Benjamin Webb is a wannabe tyrant, why public relations is viewed badly and the BBC is crazy

Dear Benjamin Webb of Deliberate PR, as per the BBC,

The reason why PR executives have such a bad reputation is because everyone knows they exist entirely to manipulate people.  Which is what your article is - sheer manipulation, trying to pretend that their job isn't to make us pay too much for shit we do not need is somehow for the good of society.  Which is bullshit and we mostly know it, even as we continue to be addicted to it.

It does not matter how many times manipulative PR fuckwits such as yourself assert that mass media puts the powers in the hands of the majority.  Nonsense.  The majority has no say whatsoever in what advertisements are thrust upon it.  No one says to me, "Hey, Chris, what do you want to see on that billboard?"  A small group of rich, mostly white guys (such as yourself) in offices in places like New York and London decide what advertisements we see, that all of us see.  They do not poll us for our opinions, they shape their advertisements to manipulate us for the purposes of greater profit for their clients.  We know this.

Benjy even quotes Edward Bernays, who said in his book, okay, this is it's real title, I'm not making this up, and Bernays is considered the inventor of modern advertising . . . the book's name is Propaganda, and Bernays writes, "the conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country."

(This is not taken out of context.  Bernays says this stuff all the time, about how it's the duty of rich guys to manipulate public opinion for their own good.)

Benjy goes say that Bernays didn't consider this corrosive to society.  Well, that's the problem.  Sure, Bernays applied it to helping the NAACP but the idea that it's okay to have a group of people out there who form an "invisible government" isn't an anti-democratic idea is the problem because it is massively, intrusively and obviously anti-democratic.  That Bernays, himself, used it for good doesn't mean it's a good idea to have a shadow government manipulating the masses and there are, of course, TONS of examples of PR being used malevolently.  Because I don't like bringing up the Nazis so much, though any discussion about PR and shaping political consciousness is truncated without talking about Goebbels (whom, I note, you do not mention, Benjy), I feel no trouble at all in bringing up the Iraqi War, which was sold to the American people using big Madison Avenue PR firms, based on lies and fear-mongering. 

Basically anyone can come up with their own examples of how PR leeches manipulate people because it is the common experience of people living in industrialized nations to be bombarded with a constant stream of propaganda, er, I mean, PR.  How can one say that the PR firms that are selling us lies about, say, global climate change aren't the enemies of democracy simply because there are other firms saying the exact opposite?  That just makes you mercenaries, which is a real insult - that you'll do anything for money, no matter how destructive.

Then this thick-witted moron says, okay, again, I'm not making this shit up, "If anything, PR now needs to go back into the shadows, which probably sounds more sinister than intended." 

Here's a hint, Benjy, if you end your paragraph admitting that sounds fucked up, there's a pretty good chance that it is, in fact, fucked up.  It sounds exactly as sinister as it is and your failure to realize this is a giant part of the problem.

Benjamin Webb, the thrust of your article is this - stripped of all it's manipulation and ego.  You say that advertising should return to the shadows to better implement Bernays' desire to form a hidden, unseen government that directs democracy, and you say that modern technology will help PR guys do this.  Yes, exactly, that is why we hate you.

As to the BBC, well, if this is a subversive attempt to show what a terrible group of people PR people are, good work!  I don't think that, though.  You're not, precisely, a subversive paper.

So, in the more likely event that this is serious, shame on you.  Seriously.  What editor reads this and goes, "He has a good point.  Maybe we should throw out democracy and give our government into the shadowy tyranny of PR flacks."  It's a position that is so stupid, so crazy and bizarre and grotesque, that . . . well, okay, it is of a piece with the other stuff you write.  Touche.

But, still an example of why editors are fucking jokes if this sort of thing passes muster at what is thought to be one of the best news agencies in the world.  Just absolutely bizarre and shocking, except it is also of a piece with their clumsy editorial policy of cowardice.

Johny Hendricks wants to make GSP "exciting", ignores reality

I know that the odds are with Hendricks in a way that they haven't been with a fighter, against GSP, since BJ Penn.  And with Weidman's victory over Silva, well, I'm sure that's added a heady air of optimism for Johny Hendricks and Alexander Gustafsson.  It's proof that these dudes aren't invincible.

That said, Hendricks has a big, big uphill battle.  The battle comes on two fronts.  The first is that he's fighting Georges St-Pierre and the second is that he's fighting Georges St-Pierre.

