APEC and the Shape of Things to Come

When the Dignitaries and Reporters Finally Left Seattle, Did the Innocence of the Northwest Go With Them?

By Doug Lauen

Much has been made recently of something political operatives call the game. Ed Rollins' comments after he bested James Carville in the New Jersey gubernatorial race in November revealed the profession of political communications (a.k.a. spin) at its most outrageous and racist extreme. A recent New York Times magazine cover story examined the grand poobah of spin doctors in a piece titled "David Gergen, Master of the Game."

Last month during the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation meetings, Seattle was blessed with a limited-run performance of the game. The result was a tragicomedy Shakespeare would be proud of.

The hero of our drama, the flak, is a modern-day greenhorn ill-equipped to face the invading hordes from the East (and West), but eager to stake a claim in the APEC International Media Center. The flak's company, USA Dry Pea & Lentil Council, based in Moscow, Idaho, is sure much good press will follow one the world's opinion makers realize that "the Pacific Northwest produces nearly 100 percent of commercially grown dry peas and lentils." Only problem is, the reporters, in their infinite wisdom, do not care; they're all trying to get into the Blake Island pool to cover Bill's ultra-casual chat with 13 world leaders.

This example would be funny if it wasn't endemic. The media center was crawling with flaks and staffed around the clock with a corps of public relations volunteers (that donated more than 4,500 staff hours), hungry for a chance to cut their teeth on the Washington press corps.

Pounds of pamphlets, brochures and press releases were stuffed into tote bags and handed to the 2,500 or so reporters as they checked into the media center throughout the week. 2,500 phone lines and 25 satellite "broadcast opportunities" were made available by US West Communications. Even the post office got into the act. A gentleman staffing the post office's five-day APEC press center branch informed me that the US Postal Service's marketing people thought it would too good of an opportunity to pass up.

USA dry Pea & Lentil was not the only company to make a pitch at the press center. Companies from Fratelli's Ice Cream to Nintendo were represented. (Nintendo placed a brochure for parents to "help you become more informed about the content of today's video game activities.")

One has to wonder what companies hoped to gain. Will a construction worker reading the Manila Chronicle really care that in Bellevue, Washington, USA, there is a company that makes automatic espresso machines? Will a waitress in New Zealand be fascinated to read that B.B. Cattle Company (based in the Tri-Cities) is the largest purebred Hereford operation in the United States?

In an event as large as the APEC meetings, the excesses of the public relations machine became unavoidable. For Boeing and probably Microsoft, international press attention was certainly beneficial. For the rest, probably not.

Corporations were not the only actors in this drama. With the heads of state came planeloads of reporters and the inevitable snowball effect of a media feeding frenzy with reporters covering reporters, reporters covering the media center and generally hyping know-nothing, tell-nothing stories into proportions that would satisfy their editors back home. APEC for Seattle was a taste of things to come, welcomed by many - particularly the local media, whose careers can only benefit from covering such a big story and whose fortunes no doubt ride on Seattle becoming the new US. power center.

Locating the APEC meetings in Seattle signals a new era for the Pacific Northwest. with GATT stalled and the European Community in Disarray, Washington, D.C. is shifting its attention westward. President Clinton's political survival depends on winning the west and he is doing all he can to woo the business elite - Boeing, Microsoft, Apple Computer - into believing that he will support their interests 3,000 miles away in the nation's capital. APEC is just the first step in D.C.'s shift of attention.

Economic prosperity will no doubt develop from better trade relations and more attention from D.C. Cascadia should be wary, however, of suitors with jaded histories. The D.C.- New York corridor is an example of urban neglect at its most decrepit. Power corrupts, absolutely, whether in D.C., Seattle or Moscow (Idaho).

Isolation has been part of the Pacific Northwest's charm and a major factor in our relatives naivetŽ in the ways of power politics. The flaks of Seattle will get wiser and the politicians will alter their behavior as the stakes are raised. Will we tarnish our reputation? You bet we will.

For those not invited to the Seattle Art Museum for the president's reception, The Pacific Northwest Ballet hosted a special APEC performance of Carmina Burana for the press, delegates and leaders' spouses. Among other spicy tidbits in the piece, a young harlot is waylaid by (as the PNB program notes) "a bawdy abbot leading his rabble of drunken monks."

Stewart Kershaw, PBN's music director and conductor, describes Carmina Burana as "not just as a piece of music - it is an event of orgiastic proportions. The work itself is an hour of primeval music bursting at the seams with pounding rhythms..."

A wonderful choice of entertainment and an auspicious beginning to the Pacific century. On with the show.

Doug Lauen is the public information officer for the Seattle Arts Commission. He is currently working on his first book, From Flak to Hack and Back Again.

Please see related article:
"APEC and the Politics of Trade"

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Contents on this page were published in the December/Jan, 1994 edition of the Washington Free Press.
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