Craig Ranapia – THIS is your ass

BISHOP TAKES RED QUEEN

Been taking some heat in the past day or so from GayNZ’s “Red Queen”, Craig Ranapia over the self-proclaimed gay “blueprint” for a propaganda campaign to brainwash the public into supporting gay rights.

Ranapia blogged on it at GayNZ calling it “conspiracy theory”, then followed up with posts across the blogosphere and at Twitter.

The essence of his argument is that the “blueprint” authors, gay activists Hunter Madsen and Marshall Kirk, were nobodies and therefore no one reading their blueprint should pay any attention to it.

Craig will shortly have his backside returned to him, but first, the Twitter setup:

Craig Ranapia ‏@CMRanapia

@investigatemag Ian – you’re grasping at a rather obscure straw to hang your usual conspiracy mongering on. @AndrewMiller05 @NZQandA

Investigate magazine ‏@investigatemag

@CMRanapia @AndrewMiller05 @NZQandA Yeah, so obscure it was printed in national US gay magazines, then workshops,focus groups, then in a bk

Andrew Miller ‏@AndrewMiller05

@investigatemag @cmranapia If choosing complexity of social change over conspiracy is a ‘lack of intellectual rigour’, I can live with that.

Investigate magazine ‏@investigatemag

@AndrewMiller05 @CMRanapia Actually boys, it’s about integrity of argument. Gay academia blows your myths away. End of story.

Andrew Miller ‏@AndrewMiller05

@investigatemag @cmranapia Ian, you do get that presenting anything as a global conspiracy does little for the integrity of any argument.

Investigate magazine ‏@investigatemag

@AndrewMiller05 @CMRanapia Andrew, a conspiracy is where two or more plan. There was no ‘theory’ in this. They called it a ‘blueprint’…

Craig Ranapia ‏@CMRanapia

@investigatemag @AndrewMiller05 Ian – Kirk and Masden aren’t academics and don’t represent themselves as such. Stop digging, petal.

Investigate magazine ‏@investigatemag

@CMRanapia @AndrewMiller05  Kirk, of course, is dead. Was a neuropsychiatry boffin.

Investigate magazine ‏@investigatemag

@CMRanapia @AndrewMiller05 and incidentally, Madsen a social scientist and marketing guru with a Harvard PhD, petal. http://www.open-insights.com/enSP/Hunter_Madsen,_Ph.D._.html

 

Now, to hand Mr Ranapia his ass back on the plate he so kindly lent me, here are Kirk and Madsen’s own biographical pitches from inside their 1990 book on the blueprint, After The Ball:

“Marshall Kirk is a researcher in neuropsychiatry, a logician and a poet. Since graduation from Harvard University in 1980, Kirk has worked with the John Hopkins Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth and designed aptitude tests for adults with 200+IQs.

“Hunter Madsen received his doctorate in politics from Harvard in 1985. An expert in public persuasion tactics and social marketing, Madsen has designed commercial advertising on Madison Avenue and served as a consultant to gay media campaigns across the country.”

Contrary to Red Queen’s inaccurate posting, both men had academic training from Harvard University – Madsen had a doctorate and specialised in the dark arts of “public persuasion tactics”.

Note Madsen’s bio carefully. They first came up with their blueprint in the mid 80s. By 1990 he said he had served (already) as “a consultant to gay media campaigns across the country”.

This wasn’t “obscure”, this was state of the art manipulation. And it had already been put into effect nationally by 1990 with Madsen as a sought after consultant to “gay media campaigns”. Some commentators say the movie Philadelphia originated from the blueprint.

If you have any doubts about Madsen’s expertise as a manipulator, here is his current bio:

Hunter Madsen, Ph.D. 
Senior Partner and Vice President for Digital Media & Marketing

Hunter oversees the Digital Media and Marketing practice of Open Insights and is one of the brand advertising most seasoned experts in on-line advertising and digital marketing. Dr. Madsen joined Canwest’s west coast publishing division in 2008 as Vice President for Digital Media to grow online audiences and revenues for The Vancouver Sun, The Province, and the Victoria Times Colonist, and both site traffic and advertising sales in the region have more than doubled since his arrival. More broadly, he contributes to the cross-company strategic team that is accelerating the extension of Canwest publishing into digital media.

Prior to joining Canwest, Madsen headed marketing for Yahoo! Canada for two years. He previously worked at the company’s Silicon Valley headquarters, where he led product definition and go-to-market for a number of advanced digital advertising products to support Yahoo! worldwide. These included systems to analyze ad campaign performance, execute online promotions, and conduct complex behavioral ad-targeting. In 2007, Madsen’s strategic work for the company’s leadership prompted Yahoo! to rethink its corporate mission.

Originally a social scientist, Madsen received his doctorate from Harvard University and subsequently lectured there before beginning his marketing career with J. Walter Thompson, in New York. Soon a Senior Partner at Thompson, Madsen developed award-winning marketing programs for Unilever, Kodak, Ortho, Sunsweet, and other major brands through the Eighties and Nineties, including the path-breaking ‘People Do’ environmental campaign for Chevron-Texaco, and the long-running Candace Bergen campaign for Sprint Corporation. In the mid-1990s, Madsen won the first-ever Grand Prix in WPP’s international Atticus competition, for his contributions to ‘fresh thinking in brand communications.

In 1993, Madsen founded JWT Interactive Enterprise, Thompson`s primary digital marketing unit at the time. JWT/IE pioneered early and highly regarded programs online for diverse clients such as Sun Microsystems, PBS, and the California Board of Tourism. Madsen designed Sprint’s first consumer website and, on behalf of that company, placed some of the first-ever ad banners on the Web. Madsen subsequently led marketing for Wired and its online properties, including Wired News, Hotwired, and HotBot, during their heyday, and then drove product marketing for several startups that launched Web-based media platforms and marketing-automation technologies.

Profiled in The New York Times, Advertising Age, Marketing Magazine, and AdWeek, and sourced by the Financial Times of London, National Public Radio, and elsewhere, Madsen is a frequent speaker on marketing in new media. His writings have appeared in Wired Magazine, Management Today, and other publications. Madsen has advised for industry organizations such as America’s Internet Advertising Bureau and the Wireless Innovation Network of BC, and shares two U.S. patents for online business processes. He is considered a pioneer of Web marketing. Madsen lives in Vancouver.

 

While in later years Kirk and Madsen played down the impact of their blueprint (Madsen doesn’t even mention After The Ball in his bio above), the comments from the book belie the claim. He had guided gay media campaigns across America, sowing the seeds of change based on messages he knew didn’t stack up. That’s a big part of how we got to where we are today.