The problem is that GSP isn't like Hendricks other opponents in terms of technique.  There is probably no fighter in the UFC who is as technical in so many areas as GSP.  The guy has all the core strengths of MMA down at an expert level. 

I hope that Hendricks is spewing BS when he says stuff like all he wants to do against GSP is punch him in the face.  Because that's the plan of a moron and if he does that, GSP will handle him like a child.  Confidence is great, but taking your opponent's skills likely is just arrogance.

The second problem with fighting GSP will be when the cage door closes and he's in there against GSP.  I think the real difference between GSP and Hendricks is that GSP will fight a very smart fight.  You listen to one of his strategy guys, John Danaher, and he talks about how it's reductive to just say, "Oh, this guy's jujitsu is better than this other guy's, or his striking is better".  He talks about how they train for key transitional states and develop strategies for them.

Johny Hendricks has several key transitional states, shall we say.  Well, two.  In particular, he uses the threat of a takedown to cover for his crude striking technique.  This was in particular evidence in the Hendricks-Condit fight.  Pretty much every time Condit started to get off on his striking, Hendricks took the fight to the mat.  He couldn't hold it there, but he took Condit down time after time, which nerfed Condit's superior striking and opened the door for Hendricks to land strikes of his own - which he would not have otherwise been able to do.  The other key transitional state is Hendricks ability to cover distance to connect with an overhand right.

However, that's pretty much the catalog of his skills.  When being outstruck, take a person to the mat, and use the hesitation caused by his ability to take people down to use his ability to cover distance to connect with the right.

This is not a bad strategy.  It is, furthermore, a strategy that has been employed successfully by one of GSP's former opponents, Josh Koscheck.  It a great style . . . but styles make fights and Hendricks doesn't have a great track record against people with good takedown defenses.  He got a split decision against Koscheck and Mike Pierce and he lost to Rick Story.  Sure, he KO'd Fitch - but that has the air of a fluke, it happened in 12 seconds.  But, in general, he's struggled with wrestlers.

He has not, of course, fought an MMA wrestler of GSP's ability, because GSP has the best MMA wrestling skillset with the possible exception of Jon Jones.  GSP has a great takedown defense.  He's not going to be worried about Hendricks ability to take him down.  So one of the key transitional areas for Hendricks to win is going to be nullified by GSP's fantastic takedown defense.  Which leaves Hendricks ability to cover distance with the overhand right . . . and we know what GSP's defense against that is going to be.  He's going to jab.

If Hendricks goes in there thinking he can just re-fight the same fight he used against Condit, Koscheck, Pierce, etc., on GSP, that ignores the differences in the skillset that GSP has.  If he tries to fight the same fight - which, to be honest, he probably will because he always fights the same fight - he will likely find his offense stifled by GSP's command of those key transitional states, that GSP will have answers for the questions that Hendricks poses.

Which is the real crunch time for people who fight GSP.  It's the same dilemma that fighters have faced since GSP's striking has gotten really good, since after his defeat to Serra.  A fighter is very likely going to find themselves in a situation where the regular tools they use to win fights don't work.  Nick Diaz was not able to employ his rolling style of BJJ to grab an arm or leg to transition into a submission or sweep while GSP's control of distance nullified Diaz's boxing.  Condit was only briefly able to use his striking effectively against GSP.  Shields couldn't use his submission game and only showed as well as he did because of five pretty flagrant eye pokes that the ref did not see.  Koscheck could not close to land his overhand right or take GSP down.  Alves so feared GSP's shot that he did not aggressively pursue his leg kicks.

All of these fighters - with the momentary exception of Condit when he got the head kick against Georges - shut down when they realized how little they could do to him.  They withdrew into their shells and did not aggressively pursue an offensive strategy.  And waiting for GSP to make a mistake is, generally, an exercise in futility.

Hendricks is going to have to face that when the cage door closes.  He'll come at GSP for a little bit but he'll get his takedowns stuffed, he'll get jabbed when he tries to close the distance and there's a real good chance he will get taken down.  Then he will realize that nothing he has done in the past will work.  He needs to change things up, right then, right there.

