by comparison. Creative? They're interesting, but not heroic, as Apple-Jobs seems to be.

Is this the kind of line of thinking that leads inevitably to character assassination? No. Somebody has to come up with another great thing. Who will that be? Are we doomed to sit around waiting for Steve's next act?

MY IPHONE POST.

2007-06-29T18:56:00.000-07:00

Isn't it amazing, how everybody's got an IPhone story? Well, here's mine. I don't even have to give you any links. It's everywhere. After months of "It's coming" stories, today we have the "It's here" stories. What are they going to write about it after tomorrow? IPhone checks into re-hab, promises to upgrade?

THE WARTIME PRESIDENCY.

2007-06-24T17:28:00.000-07:00

It's a different kind of war, Bush and Cheney say, therefore new and extraordinary actions must be taken. If it's so completely different from what we've fought before, why are they running a World War II-style security and secrecy system, from a time when we were under threat of attack and infiltration from frighteningly competent, stunningly well-organized countries. Almost nothing about this War on Terrorism remotely resembles World War II, when the U.S. economy was transformed to a weapons machine, right down to the recycling of tin cans and the rationing of butter and gasoline--America was a different place for those four years. And, significantly, it was united. Today, only Americans directly related to members of the military stand to sacrifice for our cause. How did we let this go on long enough for Messrs. Bush and Cheney to be working on their memorial libraries? How small these libraries will necessarily be; their contents will almost certainly be classified.

BLOOMBERG'S BOLD MOVE.

2007-06-24T11:41:00.000-07:00

Don't get me wrong. Everybody who flirts with running for President of the United States makes a bold move. But I think Michael Bloomberg's departure from the Republican Party is uniquely bold, and, in terms of politics-hype, brilliant. Every new-lead-desperate media monster (read: all of them) is talking about him this week, not just in the media capitals, but out in the heartland, too. You can find every last ort of the story reported and masticated. Just Ask or Google Michael Bloomberg. In today's bits-per-second world it was all out there in about as long as it took to run spellcheck.

Never mind what he's saying (I'm not running). He's the first in--to the inevitable, much needed test-marketing of the non-elephant-non-donkey in the room. The new American third party. Other than the inescapable fact, for me, that the next president can't be Republican...now I'm getting excited about the possibilities.

TRIBAL HYPE.

2007-06-14T19:23:00.000-07:00

Here's a thought. Want a clue why the Congress can't seem to get an immigration reform bill out when everybody seems to want one? We've all forgotten how to compromise. See, as Bob Schieffer pointed out eloquently last Sunday morning, everybody wants his way. Therefore, this legislative body has forgotten that they're supposed to compromise. Thus, "Congress demonstrated yet again that it could not muster the political will to confront a major problem head-on and resolve it."

Blame isn't productive, but I'll blame the Shark wing of the Republican Party for honing the art of demonizing opponents to a razor's edge. And the Snark wing of the Democratic Party for playing at their game, poorly. The result: for some time we've had only posturing faux ideologues to choose from for Senate and House. The only thing that's "saved" us this season is our general cross-party agreement to sack the most extreme jerks and get some, any, new blood in there.

We have to do something about this gap in our current education, this slide in our political culture. If you want a searing, eye-burning look at the end result of extreme name-calling and cultural labeling in politics, just look east, at Iraq, Gaza, Rwanda, and back in time to Serbia-Bosnia-et al, Lebanon, Northern Ireland.

The longer we demonize Conservative Tribes, Liberal Tribes, Christian Tribes, and all the rest of the sub-tribes, the more we're apt to tilt our increasingly gory terrain. We're going to have to agree on something; and to do that, we must rediscover that more than one person deserves to be right.

THE MARKETING-MANUFACTURED DILEMMA.

2007-06-14T10:00:00.000-07:00

Shows like NBC's Today burn through a lot of material. This morning I saw a perfect example of the marketing-manufactured problem, now solved by Websites and TV psychotherapists. Today's angst-aggravator:

Couples-who've-moved-to-another-town-struggling-to-find-other-couples-to-make-friends-with.

Did you know there's an epidemic of duo-relationship frustration? Today cleared it up today. You can try to go see the segment on their Website, but they haven't made it easy. Look under "Video from Today," and good hunting, though I can save you the trouble, unless you want to laugh firsthand.

See, it's almost like dating all over again, according to the Today-recruited sufferers. Will she like her, and if she does, will he like him? Well, at least the couple have each other to talk to about the other couple on the way home from the "date." Yes, this is probably the greatest thrash since the discovery of pitfalls surrounding kids' playdates. And this ongoing exploration of 21st Century sociology undoubtedly required a team of publicity experts, PR agency flacks, writers, producers, camerapersons and other technicians, TV show bookers, and the Today resident shrink (and contributing editor to Cookie Magazine), all to slip in a teeny plug for three you-guessed-it "coupling" Websites (who aren't getting a plug here -- go Google-Ask-SearchMash 'em yourself).

ONLY YOU CAN PREVENT HYPE FIRES.

2007-06-12T17:26:00.000-07:00

What do you expect to be when you grow up when your parents named you Paris Hilton, so you're like a walking billboard for the family business? I guess it could be worse: they could have called her Cleveland. Anyway, let's have a little dose of reality therapy here. Is the big story whatever Paris is doing at the moment, or is it "What is it with the media, that Paris is such a big story?"

Let's be honest with ourselves. We love gossip. We love it when the rich and beautiful fall upon their shapely glutes. We watch NASCAR for the thrill of streamlined cars smoothly negotiating scary curves? Hell no! We gape at car crashes. We want to see 'em flying through the air, end over end, smashing into a zillion pieces in a cloud of smoke and liquified rubber. It's all riveting TV, radio, magazines and newspaper stories.

We want our Congressmen and Senators to erupt over violence and nasty language on radio and TV. But if they ever actually took it all away, we'd storm Capitol Hill. The Hiltons have been playpeople for generations. Paris is just carrying on a family tradition, living up to her genes. And you, you're watching Entertainment Tonight tonight, skipping Bill Moyers. So, get over yourself.

FREEDOM FROM INFORMATIONAL AUTHORITY. SCARY THOUGHT.

2007-06-06T10:57:00.000-07:00

The other day I found myself watching The 700 Club, with Pat Robertson. It came on right after the local live chat show, beginning with one of those "KONG has received a fee for the broadcast..." announcements, like the infomercials. I was struck...how rational and slick the show seemed. How reasonable and personable the avuncular old wing-nut was, on the air, and how well-designed and smooth the production, how state-of-the-art-professional-TV. Normal people are watching this, I thought. How mainstream the alternate-paradigm ambiance seemed. This could be CNN or Fox or MSNBC, CBS, ABC, whatever. No florid faces or subcultural gobbledegook. Well, no more than the others.

