Russian Revolution – John Malcolm

By Jeffrey Lord | April 5, 2012 | American Spectator

Threatened for sticking with Rush, defiant advertiser declares “Battle for America.”

In whatever arena of life one may meet the challenge of his conscience — the loss of his friends, his fortune, his contentment, even the esteem of his fellow men — each man must decide for himself the course he will follow. The stories of past courage can define that ingredient — they can teach, they can offer hope, they can provide inspiration. But they cannot supply courage itself. For this each man must look into his own soul.
— John F. Kennedy in Profiles in Courage

Mark Stevens was 17 years old when his father died.

A self-described “lower middle class” rebellious kid from Queens, when Mark went about the task of ordering his father’s affairs, he discovered his father’s bank account — containing $84. He was told that his best option was “to go on welfare.”

Marks Stevens had another idea. Said Stevens in an interview with The American Spectator: “I knew then at 17 I wasn’t going on welfare.” If Mark was going to achieve anything in life, he would have to be responsible for making that happen.

He made it happen.

Today the suddenly fatherless 17-year-old with an $84 dollar inheritance is a highly successful businessman and bestselling author of 25 business books, the very embodiment of the American Dream. His marketing firm, MSCO, is “a business-driven, entrepreneurial-minded marketing and business advisory firm relentlessly driven to accelerate the growth of our clients.” The company, located in Rye Brook, New York, has 40 employees, and — since health care is very much in the news — yes, Stevens pays for their health insurance.

Life was good for Mark Stevens. Minding his own business, literally and figuratively, he got up every day and went about the business of business. Part of any business, of course, is advertising. And as a routine part of his business, Mark Stevens spends a considerable dime advertising MSCO in the expensive New York media. MSCO ads have appeared on CBS, Bloomberg, ABC, WINS radio in New York and even, where doable in the format, on NPR.

Then one day last month, out of the seeming blue, Stevens arrived at work to learn the startling news that his office was “getting actual phone calls” from people using (he eventually realized) phony names and leaving phony numbers. What were the callers saying? They called his female executive assistant a “slut.” Another employee, also a woman — a lawyer and like Stevens an up-by-her-bootstraps professional — was taking calls from hostile strangers telling her she was “anti-woman.”

What was this?

It didn’t take long for Stevens to find out.

One of the places MSCO was advertising was on The Rush Limbaugh Show. Mark advertised MSCO there for one reason — and that reason had nothing to do with politics. Simply put, Rush has a huge audience, an audience of precisely the kind of potential customers MSCO wants to reach.

Rush, Mark was aware, had generated controversy with a joking description of the leftist Georgetown Law student Sandra Fluke as a “slut” — following a Limbaugh tradition of illustrating the absurd by being absurd. Mark thought it a mistake and he disagreed. In fact, Rush himself was shortly out there saying that his “choice of words was not the best, and in the attempt to be humorous, I created a national stir. I sincerely apologize to Ms. Fluke for the insulting word choices.”

No matter.

MSCO was now being targeted because it was an advertiser on The Rush Limbaugh Show. The calls and now an increasing volume of hostile e-mail were pouring into MSCO.

Mark Stevens is a smart guy — and he quickly realized he was being targeted by somebody using a highly skilled, highly organized campaign that was deliberately designed to make the target feel besieged. When in fact marketing expert Stevens understood he was on the receiving end of a campaign involving a tiny handful of people extremely skilled in making others think dozens were tens of thousands.

Read the full article here.