Denial

     The movie Denial may not have been a great movie, but it was an insightful movie. It’s the true story about the libel case brought by holocaust denier, David Irving, played by Timothy Spall, against the author, Deborah Lipstadt, played by Rachel Wiesz. In this age of alternative facts, it’s incredibly timely and instructive. It’s also pretty satisfying. Deborah Lipstadt wins the case and it makes you want to march down to Texas and punch Alex Jones in the mouth.

     Its lesson comes out of the title. Lipstadt’s lawyer tells her, “What feels best isn’t always what works best.” And what felt most natural to Lipstadt was to rail against the injustice, get Holocaust survivors to attest to the atrocities and express their suffering. Her legal team, however, had a different strategy –– make the argument about him, David Irving; set aside your personal feelings; mine all of Irving’s writings and speeches for discrepancies and, ultimately, find proof that his version of the Holocaust evolved and was twisted to suit his purposes. It was an exhausting amount of work that showed how labyrinthine and time-consuming the process of unearthing falsehoods is. For Deborah Lipstadt, it would be an act of self-denial. “How hard it is to hand over your conscience,” she says. 

     For us ad people, it’s a reminder that Persuasion comes by focusing on the target, by setting aside our own feelings, our own tastes and styles and media preferences to communicate that, which would be most effective to the consumer.

     For every thinking person concerned about and offended by an affront to the truth, we need to understand the facts of our target's life, the facts about the issues and the facts that support our solutions. While we may all want to vent on Facebook and blast the president –– Malignant Narcissist!, Con Man!, Angry Cheeto!, Mango Mussolini!, Human Corncob!, Hair Furher!, Putin’s Puppet!, Child-man in chief! or just, well, Douche Bag! –– it won’t accomplish much more than it would to scream into your pillow. Perhaps it will keep Resistors at a full boil for an extra week, but it won’t win an argument or change anyone’s mind.
     It's all about our target –– listening to their opinions and their previous statements, probing their point of view, digging into the history of their opinions and what history itself tells us about their policies. It takes work and discipline. Restraint is a bitch. Just this morning, Trump again called Elizabeth Warren Pocahontas and it really pissed me off. I was tempted to just rant and rage.