Tag Archives: Media

WHY SEX SCANDALS DIDN’T HURT DONALD TRUMP

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Donald Trump

A well-publicized bout of illicit sex never did any celebrity’s reputation harm; often, a lot of good. But how does it affect a politician’s? Up to last week, you’d probably say: ruinously. But the election of Donald Trump (pictured above) amid a tsunami of accusations from women who claim he either touched or propositioned them inappropriately has forced us to change our minds.

It’s at least possible that, far from being damaged by the allegations, Trump actually profited from them. For a while he looked almost like a victim: someone whose every wink and flirtatious gesture over the past thirty years had suddenly returned as a baleful curse. Practically every day for about a fortnight, fresh grievances appeared; women, who had been silent for years, decided it was time to make their claims public.

After a while, it seemed Trump’s denials were useless and that his presidential campaign was wrecked. At least according to many journalists. But maybe there was a rebound in public sympathy with voters who doubted the authenticity of the claimants, lending their support to the beleaguered Trump.

He wasn’t the first US President or prospective President to have extricated himself from a potentially career-wrecking sex scandal and perhaps Trump owes his survival to the strategy adopted by none other than the husband of his presidential rival.

Bill Clinton is a liminal figure, occupying a position on both sides of the celebrity politician divide: he had a successful political career as governor of Arkansas, 1979-81, and 1983-93, before becoming president. Clinton cut a beguiling figure en route to the presidency: telegenic and good-looking, he also had the sheen of authenticity, appearing natural and relaxed on television.

Clinton arrived at the White House in 1993 in the middle of a media revolution, with cable television providing a 24-hour news cycle. His arrival also coincided with a voyeurism diffusing through the population: consumers’ interest in private lives practically commissioned the media’s intrusive approach and obliged even presidents to expose themselves. On one memorable occasion in 1992, Clinton donned Ray-Bans and played saxophone on a late night talk show. Yet there was more celebrity to Clinton than anyone dared to imagine and, in 1998, he became the central figure of a sex scandal bigger than anything dreamt up by Madonna.

There was a stunning moment shortly after the scandal broke when Clinton appeared on national television and affirmed: “I did not have sexual relations with that woman.” That woman was Monica Lewinsky, White House aide, and her account of her relationship with the President was somewhat different. The US President is always a figure of great interest by virtue of his position (there’s never been a female President), and this and the several other allegations of sexual peccadilloes that followed marked Clinton out as someone worthy of even greater interest.

Clinton was the US President for two terms of office and, for a while, under threat of impeachment. So the scandal could have had wider-reaching repercussions than it actually did. And the fact that Lewinsky actually worked in politics gave it added relevance. As the concupiscent details of the case unfurled — the semen-stained dress, the cigar, the secretly recorded phone conversations — interest built and, for the final two years of the twentieth century, Lewinsky was one of the most famous women in the world. Her celebrity status manifested in several books about her, an assortment of well-paid endorsement deals, her own line of accessories and a reality tv program in which she featured. She then faded from view.

The affair should have hurt, even destroyed Clinton. Why didn’t it? He had narrowly avoided a controversy about his wilder years as a student, when he issued his famous “I did not inhale” notice about his supposed marijuana smoking. The Lewinsky denial could have undermined his credibility.

In December 1998, within months of the denial, Clinton achieved his career highest approval rating of 73. His average approval rating during his term of office was 55.1, below John F. Kennedy, but above Reagan, Jimmy Carter and George W. Bush, among others. He enjoyed a consistently high approval rating among the “baby boomer” generation (those born in the immediate post-second world war period). An experts’ poll in 2011 placed Clinton at 19 in the all-time list of presidents. Maybe honesty was no longer part of the Presidential job description.

Clinton remained as President till 2001, when he left office after serving his complete second term. He also acquired a status distinct from that of other politicians, who leave legacies. Clinton could have been remembered for bringing together Israel’s Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat of the Palestine Liberation Front on the White House lawn in 1993, or signing the 1994 Kremlin Accords that stopped the preprogrammed nuclear missiles, or organizing peace talks for Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1995, or ordering cruise missile strikes on Afghanistan in 1998. He could also be remembered as the first president to have solicited the public’s favour in spite of deeds that would have damned politicians from earlier eras.

Clinton though was a politician for the celebrity era. Squeaky-clean politicians whose worst vice was an extra-marital fling were, by the 1990s, remnants of another age. Compare his experience with that of former civil-rights leader and Washington DC mayor Marion Barry, who in 1990, was convicted of cocaine possession. A female friend had lured him into a police sting: at their assignation, hidden cameras captured him smoking crack. During his six-week trial, accounts of his sex and drug binges, backed by evidence from a pimps and pushers, were relayed to homes via television. He served six months in jail, but two months after his release, he returned to the city council and, within three years, was re-elected Mayor. In another sex-related case, New York governor Eliot Spitzer resigned after being implicated in a federal investigation into inter-state prostitution in 2008. He barely broke stride, returning in his own television show, his credibility in tact.

