sisu

His major coup "was getting women to smoke"

"With no phone to call for help, I used my bobsled push training to break out," quipped Olympian Johnny Quinn this morning, adding his voice to the latest Twitter trending topic, #SochiProblems. We love Quinn's All-American, can-do (pun intended) solution to post-Soviet lavatory logistical problems being encoutered by athletes and visitors alike at the winter Olympics sponsored by former KGB officer Vladimir Putin's Russia.

We're no fan of moral-equivalency guru Noam Chomsky's. But what he had to say a few years back about public relations as propaganda in fancy dress rings true and sheds light on the recent controversy over that Coca-Cola Super Bowl ad with its dreamy cinematography of doe-eyed children singing "America the Beautiful" in seven languages. All sugary innocence. Why did it make us feel as though the good folks at Coke were rubbing our noses in it? Michael Patrick Leahy at Breitbart explains:

The ad instantly provoked a deeply polarized response on social media, with conservatives ripping the ad for promoting multiculturalism with a deeply patriotic anthem. 

On the multiculti side, there were smug, self-congratulatory sermons scolding melting-pot types like ourselves for xenophobic/racist views we do not hold:

At this point, we shouldn’t be shocked by the intolerance of some towards immigrants and other cultures.  But who could’ve predicted the outrage we saw over the Coca-Cola commercial that aired during last night’s Super Bowl?!

Mosaicist vs assimilationist:

And to be honest, the notion of “E pluribus unum” is more relevant today than it was in 1782 because of our nation’s evolving demographics…

In the years to come, it will be a learning experience for all [of] us as our nation evolves into an even more beautiful mosaic.

Eye of the beholder, but even among allies there is dispute. When we learned this morning that Coke had belatedly added E pluribus unum to the opening frames of the commercial, we twittered our delight. But some on our side of the aisle were calling the whole thing a distraction, protesting that "making a fuss" over the Coke ad was distracting social-media voices from their primary task of holding Republican leaders' feet to the fire over Obama & Company's "comprehensive immigration" campaign:

I'm all for adding #EPluribusUnum to anything but I can't see making a fuss about a coke ad in the first place @SissyWillis @Drudge_Report

— Peter Ingemi (@DaTechGuyblog) February 8, 2014

Far more important to keep the pressure on @SpeakerBoehner than on coke in terms of the issue @mtranquilnight @SissyWillis @DRUDGE_REPORT

— Peter Ingemi (@DaTechGuyblog) February 8, 2014

Which brings us back to Chomsky and Edward Bernays and the title of this post. Chomsky writes of Bernays:

His major coup, the one that really propelled him into fame in the late 1920s, was getting women to smoke. Women didn't smoke in those days and he ran huge campaigns for Chesterfield. You know all the techniques—models and movie stars with cigarettes coming out of their mouths and that kind of thing. He got enormous praise for that. So he became a leading figure of the industry, and his book was the real manual.

Similarly, those charming hyphenated-American children are trying to get LoFo (low information) Super Bowl viewers to absorb Coke's amnesty agenda:

The controversy surrounding Coca-Cola's Super Bowl ad has focused public attention on the company's pro-amnesty agenda. With the majority of its revenue coming from its international business, the company has long been known for its globalist rather than American world view.

As Andrew Breitbart famously tried to teach conservatives, culture is upstream of politics.

Update:

@mtranquilnight Me too. Tried to broach the subject among friends the other day, and no one was interested :)@DaTechGuyblog

— Sissy Willis (@SissyWillis) February 8, 2014

As Arizona goes, so goes the nation? Ask Massachusetts.

Don't tread Fed on me. Arizona Black Rattlesnake (above) is a fitting symbol for Arizona's widely unread immigration law: "When threatened, rattlesnakes will often rattle their tails, producing a loud, dry rattling sound meant to warn the threat away."

Scott Brown may be disappointing a lot of his supporters by going RINO in recent U.S. Senate votes, but the Brown Effect is in full swing stateside in Taxachusetts. We just got wind of this from Barney Frank challenger Sean Bielat on Twitter:          

Mass, Senate passes crackdown on illegal immigrants.

With one lawmaker citing President Lincoln's respect for the rule of law, the Massachusetts Senate passed a far-reaching crackdown this afternoon on illegal immigrants and those who would hire them, going further, senators said, than any immigration bill proposed over the past five years …

Democrats had resisted such a sweeping proposal, but spent last evening negotiating today’s measure, shortly after a new polled showed 84 percent of the liberal-leaning state’s voters supported tough immigration rules barring state services to illegal immigrants.

"The measure comes weeks after immigration measures failed in the House, and amid heightened debate over illegal immigration fueled by the state's election season and Arizona's passage in April of the toughest immigration law in the nation," reports the Globe [A fine job of reporting, we must say. Not a whiff of Bush bashing.]:

Thursday's Senate amendment would also authorize the state attorney general's office to broker an agreement with federal authorities to help enforce immigration law. That would be a stark departure for Attorney General Martha Coakley, who has increased outreach to immigrants, encouraging them to file employment complaints, regardless of their legal status. Scores of immigrants whose bosses allegedly failed to pay their wages have turned to her for help in recent years.

The Brown Effect segues into the Arizona Governor Jan Brewer Effect?

Related: "MSNBC's 'A Divided Nation' Ignores Conservatives, Champions Immigration Overhaul."

Update: Michele Malkin's "Buzzworthy" link and Memeorandum discussion.

Update II: Instalanche! This story has legs.

Update III: Maggie's links!

Crossposted at Riehl World View and Liberty Pundits.