In casinos, gambling is going on; in a Monetized Free Market, advertising is everywhere:
PORING through Harvard philosopher Michael Sandel’s new book, “What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets,” I found myself over and over again turning pages and saying, “I had no idea.”
I had no idea that in the year 2000, as Sandel notes, “a Russian rocket emblazoned with a giant Pizza Hut logo carried advertising into outer space,” or that in 2001, the British novelist Fay Weldon wrote a book commissioned by the jewelry company Bulgari and that, in exchange for payment, “the author agreed to mention Bulgari jewelry in the novel at least a dozen times.” I knew that stadiums are now named for corporations, but had no idea that now “even sliding into home is a corporate-sponsored event,” writes Sandel. “New York Life Insurance Company has a deal with 10 Major League Baseball teams that triggers a promotional plug every time a player slides safely into base. When the umpire calls the runner safe at home plate, a corporate logo appears on the television screen, and the play-by-play announcer must say, ‘Safe at home. Safe and secure. New York Life.’
And while I knew that retired baseball players sell their autographs for $15 a pop, I had no idea that Pete Rose, who was banished from baseball for life for betting, has a Web site that, Sandel writes, “sells memorabilia related to his banishment. For $299, plus shipping and handling, you can buy a baseball autographed by Rose and inscribed with an apology: ‘I’m sorry I bet on baseball.’ For $500, Rose will send you an autographed copy of the document banishing him from the game.” …
Throughout our society, we are losing the places and institutions that used to bring people together from different walks of life. Sandel calls this the “skyboxification of American life,” and it is troubling. Unless the rich and poor encounter one another in everyday life, it is hard to think of ourselves as engaged in a common project. At a time when to fix our society we need to do big, hard things together, the marketization of public life becomes one more thing pulling us apart. “The great missing debate in contemporary politics,” Sandel writes, “is about the role and reach of markets.” We should be asking where markets serve the public good, and where they don’t belong, he argues. And we should be asking how to rebuild class-mixing institutions.
Because Irony has swallowed cold poison and jumped in the sea*, Tom Friedman could use the title “This Column Is Not Sponsored By Anyone” without fear of being struck by lightning. As Calvin Trillin once said about a certain congressman, if truth-in-advertising required professional spokesmen to show the logos of their paymasters, Friedman would have to wear one of those NASCAR jumpsuits to get all the sponsors within line-of-sight at his globetrotting speaking gigs. Your winnings, m’seur!
I guess it’s a dangerous sign when all the Masters of the Universe can afford private limos, and are therefore separated from the Global Street Wisdom(tm) of Friedman’s famous cabdrivers. Or maybe the decimation of his no-longer-a-multibillionaire father-in-law’s fortune has embittered Tom to the point where he now identifies with the economic top One Percent instead of the Point One Percent. Could be he needs a new theme song.
(* Thank you, Peter Beagle)
(h/t commentor Corner Stone)
Corner Stone
H/T ME! Me! Meeeee!! Acknowledge me!!
Meap!!
Richard
Friedman needs to get kicked in the unit.
David Koch
Pete Rose is a pisser.
gene108
Apparently the Mustache of Understanding doesn’t watch professional sports or big-time college sports…
Maybe that’s why he has such a hard time figuring things out that effect normal folks and is flummoxed by “common sense”.
While he’s following David Brooks on an impromptu survey of the salad bar at Apple Bee’s on a fine Sunday autumn afternoon, the rest of us are watching the NFL.
MattF
Via jwz, for those of you who are looking forward to The Singularity, here’s the future of advertising:
jwz.org/blog/2012/05/welcome-to-life-the-singularity-ruined-by-lawyers/
Anne Laurie
@Corner Stone: Added. (Found it independently, but you did get there first.)
gogol's wife
I can’t believe he never heard about Fay Weldon and Bulgari. Has he been hiding under a rock?
arguingwithsignposts
@Corner Stone: Seriously, you can go fuck yourself, you cheap firebagging sonofabitch.
Frankensteinbeck
No, Mister Friedman. They never existed. They are entirely products of your wishful imagining. Poor people did not go to church with rich people. They did not play on the same sandlots or eat at the same lunch table.
Corner Stone
@arguingwithsignposts: Damn. No one’s ever called me cheap before. That hurts.
Baud
Friedman is shrill.
driftglass
Fred Pohl was writing better about this shit 60 years ago:
driftglass.blogspot.com/2012/05/mustache-of-understanding-discovers.html
BGinCHI
Yes, it’s really, really hard. You’d think that to find people who engage in this sort of thing without being forced to you’d have to look further than the White House.
What the fuck does he think committed liberals do?
Clueless fuck.
Tara the Antisocial Social Worker
Really really BIG jumpsuits to fit all the names on.
gaz
Adbusters, those dirty fucking hippies, were right. Just like dirty fucking hippies always are.
