The Rule of the Phallus

[You know what they say about men who need big guns and fast cars, don’t you?]

I’m not actually going to write about the Bond phenomenon; I just wanted to write “phallus.”

What I thought was really interesting throughout this intro/chapter was Rutherford’s use of marketing terms for the Iraq war. In the intro, he called the war a form of “infotainment…a commodity, something that was consumed by millions of people via the media.” It’s true, and it was smart of the Pentagon and the newsrooms to recognize and “co-produce” its marketing. So the rest of us are the “consumers,” lapping it all up (or spitting it out).

In Chapter 1, Rutherford explains what marketing does on a basic level. It makes us want something. We all bought iPods, but now there’re these super-cute, super-convenient, super-trendy Minis, and suddenly we’re just not satisfied—we need a Mini! On a more Rutherford level, suddenly there’s this bad guy and this axis of evil. We can’t sit around waiting for weapons of mass destruction to pop up—we need to do something about it—our national brand-name is at stake.

“Advertising remains the most visible way to advance an agenda,” says Rutherford, which the Pentagon and the newsrooms set about marketing. They had a branded product (national security), a strategy (marketing to “direct behavior”), the retailers (politicians), and the consumers (everyone who watches 4 or more hours of TV a day-good lord!). The rest is making history.

P.S. Rutherford used the pronoun “she” instead of the classic “he” on page 11. I just know we’re going to be friends…