”Well here's a howler. WaPo wants you to buy an ad in their paper for the O's inauguration. But it has to be "congratulatory in nature", and they give you a sample of what to write. For parroting the words they want you to say and sending them $10, you're offered a chance to be part of history!The Washington Post kindly provides boilerplate for an online ad for its paying advertisers:
Sample Online Ad:Grammatical and style errors thrown in, free of charge!Dear President Obama,
Congratulations and welcome to Washington. I am so proud of our country and thrilled to be a witness of this historical event. Best wishes!
Sincerely, Mary Smith
Of Gainesville, Virginia
Welcome to the White House
messages may also be placed by phone by calling (202) 334-6200. All messages must be placed by 6:30pm on Friday, January 16th. All ads must be congratulatory in nature. The Washington Post reserves the right to reject any notice. Available to private individuals only.
So, you must praise the Leader, and also pay for the privilege. Well, that’s what life under America’s second President for life is going to be like. Of course, the real point of the ads are for the Post to curry favor with the Leader, at readers’ expense. That’s what socialist/communist/whatevers call ”doing well through doing good.”
During the first Great Depression, companies paid you to wear sandwich signs hawking their products. The innovation of having people work for a company for free (e.g., Wikipedia, amazon.com, imdb.com), or in this case, pay to work for or advertise it–rags consisting of blown-up logos like ”Sean John” on fabric are nothing but expensive, lightweight sandwich signs–is one of the revolutions of the post-capitalist economy we’ve been in for some time.
