Imagine a yoyo. It goes up. It goes down. Now, imagine playing with that yoyo on an escalator. The yoyo may go up and down, but the escalator carries you, the yoyo, the crying child behind you and her hissing mother ever upward.
Now, imagine that somebody pushes the stop button on the escalator. At first, you will fall forward. Then, you overcompensate for your forward motion and fall backwards onto the child, knocking the mother on the head with the yoyo. Chaos.
At the Beemer, Bank of Mertonville, we know how to employ misleading metaphors in order to make our customers believe that we can actually make them money while the stock market is collapsing all around them. Beemer, Bank of Mertonville – in good times and bad, the market works for us.
PAUSE
“This is Martina Kamilov of Missoula, Missouri.”
“Hi.”
“We blindfolded Martina and asked her to test two different brands of yogurt. One was her normal brand, the other was new Tibetan Formula with 25 per cent more chemical additives. This was her reaction:”
“Mmm…yes, I like this one. It’s creamier…fruitier, and – and, do I detect more monosodium glutamate?”
“Ha ha. Martina chose the Tibetan Formula yogurt. But, you know, since we had her blindfolded, we didn’t want to waste the opportunity to conduct more research. So, we asked Martina to pet a furry animal and tell us if it was a common house cat or a feral, rabid mongoose.”
“Oh, well, this is a tough one. They would both feel soft and fluffy and – OWWWWW! Okay. I think it was the feral…the, uhh, oh my…”
“Ha ha. Martina was, indeed, holding a feral, rabid mongoose. Once we cleaned up her wound and gave her a rabies shot, a blood transfusion and a sedative, we wheeled Martina – still blindfolded – into a room with a button. We asked her if, by feeling the button, she could tell us whether it was part of a video game console or the trigger to send a nuclear missile to a third world country on the other side of a planet.”
“I…I don’t know.”
“Not even a guess?”
“The consequences -“
“Just a guess.”
“Umm, well, a nuclear weapon?”
“Why don’t you push it and find out?”
“Oh, I…OH!”
“At which point, Martina passed out. Tee hee”
“Sadism week, sponsored by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and this station. Celebrate it with somebody you love…”
PAUSE
Nuke, Incorporated subcontracts much of its production to factories in countries like China, Vietnam and Indonesia. Lately, protests have been claiming that our factories pay our workers less than the minimum wage in their countries, force them to put in overtime without pay, expose them to harmful chemicals and subject our workers to verbal, physical and sexual abuse. Wow. Our detractors accuse of everything short of setting workers on fire just to keep the factories warm.
Needless to say, nothing could be further from the truth.
An average overseas Nuke worker makes 12 times the minimum wage in his country, and each gets three months paid vacation a year. Our factories use state of the art air filtration systems that ensure that our workers breath 98 per cent pure oxygen! And, we have a zero tolerance towards worker harassment of any kind: the first time a manager is caught, he loses a limb; the second time, he loses his job.
Is any of what I have just said literally true? Of course not. Nuke would quickly find itself bankrupt if it was. However, all of what I’ve just said is legitimate free speech, protected by the first amendment of the Constitution. Or, it would be if lower courts hadn’t ruled that commercial speech is not as protected as personal speech, that corporations selling products have to maintain a standard of “truth.”
Can you imagine what advertising would be like if corporations really had to tell the – hunh! – truth? Fast food companies would have to tell you eating their products leads to obesity. Weight watchers programmes would have to tell you that the strength of your will is a deciding factor in whether you will ultimately lose weight, not their product. Car manufacturers would have to tell you all the economic and health hazards of driving gas-guzzling SUVs. And, cigarette manufacturers – well, they just prove the case, don’t they?
Truth in advertising would devastate the economy. That’s why Nuke, Incorporated is defending its free speech right to tell half-truths and obfuscations to the Supreme Court. We hope, for the sake of American prosperity, that you will join us.
Nuke – just screw ’em!