Advertizing
In this mini-essay, I offer
, to our legislature, a challenge that is not for the faint of heart!Corporate America has been indulging in the practice of advertizing, with the ‘best intentions’ rationale, products and information that have been having devastating consequences to the nation. They do this using the guise of protection under ‘freedom of speech’ item in the Bill of Rights. This course of action is also promoted as a necessary ‘good for business’ practice. In other words, the business community’s ‘best intentions’ rationale is actually a rationalization for getting away with practices that permit widespread deception, exploitation, lethal harm to the unsuspecting, gullible public. Multitudes of persuasive slogans are used as rationalizations. The one that says the people should be free to use their own judgment and exercise freedom of choice is an especially popular excuse or justification. The proffered citation of realism, with no pretense of being a holy phrase, is the "all is fair in love and war". This populace placating rationalization is often extended to political campaigns as well as product advertising.
While liberal leaning pundits ridicule the opportunistic, socially irresponsible
, self justifications of business, business counterattacks with their opposition to such attributions by proclaiming that being without being coldhearted and often ruthless they would end as impractical losers. Businessmen roundly relish reiterating that indolent, ineffectual, delusional government officials and their Pollyanna idealist supporters, safe from the killing fields of competition, are merely hooked on hearing their own oratorical pugilistic yet effete and witty criticisms of bully business barons. Business has its own pundits and they laughingly joke that the limp wristed liberals could never weather the turbulent storms business daily must beat back if they are to succeed. Business resounds that such dilettantes and dandies, ignorant of the real world, should not be allowed the power of influence to interfere and restrict business practices that are necessary for succeeding in the fiercely ‘stiff’ competitive corporate environment. For the word ‘stiff’, I, one who is so leeward leaning as to be teetering on the edge of socialism, would substitute ‘ruthlessly unconscionable’.Television advertising spots are flooded with ads for prescription medications. Someone recently did a study that found that doctors reported that about fifty percent of the prescriptions they write are for medications that are unnecessary and often even harmful to patients because patients vehemently insist on getting medicines that were alluringly promoted in television ads. In other words, the power of advertising is preempting the clinical judgment of doctors. When questioned about why they would give into such requests by their patients, they said that if they did not give in, their patients would leave and go to another doctor who would. These advertizing trends are tantamount to condoning national systemic psychopathy.
Our legislators must find a way to intervene and prohibit this disastrous pattern from continuing to be a ‘pseudo’ natural characteristic of our national culture. Whichever legislators would be emboldened enough to lead the lead charge in this cause would have to be prepared to see a massive campaign of scathing denunciation for being un-American and anti-business waged against them.
A challenge not for the faint of heart!