John Edwards, a 2004 vice presidential candidate, had an affair with a woman while his wife was dying with cancer. This was scandal enough to blow him off course in his bid for president in 2007, but he would probably have navigated his way back had it not been for allegations that he masterminded a $1 million cover-up of his affair, mis-using funds from two wealthy campaign donors. Substance abuse, carnal activities and sundry other deviant behaviours are, it seems, forgivable; in a way, they humanize a politician, exposing a few of the kind of flaws all of us secrete.

Clinton sailed close to the wind; but it blew in his favour. The political culture in which he prospered had lost the stiffness and propriety of earlier eras and his sexual misconduct was not thought venal. Clinton brought a sense of showmanship and his occasional peccadillo only intensified the drama of his presidency. Even in the midst of the Lewinsky scandal, he battled on like a rock star in his fifties, determined to show his audience he had a few good songs in him. Clinton may not have been the greatest President, but he was surely the most consumable and, as if to prove this, he still tours the world, giving guest lectures, signing copies of his own books, receiving invitations to do spots on tv shows and doing what celebrities do – appear.

There’s no evidence at that Trump studied Clinton’s expertly manoeuvred strategy. But you can be sure the people surrounding him were aware that a resolve to remain unforthcoming, distant and aloofly silent about the allegations was the only response realistically available to their man. Denial would have just led to further accusations, implicating him in a vortex of claim and counter-claim. Speechlessness effectively killed the narrative. A stream of allegations became repetitive and uninteresting after a while.

Is there irony in this? After all, most celebrities revel in sex scandals. It reminds us that political celebrities – and Trump is now arguably the paragon of these – are different from other celebs. They still need to engage with us in a way that reminds us that they have that indefinable quality of ordinariness; they also need to keep us in close contact via social aswell as traditional media; and they need to surrender their private lives to us – after all, we feel entitled not just to know but to own celebrities.

Yet politicians don’t just entertain us: they make decisions that affect our material lives and, possibly, those of our children. We like to know that, for all their flaws and foibles, they have our interests in mind. Trump has skilfully persuaded Americans that, for all his reputed dalliances, he is a man who can be trusted to put his followers’ interests before his own. This is a rare feat for a politician today.

Picture courtesy of Gage Skidmore, via Flickr

 

MYTH-MAKING: Elizabeth Taylor, Liz Smith and the birth of celebrity culture

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Ellis Cashmore discusses reactions to his new book with his commissioning editor at Bloomsbury, Katie Gallof.

Media of Elizabeth Taylor

Katie Gallof: Well your new book on Elizabeth Taylor is provoking some reaction, isn’t it? It seems you’ve captivated some reviewers, and infuriated others. Liz Smith, in particular, has moved from the first response to the second. What goes on here?

Ellis Cashmore: First let me introduce Liz Smith, @LizSmth, who, in all probability doesn’t need much of an introduction. She’s the most experienced and arguably most respected society journalist in the world and, even in her nineties, files an influential column called New York Social Diary in which she chronicles the lives of celebrities. To call her a gossip columnist – which I do in the book – is really like describing the Sistine Chapel as a church. She is the doyen of celebrity journalists.

KG: She was a friend of Elizabeth Taylor, right?

EC: Absolutely. A confidante too, I would surmise. Certainly, Liz Smith covered Elizabeth Taylor’s career in depth and for a period of time that qualifies her to comment authoritatively on virtually any aspect of her life.

KG: And your book is, of course, about Taylor’s life, but also the cultural changes she both lived through and, in her way, instigated.

EC: Yes, my argument is that Taylor ushered in what we now call celebrity culture: audiences were as fascinated by her private life as they were by her dramatic performances and she was adept at manipulating the media in a way that suited her own ends perfectly. In a genuine sense, she helped cultivate our appetite for scandal, particularly with her tempestuous romance with Richard Burton. We take this for granted now, of course. But La Liz, as Liz Smith calls her, was the first Hollywood star to capture fans in this way. Incidentally, Liz Smith wrote about Taylor and Burton: ““They trusted me and eventually I became the only journalist who could get to them.”

KG: So what did Liz Smith think about your book?

EC: In her column New York Social Diary, she offered her view that I “intelligently and dramatically” address the changing status of fame, specifically how Taylor benefited from scandals that would have ruined lesser stars, whether Taylor deliberately started those scandals, if she delighted in or squirmed from the global fame she acquired and how she turned her fame to her own purposes. In a lovely phrase, Liz Smith notes my analysis of “How she [Taylor] made mythology out of her travails and happiness.” You can imagine how thrilled I was when she concluded: “I found myself agreeing with most of his conclusions, perhaps because I myself had come to believe, and had written those same conclusions, over the many, many years I knew and had unprecedented access to the star of stars.”

