There are so many amazing things about the Obama campaign — including incomparable media savvy. Douglas Rushkoff wrote an insightful post about “brand Obama” that I consider to be one of the reasons why I supported Hillary Clinton — turning America around from the mess left by the Bush White House is going to be a lot of really hard work:

The danger in Brand Obama is that our focus on a heroic or mythic presidency could easily distract us from the hard work and reality of creating change ourselves. “Hard working” democrats loved listening to Hilary Clinton talk about how hard she was going to work for them because it made it seem like the president is in position to stay up all night and, through the extra effort, get food on our tables or money in our bank accounts. It just doesn’t work that way, and Obama’s refusal to, say, cut gas taxes over the summer to cater to this mentality speaks volumes.

Via Douglas Rushkoff

I know, Coercion could become the book that people read in order to understand and look into the belly of the beast, advertising and Madison Avenue.

Well, I guess you can read into it that way, but the truth is, Rushkoff is very sympathetic and if nothing else does not believe this coercion is a grand conspiracy — it seems to him that its pretty pell mell and spontaneous. Insidious and clever, yes; but, nefarious? No!

Coercion is a successful Re-focus of Media Virus. read Coercion first, and its a good thing.

I read Media Virus second and see some overlap, but its not a bad thing. This is not an example of either/or but both. Get both books. They are amazing foil for the entire 90s.

I know more about the people behind the PR and the Madison Avenue mistique than I ever believed.

If you enjoy memetics and if you believe that there are Genes and there are Memes, you should check out this book.

If you are a paranoid, then you might consider this book to be an excellent portal into the lack of conspiracy there is and that there are but a few geniuses in this game and that they don’t do anything to “us” but they play a game of Memetics Judo with us, and we are completely vulnerable.

And if you don’t know what I am on about, then you need to read this book. Or come to memes.org and read this book.