women

Better to use formula than risk preventing your next pregnancy by breastfeedingWilliam Saletan wrote a tongue-in-cheek letter to U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt. In it, he commends HHS's proposal to allow pharmacists and other health workers to refuse to "facilitate any abortifacient chemical or activity." Saletan writes, "I commend the language of the draft, which would define abortion as 'any of the various procedures -- including the prescription, dispensing and administration of any drug or the performance of any procedure or any other action -- that results in the termination of the life of a human being in utero between conception and natural birth, whether before or after implantation.'" But he suggests that the proposal doesn't go far enough. Why not add breastfeeding, which "like oral contraception ... alters a woman's hormonal balance, thereby suppressing ovulation, fertilization, and, theoretically, implantation." He adds, "As research uncovers additional causes of miscarriage or preimplantation embryo loss, I look forward to further legislation against caffeine consumption, exercise, and other abortifacient activities among premenopausal women."

Ads from groups weighing in on the U.S. presidential campaign "have begun getting sharper and more numerous," reports NPR's "All Things Considered." The conservative pro-war group Vets for Freedom has already spent $1.5 million on ads in such "key presidential states" as Michigan, Ohio, New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Virginia, with plans to "spend exponentially more." Their ads show military veterans supporting Senator John McCain's stance on Iraq, claiming, "The surge worked." Ads from the AFL-CIO labor union also feature veterans, who express respect for McCain's war record while questioning his plan "to keep spending $10 billion a month in Iraq." Religious groups are also getting into the act. The Chicago-based political action committee Matthew 25 Network is supporting Senator Barack Obama with ads on Christian radio stations, which tend to draw conservative listeners. On the other side, the Christian Defense Council is distributing a poster that calls Obama the "abortion president."

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved Merck's human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine Gardasil for the U.S. market in June 2006. As CMD previously reported at length, Merck launched an aggressive PR and advertising campaign to support Gardasil, even before the FDA approval, aware that GlaxoSmithKline had a competing vaccine in the wings. But GSK's Cervarix vaccine has hit snags in the U.S. In December, GSK was told that the FDA would not approve the application without further information. While recent guesses put a Cervarix entry into the U.S. market in 2009, The Financial Times is now reporting that "GSK said it had decided to await completion of a pivotal clinical trial to be filed with the US regulator during the first half of next year." This will push FDA approval well into 2010. Cervarix has been approved for sale in 67 countries and the BBC recently reported that the U.K. has chosen Cervarix over Gardasil for its HPV vaccination program.

Listen to this week's edition of the "Weekly Radio Spin," the Center for Media and Democracy's audio report on the stories behind the news. This week, we look at the nuclear industry's largesse, Merck's marketing and cigarettes for kids. In "Six Degrees of Spin and Fakin'," how is secondhand smoke like an uncurbed dog? The Weekly Radio Spin is freely available for personal and broadcast use. Podcasters can subscribe to the XML feed on www.prwatch.org/audio or via iTunes. If you air the Weekly Radio Spin on your radio station, please email us at editor@prwatch.org to let us know. Thanks!

The Corn Refiners Association launched an 18-month, $20 to $30 million public relations and advertising campaign "to convince consumers that HFCS [high-fructose corn syrup] isn't the evil it has been made out to be." The industry group is running ads in major newspapers -- under the banner "time for a little food for thought" -- that say HFCS has the "same natural sweeteners as table sugar and honey." The campaign, which was created by the Omnicom Group firm DDB, also includes television and online ads and "phone and in-person conversations with influential mommy bloggers." The Corn Refiners Association "has been trying to counter the bad publicity around HFCS since 2004," but concluded it "could no longer afford to rely on simple grass-roots marketing tactics such as talking with nutritionists and doctors." Major food and beverage producers, such as Kraft, are now promoting products as HFCS-free. The American Medical Association recently concluded that HFCS "doesn't appear to contribute more to obesity than other caloric sweeteners," but called for "further independent research."

You've heard the term "greenwashing." It refers to corporations that try to appear "green" without reducing their negative impact on the environment.

Since 2002, the group Breast Cancer Action has promoted its "Think Before You Pink" campaign. It's fighting "pinkwashing," which is when corporations try to boost sales by associating their products with the fight against breast cancer. Pinkwashing is a form of slacktivism -- a campaign that makes people feel like they're helping solve a problem, while they're actually doing more to boost corporate profits. Pinkwashing has been around for a while, but is now reaching almost unbelievable levels.

