“President
Obama defended his year-old economic stimulus package on Wednesday, as
Republicans and Democrats took to the Internet and the airwaves to wage a
furious partisan battle over whether the bill was a monumental waste of
taxpayer money or had rescued the economy from catastrophe....
“At
a time when both parties are talking about the virtues of working together, the
anniversary touched off a bitter dispute between them, with each using the day
to write its own political narrative around the bill....”
Thursday, in The New York Times
Here at the National Narrative Institute, it’s all about the story.
Let
others get bogged down in the complicated details of complicated issues. Let
others try to sift through forests of studies, and mountains of reports. At the
National Narrative Institute, we’ve taken a different path.
A
better path.
Our
highly trained staff of highly skilled narrative-crafters can put aside complexity,
and zero in on what really matters: a simple tale, with easy-to-recognize good
guys and bad guys, and a moral that can fit into a fortune cookie. In today’s
24/7 world, after all, who has time for more?
The
National Narrative Institute was built for these times -- and for today’s
over-extended citizenry, drowning in a sea of “convenience” gadgets and
struggling to keep up with an information overload unlike any the world has
ever seen. These desperate Americans know that they can turn to us for the help
they need.
It
might be our take on the economic-stimulus package -- just the latest
worse-than-useless Washington boondoggle from a federal government that’s gone
completely out of control. Unless, of course, it’s a bold and necessary step
that finally put the brakes on a financial crisis that was sliding us ever
closer to a second Great Depression, and set the country on the road to robust
recovery.
We
say: absolutely. The professional, non-partisan NNI staff can produce both of these stories -- one tailor-made for Republicans
and one, equally compelling, for Democrats -- and never lose so much as a
minute’s sleep. This is our mission. This is what we do.
Or
take the war on terror -- another failure of nerve by a wimpy president who
puts our country’s very survival at risk by hamstringing his generals,
apologizing for extremists and reading terrorists their Miranda rights. Unless,
of course, it’s a subtle-yet-aggressive campaign that, under this same
president’s wise and firm leadership, has already scored significant victories
against those who would do us harm, even as it reaches out to forge new
alliances to further protect America’s security.
Obama
as sellout? Obama as savior? Take your pick. We can sell it flat, and we can
sell it round.
We
can even sell it hot or cold. Global warming is the greatest fraud ever
perpetrated on the planet, with granola-chomping environmentalists and
data-distorting “scientists” happy to band together to jam a giant stick into
the gears of industry, no matter how many hardworking people are thrown out of
their jobs and into the streets.
Unless,
of course, the polar ice caps really are melting, threatening life as we know it -- and all because greedy
businessmen insist on spewing deadly chemicals into our air and water in
single-minded pursuit of corporate profit, no matter the societal costs.
Choose
A. Or choose B. Go with whichever NNI narrative you prefer. Whichever narrative
makes the hard things simple, and explains everything about your world in
partisan, easy-to-swallow soundbites.
We
could go on: health-care reform, Wall Street regulation, even the concept of
bipartisanship itself! There are multiple narratives for each of these topics
and so many others -- simple, and appealing, and in total conflict. Google the
word “narrative,” and the nearly 50 million results will tell you all you need
to know: Narrative is now. Narrative is the future.
That’s
our story, and we’re sticking to it.
# # #
Rick Horowitz is a syndicated columnist. You can write to him at rickhoro@execpc.com.
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