Month: February 2012

According to CSGV, anyone who questions the strategy of gun control groups lighting candles in order to achieve a political change is just a big old mean person. And a jerk. Well, I look forward to their condemnation of Michael Bloomberg.

In what is otherwise a fawning piece over Bloomberg’s financial and political sacrifices for gun control, there’s an entire section called “NO MORE CANDLES.”

In the past, advocates for stricter gun controls held marches, rallies and candlelight vigils. MAIG has taken a far more activist approach, conducting undercover investigations and sting operations that are then dramatically revealed to the press.

So, now that Bloomberg is publicly throwing CSGV & Brady tactics under the bus, will they condemn him?

There are a few notes from this USA Today web piece on the new Brady president, and I decided to turn it into a game.

Youth anti-violence advocate Daniel Gross has been elected to head the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence and the Brady Center, the Washington-based organization promoting gun control plans to announce Monday.

In the opening sentence, we have two already. He was hired, not elected. There may have technically been a vote by the Board on whether to extend an offer, but he was hired. We know this because the Board hired a recruiting firm (multiple times, it seems) to find someone for the job. When a recruiter finds a candidate for a job and that applicant then interviews with multiple people who mutually come to a decision on extending an offer, we don’t say they were elected to do their job. They were hired.

Also, we know they announced last week. Although, to be fair to Dan Gross, it would seem that they didn’t plan to do so, so maybe it doesn’t count as an outright lie. I’ll count it for half.

Gross is cofounder and executive director of the Center to Prevent Youth Violence and was elected to the Brady post by the organization’s board of trustees. He replaces former Brady president Paul Helmke, former mayor of Fort Wayne, Ind., who announced in June he would step down on July 10. Helmke’s resignation followed a five-year commitment he’d made to serve the organization starting in 2006.

This bring our tally to 4 1/2 lies. First, we have the elected crap again. The Board came to agreement to extend a job offer, not hold an election of Brady Campaign members. Second, Paul Helmke & the Brady Campaign were all quite vocal that he wasn’t stepping down, they weren’t welcoming him back. Along those same lines, the third sentence is an outright fabrication that he resigned since it has been reported by mainstream media outlets when Helmke was giving interviews left and right last year that he didn’t want to leave the Brady Campaign, the Board refused to renew his contract.

After this paragraph, the rest of the story is the standard gun control manipulation counting suicides as the same as crime, and talking about how many children (many of whom do not meet any definition that a regular person defines as a child) die by guns. Following that, it’s all about feelings. I’m not exaggerating when I describe his quotes as sounding like Bette Midler in Beaches.

“Policy is a big part of the solution but people have to realize that this isn’t a political issue, this is an issue that’s claiming the lives of 30,000 people every year and eight kids every day and we need to approach it with that kind of urgency,” Gross said.

“The bottom line is making people care about this issue and care about it personally and deeply,” he added.

“Now, tell us the truth. I want you to pull out all the stops. We know the performer. Who is the person? Who is C.C. Bloom?”

“Oh, Marla. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve asked myself that very same question. Well, first and foremost, I would have to say that C.C. feels things – deeply. C.C. is a deeply feeling person. And, because of this, is deeply emotional. Do you understand?”

I would like to thank Dan Gross for inspiring me to pull out my copy of Beaches which I haven’t watched in far too long. I admit that I teared up even fast forwarding to get to the interview scene.

Back to more serious issues, his comments definitely highlight that the Brady Campaign is likely to make themselves even more scarce on Capitol Hill. It looks like we need to focus on MAIG’s efforts in DC since they are the new and upcoming gun control group looking to pass actual policy instead of just trying to make you feel deeply like C.C. Bloom.

Also of note, he had a random foundation director from Beverly Hills email the reporter about himself. I guess he is trying to highlight that he’s bringing a fundraising network to the table, but those funds are going to be pretty well restricted to the (c)3 that can’t lobby much.

