1 of 13

Write now Article Tools

Page 5 of 6

that the governments actions and policies were beginning to interfere with the populations ability to accumulate wealth and participate in truly "free" enterprise, those who had long anticipated a back lash against big business and their accumulation of wealth and power turned on the oven burners and began to seep steam from a rapidly heating public relations kettle.

In the chapter titled "Getting to Yes," Thomas Frank, in his book One Market Under God, insists that the market populism of the 1990's was not a grassroots movement of organized people attempting to level the playing field for working people and entrepreneurs, but was in fact a highly organized public relations campaign, launched by corporate executives and politicians, in anticipation of a backlash against the elitists and the consolidation of their wealth. Frank attempts to support this by proving that the major players in the "populist market movement" were not market outsiders looking for a way to tear down conventional business models or politicians working to emerge business from suffocating government regulation, but that they were in fact tools and willing participants in a plot to keep the wealth and power amassed in the 50 years prior to the 90's stabilized.

In the 1990's companies accelerated their public relations strategies and used emotional branding to connect themselves with their employees. They turned upper management loose to mingle with the regular working folks. Corporations referred to their employees as teams and even as family. Those who spoke out with authority against the elitist government and the liberal media, such as radio personality Rush Limbaugh, quickly drew the attention of Americans feeling the invented binds of liberal control. Limbaugh said he represented "middle Americas growing rejection of elites," which included "the medical elites, the legal elites, the education elites" (Frank, 43) and the ideas these groups promoted through the liberal media. These new free enterprise celebrities explained quite clearly that not only did government have a strangle hold on us, but on our business as well. While Limbaugh was a celebrated Republican, (in fact so celebrated he was made an honorary member of congress during the Newt Gingrich heydays of the early 1990's) opposition to government involvement in the regulation of business was being spit from both sides of the political fence. Co-conspirators, such as John Barlow (former lyricist for the Grateful Dead) declared

• << previous page
• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4
• 5
• 6
• next page >>

Add your voice

Know something about Learning the art of advertising?
We want to hear your view. Write now!