You Lie 2.0: How disrespect can get you thousands of new friends and a million dollars
At first, Congressman Joe Wilson’s outburst during President Obama’s health-care address looked like a career killer. Members of both parties blasted him for his dramatic breech of decorum, and most Americans, regardless of ideology, reacted with disgust.
But the South Carolina Republican used the incident to build a massive audience that has helped him raise more than a million dollars in new campaign funds. He’s arguably more influential than ever before.
Welcome to Twitter-era politics, where a moment of fame — even one as inglorious as Wilson’s — can translate into political power.
The night Wilson shouted “you lie” at the President of the United States, he hired a new-media strategist, who went to work immediately.
Within 24 hours, the Congressman’s Twitter account had sent out 50 new messages, and his followers had increased by an unprecedented 500 percent to over 10,000.
Without any sincere apology to the American people or to his fellow Members of Congress, Wilson managed to create friends or, in Web 2.0 lingo, “picked up people” wherever they were — on Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube.
He replicated the Campaign 2.0 success of his political foe, President Obama, and increased his fans on his congressional Facebook fanpage to more than 11,000.
At the same time, he also equipped his Facebook campaign page with a donation option and added the following pitch:
The result of the Congressman’s breach of protocol and subsequent social-media broadcasts: Enormously enhanced name recognition and more than $1.5 million dollars in donations in the week following his outburst (and as of today $2.7 million).
What is most interesting here is how a whole new kind of message spin has emerged — one that specifically focuses on targeting new media channels and is directed by a whole new kind of PR expert.
It’s not just about talk radio and the Internet anymore. In the old days, Wilson’s best course of action would have been to sincerely and thoughtfully apologize and then hope that his constituents would forgive him. Not any more: Today’s messages are not about damage control but about turning a wrong into a right.
In other contexts, such misbehavior is not acceptable to anyone: Kanye West was shunned by his celebrity colleagues for jumping on stage at the VMA awards during Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech; Serena Williams lost her match and received a fine of $10,500 dollars for insulting a line judge during the US Open finals on the same weekend.
Both found themselves in the dog house, both apologized profoundly, not only directly to the person they harmed, but also to the public. Their standings were arguably hurt by their behavior, while Wilson’s appears to have been enhanced among those who share his views.
In a recent tweet, he says, “I will not back down from speaking the truth. Please stand with me.“.
In Wilson’s world, shouting at the president during an address to Congress is now called “speaking the truth.” And by being able to communicate with thousands of followers directly on social networks, he can have his own version on the truth, unfiltered by journalists, academics, or pundits. He can directly spin the public, and doesn’t need to worry nearly as much about spinning what we normally think of as the “opinion makers.”
Democracy may well be better off as a result of the Internet’s ability to build audience and supply that audience with direct, unfiltered communication. But as Wilson has shown, it is also a challenge for civil society, loosening norms of public behavior, and giving those who wish to cater to the extremes powerful new tools.
Well, he was speaking the truth. It was just a VERY inappropriate time and place to do so.
You can always tell when a politician lies, their lips move. But that includes Joe Wilson as well as any other elected official. The issue we have to deal with is now any uncouth jerk thinks that he has the right to shout down the President of the United States in a public forum. This is not acceptable. Losing a civil forum leads to anarchy. The sergeant at arms should not just be a ceremonial position. Someone should have have removed the loudmouth and escorted him out of the chamber, like being sent to the principal’s office, on national TV. And the same should have happened for anyone who booed President Bush in that same chamber. I have no desire to be governed by children who can’t control their “acting out”.
Good points. Although my post was meant to mainly highlight his use of social media to spin the message. I didn’t want to judge the content or professional conduct during the session.
It is certainly a new era… when you no longer need Rush Limbaugh to pedal logical fallacy. I won’t blame it entirely on social media, but any time people’s willingness to believe only what they want to believe – when that can be confirmed not by sampling all of what’s out there but rather by hiding in a safe place where you will find only what you want to hear, are we truly heading to a world of “Idiocracy.”
The comment “It’s a lie” was, itself, a lie of omission. It was also disrespectful and inappropriately timed. Had Wilson said something along the lines of: “you can’t promise that because the law can’t promise it,” he would at least have been more accurate, but that’s not nearly as catchy or tweetable. If we continue to live by the sound bite… or the 140 character limit… we will eventually die by it.
Dealing with real human issues requires discussion and debate… civilized, logical, well-constructed, NOT sound bites. Only in the world of one-liners and 140 character limits can logic be discarded and “the truth” distorted like this and like it has in so many other examples in the age of instant and constant media.
I understand your point is not to debate the action itself, but he did apologize (you state he did not), and I personally believe that in a forum where it’s appropriate to break for 5 minutes of applause, standing ovations, and panning to the President who is nodding his head and grinning to accept the accolades, than someone should be allowed to shout “you lie” if that’s what they believe. If it was a totally silent and reverent forum, then it would have been totally inappropriate.
It’s true that there was no “sincere apology to the American people or to his fellow Members of Congress”. On top of that, to claim to be sorry and then to turn around and say to your faithful that not only are you NOT sorry, but that you will not stop saying the same thing, and oh by the way, send me money! Is the height of disingenuousness, if not worse.
Getting back to Ines’ point, I think we, as consumers, need to really understand the technology that we are using. Too many people take blogs or tweets as factual, when they are just the thoughts or opinions of individuals. It is up to the consumers (and in this case citizens) to hold the individual accountable for what they state are ‘facts’.
Thanks for posting this Ines.