GOEBBELS COMES BACK AS A LESS-CHARISMATIC DON DRAPER.

I don't normally do a second post on Pimp Village Voice Column Mondays, but I found something I wanted to make sure was noted before we're all thrown into gulags. You may have seen that the Associated Press -- whose business is clarity of thought expressed by clarity of prose -- laid down standards for use of the term "alt-right" that make clear AP will not accept use of the term as the disguise for which neo-Nazi goons like Richard Spencer obviously intend it, and counseled editors thus:

Again, whenever “alt-right” is used in a story, be sure to include a definition: “an offshoot of conservatism mixing racism, white nationalism and populism,” or, more simply, “a white nationalist movement.

Enemies of clarity such as Jim Hoft of Gateway Pundit erupted as one would expect:

Don’t be fooled – The left is doing this so they can label all Trump supporters as racists. This enables hateful liberal reporters to label all Trump reporters as evil racists. The AP can go to hell.

So I guess Hoft will stick with the "Grammar & usage R for fags" stylebook he's been using all along.

Not causally related but very relevant is something CNN ran, by one Brad Todd, identified there as "a founding partner at OnMessage, Inc., an advertising agency where he has produced ads for Ron Johnson, Rick Scott, Bobby Jindal, and many others."

So, already, an obvious scumbag -- but one with an interesting Age of Trump angle:  He famously said on one of the talk shows that "voters take Donald Trump seriously but not literally, while journalists take him literally, but not seriously." So far as it goes it's an astute observation of the poetic sense of political rhetoric. But Todd wants to take it further:

Months later and on the far side of the election, the press is still taking Trump more literally and less seriously than voters do. The most recent case in point is the furor over his baseless claim on Twitter about voter fraud, that "millions of people who voted illegally" cost him the popular vote. It's the latest instance of the media buying into Trump's outrage-tweeting strategy. 

And journalists keep falling for it because they, like politicians, over-value words -- and they are now covering a politician who does not. President-elect Trump still takes the same cavalier approach to verbal description as he would in hawking a condo tower that's yet to be designed. And more than enough voters don't seem to mind.

Those of you who value words as -- well, as what they were meant for: a means of honestly communicating with your fellow man -- are just being silly and precious, says the adman: words are just a sales tool, something to put on a brochure with the pretty pictures and every bit as suitable for Photoshopping:

Trump has spent a career interacting with journalists, but as the first president never to serve in the military, the cabinet, or another public office before his election to the White House, he's never been immersed in the word culture that drives political journalism.

Translation: He can't read. Hey, but who cares! What's "word culture" got to do with leadership? And look at those chumps who can read and their childish concerns:

Journalists are conditioned to believe that words are the ultimate product, to be curated, sweated, grinded and polished. The profession slavishly follows the Associated Press Style Manual...

Boo! Hiss!

..which is hotly debated on every revision, to achieve industry-wide consensus on exactly which words are forbidden and which verbal shortcuts are allowed. Any exceptions to that manual come in the form of a style manual unique to each publication or network, a supplemental set of inviolable stone tablets.

You've heard this kind of talk before -- not so much from other admen, who (like David Ogilvy) are usually in favor of clearer communication, as from neo-reactionaries such as Mencius Moldbug and Rod Dreher, who denounce "The Cathedral" of people who maintain intellectual standards ("stone tablets") because they don't serve the racist revanchism in which Moldbug and Dreher believe and are therefore illegitimate. The only reason they can imagine anyone would pay close attention to words is to advance propaganda; the idea that anyone would value the symmetry of words and meanings for any higher purpose or pleasure eludes them, probably because (as their prose betrays) they take no such pleasures and their purpose is lower than shit.

Todd's pretty much the same way, philosophically -- he thinks you're only grinding and polishing words to peddle something, just like he does, see! -- but (thank heaven for small favors) he's not as addicted to spooky pseudo-mysticism as Moldbug and Dreher. He's a sunny salesman! And he's here to tell you, Mr. Gloomy Old-Fashioned Journalist, to get your head out of the clouds -- stop "writing endless columns on this or that flip-flop based on Trump's conflicting rhetoric," because you're "wasting the time" of readers -- "also known as 'customers'" -- who see Trump's words "differently than journalists do. They, or at least the members of his winning electoral coalition, see Trump not as a politician but as a businessman.... They may have met other real estate professionals in their own lives and they know better than to take the words of ad hoc marketing seriously."

In other words, it's all bullshit, and you shouldn't harsh the customers' mellow by trying to give them anything else:

Donald Trump's electoral coalition has shaken up American politics in ways few expected. Smart operatives in both parties are already trying to adapt practices and metrics to better suit the wave of change Trump rode. 

The Washington press corps, already suffering through a decade-long decline in viewer trust and consumption, would be foolish to not adapt as well. If the press covers Trump the way it covered prior presidents -- too literally -- it may find its own customers take journalism itself a lot less seriously.

[flaps hand at Mr. Smartypants Journalist] C'mon, get with it! Quit pretending you're better than flacks like me! Be a smart operative! Here are the talking points, now don't fuck things up by checking them against your precious "facts." Do you like your job?...

You know, I turned away from the Church many years ago, but I still can't get over the feeling that the Devil is trying us.

UPDATE. Todd's idea has caught on, at least in some crippled form, with one of the dimmer rightbloggers -- "Trump Punks Media With Claim Of 'Millions Of Illegal Votes.'," writes William Teach of Right Wing News. "Could Trump be correct? Probably not," admits Teach. But that's not important -- what's important is, Trump spurred a "Typical Media Freakout," which shows that "the media still do not get Donald Trump." Boo-yah!

Teach hasn't quote grasped the Tao, though -- he goes to the trouble of trying to explain Trump's bullshit:

But, hey, without an examination of the tallies in places like California and New York, how do we know that they didn’t have millions of illegal aliens, felons, people voting two or more times, and legal aliens voting?

Similarly, how do you know I wasn't kidnapped by aliens, and that these cops who claim I was driving 100 mph drunk aren't in on it? Without a major outer space exploration to check out my assertion, we'll just have to agree to disagree.

So Teach still has traces of oldthink in his system -- to go that extra mile, he has to accept that even dishonest explanations are unnecessary and may even be injurious; best to follow up only with chants of "U.S.A.!" or those bouquets of emojis, hashtags, misspellings, and conspiracy theories with which Trump followers respond to The Leader's tweets. From the evidence of his writing, Teach is not so devoted to "word culture" that he can't get with this program -- especially when he sees how much less effort it takes.