Challenge for Hugh

[FourthBase]

According to Wikipedia:

Reader's Digest is still the best-selling consumer magazine in the USA, with a circulation of over 10 million copies in the United States, and a readership of 38 million as measured by Mediamark Research (MRI). According to MRI, Reader's Digest reaches more readers with household incomes of $100,000+ than Fortune, The Wall Street Journal, Business Week and Inc. combined.

Although Reader's Digest was founded in the U.S., its international editions have made it the best-selling monthly magazine in the world.

Every issue is almost entirely compiled by editors. US editions are produced separately from international editions. Challenge: Find and post compelling instances of memejacking in at least half of the last year's worth of Reader's Digest. That's a reasonable expectation, no?

http://www.rd.com/

[Hugh Manatee Wins]

Readers Digest has continuously been part of the CIA's Operation Mockingbird for ages, not just during the Cold War as a book review suggests below. A few books are recently out trying to tell us "that was then but this is now."

So I'm sure you are correct, FB, to point at it as likely to contain big clunky obvious psyops worth exposing.

Here's a book on the history of Readers Digest including some of its history with FBI and CIA although I'm sure not all of that history since the author was an editor for RD-
http://www.amazon.com/AMERICAN-DREAMERS-Wallaces-Readers-Insiders/dp/0684809281

AMERICAN DREAMERS: The Wallaces and The Reader's Digest: An Insider's Story
by Peter Canning

Editorial reviews-
.....
In the 1940s and 50s the CIA fed articles to the Digest. During the Vietnam War it was stridently hawkish, and Richard Nixon's speeches formed the basis of editorials. While too many Digest stories have had the insipid flavor of packaged pieces of puffed-up positive thinking, Canning's history is stronger stuff.
.....
Canning, whose first book (amazingly) this is, was a Reader's Digest managing editor for 25 years until he resigned in 1987 as the magazine was beginning what turned out to be a long and still-continuing decline. He therefore enjoyed extraordinary access to staffers from various periods, understood the odd Digest ethos and was privy to many of the machinations that disfigured its last decade. It helps that he also writes cleanly and often dramatically, able to clarify complex legal and financial issues. His story is essentially in two parts: first, the saga of the two idealistic Midwesterners, DeWitt and Lila Wallace, who combined to create, out of an idea scorned by other publishers, a magazine empire that embraced the globe, with a circulation at its height of more than 20 million, and a mailing list many times as large. For their first 50 years, as WWII helped it expand internationally, Digest sales leaped year by year; then, during the Cold War years, the magazine began to become a political football. The conservative Wallaces had carelessly let it be used by the CIA and the FBI, and when Ed Thompson, a more liberal editor, tried to turn the magazine into a real force for truth, the knives were out in Washington. At the same time, as the founders began to fail, with no heirs to take on their vast fortune, avaricious eyes were cast on it, notably those of Laurence Rockefeller, who, ostensibly to help with taxes, began to siphon off stock worth millions into his chosen charities.

Here's another "but that was then" book trying to put CIA psyops in the past tense but with a wink to the present by a Brit academic (MI6?).
Readers Digest is included in CIA's stable again-

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Mighty-Wurlitzer-How-Played-America/dp/0674026810

The Mighty Wurlitzer: How the CIA Played America
by Hugh Wilford
....
Customer review-

Hugh Wilford, previously of the University of Sheffield, now at California State University, Long Beach, has written an astonishing account of the CIA's front operations in the USA during the Cold War. In 1967, research by Ramparts magazine exposed this covert system, which broke the law banning CIA operations in the USA.

The CIA funded front organisations within trade unions, New York intellectuals, émigrés, writers, artists, musicians, Hollywood, the National Student Association, aid workers, civil rights activists, clergy, women, and black nationalist groups like the American Society of African Culture. For example, Harvard University got $456,000 in disguised subsidies from the CIA between 1960 and 1966. The CIA collaborated with the major news media, particularly the New York Times, the Reader's Digest, Columbia Broadcasting System and Time magazine.

The CIA backed and funded the American Committee for a United Europe, which backed the emerging EEC. The CIA had a secret alliance with US Catholicism, for instance, between 1959 and 1966 it funded the Family Rosary Crusade's operations in Europe, Latin America, the Middle East, Australasia and Africa.

