WhackyNation

A friend said to me the other day: “Why can’t we get rid of these godawful ads on TV and radio and all the bra and panty ads in the newspapers, as well as many others?” He was not alone. Others have made similar remarks to me, knowing full well that my life has been devoted to the print and broadcast media.

I’ve always had a ready answer for my friend and others, and I am constrained to make it now for the umpteenth time. Like it or not, advertising is an essential part of our capitalist, free-enterprise system — and, thus, a most important adjunct to our freedom and liberty.

The explanation is easy to understand and should be made available to all those who complain about those “godawful” ads and the bra and panty ads, as well. It goes this way:

Advertising supports the free press, television, and radio. It also supports all magazines, department stores, drug stores, and commerce of every kind. Without advertising — whether it turns you off or not — these enterprises, which are the life blood of American commerce and industry, would vanish overnight because of the immediate falloff in paying customers.

At the same time, we see advertising on billboards, on transit buses, on the sides of delivery trucks and panel trucks, on many of the products we buy, and even on the movie screens these days at the neighborhood theater — although I’ll grant that’s one area I wish we could do without because I pay to get in.

All of these ads — yes, I’ll concede even including those on the movie screens — are critically important to the businesses that utilize them. Without the “salesmanship” provided by all these ads, most of the businesses and industries that use them would find it difficult to make a profit and survive.

Oh, yes, here’s one more crucial point: Advertising is a multi-trillion-dollar business in America and it provides many millions of jobs! Now, that point should be a clincher for the doubters in our midst.

I have a couple more selling points in my argument. One is that advertising is actually a significant news source, informing the public of what products and services are available and where they may be purchased. Another is that advertising can be instructive and even humorous.

However, I have saved the one most persuasive argument for the very last: In Communist countries and other totalitarian nations, the government owns everything and permits no advertising anywhere except what it wants its servile public to read, see, and hear. Do we want that to happen to us? Of course not.

So, ladies and gentlemen, make with the ads, please. Some of them may be silly or senseless, but we free people are willing to take the bitter with the sweet to preserve our freedom and liberty.

I hope you won’t mind if I tell you my favorite billboard story. It’s a true story. Way, way back in the 1950’s, a multi-colored beer advertisement appeared on a hillside billboard on Seattle’s South Side. It featured a very large photograph of Mount Rainier, the pride and joy of the Pacific Northwest.

I asked one of our photographers at the Seattle Times to point his camera at the billboard and bring me the result. In the newspaper the following day, I ran the photo of the billboard alongside my column for the day. Take a good look, I wrote, and see if you can determine what this billboard is hiding.

At the bottom of the column, I added the answer to my question: The billboard was so situated that it blocked a view of — you guessed it — the mountain itself, in all its glory, its snow-capped peak, and its elegance in the sunshine. It was a much better view of Mount Rainier than any billboard could possibly reflect.

As a result, the beer company sponsoring the ad on the billboard soon removed both the photo ad and the billboard itself. Victory! It was one of my few triumphs in my campaign to remove clutter from the views of one of the most beautiful cities in the world, Seattle. And it also gave added impetus to the move sponsored by a city-beautification committee to remove all offensive billboards and other signs blocking views in the city.

I admit to being a lifelong opponent of billboards and oversized signs. In the 1950’s, several Seattle beautification organizations — Allied Arts, the Seattle Arts Commission, and the Washington Roadside Council — touched off a strong campaign against them. And, as the newspaper’s music, arts, films, and drama critic, I embraced the campaign under the general umbrella of “esthetics.”

That campaign resulted in some of the nation’s strongest city, county, and state laws controlling signs and put Seattle and Washington State in the forefront of the battle against national clutter. The state’s billboard-control law, enacted through the campaign, was tougher than that in any state except Hawaii, which was smart enough to order a total ban to protect its views and natural beauty.

Unfortunately, Washington’s law and similar laws in other states were rendered virtually useless by President Lyndon Johnson’s federal law in the 1960s. It was a law that made billboard eradication so expensive that states could no longer afford to ban the blight along streets and highways.

Even worse, that law has remained all these years. I think we need to put the train back on track and crack down hard on billboards and outsized advertising signs that clutter our cities and destroy natural vistas. Because most politicians who rely on billboards are reluctant to take any action to remove them, civic organizations like those that took anti-billboard and anti-sign action in Seattle have lost their clout.

The 49 other states should take their cue from the beautiful island of Hawaii and remove the offensive clutter of the billboards and the big signs, which are an eyesore in the beautiful natural views in Washington State and all the other states of the union. Those firms that advertise on billboards and the other offensive signs have many other places for the ads — places that do not offend the eye nor the horizon of vistas.