It sounds like a headline from the Onion, but strategy documents uncovered yesterday, from the nation’s most prominent anti-gay marriage group, the National Organization for Marriage (found by the Human Rights Campaign), reveal a novel approach to convincing Americans to vote against marriage equality: recruit glamorous but unintelligent celebrities. (p.19/20)
“Hollywood with its cultural biases is far bigger than we can hope to be. We recognize this. But we also recognize the opportunity – the disproportionate potential impact of proactively seeking to gather and connect a community of artists, athletes, writers, beauty queens and other glamorous non-cognitive elites across national boundaries. (This is applying the Witherspoon and IAV model to non-intellectual elites.)”
The first thing I thought of was Carrie Prejean, and the article goes on to discuss her relationship with NOM (before the nude photos and sex tapes were revealed and they were forced to dump her).
The second thing I thought was that this sure seems like how the GOP has been picking their candidates the last few decades.
The third thing I though was that Non-Cognitive Elites would be a good band name.
chopper
I can’t wait to hear newt blame ‘the cognitive elites’ for our problems.
frogspawn
Sounds like I’m in the wrong line of work.
Steve
The Victoria Jackson strategy! What could go wrong?
Herbal Infusion Bagger
Them Hollywood celebrittees and theyre fancy book larnin’
The Other Chuck
I request you add “Non-Cognitive Elites” to the rotating taglines post-haste.
quannlace
“non-cognitive”
Aren’t those coma patients?
beltane
The only problem with this strategy is that the has-beens and never-weres likely to be recruited do not make very effective spokespeople.
Daaling
Prejean has a sex tap? Googling for it now :p. As long as she doesn’t talk in it which is a safe bet.
The Other Chuck
The Reese Witherspoon “Legally Blonde” model?
Daaling
Prejean has a sex tape? Googling for it now :p. As long as she doesn’t talk in it which is a safe bet.
The Other Chuck
@quannlace:
Give ’em a break, conservatives have to find a growth constituency _somewhere_.
Redshift
Leaving aside the pretty people, I’m just trying to wrap my mind around the idea of “non-cognitive” artists and writers.
I mean, I know they’re working off of some bizarre straw man concept of the opposition that I’ll never understand, but still, WTF?
redshirt
These guys should form a boy band that rockets up the chart yet who’s lyrics preach the Christian beliefs of hatred, fear, and violence towards the Other. All to a dancy beat that appeals to the youngsters!
Redshift
I guess they’re trying to emulate the wild success of the Half-hour News Hour and Conservapedia…
slag
@Daaling: You and Rush Limbaugh…gross.
Catsy
“Non-Cognitive” as a positive descriptive phrase for the kind of people they want to recruit.
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The mind reels. If that isn’t pretty much the perfect distillation of what is so toxic and destructive about modern conservatism, I don’t know what is.
SiubhanDuinne
@quannlace:
.
Yes, but not Oxford coma patients.
Polish the Guillotines
Funny — I was actually thinking that about “The Broccoli Mandate.”
Even though this NOM strategy is not exactly a surprise, it’s still kind of shocking to see how blunt they are about it. It’s definitely smoking-gun proof that anything the wingers accuse liberals of doing (i.e. infiltrating social institutions and recruiting celebrities for propaganda purposes) they’re actually doing times ten.
Julia Grey
What’s the IAV model?
John O
When is Maggie gonna come out and explain this stuff?
Tara the Antisocial Social Worker
@John O:
No. For the love of all that’s holy, don’t wish that on us.
Democratic Nihilist, Keeper Of Party Purity
Goddamned scientists.
aimai
Non cognitive elites. I’ve got nothing to add to that. I just had to have a chance to type it out. I guess I do have one thing–is a “non cognitive elite” part of the 99 percent, or part of the 1 percent?
aimai
protected static
Way ahead of you, John: http://twitter.com/#!/protectedstatic/status/185042581665751040
gbear
@redshirt: That band already exists in Minnesota. They trick schools into thinking they’re coming in with an up-with-people kind of message and but then start telling the kids why the impure are going to go to hell. Bradlee Dean is a real piece of work.
redshirt
@gbear: I heard about them recently. But I mean big time – like a Pentecostal Menudo, except not nearly as brown.
kindness
Victoria Jackson, the has been ex SNL hag fits the dumb part. Just can’t cover the glamorous part though…..
Tonal Crow
Non-cognitive elites? You mean like the entire Republican party?
Violet
These people are nothing but psychological projection writ large.
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Speaking of projection, Rush Limbaugh today said the people who were suffering the most from his show being boycotted were the advertisers who were forced to leave him. Yeah, sure. You keep telling us that. He also said the Obama administration was tyranny and that we were living under tyrants. And Comcast aired an ad during his show in my area. Fucking Comcast.
The Bobs
@The Other Chuck: I agree, this is too good to not be there.
John O
@The Other Chuck:
Seconded. And just for the record, you have to be pretty elitist to coin the phrase.
Most of us would just go with, “stupid.”
Amir Khalid
@beltane:
On the other hand, they make very easy targets for mockery.
