MotherJones MJ93: America in the nineties: the new hucksterism

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


To the new shills, nothing’s sacred. Penn State signs a $14 million deal to make Pepsi the official drink on campus. The nutrition exhibit at the Chicago Museum of Science features Swift meats and not a bad word about cholesterol. Pet-food marketers try to develop a high- pitched whistle that calls the family dog to television ads. Cineplex Odeon guarantees its ad buyers “No zipping or zapping . . . a captive movie audience.” Privy Promotions sold restroom ads for $2,000 a square foot, promising “long lines of consumers . . . staring at the wall anywhere from three to five minutes.” Students in a California high school “earned” higher grades for spending money at a local supermarket, which offers the school computers in exchange.

In place of George Bush’s “military renaissance,” we now have a renaissance of the Rotarians. Today’s Babbits have read Robert Reich and are going global.

The new tone was set as early as that ultimate Rotary Club luncheon, Clinton’s preinaugural economic summit. A misty-eyed Jill Barad, president of Mattel, spoke of wanting “toys to be accessible to all families and all children in the United States,” and proudly noted that “it wasn’t until we went to lower-cost sources that we were able to dominate the worldwide toy market.” Though she ex-pressed concern over the human-rights situation in China, she pointed out that “it would be very, very difficult to maintain that competitive edge if we were to withdraw Most Favored Nation status with China.”

When Clinton all but guaranteed MFN for Mattel’s cheap crew of Barbie builders, Jill Barad, very nineties, did not light up a cigar.

Make-a-buck smarm, of course, has long threatened to engulf American culture. But Barad’s “toys are us, gulags are them” logic had that upbeat “competitiveness” ring to it. If Mattel gets its way in China, she said, “we [can] hire and employ thousands of U.S. workers in high-wage, high-value jobs.” Clinton and Reich have been saying similar things for so long–the global economy, stupid!–that it feels like we’ve all been through one of those lean and mean, you-will- have-eight-jobs-in-your-life management seminars.

Months after the December summit we still “are not having the kind of conversation we need,” says Christopher Lasch, noted skeptic of progress. “The meaning of life is to be sought in useful, self- respecting work. But the so-called good jobs increasingly are devoted to the manufacture, design, and promotion of things we don’t need.

“You can’t afford to have a sense of the sacred,” Lasch continues, “in a society where the powers that must be propitiated are not the unseen forces of the heavens or earth, but the people on Wall Street.”

The renaissance of the military may indeed be over. No more Star Wars economy, no more Super Bowl halftime bombing raids. The question is, how to pay for the last renaissance and make the next one a little more dignified? How about a “shill tax” on the $130 billion that American business pours into advertising every year? That might crimp our world dominance in shameless hucksterism, but we may have lost that already. After all, it’s the biggest bank in the world, Japan’s DKB, that claims a heart for its logo.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with The Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with The Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate