You know how the ads go. They have THAT music. Some somber narrator comes on and announces that during these “uncertain times” given “what’s going on” that some corporation that never cared about you actually does.
Generic COVID-19 Corporate Messaging
Ted Rall
Ted Rall is a syndicated political cartoonist for Andrews McMeel Syndication, WhoWhatWhy.org and Counterpoint. He is a frequent contributor to The Wall Street Journal, a graphic novelist and author of many books of art and prose, and an occasional war correspondent. He is, recently, the author of the graphic novel "The Stringer."
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Caring Corps, indeed.
I’m anticipating a redux of those “support our troops” car window decals, this time electronically appearing on corp websites next to the login button … in simulated Kente cloth.
About that fifth frame, Ted – isn’t that precisely what is meant by «social distancing» ?…
Henri
Link below for a compilation of this “corporate caring” BS…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vM3J9jDoaTA
Pure authenticity….
Henri
Serious question for the group:
When we see these corporate wuv wetters, we all roll our eyes and groan. Not one of us tears up a little and chokes out from a constricted throat, “Gosh. They … they DO care. I always thought they did but never dared to hope.”
But when hamfisted, two-faced, woodenfaced, blood-coated Hillary Warmonger Clinton or Dry Drunk George W. Bush or Wipemyassontheconstitution Ronald Reagan pulls these same gimmicks, people come RUNNING with their children’s college funds.
What, exactly, is the difference? Why can people see the one so clearly but not the other?
To Alex,
Assuming “we” is the same as “people,” I’d have to disagree with your apparent dichotomy.
That is, it is hardly true, as you seem to say, that 1) ALL “we/people” reject corporate con games, and 2) ALL “we/people” pledge “their children’s college funds” to the a) “hamfisted, two-faced, woodenfaced, blood-coated-” b) Dry Drunk- or
c) Wipemyassontheconstitution- , candidates that are shat onto our presidential ballots every 4 years.
In support of 1), see Henri’s comment about the reception received by Ted’s opinion piece in the WSJ. Among those who don’t see corps as the cuddly entities the corps would like us to see, there is a massive cadre who say about the corps: “Well, I may not approve of everything they do, BUT I support their right to do it.” The problem is that they do not notice or are suicidal enough to not care, that “do it” essentially means grinding to economic (or bloody) dust the “little” people.
For 2) consider that 50% of elegible voters do not vote and that only a tiny fraction of the value of campaign donations is given by the 99.99%’ers.
To Alex
PS
Among recent presidents/candidates you seemed to have forgotten: vWJ “I feel the pain I’ve profitable inflicted on you” Clinton and BH “One-man Weimar Republic & graduate of Neville Chamberlain Night-School of Political Negotiation” Obumma.
I didn’t forget them as much as omitted them in hopes of sidestepping the moderator (dys)function of the site.
As to the other point, I was using “people” and “we” somewhat selectively AND somewhat collectively.
More precisely: I don’t think many people at all buy into the Madison Avenue-generated faux folksiness of all the “we’re in this together (heart) but we’ll get through this” ad copy. But when pretty much the exact same scripts come out of a politician’s mouth, millions of people line up to back said politician.
Obama did it to Main Street while giving his buddies on Wall Street a huge bailout and a free pass.
Hillary Clinton did it (with a little more woodenness than Howdy Doody) while running for 2016 — I can still find clips on YouTube of the people CRYING as she was losing the election because they HONEST and FOR TRUE thought she was going to FIGHT for THEM.
Ditto with Dubya acting like he’s Tom Cruise in his fwight suit, just like when Da-da got his that safe spot in the TANG.
Not to be too finicky, but this isn’t “Orwell winning,” it’s what he warned against coming to pass….or perhaps the beginning of the slippery slope into the world of “The Matrix,” in which individual human beings were mechanically separated from each other but given the illusion of an interactive reality.
yeah, it’s kind of annoying when I’m shopping at Smart & Final when the background music is interrupted by “…because we’re all in this together.”
Pay wall?
The return on investment in advertising is remarkably low. Back when I was doing advertising it was about 1.5%. In other words, if two out of one hundred people who see your ad buy something you make a profit. If P.T. Barnum was right (in my experience he was) that a sucker is born every minute, even cheesy ad pitches are a sure bet for making money.
Beach Watcher, aren’t you saying precisely the opposite, i e, the the return on investment in advertising is remarkably high, given that, to use your figures above, if so few as two out of a hundred persons who see one’s ad, are actually moved by it to purchase the product, one makes a profit ?…
Henri