Global Research, February 21, 2014
Shannon
Watts often explains how she’s simply a reluctant activist. The plain ole
everyday stay-at-home Midwestern mom founded Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in
America (MDA) on
December 15, 2012, just
a day after the Sandy Hook School massacre. Boasting “tens of thousands of
members and over 80 local chapters,”[1] the organization seeks to accomplish
for gun control what Mothers Against Drunk Driving did for sobriety behind the
wheel.
MDA joined Michael Bloomberg’s Mayors Against Illegal Guns (MAIG) on February
12th to issue a new joint study highlighting at least 44 school and college
shootings since December 2012. With a total fatality count of 28, the report
emphasizes how the tragic events have surpassed that of Newtown itself.
“We are a developed country,” Shannon declared in a fed-up tone upon the
study’s release, “and we have to ask ourselves what is wrong with our culture
Is it beyond reason to ask, “Who exactly is Shannon Watts?” This is a question
major news media outlets have predictably left unexamined. Again, the
43-year-old is a self-styled “mother of five children,” a modest “stay-at-home
mom in Zionsville, a suburb of Indianapolis, Indiana.” Watts is also portrayed
in glitzy promos and has been wholeheartedly embraced by venues such as MSNBC
as simply “a mom who demands action” to stop gun violence–the kind of gal who
wants “sensible” gun laws, much like Boss Michael Bloomberg, President Obama,
and many Congressional Democrats.
Yet Watts’ public persona was one she has only recently acquired. In fact, she
has spent two decades quietly behind the scenes as an extremely ambitious
executive at several major public relations firms and Fortune 500 companies.
Watts’ Linked In profile indicates that she formally left the PR profession in
June 2012, just six months before the Sandy Hook event.
At that time Watts headed up her own “boutique” firm, VoxPop Public Relations,
while working as a freelance consultant for clients of public relations
behemoth Fleishman-Hillard. Watts began VoxPop in 2008, the same year she was
recognized by the foremost public relations trade journal, PR Week, as one of its “40 Under 40,” for notable achievements and
future promise in the industry.
Overall, Shannon Watts, who until only recently went by the last name
Troughton, began work fresh out of University of Missouri in 1993 as a public
affairs officer for Missouri Governor Mel Carnahan, the Missouri House of
Representatives, and the Missouri Department of Economic Development.
In 1998 Watts (Troughton) moved on to further develop her propaganda acumen as
Vice President of Corporate and Public Affairs at the major PR firm
Fleishman-Hillard, where she remained until 2001. Watts then became Director of
Global and Public Affairs at the Monsanto Corporation “where she led external
initiatives designed to generate positive, proactive media coverage of the
company’s agriculture biotechnology products.”[3]
Between 2004 and 2006 Watts served as Director of Global Communications for GE
Healthcare, General Electric’s $15 billion medical and diagnostics device unit.
She then joined WellPoint, the nation’s largest health insurance corporation,
as its Vice President of Corporate Communications.
At WellPoint Watts oversaw an impressive “30-person corporate communications
team” until 2008, when she stepped down to begin VoxPop Public Relations. Watts
“started the firm because she saw a need for boutique agencies that can provide
the same service at a lower cost during the recession,” PR Week observes.[4]
Watts’ Linked In profile lists numerous proficiencies, including “New Media,”
“Crisis Management,” “Crisis Communications,” “Thought Leadership” [sic],
“Publicity,” “Integrated Marketing,” and “Marketing Communications.”
In other words, as a very highly-positioned and well-connected public relations
maestro, Watts is an especially apt individual to head up MDA—perhaps too apt.
Given her talents (that systematically go without mention in news stories) it
is perhaps unsurprising that Watts has been embraced by corporate news media
outlets that strongly back heightened gun control measures and routinely cite
Sandy Hook as a transformative event in this regard.
For example, here’s Shannon playing reluctant protester at the January 2013
“March on Washington for Gun Control.” “I am not a politician. I am a mom from
Indiana,” Watts declares. “I am an accidental activist.”
Here’s Shannon on MSNBC, where she is introduced not as a professional flack,
but simply as the “Founder” of MDA and “Mother of Five Kids.”
