Joe Eszterhas Quotes
Meanwhile, politics is about getting a candidate in front of the public as a star, politics as rock'n'roll, politics as a movie.
Eszterhas, Joe. American Rhapsody. Knopf, 2000.
Ailes was the inventor of the "Video News Release", a deceptive practice which was so successful that politicians of all political stripes started using it. Then government agencies started promoting their programs using it. But soon private corporations adopted Ailes technique and made the Video News Release a mainstream advertising and public relations technique and by 1990, it had lost all ethical taints and was used throughout the world with very little of the old moral and ethical compunctions or stigma.
“Camels” and “Chesterfields” were the brand names of 2 of the very popular cigarettes of the time when the danger of cigarette smoking was not as well understood and a much higher proportion of the nation smoked.
Sinclair was a writer who had written about some of the worst scandals in American politics, leaned toward socialized democracy, and decided to run as a reform candidate in California where he lived. He won the Democratic primary easily even though he had no money, political experience, or backing. He terrified the Republicans who ran one of the dirtiest campaigns in American History to defeat him spending more money than in any election up to then including the Presidential elections. (for more details see {619613}) Sinclair lost, but it was close.
It was, but each subsequent Presidential election grew much commercial, more sophisticated, and more expensive.
Romney and his surrogates had more than usual difficulty with getting their facts right. Fact checking organizations would call them on this and in April of 2012, Romney ran a TV ad that was grossly wrong and misleading. When asked about the expose of the falsehood of the ad, Newhouse made this classic response. The reason this is an important quotation is that the statement drew much more critical attention than the false had or its classification as untrue did. Even President Obama made fun of it in his campaign speeches. See Martin Amis {631017} for a serious critique of the meaning of the quotation.
This point is taken seriously even today by all modern political campaigns. The “advance man” is a key staff member whose job is to arrange for a good turnout when the candidate appears. The numbers are important, and so is the makeup of the crowd—including the presence of local politicians and people of importance. His older brother was running for Consul—the highest elected office of the Roman Empire. The Handbook, was his advice to his brother as to how to conduct his campaign.
This is the earliest use of “spin” and “spin doctors” in a political context that we have found.
Many feel that this reality is one of the major factors that kept him from running for President despite the polls predicting that he could win. He was generally a very positive politicians.
The Johnny Carson Show was then the most popular late night TV show.
While this is generally true, there have been times where one candidate has been so unattractive, corrupt, or unsavory -- or was closely alighted with such an unpopular figure --that the opponent won without a message just concentrating on the negative aspects of the opponent.
József A. Eszterhás is a Hungarian-American writer. He wrote the screenplays for the films Flashdance, Jagged Edge, Basic Instinct and Showgirls. He has also written several books, including American Rhapsody, Crossbearer: A Memoir of Faith and an autobiography entitled Hollywood Animal.
