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The Citizen, 1991-06-12, Page 5THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, JUNE 12, 1991. PAGE 5. Zeroes bring ~eal truth in advertising advertising is legalized lying H. G Wells t's the greatest art form of the 20th century. Marshall McLuhan there's a sucker born every minute. P.T. Bar num Well, perhaps the truth about advertising lies somewhere in amongst the Wellsian/McLuhanesque/Barnumite extremes. There have been one or two recent guerrilla attacks upon the sleek flanks of the advertising business that neither H. G. nor Marshall nor even cynical old P.T. could ever have anticipated. The first fire fight occurred in London, England last month at the annual Ratners convention. Ratners is the largest and most successful retail jewelry chain in Great Britain. It was especially embarrassing, then, to have some malcontent seize the microphone at the convention and proclaim that the reason Ratners was so successful was that the company sold "total crap". "The secret of Ratner's success" hooted the troublemaker, "is bad taste and poor Is God A Cosmic Bellhop? BY RAYMOND CANON One of the more distasteful aspects of the war recently concluded in the Middle East is that both sides rushed to invoke the support of God on their side. We had George Bush on one side making liberal use of God's name to legitimize the cause of the Alliance forces while in Iraq Saddam Hussein was just as vociferous in assuring his people that Allah would see to it that the Iraqi forces came out victorious in any conflict. For any readers whose understanding of the Muslim religion could stand a refresher course, their God and ours is one and the same deity; Allah is just the word that they use to refer to Him, much the same as we frequent make use of Jehovah. The ironic thing about Saddam is that, until he got the idea that it might not do any harm to enlist the help of Allah, he was what you might call a non-practicing Muslim. George Bush has at least been a church-going Christian, whatever that might mean in this humanistic age. If my memory serves me right, this is somewhat the same approach that was used in previous wars. Feeling perhaps that it would not do any harm to have God on our side and, since we are the "good guys", we do not hesitate to petition God to support us in this or that just war and, if we turn out to be on the winning side, there are undoubtedly some who are prepared to give God part of the credit. Early on in my career on this planet, I ran into something that was for me a very unique situation. I was visiting some distant relatives in Germany after World War II and, as luck would have it, Sunday fell on Nov. 11 and we all trooped off to the local Lutheran church. After the service, my aunt commented that it was fine if you happened to be on the winning side, you could say that God was with you and that, if you lost any friends or relatives, you could rationalize it all by saying that quality." Bad enough to have some radical outsider disrupt convention proceedings in such a rude manner. How much worse when the 'radical outsider' turns out to be Gerald Ratner, chief executive officer of the company in question. The other Ratner executives scrambled to provide emergency damage control. Mister Ratner, they insisted was just making a little joke. Mister Ratner, they hinted, had perhaps lingered over-long around the after-dinner port decanter. But I'm not buying it. I think Mister Ratner has been stricken by a virus hitherto virtually unknown in the advertising world. An insidious little beggar called truth. There is no known cure. And who knows where it will lead? If "truth in advertising" becomes a plague, what comes next? Balloon-Gut Beer? Cholesterol City Fast Food Joints? Ozone Smasher Hair Spray? Before you laugh, stroll into any Los Angeles smoke shop and check out the cigarette brands. Somewhere up there on the shelf, snuggled in amongst the Pall Malls and the Lucky Strikes, you should be able to find a brand new brand. It comes in a pure black package with a skull and crossbones on the front. And it's called simply "Death". they had died for a just cause. What did you say if you were a devout Christian on the losing side, as my aunt was, who saw both friends and relatives go off to war never to return. What was your attitude to God then? I must admit that I had no answer. Since that time I have developed what I call the cosmic Bellhop concept of God. If life goes along without too many negative aspects, we tend to take our belief in God pretty much for granted. Let something bad happen or let us want to achieve or obtain something, we suddenly start direct-dialing God and asking Him to bring us what we want. When we don't get precisely what we desire from Him, by a strange sort of logic we jump to the conclusion that He does not exist or, what is just as bad, He does not care. Small wonder that, with that kind of logic, many people dismiss a belief in a superior being as meaningless and nod in agreement wherever reference is made to Karl Marx's oft repealed comment that religion is the opiate of the people. It doesn't help that we have some of these televangelists resorting to what can only be described as gross hypocrisy in order to raise money. The most egregious case is that of Oral Roberts who, taking fashion. Helping kids THE EDITOR, Once again we are planning our summer camp program for Huron County children. Last summer, five year old Beth saw the lake for the very first lime. She had never been to the beach before and thanks to generous donors such as yourselves, we were able to provide her with that marvelous experience. We are to receive $6,600 from the federal government which will subsidize the salaries of three students. Our Children's Benefit Fund, however, needs to have money to provide for the camp fees and activities for children. In 1990 we sent 138 children to church The fine print on the cigarette package isn't any more comforting. Where most cigarette packages talk about their wonderful filter system or the purity of their Virginia leaf, the Death Cigarette package says: "Cigarettes are