History
Let’s say you’re at a wedding, and everything has gone smoothly until the pastor says, rhetorically (as always), “if anyone has any objections, speak now or forever hold your peace.” And then one guy, sitting in the last pew on the bride’s side, stands up and regales the audience with a lengthy anecdote about how [...]
Continue reading about Spoken For: The Insanity of the Filibuster
I remember the day in 1993 when MTV News reported Al Sharpton was leading a funeral service for the word “def,” announcing that a word which had once meant something specific to a certain culture had now been appropriated by the mainstream, thus robbing it of any relevance to the culture that coined it. But [...]
When a field, an art or a business is new, everyone does things her own way. Since there are no “rules,” everyone is free to explore and discover which methods work better than others. But when someone starts earning fame or fortune from doing things a certain way, that way becomes the norm — and [...]
Continue reading about It’s More Important to Fit In Than to Win
Yesterday, I explained why I think Microsoft sees its customers as idiots — an opinion that sparked a debate about the very nature of advertising. Like politics, war and most other conflicts, advertising boils down to the challenge of convincing other people that YOUR worldview (or your client’s) is the most valid. So does that [...]