Associations that accepted covert state patronage violated their own proclaimed principles of voluntary association. Many members of these organisations knew about the CIA's role, but many did not. Americans were systematically deceived by the state. And the CIA's undemocratic covert activities did not cease with the 1967 exposures, or with the end of the Cold War. Even now the CIA is `a growing force on campus', as the Wall Street Journal recently noted.

This book exposes the CIA's role in the USA and leaves one asking what it did and does in Britain.

on edit: Odd the way UK Amazon's "search inside this book" function isn't working right. Hmm.
But the US Amazon does work-
http://www.amazon.com./gp/reader/0674026810/ref=sib_dp_pop_idx?ie=UTF8&p=S0A1#reader-link

At the US Amazon site there is a CIA-Washington Post Book World review that downplays CIA media effectiveness, of course-

In the end, the agency's elaborate program operated more like a creaky karaoke machine than a majestic cathedral organ. Its American clients were glad to sing along -- but in their own key, often substituting their own lyrics. Even at the height of the Cold War, our government discovered it couldn't "play" unruly, pluralistic, opinionated citizens raised on the First Amendment as if they were a disciplined Stalinist cadre. That should be a welcome conclusion.

So we're to believe that the US is in Iraq due to something other than CIA psyops. Right.
Cuz that stuff doesn't work and that was then but this is...hell.

[Hugh Manatee Wins]

Readers Digest is written at around a ninth grade reading level to reinforce nationalist myths taught to us in grammar school. Optimism in the face of adversity is pumped up to go with the puppy stories to sustain that old Reagan meme of "morning in America."

From the looks of it, RD is targeted more towards women than men. Atleast online.
The moral framing meme "America the Rescuer" is all through RD using women as examples.

Because if women get pissed off about American capitalism and militarism, there goes the Warfare State's neighborhood when the kidz pick up on mom's attitudes.

Keywords:
AMERICA, INSPIRING, SOLACE, SURVIVAL, RENEWAL, HOPE, INVESTMENT

Almost all women presented by RD to optimize parasocial interaction with the target audience-

Topics on rd.com

Your America
Heroes, Inspiring Stories, Politics

http://www.rd.com/inspiring-true-stories

Inspiring True Stories
Read about incredible doctors, coaches, athletes, teachers, and survivors—and their inspiring true-life stories.

13 Women and Their Necklace

What a group of women learned about life, love, and happiness from one spectacular necklace.
-----


They're Making it Matter

Through an initiative called Make it Matter, the Reader's Digest Foundation is donating $1 million to worthy causes over a one-year period. Each month, the Foundation selects someone who is giving back in a significant way and awards $100,000 to a nonprofit organization in honor of that individual. Get inspired by the honorees and submit an individual or group for consideration.
-----


Helping and Healing Wounded War Veterans

Thanks to Project Healing Waters, veterans wounded in body and mind now have somewhere to go for solace and healing--a riverbank.
------


Sheri Schmelzer: Accidental Entrepreneur

In the kitchen with her kids, Sheri Schmelzer got crafty-and lucky-with her Crocs.
--------

The Latest in Inspiring Stories

1) Interview With Iraq War Photographer
Photographer Stephanie Kuykendal spent time in the Iraq battle zone, then came home to bond with war vets.

2) Rebuilding New Orleans After Hurricane Katrina
After Hurricane Katrina, Alice Craft-Kerney and Patricia Berryhill created The Lower 9th Ward Health Clinic deep within one of the poorest sections of New Orleans.

3) Best of America: Disaster Doctor
This doctor turned his own hardships around by traveling the world to help others in the wake of disaster.

4) Best of America: The Flag Ladies of Freeport, Maine
These patriotic women make supporting our troops a weekly mission.

5) MAKE IT MATTER: After the Deluge of Hurricane Katrina
Two nurses lost everything to Hurricane Katrina -- and still found a way to give back.

6) Home Again
The bank gave notice. But a community rallied, and Maria Leon got her house back.

7) The Deep End of the Ocean
When cancer interrupts a lifelong friendship, two women find solace in the sea—and the strength to accept the unexpected.

8) Out of the Wreckage
A wave of tornadoes brings death, destruction—and selfless acts of bravery.

9) Never Say Never
These remarkable athletes prove that attitude trumps everything, no matter how steep the odds.

