[Peace-discuss] TRANSCRIPT of recruitment spot on WEFT

[Randall Cotton]

I transcribed this at the station yesterday evening after verifying
precisely what recruitment spot was played with the airshifter on duty at
the time who chose to broadcast it.

------------ BEGIN  transcript -------------

<in the background, a cacophony of music, drums, yelling and grunts can be
heard in a slow, dramatic crescendo>

<voice of young male recruit>: There's always a moment of truth where I say
"Look, it's either put up or shut up" and it was time to put up. I had
crossed that thin line. It was 100 plus degrees. We were hot - we were on
fire. We were yelling our hearts out. You could feel the intensity rising.
Even in our tiredness, even in our weakness, even in our pain, we continued
to push. I told myself you can suck up the pain for another mile and a half.

<crescendo ends with a collective guttural yell, followed by a dramatic
pause>

<voice of young male recruit>: And you will be a Marine. <pause> Not may
people believed that I could do it. I don't know where I got the energy
from. I don't know where the pain went to, but all I know is that I had what
it took. I *am* <pause> a United States Marine.

<voice of professional announcer>: PFC Darrel Willis proved he could be one
of us. Can you? Call 1-800-MARINES. Maybe you can be one of the few and the
proud.

----------- END transcript ---------------

This is a "call to action". And when you think about it, any effective
military recruitment spot will be, by definition. In particular, the
sentence "Call 1-800-MARINES" makes it so. Note the sentence is not "If you
would like more information, call 1-800-MARINES" or "To learn more about
the Marines, call 1-800-MARINES". And, since there is no qualifier, in the
context of everything leading up to that sentence, its only logical
interpretation is "Call 1-800-MARINES, enlist, and prove you can be one of
us, just like PFC Darrel Willis."

Every other recruitment spot on that CD follows the same pattern, including
the exhortation "Call 1-800-MARINES".

I welcome the WEFT Programming Committee's impending review and urge them to
take my argument above into consideration.

R

----- Original Message -----
From: "Kranich, Kimberlie" <Kranich at WILL.uiuc.edu>
To: "'Ricky Baldwin'" <baldwinricky at yahoo.com>; "Paul King"
<pmking at students.uiuc.edu>; "Randall Cotton" <recotton at earthlink.net>
Cc: <jpitzl at wildhunt.org>; <wefta at lists.cu.groogroo.com>;
<peace-discuss at lists.cu.groogroo.com>; "Kranich, Kimberlie"
<Kranich at WILL.uiuc.edu>; <programming at weftfm.org>; "Sandra Ahten"
<spiritofsandra at hotmail.com>
Sent: Friday, August 22, 2003 9:24 AM
Subject: RE: [Peace-discuss] Re: [Wefta] military recruitment on WEFT (!)


[some text deleted]

> In the meantime, I will attempt to locate the PSA, have the programming
> committee listen to it at our Wed. meeting, and determine if it was within
> our PSA guidelines.

[some text deleted]