KG: Praise indeed from someone who has been writing about the stars for at least four decades. I understand she launched her renowned New York Daily News column in 1976.

EC: Yes. In fact, she implicitly invited me to contact her for further information when she wrote that her input could have “made his good book better.” I don’t doubt this.

KG: So what’s changed?

EC: Three days later in another New York Social Diary column, Liz Smith wrote that the more she thought about my book’s references to her, the more “pissed-off” she became. Naturally, it wasn’t my intention to upset her and I don’t think there was any inaccuracy in my account. But I recorded how she was present at many pivotal events in Taylor’s career and was closer to her than any other journalist. This led some writers to assume she lost some objectivity and became too chummy. This wasn’t my criticism: in fact, it came from Ann Gerhart, who, in 1993, wrote critically after Liz Smith had emceed a press conference at which Taylor introduced her range of fragrances: “Now, the veteran gossip columnist is a celebrity in her own right, by virtue of her years of access and hefty salary, and many times she has hosted various functions to raise money for charity. But a journalist serving as a flack, helping an interview subject hustle a commercial venture, that’s something entirely different and smacked, to us, of ethics violations.”

KG: That was certainly a stinging censure.

EC: It was, though, in a sense, journalists can, indeed have to become familiar, if not friendly with their subjects. Remember Gerhart’s remarks were 23 years ago. Today, we consumers expect journalists to provide insider accounts of the most personal details of celebrities’ private lives. This is not sycophancy, but Liz Smith was ahead of her time in this respect.  I know she grumbles that many critics have given her “bitchy write-ups,” but I’m hoping she doesn’t include me. In writing the book, I’ve tried to be analytical and detached.

KG: I notice that, at the end of the book, you include her in the roll of influential individuals who, in their own way, shaped Taylor and, in turn, the world in which she lived.

EC: Indeed I do. The whole book is as much about times of Elizabeth Taylor, as well as her life. She was inseparable from her cultural context and, of course, Liz Smith was part of that context. I quote her poignant phrase after Taylor died: “She was only 79, but had lived a thousand years, had fired up and exhausted endless fantasies for herself and the millions who watched her.”

 

Katie Gallof is Bloomsbury’s Senior Commissioning Editor for Film and Media Studies. She’s based in New York. katie.gallof@bloomsbury.com  @BloomsburyMedia

Ellis Cashmore is author of Elizabeth Taylor: A Private Life for Public Consumption and Beyond Black: Race and Celebrity in Obama’s America. He is a visiting professor of sociology at Aston University  e.cashmore1@aston.ac.uk.  @elliscashmore

WHY DOES THE REST OF THE WORLD LIKE SEPP BLATTER (WHILE MOST EUROPEANS HATE HIM)?

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Joseph Sepp Blatter

Q: Let’s cut straight to the chase: will the World Cups take place in Russia in 2018 and Qatar in 2022?

A: Yes and possibly: it’s too late to change Russia, but the current investigation into Fifa will probably lead to revelations about how the bidding process for the World Cups was flawed by corruption and bribery and this could force Fifa to change the host nation for 2022. Qatar is already an unpopular site, anyway. Head of the English Football Association Greg Dyke doesn’t think Fifa president Sepp Blatter (pictured above) will survive his next full term of office (4 years) and he’s probably suspecting the trail of the current FBI case will lead all the way back to 2010 when the results of the Fifa vote for the World Cup hosts were announced.

Q: I heard you talking on radio last week and you seemed to think the big sponsors, or Fifa’s partners as they call them, would wonder whether their own brands are likely to be tarnished by their associations with Fifa. I guess you mean the likes of Coca-Cola, Budweiser, adidas, McDonald’s and the others, right? Surely they’re big enough to survive the latest scandal.

A: No doubt about it, though Visa, one of the major sponsors, has expressed doubts about Fifa and publicly declared that it will ask the organization to account for itself. Visa and each sponsor pay roughly $30m a year to be featured on official Fifa merchandise and have their logos plastered all over the screen when the games are being played. These global brands don’t throw money at Fifa out of the goodness of their hearts: they get good value from the exposure.  If they thought they’d suffer, they’d pull their money in a heartbeat. I imagine several others besides Visa will make pronouncements over the next week or so, but they’ll probably declare that they’re holding meetings with Fifa and expecting to get assurances that the type of corruption we’ve been hearing about will be stamped out. The usual anaemic platitudes, in other words.

Q: Were you surprised Sepp Blatter retained his presidency, despite the turmoil 48-hours before the election? His credibility must have been shaken.

