The Things You Carry

‘Please, sir. I want some more.’

(Public domain Oliver Twist illustration. Source: Wikipedia.org)

Damn. It would be so easy to post links to the news articles linking consumerism and childhood depression in British children.

I could say something smug about how I knew it all along. Then I could stop blogging for the day and make a sandwich.

But the fact is, those news articles are bunk. I’m not saying there’s not a link between consumerism and unhappiness. I’m saying that the news articles are about a survey that doesn’t say what the reporters say it said.

A bit of back story:

The Good Childhood Inquiry recently released the results of a public opinion poll asking UK adults questions related to consumerism and children. 61 percent thought the government should ban advertisements of unhealthy food, 69 percent thought violent video games make kids more aggressive, 90 percent thought advertising to children at Christmas puts pressure on parents to spend more than they can afford, etc.

By the way, the Inquiry is run by the Children’s Society, which got its start in 1881 as “The Church of England Central Home for Waifs and Strays.” Coolest. Name. Ever. The “patron of the inquiry” was the Archbishop of Canterbury, which confused me because I thought King Henry had his ass stabbed to death like 1,000 years ago.

(There’s no link for that joke. Look it up yourselves.)

I have no problem with the survey - a valuable tool for people looking at public perception. My problem is the damn headlines. “Pressures of consumerism make children depressed,” “‘Commercialism is harming children’s lives’, “Study: Consumerism making children miserable,” and my favorite, “How the pursuit of trendy possessions is mentally damaging our children” complete with pictures of bad role models like “ones who make it seem fashionable to take drugs such as Amy Winehouse, or who are obscenely rich footballers such as Chelsea Captain Ledley King or stick thin like the model above right.”

They didn’t even bother to find out who the file-photo model was. Journalism, baby!

I’m not saying consumerism isn’t bad for children. What I’m saying is that anticonsumerism could eventually be written off as an early-2000s fad if we don’t back it up with REAL FACTS AND DATA, not sensational Fleet Street nonsense.

Don’t believe me that this could just be a fad? Remember when everyone wanted to save the whales? The whales are still in trouble. But now all the bumper stickers talk about climate change.

The British survey is an opinion survey of adults. All it proves, all it claims and all it shows is what the weighted sample of 1,225 UK adults aged 16 and older responded in a telephone survey.

Anyway, here’s the first line of the Children’s Society’s press release on the survey [all spellings British]:

“A public opinion poll published by The Children’s Society, as part of its ongoing Good Childhood Inquiry, reveals a consensus among adults that increasing commercialisation is damaging children’s well-being.”

Simple and honest. It just says adults think that. But then, throw a reporter in the mix and you get this article from the Times Online. Here’s the first line of that:

“Pressure on children to have the latest designer clothes and computer games is making them miserable, according to a study of modern childhood.”

Ah, the magic of lazy journalism. A “public opinion poll” has taken on the authoritative-sounding name of “study” and “a consensus among adults” has become a fact. Granted, it’s catchier, snappier, jazzier and so on, but a very important nuance has been lost.

Oh, and the author of the Times article keeps pulling quotes from the press release itself. I’ve been a reporter and I’m in grad school to be a better reporter. You’re not supposed to rely on press releases. People stretch the truth or outright lie in press releases. Like a former editor of mine always said, “If your mother tells you she loves you, check it out.”

Weird, though. This is a rare instance of a press release being more trustworthy than the newspapers covering it.

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Incredibly annoyed

Here’s an object lesson in research:

For years, I’ve worn New Balance shoes because they have good arch support and, I thought, they’re made in the USA.

Turns out I was only partially right.

True, New Balance does manufacture some of its shoes in the USA. But not all. Not my green, yellow and black 574s. They’re from China, which I found out during a discussion of sweatshop clothing.

Me: “That’s why I wear New Balance.”

Not me: “You know they only make some of them in the US, right?”

Me: “What? Let me check mine.” (Crossing room and checking shoes) “Motherf***er.”

So, that’s the lesson. Don’t make any assumptions, even ones based on a company’s reputation. Do your research - all of it.

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Buy my anticonsumerism

I would like you guys to take a few seconds and look at this posting on Lifehack.org. It’s called “How to Avoid Being Enslaved by Consumerism.”

