Yes It Is, It’s True: America getting ‘bright-sided’ too often

“I’m sitting here in Iraq. And I wish my head had eyeballs in the back.

It’s a bummer that my Hummer isn’t armored to a T

To show us your support you spent a dollar ninety-three… a dollar ninety-three.

Oh, stick magnetic ribbons on your SUV, show your apathy, and get off scot free.”

— The Asylum Street Spankers

Barbara Ehrenreich, author of “Nickeled and Dimed,” also wrote a book called “Bright-Sided,” in which she maintained that too many well-meaning public relations campaigns do nothing to help the cause they trumpet and sometimes do more harm than good.

One of the finest examples in recent times was the “Support Our Troops” magnetic ribbons so many people bought to demonstrate their patriotism. Just about the only one who benefitted from that campaign was the ribbon manufacturer. It certainly didn’t really help the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I recall back in 1982 when a group of local businessmen in Albion, noting the troubled economic times, started a group called “We Care” in hopes of rallying people in the community. It did nothing to stop the bleeding.

A year later the City of Albion and Albion schools had a contest for the best slogan to promote the town. The junior high principal won with “An Honest Slice of Life.” But slogans and public relations campaigns did nothing to forestall the inevitable. Albion now doesn’t have a high school and the city is a small shell of what it used to be.

Later in the 1980s came the War on Drugs, with Drug Abuse Resistance Education (DARE) and Nancy Reagan’s “Just Say No” program. Though well intentioned, they all were abject failures. Drug abuse problems continued and even worsened.

All of these examples were public relations campaigns to “raise awareness,” which they did, but they did not make a dent in the problems they attempted to solve.

Ehrenreich, in “Bright-Sided,” took aim at the very popular programs on behalf of breast cancer, insisting they did little for victims, but perhaps did a lot for public relations firms.

I noticed Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette’s “OK2Say” program is coming to Wayland next week in hopes of tackling the school bullying issue. I predict it will be about as successful as the previously mentioned campaigns. The reason is that too many of the program’s sponsors have fundamental misunderstanding of the problem, just like they did with drugs.

Too many people have been shown to fail to recognize bullying, just as Frank Zappa said so long ago about his fans: “Those kids wouldn’t know good music if came up to them and bit ‘em on the ass.”

At least 40 percent of American adults support the most famous bully of our time, Donald Trump, in the 2016 presidential election. This is not to mention the massive admiration so many have for athletes who disrespect or beat up their wives or who practice dog fighting for fun and profit. We have a propensity toward worshipping at the altar of violence rather than appreciating intelligence and grace.

Bullying seems to be hard wired in American culture and it is manifested in our new national pastime — football. Too many of us don’t just want to win the game, we want to humiliate the opponent. And compromising with our political opponents is a sign of weakness,

Public relations campaigns that on the surface seem to be harmless and promote public awareness, but are guilty of lack of understanding the issue, are destined for the dust bin of ideas along with “Just Say No,” “We Care,” “Gun-free Zone,””Drug-free Zone” or “An Honest Slice of Life.”