David McRaney  |  Journalist

Smoke and mirrors

They lied to us, but then again, they always do.

A friend of mine received a phone call Tuesday. The woman on the other end asked him if he would like to be part of a test audience for a new sitcom. He said he would, and she interviewed him for 30 minutes. The next day, he received a tape in the mail and some paperwork to fill out. On the tape in bold print was, "Do not rewind or fast forward - this tape will erase after viewing."

There were instructions in the paperwork to choose what free prizes he would like to receive as a reward for being part of the test screening. He could only choose one from each group, and the choices were presented as a variety of products with photographs of their packages above. He was to circle what he wanted from one list before watching and from another list afterward.

He invited me over because he knew I hated sitcoms and would enjoy tearing it apart. That's when it became painfully obvious that we were being duped.

The show was called "Dads," and it was awful. It featured three single dads, a corporate uptight character, a laid back architect and a kid-at-heart numskull, all struggling to make it in a Full House-ish kind of '90s style sitcom with Rue McClanahan from "Golden Girls" as the superstrict kindergarten teacher with a heart of gold. It also had commercials that strangely corresponded with the products you could receive as gifts, and since you couldn't fast forward-

When the credits ran, we noticed that the pilot was copyrighted in 1997, and thus the game was up. Despite all the questionnaires about the show and the characters, they were really trying to figure out if the commercials worked on him.

Pure deception.

I am a journalism major, so I come in contact with a lot of public relations and advertising majors. Although I despise advertising and believe that to do it well one has to allow a small part of his or her soul to die, I can't really hate advertising majors because they grew up in the same world that I did. Every one of us knows what choosy mom's choose and where you can have it your way.

Advertising, politics and corporate press releases are all placed under the umbrella of public relations. Basically, this is a movement that seeks to mold the American mindset to whatever the needs of those in power choose it to be. For the most part, they are quite successful. What the general population sees as truth and reality is in large part a fabrication generated by clever public relations and a tightly controlled media.

Being a journalist, I sit on one of the pipelines that delivers this crap. Luckily, I have a little power over the manipulations of those that serve as herders to the American mental flock, but not much, and certainly not enough to do anything to salvage our humanity.

You see, the man considered by many to be the father of public relations is Edward L. Bernays. He was a foot soldier for U.S. Committee on Public Information, the American propaganda unit around 1917 that claimed they wanted to make the world safe for democracy. Working with them, he established the mold for marketing strategies to come for the rest of the century. He also worked for an American tobacco company, where he was able to persuade women's rights marchers to hold up Lucky Strikes as torches of freedom. He was considered an inspiration to Hitler's own PR man, Goebbels, despite being a Jew.

Bernays said that in his opinion, PR deals in reality, and it is about fashioning and creating credible renditions of reality itself. Bernays believed that there is a natural hierarchy to society, and the common person responded to their world through instinct, while an intelligent few contemplate the tide of history. He once said, "A highly educated class of opinion molding tacticians is constantly at work, analyzing and adjusting the mental scenery from which the public mind, with its limited intellect, derives its opinions"

Sitting there after the tape self destructed, I felt angry and used. But, I suppose I should feel that way after every commercial break. Advertising is always there, always molding and manipulating the mind whenever it can, and advertising has always played a huge role in the shaping of public consciousness throughout American history. By watching advertising evolve over the years, one can sense the urgency of the media to understand just what people are thinking and feeling and then to use that to their advantage or simply change the attitude of the public to serve them.

Wow, writing all this has made me hungry, maybe I'll go to Burger King. I hear they have chicken fries now, and get this - they fit in your cup holder!

Originally published in The Student Printz on October 4, 2005