Seriously, take a look. I’ll wait here.

… hum de dum de du rai ey … (softly crooning) Oh, Eileen …

Oh! You’re back. I swear, I wasn’t picking my … never mind.

So what struck you the most about the “How to Avoid Being Enslaved by Consumerism” article? Was it the cry for “a sculpted internal world”? Was it the author’s arguments about the myth of ownership? Was it the Henry David Thoreau epigraph?

Or was it ALL THE GODDAMN ADS ON THE PAGE?

That felt good. I usually use italics for my scannable writing. This is much more satisfying.

OK, call me crazy, but maybe if you’re writing a page devoted to decrying all the wanton consumerism in the world, you might want to give sites that use Google AdSense a pass. For those who don’t know, AdSense is a service that puts random ads up on your page. If enough people click on ads from your page, Google starts to pay you per click.

I’ll look the other way for folks on Geocities, like David MacClement here, because Geocities just does puts up ads if you want to use their service. But Google AdSense is purely optional, Scott H. Young, Mr. Guy-Who-Posted-To-Lifehack. Maybe people will take you a little more seriously if you don’t post to a site covered in ads.

Anticonsumer blogger Paul Ippolito took a different tactic in writing an entry about why he had, but then got rid of AdSense:

“… I decided that it really goes against the philosophy of this blog to advertise for things I’m lambasting. Plus, nobody is going to actually click on those ads, anyway. At least, nobody who reads anticonsumerist websites.”

Interesting point. A combination of “it’s morally suspect” and “I’m not going to make any money anyway.”

I ask for very little from life. A beer with friends. A hot cup of coffee and a newspaper. Anne Hathaway.

But mostly, I ask not to be made to look like a jackass by association. I’ve already got those Adbusters nitwits to deal with (”Hey, let’s fight advertisements that create an artificial demand for a certain brand of shoe by using advertisements to create an artificial demand for our brand of shoe!”) Don’t give my issue more idiocy.

Now, because my grade goes up when I use images in my blog postings, here’s a public-domain line illustration of a boy using an apple to train a pig to jump over a rope. It’s from the 1915 children’s book, “Squinty The Comical Pig.”

(Source: public-domain.zorger.com)

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This is going to sound bad

(Public domain image. Source: Imageafter.com)

OK, so I’m just putting it out there - when I was a kid, I thought everyone on the entire planet was poor except for in the US and western Europe.

Seriously, I thought the world was a bunch of tempest-tossed, starving refugees, some British guys and then, well, us. I knew there were poor people in the US, but the concept of, say, a rich person in India was a little beyond my ken. I’m not a bad person. I just had a poor conception of international relations as a child.

And I never would have believed that the well-off in India would be wrestling with the same moral issues as those of us well-off here.

This is a posting by Indian blogger Melody  about her issues dealing with inequality in her own country. She and other rich Mumbaikars are paying 600 rupees for a Jack Daniels while, in Bihar, there is a 10-year-old girl who wants to return to slavery because the food is better.

Holy crap.

Melody’s posting was at Desicritics.org, but her normal site is The Voice In My Head.

As a kid, you only hear of a lot of countries from Sally Struthers commercials and when your folks say to eat your spinach because there are people starving in Africa (or India, or China. My parents always said China.) Occassionally, one will pop up on the news, but only when something horrible happened there. It gives people a pretty skewed view of the world.

Either way, consumption is out of whack around the world. Check out this 1998 United Nations Development Programme report if you don’t believe me. Granted, it’s a decade old, but it’s still some pretty scary stuff.

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

ECO-NUNS!!!

 A brief diversion from the usual topic today.

 The National Catholic Reporter did a story on nuns going green. 

Hmmm. I wonder where they got that idea?

Dang religion reporters ripped me off.

Posted in Business practices, Waste | No Comments »

The Renegade Interview

(Source: Renegade Handmade Flickr account. Used with permission.)

In the sea of hip known as Chicago’s Wicker Park neighborhood, there is a modest consignment shop where a person can buy plush bacon and eggs, buttons with owls on them and posters and shirts made by artists and crafters from Korea to, well, Chicago’s Wicker Park neighborhood.