I also saw Michael Moore with Oprah. Wow. No more rumply slob. Well, except on his Website. Look at those glasses. Haircut. No baseball cap, no windbreaker. I think the guy's lost some weight. And he didn't say a mean word, even against the pharmas, one target of his new movie, Sicko.

Wow. What's going on?

We should well and truly stop looking for overt hormonal imbalance in the sources we choose to demonize. I prefer to think the New York Times isn't a left-slanted rag, of the same species as, say, the HuffingtonPost. I like to think there is such a thing as journalism, and that FoxNews doesn't make it their first priority. I do agree with Al Gore that the media, all of them...well, maybe not The News Hour -- plunks Entertainment way too high on their editing priority lists. It is getting tougher to sort out unspun facts you need to be a citizen, assuming you haven't given that up.

In a way, it's a good thing every voice seems reasonable. You can get the relevant stories on Al Jazeera, without any more spin than anyplace else, maybe less. Nobody really owns the truth, if anybody ever did. With more voices, though, the scary thought is: we really need to look at all sources. We may even have to learn to think, if we don't just want to be dragged along with one or the other American sub-herd. So, I'm going to read Fox and the Times and MSNBC and BBC and CNN and, oh all right, the Washington Times even. I'm going to try to think.

DARN THOSE FLEETING EXPLETIVES.

2007-06-05T07:55:00.000-07:00

And so it goes. The great American debate on naughty language and its regulation on the public electromagnetic spectrum rages on, as it has virtually since the time of Marconi. And, will continue, of course, as long as expletives fleet. This is what ideologues waste our time with, while various Middle East cities burn. Another panel of judges has their say, and and lawyers scratch away at their time sheets, and the planet inexorably warms. I'm in favor of ending the careers of certain pottymouths of radio. But I also favor the continuing constitutional barricading of government control of public speech, however disturbing. I must say, though, this round has given us a new phrase to play with. "Fleeting expletives" has a nice tripping poetry to it.

HYPE REVIEW, II. WHAT IF THE PRODUCT ITSELF IS HYPE?

2007-06-03T11:09:00.001-07:00

You've surely noticed, that much of television programming is about...television programming. Much of entertainment is about...other entertainment. Beginning with Entertainment Tonight, the whole celebrity fanmag market boomed. Now it's a culture. "Reality" shows are not about reality. They're about being about reality. Creating their own reality. "News," especially broadcast news, is often about covering events, not the events themselves. "Entertainment news" used to be published for the participants of the entertainment business. Now news about the news and entertainment people easily ranks above world events. So, it's inevitable that the Internet Entertainment and Communications hurricane would become bigger than events or issues of real life, assuming there still is such a thing as "real life." Examples: this conversation about blogging, and disappointment in blogging...essentially, that we can't all be famous, after all.

HYPE. A REVIEW.

2007-06-02T12:53:00.000-07:00

Wikipedia says "hype,", or actually "hyperbole," is synonymous with "exaggeration and overstatement." I drop this in at this point as a kind of review, for use in understanding the context of this Weblog. So...what do you do when the zero point on the communication scale is hype? What is the antidote for hype? I would say, facts. Where shall we look for facts? Where can one find a dependable source of unhyped facts?

WHAT IS INTELLIGENCE?

2007-06-01T10:27:00.000-07:00

I remember a moment of realization I had, not long ago. George W. Bush was on TV, saying something like, '...my decisions are based on deeply held beliefs."

It dawned on me: His decisions are not based on current facts. This explains almost everything.

HYPE OR NO HYPE. ALEC BALDWIN EDITION.

2007-04-30T20:34:00.000-07:00

Definitely hype, folks. Mr. Baldwin's attempt to play the contrite male anger-management school candidate on The View the other day was unsuccessful, except for those committed to following the lead of their prize-giving hosts, along with attending to the studio applause signs on cue.

How could anybody take any part of Alec's ugly, self-aggrandizing monologue as contrition? I don't believe he intended the slightest apology--the closest he got was alleging his famously abusive voice message to his daughter should have been directed to "someone else." Like, that would have made it merely an eloquent indictment of a deserving villain(ess). The only truth in View was the director staying with the studio camera as the hosts broke for commercials long enough to see Alec slipping his crib notes from under his thigh to make sure he'd covered all his first-segment talking points.

I'm not really trying to join this battle. Celebrity mudfests and gaffes are so routine now, they're the base level (pun intended) of contemporary television and magazine content. It's the universal Plan B for career-making in the entertainment business.

Now, Mr. Baldwin intends to make his grievance his career, beginning with a book about male child-custody victimhood. And he's about as sympathetic a poster child as The Donald, or The Rosie, for that matter. Alienation of divorced fathers may well be a cause worthy of taking up. But I don't believe this cause-celebrity will move it toward resolution.

We need a new awakening in this country. What would happen if we all stopped enjoying the spectacles people and the media spectacle system are making of themselves. What would happen if a television company decided to take another tack, away from the tabloid swamp?

And how is it that Barbara Walters trips along the surface of the quagmire without soiling her Manolo Blahnicks?

THE CASE AGAINST MEDICAL MARKETING.

2007-04-24T08:36:00.000-07:00

This book review, not to mention the book, is a must-read, even if you only take pills. Link.

IMUS IS OUT. IS THAT IT?

2007-04-18T14:29:00.000-07:00

The risky business of trying to figure out what’s outside the envelope has finally blown up in Imus’s craggy face. Trouble is, how does the entire broadcasting business back up from envelope-pushing. ‘Cause this isn’t just a single guy’s problem. Outrageousness is a growth industry, one that’s made more than one radio operator, not to mention TV and other media moguls, a lot of money. Radio gets to stare at its navel first, because so many morning zoos in so many markets work on tightropes. Maybe somebody in the industry will find a way to create without crudity. If there’s a creative person left in radio.

THE IMUS TOUCH. TIME TO RETHINK SHOCK RADIO?

2007-04-10T09:05:00.001-07:00

How then would we target male (and male-minded) listeners? How shall we sell beer and football? It’s a corollary of radio marketing that men are beasts. Particularly 18-34 men. Well, maybe 18-24s. Thus, entire generations of under-developed frontal lobes have grown up with Stern and Imus and their wannabes. Thus delaying full maturity well into their sixties, seventies, and today. What if all the guys decided to grow up and embrace the world, whether radio’s professional sub-adolescents liked it or not? More to the point, what if advertising agencies decided they actually cared whether people were ignorant, self-indulgent slobs, and stopped buying ratings numbers delivered through appeals to our dark side? Is it finally time for radio’s bad boys and their executive enablers to retire? What creative wonders might radio conjure then?

