Last week, TBogg reported that Lanny Davis had shown up to defend “embattled overpaid NFL head and penny-counting situational ethicist Roger Goodell”. Now Deadspin investigates “The Political-Messaging Huckster Behind Roger Goodell’s Awful Presser“:
Roger Goodell was talking, but the words weren’t his alone. “That speech was all Frank,” says an associate of pollster Frank Luntz, lord of the dark arts of political messaging, who frequently works with Goodell and the NFL. “As soon as I heard Goodell’s intro, I was laughing.”
The part that got him giggling was the line “We will get our house in order first.” The NFL commissioner used that same phrase minutes later, in response to a question from a New York Post reporter about whether he would resign. “That’s textbook stuff that Frank uses all the time,” says the source…
As it happened, Luntz himself was watching the press conference, in his capacity as a Fox Sports 1 talking head (he moonlights as a Fox News commentator and analyst). Not long after the commissioner left the podium, Luntz gave his review.
“This,” he puffered, “was language perfection.”...
As a consultant, Luntz is probably most famous for having framed the GOP’s message on the estate tax (or “death tax”) and global warming (or “climate change”). His first noteworthy communications job came as a pollster for Pat Buchanan during a 1992 run at the Republican Party’s presidential nomination. That campaign was one long open appeal to the racist, nativist, homophobic fringe of the right…
In recent years Luntz has begun to move his dial-turning focus groups into the realm of sports. The source, who says that away from work Luntz is “the nicest, most generous man you’ll ever meet,” claims the consultant would never work another campaign if he could get away with it.
So what does it look like when Luntz mixes his passion and his profession? He helped NHL owners craft their propaganda during the 2012 lockout… More recently, Luntz has done some focus-grouping on behalf of Dan Snyder during the owner’s disaster of a campaign to save the Redskins nickname…
It’s likely not a coincidence that three owners with whom Luntz has worked very closely—Washington’s Snyder, Carolina’s Jerry Richardson, and the Bears’ George McCaskey, for whom Luntz emceed a 2012 Veterans Day event in which ex-Bears and military veterans discussed concussions and brain trauma—were among the first and few owners to publicly support Goodell after TMZ released the second Ray Rice video and put the NFL in its current state of crisis…
So… any bets on the next Grima Wormtongue to speak professionally in Goodell’s defense? Karl Rove? Grover Norquist?
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