The selling

Messaging.

Optic.

Image.

Perception.

Zelensky, 2-hour briefing. Subway station as set and fatigue T-shirt as prop. Still dignified. Still Head of State, deserving a State visit from America’s Secretary of Defense and Secretary of State (no more T-shirt?).

Either way, I was blogging the other day about Press Briefings on the Rooftop of Rex during the Vietnam War and couldn’t help noticing the contrast (from Television to Twitter).

Unlike Television which demands make-ups, wardrobe, lighting, teleprompter, white-balance, boom mike and floor directing, Twitter just cuts through the chase: “we need weapons”.

The selling of a candidate, from Nixon to Desantis (who pisses off Disney, an image maker himself) is ongoing.

It’s not enough to stay on the right side of History.

You need to “sell” your position, conviction and persuasion, to manage perception.

Rebuilding Ukraine will take years and trillions of dollars.

But an Ukrainian lady expressed her sentiments in a Newshour interview: “we certainly can do it”.

What a marvellous lady! Full of confidence and grace.

We are talking about a nation of grit and determination. No time to die.

It has done some damage (at the tune of 25% of the invading Russian army…an equivalent of decades-long toll in Afghanistan).

I can see in a near future, tanks going back the other way, same way I saw on the news back in the 80’s.

Dien Bien Phu, Saigon Embassy, USSR’s Afghan, US’ Afghan…you name it. A story, war ‘s not excluded, has the beginning, middle and ending.

Unsustainable. Face-saving and self-preserving.

Nations rise and decline..

Whether it’s roof-top briefings or subway station briefing. Ups or downs. Otis elevator or train escalator.

War and Peace. Refugees can’t wait to go home.

If ever (Denial). Life interrupted, re-invented and oh well the “selling” of job candidates.

Resume anybody? Time for our Red Cross to go about: document translation, missing relatives re-united, etc…. Already NGO’s and a host of UNHCR-related hands are busy at work. Rightly so. If not now, when?

History repeats itself. I have seen it with my own eyes. In fact, I have lived it myself. No time for compassion fatigue. No time to die. In fact, it’s time to “dress for success”, at least with 100,000 new comers who will soon be needing a job. It would be doubly hard with foreign-sounding names. Back then, the nation was n’t ready even for a candidate of a different branch of faith despite JFK obvious good looks.