Closer to Finding Common Ground
Daniel L. Jaffe
In 1924, Canadian economist Stephen Leacock claimed, in his book The Garden of Folly, that advertising “may be described as the science of arresting the human intelligence long enough to get money from it.” Unfortunately, at that time, this was one of the more benign statements from critics. George Orwell later described advertising as the “rattling of a stick inside a swill bucket,” and H. G. Wells described it as “legalized lying.” Then there was F. Scott Fitzgerald. Mincing no words, he called advertising a “racket” whose “constructive contribution to...