addictive and deadly". Where most cigarette packages carry wimpy government advisories hinting at some possible, distant connection between smoking and ill health, the Death Cigarette warning says: IF YOU DON'T SMOKE, DON'T START. IF YOU SMOKE, QUIT. A fellow by the name of Charles Southwood is behind Death Tobacco Inc. Southwood says he's umm, dead against smoking and he hopes his tell-il-like-it-is Death Cigarettes will persuade smokers to give up their gaspers once and for all. In the meantime, Charles Southwood, like any forward-looking entrepreneur is ... hedging his bets somewhat. He's already got his lawyers working on the application for a trademark on the name Green Death — a menthol variation on his current brand. He also says he hopes to "go national", appealing to the younger set that he says scoffs at the idea of mortality and thinks Death Cigarettes are a joke. Some joke. In the first two weeks, Southwood sold 25,000 packs of Death — without a word of advertising. I don't understand it — but I'm sure P.T. Barnum would. advantage of the current recession both here and in the United States, has been sending letters out to exploit people's fear over financial hardship or ruin. He has, he says, "A miraculous answer direct from the throne of God to your home." The answer, naturally, comes to you from God through his spokesman, Oral Roberts, who then invites you to send, regardless of what you owe elsewhere, all that you can scrape up. "You will," Roberts assures us, "start receiving your miracle harvest to get out of debt very quickly." Perhaps Ottawa should send him $100 and inform him or our national debt of about $400 billion. Frankly, between non-believers and hypocrits, God must have a good laugh at the things being done in his name and at the manner in which he is so routinely dismissed for non-performance. I do not claim to have a monopoly on the understanding of the proclivities of God. I have, fortunately, met sincere Christians all over the world who were not making grandious demands on God nor dismissing him when things went wrong. It is these people who, I believe, are far closer to the true meaning of God in our universe than those who treat him in such a cavalier camps lor one week. Ihe average cost of this was $126, including transportation and necessary extras. As well, we provided a weekly outing for a selected group of children who were experiencing difficulties with behaviour, school, or home. The total cost of the summer program last year was almost $25,000. It is therefore necessary for us to raise approximately $18,400 for the children's camps and activities. We would appreciate your contribution to this enriching summer experience for Huron County children. A tax deductible receipt will be provided. If you have any questions, please call our office and we will be happy to discuss the program with you. Thank you for your continued support. Thomas F. Knight Executive Director Children’s Aid Society of Huron County Letter from the editor Controlling the information agenda They tell us we're in the information age and if so, the country that can control the flow of information is the country that will hold the most power in the world. It's unclear whether Canadians have grasped that fact yet but U.S. policies show the Americans have. For all its military might, its Star Wars technology, its tanks, battle ships and "smart" bombs, U.S. domination of the world really comes from one small band of warriors who most people wouldn't sec as any threat at all. Keys to American power in the world come as much from the people who make the movies and the television shows and the magazines as from any general in his desert fatigues. American popular culture dominates the world, whether in Canada next door, (the country with more foreign culture than any other country in the world) or in some remote African village where the only television set broadcasts reruns of Dallas. Americans win audiences for their culture in two ways. First, it's fun. Americans turn out more entertaining television and movies than the rest of the world combined. This is supported by a whole sub-industry of magazines, radio and TV shows devoted to glamorizing the stars and making it even more fun to watch them on the screen. Secondly, American TV, movies and magazines can dominate by what, in any other industry would be called "dumping" or selling at far less than the cost of production at home. An American television show that costs $2 million an hour to produce may be sold to a Canadian station for a few thousand, to a little African nation for maybe a few hundred dollars. The reason is that the American market is so huge and so nch that the costs for that show arc already met at home and anything brought from foreign sales is pure profits. Meanwhile those foreign countries, whether in Canada or Africa, must try to compete for viewers with the slick American programs while trying to produce shows that cost far less...and yet still cost more than the American import. Countries that try to have a private enterprise cultural system can forget about having any local content. And the Americans want to make sure they keep it that way. A recent documentary on the subject told of U.S. government pressure that came down on one country when it tried to impose a quota saying 20 per cent of television shows had to be made in that country. Through the Free Trade Agreement, and now with the three-way trade talks with Mexico, the U.S. has made it known it thinks Canadian cultural policies are nothing more than a barrier to trade. But cultural industries are not ordinary industries as the U.S. well knows. If we were talking about anything else, whether shoes or wine, it wouldn't be so important for the U.S. to win, or for other countries to resist. But culture is the trojan horse of the American economic empire. When people in some foreign coumry watch Dallas or Pretty Woman, they get an look at a glamorous lifestyle beyond their humble dreams and they want it! They want their country to be like that, or they want to move to the U.S. or, at the very least, they want to buy the Continued on Page 19.