The Woke-Washed and the Vote-Washed

 Neoliberal capitalism never dies, much less fades away. It just keeps right on reinventing itself and gaining strength, even as the world collapses around it.

With millions of Americans in increasingly dire straits due to the federal government's failure to provide even a modicum of renewed relief in one of the worst pandemics in human history, you'll be happy to learn that Facebook is here to help. Its billionaire CEO Mark Zuckerberg just ostentatiously forked over another $100 million to help keep the polls open next month,  ensuring the "safety and efficiency" of ballot-casting.

He also has recently financed a study which concludes that the way for corporations to help disabled, sick, overweight, elderly, gay, transgender, and racially marginalized people is to use more of them in their advertisements. The more that an oppressed population group can be used in commercials, the higher the profits will be for corporations like Facebook, which are absolutely loath to pay taxes that would help fund social programs and Covid relief for the people who need help the most.

Neoliberal "woke-washing" has, of course, gained a whole new head of steam since the police murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, and the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement. It is a novel way of keeping capitalism-spawned systemic racism and record economic inequality - and the resulting social unrest - under strict control, so that the rich can get even richer as they pretend to care. The public relations message is this: it's not a living wage, guaranteed health care, food and housing that people need. It's recognition. It's either seeing others who look like you on TV and in social media ads, or it's getting the chance to appear in one of these commercials yourself to sell stuff that makes rich people and corporations even richer.

But lest you get too far ahead of yourselves, remember that your very first acting job is to vote, to elect the politicians who will help the rich get richer. Vote-shaming marketing campaigns are fine. But the Facebook CEO is going that extra mile in directly funding the election of politicians who will do Facebook's bidding. Woke-washing and vote-washing have joined forces as the most important weapons in the Zuckerberg arsenal, to defend him both against future antitrust suits and to combat the widespread criticism of Facebook's political ads and other nefarious marketing, surveillance and propaganda operations. 

As much as acknowledging that the United States is a full-fledged oligarchy, albeit one that still requires the occasional rubber stamp of legitimacy from the unwashed masses, Zuckerberg writes:

“Voting is the foundation of democracy. It's how we express our voice and make sure our country is heading in the direction we want. Priscilla and I remain determined to ensure that every state and local election jurisdiction has the resources they need so Americans can vote.”

To help nudge the country in the direction that he wants, Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan had already sent $250 million  to Chicago's Center For Tech and Civic Life, before upping the ante by another hundred mil last week. This organization's board of directors is a bipartisan mix of private equity moguls, former campaign operatives, McKinsey consultants and neoliberal think tank leaders. Its executive director, Tiana Epps-Johnson, founded the Center and financed it with the help of a generous Obama Foundation "fellow" grant. She said she will use the $350 million donated by Zuckerberg to disburse Covid protective gear and extra hazard pay and hire temporary workers - aid which the Trump administration refuses to provide to help ensure that more voters show up and local elections can run more smoothly.

Joe Biden, vice president under philanthrocapitalist and media mogul Barack Obama, has been a vocal critic of Facebook. The keyword here, of course, is vocal. Because as much as they deign to remind us every four years that "we" have a voice, it's still their money that talks.

Okay, so now that you've mailed in your ballot, already voted in person or at least made a plan to vote, you can finally lean back and relax by going online to be pressed to Buy Stuff. Even if you are poor, you still can feel a little better watching people who look like you trying to sell you Stuff that you can't afford. And if you can't afford Stuff because you have no job, no savings and can't even make the rent, an acting gig in a new slew of Woke-Washing diversity commercials might just be in your future.

Facebook recently commissioned the Geena Davis Institute to conduct a survey whose results claim that 70 percent of respondents want to see more diversity in online advertising. (Geena Davis is a Hollywood actress who started the Institute after her own acting jobs dried up due to systemic ageism in the film industry. Among her corporate endeavors is the annual film festival in Bentonville, Arkansas, bankrolled by the hometown Walton billionaires of Walmart.)

The Institute's Facebook study revealed, among other shocking things, that "even though 19 percent of Americans have some sort of cognitive, emotional or physical disability, only 1.1 percent of (advertisement) characters did." 

I doubt that the mass despair engendered by Covid alone, and the government's criminal neglect of same. could possibly have factored in to these results, given that a CDC study recently revealed that a not-insignificant percentage of the US population is now so depressed as to be suicidal.

But be that as it may, for according to the Facebook press release just published in Adweek:

It’s everyone’s responsibility to speak up about bias and stereotypes. All brands have an opportunity to step up, not only through increased presence of underrepresented groups, but through portrayals that are more authentic and empowering.

And it also may lead to better business results. In a Facebook analysis, we found that campaigns with more diverse representation had a 90% likelihood to be more effective at driving ad recall compared to campaigns with single traditional representation.

Thanks to Facebook's largesse, the Geena Davis Institute study coordinator is able to conclude:

I’ve observed that not only is eliminating harmful bias in advertising the right and responsible thing to do, it can lead to better results. I’ve even seen studies showing that creative with more diverse representation can boost stock price. As a general rule, I believe what’s good for our society is good for brands!

