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issue 13 issue 14 issue 15 issue 16 issue 17 issue 18 issue 19 issue 20 issue 21 issue 22

ATTN: ADVERTISERS

Since advertisers like dead people so much, here's a list of people you SHOULD use in commercials. Unlike the folks on the previous page, these guys would have loved to pitch products.


JOSEPH McCARTHY
(1908­1957)
Joseph McCarthy did the advertising industry a huge favor, however inadvertently, by igniting the 1950s Communist witchhunt that purged Hollywood of talent. Those who lost their jobs were welcomed to Madison Avenue, where--unlike films or movies--their work appeared anonymously. Adding to his natural business appeal, McCarthy attacked public housing as a Communist plot. Although it will be noted that McCarthy was paunchy, pasty, and balding, he did lure viewers to TV screens.


EDWARD BERNAYS

(1891­1995)
The godfather of corporate PR found his calling with Damaged Goods, a play about the dangers of venereal disease. Bernays was the nephew of Sigmund Freud and, like his uncle, probed the depths of the human psyche. Bernays, however, saw his mission as uplifting the moronic majority (on behalf of corporate sponsors) and this perspective colored everything he did, from promoting mass persuasion techniques to affectionately nicknaming his house servant "Dumb Jack."


H.H. HOLMES

(1861­1896)
Nineteenth-century psychopath Holmes amassed a fortune through insurance fraud and drugstore management. He then bought a hundred-room mansion equipped with gas chambers, trap doors, acid vats, lime pits, fake walls, and secret entrances. During the 1893 World's Fair he rented rooms to visitors, who, after being forced to sign over their savings, were tortured, gassed, dismembered, skinned, and thrown down an elevator shaft (not necessarily in that order). As one of the first American serial killers, Holmes would assuredly have loved the media attention an endorsement deal could offer.


FRANCIS GALTON

(1822­1911)
A leading intellectual of his day, Galton helped pioneer modern statistics. He is, however, less known for his creative math (including a statistical test of the efficacy of prayer) than his devotion to eugenics, his method of genetically improving humans through science. Galton advocated the regulation of marriage and family size according to the hereditary of parents. Although support for eugenics began to wane in the U.S. in the 1930s, some of Galton's ideas became a real hit in Germany.

 


ERNEST BORGNINE

(1917­?)
Although Ernest Borgnine is not yet dead, he did star in BASEketball.