Words You Can Believe

"Is advertising worth saving? Yes, if we can learn to look at advertising not as a means for filling so much space and time but as a technique for solving problems.” -Howard Luck Gossage

Thank you for being here.

As we enter 2025, I plan to experiment with form and frequency, as it relates to this newsletter. For the past number of years, I’ve written a traditional email newsletter and published it once per month. Now, I want to turn things in a more literary direction by writing essays (or essay-like fragments), and doing so more frequently.

In part, I am inspired to do this by a book that I am currently reading. In One Man’s Meat by E. B. White, the author describes his seaside farm in Maine and his neighbors in the local community with a keen eye for the tiniest details—details which then get spun up as meditations, better known as essays, on place, culture, politics, war, and more.

Can I give you a sense of what White was doing with the essay? In May of 1939, he wrote, “A Boston Terrier,” for Harper’s Magazine. It is a funny and insightful piece about dogs. It’s also about the lies that advertisements tell. To make his point, White points to the people at Camel Cigarettes who at that time claimed that smoking could calm your nerves. To illustrate the idea, Camel used dogs in their print advertisements. White points out how they knew next to nothing about dogs. He writes:

The ads says, “But when a dogs nerves tire, he obeys his instincts—he relaxes.” This, I admit is true. But I should like to call attention to the fact that it sometimes takes days, even weeks, before a dog’s nerves tire. In the case of terriers it can turn into months.

That some ads tell no truths is an accepted and well-known fact of modern life. At the same time, the most effective ads almost always reveal a compelling truth about the product or service in a decidedly memorable way.

❦

Advertising is an unregulated industry with immense power. It’s also an easy target for intellectuals and brick layers alike.

In May 2013, Noam Chomsky was interviewed by Michael S. Wilson. During the interview, Chomsky discusses the role of public relations in manufacturing consent.

In fact quite generally, commercial advertising is fundamentally an effort to undermine markets. We should recognize that. If you’ve taken an economics course, you know that markets are supposed to be based on informed consumers making rational choices. You take a look at the first ad you see on television and ask yourself … is that its purpose? No it’s not. It’s to create uninformed consumers making irrational choices. And these same institutions run political campaigns. It’s pretty much the same: you have to undermine democracy by trying to get uninformed people to make irrational choices.

If any medium ever promised to deliver on “informed consumers making rational choices,” it’s this one. The Internet. But the Internet failed to usher in a new age of transparency and customer empowerment, as some early cheerleaders thought it might.

Think about it…When you shop for goods and services today are you empowered in real time by a treasure load of data to assist you in making informed decisions?

❦

Darby, Pilot, and I opened up the new year with a three day, two night trip to the Rio Grande Valley. Specifically, Brownsville and South Padre Island, Texas.

The food and beverage scene in Brownsville—a big part of the draw to visit—was as advertised! We found one of the best little coffee shops in Texas, incredible tacos for a song, craft beer, craft cocktails, brick oven pizza, and elevated Mexican cuisine all served by incredibly welcoming, nice young people in restored downtown buildings.

We also walked Pilot on the grounds of UTRGV and took note of the beautiful grounds and architecturally significant buildings. Looks to me like a great place to go to school.

Burn Strong in the Rio Grande Valley

❦

On this day four years ago, a mob (of uninformed consumers making irrational choices) attacked the U.S. Capitol with the intention of stopping Vice President Mike Pence from certifying the November election that Joe Biden won. The mob wanted to kill Pence and The Speaker of the House. Instead, they killed Capitol police and injured hundreds of others.

The main perpetrator of this violence went free and today the current Vice President, Kamala Harris, will peacefully certify his re-election, even though he’s the most dangerous and problematic person to ever hold the office.

I pray that his utter incompetence will sink his ambitions to rule as a King. But how much damage will he and his Magats do first? That is the question. For those of us fundamentally opposed to tyranny, organizing locally to provide mutual aid is one good answer. Making art and cultivating joy are other good answers.

Let me hear from you about other ideas and what you’re doing to manage the darkness. Our beliefs may be constantly challenged, but I continue to believe that together, we can grow a stronger, more compassionate and enlightened citizenry. We can make America better by degrees, as conscious and capable Americans have done since the country’s inception.

Here’s a haiku.

Throw your gavel down

False authority again

Who wants to be free?