A few fighters can do this - Jones showed it in his fights against both Machida and Evans.  I think Weidman has it, too, the ability to change the context of the fight into one that favors your abilities - Weidman headbutted Silva's hand!  How about that as a way to show your contempt for Anderson Silva's striking.  Dominick Cruz can do it, too.  But it's rare and Hendricks hasn't shown any abilities in that area.  He has one fight.  He fights that one fight.  And it's a good fight and if GSP wasn't there, it might be enough to make him a champion for a long time.  But the same could have been said of Jon Fitch.  Fitch fought a good fight and he was very good at fighting that fight.  He was on an 8 fight winning streak before GSP beat him, and then he had a five fight winning streak before his career kinna fell apart.  But since it was the same fight, when he got into the cage with Georges, Georges just hit him like a train.  There's a really good chance that Hendricks is going to be hit by a train, too, because a guy who fights one fight is like a gift to GSP.

And when Hendricks realizes this, there's a really good chance he won't "make GSP exciting" (though I would characterize it more as, "Hendricks won't make Hendricks exciting") as he clams up and his offense flags due to his inability to deal with the multifacted nature of GSP's skillset.  He'll stall and GSP will have to carry the fight and it's really hard to finish a guy when all he wants to do is make it out of the round standing.

MMA Junkie's "Twitter Mailbag" and the strategies of Anderson Silva

Ben Fowlkes over at hardly ever says anything even vaguely intelligent, but he brought up a point about the Silva-Weidman fight.  It's not a good point, but it is certainly a point.

People like me asserted that Silva held his hands down and clowned because Silva thought it was the best way to win.  It wasn't arrogance, but a strategem, one that Silva had used in the past quite successfully.

Fowlkes rejoinder was, on MMA Junkie's July 11th Twitter mailbag, is that it had to be arrogance because Silva could have no doubt employed other strategies against Weidman.  Silva tried this strategy, it didn't work, it clearly wasn't working, so to keep doing it was arrogance.

A few points.  The fight was barely six minutes long.  Something like two-and-a-half of those minutes were Weidman in total top domination.  Silva had barely three minutes of striking time.  My first rejoinder to Fowlkes would be that's not a lot of time to do something.  It isn't like Silva said, "Oh, this didn't work, I'll try this other thing, instead!"  It was more, like, "I'll clown him, HOLY SHIT I'M UNCONSCIOUS!"

Second, well, most fighters have only got a few effective strategies.  Silva has four.

1.  Striking from the outside.  Silva is a really good striker, very accurate and with KO power.  On the down side, he's not very aggressive and prefers to counterpunch.

2.  Striking from the outside plus clowning.  When a fighter won't engage aggressively, Silva taunts them into striking.

3.  Muay Thai clinch.  Silva had murderous knees.

4.  Bottom game Brazilian jiu jitsu that he employs when he's been taken down.

He has a fifth, ineffective strategy:

5. Jazz hands.

In his effective strategies, he tried three of them against Weidman.  He came out, in the first, in his usual stance.  He did not clown.  Weidman took him down.  Then Silva tried his bottom game BJJ.  Weidman was having none of that and utterly controlled Silva, passing his guard pretty easily.  Then, after Silva got out of a pretty rough spot with a kneebar, he got up and employed the striking plus clowning.

It's been a while since Silva has seriously gone for the plum clinch at all.  I'm not sure why he's gotten away from it, but he has.  However, it was the only common strategy Silva had left, though trying it with a wrestler wouldn't be the smartest move in his career, either.

I grant that the strategy that Silva committed the most to was the clowning.  But he did it for around three minutes.

The hands down strategy has the very good advantage for Silva of having his hands, right there, to push away an attempted takedown, too.  I think that was the primary reason Silva did it - because, no, he couldn't think of another way to win.  He has four effective strategies.  He tried outside striking but his raised hands left his legs too vulnerable to the shoot.  His BJJ was trivial compared to Weidman's top control.  Clinching with a wrestler is just asking to get taken down, and it isn't something Silva does, anymore.

I don't imagine that Fowlkes will read this, but I ask him: what is this magical new thing that Silva would do, that he hasn't done in 38 fights?  Is he really learning new techniques, especially when those four strategies have been enough for him to dominate middleweight?  I grant that his style has shifted, from the aggressive style typical of Chute Boxe fighters to one of the purest counterstrikers in MMA, but the development was reasonably slow.  It wasn't like he just tossed out the aggressive plum clinch and developed jazz hands, it was a progression, it was incremental.