There's the Readers Digest formula, FB.
I think analyzing the news cycle treatments would show the same memes.


From the current magazine issue online, note the odd juxtaposition of a photo of nuclear power plant cooling towers with a positive New Orleans blurb.
There's another sign of a political agenda with RD's favorite framing word, "inspiring."
Personally, I'm not "inspired" by nuclear technology.

http://www.rd.com/current-readers-digest-magazine

Page 157: Rebuilding New Orleans
See a slideshow of images from New Orleans and for more inspiring stories of people helping the city.
By Jason Berry

That inspires me to repeat the Readers Digest formula.

Keywords:
AMERICA, INSPIRING, SOLACE, SURVIVAL, RENEWAL, HOPE, INVESTMENT

[FourthBase]

So far so good Hugh! Reader's Digest truly reeks of pro-establishment emotional manipulation, and this all rings true:

Readers Digest is written at around a ninth grade reading level to reinforce nationalist myths taught to us in grammar school. Optimism in the face of adversity is pumped up to go with the puppy stories to sustain that old Reagan meme of "morning in America."

From the looks of it, RD is targeted more towards women than men. Atleast online. The moral framing meme "America the Rescuer" is all through RD using women as examples.

Because if women get pissed off about American capitalism and militarism, there goes the Warfare State's neighborhood when the kidz pick up on mom's attitudes.

Questions: Do you personally find any of the stories genuinely inspirational? Because I sure as hell do sometimes, and even in a perfect unmanipulated world I think there would still be a demand for the kind of stories RD trafficks in. I mean, meme manipulation aside, isn't it a little perverse for us to be so pessimistic about stories of women empowered against all odds acting in real ways to help others and improve the world, etc? The stories themselves, most of them anyway, can't be intrinsically bad. How do you reconcile that? What inspirational stories could they possibly tell that wouldn't be manipulative? How can an inspirational story about overcoming our fucked up world inspire people to fix our fucked up world without the feel-good part of the story perversely making people feel so good about our fucked up world that they wind up still sitting their asses? Doesn't your stance maybe discredit the very concept of an inspirational story? Or at least hint at the seed of destruction for RD's hypercirculated meme strategy within itself, by risking the chance of inspiring too many women too much?

Keep the RD analysis coming, anyway.

[DrVolin]

I went to grad school with the editor of an international edition. If KWH there was, it was at a higher level than the local international editor.

[brainpanhandler]

So far so good Hugh! Reader's Digest truly reeks of pro-establishment emotional manipulation, and this all rings true:

Readers Digest is written at around a ninth grade reading level to reinforce nationalist myths taught to us in grammar school. Optimism in the face of adversity is pumped up to go with the puppy stories to sustain that old Reagan meme of "morning in America."

From the looks of it, RD is targeted more towards women than men. Atleast online. The moral framing meme "America the Rescuer" is all through RD using women as examples.

Because if women get pissed off about American capitalism and militarism, there goes the Warfare State's neighborhood when the kidz pick up on mom's attitudes.

Questions: Do you personally find any of the stories genuinely inspirational? Because I sure as hell do sometimes, and even in a perfect unmanipulated world I think there would still be a demand for the kind of stories RD trafficks in. I mean, meme manipulation aside, isn't it a little perverse for us to be so pessimistic about stories of women empowered against all odds acting in real ways to help others and improve the world, etc? The stories themselves, most of them anyway, can't be intrinsically bad. How do you reconcile that? What inspirational stories could they possibly tell that wouldn't be manipulative? How can an inspirational story about overcoming our fucked up world inspire people to fix our fucked up world without the feel-good part of the story perversely making people feel so good about our fucked up world that they wind up still sitting their asses? Doesn't your stance maybe discredit the very concept of an inspirational story? Or at least hint at the seed of destruction for RD's hypercirculated meme strategy within itself, by risking the chance of inspiring too many women too much?

Keep the RD analysis coming, anyway.

At the risk of being obtrusive and since Hugh seems to have characteristically dropped this line of inquiry (I wonder how often Hugh fails to finish what he starts) I'd like to field those questions.

Hugh, I'll be happy to eat my words and apologize if you have been busily working on FB's challenge and have not completed the task.

