If your mailbox is anything like mine, it’s starting to fill up with gaudy campaign mailers from politicians who are trying their damnedest to channel Chris LeDoux (and we’ll tip our Stetsons when that name is mentioned) and failing miserably. It’s comical to watch these dudes and dudettes try to cowboy up just to get the voters’ attention!

I don’t own a television, but I’ll bet a dollar to a donut the same stuff is assaulting your eyeballs from the boob tube screen.

Their mailers and ads show politicians standing nervously next to a photogenic horse, forcing smiles through their fear. That’s because there isn’t enough money in the campaign budget to convince them to climb aboard a critter as big and scary as a horse. They wear a sombrero that looks like it was purchased under the stands at Frontier Days, and a brand new pearlsnap shirt with the price tag still attached.

Or they pose in front of a buck n’ rail fence in some rustic Wyoming meadow, clutching a gun with their trigger fingers outside the guard, as the director instructed. You can almost hear the photographer’s voice off-camera suggesting, “Now, try to look tough.”

What we are seeing in our mailboxes and on our screens is the classic Madison Avenue ploy of manufacturing opinion through an appeal, not to the consumer’s logic or reason, but to emotion and attachment to symbols. The American cowboy is one of the most powerful symbols in the propaganda professional’s toolbox, and he gets trotted out to work his magic every election season.

Decades ago, I worked on several Marlboro commercials as a wrangler and background model. The producer, from Leo Burnett advertising company of Chicago, told me that the image of the Marlboro Man was worth several billion dollars a year to the tobacco company, because the cowboy symbol sold cigarettes to folks in countries like Libya and North Korea who hated America but loved cowboys.

Think about that for a moment. One simple image is powerful enough to sell a carcinogenic American product to millions of people who hate America but identify with cowboys. That is the psychological power of advertising symbols.

Edward Bernays, Sigmund Freud’s nephew, is widely regarded as the godfather of modern advertising, public relations and propaganda. Bernays understood, in the early 20th century, how symbolic images and slogans could bypass critical thinking and implant a message directly into the subconscious reptilian part of the human brain, where instinct and emotion rule. When that part of our brain is stimulated, we act instead of think. We just say “ditto!”

That is precisely how political media manipulation works on us.

The political advertisements, resplendent with drugstore cowboy politicians, that bombard us every election are the direct lineal result of Bernays and the public relations/advertising/propaganda machine he created, and it has made vast fortunes and influenced our society for over a century.

The irony is that these mailers and videos never show politicians doing real cowboy stuff — like indulging in a three-fingered dip of Copenhagen, drinking Wild Turkey 101 straight from the bottle or getting bucked off into cactus and rattlesnakes. Images like that aren’t very mythological and won’t gather many votes.

But I digress. Every election season, we become lab rats in an ongoing experiment in politics and psychological manipulation, and the laboratory is our own brains. We are inundated with evocative pictures and slogans intended to short-circuit our intellects and engage our emotions. We are force-fed politicians who wrap themselves in appealing images and focus group-approved slogans that are intended to make us switch off our brains.

We confront Edward Bernays’ ditto-ism machine whenever we open our mailboxes or look at our screens. With every political advertisement, we are invited to suspend our intellects and just go along with the crowd.

A real cowboy would call bullshit on that nonsense.

So, it is critically important that we understand how and why political advertisers try so hard to make us act without thinking. Knowing the forces at work during a political campaign, and how they try to worm their message into our noggins, builds a healthy immune system that can resist manipulation by seductive but meaningless symbols.

A healthy skepticism toward political messaging is a necessary component in a functioning bullshit detector. Here endeth the lesson.

SAN FRANCISCO – The children in one of San Francisco’s most historically challenged neighborhoods now have a new playground to call their own. The park has undergone its first major overhaul since it was opened in 1995, and is now officially kid approved.

Revitalized family-friendly space 

What we know:

The children of San Francisco’s Tenderloin welcomed visitors to the newly renovated Tenderloin Children’s’ Playground. Upgrades include a new basketball court, new mini-soccer field just in time for the World Cup, and a new climbing structure that will thrill a new generation of kids.

Azzam Alameri, the District 5 youth commissioner, grew up just blocks from Tenderloin Children’s Playground and he remembers the outdated old park. 

“It’s a drastic difference. Before, it was very desolate. It was very dark,” said Alameri.

Now he said the kids would have a destination. “I can relate to these kid,” Alamaeri said. “This place is like their safe spot. Their parents can drop them off and have not too many worries about the neighborhood and have them be kids, you know.”

The park reopened earlier than anticipated following a $3.8 million public private partnership. Sarah Madland from San Francisco Recreation and Parks said: “For more than three decades, Tenderloin Rec has not received a full renovation. But, with the support of our park partners, today we are celebrating this completely reimagined space.”

Upgrade ‘long overdue’

Supervisor Bilal Mahmood said the upgrade was long overdue. “This is a neighborhood with 3,500 hundred kids and it deserves to see the same love as the rest of the city does as well.”

The park drew fans big and small, including Mayor Daniel Lurie. “I want to be brief because I want to go up there,” he said, pointing to the top of the slide. 

The new park brought out the kid in Mayor Lurie who couldn’t resist a quick climb into the structure, and a slide to the bottom. The mayor says this park is only the beginning. “This community deserves all of this and so much more and so, this is just a start.”

What’s next:

  Until now, the park was only available Monday through Friday, but now it will be open on Saturdays from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. to welcome as many kids as the park can hold.

DENVER – Some of the most important documents in American history have arrived in Denver.

The Freedom Plane landed at Denver International Airport on Tuesday, carrying nine historic documents pulled directly from the National Archives for a rare traveling exhibit that will make eight stops across the country.

“This is a once-in-a-generation experience,” said National Archives Foundation CEO Patrick Madden. “For us at the National Archives, it is about the original records and saying, ‘How do you take this and make this a human experience, and know it was all people who were coming together around a common idea that has become our nation today?’”

The exhibit includes a William J. Stone engraving of the Declaration of Independence, a draft of the Constitution, a draft of the Bill of Rights, and the Oaths of Allegiance signed by George Washington, Aaron Burr, and Alexander Hamilton – documents that have never traveled outside of Washington, D.C. before this tour.

“What could be more important than these foundational documents that formed our nation?” said History Colorado President and CEO Dawn DiPrince. “To be invited to host these feels like one of the greatest honors that we could ever hope for in our work.”

Before the documents are ready for the public, History Colorado staff face a significant behind-the-scenes challenge to prepare the museum.

“I think a lot of people don’t realize what goes on behind the scenes in the museum,” said Exhibits and Loan Registrar Samantha Stamps-Ten Hoeve. “It’s kind of like an extreme version of Tetris, where there’s so many things going on.”

The preparation includes organizing security, calibrating lighting, and addressing a challenge unique to Colorado’s climate.

►Watch Ethan Carlson’s report in the player below:

Freedom Plane arrives in Denver with rare founding documents from National Archives

“We did make a plan: in our case, silica gel, because that’s very useful to help raise humidity,” Stamps-Ten Hoeve said.

The exhibit opens Thursday, May 28, and will only be on display for 17 days before moving on to Miami. Admission is free to the public, but tickets must be reserved in advance at HistoryColorado.org.

“To do this on behalf of Coloradans and the Rocky Mountain West is pretty incredible,” DiPrince said.

Madden said the goal of the exhibit goes beyond a history lesson.

“We’re hoping they take a little bit of civic spark from it and say, ‘What is my role in my democracy today, and how do we shape it for the future?” Madden said.

This story was reported on-air by a journalist and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Our editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.

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