In short, there was no reason to imagine that Silva would come into the Weidman fight with a hot new strategy.  He did come in with a modest revision of his hands down, clowning strategy - he's much better as using that to counter takedowns, which he also did against Sonnen in the second round of their second fight.  Part of that incremental change was an even more outrageous clowning than we've seen in the past, but it wasn't a tidal change in his style.  It was fairly vintage Silva, really.  I think it's facile to say that Silva had lots of options and it was his arrogance that made him choose that one.  I think he really thought it was the best way to win the fight, better than his other traditional strategies, because they had already failed.

I admit that Silva didn't test them very hard, but he tested none of them very hard, not even the clowning, because Weidman beat him so fast.

I suppose that is the structure of the piece, though.  "Twitter Mailbag".  What you do is take 300 characters that someone else has written and devote as much space as you want on a forum where you're the one in charge to refute those 300 characters.  It makes it very easy to appear clever when the person could neither fully develop their point in the first place due to Twitter's character limitations while you can respond at length in a forum where you're the authority figure.

Bad news story of the day: MMA Underground's "Is the outrage over Cyborg really about aesthetics?"

In just bad news reporting, MMA Underground has an article that is titled "Is the outrage over Cyborg really about aesthetics?"  It mentions how Cris Cyborg seems to be excortiated for steroid use in a way that many other male fighters aren't.  He mentions how the most popular women's fighters - Gina Carano and now Ronda Rousey - are attractive as if it's relevant.  It is not.

But . . . what makes the article horrible isn't that it wonders if Cris Cyborg is being discriminated due to comparisons with prettier fighters.  What the article does is talk about how, y'know, when men are caught for steroid use it doesn't effect their popularity.

The question asked isn't if Cyborg is being discriminated against because she's not pretty but if she's being discriminated against because she's a woman.  Not because she's a not a pretty woman, but more because she fails to satisfy the criteria that most men have for "womanhood".

The answer to that is, "Well, duh, yeah."

A deeper analysis would talk about how men like to define acceptable womanhood and Cyborg has always been a contentious fighter because she destroys male stereotypes about what a woman should look like and how a woman should be.  The idea that a woman should be as physically powerful as a man, more than most men, with the kind of aggression in a fight that one associates with someone like Wanderlei Silva . . . well, that's disturbing to a lot of men.  That she then totally fails to court any particular image of conventional womanhood is doubly troubling - which is why male fight fans embrace fighters like Rousey and Carano, because while they fight, they still "look like women".  They don't challenge as many stereotypes about what a woman should "be", or, more precisely, what a man thinks a woman should be.

So when this unrepentant physical woman fighter, incredibly strong, not just for a woman but period, who has the kind of aggression we associate with the most terrifying fighters, who then goes on to reject most of the forms of womanhood - she doesn't try to go around pretty, she walks around pretty much exactly like any elite male athlete might go, lots of t-shirts and comfortable shoes, sexist men look for a reason to hate her.  Her steriods bounce merely gave them that rationale.  They can say she's bad for the sport, she's a cheat, so forth and so on, even when they're far less interested in condemning male fighters for the same misdeeds (much less the discussion about testosterone replacement therapy, where men can legally acquire anabolic steroids!).

The question isn't if Cris Cyborg is discriminated vis-a-vis other women.  It's simply how much she's being discriminated due to sexist bullshit.  (Right answer: a lot.)

So, bad article!  Bad!

Little known and never enforced MMA rule against foul and abusive language

There's been a lot of hay made over whether Anderson Silva was "disrespectful" of Chris Weidman.  I've argued, and I think pretty well, that, yeah, that Silva disrespected Weidman but as an intentional ploy.  That his hands down wasn't so much a sign of arrogance, but an attempt to drawn Weidman into a striking match where Silva thought he'd have the advantage.  But, without doubt, mocking your opponent openly is pretty disrespectful and it isn't the first time that Silva has done it.

However, MMA's rules are not particularly well enforced.  Unknown to almost everyone, including, it appears, both MMA referees and the president of the UFC, is a rule that says, using abusive language in the fenced ring or fighting area is a foul. 

I don't know what Silva said.  Vitor Belfort didn't like it, but he didn't specify and I don't speak Portuguese.  I do, however, speak English and a bunch of fighters use abusive language in the cage.  I'm lookin' at you, Diaz brothers.  They do it openly.  Just watch their fights and even though you can't see them, it doesn't take that much lip reading to see them calling their opponents pussies, bitches, punks, faggots and various other swear words, like fuck, that are generally regarded as abusive.  I don't know if Silva used abusive language - though it certainly looked like he did - but I do know that MMA . . . ignores it's own rules in this regard with great regularity.