A PROMOTION -- UNCLE BEN TO CHAIRMAN.

2007-03-30T07:25:00.000-07:00

This historic move is reported in no less serious a journal as the New York Times. MasterFoods, makers of Uncle Ben's Rice, has re-characterized their logo character as Chairman of the Board. The Times solemnly reports this marketing innovation in its Media-Advertising section, where the Kool-Aid is rarely so undiluted. This should surprise no one, in an age when even Presidents are more brands than men or women. It isn't the Times' liberalism that worries me today.

WHAT'S NOT HYPE?

2007-03-09T15:00:00.001-08:00

Thinking this blog through again, one of my thoughts is: the problem with living in an info-tainment-gossip tsunami is not how do you tell what's hype; it's how to tell what's not. I'm afraid we must assume all of it is, until proven...what: not guilty? Disingenuous? Every piece of data is produced for somebody's purpose. Not necessarily a bad thing. I've said, I believe marketing and sales, thus hype, don't belong in the practice of health care and medicine, and these fields are now just plain ruled by the pharmaceutical branch of Madison Avenue. And then there's politics. The old political hokum has given way to the marketing-media complex, and I think that's wrong, too. TV news, too, especially the totally sold-out local TV station variety. These have been my focus here on these non-existent pages. Should I continue, or is this a lost cause? Should I be reporting the obvious rottenness, or trying to point to the tiny fraction of communication that's genuine? Which would be a full-time job--finding some, I mean--which I don't want. Any suggestions?

TODAY'S HYPE WATCH.

2007-02-28T08:03:00.000-08:00

Of course you know to watch how the Deny-er absorbs issues and clasps them to himself, ignoring recent facts. E.g., sorta-quote: "If you want to make sure your troops are getting what they need, write your Congressman, or your Senator." No longer operative: Rumsfeld's heartfelt exposition of Administration policy, sorta-quote: "You go to war with the army you've got." Even after even the usually flaccid voters chop him down to size, it ain't an issue until Bush says it's an issue, and the Democrats' fault. That is very high quality hype, pal. Later.

BACK TO THE BLOG.

2007-02-26T15:14:00.000-08:00

Because we've been moving out of our long-lived-in house, I've been away from the normally excessive time-spent-fiddling with my computer. And the blogs. It's been no vacation, but a good break. And I'll be exploring why I do this particular blog, and whether it needs changing, or ending, or what, in the next few weeks, the dregs of winter 2007. I'm in new places, now, literally and figuratively, and everything's getting a look. Today I attended a Microsoft sales hooha in Seattle. Pretty good, nothing to write home about. Their products have taken quantum leaps in human resource control complexity, and, in the current term, "granularity"; and the faithful were nodding. So was I. Only, not in agreement. I met some old friends and a truly nice oddball named Charles.

ZUCKER'S NBC.

2007-02-07T12:28:00.000-08:00

I don't know if Jeff Zucker should get the credit-blame for the Today Show's post-Meredith revamp, but I have a bone to pick, and whichever bald-white-guy-in-suit who's running NBC takes the heat. It goes almost without saying that everything on TV has a promotional hook attached. But most news operations go hunting for outside experts to provide depth to health, science, and other specialized stories. Today has recently decided to build a cadre of its own experts, like Nancy Snyderman, the physician-talker, for example, ready at a moment's notice to articulate the details. I'm not so sure this is a good thing. I don't mind their having their "editors," and "consultants," but isn't it a bit, well, limiting? And is it truly journalism? I'm particularly uncomfortable with Dr. Keith Ablow as Today's "explainer," and, I think, resident bloviator on all things associated with human behavior. Like, today, he and his shaved, glowing pate held forth on the wayward astronaut and her alleged attack on an alleged romantic rival. This is a perfect TV story, and no show is going to waste time waiting for details before full on-camera psychiatric analyses. Ablow was there this morning, fully a-blow on the subject. When I start to feel creepy, I know we're in the hype zone. Who is this guy? Why is he the most qualified shrink in all of New York City, other than the fact that he's got a new TV talk show. I even assumed NBC-U had a financial interest in him. But he's with Warner Brothers. Anyway, Jeff, I'm getting that creepy itch. Is the budget so tight that you can't develop more real sources? TV is really thinking smaller these days, folks.

I'M ACTUALLY POSTING ABOUT SIMON AND AMERICAN IDOL.

2007-01-22T21:34:00.000-08:00

This won't take long. The opening gambit of American Idol has always been to broadcast the worst auditions, tweaking our voyeur bones, and the natural human desire to feel better than someone, anyone. This season's flap is merely the result of the natural showbiz tendency to up the ante. There is no limit to what TV people will do to assure maximum attention -- controversy, feuds, contestant abuse, whatever it takes. There's no point chastising Simon. Outrageous is the default minimum. It's all hype, folks, proceeding on schedule, according to plan. Is it making you uncomfortable? You have the solution at hand. You're a willing participant. Stop.

SUNDAY MORNING TV ADS. WELCOME, WAL-MART.

2007-01-21T09:12:00.000-08:00

Corporate image TV advertising has a long history. We used to call it "institutional." As opposed to product-flogging hard sell ads. These days, prime time TV is dominated by buy-me ads -- too much competition out there to spend your expensive spot time trying to get people to love you for your good works. But on the Sunday political-public affairs and magazine shows, you'll still find institutional advertising, from biggies like ArcherDanielsMidland, for example. So much of it, in fact, you start to feel like you're in corporate church, with all the high-mindedness glowing out at you from the screen. If you're, uh, a little incredulous, like me, you start to wonder why. Could it be that the Meet the Press audience contains a lot of influential people who could, maybe, be influenced to think less harshly about your semi-harsh business practices? Enter Wal-Mart, whose new crop of Sunday morning do-good TV spots I spotted this morning. Did you know Wal-Mart has given more employees health insurance at, like a dollar a day, than, like, any other company? Those may not be the exact words on the spot, but that's the impression, which is what advertising's all about. The spot doesn't mention that this largesse is motivated by public and legislative pressure on the company. In the great tradition of corp-image TV ads, it sounds like WM has always done it. Well, here's a little collection of links, if you're interested in getting a fuller picture than you're likely to get in the Sunday morning ad market:

Wal-Mart to Expand Health Plan for Workers, New York Times, October 2005
Wal-Mart Provides Health Insurance to More Employees this Year, Medical News Today, January 15, 2007
The Wal-Mart You Don't Know, Fast Company, December 2003
WalMartWatch.com
Google Search -- "Wal-Mart health insurance"

WE VOLUNTEERED.