A: I thought this initially, but now I’m not sure. After all, he had no credibility in Western Europe anyway. In North America, he was held in suspicion, and the Aussies have mistrusted him since Fifa voted down their bid to host the 2022 World Cup — the one that was awarded to Qatar. By the way, I think Australia will go on the offensive and try to snatch the World Cup from Qatar in the future. So Blatter was never banking on the support of those nations: his friends and stalwart admirers are in Africa and Asia. He can do no wrong with these nations.

Q: You’ve hit on an interesting point here: our media has been scathing about Blatter, but elsewhere in the world they haven’t been so destructive and, as you say, he enjoys support from many other parts of the world outside western Europe, North America and Australia. Why is that?

A: One of the first terms I learned when I was a sociology undergraduate was ethnocentricity (sometimes, ethnocentrism): it means evaluating other people and cultures according to the standards of your own culture. That’s what we’ve been doing. I was listening to Greg Dyke recall how, at last week’s Fifa election, he was talking to delegates from Africa and Asia who weren’t concerned about the allegations and whether they implicated Blatter. It “didn’t worry them at all,” said Dyke, “if you get into a position of power, you take cash.” In other words, there is a more relaxed approach to casual bribery in many parts of the world. It lubricates wheels. We shouldn’t kid ourselves that we’re above this; it’s just that we take a disapproving attitude that’s not so apparent elsewhere. So Blatter isn’t seen as the unscrupulous figure he is over here.

Q: All the same, a change of leadership would’ve made a difference, wouldn’t it?

A: Would it? Again, I’m reminded of my undergrad years: one of the writers that struck a chord with me was an Italian scholar named Vilfredo Pareto (pictured below), who lived 1848-1923, and who analyzed how ruling groups, or elites, clung to their power no matter what the political regime, whether capitalist, socialist, communist or whatever. There are always cliques that rise to the top and engineer ways of staying there. He called it the Circulation of Elites. If he were around today, he’d probably conclude that, in a largscale organization like Fifa, which has reserves of about $15 billion, it really doesn’t matter who’s in charge: the people in positions of power will try to feather their own nest — make money for themselves. Even organizations committed to democratic ideals succumb to the rule of a small, self-serving elite. By the way Pareto was part of a group of scholars known as Machiavellians — after the Italian nobleman and author Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527), who advised rulers that, if they wanted to hold onto power they would have to use devious methods.

Wikimedia Commons - Vilfredo pareto

Q: As usual, your cynicism guides your understanding. But what should the nations that are genuinely alienated by Blatter and want to show their disgust at the way he’s governed the football world actually do? There’s talk of a boycott. Will this help?

A: Why leave it at a boycott? If you want to get out, there’s nothing to stop national football federations pulling out of Fifa completely. If say, Germany, Italy and Holland decided to withdraw from Fifa, they would probably expect to be joined by Australia, USA, France, England and a few others. They’d only need eight nations and they could easily get one of the global media corporations, such as NBC, Disney or Fox, interested. One of them would part with $500 million or so for exclusive English language rights. And it would rip the heart out of Fifa’s World Cup. There have been breakaways in cricket, tennis and boxing; and all of those sports survived. So it isn’t beyond the realms of possibility. Michel Platini, the president of Uefa (the European governing federation) is a known critic of Blatter, but we’re not sure how brave he is: he could propose a complete Uefa withdrawal from Fifa. There would be strong dissent from Russia, which hosts the 2018 World Cup, of course. Russian president Vladimir Putin is an outspoken critic of the FBI’s investigation into Fifa. Spain wouldn’t be keen on leaving Fifa either. Even so, the football world could split. The World Cup is as big as the Olympics at the moment, but that could change.

Q: One final question: is this whole affair really so bad for football?

A: No one likes to admit it, but scandals like these keep interest alive: the whole football narrative is populated by notorious characters who indulge in repugnant behaviour that turns the rest of us into moral judges. We like tut-tutting and issuing condemnation; it’s satisfying. When scandals like this make the lead stories not just for a day, but — in this case — for three straight days, we can’t escape them. How many sports can boast as many high-profile scandals as football? Historically, boxing and baseball have come close, but today football is dominant. Scandals make football the most fascinating, exciting, most pleasurable sport of them all. The least interesting aspect of football is the 90-minutes of play!

IS KATE MOSS WORTH £20 MILLION?

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Vicarious consumption is the key to understanding why we think she is worth it

Q: I see Kate Moss is worth £20 million. I knew she was pretty well-off, but usually a model’s earning power seems to decline as she gets older. Kate’s 40 now. I see you’ve commented on her staying power in the Observer (above). But I wanted to ask you a different question: how do we Brits look at seriously rich celebrities?