Notice they don’t let Mumbles talk a whole lot. But I do have to say I’m relatively relieved. This could have been a lot worse for us, especially if they had been willing to spend money on a one minute spot. They spent so much time in their initial comical banter, they were only able to make a laughable statement about supporting the Second Amendment, and then imploring people to visit their web site (which no one will). Given that we now know they only bought spots in the DC market, my opinion in that this ad is meant to get MAIG exposure in front of politicians. After all, if they have the money to buy a Super Bowl ad, they must be big players in this issue. And imagine what they could do if they pumped money into issue ads during a race?

Of course, they already tried that in a media market primed for their message and failed spectacularly. But they surely want DC to know who the big dog is in this issue.

One of the things I’ve been wondering ever since the news broke about Bloomberg’s big spend on a gun control ad during the Super Bowl is where exactly the ad would air. I saw many reporters simply repeating the line that it would be regional. Since Bloomberg has spent so much money on Pennsylvania, I wondered if this area would be a target. One reporter made a mention of asking about the regions, but did not publish and answer.

Yesterday, the NYT finally answered the question. Bloomberg only funded his gun control ad to run in DC. Yup, that’s right. He won’t take the fight to the states, only to other politicians. I think it represents an important trend with the Mayor to consistently try to overrule the voters by keeping up his relationships with and only target other elites. He doesn’t want to be bothered by us little people who might dare disagree with him and his nanny-state tendencies.

The Brady Campaign board decided to hire a president whose entire background is in advertising and non-profit work. He has no political background that I’ve seen, and what little does exist is entirely focused on New York. In other words, they hired someone who seemingly has no real network to get started on the DC political scene.

Now, assuming he’s a Democrat*, that will be an automatic in to gun control political circles that Paul Helmke never had. Unlike Helmke, he should have a background that the gun control caucus from highly urban areas can rally behind. But, since he doesn’t seem to have any direct experience playing the political game, it will be interesting to see how far this kind “in” can really take him politically.

In my mind, this type of hire gives a little more credit to the idea we’ve been talking about for a couple of years now that maybe the Brady Campaign is taking a backseat to the Brady Center. It’s probably easier to raise the (c)3 funds, and this would be a step in the direction of really focusing on the (c)3 work that isn’t just centered around Dennis Hennigan’s legal attempts to re-write the Second Amendment. Dan Gross can focus on happy, feel-good things that will look better to donors who might otherwise be tired of the losses they have faced politically and in the courts for the last three-and-a-half years.

*According to Open Secrets, there is a Daniel Gross from New York who has rather modestly donated to exclusively Democrats since 2007.

UPDATE: It looks like the Brady Campaign’s new president is trying to play a game of Down the Rabbit Hole. Silly Dan! Screenshots save evidence of your fumble. (See, I can use the Super Bowl theme, too!)

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I don’t even know what to say. They hired an advertising guy, and yet this is the mess that the Brady Campaign has been pushing lately. Racism, drug use, child neglect, embrace of the “thug” lifestyle, these are all things they have been promoting with the people they have been recently retweeting. I don’t know if I should feel sorry for the guy or if this is the kind of work he finds acceptable.

The Brady Campaign president, Dan Gross, lives in New York and pushed the ASK program at his previous job. In other words, he’s a big believer in the Bloomberg nannyism to get other people to dig into your personal lives at home. Perhaps the Brady board looked to Bloomberg’s work with MAIG and assumed that if they could just get someone like him, they could come back to the top of the gun control world.

This is rather funny since his first PR-related move as a leader of the Brady Campaign is a stumble. Or, rather, should I call it a fumble?

Um, no.

The first announcement is on their website. On Saturday. (Maybe even Friday since I didn’t look at it yesterday.)

The more cynical may point to this as another Brady lie. I just find it amusing and very much in line of their strategy for not actually reviewing anything before it goes out the door.

Also, I find it interesting that he has opted to make his announcement on a day where no one will care. Things people will talk about on Monday include the Nevada caucuses, the Super Bowl, the inevitable Boston riots, and Newt Gingrich’s lack of a plan. It won’t be the guy no one in DC has heard of taking over an organization that can’t even get their bills through a committee. I have to wonder if this was intentional on the part of the Brady Campaign.