On June 7, the anti-abortion groups American Life League (ALL) and Pharmacists for Life launched a new national campaign called "Protest the Pill Day 08: The Pill Kills Babies." Their goal is to convince American women to stop using oral contraceptives, which they believe kill people. June 7 marks the anniversary of the landmark 1965 Supreme Court ruling Griswold v. Connecticut, which made it legal for married couples to use contraceptives. The shift to opposing contraceptives significantly broadens the agenda of anti-abortion groups. ALL also opposes use of intrauterine devices, emergency contraception and health insurance coverage of contraceptives. The group plans to organize protests in 18 states.

If producers anticipated that the new movie "Sex and the City" might be a marketing bonanza, it did not disappoint. Vanity Fair magazine sent two reporters to view the movie and count the number of promotional products that appeared on-screen, including any blatantly-mentioned brand names. The movie mentioned no fewer than 26 different clothing and accessory designers, eight stores and services, seven gadgets (including Carrie's Apple computer, an iPhone and a Blackberry), seven publications, seven drinks and snacks, five pharmacy products (like shampoo and moisturizer) and eight places or conveyances (like American Airlines, Mercedes-Benz and the Four Seasons Hotel). The movie in fact proved to be such a prominent vehicle for advertising that a New Line Cinema executive dubbed it the "Super Bowl for women."

Recently while browsing the Web I came across UrbanDictionary.com, which is sort of a wiki of contemporary slang. I found some of the newer words listed there amusing, like "hobosexual" (the opposite of metrosexual; someone who cares little about their looks), "consumerican," ("a particularly American brand of consumerism"), and "wikidemia" ("an academic work passed off as scholarly yet researched entirely on Wikipedia").

Then I came across a word that put me into a more thoughtful zone: "slacktivism."

"Slacktivism" (alternative spelling "slactivism") is a fusion of the words "slacker" and "activism," and UrbanDicationary.com defines it as "the act of participating in obviously pointless activities as an expedient alternative to actually expending effort to fix a problem." It refers to ersatz acts that people perform that they have somehow come to believe are full of meaning, like slapping a magnetic ribbon on your car to "support the troops," wearing a colored rubber wristband to "fight cancer," or refusing to buy gasoline on a certain day to protest high gas prices, instead of, say, actually changing your lifestyle to use less gas.

"I tell my students that policy-making is 90 percent blocking and tackling and 10 percent intellectual."--Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, cited in Mary Beth Brown, Condi: The Life of a Steel Magnolia (Nashville, Tennessee: Thomas Nelson, Inc, 2007), p. 180.

"When you never accomplish anything, your weekly summary of what you've done all week is just a bunch of 'accondishments' -- how you've filled the days."--Noah, a reader of "Princess Sparkle Pony's Photo Blog: I keep track of Condoleezza's hairdo so you don't have to" (May 5, 2008).

Notwithstanding the low poll numbers of the president she serves, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is one of the few people within the Bush administration who has managed to remain relatively unscathed by the public and by pundits. Unlike some in the president's entourage who have left Washington due to criticisms of their performance or ethics, Rice's current standing at home is sufficiently adequate from a PR perspective to allow her (up to now) to stay on in her job without too many embarrassments. True, there have been calls to remove her from her current position because of her recently disclosed role in the administration's use of torture. And doubts about Rice's qualifications as Bush's foreign-policy guru have existed for years, with, for example, her former National Security Council boss in the administration of George H.W. Bush, Brent Scowcroft, stating in 2005 that her "expertise is in the former Soviet Union and Europe. Less on the Middle East." More recently, an article by Patrick Seale, a British writer on the Middle East, talks about "The Tragic Futility of Condoleezza Rice."

But Condi, rising as she has from her solidly middle-class origins in Birmingham, Alabama to the highest echelons of the US government, remains a subject of admiration. Earlier this year the Harris Poll reported that Rice was "still the 'shining star' of the administration." A 2006 profile by BBC News gushed that "Rice's intellectual brilliance is undisputed," and she "has consistently been one of the most popular members of the Bush administration." Pundits have repeatedly floated her name as a possible Republican vice presidential running mate for John McCain. "For a party that up to now has been clueless about how to run against either a woman or a person of color, Condoleezza Rice is pure political gold," explained Nicholas Von Hoffman in a commentary for CBS News.

In fact, Rice's genius and foreign-policy expertise are more image than substance, as recent biographies by Elisabeth Bumiller and Marcus Mabry suggest. In her ascendance to power, Rice's main instrument has not been ground-breaking thinking about important international issues, but rather what Mabry characterizes as "her phenomenal skill at spinning."