Truth in Advertising

We've all had it up to our ears and beyond: all of the half-truths, exaggerations, misrepresentations, lies, and distortions on television. And that's just the news! Then there are the ads, that make the good old fashioned lie almost virtuous, by comparison. Which of course leads to those so-called 'public announcements' that are political ads. Which are every bit as truthful as say, Hitler announcing his new humanitarian child care program at Auschwitz. Still, there is nothing new about all this, and these practices have been around for a long time.

Most of us probably are too young to have read it, but back in 1960 there was a bestseller by a Madison Avenue guru named David Ogilvy called Confessions of an Advertising Man, in which, even then, the founding partner of the premier New York and London ad agency Ogilvy and Mather and inventor of modern advertising complained that “political advertising ought to be stopped. It's the only really dishonest kind of advertising that's left. It's totally dishonest.” Yeah? No kidding.

And this practice seems to be rather time-dishonored. This observation was made in the 1960s, mind you. But this admission certainly sheds further light on another famous line of his, his dismissive if not defensive insistence that “Advertising is only evil when it advertises evil things.” Such as corrupt politicians and their views and intentions?

So now our democracy has come down to choices between those who consistently break good-intentioned and reasonable-sounding promises, and those who have no intention of fulling any promises whatsoever other than to an immediate circle of sponsors and handlers. Hence they have nothing to offer except slander, bigotry, hatred, and threats of violence. Amazing, really. I mean, if what you really want to do is round up and shoot all those who disagree with you (which, guess what, has been done a thousand times before) why bother pretending otherwise? Would Torquemada have been more legitimate if he'd run for office first before leading the Spanish Inquisition?

Hitler, on the other hand, did run for office making statements that sounded chillingly like many of today's Tea Baggers, and he got elected: as leader of Germany's National Worker's Socialist Party which was every bit as socialist as Henry VIII.

What seems to be different about America today is that you can get away with saying just about anything about anyone, and not only do so with impunity, but you can also put it out there on radio, TV, the internet and a billboard as though it were gospel truth, when in fact it is absolute fiction (as is much that is cited as 'gospel,' of course).

George Orwell predicted all this, as some of us have been pointing out ad nauseum, as of late. And Machiavelli practically invented masquerading lies as truth a long time before there was any radio or TV to blather all over the place. Suddenly, today, for the first time in history, facts are completely irrelevant and immaterial. All that matters is opinion, and the more viral and virulent the better. Hence regardless of the evidence, Obama remains a foreigner Muslim Socialist planning to overthrow the government of which he just happens to be the elected leader. Hello? And that global warming is a 'hoax', apparently perpetrated by all the scientists in the world together except those on the payroll of Exxon and BP.

And I love the one about how the 'government' is threatening to 'take away our guns.' Granted, I don't have any guns and always felt perfectly secure not having them, given I am guarded by the world's best equipped police force backed up by the world's largest military. But apparently either that is not enough weaponry for the NRA and ilk, or they intend to take on those forces with their own arsenal.

So what is 'truth,' if it is not an absolute, as determined by God, Jesus, or God's self-anointed representatives on Earth i.e. the latest Pope, Archbishop, Rabbi or Mullah? And what about the people who do this so-called 'creative' work, producing, writing, directing and acting in all this for-profit media mayhem. Can such a media prostitute actually imagine he or she is just 'doing a job,' by taking money to spread such lies? And if so, how is this job any different than a hooker spreading STDs for a price? Because the social damage being perpetrated by these 'artists' is far worse-- perhaps in the long term even worse than spreading AIDS.

As to where it is really coming from, let alone where it will ultimately lead, is anybody's guess. It may simply come down to William Goldman's great line “Follow the money,” from All the President's Men. There is a staggering amount of money being pumped from sons of billionaires and other self-righteous inheritors and exploiters serving venal and greed-driven self-interests into the pockets of the inheritors of Paley and Luce (no matter how flawed they themselves may have been) who have devolved from disseminators of news, information and culture to distributors of propaganda, misinformation, lies and trash. Let's face it: Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes make Ted Turner and Larry Flynt paragons of enlightenment by comparison. And they make Paley and Luce look absolutely saintly.