Blog by Sumana Harihareswara, Changeset founder
I should have known that some book entitled In Defense…
Hi, reader. I wrote this in 2001 and it's now more than five years old. So it may be very out of date; the world, and I, have changed a lot since I wrote it! I'm keeping this up for historical archive purposes, but the me of today may 100% disagree with what I said then. I rarely edit posts after publishing them, but if I do, I usually leave a note in italics to mark the edit and the reason. If this post is particularly offensive or breaches someone's privacy, please contact me.
I should have known that some book entitled In Defense of Advertising: arguments from reason, ethical egoism, and laissez-faire capitalism would revolt me. But the copyright acknowledgments page contains eight items, three of them by Ayn Rand! Aieee!
It gets better. The preface starts out talking about ads that the author, one Jerry Kirkpatrick, once disliked, until he learned more about advertising and now he believes that the ads "all meet the standards of both good advertising and good taste." Well, Mr. Kirkpatrick, if you reacted negatively to the ads -- and, by association, to the products they advertised -- then they were bad advertisements, weren't they? Jeez.
