Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, December 10, 1993                   TAG: 9312140001
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A15   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: CLAYTON BRADDOCK
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

WEAPONS OF INFLUENCE THAT'LL STICK IN YOUR CRAW

Some of the more pessimistic of the experts have called such influence the principal dilemma of modern democracy.

The experts have warned of weapons of influence coming at us in torrents of both political propaganda and merchandising. They say the fog bank comes in one especially venal form - political advertising in campaigns such as recent races in Virginia, New York and New Jersey.

I hate to scare the pajamas off anybody, but it's going to get much worse than anybody ever thought possible. The latest, hardly out of the caverns and bayous of modern political thought, comes to us from the world of medical research.

A Southwest Virginia physician - who asked for anonymity - reported to me the deadly scheme to steal our birthright of freedom of speech and thought. The unimpeachable source - call him Deep Swamp - discussed privately what he had learned about research that will unleash a new weapon that political scientists and sociologists will someday know as Positional Vertigo.

At the medical level, vertigo is a condition that causes dizziness when too much fluid builds up in the inner ear. At the persuasion level, positional vertigo is what happens when lots of folks need help figuring out where they stand on anything from political posture to a choice of necktie or a new and improved dish soap.

Somewhere in there, you get a whiff of the country music song: "You gotta stand for something or you'll fall for anything."

Anyway, the intrepid research team may be on to something to make persuasion a sure thing.

Research began in the bayous of Southwest Louisiana, Deep Swamp whispered to me one foggy morning along the banks of the New River. Scientists chose the lowly crayfish for reasons as yet only suspected. A large number of these creatures - the lowly but much-revered crawdad of Southern song and legend - were required to carry out the research over many months. It is only coincidental, Swampy said, that each experiment during the research was concluded just prior to a three-county jambalaya festival.

The experiment got into high gear when investigators discovered how the crawdad tells up from down. The crawdad knows he's upright when sand - which inevitably sneaks into its cranial cavity - falls to the bottom of said cavity. This tells its nerve center that wherever the sand grains have come to rest, that's down. Anything else is up.

Well, our scientific team then found an open sesame to understanding of both crayfish and some undisciplined forms of shoppers syndrome and political thinking. Here's the way Deep Swamp unraveled the tale:

The team headed straight for sociological destiny in a cloud of Eureka by dumping a fistful of tiny iron filings into the holding tank reserved for the crawdad. Sooner or later, the filings wound up in Mr. C's cranial cavity along with the sand.

The next step was a lulu!

As the crawdad rested (tummy down), a simple magnet was placed just above it. Voila! The iron filings zipped upward (to the top of the cranial cavity).

The critter had not moved a silly millimeter but he didn't know that. He flipped over on his back, claws up, taking his cue from the placement of the iron filings instead of common sense. He should have known he was upside down when he found out he couldn't crawl around in that position.

Suddenly, medical science - in one fell swoop - had made a major breakthrough to understanding both the mind of the crawdad and the minds of an as-yet- unknown number of voters, mindless shopping mall addicts and couch potatoes.

From the womb of 1950s television comedy came situation ethics. From the brain of the humble crayfish comes positional vertigo, crawdad style. Think of it! All it takes is some anger, deep hunger for change, some material greed - and some iron filings induced by those with a penchant for manipulation.

Federal and state officials who think they can pry the true name of Deep Swamp from me had better think twice. My lips are zipped, my heart is hardened, my hard disc has been purged of all evidence and my head contains nary an iron filing.

Not only that, Deep Swamp has taken his medical practice up North, where crawdads aren't part of regional culture. If you feel undue persuasive pressure, he suggests you keep a magnet handy to screen your cereal each morning.

The idea is bound to catch on. It's a whole lot easier than thinking, not to speak of making informed decisions.

Clayton Braddock is an assistant professor of media studies at Radford University.