2007-01-10T10:14:00.000-08:00

I remember hearing President Bush mention in passing, several times, that we have an all-volunteer military. Could he have thought that we wouldn't be affected by watching thousands of them come back in coffins or without limbs, because they knew what they were getting into? I really don't want to believe this, but I do.

PRIORITY ONE, CONGRESS, MR. PRESIDENT. IRAQ.

2007-01-08T11:07:00.000-08:00

Just to make sure you got the message. Don't even start talking about taxes, or drugs, or even Halliburton, until you get us on the road out of Iraq. It isn't simple, and it'll be a fight. Bring it on.

BLOWOUT AT SHOE PAVILION.

2007-01-06T08:56:00.000-08:00

On their TV spots this weekend:

STOREWIDE CLEARANCE!

ON SELECTED ITEMS

YourTimeForChange?

2006-12-28T08:49:00.000-08:00

It's a classic marketing challenge. You've got a good product, but it's just like all the others. You weren't the first into the market, so you don't have brand name recognition. What do you do?

There are lots of prescription drugs for depression. It's one of the miracles of pharmacology. First, there was Prozac. But, of course, there couldn't be just one drug -- all the drug companies had to have one, to get a piece of the depression market. Wyeth wasn't the first on the market. And Lilly, the Prozac company, beat them to the "new-improved" space with Cymbalta, touted to be the first drug that replaces norepinephrine, as well as serotonin. So, now, what does Wyeth do to elbow into this mature market with their me-too Cymbalta-type drug, Effexor XR?

Well, they found a way. See, a particular drug doesn't always work for every patient. Doctors often have to try several with a patient before something clicks. So, Wyeth has just rolled out a TV-Internet campaign, suggesting that if you're taking an antidepressant and still have depression symptoms, it may be "Your time for a change." The TV spots mention no drug. The pitch is to talk to your doctor, and/or go see YourTimeForChange.com. The site doesn't mention a drug name either, just gives you information, offers you a checklist of symptoms, and talking points to use with your doctor. Subtle, no? Wyeth's name is on the TV spots and the site. Nothing illegal here. Oh, they do have another site, or at least a domain name, TheChangeYouDeserve.com, in a Google search ad, which takes you to the Effexor XR site.

You might call this the Ricochet School of Marketing -- finding work-arounds for a heavily regulated advertising marketplace. Wyeth is spending millions to, like, drop a few hints. As a public service? No, folks. Something tells me a depressed person already under a doctor's care would know to go back if she's not feeling better. Remembering that most meds take six or more weeks to kick in, right? And, of course, don't docs who prescribe powerful medicines know to tell you all these things? Ignore drug ads, folks. Things have gotten all out of balance. Focus on getting the most attention from your doctor.

HUGH DOWNS. HOW COULD YOU?

2006-12-26T09:02:00.000-08:00

The first word that popped into my mind was "creepy." That creepy infomercial about alleged "natural" health cures now features Hugh Downs as host, interviewing the creepy nobody "doctor." I can't believe I'm the only one who thinks people drain their good reputations when they agree to do commercials of any kind -- but especially so when they do cheesy informercials for health scams. I will spend a little, not too much, energy trying to find out why Hugh has done this to himself, and us. (The TV Squad beat me to "creepy." Go see their rant.)

What's new? If you've arrived at this post by searching for a subject, I invite you to see what I'm up to today. Click here to go to the top of the blog.

BE MERRY. TRY.

2006-12-24T10:04:00.000-08:00

It's been a little hard to get merry this year. For the last five, actually. However, at this peak hype season, it's important to move beyond visions of sugar plums and plasma TVs and game consoles, to the bedrock of our humanity. Love.

Happy holiday -- your holiday, your way.

MORE ON MEANINGLESS CYMBALTA MYSTERY.

2006-12-19T10:52:00.000-08:00

A dehype reader writes:

I was just discussing what I thought the melody on the Cymbalta ad was with my wife and decide to look it up on the net. I came across your site and would like your opinion. Sounds like portions o"Poor Little Buttercup" from Gilbert and Sullivan's "HMS Pinafore". My wife says it sounds nothing like it, check it out and please give me your opinion. If it is, I would think it could be considered somewhat insensitive.

regards,

Al Fien

And I answer:

Golly, Al. I never thought of "Buttercup." You're right, the first six notes are pretty close, if not identical. Could some ad-music guy be playing a little prank on us? Lilly isn't saying. But, knowing how risk-averse advertisers are, and how closely they scrutinize every detail of a commercial or ad for signs of trouble, I think it's likely what they say about the music is true: that it's "original" music written for the commercial. Still, there's nothing new under the sun, and I'm pretty sure the "composer" was looking for familiar, evocative phrases, and his memory supplied this tune, maybe a snippet of Schumann, maybe a taste of Gilbert. In any case, it's a clever job of pushing our emotional buttons, which, when used to sell a drug directly to people with depression, I believe, is the very definition of insensitivity.

Thanks for writing.

Dave

What's new? If you've arrived at this post by searching for a subject, I invite you to see what I'm up to today. Click here to go to the top of the blog.

A GLIMPSE AT PHARMA SALES MANAGEMENT.

2006-12-18T13:34:00.000-08:00

The FDA is looking into Eli Lilly's promotion of Zyprexa for other conditions besides those for which it's approved: schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Read about it here in the NYT, and notice especially the words of the Lilly sales executive. It's good, I guess, that FDA looks into problems like this. But who's looking into the physicians who actually prescribed the drug "off-label" after a Lilly rep's pitch? Who regulates fools who rely on drug reps to tell them how to treat their patients?

GENERAL UPDATE. THE STATE OF DEHYPE.

2006-12-15T10:20:00.000-08:00

It seems a year since I posted here -- 11/29/06, to be exact, only a fortnight. Half a month, but I love "fortnight." It isn't that there's no hype to comment upon. Hey, it's the Christmas (or should I say "Holiday") season. I've just been busy with my life, my new site, getting ready to move out of our long-time home, and riding out last night's Pacific Northwest wind-rainstorm. Here in the Seattle area, we have lots of trees, and many big, old evergreens. Right now I'm running on laptop battery power and the good old vanilla phone system, and listening to the traffic outside -- the Evergreen Point Floating Bridge is closed, and a lot of the confused drivers have been rerouted through our neighborhood. So, there are many things more important right now than viewing anything with alarm. I'll leave it to the many, many others to take up the slack today. Stay warm.

O.K., ALREADY, IT'S A CIVIL WAR.

