Waging a worthy PR war

Public Relations is going where it has never gone before. The Chinese government is waging PR war to get the good citizens on its side, using more sensitive slogans to encourage family planning. Classic one liners like "Raise fewer babies but more piggies" and "One more baby means one more tomb" will be lost forever in favour of more polite options like "The mother earth is too tired to sustain more children". The government is worried about its tarnished image apparently. Better late then never.

Meanwhile in faraway Seattle, the local authorities organise and an obscure online poll to select a poet who is then paid the princely sum of $500. In return, the winner has to turn up as required at official events and read poetry. Bizarre but true. Nothing is free they say, not even in the land of opportunity. Another futile PR excercise or a worthwhile effort? Read on...

The Press Trust of India reports:

In a bid to win the hearts and minds of the Chinese people on the country's unpopular family planning policy, the government has decided to clean up stiff or even crude slogans on rural walls that ask people to have fewer children.

The National Population and Family Planning Commission issued a circular this week demanding local officials to substitute those stiff, offensive and bad-taste slogans with 190 recommended ones which it said had been selected from a 'national collection campaign'.

The commission acknowledged that currently many slogans promoting the family planning policy are poorly worded, or full of strong language that leave an impression of simply forcing people to give up having more babies, causing misunderstanding on the policy and even tarnishing the image of the government.

The slogans sometimes are full of wrongly written words and are also poorly painted, with an unorderly design of character size, colour, typeface and position, the commission said.Widely posted slogans on BBS and blogs range from earthy ones like "Raise fewer babies but more piggies" to forcible or bloody ones like "Houses toppled, cows confiscated, if abortion demand rejected" and "One more baby means one more tomb."

If such low-quality slogans, which may cause public complaint and resentment, are not corrected and remain where they are, the country's family planning efforts in the new era will be hindered, the commission said, proposing a list of more amiable slogans including "The mother earth is too tired to sustain more children" and "Both boys and girls are parents' hearts".

The Seattle Post Intelligencer writes:

Nick Licata's a good guy. Obviously he's a good guy. You're looking for a good guy, look no further.

As Seattle's City Council prez, he can be counted on to advocate a populist approach, which is why he's the chief supporter of Seattle Poet Populist. Each year, arts organizations great and small, mostly small, nominate somebody, and the people vote online for the winner.

The lucky duck gets $500. For that princely sum, he/she is expected to pop up at various official events and read poems.

Licata is undoubtedly the only City Council member to insist that poets read at his committee meetings. Why they would want to is a mystery.

Follow the above link, and you can cast your e-vote, due Aug. 15.

Here's my problem. I go the site and read about the life experiences of these poets. What I can't do is read a poem. Oh, by following a maze of links, I can uncover a few poems, but mostly I uncover more information about the poets and the organizations that sponsored them.

Why? Because this feel-good event is not about poetry. It's about using poets to well-wish the government. It's about poetry as PR for political functionaries.

Nick: Instead of shaking hands with poets and paying them a pittance, why not support the organizations that support them? Instead of an e-vote for a meaningless position, why not have experts (yes, I mean celebrated leaders in the field) chose one and write that person a real check?

Poetry is not a populist enterprise. When it matters at all, it's the opposite of populist. It starts with talent given to a precious few and denied to the multitude.