9 ms·

>Disney CEO Bob Iger is said to have ordered the retaliatory measure against the LA Times, and is also thought to be considering a 2020 presidential bid, which

• rplnt 9y ago
  And only the bidders who lost will have to pay!
• _jal 9y ago
  Let's just start selling the role outright. It would be more efficient, most likely lead to the same result, and avoiding the grating, bullshit horserace coverage for a year would make everyone's live better.
  • stale2002 9y ago
    This is a funny joke, but empirically not true as of this last election. Hillary massively out spent Trump.
    • mullen 9y ago
      Trump got several billion dollars in free coverage. No one would care about Trump if he was not Trump.
      • thaumaturgy 9y ago
        You are correct. He didn't spend a single dollar on television (or radio) advertising (http://fortune.com/2016/08/09/donald-trump-tv-ads-clinton/ http://fortune.com/2016/08/09/donald-trump-tv-ads-clinton/). He relied on tweets, controversial statements, and third parties for all of his advertising. This was mentioned several times by at least NPR near the end of the 2016 campaign cycle, as I recall.
        • magicalist 9y ago
          > He didn't spend a single dollar on television (or radio) advertising Before that August. He started spending after that.
      • Shivetya 9y ago
        the vast majority negative. what it really shows that it takes an incredible level of personal wealth and fame to beat the two party system and even then he had to usurp one of parties to do it. I have no problem with his wealth and fame, I have a problem of it being an example of how much it takes to break the stranglehold those two parties have on our system. worse they use people and wealth like his as the means to implement rules to prevent outsiders from rising
        • megaman22 9y ago
          They say there's no such thing as bad publicity...
      • wallace_f 9y ago
        Does it even matter, with respect to the problems with our plutocracy? Every election the same plutocrats win no matter what, for example: https://theintercept.com/2016/12/09/trump-makes-america-goldmans-again-maga/ https://theintercept.com/2016/12/09/trump-makes-america-gold...
        • tripplethrendo 9y ago
          Why shouldn't it anger a lot of people? Why can't we preserve America for Americans?
      • jeffdavis 9y ago
        I don't think that's intellectually honest. The last presidential election was a clear counterexample of the "money buys the presidency" narrative. After the fact you can always think of a reason that the counterexample is a special exception, and doesn't really invalidate a claim. Someone who likes Trump could just as easily call his campaign grassroots from an outsider who didn't try to use his vast wealth to buy the presidency, but instead made a strong message for the voters.
        • ConceptJunkie 9y ago
          The last election shows, among other things, that the media so grossly overplayed their hand that it backfired on them greatly, and Trump was there to take every advantage that was possible to take. Meanwhile, Clinton literally acted as if the election were merely a formality and coasted (although she spent a huge amount of money). I can say personally that the media's breathless spittle-flecked coverage of Trump did nothing to turn me off to him, and only improved my opinion of him. I did not vote for him in the primary and was angry when he ran, but by the time the general election came along, the idea inflicting schadenfreude on the media and left became incredibly appealing to me, and along with the fact that I would no sooner vote for Clinton than for Chairman Mao, and the fact that I wasn't going to throw away my vote, I pulled the lever for Trump.
          • jeffdavis 9y ago
            What you describe is similar to a heroic moment in a dystopian novel: the elites have already chosen for you, elimated all of your other reasonable options, left you with only one horrible alternative that you'd be a fool to exercise. But you, the protagonist, defy wisdom and reassert your free will by choosing the horrible option. Though your chance at heroism does place you in real risk of becoming a villian, in this case. I hope that doesn't happen.
            • ConceptJunkie 9y ago
              Voting in the general isn't about picking the perfect candidate. It's about picking the best candidate out of a limited selection. It's not even really a political decision but a game theory one. I am willing to vote for someone I don't like because he's infinitely preferable (or even somewhat preferable) to the alternative. That doesn't mean I own every bad thing Trump does. Like you said, I asserted my will and made a decision. I also know that I would face a lot of criticism, ridicule, and yes, hatred for expressing that truth (and I can already hear the chorus of, "But you deserve it!"... I'm not impressed ). Well, here it is. I voted for Trump and I'm glad I did.
    • eru 9y ago
      Trump had a real genius for getting free media attention (in return for giving the media good numbers of viewers with his antics).
