Written by John Escher   

We here at The Admen's Council come from a long line of great readers of worldwide literature. Our ancestors adored Penelope, Anna Karenina, Emma Bovary and Hester Prynne not to mention Scarlett O'Hara.

While we were just sitting around and brainstorming one day we came up with the idea of the slender romance novel-- a lot easier on the eyes than those old books with those famous women at the center. Then there was FIFTY SHADES OF GRAY. Too long again. And so our ads for Cialis, Viagra, and vaginal mesh infraction became the new standard for telling a love story.

Why spend 900 pages reading about some love affair that you could experience complete in one 20-second ad that addresses toilet functionality at the same time?

Similarly, why read Thucydides when you can learn all you need about starting wars by standing up at a football game to honor American veterans?

To be told that these veterans have protected you when in fact they have endangered you by foolishly signing up to fight in incendiary wars?

To learn, through the power of advertising, that THIS country is YOUR COUNTRY, right or wrong?

Whether the subject is love, wrongheaded war, or the TPPP (the secret Trans-Pacific Partnership all full of Pitfalls), the men and women of our council, speaking for all advertising persons everywhere, have the answer for anyone's business need.

We advertisers carry among our ranks presidents and politicians of every stripe along with all military brass, all CEO's-- in short just about anyone conspicuous in public or private life.

Once, a person could have substance and be engaged in American society at one and the same time-- that changed.

There is no regard now for the truth or texture of anything, only for the sell of it.

How did this sad situation come to be? A proliferation of ads changing forever the language and thought which was our commonality? The exponentially increased new ways of projecting image that became available with the rise of the internet? Attention span that correspondingly shrank to less than that of a speckled newt?

We as advertisers don't care about that dark side of modernity and in fact rejoice in it. The American world is shallow now as illustrated by the self-declared shallow businessman renting a "Go like a Pro" red car at National Car Rental.

If nothing is anchored, the wind can blow pretty much in any direction and knock things down. The idea of the existence of any kind of robust truth in any subject now seems antiquated.

But that too of course is just image and a present one.