More importantly than the question of whether or not Silva was disrespectful of Weidman, there's the issue of whether his behavior in that fight, and fights past, qualifies as a foul.  I'm pretty sure that could be determined.

For my own part, I don't really care if fighters swear at each other.  I find it slightly distasteful but I don't think it's a big deal.  However, what I hate is when rules are enforced selectively and we have the idiocy of seeing the president of the biggest MMA organization in the world pretending he doesn't know what "respect" is in the context of martial arts.  If there's a rule, enforce it.  If you don't want it to be a rule, take it out.  While you're at it, allow knee strikes to the heads of downed opponents.  That'll also clear up a bunch of messes and be awesome.

More BBC nonsense - their inability to understand what "murder" is

The BBC has a story, "Leaked report reveals Pakistan failures on Bin Laden", that says something everyone knows - a lot of people in Pakistan helped protect Bin Laden.  Duh.

But one of the things they say is, "A version of the report leaked to al-Jazeera says the killing of Bin Laden by US forces was a 'criminal act of murder' ordered by the US president."

Well, yes, when you send in your special forces into a country we are supposed to be allies with and those people then shoot an old man dead, yes, that's a criminal act of murder.  That's just fact.  It doesn't matter of it's Bin Laden or a sweet little old lady - the US President ordered troops into a country we are supposed to be allied with and they killed someone.  The designation of "enemy combatant" - even were it not a farcical term - does not give Obama the legal right to order executions in a foreign country with whom we are at peace.  What the US did is, indisputably, a criminal act of murder if you're actually bothering to go by the normal standards of international law.

(If you don't see that, do a little thought experiement and imagine how outraged people in the US would be if China send commandos into Nebraska where they then killed a murderer of Chinese people.  We wouldn't care if the guy was guilty.  It would be an intolerable violation of our sovereignty.  Everyone knows that China has no right to send soldiers into the United States to kill people, no matter who that person is, no matter if the Chinese government had designated that person an enemy of the people.  Just because Pakistan can't retaliate doesn't change the law.  It was just as illegal and immoral for us to kill Bin Laden in Pakistan as it would be for Chinese soldiers to kill an admittedly guilty person on US soil.)

The inability of newspapers to say things that are obvious and true is quite amazing.

BBC headline: "Egyptian interim leader calls for calm". Translation: "Forget the coup that happened and accept your new overlords".

The language of newspapers is, to me, fascinating.  So, the Egyptian Freedom and Justice Party, with nearly half the seats in the Egyptian Parliament, "has accused the army of staging a coup".  To me, that's fascinating.  The BBC isn't calling the coup a coup, it's just reporting that some people in Egypt are calling it a coup.  Why the hesitation to call a spade a spade?  When the army tosses a constitution in the garbage, arrests a legally elected head-of-state and then puts their own stooge in power, that's a coup.  That's pretty much the dictionary definition of a coup.  But they can't call it that, they merely "report" that people in Egypt are calling it a coup.

Then, in a move that stunned, well, it didn't stun me, the Egyptian army committed a massacre.  But the BBC asks, "Who fired first?"  How about this, BBC, who fucking cares?  Even if the official story is true and the protesters tried to charge machinegun nests to overcome the Presidential Guard barracks - where the deposed leader of Egypt was reputed to be staying - the army is still the bad guys because the committed a coup!  That fact, that illegal, constitution destroying fact, justifies action against the tyrants who deposed a legally elected leader.  Even if the army was attacked, by fighting back against people moving to secure the legal President of Egypt merely worsens their crimes.  That they shot kids in the process is just icing on the cake.

The the absurdity increases.  There are just layers of newspeak going on.  The White House has said it is not aligned with any political movement in Egypt but cutting military aid to Egypt is not in US interests.  So . . . America isn't supporting any political movement, just the Egyptian army . . . ?  It's bafflingly stupid. As statements go it's literally self-contradictory, it literally contradicts itself in the same statement, but the BBC does not deign to notice the absurdity of what the White House said or what it reported.

And this is one of the most respected new sources in the world!  But they refuse to use common language to describe events, they dutifully report on things that make absolutely no sense without also reporting that it makes no fucking sense.  That Washington is spewing out statements that make no sense is, itself, a story, guys!  It's a story that Washington is lying, saying one thing ("We don't support any political group in Egypt!") while doing another ("Giving weapons to the very army that performed the coup.").  That's relevant, but unreported.

It's fascinating and black humor all at the same time.