POINT A FINGER AT ME, POINT THREE AT YOURSELF

The Limits of Shame and Blame

The M.A. in Professional Communication program at the University of San Francisco, where I’ve taught for 12 years, attracts bright and engaging students from around the world.  Right now, I’m teaching my Crisis Communication class, a spring semester ritual, and we had an intriguing discussion Thursday night.

In crises, I said, key audiences expect an organization to take responsibility and not point the finger of blame or find fault elsewhere, tempting though it may be.  Companies that put on the grownup pants early and decide to fix problems, rather than deflecting that responsibility, act more like the organizations we think we know.  Point the finger at someone else (I’m looking at you, Ford and Firestone), and the circus begins.

Responsibility and blame have different power dynamics.  When you take responsibility, you seize power.  You become the captain of the ship.  Fault and blame, on the other hand, forfeit power.  Blamers carry the added baggage of diminished trust.  Don’t get me wrong: blame is a time-honored tradition among many spin doctors.  But it fails to do the most important thing, which is to fix the actual problem.  Fault lives in the past, responsibility in the present and future.

Putting a fine point on this is a recent article I came across in the publication Psyche.  Shame and blame are running hot, the author says, especially in politics.

Problem is, they don’t work.  In fact, trying to shame someone for their views likely has the opposite effect of hardening them.  David Keen, a professor at the London School of Economics, says:

Indeed, the Right-wing populist politics that has been on the rise in the US and elsewhere rather systematically spins shame into votes. A good deal of contemporary politics has been constructed around an orchestrated escape from shame that recruits its own brand of shaming and scapegoating. As part of this, the working definition of ‘the enemy’ has been extended not only to minorities of various kinds but also to any critics. In this context, the watchword becomes something close to ‘Shame on you for shaming me!’ – a recipe for political polarisation.

It is particularly suited to our dopamine-driven, always-on culture,  Keen says:

In her book The Shame Machine (2022), the data scientist Cathy O’Neil emphasises that, within what has been called the ‘attention economy’, shaming and counter-shaming work well – and profitably – in keeping people glued to their screens.

I think this may also explain why Bibi Netanyahu’s message of shame against Hamas may be landing with a thud outside of Israel.  Intuitively, we know that the October 7 massacres were horrible and indeed the very definition of shameful.  But Bibi is perhaps the least credible, in the eyes of those who know him too well, to point that finger.  Not because he’s the head of Israel, or the most recognizable Jewish leader in world, but because he’s Netanyahu.

I don’t think Netanyahu will succeed in “destroying” Hamas, but perhaps will orchestrate a physical and psychological buffer that may restore a semblance of security to an Israeli people who are facing a seven-front conflict.  But it’s difficult for me to see how the country moves forward, and toward anything resembling a lasting peace, until Netanyahu is gone.  Like a lot of people who care about Israel and the Palestinians, I just don’t have an answer for that one.

Here at home, we Democrats have to stop thinking we can shame our fellow Americans into voting our way.  Again, I turn to the wise words of an old Chicago friend, David Axelrod.

You have two old guys running for president. One of them is consumed by his past, and the other has an eye on your future. That’s the choice. To me, that’s a compelling argument for Biden. It transcends whatever concerns people have about his presentation and so on. Look at the work product and explain the work product in context.

President Biden called Axelrod “a prick” for his observations and critique - a form of shame and blame in itself.

But to me, the advice is solid – in a crisis or a political campaign.  Take responsibility for the future and tell me how we’re going to get there.  Shaming, Keen says, “is the ‘feel-good’ solution that, in the end, makes nobody feel any good.”

Before I Go…

·      Could anyone ever, ever, come up with a more ridiculously terrible brand than Woke Kindergarten?

·      Now, these are some killer brands….

·      Mind you, Levittown, PA has always been known as a happenin’ town…but we never had this much fun when I was growing up there.

Good pub quiz answer – Billy Joel’s Allentown was originally about beautiful Levittown

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