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.