A: Interesting question. Of course, Kate is rich, but not super-rich. I mean, Bill Gates, the richest man in the world is worth about £30 billion and counting. Simon Cowell is now worth £300m. David Bowie’s return last year saw his wealth expand to £135m. Pete Cashmore (no relation), who started the social media blog Mashable from a room in his parents’ house near Aberdeen, is said to be worth £120m. But I take your point: we don’t resent these people having so much money.
Q: But I can remember when we begrudged the rich having so much money, while the rest of us scrambled to make a living. When I was a student the rich were a class apart; in a sense they were the enemy in the class war. What happened?
A: First of all, we’ve seen the rise of a new class of rich people who have made their fortune not from industry, or business, but from services, specifically sport, media and other parts of what we might describe as popular entertainment. Think of the three rich Brits I named above: we’re all consumers of their products. Even if we don’t watch The X Factor, or buy Bowie albums, or use Mashable, we are all part of a culture in which these are integral parts. We’re surrounded by their products and effects.
Q: This is something to do with consumption, isn’t it?
A: It is. We used to place a lot of importance on how much money people had. Now we’re interested in how they spend it. So we read about how much money Kim Kardashian (below) earns, and we know she has what most people regard as limited, if any, talent. But do we begrudge her the money? Not while we get so pleasure from reading about her £6 million ($10 million) wedding. We expect wealthy celebrities to entertain us.
Q: Hang on. You’re saying we enjoy watching other people’s extravagance? We don’t mind them squandering  ridiculous amounts of money?
A: That’s it, yes. Think of footballers and their cars. We’ve got past the point when we complain about the so-called obscene amounts of money they earn. We realize that they can earn that much because we’re prepared to pay so much to watch football and buy the products they advertise. So we expect them to provide us with amusement, not just on the football field, but in the way they waste their money. We find this gratifying.
Q: It’s a kind of vicarious consumption, right?
A: Good term: vicarious consumption. We experience in our imaginations how it must be to spend lavish amounts of money.
Q: But how about wealthy industrialists? They don’t entertain us.
A: Name one.
Q: Err …
A: Let me name a few: Srichand and Gopichand Hinduja, combined wealth, £11.9bn. Paul Sykes, the entrepreneur and property magnate who helped fund UKIP, has a fortune of £650m. We don’t get to hear about these people. If we did we would probably feel resentful and aggrieved that they have so much money, but don’t give us any value. I’m not saying they don’t create jobs, generate taxes and make a sizeable contribution to the UK economy. But they’re not in the media. That’s where we like the rich to be — right in our faces so we can see how they’re spending their money and, hopefully, getting into trouble doing it. Imagine if David and Victoria Beckham (worth £210m) stopped appearing in the media and drifted into obscurity. Not that this is likely to happen soon; but we’d think we were not getting much value out of them.
Q: So you’re saying consumption is so important now that we actually consume the rich.
A: That’s pretty much it: we know they’ve got rich thanks to our money and we want something back in return. As long as we are reminded about their expensive clothes, cars, houses, yachts, weddings and so on, we don’t mind. So I know people think Kate Moss has got rich just by appearing in fashionable places and looking good. But it wasn’t so long ago she was called “Cocaine Kate” and criticized for her dissipated lifestyle and her dodgy choices in men. She’s hardly ever been out of the limelight. And we’ve enjoy the Kate narrative so much, we’d probably miss her if she dropped off the radar.
Q: Let me summarize: while some time ago we were resentful of people who had a lot more money than the rest of us, we accept rich celebrities nowadays on the condition that they spend their money and maintain a lifestyle that we enjoy, albeit vicariously.
A: Yes. And remember: consumption isn’t just about buying stuff over the counter or online — though this is part of it. But it’s also about engaging with public figures, reading, watching, judging and talking about them in a manner we find agreeable. As long as they continue to amuse us, we’re prepared to accept their wealth. In other words, Kate Moss is probably worth her £20 million. @elliscashmore

WHY DO ADVERTISERS LIKE FOOTBALL SHIRTS?

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Q: As a new football season kicks off, I thought I’d ask you about shirt sponsors. Hull City recently announced a deal worth “seven figures” with 12BETuk, which is a gambling outfit, and Everton has extended its contract with Chang beer for another three years; that’s worth £16 million to the club.

A: And don’t forget Everton’s neighbours, Liverpool, which gets £31 million per year for wearing shirts with Standard Charter emblazoned across the front.

Q: So my first question is: Why?

A: Simple answer is: advertising. The Premier League is broadcast practically everywhere on the planet, so every time a game is shown, viewers see 22 moving advertisements for their product. The cumulative viewing audience is colossal.

Q: When did all this start?

A: Well, you have to remember association football has always been sponsored. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, clubs were usually started by churches or factories. The factories in particular sponsored teams with kit, travelling expenses and even wages after professionalism was allowed in 1864. But they weren’t allowed to use their players’ shirts to advertise themselves. That crept in during the late 1970s, at first in Germany.  Eintracht Braunschweig carried the liqueur Jägermeister logo on their kit in 1973.