She got it a little backwards. Because the first tenet of neoliberalism is that when something is good for brands, only then can it be deemed to benefit "society." Societal good is a marginalized person being displayed and noticed for the ultimate profit of the user. A marginalized person is mainly being valued as a commodity and a marketing tool.

Just as Madison Avenue once used only young sexy women to sell everything from cars to mouthwash, so too can the ad industry now use marginalized or "exotic" people to sell any number of products. The Institute tells Facebook exactly what the ethics-challenged Zuckerberg paid them to suggest:

 Get specific in your briefs, scripts and casting documents—include gender, race and sexual orientation. Consider using an intersectional lens even if (and especially when) it’s not related to the brand or the message of the campaign. (my bold.)

Intersectionality pays! If a transgender person is selling a Chevy, be sure to mention their identity bona fides along with the misleading mileage stats so that the audience may feel more smugly tolerant as they shop for the latest gas-guzzler.

Advertisers can even combine woke-washing and vote-washing with good old fashioned green-washing.  For example, if a physically challenged actor is shilling for Exxon-Mobil, the theme of the script can be that even disabled people have the god-given right to be an Energy Voter and breathe in the sublime air of freshly fracked gas. The subliminal message to viewers? You cannot possibly champion disabled people and support the Green New Deal at the same time. You should wash all that angry knowledge about the oil industry's criminal role in climate change right out of your brain.

The possibilities for malign oligarchic intersectionality are as stratospheric as Mark Zuckerberg's vast tax-proof wealth, and as deep as the poisoned oceans, and as unrestrained as the greedy reach of capitalism itself.

Zuck Gets the Senatorial Spa Treatment

I have to laugh at all the "Zuckerberg Gets Grilled!" headlines today, or the equally annoying ones that insist he was raked over the coals or pounded flat on the congressional cutting board.

If you actually watched all or part of Tuesday's Senate hearing pretending to explore what Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg knew about Cambridge Analytica and when he knew it, you would have realized that he was being massaged like the tiny loaf of pasty white dough he so closely resembles. You knew he was in for a luxurious kneading when Sen. Jon Tester praised his tax-evading fortune as a "charity" before he got the first question.

You knew who really was in charge of this puff pastry lesson when Zuckerberg prefaced almost every evasive answer to a softball question with a condescending, "That is a really good question, Senator."

You could almost see Zuck patting each of their empty little heads as he took frequent sips of the US Senate-brand bottled designer water. It was the only sign that he was even remotely nervous. In fact, he must have felt like the Pillsbury Doughboy after awhile, because the over-hyped Grand Inquisition consisted of one ticklish finger-jab after the other. The disingenuous queries about whether he is afraid Facebook might become a monopoly were particularly amusing.

He got so confident, in fact, that he actually pulled a Hillary Clinton and credited himself with inspiring the #MeToo movement. This is really pretty amazing, given that he originally started Facebook as a hacking tool to shame and rate the bodies and faces of his female Harvard classmates. But no matter. The way he told it to the senators, he started Facebook because he wanted to make the world a better place. His only fault, he implied, was that he was just a wee lad of 19 when he had his utopian brainstorm in his humble dorm room. Callow youth that he was and still is, he never dreamed that his apps and his algorithms could be abused by "bad actors." If the old Coke theme song selling perfect harmony and a smile on the face of an earth e-moji had started echoing through the Senate chamber during his testimony, I would not have been surprised. 

Zuck's real ace in the hole was when he coyly let out that Facebook has been subpoenaed by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, and that he will gladly be cooperating with the investigation of Donald Trump, and Russian meddling and other colluding things. Beyond that, though, he can't be more specific lest national security be threatened. But of course, he'll be glad to tell them everything he knows in a more secret setting so that actual people can be kept in the dark. Just as he is opaque about how exactly his apps and his algorithms suck up and misuse the information of billions of global Facebook users, he will be opaque about his own exalted role in both bringing down a president and helping the "intelligence" communities simultaneously censor users and spy upon them.

Not that he himself knows much of anything, of course. Callow idealist that he is, the details have escaped him. But he'll have "his team" get back to the Senate team. Because they're all on the same team. And we're just bystanders who are too stupid to read the fine print of the convoluted user agreements we sign as we sell our souls to the Silicon Valley devils.

As the New York Times reported in its own rehash of the "grilling,"

The technological gap between Silicon Valley and Washington was apparent when Senator Roger Wicker, a Republican of Mississippi, asked about internet regulation.

Mr. Zuckerberg explained that when thinking about regulations, government officials need to differentiate between internet companies like his and broadband providers, the companies that build and run the “pipes” that carry internet traffic, like AT&T and Comcast. 

The difference is at the heart of net neutrality, a hotly debated regulation that was overturned last year. The rules prevent internet service providers from favoring the flow of all internet content through their pipes.

“I think in general the expectations that people have of the pipes are somewhat different from the platforms,” Mr. Zuckerberg said.

“When you say pipes, you mean?” Mr. Wicker asked.

Zuckerberg must have felt like Julia Child trying to teach a first-day class of culinary students who'd never boiled an egg in their lives how to prepare Beef Wellington.

Another plutocrat has hit the jackpot. It's the Luck of the Zuck, or as it's more commonly known among the ruling class racketeers: "the house always wins."