The store, which opened in July, is Renegade Handmade. It itself is an offshoot of the Renegade Craft Fair, a quarterly gathering of hippies, punks, paper-makers, seamstresses, musicians, suburban retirees and other people who want to make and buy handmade goods rather than go corporate. The most recent fair in Chicago (they also run in New York and San Francisco) had an estimated 60,000 attendees.

I sat down with Sue Daly, the 29-year-old founder and organizer of the fair and owner of the store. In the following audio interview, we discuss the politics, culture and style of buying handmade, plus chain stores trying to cash in on the trend and how a hobby became, to her and others, a growing subculture.

Nine Questions for Sue Daly: 

Sue Daly audio interview

(Source: Renegade Handmade Flickr account. Used with permission.)

To read a transcript of the video, click below.

Read the rest of this entry »

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Coming Monday!

The Things You Carry goes audio, debuting what will hopefully be the first of many audio interviews.

You have been warned.

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That saucy Bernays

Meet Edward Bernays.

That’s him. He looks a little like Walt Disney, huh? Happy guy. I bet he’s got a cute, happy quote to describe the worldview that makes him so darn smiley.

Here it is:

“If we understand the mechanisms and motives of the group mind, it is now possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without their knowing it.”

Meet Edward Bernays, the Father of Public Relations.

He led to the overthrow of Guatemala, convinced the nation Americans had always eaten eggs and bacon, made green the hot color of 1934, wrote books Joseph Goebbels consulted and headed up promotions for a groundbreaking 1920 NAACP regional convention in the heart of the Deep South. He was Sigmund Freud’s nephew too, just to add to the crazy.

To quote Dave Barry, “that would be a good name for a rock band.” Oh, wait. No, the other one. “I’m not making this up.”

Allow me to begin at the beginning: Who the hell is this weird, weird man?

According to this New York Times book review, Bernays was born in Vienna in 1891. His family moved to New York while he was a baby. After starting as a Broadway press agent, he worked as a war effort propagandist during World War I: The Phantom Menace.

There, the book review states, Bernays found his calling, later writing “I could create events and circumstances from which favorable publicity would stem.”

More from the review:

“It sounded nefarious, and it was. To promote Ivory Soap, he organized a national soap-sculpturing contest in schools, though pliable Ivory was the only soap that could be used. To promote a bacon company, he enlisted a prominent doctor to solicit fellow doctors’ opinions on the salutary benefits of a heavy breakfast. In trying to re-elect Herbert Hoover, he formed a Non-Partisan Fact-Finding Committee, which issued a poll showing Hoover trouncing the Democratic candidate, Franklin Roosevelt.”

He really was Freud’s nephew. I gotta hit that part over the head. Although, as this PR Watch book review states (lots of book reviews, huh?) at least one author argues that Bernays, the Father of Public Relations, did a lot to cement Freud’s rep as the Father of Psychoanalysis. Why not? Bernays’ own bread was buttered with Siggy F.

From the PR Watch article:

“Bernays regarded Uncle Sigmund as a mentor, and used Freud’s insights into the human psyche and motivation to design his PR campaigns, while also trading on his famous uncle’s name to inflate his own stature.”

And oh how those Guatemalans hate him.

When Bernays was working for United Fruit, the company was relying on the corrupt Guatemalan government to supply them with cheap bananas grown by virtual slaves. Then, well, let’s let the PR Watch article say what happened next:

“When a mildly reformist Guatemala government attempted to reign in the company’s power, Bernays whipped up media and political sentiment against it in the commie-crazed 1950s.”

The book being reviewed, the PR Watch guy wrote, “sheds new and important light on the extent to which the Bernays’ propaganda campaign for the United Fruit Company (today’s United Brands) led directly to the CIA’s overthrow of the elected government of Guatemala.”

Funny thing. That little incident seems to have slipped by the folks at The Museum of Public Relations.

In their online Bernays exhibit, it seems to veer more toward the cutesy or good. He made green the fashionable color in 1934 so women would buy the then-green-packaged Lucky Strike brand. He worked with the NAACP. He made Cal Coolidge seem hip.

The museum also mentions that he later resented doing so much work to publicize smoking. One of his early triumphs was linking smoking - particularly smoking Lucky Strikes - with feminism.

He called cigarettes “Torches of Freedom.”