Q: That recently?

A: Kettering Town, when the club was in the Southern League, could actually claim to have been the first British club to wear shirts with a brand name, in this case Kettering Tyres, way back in the 1975-76 season. The late Derek Dougan (1938-2007, pictured above in early 1976) was the inspiration behind this innovation. The League told the club to remove the lettering. In 1977, Derby County explored a deal with Saab, the Swedish carmaker, and approached the Football League (this was before the Premier League) for permission. The deal didn’t go through, but, as the League approved it, Liverpool rushed in and clinched a deal with Hitachi.

Q: How much?

A: Difficult to know for sure, but £50,000 is the figure I’ve heard. It sounds a ridiculously small amount now, but back in 1978, no one had a clue whether it would be effective, so it was an experiment.

Q: It’s a wonder no one else came up with the idea before, isn’t it?

A: Not really. Football was a sport in the 1970s, not a popular entertainment. Let me explain: although it was a professional game and the players were well-paid after the maximum wage (i.e. wage ceiling) was abolished in 1961, football was not meant to be a business and fans were not customers; they were organic parts of the club. No one would have dared talk about a football market, as they do today. Clubs were wary of the accusation that they would be exploiting fans.

Q: I imagine the Football League was concerned too.

A: Absolutely. The lettering on the shirts was restricted to a maximum size, 2×8 inches back then, which is a lot smaller than the logos we see splattered across shirts today.

Q: But I guess it caught on straightaway, right?

A: Not quite: the television companies opposed it. BBC didn’t allow advertising of any kind and either refused to broadcast games featuring games with teams playing with sponsored shirts, or made those teams cover the lettering with tape. ITV opposed it for a different reason. As the company relied on advertising revenue, it hated the prospect of effectively advertising products and not only not receiving money for it, but having to pay for the privilege. So it was a highly controversial development. The television companies relented in 1983.

Q: Did fans wear the replica shirts with the sponsors’ names back then?

A: No. If you saw someone in the 1970s wearing a football shirt and trainers, you’d assume they had been playing football. The shirts started to be worn as casual clothes around the mid-1980s. Now, this was a crucial development because when fans started wearing replica shirts, it meant that a commercial sponsor had it’s name or logo worn not just by eleven men, but by thousands and, in the case of well-supported clubs millions of people. I know it’s not a reliable figure, but Manchester United claim over 600 million fans around the world, which is why Chevrolet is paying the club £357million to plaster its logo on shirts for the next seven years (see picture below).

Q: So the fans became walking advertisements?

A: Precisely. If one person had dreamt this up, he or she would have been called a marketing genius. But it came about almost by accident. Remember the figure Liverpool gets paid by Standard & Charter bank: £31 million per year. This reflects Liverpool’s huge fan base, a global fan base too. So all over the world, fans are walking around advertising the bank.

Q: That sounds like exploitation.

A: It is. But no one is forcing the fans to pay fifty quid for the 2014-15 shirts, and, if you tried to sell the shirt without the sponsor’s name, fans would complain that it wasn’t an accurate replica. So they willingly agree to be like sandwich board carriers.

Q: So let me try to sum this up. You’re saying that shirt deals have to be understood in the context of changes in the sport rather than just changes in the regulations?

A: Yes. When shirts sponsorship was introduced, many people thought it was against the spirit of football and hurt its integrity. It also used the fans, rather than respected them. The idea of exploiting fans appalled most people. But, as football has become an entertainment industry, the fans have become customers and, as such, they are there to be squeezed. Look at the hikes in season ticket prices as another example. Fans enjoy wearing team strips and they want their shirts to look exactly the same as the players’. They say the most effective form of advertising is when people don’t realize it’s advertising. This is a perfect example.

Sponsors care about Fifa’s corruption. Do fans?

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FOOTBALL IS MORE ADDICTION THAN ATTRACTION

Qatar 2022: Fifa partner Sony call on governing body to investigate World Cup corruption claims

