Thursday May 19, 2005

Look Who’s Talking Now

A question. How did it come to pass that a media trade organization, in this case the Outdoor Advertising Association of America (OAAA), decided to endorse an anti-Constitutional statement like this—as a public service announcement, no less—at a time when the political right is threatening the very idea of an independent court, and why are their democracy-loving customers standing for it? And, furthermore, why aren’t folks like StopSinclair.org all over it?

Much detail after the jump.

Back in 1998, you might recall, billboards started cropping up bearing pithy messages from God. They said things like “We Need To Talk” and “I Love You. I Love You. I Love You.” The story goes that they were sponsored by an anonymous donor in South Florida, who hired a nothing firm called The Smith Agency to develop the campaign. Being the freewheeling theist that I am, none of this seemed terribly offensive to me—anonymous donors can sponsor whatever they want, and at least it wasn’t overtly hateful—and lots of people, myself included, wrote light media pieces about it. I talked to Smith Agency president Andy Smith, who is Jewish, about the campaign, and he stressed its nondenominational focus and the fact that his agency was just a workaday shop that happened to have this donor as a client. Clinton was still in office and theocratic dominionism wasn’t on anyone’s mind.

The campaign was picked up as public service effort by the OAAA, which posted the billboards all over the country. Since then, the GodSpeaks campaign, as it became known, has had a strange history. In 2000, The Smith Agency sued Andy Smith and creative director Charles Robb for shopping the idea of a book of God’s sayings to Random House. Robb’s book God Speaks appeared in 2000 and is currently only available as a hard-to-find title. The Smith Agency then went out of business—although not before it was able to unleash the wretched, urban-flavored WuzupGod campaign—and thus far I have had no luck tracking down Smith or Robb.

The billboards made another unusual appearance in 2003, when Hurricane Charlie damaged a billboard face, revealing a message from God underneath. In the Bush era this was naturally interpreted by some as an actual sign from the actual God. It was not.

Now, this spring, the GodSpeaks campaign is making a comeback, again backed by the OAAA. This time, however, it isn’t even pretending to be nondenominational. Not only does it parrot the right’s antagonistic position toward the judiciary, but it’s being run by The DeMoss Group, a Georgia-based PR firm that specializes in work for evangelical clients like Billy Graham. A picture of President Bush even appears in the slideshow on the firm’s homepage.

So, who is this anonymous donor, assuming it is the same donor as the first go round as The DeMoss Group claims? The Winston-Salem Journal did the only real reporting on this I could find, back in 2002. According to tax-return documents, it looks like the money for the original campaign came from the Festus and Helen Stacy Foundation, a foundation set up by Pennsylvania gas station baron Festus Stacy “to enhance the lives of others and to spread Christianity throughout the world.” And to hate on the Supreme Court?

While the right’s contempt for the judiciary may or may not make political sense, there’s something I just don’t get about the Christian right’s antagonism toward the courts. Allegedly, God wrote—or, at the very least, participated liberally in the writing of—the Constitution. That’s why, according to the right, we shouldn’t have separation of church and state or (apparently) separation of powers. But the Constitution, which God wrote or helped write, has both of those things. So, either God was wrong when he put them in there or he likes them. Why not assume the best and leave the courts (and God) alone?

Posted by jim at 10:31 PM ||