Kyle, OF COURSE you're allowed typos. I have typos all the time and I don't have a Regan era computer (I'm just lazy). I wanted to clarify because your typo significantly altered the meaning of your sentence and I genuinely didn't know what you meant. :)
I don't CLING to that primary assumption, but I do filter with it...and it seems to serve me rather reliably.
So, what do you understand as "intellectual work".
I realized, after I posted that there are those among us who work in the field of marketing, and I do not mean to imply that they don't do intellectual work at work - what I meant to say is that I'm not convinced that it's a conscious conspiracy of hegemonic forces to pass out bread and circus tickets, I think what drives marketing is the race for the almighty dollar. I think the fact that it ends up being bread and circus tickets is secondary to the race for a larger share of the target demographic...which is why they have the partidge family theme to sell a van to drive your family around in: people my age have families they need to drive around and need room to put the patio bricks from home depot so they can renovate their back yard (ok, I don't have a family or a back yard, but you know what I'm saying). They use hip hop music to sell Scions because the target demographic for that car is the twenty somethings. (and Ford has a history of using generations to sell their trucks. Does anyone beside me remember the old commercial with four generations of a family who owned ford trucks because their dad had one? the last was an old dude in a rocking chair next to a model T ford: "My dad came across in a covered wagon, I had to learn about ford trucks all by myself. I'm a smart old bird ain't I? Heh heh heh." Now they use Mike Rowe of Dirty Jobs to sell their trucks; which I see as being along the same lines; Dirty jobs is a show that crosses generational boundaries: kids and adults like watching that show...)
Now I'm going to tabulate bids on a sewer pump station renovation and think about what Jim said. (Jim! I'm so glad you've joined us!)
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Oh, yeah, THIS is one of those vistas about which I was supposed to quip.
Odd correlate first. As you may know, I used to run telemarketing rooms for non-profit theatres. There were in those rooms that would get over $100k in sales, to theatre mind you, in just over 20 weeks. People that would get other people to give them, on the phone, on a credit card, a combined $8k in a week.
And I never worked in a room where I was the best educated. Never was there less than two MAs and often more. A Wallace Stegner fellow from Stanford worked three with me.
Which is just a lead-up to say OH MY GOD is marketing and advertising intellectual work. Worse, sales/marketing/advertising/et al is a huge pull and a huge rush for the intellectually gifted and morally lax. It is such a hard game, but the rewards are immediate and material and tactile.
One must never underestimate how calculated every moment of it is. That's why Sut Jhallly uses ads as an entry to deeper dissection of the social mores communicated through media. Hell, it's why I have such a boner for ad deconstruction.
Rich, ripe, and stone cold evil. That's marketing.
Wow, I have always imagined the vacuous marketing majors I've met (peeps with their BA in Marketing worn on their sleeves like Congressional Medals of Honor) and thought THESE were the people behind the ads...
So, is it really a conspiracy? ~starts humming the x files theme music~ Is the truth out there?
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