2006-11-28T08:16:00.000-08:00

11/29/06 - A little rewrite:

NBC announced yesterday that it will hereafter refer to the turmoil in Iraq as a "civil war." The term joins the officially sanctioned list of television news words which is found pinned to the cubicle wall of every local news writer and editor in America. On local TV newscasts we can now expect to hear reports like the following:

"Horrific morning in traffic, right, Bob?"

"Right! As you can see from our bridge-cam, I-5 is a regular civil war of congestion this morning! I was devastated when I logged on this morning."

"Talk about a civil war, how about that school board meeting last night. This could change our lives forever!"

PERSPECTIVE.

2006-11-24T21:14:00.000-08:00

So I'm sitting on the couch watching Nick Cage in The Family Man, one of those holiday movies. You know, the kind Hollywood's been cranking out for decades. Hard-nosed-and-hearted businessman's life upended by some supernatural force--like, instantly plunged into an alternative reality, in which he must confront the road he didn't take, or did, and potential consequences of same. Comes to his senses, becomes loving human being, etc., etc. Right, science-fiction fantasy. No connection to 21st Century American reality. We love these stories. Loved 'em since Scrooge. Hello. Look around. How did this movie succeed? Isn't this the country where Congress passed a law that made it illegal for the Federal Government to negotiate lower prescription drug prices? Where the biggest retail chain encourages its workers to apply for public assistance? Where everything...everything...is marketing. O.K., we just shifted the Congressional balance of power a few bodies a week or so ago. Don't get comfortable. This is no movie.

HYPE DOESN'T WORK?

2006-11-21T10:33:00.000-08:00

It doesn’t. I give you the recent mid-term election campaign. The Republican mix of quarter-truth slander in a TV ad blizzard. Didn’t work. The Democrats’ snarky attempts at advertising countermeasures and botched insults. Didn’t work. Didn’t even work on either party’s deep-core-base loyalists. All campaign propaganda was simply irrelevant static—always is when the citizenry is awake, alert and taking nourishment.

I give you the O.J. book flap. Didn’t work. There’s probably more to this, that'll emerge over the next few days. For example, how do African-Americans who celebrated O.J.’s acquittal feel about this project’s crash ‘n burn? But, for now, enjoy feeling righteously indignant, if you must.

Hype doesn’t work. We just think it does, because nobody, or too few of us, stand up and slap it down. For instance, hype’s working for Big Pharma because too few of us care to object to drug advertising’s replacement of the practice of medicine.

The illusion of hype’s effectiveness persists because nobody measures how intensely a particular campaign is being ignored. How do you prove a negative? For instance, it took three years for us to slap down the Iraq Affair, because we were ignoring the hype, instead of getting universally pissed off. How about a hype-ignore-ation index? How would we do that? Marketing departments try to measure even such ephemera as “awareness.” Why not ignorance? Surely Google can come up with something. Hype: to paraphrase Samuel Goldwyn, “Don’t even ignore it.”

Wikipedia: hyperbole

O.J.'S NON-CONFESSION. TOO MUCH EVEN FOR MURDOCH?

2006-11-20T17:27:00.000-08:00

Have we reached the point of diminishing returns for Outrage (capital O variety)? If the Emperor of News Corp. and Fox Television gets out of this kitchen, maybe we have, for a while. Predicting blossoming enlightenments is risky, however, so I'll back off. Hype is like magma; it expands, heats up and explodes, as opposed to melting into the earth. It's prudent to expect more, hotter, Outrageous eruptions, not fewer. But now that Rupert has blinked, can we expect them from the NC-Fox machine? Is Rupert mellowing?

LIGHTEN UP, DAVE.

2006-11-16T11:44:00.000-08:00

I think I've been taking my mission too seriously. I'm gonna have more fun. Why am I writing this? Because I looked at one of the Google searches you people use to look up information on the Cymbalta TV campaign and its insidious music. Here it is.

When I read what the bloggers are saying about Cymbalta's music, and other commercials, like the Abe Lincoln and beaver spot for Rozerem, I feel a lot better about how gullible people who use the Web are not. Like this one, for example.

I'm getting mostly hits from people looking up these and other pharma commercials. Dr. Jarvik's Lipitor campaign is probably the number two search I see on my hit counter. Keep looking. Keep talking about it. When everybody realizes drug ads don't make drugs work better, maybe they won't sell drugs either.

AFTERTHOUGHT ON MY LAST POST: DUH.

2006-11-13T09:06:00.000-08:00

Reading that post (below) now makes me feel a little foolish. Of course all that make-nice stuff, including flushing Rumsfeld, was political "tactics." I wonder if the news folk are reading last week's copy with the same reactions this morning. Rummy's removal derails Democrat hearings on the military. And what do you bet some "fresh ideas" will emerge before January. Who says the Rove-Cheney folks aren't agile. Not that I'm cynical, but Democrats are going to have to be more aggressive than before to avoid a flummoxing.

POST-ELECTION WASHINGTON: INSTANT HARMONY?

2006-11-12T09:10:00.000-08:00

Were you, like I, breathless at the sight of George Bush's post-election candor and sweet-talk? Before the end of the week he's having lunch with Nancy, Harry, and other former scum. And, bye-bye, Rummy. Whoosh! It's a new world. But wait. Josh Bolten, Presidential Chief of Staff, is telling George Stephanopolous, "Sure, absolutely, full speed ahead, victory is the President's objective in Iraq." In other words, what Cheney said just before election day. So, order the drapes, drink up the champagne, eat the pasta salad. But keep your guard up. Other than sending Bush and minions out with a new script, this administration hasn't had a soul transplant.

LUNESTA'S PILL PUSHING. YA SNOOZE, YA LOSE.

2006-11-03T19:08:00.000-08:00

It's called the Lunesta 7-Night Challenge. You can get a coupon, on the Web or in magazines, for seven free Lunesta tablets. It's one of the new breed of prescription anti-insomnia drugs. Anybody besides me feel creepy about this? Any physician out there been insulted by a patient handing you a coupon and asking if Lunesta's "right for him." Is it necessary to point out that this turns the practice of medicine on its head? Why is freebie marketing O.K. in the prescription pharmaceutical business? Ask your new Congressman or Senator if shutting this self-diagnosing-self-prescribing promotion game down is right for America.

One of the features of the Lunesta site is a cute animated "fact or fiction" quiz about insomnia causes, remedies and treatments, which confirms that warm milk often works. But, the quiz hastens to add, it isn't a cure, suggesting by pointing this out, without claiming it, that Lunesta could be one. High-quality weasel words. Well, Lunesta, and the rest of the new drugs, aren't cures for insomnia, either, according to the American Insomnia Association.

INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM, KOMO-TV STYLE.

