From Randy Olson: The Governator Reaches for Likeability

Governor Ahnold has been pushing an environmental agenda in California (in 2004, for instance, he jump-started the process to establish 29 marine protected areas along the coast) and now he's wading into the subject of environmental communication. And he's on the right track (maybe he's been reading Nisbet and Mooney's editorial on Framing Science).

In a speech yesterday at Georgetown University he scolded environmentalists for their basic style of communication, saying the environmental movement needs to get to the point where it's "no longer being seen as a nag or a scold" (hitting some notes similar to the book I'm writing titled, "Don't Be Such a Scientist" in which I comment on the downside of being overly literal).

And he said the environmental movement needs to become "sexy, attractive," which makes me think of my silly mother in Kansas, Muffy Moose, and her blog post a while back about the bimbo in the tv ads who lost weight and says, "I'm sex-eeee!" (see her December 22 post).

Here in Hollywood, sexy and attractive tends to conjure up images of plastic and phony--not clear that's necessarily the winning strategy.

The term the Governator was reaching for was, "likeable." The environmental movement needs to make itself more likeable. And on that note he's absolutely right. The only problem is that everyone wants to be likeable. And if it was that easy, everyone would achieve it. It's a bit like good taste -- everyone would like to have good taste (well, almost everyone--I've got a few white trash friends who relish their bad taste), but is it really something that can be taught? Who knows, but what can definitely be taught is how to avoid bad taste (list your own examples here), AND...how to avoid being unlikeable (by not being a nag or a scold, as Ahnold said).