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Ch 7 Lobsters, TV
ads and small crowds
in campaigning From around page 4... One television ad that
particularly galled me involved a well know television actor (it may have been,
or was someone like Cliff Robertson) walking along Southern California's
thermally heated beach waters off of the San Onofre Nuclear Power Plant.
The add evokes probably everything a good ad can evoke that deals with a
complex, evolving engineering design that encases deadly radioactive power that
has millenniums of radioactive garbage half lives.
Early on there is a shot of the San Onofre Nuclear
Power Plant with a cut to the tranquil beach that serves as its back yard.
From scene left comes that recognizable, comfortable, believable, smiling
actor reminding us that he is on the beach behind the San Onofre Nuclear Power
Plant, where he says something like: “The
ocean’s water is used to cool the nuclear power plant reactors and then the
safe, thermally heated water is flushed back into the ocean.”
Strolling along he comments, as the oceans soothing negative ions flood
the television viewers with ease and relief, that the ocean life in the nuclear
plant’s thermally heated waters teems with life.
To magnify the point he reaches into the lapping waves of the shore next
to him to produce a healthy, thriving lobster.
“See, ocean life loves it here…” or some such utterance precedes
the closing that reminds us to vote against People’s Lobby’s Clean
Environment Initiative that calls for a moratorium on nuclear power plant
construction until safety standards are met. One
day while at the Lobby, Ed heard me complaining about that ad.
Ed knew I was an Ohio boy new to California politics and said something
like: "Don't you know about
that ad? Go through that pile of
New York Times over there. Find the
Tuesday paper and look somewhere in the back around page 17 for a small
article." Obediently,
I did my search and read. A few
weeks later the handsome, well dressed, personable Public Relations Director for
Southern California Edison (SCE) arrived with slide show intact for his
presentation. Along with him came
the President of SCE and a couple of concerned parents to sit in the audience. The audience was quite big, since I often lectured to three
classes under a Glendora High team teaching program and because students often
came from other or open classes to my guest speaker presentations.
With the portable walls opened there were probably four or more
presentations to over 100 students each. The
girls 'ouued' and 'ahhed' at the good-looking PR guy in his suit and tie, and
his slide presentation was professionally done and effective.
When
he opened his first presentation to questions, the audience was, as many
audiences sometimes are at first, reticent to start the questioning.
So, from the back of the room, I asked my first and only question of the
day. "I
enjoyed your presentation. I'd like
to ask you about the San Onofre Power Plant and the series of television ads you
company is running during these final weeks of the Clean Environment Initiative
campaign. Are you familiar with the
ad where the actor reaches down into the thermally heated waters off of San
Onofre and shows the lobster that enjoys those waters to the television viewers? "Yes,
I am, " he responded. "Isn't
it true that that lobster, pulled from those Pacific Ocean waters, was a Maine
lobster imported for just that commercial?" There
was a pause. The guy’s eyes
fixated on mine. The audience
seemed to fixate on the silence in the air, and turned their heads from me to
him. He still seemed to have that infectious twinkle in his eyes
that made him attractive to an audience. He
seemed to glance, ever so slightly, toward the President of the company, sitting
in the doorway to his right with those visiting parents concerned about balance.
Then, he surprised me. "Yes,
that lobster was imported for just that commercial."
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