2006-11-01T11:05:00.000-08:00

Seattle's a pretty good TV news town. There, I've satisfied my vestigial fairness doctrine urge. Weeks ago, October 8, to be exact (God, I love Google), the Seattle Times published an editorial about a failed city experiment -- placing slick, automated public toilet kiosks around downtown, hoping to get street people to clean up their acts. Seems the cybercans have become convenient privacy stations for other street pursuits. As of this morning, that editorial, and other token stories on the subject in other token media, ran at least three weeks ago, and are long dead and gone. But who sent out their crack "investigative" team to visit the toilet kiosks for the purpose of nabbing perps, in the act? Why, KOMO-TV, apparently now going for Cheesiest News Operation in the November Sweeps "Cheesies" awards competition. I saw a promo for their piece this morning -- plenty of quick cuts, fearlessly coiffed female reporter chasing assorted street folk, shouting uncharacteristically penetrating questions. "Is that crack you're blowing out of your mouth?" The promos, as you know, run many more cumulative minutes than the "package" runs in the newscast it's supposed to hype. KOMO's current positioning slogan: "Working 4 You!" It's the last locally-owned TV station in Seattle. In case you haven't noticed, local ownership means nothing in TV and radio. We can also retire the word, "investigative." In fact, while you're at it, scratch "news" from the broadcast operators' lexicon.

AND ANOTHER THING. SEND BARACK IN. (SEE BELOW.)

2006-11-01T10:48:00.000-08:00

He's fresh. He's hungry. No baggage. He's got a good brain and he still speaks from his heart. Send the handlers home. Here's the message. This is a Congressional election. You want things to start changing? Change faces in Congress. Is there a better example of the kind of legislator you want?

KERRY'S "BOTCHED JOKE."

2006-11-01T09:36:00.000-08:00

First, bring me the jerk who wrote a joke that, if botched, attacked the troops. Outahere. And the dolt who approved it. Oop, that would be John Kerry. "You know what I was trying to say..." doesn't get it. Yeah, maybe it's just as well he's canceled his next stop, not wishing to be a "distraction..." Whatever. Makes you wonder who really is smarter, Kerry or Bush. What the hell are you guys thinking, producing tricky "jokes" about a deadly war? Notice, Rovians don't make light. And notice, Bush learns his lines, and Rove never, never gives him lines he could "botch." I thought for a moment that Kerry had found his voice. But this was inevitable. I've got an idea. How about this: turn off the pissing contest, fire the quipsters, and state the facts--that is, just say the stuff Americans are already saying to each other.

WHY WE NEED GOOD NEWSPAPERS.

2006-10-19T06:51:00.000-07:00

The Seattle Times has been investigating court secrecy in the Seattle area. Today's paper (and site) leads with this account of how a court commissioner sealed the records of a potentially significant and novel lawsuit -- the family of a woman who died of ovarian cancer sued prestigious Virginia Mason Medical Center for failing to advise her to have ovarian surgery in light of her family's history of cancer, and "decades" of medical literature about genetic risk. She died at 42. That was five years ago. The court commissioner sealed the record and the settlement prevented the publishing of medical journal articles about it.

Of all the media companies chattering away in this major health sciences center, only the Seattle Times has investigated the local health industry. Or the courts, for that matter. Even our "best" TV station news operation, KING-TV, wins "awards" for mere litigation-safe muckraking, and devotes great chunks of its newscasts to "HealthLink" features sponsored in sweetheart advertising endorsement deals by the healthcare establishment institutions they frequently cover. KING's news department just got an Edward R. Murrow Award for "general excellence." Sure, they're "generally excellent." Unfortunately, Murrow Awards are doled out by the Radio and Television News Directors Association (RTNDA), with the help, presumably, of their news consultants, so they have little meaning -- there are only so many news directors to choose from for the award, and the truly excellent local TV journalism operations can be counted on fewer fingers every year. Getting the Murrow can't mean much to the good KING staffers, when KIRO-TV, the city's second cheesiest operation, got one. It's all grist for those incessant news promo spots, anyway.

In our current poisonous political and public affairs atmosphere, we need more truth-telling. We have more than enough entertainment. They say the newspaper business is in trouble. I'm rooting for it to thrive.

A SMALL REVISION. THANKS, PFIZER.

2006-10-18T22:01:00.000-07:00

I heard that. I heard the voice on a Lipitor TV commercial say it: "...Dr. Robert Jarvik, inventor of the Jarvik Artificial Heart..." Those spots used to call Jarvik the "inventor of the artificial heart." Which many believe is not true, as my readers and I have reported before. I looked at the Lipitor site. They haven't changed the claim there. I'll be watching. You, too?

WHO NEEDS THE F.D.A.?

2006-10-17T15:20:00.000-07:00

Every day, I learn something that makes me feel like a chump. Here I am, posting often about the evils of prescription drug marketing. Did I really think there aren't any prescription drugs that haven't been approved by the F.D.A.? This Bloomberg story, about some of the companies in the US that manufacture and market drugs without ever approaching the F.D.A., took my breath away. Some of these guys even buy listings in the PDR for their unapproved drugs. And send reps to call on docs. And, you know what, docs prescribe them. And insurance companies pay for them. You can write your own rant. I'm too tired.

ALZHEIMER'S; HERE'S ONE YOU WON'T SEE ON HEALTHWATCH.

2006-10-11T20:59:00.000-07:00

TV "Healthwatch," "Healthlink" -- and other syndicated short features generally health-clueless local TV anchors read to you every night -- stick with exciting "medical breakthroughs," or the latest liposuction technique. You have to read a newspaper or do your own health "watch" on the Web to get the bad news you need.

Here's a link to a major informational breakthrough-warning you won't see on local TV, published today, and reported here on NYTimes.com. The word is that a class of antipsychotic drugs that have been used to try to control the behavior of Alzheimer's patients mostly don't work, and may make people worse. Here's a key quote from a scientist from a company that makes one of the drugs in question:

“What the study does indicate is that this is a very sensitive population and that any treatment needs to be done with a lot of forethought and constant reevaluation” said Dr. Bruce J. Kinon, a Lilly psychiatrist.

The drugs that are the subject of the new study are not approved for use in the treatment of Alzheimer's, and their use is a practice known as prescribing "off label." I'll have to do some research. I don't understand why this practice is O.K. with the FDA. Or, the AMA, for that manner. But I'm just an ignorant lay person.

One more thing. If the treatment of this "sensitive population" should be performed with a lot of "forethought," why do drug companies advertise another class of Alzheimer's drug on TV? There is no cure for Alzheimer's, and the experiments in slowing it down are just getting started. Is a claim like this -- "Aricept may help..." (emphasis mine) -- enough to justify millions in advertising and the resulting pressure on doctors? Or are these companies exploiting family members? Drug advertising and marketing makes my flesh crawl.

