Malcolm Gladwell Unmasked: A Look Into the Life & Work of America’s Most Successful Propagandist
Im necessarily parasitic in a way. I have done well as a parasite. But Im still a parasite.
Malcolm Gladwell
In the vast ecosystem of corporate shills, which one is the most effective? Propaganda works best when it is not perceived as propaganda: nuance, obfuscation, distraction, suggestion, the subtle introduction of doubtthese are more effective in the long run than shotgun blasts of lies. The master of this approach is Malcolm Gladwell.
Malcolm Gladwell is the New Yorkers leading essayist and bestselling author. Time magazine named Gladwell one of the worlds 100 most influential people. His books sell copies in the millions, and he is in hot demand as one of the nations top public intellectual and pop gurus. Gladwell plays his role as a disinterested public intellectual like few others, right down to the frizzy hairdo and smock-y getups. His political aloofness, high-brow contrarianism and constant challenges to popular wisdom are all part of his shtick.
But beneath Malcolm Gladwells cleverly-crafted ambiguity, beneath the branded facade, one finds, with surprising ease, a common huckster on the take. I say surprising ease because its all out there on the public record.
As this article will demonstrate, Gladwell has shilled for Big Tobacco, Pharma and defended Enron-style financial fraud, all while earning hundreds of thousands of dollars as a corporate speaker, sometimes from the same companies and industries that he covers as a journalist.
Malcolm Gladwell is a one-man branding and distribution pipeline for valuable corporate messages, constructed on the publics gullibility in trusting his probity and intellectual honesty in the pages of Americas most important weekly magazine, The New Yorker, and other highly prominent media outlets.
Early Ultra-Conservative Training
Perhaps Americans would be less shocked by Malcolm Gladwells journalistic corruption if they were aware of his background. Gladwell was trained up in the same corporate-funded network of training and education institutes and outfits responsible for churning out the likes of Michelle Malkin, convicted criminal James OKeefe, Dinesh DSouza and countless other GOP corporate activists. The difference: Unlike Gladwell, they rarely hid their ideological willingness to take cash in exchange for promoting the corporate rights agenda.
While a student at the University of Toronto, Gladwells admiration for Ronald Reagan led him into conservative activist circles. In 1982, while still an undergrad, he completed a 12-week training course at the National Journalism Center, a corporate-funded program created to counter the medias alleged anti-business bias by molding college kids into corporate-friendly journalist-operatives and helping them infiltrate top-tier news media organizations. To quote Philip Morris, a major supporter of the National Journalism Center, its mission was to train budding journalists in free market political and economic principles. Over the years the National Journalism Center has produced hundreds of pro-business news media moles, including top-tier conservative talent like Ann Coulter and former Wall Street Journal columnist and editorial board member John Fund.
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/06/malcolm-gladwell-unmasked-a-look-into-the-life-work-of-americas-most-successful-propagandist.html
Andrew67
(30 posts)[IMG][/IMG]Thanks for your post.
Blue_Tires
(55,445 posts)Scuba
(53,475 posts)Blue_Tires
(55,445 posts)A conservative co-worker tried to steer me towards "Outliers" back when it was the hot seller... Flipping through it in the bookstore, it just seemed specious and empty to me somehow, so I never pulled the trigger on it... Good to know now my suspicion was correct...
Ichingcarpenter
(36,988 posts)this forum isn't as fast moving, its meant for intellectual digestion.
Response to Ichingcarpenter (Original post)
devilgrrl This message was self-deleted by its author.
Uncle Joe
(58,366 posts)Thanks for the thread, Ichingcarpenter.