All through my childhood my parents had a subscription to RD. It was bathrom reading for them and for me. I think the publishers probably realize that the vast majority of their issues wind up parking themselves in people's bathrooms. The magazine seems designed for, among otehr things, bathroom reading, depending of course on the average reading speed of subscribers and the average time it takes for a bowel movement.

I would be curious to know the demographic make up of RD's American readership/subscriber base.

It was not until I was in high school that I figured out what a right wing, christian propaganda rag RD is. This was about the same time that the picture of my father as a Reagan supporting, christian fundamentalist coalesced in my head. I began to understand what I did NOT want to be and SHOULD not be or support.

I've never had a reason to pick up an issue of RD since, which is more years ago than I care to admit, ahem.

Looking over the website it does not appear that the magazine has changed a whole lot.

Do you personally find any of the stories genuinely inspirational?

Yes, but that is not at odds with my overall impression that RD is designed to appeal to a segment (albeit an alarmingly, appallingly large segment) of the population that probably also believes Reagan was a great president, the war on terror is a necessary evil, satan really does exist, and the rapture is well nigh imminent. The publishers know who their core readership is and what they want and although a publication like RD is designed primarily to gain as broad a readership as possible and thereby, presumably, make as great a profit as possible, nonetheless, it seems to me that the publishers/editors have a clear social agenda. This does not seem to be in dispute. The existence of that agenda does not seem to be to be mutually exclusive of inspirational stories. Infact the two seem to go hand in hand for the very reasons you later cite, which I will get to, although the question for me is and will be, "Inspired to DO what?".

I mean, meme manipulation aside...

Yah, but this creates a hypothetical scenario that is, well, hypothetical and not what actually exists.

cont. ...isn't it a little perverse for us to be so pessimistic about stories of women empowered against all odds acting in real ways to help others and improve the world, etc?

Yes, if those stories were read and understood in the artificially out of context fashion you suggest. The meme manipulation may be sprinkled with real sugar as opposed to sacharine, but the intended effect is still the same.

The stories themselves, most of them anyway, can't be intrinsically bad. How do you reconcile that?

True, but only necessarily so when taken out of context.

What inspirational stories could they possibly tell that wouldn't be manipulative?

Using a narrow defintion of manipulative the possibilites are infinite. "Manipulative" is a problematic term. It carries connotations of deliberate obfuscation and covert coercion. At least in this context that is how I assume you are using the term. The term manipulative could be defined much more broadly though and could include constructs which reasonable people could choose to label with terms loaded in other less negative ways, like, persuasive or even, inspirational. Using a broader definiton of manipulative the possibilities are more limited. Almost ANY inspirational story (especially and most importantly in the context of RD) would be by definition 'manipulative'. As hugh would no doubt attest it is often the juxtaposition of themes/memes, stories, images that constitutes their manipulative design and potential.

How can an inspirational story about overcoming our fucked up world inspire people to fix our fucked up world (or even some little part of it?) without the feel-good part of the story perversely making people feel so good about our fucked up world that they wind up still sitting their asses?

This is a good question and I'm tempted to carry on a bit more about people sitting on their asses on the crapper reading RD, but I'll refrain. Maybe I'll come back to this question. For now I'll only say that perhaps this is where innoculation theory has some explanatory power.

Doesn't your stance maybe discredit the very concept of an inspirational story?

IF I understand Hugh's stance or am guessing correctly what his stance is I would think his answer would be no, even within the context of RD, which is where our attention should be properly focused for the purposes of this thread. Your previous question seems to imply an underlying opinion that answers this question already. I realize that you are just thinking out loud and searching for answers yourself, but I am a little confused by what your stance is.

Or at least hint at the seed of destruction for RD's hypercirculated meme strategy within itself, by risking the chance of inspiring too many women too much?

Inspiring them to do what? RD seems to be to be designed to compartmentalize information and entertainment into tidy little nuggets in a way that has a little of everything for everyone. The overall meme strategy, as you say, is decidedly christian and conservative though. A sprinkling of secular, nonpartisan stories of human courage, empowerment, and persistence in the face of tyranny, injustice or tragedy will not subvert that overall meme strategy, imo. This is especially true if most people who read those stories are not actually inspired to DO something. If all they do is close the magazine with a contented smile and wipe their ass then we don't really have to expect, hope or worry that much of anything will change.