INCOMPETENCE OR CONSPIRACY?

2006-10-10T09:52:00.000-07:00

As I predicted, the doctors are rising up against the FDA and the Pharmas. Two new studies and articles in prestigious medical journals, as reported here, have called for new legislation to fix the FDA's fractured system -- this key health agency is not protecting our health from unproven prescription medicines, folks. And, as you may recall reading on this blog, the AMA has already declared a kind of muted war on drug marketing and advertising. Write your representative. Better yet, elect a new one. Much of Congress depends on the drug companies' deep pockets for their campaigns, and the Bush administration consistently appoints administrative saboteurs to the bureaucracies, including the FDA. Look it up.

WORDS OF OUR TIMES.

2006-10-06T09:28:00.000-07:00

Bill Clinton gave intern a whole new meaning. Mark Foley did the same for flirt. And, in so many ways, George W. Bush defines torture. Imagine yourself living through the next two years. No wonder the marching types are marching.

Photo on 10/6 Seattle Times front page. The story, if you're checking in later.

GENES, ANTIDEPRESSANTS, AND THE HARD SELL.

2006-10-04T18:08:00.000-07:00

How does your doctor decide which antidepressant to prescribe? Has yours ever ordered a genetic screening before writing a 'script? Mine didn't.

A Korean study just published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that the condition of particular genes in seriously depressed patients apparently determined which antidepressants were effective in those patients. There was good reason to do this study. According to the study, 30% to 40% of initial depression treatment choices fail. If you want to wade through a little technical language, here's the University of Pennsylvania's MedPage report on the study -- I think it's readable, though it's meant for docs.

So, what'll it be? Cymbalta? Zoloft? Prozac? Celexa? Is your doc deciding based on who's selling her the hardest? Are you pushing for the one whose commercial music captivates you?

We could, I suppose, muscle our legislators to drain the FDA-Pharma multibillion-dollar drug marketing swamp. We could pressure our doctors to wake up and smell the hype, and be a little less quick with the prescription pad. But, in the short run, and the long, for that matter, the enemy is us. Wise up. Just say no to drug ads.

CYMBALTA MUSIC: IS IT SCHUMANN?

2006-09-21T12:16:00.000-07:00

The drama continues. I don't have an accurate count of the Internet searchers who've wondered what the music is on the Cymbalta TV commercial, but it's a lot. Several commenters to my posts on the subject have suggested that the theme was heard in "Sophie's Choice," the movie, but until now, nobody has identified an actual piece of classical music by name. This week, an anonymous commenter has suggested it's a rearrangement of Robert Schumann's "Kinderszenen [Scenes from Childhood] Op. 15 No. 1 that was played in "Sophie's Choice" by Nathan while sitting on the piano bench with Sophie." Well, it could be. I went here and listened, and it sure sounds like the "composer" of the TV music created something that sounds very much like Schumann's piano piece. There are other places to listen. Just Google "Schumann" and the title above. Unless there's another very similar piece of music out there, I think we've solved the riddle. Just remember why I started posting about this...music and other attention-getting devices have nothing whatever to do with which medicine is right for you.

LINK: Other dehype posts on Cymbalta.

What's new? If you've arrived at this post by searching for a subject, I invite you to see what I'm up to today. Click here to go to the top of the blog.

ONE-SHOT DEPRESSION CURE? OR SCIENTIFIC HYPE?

2006-08-09T09:30:00.000-07:00

TV News might get all steamy and call this a "medical breakthrough." Even though the research trial was conducted with only eighteen (18) severely, chronically depressed patients, including those who got the placebo.

The test involved giving (I repeat) severely depressed patients a carefully measured shot of ketamine, a commonly used anesthetic. The positive result came, said the lead investigator, Dr. Carlos A. Zarate of the U.S. Government's National Institute of Mental Health within two hours. (Here's how Medpage, an info service for doctors, covered the NIMH press release.)

Now, there are many qualifications and cautions to deliver with the usual miracle cure report, not the least of which is that this study involved a very small sample -- eighteen. But as this sort of news moves through the hyperactive--and highly commercial--health media network, those details will no doubt get lost amid rapid speech, small print and unfamiliar medical words.

And it's also likely to get lost in the investigating scientist's career-advancing hype:

Dr. Zarate said experimenting with novel approaches was crucial because the current crop of antidepressant drugs worked slowly and weakly, if at all, for millions of patients.

--NYTimes.com story

Is this true? Some studies upon which Dr. Zarate may be basing his brag, like this one, say things like this:

Although efficacy studies suggest equal potency among antidepressant treatments, their effectiveness in clinical practice appears more variable, particularly in that the newer antidepressants may be less effective in either more severe depression or the melancholic subtype of depression.

Again, they're talking about severe depression. but this study is getting publicity from the likes of ABC-TV, Fox News, and Forbes -- the latter for alert stock analysts, no doubt, who will not necessarily become severely depressed as a result of getting this news.

"Slowly and weakly" means that Prozac, Zoloft, Cymbalta and others take four to six weeks of daily doses, gradually ramped up over time for safety, to achieve effective levels of the drug in your blood in order to relieve depression.

[Full disclosure: About ten years ago, Zoloft relieved my own fairly mild depression after about six weeks, after I attended a depression screening event at a hospital auditorium, and my doc prescribed it without bothering to run blood tests on me--"I can either run tests or start treating you". Several years later a new doc had a hunch, ran tests and discovered my thyroid was underperforming, which probably triggered my depression. It was a time of intense marketing among competing drug companies, and the docs were cooperating, as they're wont to do--it's the way the system works. I'm happy I was helped. But it was expensive, and I've come to distrust the pharma-medical industrial complex. Zoloft cost me and my insurers a lot of money, when Synthroid (thyroid replacement), which costs pennies a pill, could have done the job. A blood test could have saved us thousands.]

Most interestingly, ketamine is a common enough brain drug to have made it to the street--it's known to be a popular "club drug." Chemical athletes love the side effects. Great, now the NIMH is injecting science into the mix. How much do you suppose the street price of this party popper will now jump?

Am I biased--over the top? I don't think so. Will you be asking your doctor if ketamine is right for you? How do you suppose we're going to get the pharma genie back in the phial, when FDA and NIMH are part of the marketing formula?

DRUG AD-INDUCED CONFUSION.

2006-07-25T20:17:00.000-07:00

The reason I started this blog was to try to keep advertising and marketing hype from misleading or confusing you.

