Seven Step Plan for Media Domination and Opponent Destruction

It sickens me how easily politicians fall for the traps that other politicians set for them. It’s a little stunning that these leaders haven’t caught on to how this game is played, so I’ll lay it out for them. This is the quick and easy Seven Step Plan for Media Domination and Opponent Destruction:

• Step One

  Select the strongest person on the other side – and target him for destruction. Attempt to destroy his credibility in the mainstream media, so that reporters will be skeptical of him and eventually his own party will disown him.

• Step Two

  Comb through all of the speeches of the target. Fine one to two sentences that can be taken out of context and beat to death. Portray these few, isolated statements as extreme.

• Step Three

  Repeat Step Two eight hundred times until three things happen: 1. Every time, the target is mentioned, the audience will think of only the charges you have repeated ad nauseam. 2. The conversation is no longer on the topic at hand but about what your target said about the topic. 3. Your target sounds like an extremist simply because you have repeated the charge enough times.

• Step Four

  Co-opt the mainstream media into doing your dirty work. If you keep talking about one issue long enough (e.g., Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, what Howard Dean has said), the mainstream media will feel like it’s an important issue “everyone” is talking about and will be “forced” to cover it.

• Step Five

  Get the targets own party or allies to turn on him by admitting – after lengthy and ceaseless questioning from the mainstream media, as well as, the conservative talkers – that what was said was not right or prudent. And then after this is repeated a couple of hundred times, even your opponents will start to believe that your charges against the target have a lot of validity.

• Step Six

  Get your opponents to take down their own people for fear that they will keep getting asked the same annoying, senseless questions from you and your proxies. And the reason they will give is the one you conveniently planted – the target has become a distraction.

• Step Seven

  Laugh as hard and as long as humanly possible that you just got the media, who you call liberal, and your political opponents to take down their own man because he had become a distraction when in fact the whole point of the exercise was to distract the media and your opponents from the real issue. Pat yourself on the back for killing two birds with one stone – destroying your target while avoiding the real issue – and making your opponents look weak and ineffectual. Laugh one more time.

• By Cenk Uygur

  King of New Media, Host of The Young Turks (http://www.youtube.com/theyoungturks), MSNBC Contributor Excerpt from: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/cenk-uygur/seven-step-plan-for-media_b_2236.html