by:
Robert Greenwald, Brave New Foundatation | News Analysis (Video)
America just got rickrolled.
There we were last week, innocently partaking in the annual
testosterone-fest that is the Super Bowl, when we were treated to an ad
featuring a group of supposed auto mechanics lamenting that they never
voted for the union they’re in. But look closely. One of these
“mechanics” is sporting a gold watch, manicured hands, and a brand new
shirt. That’s because he’s not a mechanic, or even an actor.
He’s Washington lobbyist Rick Berman.
Berman is a gun-for-hire—nicknamed Dr. Evil—who specializes in creating
nonprofit front groups to push corporate interests. His clients have
included the likes of Phillip Morris, Coca Cola, and Tyson’s Foods. But
you wouldn’t know it hearing the names of the organizations he starts.
The Employment Policies Institute?
They fight minimum wage increases.
The American Beverage Institute? They go after Mothers Against Drunk
Driving. And the gem of an organization linked to the Super Bowl ad is
the Center for Union Facts.
Like other Berman fronts, the Center for Union Facts lists no staff on its website. But it does offer up a lot of false information about labor unions, using distorted statistics to paint their staffers as a bunch of corrupt thugs out to steal workers’ hard-earned money. No mention is made of the better wages and benefits union members receive relative to their non-union counterparts, nor of the far more pervasive acts of corporate corruption and coercion
that go on in American workplaces. Without a union, workers are left to
fend for themselves against employers with unchecked power.
So Rick Berman is not quite the salt-of-the-earth mechanic that Super
Bowl fans were supposed to find relatable while being fed anti-union
propaganda. Indeed, he appears to be a master of the bait and switch: He
creates fake nonprofits to lure Americans to corporate propaganda, and
occasionally he shows up posing as an ordinary American in those groups’
ads.
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