This aint news. It isn’t even new. Bernays died in 1995 at the age of 103 and proudly wrote books about what he did. He’s not some little troll hiding in the darkness. He was a brash salesman who promoted himself along with his clients.

It’s just that not a lot of people bother to find out about the people who try to get them to buy things. People don’t bother to find out who were the people who influenced the modern salesmen, disinformation specialists, hucksters and bull artists trying to part you from your money and get you to go to war in Ira-

Um … sorry. Anticonsumer blog, nothing else.

Aren’t you glad you know a little about Edward Bernays and the world he helped create? And there’s a lot on neat links to find out more.

Just to throw in one more link, here’s an NPR piece on Bernays.

So think about Bernays next time you slice up a banana, make some bacon and eggs, light up a Lucky or vote for Herbert Hoover. (OK, so they don’t all apply). Doesn’t he just look so damn happy in that picture?

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How do I buy thee?

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of being and ideal grace.

Just think, instead of writing those famous lines, Elizabeth Barrett Browning could have just bought her husband a lot of crap.

Today is Valentine’s Day and I’m going to end up sounding like one of those cranky anti-romantics. I’m not. Crank up the “Casablanca” and some Edith Piaf and I’m all sorts of mushy. I just don’t like to be told love requires expensive gifts.

“But Paul,” those of you who care and know my first name might say, “What if people want to express their love through presents? Why you gotta get all high and mighty on them?”

Well, according to the following ABC news article, people aren’t buying presents because they want to. They’re buying them so their sweeties don’t get pissed at them.

I have no idea what’s going on with the blog program today, so here’s the link. Cut and paste time, brother.

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=4279478&page=1

Here’s a quote from the story:

The closer it gets, the greater the likelihood that the giver will pay more, “but only when it’s a means of avoiding a negative outcome,” Mogilner said. “It’s not that they are willing to pay more for a fabulous gift right before [Valentine’s Day], but they are willing to pay more to avoid a negative situation.”

Oh, how romantic.

During the 2001 recession, Valentine’s shoppers still planned to spend an average of $84.20 to prove the Beatles wrong on the ability to purchase love. Those aged 18 to 24 planned to spend $183.80. Men planned to spend $122 and women planned to spend $50.

Here’s the link to that International Mass Retail Association study:

http://retailindustry.about.com/library/weekly/01/aa010203a.htm

But is that spending limited to those in lurve? Hell, no! Meet Anti-Valentine’s Day!

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17011635

That’s a link to a 2007 story about the growing market of greeting cards and the like for people who don’t like Valentine’s Day and have no special someone.

It’s like Butterball found a way to market turkeys to people who don’t celebrate Thanksgiving.

Either way, grab your sweetie, crank some Otis Redding, try a little of the old tenderness, take a walk, hold a hand, kiss, snuggle, read poetry, tell ‘er (or ‘im) you love ‘er (or ‘im) and don’t ever ever ever let anyone convince you that love means never having to say “I didn’t get you anything.”

Posted in Advertising, Consumer spending | 2 Comments »

There’s gold in them thar portfolios

You know what really makes me feel good about the economic outlook? Financial experts hoarding gold.

According to the Malaysian Star Online (and some other sources - I just chose the most exotic one), more financial experts are padding their portfolios with gold rather than stocks or cash. That’s also the advice from Boris Schlossberg at Minyanville.com.

Minyanville.com, by the by, is where you can get financial news from a CGI bear and bull on such pressing issues as the Mr. T Gold Indicator and the current consumer outlook.

Anyway, gold - you know, that shiny rock you pull out of the ground - is doing so much more these days than letting Lil’ Jon tell people how rich he is.

It’s also a safe bet for investors who are scared of the dollar. The government’s plan of the economic stimulus package is based on Americans using the extra cash to buy, buy, buy, rather than save, save, save. It’s like the government is trying to guilt us into spending more.

I know it’s a big step from people investing in gold to actual hoarding gold, but both are signs of a lack of faith in the dollar, the stock market and the American economy. I’m a bit torn.

On one level, I like the idea of billionaires hoarding gold. It brings a very Scrooge McDuck vibe to the table.

On the other hand, it’s scary. Look at this history of gold hoarding from a 1975 Time article.

Either way, read up on the issue and figure out what you think.

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