Lying is slathered onto the American culture like honey on toast. Truly, our societal values support, even encourage, lying. It typically starts when we turn on the radio while getting ready for work. First thing in the morning, we hear an eager shill say something such as, “Come on down and get the deal of the century on a brand new Ford pickup truck.” Or, “See my good friends at Zeno’s Sleep Emporium for an American Revolution in mattress design.”
Okay, reasonable people, we realize that Ford truly does not offer a deal of the century. And, yes, Zeno’s Sleep Emporium sells praiseworthy mattresses but nothing better or different from any other company that hawks the same brands ad infinitum. We are used to the spiels, the downright lies, and the flapdoodle that spatters rubbish into our consciousness without cessation. After all, advertising is mother’s milk for a society built on no money down and twelve easy payments, a society in which Thanksgiving has become a warm-up holiday in preparation for Black Friday. Adverts now squeeze between paragraphs when we read online news articles. With every Google search, popups disrupt our curiosity like the rearing head of the Loch Ness monster. While we lounge at the beach, aerial banners drag behind small planes. Billboards, radio, television, posters, even inserted into the flow of a baseball game call (“the next pitch is brought to you by Brown Cow Cheese” and “there’s a double play, and if you want to double your pleasure, try a double burger at Cleo’s Burger Grill”)—unless you shut down all devices and go blind and deaf, there is no escape.
The American way of teaching us to tolerate these lies, which we call advertising, must have a lasting effect on the moral well-being of all its citizens. Seriously, we begin to respect big liars, the ones who have lied their way into billionaire status. When the object becomes moneymaking, our moral Geiger counter goes haywire. Apparently, it is okay to dish up a con and call it fair play because that is the way of the fast-talkers, the get-rich-quick barkers. That is the American way.
When my son attended high school, every school day he had to endure a good-morning broadcast called Channel One, a brief marketing tool meant to deliver the morning news to schoolchildren. Before classes began, youngsters had to watch television (as if they did not get enough of that at home). If the school district allowed the company delivering the news into their classrooms, then the Channel One distributors would provide free television sets to those schools that permitted the news into their classrooms. But there was a catch. Nothing is free, right? In accepting the dubious gifts of television sets and morning news, the school district had to agree to allow a daily menu of adverts embedded in the broadcast for consumption, all those malleable minds soaking up the virtues of whatever products the ad agencies hawked. The children did not seem to object. They should have. They were targets in a scheme to capture the next generation in the paralyzing clutches of Madison Avenue. I do not remember if the ads were for soft drinks, breakfast cereal, or cool clothes, but it does not matter. The marketers had purchased an opportunity to bombard impressionable children to buy stuff. Channel One still exists, but after ownership changes, schools may now opt for ad-free broadcasts for a fee.
Ever since Elliott’s Asthma Cigarette Company told us to smoke their product in order to have better health, we have been sucking up dishonesty.
The ethics of the big sell has always been dicey. Truthful advertising works, I know, but all too often the gimmick, the lie, the false claim gets the suckers to line up cattle heading down the chute. Truth-in-advertising laws supported by the Federal Trading Commission, however, have derailed some of the liars. But not many.
Accordingly, “When the FTC finds a case of fraud perpetrated on consumers, the agency files actions in federal district court for immediate and permanent orders to stop scams; prevent fraudsters from perpetrating scams in the future; freeze their assets; and get compensation for victims.”
Although it appears useful to have a watchdog guarding our interests, the FTC can hardly keep up against all the false claims and sleight of hand tricks employed by those seeking unfair advantages.
After hanging up on the fifth robocall of the day, I realized that no one looks after our interests (even the Federal Trading Commission) in the same manner as we, the consumers, do. In an effort to staunch the enfeebling attacks on my well-being, I do what so many other Americans have found necessary. I mute the commercials on the television, I delete immediately all trash from the in-box email, I refuse to open the door when a slick-looking stranger knocks, and I turn down the radio at every commercial. I resist by making myself a quick-moving target. It is pathetic of me to play dodge-ball with the purveyors of commerce, I know, but how else to avoid manipulation?
I understand why Jesus drove the moneylenders from the temple. All these centuries later, the money-grubbing stinkers continue to insinuate themselves into every precinct of our lives.