You're leaping to conclusions out the window of ideology again, Tom.

If you, as a parent, haven't experienced your kids pressuring you mercilessly to buy them some junk they've seen advertised on (and often in, these days, with blatant tie-ins) their favorite cartoon shows, you're in a distinct minority. The advertising must obviously work on kids, and it enlists the kids in pressuring you.

I never said that I was immune to advertising, only that I've developed conscious defenses that I try to use to resist it. People may claim to be immune to advertising, but how can they be sure? It's designed to circumvent conscious defenses, after all. A pragmatic testimony to the power of advertising is simply that advertisers pour billions of dollars each year into it. They wouldn't spend such a large chunk of their budgets on something that doesn't work.

Advertising is a classic arms race, too. People do develop defenses, or at least their level of numbness to the barrage of tricks keeps rising, and advertisers counter by coming up with new tricks and raising the intensity. Contrast advertising today to the advertising we grew up with as kids. It's indisputably more intense, and more full of deliberate and scientific psychological manipulation.

I study TV ads, as I said. They've become an art form, packing into 30 seconds or a minute some of the most sophisticated video production techniques you'll see anywhere. Many times the production values outshine Hollywood feature movies. If Steven Spielberg can manipulate your feelings on the big screen, how can you claim that advertisers can't do it on the small screen?

You might consider this: If you think that you're immune to advertising, maybe you're actually more vulnerable because of your complacency. I think that advertisers count on the majority of people having your attitude, and therefore not consciously resisting their trickery.

Should the government "do something"? Well, you don't object to the government punishing assault with a deadly weapon. Why should assault with a psychological weapon be fundamentally different? Is harm to our minds less a legitimate concern of government than harm to our bodies?

--Robert