Screw the Chocolate Factory Cut to Commercial

I’ve heard enough about Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich talking about the I Love Lucy episode at the chocolate factory; they should cut to commercial, Lucy’s that is or better yet Edith’s, certainly not the commercials that they’ve been coming up with for the political campaign which are pathetic and exceptionally deceptive. In the fifties and seventies the system wasn’t so consolidated that they completely suppressed all criticism of the commercials that have taken over our lives and both Lucy and Edith did a much better job informing the public about how credible commercials are than anything that the current establishment does which has turned into an indoctrination machine.

(This was originally posted on Open Salon January, 3, 2012)

A much better episode to focus on would be Lucy Does a TV Commercial (Season 1 episode 12) or All in the Family - The Commercial (Season 8 episode 15 starring Edith; due to efforts by the thought police to collect a fee every time you watch anything or if possible every time you breath these links may be moved from time to time). This is why they would never do shows like this any more; it would remind the public how little credibility commercials of all types have today or have ever had. Edith made it clear that these commercials have little or no credibility when she said that they wanted her to choose this product but that is the one she really liked and she lost the job because of it. This is the way commercials work; they have no incentive for honesty; instead they provide an enormous amount of incentive to lie. And we’re increasingly being encouraged to base out political decisions almost entirely on these deceptive commercials which sell our candidates that same way they try to sell the shoddy merchandise they’re trying to pass of.


There is little if any sincere discussion about the content of these commercials, although they do have a limited amount that pretends to analyze them from the corporate media but they only go so far and only when it suits their purposes. Both the corporate media and the political establishment including the candidates pretending to represent the public are controlled by the corporations. This is the type of speech that is protected by the Supreme Court while many academics and sincere critics who have much less opportunity to get their points across aren’t allowed nearly as much free speech; and in many cases they even have their right to free speech suppressed when they don’t limit it to the “free speech zones” that the Supreme Court has declared to be constitutional. This essentially means that people can have all the free speech they can afford to pay for because speech isn’t really free anymore in a modern corporate plutocracy. When the Supreme Court declared that money equals speech in the Buckley v. Valeo decision they essentially ruled that the truth can be bought and sold. They didn’t change the fact that money often also equals bribes they just essentially declared that bribes equal speech.

It didn’t used to be quite as bad; they used to have some more active groups like the League of Women Voters that would organize and moderate some of the debates. We also used to have a mush more diverse Media. This doesn’t mean that they were perfect; in fact they had many problems and a close look could almost certainly have improved things. Unfortunately instead they allowed the corporate media to consolidate and control the vast majority of the media that can get the attention of large audiences across the country. The current Mass Media is of course now under the control of a small percentage of the public with little or no accountability and they have almost complete control of the election process and it has turned into a propaganda and money making process that has little to do with informing the public about many of the most important issues.

A few years ago when they did a “couch commercial” where both newt Gingrich and Nancy Pelosi agreed that it would be a good idea not to destroy the environment I thought this was a good message although I didn’t think they should have delivered it that way; now they don’t even have a good message, they want to destroy the environment and they’re delivering their message in a deceptive manner. It has become a political correct thing to do to believe that we should eliminate any protection of the environment so that we can “drill baby drill.” When I first heard that slogan I thought it must be a satire but it turned out that Sarah was actually cheering it on as if it was a good things and they’re convincing a large segment of the public of this with their propaganda and commercials.

Of course this isn’t the first time that candidates have tried to run their campaigns based on commercials that appeal to emotion or attempt to provide good images without actually addressing the issues; some of the classics include Democrat Daisy TV ad for 1964 Presidential Campaign and 1956 - I like Ike for President. The truth of the matte is that we have never had as good a system as we choose to believe. If we’re going to have a sincere democracy we desperately need a much more educated public that could be helped with an Educational Revolution or something similar that could lead to some form of Election Reform that would enable the public to have more control over the interview process and perhaps even increase the amount of direct democracy by increasing the public participation in choosing policy through Ballot Questions and other efforts that the public can control.

(For more information on Blog see Blog description and table of context for most older posts.)

The following are the original replies when this was first posted on Open Salon.

Zackery, when the men in the black robes, who become Gods when they are given lifetime jobs and answer to no one, let these PACS loose and gave them all the status of an individual, they destroyed whatever was left of a voting process that needs to be shot and buried anyway!

scanner January 03, 2012 11:57 AM They should be impeached!

There is no way they could justify their rulings which is why they try to make them more complicated and bury them in legal language and hope for a complacent public. They've had it for a while but perhaps not much longer.

zacherydtaylor January 03, 2012 12:01 PM

Zachery, I had a client with whom I'd established a pretty friendly relationship (I did work in his home). He was one of the top marketing people at a huge US corporation and eventually, opened his own marketing firm. I was asking him about marketing an invention of mine, which had a very practical application, made life easier and saved resources, to boot. In bringing up all those features, he interrupted me to say this:

"Sam, no matter how warm and fuzzy, practical or valuable any product you've ever seen marketed seems to be, the underlying factors which make every marketing campaign successful are that they appeal to people's insecurities, envy and greed - those are the buttons that work and I can show you how they are the motivators in all of those campaigns, no matter how warm and fuzzy they appear on the surface." (I'm paraphrasing).

Commercials are specious because people's capacity for critical thought which can overcome their lizard brain, is both woefully inadequate and perhaps deliberately (and increasingly so) the last thing that the establishment wants them to be educated about, in a manner which would enhance it.

Rated, because no matter how sadly deficient our voices are against the storm, being human requires shouting out a warning to other that they are about to be buried by debris.

Samasiam January 03, 2012 12:45 PM

“drill baby drill.” Of course Palin cheered it on she did after all start with her own head (she was trying to free her pineal gland so she could ascertain who is the father of her grandchildren)

Jack Heart January 03, 2012 06:19 PM

I like the analysis English sociologists have come up with to describe commercials. Watching commercials is "work" and for this work the payment (reward) we receive is entertaining TV programming. At present, I'm finding the payment pretty shitty for all the hard work I put in watching commercials. So I find I watch less and less TV.

Dr Stuart Jeanne Bramhall January 03, 2012 06:27 PM

Sam, this sounds like something that came out of a marketing research book; they start out by learning to take advantage of existing insecurities but they’ve gone beyond that. Once they learned that they could take advantage of kids insecurities and that schools could help kids deal with them better they started marketing in schools and encouraging kids to have more insecurities from a very early age. The worst of that is done by Channel One which was studied by Roy Fox (see my review if you haven’t already for more). Marketing researchers have turned into subtle child predators that create unnecessary social problems for profit.

Jack, Sarah is just another Oil company puppet; like the Doonesbury cartoon says, “What would it take to get you to talk?” “$100,000”

Stuart, I never thought commercials were worth paying attention to and used to assume that all intelligent people felt the same way until I casually mentioned it once and noticed the shock at my belief by someone who thought they had a purpose. TV has turned to crap since they canceled MASH a few months ago.

zacherydtaylor January 04, 2012 09:40 AM