Q: Sony is demanding that Fifa “appropriately investigate” the corruption claims that have been flying about lately. What authority has Sony got?
A: The authority that comes when you pump $305 million per year into football, that’s about £182 million, enough to buy a pretty decent Premier League club, every year. So Fifa will take notice of this.
Q: I guess Fifa depends on corporations like Sony for sponsorship money then, eh?
A: And how. Coca-Cola and adidas have pumped money into Fifa for years. And more recently credit card giant Visa and Emirates, the Dubai-based airline, and Hyundai, the car manufacturer have joined them. They each sponsor Fifa. Collectively, they contribute probably close to £1 billion per year. The World Cup alone is expected to fetch Fifa $730 million, or about £445 million, in sponsorships. So Fifa will not want to get on their wrong side.
Q: But the sponsors have made noises before, haven’t they?
A: Yes. In 2011 when Fifa was in the middle of another corruption scandal, Visa said: “The current situation is clearly not good for the game and we ask that Fifa take all necessary steps to resolve the concerns that have been raised.” Coca-Cola, the single biggest sponsor, released a statement: “We have every expectation that Fifa will resolve this situation in an expedient and thorough manner.” That was three years ago, remember. So they must be thinking Fifa have not just failed to resolve the matter, but have become involved into an arguably more serious episode — this one, as we know concerning the awarding of the 2022 World Cup to Qatar. There could come a point at which the likes of adidas and Hyundai ask themselves: “Are we doing the image of the company any good by associating ourselves with a sport that is tainted?”
Q: I suppose so, but, so far, only Sony has spoken up and the electronics giant hasn’t threatened to pull its money, has it?
A: No. That’s because Sony, Coca-Cola and the others are confident football is so incredibly popular that, by the time the World Cup is over, everyone will be feeling so jubilant that they’ll have forgotten about how dirty Fifa is.
Q: Are they right?
A: I suspect they are: Fifa has a habit of riding out these scandals and stay in tact. The reason is simple: fans don’t much care.
Q: You’re kidding, right? Fans surely care that the game they love is riddled with corruption, bribery, matchfixing, bungs and all sorts of other skulduggery.
A: Well, they know association football is endemically bent. But I’m not sure they care that much. I mean, once the big games start on Thursday, this crisis will vanish and all the fans will care about is the tournament. Tom Peck, of the Independent, wrote a biting story the other day, in which he suggested: “When the whistle finally blows in Arena Corinthians in Sao Paulo on Thursday night, a football-addicted planet will get its first sweet quadrennial pull on the World Cup crack pipe and all will be right again.” And I think he’s right. I’m not sure his conclusion is accurate: “It is this addiction that hides from the football fan the extraordinary truth.” Fans know the truth; they just don’t care that much.
Q: That’s a bit of a compliment with a criticism inside it, isn’t it?
A: Let’s put it this way: fans are clued-up, they know about the politics of the sport; but they also realize that, in practical terms, there isn’t much they can do about it.
Q: But, as we both know, there is.
A: I see what you’re getting at. Imagine if football fans decided to boycott, say, Budweiser beer, McDonalds, or Johnson & Johnson products. They’re all sponsors and stand to benefit from football’s greatest tournament. They could force change in the way in which the global game is run. Sony is probably aware of the potential impact of negative publicity and that’s why it’s put out this statement. Remember: some sponsors are quick to sever links with athletes who are convicted of doping offences: they think their brand will suffer by association. Others just ride out the storm, assuming sports fans are just not motivated enough to put their convictions into action. Are they really going to stop buying adidas gear or scissor their Visa cards?
Q: I’m asking the questions … are they?
A: No. I’m afraid I agree with Peck: football is more of an addiction than an attraction. I hate to say it, but I think this scandal will have been forgotten by the time the whistle blows to end England’s first game. All the same you have to wonder if anyone benefits from all this. I bet Nike, Pepsi, Toshiba, Burger King and the other rivals of Fifa’s main sponsors are having a quiet laugh. Nike, in particular, has opted to capitalize on the World Cup and other Fifa tournaments with ambush marketing and sponsoring national teams, like Brazil’s. But, as Nike has no direct link to Fifa, it won’t incur collateral damage. The others’ reputations are vulnerable.

Harry Styles’ deal with the devil

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IS HE RENEGING ON A FAUSTIAN BARGAIN?

harry styles, where have you come from. amazing

Q: So what’s all this about Harry Styles? He’s taken out an injunction. What’s that?

A: An injunction is a court order or warning, restraining people from continuing an action that threatens the legal right of another. Harry says photographers follow him and invade his personal space.

Q: Which is?

A: 50 metres. So now photographers can’t stake out or loiter within distance of him.

Q: He’s not the first celebrity to do this, is he?

A: No. There have been several. Cheryl Cole won a similar high court order last year after complaining about the “intense and very annoying” experience of photographers camping outside her home. Lily Allen too. And the late Amy Winehouse. In 2008, when Britney Spears was taken to hospital, the ambulance needed at least 12 police motorcycles to escort it through a swarm of photographers.

Q: So you can understand why they get annoyed.

A: You can. But it’s like a professor getting annoyed by persistent students who are always asking questions, calling him at home and constantly asking for reviews of drafts. The students might be a bit annoying, but without them the professor would be sunk.

Q: You’re not serious. That’s a ridiculous comparison.

