Truth in Advertising and Vice Versa
AN EDITORIARL COMMENT FROM THE ANT FARMER'S ALMANAC EDITORIAL COMMENTORS
Corporate sponsors routinely splash their names all over events or stadium they've ponied up the money to name after themselves. It's as American as Mom's Apple Pie®. Yet, when it comes to sponsoring politicians corporations get all bashful about which elected officials are on their payroll.
This doesn't make any sense to us.
You'd think they would insist that the elected officials they've bought and paid for wear their brand proudly. Athletes wear the gear of whatever shoe and equipment company pays them to. Right up until they get arrested, after which they're dropped faster than, well, an athlete endorser who's been arrested. . .
Shouldn't politicians be held to at least the same standard of corporate sponsorship ethics as professional athletes? We here at the Ant Farmer's Almanac think so.
We propose the following: Anyone running for elected office should have to wear a NASCAR-style jump suit, emblazoned with patches displaying the names, logos, trademarks, etc., of all their contributors.
Each of these patches would be sized and placed proportionately according to the amount of the contribution. The largest contributors' names would be bigger and placed prominently enough — chest level, say — to always be visible above a lectern, podium or other object(s) that the candidate might be standing behind. This would also give cameramen the option of shooting the backsides of candidates just for the fun of seeing what small-fry contributor is on the guy's butt.
Once elected, the officeholder would be legally obligated to wear the jump suit during business hours and to any and all public functions and appearances, at any speaking engagement anywhere, any time and especially at sessions of whatever legislative body he is a part of.
The advantages are obvious. First, everyone would know who paid to get this guy in office and, therefore, who's holding his leash. He can deny that there's any connection between that pharmaceutical company's $100,000 campaign "contribution" and his vote against a bill allowing manufacture of a generic version of that company's biggest seller, and maybe there isn't one, but the public will get valuable insight into his thinking process. Many of the athletes who wear-for-pay don't appear in any traditional advertisments for the brand or claim it makes them perform better; it's implied and fans are left to draw their own conclusions.
It doesn't have to be all negative, either. Who wouldn't like a politician sporting, say, the Coca-Cola logo, front and center. Everybody likes Coke. Have a congressman and a smile! The downside would be that rival companies play out their competition as impromptu infomercials on the floor of the Senate: "Mr. Chairman, point of order! As the senator from PepsiCo I take exception to the preceding statement that 'Things go better with Coke!' and move to strike that remark from the record. . ."
Even at that, it might even make C-Span almost watchable.