More recently Shannon has appeared on MSNBC’s “The Ed Show,” where she provides
her account of being accosted by a motley pack of “gun bullies” while on a
simple coffee date with like-minded moms. Asked by host Ed Shultz whether she
had previously been an activist, Watts responds, “Never in my entire life. I
became an accidental activist on, uh, December 15, 2012, after Sandy Hook–the
day after–and I will never go back …”
Watts has also become a de-facto columnist for the Huffington Post, having written nine opinion pieces since January
2013—about one every six weeks—as the “stay at home mom” and former
“communications executive” who has finally found her cause.[5] One piece
appearing on Mother’s Day, “Keep Your Flowers on Mothers Day, I want My
Rights,” predictably trotted out Sandy Hook as a rallying cry. “Twenty children
and six adults had been slaughtered in the sanctity of an elementary school by
an assault weapon designed for the battlefield,” Watts tells HuffPo readers.
The horror of it was almost too much to believe or comprehend. This has to be the tipping point, I thought. This has to be what moved us as a country to change. But it wasn’t. Twenty dead first-graders weren’t enough to advance even the weakest of legislative measures.[6]
Here is yet another especially unusual development closely
related to the Sandy Hook massacre. In this instance a highly experienced
public relations practitioner apparently quits a very promising career, then
just months later happens to start up a prominent non-profit activist
organization that echoes the voices of Newtown parents–the day following the
incident itself. The organization is also now closely aligned with Bloomberg’s
MAIG, a group that similarly clings to Sandy Hook, and will thus have more than
ample resources going forward.
Over the past year MDA has generated publicity by pressuring retail chains
Starbucks and Staples to issue policies preventing their law-abiding customers
from possessing weapons inside their stores. It will soon be embarking on a
campaign against McDonald’s to enact similar measures.[7]
As an expert PR practitioner Shannon Watts appears to have a great deal in
common not only with Sandy Hook’s central players, but also the classic
engineers of mass consent. By combining her personal identity and professional
forte toward furthering a broader narrative intended to refashion public
understanding and will, Watts demonstrates the greatest of moral forfeitures so
common to modern governance–specifically, inducing a credulous constituency
toward the false notion that a statist monopoly over killing technology will
somehow achieve more secure communities and public spaces. History suggests
such a concentration of power brings about quite the opposite.
Notes
[1] “Shannon Watts,” (Contributor Profile), Huffington Post, n.d. See also, “‘Grassroots’
Gun Control Org “Moms Demand …” is Utterly Astroturf,”
DemocraticUnderground, November 8, 2013.
[2] Ed Pilkington, “Twenty-Eight Killed in 44 US School Shootings Since Newtown,
Study Finds,” UK Guardian,
February 12, 2014.
[3] “Launce of New Public Relations Agency, VoxPop Public
Relations LLC; Shannon Troughton Named 40 Under 40 By PR Week,” PRNewsWire.com, n.d.
[4]. Ibid.
[5] “Shannon Watts.”
[6] Shannon Watts, “Keep Your Flowers on Mothers Day, I Want My Rights,”
Huffington Post, May 8, 2013. The
extent to which such “mass shooter” events are authentic requires more serious
consideration than it has heretofore received. See, for example, Nona Willis
Aronowitz, “Fake Blood and Blanks: Schools Stage Active Shooter Drills,”
NBC News, February 14, 2014; James F. Tracy, “Nationwide Post-Sandy Hook Shooter Drills: Real or Fake?”
MemoryHoleBlog, August 22, 2013.
[7] Clare O’Connor, “After Starbucks Success, Gun Control Advocates Target
Staples,” Forbes,
September 26, 2013; Awr Hawkins, “Bloomberg Joins Moms Demand Action to
Pressure Businesses for Gun Control,” Breitbart.com,
December 22, 2013.
The contents of this article are of sole responsibility of the author. The
Centre for Research on Globalization will not be responsible for any inaccurate
or incorrect statement in this article.
The original source of this article is memoryholeblog.com
Copyright © James F. Tracy, memoryholeblog.com, 2014
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