A: Follow my logic. Without students, a professor has no one to educate, no one to read his or her books and articles, no one who is interested in learning, no one to lecture. So the prof might get the occasional student who calls at inconvenient times or bombards him or her with drafts of essays. But that goes with the job. It’s not 9 till 5. Celebs need exposure: they become famous because the media, especially the paps, give them phenomenal publicity. Someone like Harry has been elevated to stardom courtesy of television (he shot to fame with One Direction on The X Factor) and has been in the public eye ever since. His band’s records sell in their millions and their concerts sell out. But can you imagine what would happen if the global media decided to ignore them?

Q: All their fans, the “Directioners” would kick up a fuss and … well, I’m not sure what would happen after that. What?

A: We’d all forget about them, stop buying records and all the other merchandise. Television shows would lose interest and stop booking them. And twitter traffic would eventually slow down. The band would still make a living, but, without the kind of media attention 1D now enjoys, it would be headed for oblivion.

Q: You say, “enjoys” but clearly the band, or at least Harry, isn’t enjoying all the attention, is he?

A: Apparently, not. Though the phrase “goes with the territory” should mean something to him. The band has shot to global fame in a relatively short period of time. They appeared in the 2010 X Factor. Harry is still only 19, remember. The band finished in third place behind Rebecca Ferguson, and winner Matt Cardle, neither of whom has made nearly as much impact as 1D. Imagine if they commanded the same kind of attention as Aiden Grimshaw or Katie Waissel, both of whom were in show’s finals, but never registered with the media. I think that when people go on a show like The X Factor, they strike a kind of Faustian bargain: they trade in their right to a private life in exchange for a shot at fame, riches and A-list status. In 1D’s case, the deal came off and the boy band got what it wanted. But Harry seems to want to renege on the deal.

Q: A bit harsh, isn’t it?

A: It sounds it, but surely anyone who contemplates fame – and a great many people, young and old, do – must know that being followed by paps is part of the definition. Being a celeb means that the media are going to chronicle your every move and convey this to consumers. If they lose interest, then chances are fans have either already lost interest or soon will. That’s just the nature of celebrity culture nowadays.

Q: So what will happen?

A: Either this is an astute career move for Harry and he is intent of becoming the most prominent member of the band. He probably already is. Or he could scare off the paps and they will just ignore him. I think the former is more likely. Interest in the band is inevitably limited by time. In a couple of years, fans will move on: look at JLS. But my suspicion is that Harry will try eventually to establish himself independently of the band. @elliscashmore

 

Why we should be grateful for Fabricant’s lack of caution

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“OMG! Just said “twat” live on air …”

I wonder if Tory MP Michael Fabricant thinks the word “twat” refers only to a person who is stupid or obnoxious. He may not realize it is also vulgar slang for a woman’s genitals. Or perhaps he does and just doesn’t care. When he used it on BBC WM, he was dissing Russell Brand for his theatrical responses to Jeremy Paxman’s questions about his politics. Setting aside the interview itself, in which Paxman allowed Brand to pontificate critically about the ineffectiveness of democracy, Fabricant’s sideswipe at Brand has prompted outrage on a scale Brand himself would envy [skip to 1.36 minutes]. In condemning Brand’s lack of realism and his use of nouns such as paradigm, Fabricant must have forgotten his media training and lapsed into an everyday vernacular, which prompted listeners in the West Midlands to complain. He seemed to regret his lack of discretion, or he could have been be luxuriating in the fuss he caused when he later tweeted: OMG! Just said “twat” live on air with @adriangoldberg on BBC WM referring to Russell Brand and his pompous remarks on @BBCNewsnight.”

But perhaps we should be grateful for his heedlessness. Politicans today are meticulously cautious when they appear in public: every word is thought-out, every sentence is measured, every gesture is rehearsed. Since the Tony Blair period, politicians have become entertainers: they know the power of the media and adjust accordingly. Politicians create a persona and display this, much as Vincent Furnier displays Alice Cooper – as public figures rather than private individuals with a remit to engage, amuse and in many other ways, keep us interested. There has been a dramatic drop in confidence in politicians since the war: we no longer believe they prioritize the nation’s interests above their own personal interests; we don’t accept they have any moral authority to make pronouncements; and we have concrete evidence that they will resort to the most cringingly embarrassing rule-breaking, like fiddling their expenses. Politicians are more tolerated than respected. All the same, should we decry Fabricant for speaking his mind, even if he did it a way that offended a few puritans? We hear the offending word in soaps and other tv dramas all the time. I thought his evaluation was refreshing in its honesty. Think about it: this was an elected politician speaking his mind in a language that was coarse yet candid. It was a spontaneous expression rather than one of those endlessly tiresome interviews in which the responses seems almost independent of the questions (they actually are: politicians are taught to use media interviews to project views rather than answer questions). Politicians who let their guards down are often criticized for making gaffes. Think of Godfrey Bloom who recently put his foot in his mouth with his “bongo-bong0 land” remark. But we should be grateful: we get to glimpse how they think rather than how they are told to think. @elliscashmore