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And yes, I too must question the very idea of signing up celebrity spokespeople from outside the cognitive elite. What if you approach one of these non-geniuses — Cim Cardassian, say — and she replies, “You want to sign me up because you think I’m stupid, right? Well, fuck you.” ? Or if you do manage to sign them up, and foot-in-mouth disease breaks out among your celebrities?
les
Well, I always thought you’d need a lobotomy to agree with those assholes.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@SiubhanDuinne:
The internet, yours it is.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@John O:
I ain’t gonna work on Maggie’s farm no more.
arguingwithsignposts
Non-cognitive elites sounds like a Matokoloco/Samara Morgan term.
wasabi gasp
Non-cognitive elites need some water added to become sea monkeys.
Janus Daniels
What is “the Witherspoon and IAV model”?
arguingwithsignposts
@aimai:
I think it’s part of the 27 percent.
Brachiator
I’m smelling a new tag.
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ETA: I see The Other Chuck got here, too.
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Jay
“The first thing I thought of was Carrie Prejean…”
And Tebow. Definitely Tebow.
Jesus H. Tapdancing Christ
Get me Stephen Baldwin!!!
Face
Carrie prejean had sexytime videos?
/breaking fingers googling as fast as possible
The Other Chuck
@Face:
I believe they were of the “sexytime with yourself” variety. Could be hawt, but I can get gigabytes of porn from any number of sites, not sure why I’d care much about that particular video.
protected static
Didn’t see if anyone had answered this, but ze Google resolves “IAV & Witherspoon strategy” into Institute for American Values and the Witherspoon Institute. [Edited to add: so… what? create a stupid tank?]
FlipYrWhig
It’s funny, but I don’t think they mean “non-cognitive” and “non-intellectual” as descriptors in their own right. I think they mean non-“cognitive elites” and non-“intellectual elites” — meaning they’re looking for people outside the think tanks and institutes from which they usually draw their would-be experts. IOW, they want people who are famous, not policy wonks, not even the conservative misinformation experts they tend to trot out, like Maggie Gallagher and Elaine Donnelly and Betsy McCaughey.
Uncle Cosmo
IOW they’re looking for the kind of folks that pronounce “elite” as “E-light.” Perfetto.
protected static
@FlipYrWhig: Yeah, except they alluded to picking them for their vapidity and general ignorance, too.
FlipYrWhig
@protected static: I haven’t seen the original document, just the linked write-up, which uses laughable phrases but doesn’t actually say the things like “unintelligent” the write-up uses to interpret “non-cognitive elites.” From that, it seems like NOM’s strategy counts on its memo’s readers recognizing phrases like “cognitive elites” and “intellectual elites” — which are the stock in trade of people like Charles Murray. They’re trying to describe potential opinion-leaders with cachet and prestige, elites by some definitions but who aren’t elite in the same way “cognitive elites” are.
The prophet Nostradumbass
@redshirt:
The Party Posse say, “Yvan eht Nioj”!
Constance
non-cognitive elite?
I’m actually getting a headache trying to wrap my brain around that. WTF?
AA+ Bonds
Copy editors are extinct cholo
Marcellus Shale, Public Dick
they went for non-cogs and got tebow and david tyree.
kth
Great career advice for good-looking young performers hoping to expand their audiences: embrace bigotry. No doubt you will always be able to find work in Kirk Cameron’s movie company.
I doubt they’ll even be able to get anyone from Nashville, at least not anyone not already fighting the culture war for a living.
protected static
@FlipYrWhig: You’re probably right about “cognitive elites” as a term of art, but at the very least, you should glance through the original docs. The section where they describe who they want to reach out to to fill these roles struck me as even more cynical than the race-baiting.
I can’t be arsed at the moment to dig up the exact wording, but they basically stop just short of calling their marks willfully moronic. Given NOM’s verbiage, you really can move the quote marks around without losing any meaning: non-“cognitive elites” or “non-cognitive” elites both work in context. It’s quite stunning.
curiousleo
Not just non-cognitive elites. glamorous non-cognitive elites.
I can’t stop laughing. I shouldn’t be laughing. Because the fuckers control the House and my state legislature. But you’ve got to be freaking kidding me.
Bitter Scribe
@Redshift: Yeah, that one had me scratching my head too. I could see beauty queens and athletes. Maybe even artists, though that’s a stretch. But writers?
And what about actors? Pop musicians? Some of them are dumber than a sack of hammers. I think they’re looking for dumb in all the wrong places.
stratplayer
@aimai: Both, aimai. To be a “non-cognitive elite” is to be a floor wax and a dessert topping.
El Cid
I’M TIRED A ALL THA DAM SMART PEOPLE WHAT THINK THEYR SO SMART
El Cid
Does this set up a battleground between cognitive elitists and cognitive commoners?
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Pro-cogs versus non-cogs?
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Thought will be met with non-thought? For every well-considered argument you launch against us, we shall retaliate three times over or whatever with stuff that don’t make no sense at all!
JGabriel
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John Cole @ Top:
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And an even better blog name.
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S-Curve
“Cognitive elites” is actually a term from The Bell Curve. Guess whom it refers to? So it seems that we have some awesome signalling going on here as well.