I don’t wear logos. I don’t watch television. I’ve defaced more than a few billboards. I try to do my part.
The mindspace pollution is killing culture. Killing us. Softly, with shiny objects and empty glitz.
Suffern ACE
@gene108:
Or read the paper that employs him.
different-church-lady
Freidman had no idea about ANY of that? Does he live on the same planet as the rest of us? Has he ever seen a supermarket scanner? Does he know that people now have phones that work like Dick Tracy two-way wrist radios? Has he stepped outside his house or turned on his TV in the last 20 years?
Jewish Steel
I am no baseball expert, but it is my understanding that MLB, players and owners, have sought to wring every last cent out of their game since day one. It’s practically part of the game. What planet is this guy from?
PeakVT
I bet Friedman would be surprised to find advertising inside taxi cabs.
pseudonymous in nc
@Jewish Steel:
What I realised, as a filthy foreigner, is that it’s more subtle in MLB: the sponsorship deals are larger and the branding is part of the landscape, rather than imposing itself. Go to a minor league game, and it’s clear that there’s literally nothing that isn’t available for sponsorship, whether it’s the middle of the third inning or the middle urinal of the men’s toilets.
Djur
@gene108: Does one have to watch sports to be “normal folks”? Is this the same as “real Americans”?
different-church-lady
@pseudonymous in nc: Years ago I paid a visit to Wrigley Field. The PA announcer said, “This break in the action is brought to you by…”
And I thought, “Wait… absence of activity has a sponsor? Even things that don’t exist are sponsored now?”
Corner Stone
@Djur: Duh. Fuckin’ commie.
Marcellus Shale, Public Dick
advertising is the only true medium.
all other mediums exist to segment the market, so advertisers can sell multiple messages on multiple platforms.
rather than demonize advertising itself, we need a way to make advertising accessible to contrasting narratives.
Marcellus Shale, Public Dick
advertising is the only true medium.
all other mediums exist to segment the market, so advertisers can sell multiple messages on multiple platforms.
rather than demonize advertising itself, we need a way to make advertising accessible to contrasting narratives.
Starfish
At the Museum of Science in Baltimore, at least several of the exhibits have corporate sponsors. For example, there is a house within the Harry’s Big Adventure exhibit (which is about insects) that is sponsored by a pest control company. There is also an exhibit on fuel efficient cars that is sponsored by one of the car companies.
gene108
@Djur:
If you’re SURPRISED, as Mr. Friedman is, that there are things like MetLife sponsoring stolen bases or All-State having a “Your in Good Hands Catch of the Day” on football broadcasts, there is something wrong with you.
Even if you don’t watch sports regularly, it shouldn’t SURPRISE you that advertisements are everywhere.
What’s he going to write up about next? How SURPRISED he is that websites are full of advertisements that put up ads based on your browsing history?
Citizen_X
A epitaf. Mustash man haz it.
Suffern ACE
Ok. Before we go on about advertising like its a problem, what is the problem Friedman has uncovered? He and bobo have written about the issue being “social distance” before (as does Charles Murray) because it’s nice to think that we could cheaply solve problems by doing things together (and then swipe at mean old liberals for being all elitey and wanting better food but no Protestant work ethic while looking down on people who just want a Budweiser). I’m trying to figure out how he gets from “advertising is everywhere” to lack of a common project.
maus
OH MY GOD SOMETHING THOMAS FRIEDMAN DOESN’T KNOW
stop the presses, we’ve got a column
also, TWIF
freelancer
@Citizen_X:
They should have sent a poet. Literally.
Linnaeus
That’s capitalism, folks. You can commodify anything.
Just Some Fuckhead
Hell, they advertise on top of taxi cabs which Friedman would know if he ever rode in one.
Nylund
I can’t get over how out of touch he is. His life must be absolutely sheltered. I wonder if he’s put two and two together and realize that this thing he just discovered and thinks poorly of is at the heart of so many of his espoused economic views, not to mention part of the source of the vast wealth held by his father-in-law. Did he think the stores in the family malls were all mom’n’pop shops with no advertising budgets and that their sales that paid the leases were based on word-of-mouth?
Yes, Mr. Friedman, the things you describe are pretty terrible. The rest of us have to live with it every day. And these terrible things are part of the reason why your wife will inherent quite a fortune.
Villago Delenda Est
Today’s sermon has been brought to you by the following sponsors…
MayM
Nice job with the Peter S. Beagle quote-Am I the only one who caught it?
guntheranderson.com/v/data/wheniwa0.htm
handsmile
With this column, the Moustache of (Mis)Understanding’s pimping of the “Americans Elect” flimflam makes a whole lot more sense.