      • ConceptJunkie 9y ago
        This is what so many people fail to grasp. Trump used some major judo on the media. They thought they were totally trashing him (and they were), but he leveraged the massive negative media attention to his benefit in a way I think the media and Democrats still largely don't understand. The biggest problem, I think, is that the media still think that people find them objective, when they are trusted at rates comparable to Congress' approval ratings. Trump tapped into this distrust and played the media like a fiddle, and in doing so, he was not only able to win a Republican primary that few people expected, but a general election that even fewer people expected.
        • ConceptJunkie 9y ago
          To put this more simply, when the media acts like the propaganda wing of the Democrat Party, they are only preaching to the choir (who already agree with them), and the ignorant, who are gullible enough to believe the media are objective. They aren't persuading anyone who is informed, unless they already agree with them.
      • lostlogin 9y ago
        It’s been a topic that’s has come up a few times - was it a tactic that was considered, or was it something that just happened and has benefitted him?
        • eru 9y ago
          That's a big question. Probably a bit of both---Trump has been playing the celebrity game for long enough to notice that any publicity is good publicity. But I'm by no means an expert, I'm not even American. And people who know more have been speculating about the exact extents of the two factors for a while.
      • 9y ago
    • jandrese 9y ago
      Only in official spending. Third parties aren't counted so it's a mostly meaningless measure. All it means is Hillary was worse at hiding the contributions to her campaign.
      • vostok 9y ago
        I'm sure it was a calculated decision rather than incompetence. She would have been burned at the stake long ago if she did anything not entirely above board.
        • jandrese 9y ago
          She was burned at the stake politically anyway, I'm not sure how much difference it would have made.
      • oh_sigh 9y ago
        Or that she legitimately spent way more money and it was spent poorly.
        • jandrese 9y ago
          Possible, although I am dubious of any measure of campaign spending that does not include PAC contributions.
    • IkmoIkmo 9y ago
      I don't see why you're being downvoted, it's true. There are some counter-arguments to make, of course. One of them is that this model is true in general, but not in every single case. Rather, it may be more useful to say that media attention for your story wins elections, and typically money is a good proxy in terms of the purchasing power to get your story out there. Whether that's via pure advertising, or financing community organisers, or the best PR, money is a solid proxy. And Trump was exceptional in that he had celebrity status and an incendiary message that didn't need much money to get attention, combined with an exceptional time of social media that magnifies incendiary messages very cheaply and buries nuance as nuance doesn't go viral. It'll remain to be seen if this will become the new model, or whether money will continue to be the best predictor of election outcomes. I think the model will change, but the latter statement will remain true. Of course, by vote-outcomes indeed her campaign (and you may say, her money) did win her more votes. So even this election could be viewed as business-as-usual, the Democrats and its leader got the most votes. Finally, there's lots of speculation about spending that aren't part of the official figures. We now have evidence that this is the case, with Russia spending in the order of millions on a divisive campaign, mostly against Hillary and in favour of her opponents (both Republican and Democrat. A bit like how Bush at one point ran a campaign for independents/greens, as they were most likely to steal away Democratic votes). With the level of support by Trump for cutting taxes for multinationals and the richest individuals in the country, as well as support from Russia, it wouldn't be surprising if they supported him outside of the official spending figures, either. There is evidence it happened, we're just unsure of the magnitude.
  • barrkel 9y ago
    There's a variant of this that's been studied: quadratic voting, but more in the context of corporate governance. It actually can have positive effects. http://ericposner.com/quadratic-voting/ http://ericposner.com/quadratic-voting/
  • kmc059000 9y ago
    But then what would the media have to talk about?
• banku_brougham 9y ago
  Reminds me of the short lived reign of the emperor who purchased his title. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Didius_Julianus https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Didius_Julianus
  • wl 9y ago
    Non-mobile link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Didius_Julianus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Didius_Julianus
  • gooseus 9y ago
    Ha, I specifically remember this as one of my favorite episodes from the History of Rome Podcast[0] by Michael Duncan (#98 in linked list[1]). Of some relevance is his new book that just came out, The Storm Before the Storm[2], which details the events that preceded the rise of Julius Caesar and paved the way for him to overthrow the republic. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_History_of_Rome_(podcast) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_History_of_Rome_(podcast) [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/ancientrome/comments/32lono/every_episode_of_the_history_of_rome_podcast_in/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ancientrome/comments/32lono/every_e... [2] https://www.amazon.com/Storm-Before-Beginning-Roman-Republic/dp/1610397215/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1510077003&sr=8-1&keywords=storm+before+the+storm https://www.amazon.com/Storm-Before-Beginning-Roman-Republic...
