Archive: Opinions

I can tell from the volume of press releases that the campaign for New York Governor is heating up.  I have mixed feelings about these releases.  In general I find partisan notices irritating.  Governor Andrew Cuomo regularly sends partisan emails that his folks opted me into.  I do want to know about substantive efforts and accomplishments of our elected officials, but I am unsettled by strongly partisan statements that don't really address solutions to problems New Yorkers face.  Blaming president Trump may be the political soup du jour, but it doesn't really accomplish anything.

After Cuomo I guess I get a lot of notifications from green Party candidate Howie Hawkins.  But when former 'Sex and the City' star Cynthia Nixon entered the race she won the political emails volume race hands down.  It is only 2pm as I write this, and I have received at least four emails from her campaign so far today.  There is a barrage each day.

Considering that there are three democrats, two Republicans, and three third-party candidates vying for the Governor's chair I suppose I will be inundated with still more annoying emails.  I am often opted in for email blasts without my knowledge or consent.  I have long been a supporter of opt-in email.  And just about everything else, for that matter -- I don't want to be bothered unless I decide I do, in which case it is not a bother.  Naturally cranky on the topic of excessive email, I am resentful when someone opts me in, but I understand it is a way, especially for politicians, to get their message out to journalists.  So I am reservedly OK with it in these cases.

My question is, once they have opted me in for their emails, do they really think irritating me is going to motivate me to get their message out?  Perhaps the Nixon campaign could consider an aggregate email instead of multiple blasts each day?  Because my conundrum is this: I do think it is important to know what is happening in the campaign, especially if candidates are going to come here.  But a lot of what I am receiving is redundant and/or irrelevant to my beat.  I struggle with whether or not I should click 'unsubscribe'.  I am sorely tempted, though, so far I have not done it.

Some politicians are better than others at interfacing with the press.  The master was former New York State Senator Mike Nozzolio, who was the slickest politician I have ever met, yet had a way about him that made him human and personable.  I rarely saw him without his photographer, and his press releases were optimized for press use.  The least masterful come from Assemblywoman Barbara Lifton, whose releases are often in unusable form, and most of which laud some letter she has written rather than actual accomplishments all the other elected politicians like to tell the press about.  But at least they are about issues she cares about.

Call me crazy in this era of fake news, opinion, and loud-mouthed pundits, but I look for announcements of solid accomplishments that actually help people as I consider what goes into an issue.  I do want to know what candidates stand for and what they will actually do, if elected.  But I don't care what they think or say about their opponents.  Obviously they don't agree with them, or they wouldn't be running.

On a side note, I also have no patience for the sob stories and exclamations by judges and contestants on talent shows like American Idol or The Voice or America's Got Talent.  'It means the world to me' got old immediately.  A lot of contestants say 'This is my last chance at a music career'.  It's not, unless they decide to quit.  Interestingly many who didn't win have bigger careers after the competitions than some of the winners.  The contest wasn't their last chance.

And most irritating is when the judges whine that eliminating contestants is 'so hard'.  No it's not, and even if it is they are getting seven-figure salaries to do it.  It's a contest.  There is only one winner.  They are way overpaid to eliminate contestants.  Get over it!  I like these shows for the singing, the actual accomplishments of the contestants.  Unfortunately there is more whining than singing.  Sometimes they even truncate the performances to get more 'poor me, boohoo' tearful utterances into the allotted time, often repeating whines from previous episodes.

Political missives have the same problem.  It is harder for challengers to point to solid accomplishments that incumbents, because, let's face it - they're not yet in office where they can accomplish something.  But they can point to their accomplishments that they think show voters why they show what they could accomplish, given the chance.  They should limit their releases, and concentrate on that.

How politicians send their news to reporters is the 'back stage' of real stories that may come from their news, so it is not even on the radar of most people.  Nobody cares about the guy dressed in black who runs on stage to place a mic stand during the break.  But the thing people do care about, the performance, is ruined if that mic stand guy doesn't put it in the right place.  And effective news releases do impact how or even whether their news gets out.  So, for the most part, annoying irascible journalists is not a good idea.

Or to put it another way, a marketing guru once told me that if I wanted my products reviewed i should submit a press release that read exactly like a news story a journalist would write.  That would increase my chances that it would be published, or used in some way because editors are busy just getting the next issue out, so the less work it takes to get your message out, the better the chance it will be chosen.  At the time I never expected to be an editor, but being on the other side of that now, I see his point.

That was going to be the last paragraph, but on re-reading it I thought about elected officials, more than you might imagine, who have told me they love the job but hate politics and campaigning.  Being good at politics doesn't necessarily mean a candidate will be good at the job, or vice versa.  But politics is the way they get those jobs, so it is important to learn to be good at it even if you hate it.  And not to whine about it, which seems unprofessional, if not unrealistic.

Otherwise really bad officials are elected because they are really good politicians.  Four words in support of that: Washington, District of Columbia.

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