If you could see the searches some people type into Google and other engines, you'd know there's a need for this.

In the interest in clearing up some of the bewilderment caused by direct-to-consumer drug advertising on television, here's a quick list of currently advertised prescription drugs, and the conditions they're marketed to treat:

1. Cymbalta -- advertised to treat depression, NOT Restless Legs Syndrome or prostate problems.

2. Requip -- advertised for Restless Legs Syndrome, NOT depression or prostate problems.

3. Avodart -- marketed as a remedy for complications of an enlarged prostate, NOT depression or Restless Legs Syndrome.

Presumably, the confusion created by advertising prescription drugs can be cleared up when you ask your doctor if the drug is right for you. So far as I know, physicians don't rely on television commercials to educate themselves on drugs or make diagnostic decisions.

[07/26/06 Afterthought: The links above take you to commercial Web sites owned by the respective drug companies. While they contain information, they're also closely managed marketing sites. For independent drug information sources, see my hype-free links in the right column.]

PEARLY PILLS PASS FDA. I'M NOT MAKING THIS UP.

2006-07-21T10:19:00.000-07:00

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved the use of "pearlescent pigments" to gussy up your prescription pills and potions. The Washington Post reports:

The pigments can produce sparkly metallic, satiny and shimmery finishes, as well as different hues of red and gold, depending partly on the color of the underlying drug.

Would I kid you?

Took them eight years to decide on this. And people tell me I'm not serious enough.

SLEEPING PILLS, A (AMBIEN) TO ZZZZZ (ROZEREM)

2006-07-18T13:27:00.000-07:00

What's Rozerem? It's the latest prescription sleep medicine, from Takeda, a Japanese pharma. They've started a $100-million ad campaign for it. Approved by the FDA a year ago, Rozerem is the first sleep med not to be classified as a controlled substance, that is, the manufacturer can say it doesn't make you dependent on it.

Interestingly, Takeda waited a year before starting direct-to-consumer advertising, using the time to "educate" doctors about the drug (free translation, "sell"). By the way, this is what the AMA is now demanding of the pharmaceutical industry and the FDA--a year's moratorium on advertising between approval of a new drug and its direct-to-consumer advertising. But, taking a year to blitz the docs with a thousand-person army of drug reps doesn't necessarily signal reform in pharma marketing tactics: Rozerem's "creative" TV ads feature "dream" characters of Abe Lincoln and a beaver, and target garden variety insomniacs, not sufferers of known diseases. As usual, a voice mutters the warnings at the end of the spot. Look at their Web site -- the centerpiece is a giant freeze-frame from the TV spot, and the side-effects warnings are a long scroll-down below the apparent page unit, unless you've got your browser set on "full screen." Weasel Web Design.

For me, the most jarring part of the Trib article is this:

"The companies have tried to pretend they [Ambien and Lunesta] are not addictive," said Dr. Sidney Wolfe, director of health research for consumer group Public Citizen. "The drug ads have created a much-expanded market so even people who do not have sleep disorders and could benefit from non-pharmacological [treatments] use them. And it's easier for doctors to just write out a prescription rather than take the time to figure out the causes for [their patients'] sleeplessness."

But, isn't this the whole purpose of direct-to-consumer prescription drug advertising -- to increase sales by pitching prescription drugs to people who may not be that sick, and might respond to cheap changes in diet and other habits?

Hey, doc, is it true? Would you rather write a prescription than make a diagnosis? Look at the numbers. TV advertising has taken prescription pharmaceutical sales to the stratosphere. Only doctors can authorize the sale of prescription drugs. What are we to believe about this system? Can some medical person help me out here?

As for you, Mr. and Ms. Consumer, are you so convinced that drugs are the instant fix for all your problems you're willing to believe that if it's advertised on TV and costs an arm and a leg, it's got to be good? As Joseph Heller wrote in Catch 22, "Every culprit a victim, every victim a culprit."

Update 08/11/06 - Somebody landed on this site after searching on "Why beaver on sleep medicine commercial?" or words to that effect. Isn't that the whole point? DN

LIPITOR, MOVIE MAGIC, DR. JARVIK AND HIS BODY DOUBLE, AND THE COMING M.D. REVOLT.

2006-07-07T18:47:00.000-07:00

Last week I followed a Google search link that brought one of you to my post on Lipitor's TV commercial starring Dr. Robert Jarvik, the heart pump inventor, who is apparently the first doctor to perform a paid endorsement for a prescription drug.

Not only did I learn that the spot was filmed on Washington state's Lake Crescent, on the Olympic Peninsula, but that a member of Seattle's Lake Washington Rowing Club was hired through a local casting agency to be the good doctor's body double for the heavy rowing of the commercial shoot. Because, though Robert Jarvik may be a cardiologist and an inventor, he apparently isn't a rower. You can see the talent agency's photos and chatter about the production on their site, and the body double's account in the LWRC's April newsletter. (Here's the auto-download link for the PDF--be warned: it's a big file.)

Just another day at the office for the advertising and commercial production industries--perfectly normal use of paid endorsement, state-of-the-art persuasion techniques and movie magic, in the service of perfectly legal marketing business. But, is it in your best interest to accept the resulting "impression" as health education?

Now, finally, medical professionals are beginning to call out the pharmas and the government on drug ads.

Lipitor, says Northwestern University medical ethicist Katie Watson, is one of the most expensive of the cholesterol-lowering drugs, intended for people who need high-dose treatment. There are many such drugs, and, now, much cheaper generic versions are on their way. But Pfizer, Lipitor's maker, is spending big on TV, in newspapers and magazines, and, presumably, in fees to Dr. Jarvik, to keep Lipitor the bestseller in the field, hoping you and the docs will overlook the fact that there's no evidence it's more effective than any other. Listen to Ms. Watson's entire June 28 NPR commentary on the subject.

The best news I've heard lately is the American Medical Association's new policy on direct-to-consumer drug advertising--read about it in the Orange County Register --the AMA's up to here with it. Maybe we'll hear more from the silent, drug-rep-beleaguered medicos.

But, what about you? What does Robert Jarvik rowing a shell on a mountain lake, or the Cymbalta "Depression Hurts" music, have to do with getting the safest, most effective, most cost effective treatment for what ails you? Shouldn't you be a little more skeptical? It's not education; it's Twenty-First Century sales pitching applied to the practice of medicine. Recognize drug advertising for what it is--selective, manipulative persuasion: hype. Talk sense to yourself--get non-commercial information, then ask your doctor for an uncoerced, scientifically supported, common sense judgment about what's right for you.

Oh, by the way...we may have an answer to the Cymbalta music question. See here.

[Past posts: Jarvik; Cymbalta.]