    • rhcom2 9y ago
      After two years of getting through the back catalog I'm almost done with The History of Rome. I highly, highly recommend to it anyone who likes history or Rome or just a good story.
      • gooseus 9y ago
        Oh man, I'm excited for you, I cried when I got to the end of THoR... you gonna continue with The History of Byzantium or Revolutions Podcast? I find Robin Pierson to be pretty good (THoB), but I find I can't stop listening to Duncan... I'll buy the audio book for Storm Before the Storms just to keep listening.
• porfirium 9y ago
  >Most money offered gets to be president. Didn't seem to work very well for Hillary... (I know this sounds like a cheap shot, but it completely breaks down your argument)
  • ceejayoz 9y ago
    $2B in free media attention helped a bit, I'd imagine. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/16/upshot/measuring-donald-trumps-mammoth-advantage-in-free-media.html https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/16/upshot/measuring-donald-t...
    • mnx 9y ago
      Oh hey are we under a post about a guy running for president that he didn't pay for?
    • rs999gti 9y ago
      Was Clinton blocked from social media? She could have polluted Twitter and the news with sound bites that forced analysis and coverage of her, which is what Trump did. He played the media and Twitter and got free advertising. She had as much accessibility but didn't use it to her advantage and thus ended up losing.
      • notyourday 9y ago
        Nah. She hired the smartest people in a room, the ones that laughted at Trumps digital operation. There was an article in 2016 that compared Clinton's Silicone Valley staffed machine with a pile of Macbook carrying geeks, big data, mobile developers vs. that sleepy dude in a corner. A few google queries can't seem to find it but i will dig it out later. It was that priceless. The SV circle jerk worked about as well as expected.
    • eru 9y ago
      It does. But that free media attention did not come out of Trump's campaign chest. So porfirium's argument stands.
• tzakrajs 9y ago
  And the federal government finances all of the bidding.
• rs999gti 9y ago
  > Most money offered gets to be president. But even that doesn't work. In 2016 for the US presidency, Hillary Clinton's campaign had $790M USD versus Donald Trump's $408M USD. She had double the money 'to buy the presidency' and she still lost. https://www.opensecrets.org/pres16 https://www.opensecrets.org/pres16
  • s73ver_ 9y ago
    Does that count the amount of free press Trump received during the campaign?
    • biomcgary 9y ago
      Natural disasters also get a lot of free press, if the ratings are high enough.
      • Chaebixi 9y ago
        Natural disasters rely exclusively on word-of-mouth advertising. Political campaigns? not so much.
    • FourPostWonder 9y ago
      He didn't receive free press. His campaign hacked the ever living shit out of the progressive moral supremacism that drives modern narratives. You call it free press now, but during the election, you most likely called it "Haha! Look at this stupid buffoon! Oh please yes, reveal how dumb he is, this will totally help Hilary!" Pride before the fall.
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    • anonacct37 9y ago
      Don't know why you're getting downvoted. Trump was the best thing that ever happened to the media and they didn't stop talking about his antics for the entire election. He made them alot of money in clicks, and that's what journalism is about. Ultimate responsibility maybe lies somewhere else, but there's plenty of blame to go around and they emphatically deserve some of it.
• deleted 9y ago
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• davidf18 9y ago
  Bob Iger donated $2 million to Florida Sen Marc Rubio. Rubio is one of the "Gang of Eight" in the Senate that wants to triple H1-B. http://www.breitbart.com/immigration/2016/02/28/displaced-disney-workers-shame-on-you-marco-rubio-we-stand-with-trump/ http://www.breitbart.com/immigration/2016/02/28/displaced-di... Interestingly, MSM, rarely speaks of Trump denouncing H1-B visa abuse. Iger wants to depress H1-B wages and already has replaced 250 American Disney IT workers with H1-B Visa Indians. It is for reasons like this that Trump won.