The geniuses at The Onion could not have penned a more note-perfect satire of this dispatch from Versailles.
maus
@Nylund:
More like “these terrible things are the reason why anyone pays attention to your worthless ignoranusisms.”
arguingwithsignposts
@Corner Stone:
Why do you lie?
schrodinger's cat
When exactly in history did the rich and poor mingle, like Bobo and MoU want them to?
Suffern ACE
@Just Some Fuckhead: The ads are now inside the cabs, too! But again, I’m not sure what his complaint is. The issue isn’t that we don’t have a common project. It’s that the project is buying stuff. But that has been the project for a long time.
Just Some Fuckhead
@schrodinger’s cat:
Dunno, but David Brooks seems to be taking it pretty seriously. He moved to Cleveland.
AA+ Bonds
IS THIS THE SAME TOM FRIEDMAN WHO WAS THE #1 ADVOCATE FOR ALL OF THIS EXACT SAME BULLSHIT LIKE TEN YEARS AGO
IS IT
FUCKING IS IT
schrodinger's cat
I think MoU should be changed to MoB = Mustache of Bullshit.
Connor Cochran
@MayM: Well, I caught it, but then I’m Peter’s business manager, so I’m kind of a specialized audience…
AA+ Bonds
Friedman approvingly quotes Sandel on the dangers of branding = no goddamned justice in this world
Ohio Mom
@Starfish: Yeah, the Indiana State Museum in Indianapolis also has at least one corporate-sponsored exhibit. I saw it last year and it’s on genetic engineered crops.
It’s all about how people have always cross-bred plants –as if that’s the same thing as sticking fish genes in a corn cell. There’s a little fine print in one or two places admitting there’s some controversy surrounding genetic engineering, without much explanation about why that might be.
Pure propangda, argueably advertising and certainly not what I expect to see in a non-profit educational institution. So I guess that makes me just like Friedman, shocked.
russell
Dear Thomas Friedman:
We are not engaged in a common project. We haven’t been for at least a generation, maybe longer.
Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.
Please get a fucking clue before writing your next book.
Thank you
russell
jrg
@AA+ Bonds: Yes. This would be the same one who wrote books about the awesomeness of billboards in Bangalore, Starbucks in the Airport terminal, blah, blah, blah.
The man’s a fucking idiot. He reaches conclusions ten years later than insiders do, then intellectually autofellatiates himself over it, and people even dumber than he is pay to read about it.
Mike G
This is the same Thomas Friedman who writes with near-orgasmic glee about seeing IBM billboards in Bangalore or a Pizza Hut in Budapest airport.
His much-documented excitement at the sight of American corporations in foreign countries reminds me of a toddler beaming with pride over making a weewee.
RossInDetroit
@gaz:
Me too! Banksy is my pop culture hero.
Citizen_X
@Just Some Fuckhead: Goddamit, you made me look!
Jebediah
Fucking Friedman. Every time I see his clueless mug I think of Cliff Claven.
Or what Cliff Claven would be if he were an order of magnitude more clueless.
Anne Laurie
@driftglass: That photoshop is truly one of your finest productions, sir — and you set a high standard!
Anne Laurie
@schrodinger’s cat:
During America’s first Gilded Age, even the “modestly comfortable” middle-class families could afford at least one live-in servant, and the noveau riche people like the family Friedman married into could buy a whole staff to (per Gosfield Park) “know exactly what they’ll want to eat, even before they know they’re hungry”. Tragically for the Friedman/Brooks/Charles Murray phantasy, the current Global None-Dare-Call-It-Depression has failed to convince all us laid-off American middle managers and tech assistants that working a six-and-a-half-day week in return for room & board is a worthy ambition. (Conversely, there’s a branch of economic history that claims Americans have always led the world in domestic technology because a large part of the real American Dream is never having to be a domestic servant!)
mainmati
@Suffern ACE: I so like the “Mustache of Understanding”. Perfect.
mainmati
@Anne Laurie: Yes, I have heard this before that businesses always searched for labor substitution as the ideal business model. It has long since become a pattern since the turn of the 20th century. Big Business has always hated labor; still does.
mclaren
Great headline. In case anyone didn’t get the reference, it’s from the film Casablanca when Claude Rains the Vichy police prefect enters Rick’s and shouts “I’m shocked! Shocked to discover that gambling has been going on!” And then a croupier comes up to him and says, “Your winnings, sir.”
gaz
@RossInDetroit: to be fair, I watch shows, but I pirate them so I don’t see the commercials, other than some product placement, and yes I LUV banksy
BrianM
@schrodinger’s cat:
I remember de Tocqueville made a big deal out of that in Democracy in America. I think it was he who pointed out that, on riverboats, everyone mingled together in the same compartments, and the common man did not defer to the rich.
I think I’ve read the same thing about railroad travel, though I may be just remembering the same point twice.