The Swami despises this trend in political action: Make up fake letters, send them to your allies and have them pretend they wrote the letters. Then affix stamps and inundate officials with the test-tube missives. No fuss, no muss, no thinking. Just what good public-spirited debate needs: More pre-digested, pre-constructed pap…..and here’s how they do it here…
The recent debates in Lindenhurst and Round Lake over which town is going to get a new hospital (the current thought temporary answer is NO ONE!) showed both sides trying to manipulate the debate by pretending there actually was a debate.
Mostly, it’s just big-monied health companies trying to manipulate the process to their own benefit and getting local schmucks and schmuckettes to help.
In Vista Health System’s behalf, the public information agent there sent out emails to the entire staff of the hospital suggesting they send letters about how swell Vista is as a hospital. Swami is sure there’s no conflict of interest in that opinion.
They also suggested the chamber-type folks in Lindenhurst do the same thing, as if deciding who will run the best, most professional, most efficient hospital is open to a plebiscite. Look! We’re a better hospital. We got MORE votes. Yea!!!
The hospital also asked its employees to pack the ballot box on a weekly newspaper’s Internet “poll” earlier. Vote early, vote often. Have our dead Aunt Martha vote, too. It’s the Chicago way.
A member of Vista’s public relations staff even snuck her own love letter to Vista into the News-Sun’s letter columns. (Sorry, guys. No more of those will see print. The News-Hound is on the scent).
The PR flak machine at Advocate Lutheran did the same for its proposal in Round Lake.
Nobody is nobler in this fakery than anyone else. It’s all in the process of blowing sunshine up someone’s skirt. So why should anyone care, let alone Swami?
Here’s why. It’s dishonest. It’s a lie by omission. It tells only selective truth. It’s Nixonian.
We’ve had a lot of lying in high public places, and it’s time just make your best case and then sit down.
All this deliberate PR buffoonery makes you wonder if the state mucky-mucks pay attention to ANY evidence of support or antagonism for a proposed hospital. State rules might require public hearings, but it probably doesn’t mean that anyone at the state has to pay attention to it (or even stay awake during the testimony. Swami has been to those hearings and felt…it…was totally…. ZZZZZZ.)
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