It took a huge effort to hide how impressed I was. It wasn’t every day I came across a thirteen-year-old girl who’d prefer Utne Reader over Tiger Beat. Gracie would have loved her.
I sat back in my seat. “Are you familiar with the expression ‘Ignorance is bliss’?”
“Yes. I’m also familiar with the fact that bliss is bullshit.”
“That’s pretty cynical, don’t you think?”
She shrugged. “I’m a cynic. I admit it.”
“Don’t be. Cynics make the worst publicists. Skeptics, on the other hand, make the best ones.”
“What’s the difference?”
“Let me put it this way. If I told you that George W. Bush has a 160 IQ, would you believe me?”
“Uh, no.”
“Okay. What if I told you he has an 85 IQ and that the White House has spent millions of dollars keeping that information quiet? Would you believe me?”
“Probably.”
“That’s the difference between a cynic and a skeptic. Cynics blindly accept any information that confirms their lack of faith in humanity. Skeptics question everything, even the bad news. Cynics are easy for the media to control. Skeptics aren’t.”
She leaned forward in wide-eyed wonder. I didn’t want to enjoy this. Really.
“So how do I become a skeptic?” she asked.
“It’s not easy. You’ve got over thirteen years of corporate conditioning in you. The U.S. is only six percent of the world’s population, and yet we consume fifty-seven percent of the world’s advertising. And nobody on earth is peddled to more than the American teenager. By the time I was eighteen, I was practically a nihilist.”
“Well how did you change?”
Drea. “Reading. Watching. Listening. Keeping an open mind. If you want a peek behind the curtain, here. Let me show you something.”
From my bookshelf, I pulled a few recent issues of Brandweek. I hunkered down next to her on the couch, flipping through pages.
“This is one of our trade magazines. This is where we get to loosen up and be ourselves. See, behind your back, we don’t call you customers, we call you ‘targets.’ We don’t provide services, we ‘perpetuate campaigns.’ And this is where the media advertises to the advertisers by selling them people. Look at this. ‘The Learning Network: We Have Mothers Coming Out of Our Ears.’ ‘Tripod Delivers Gen-X.’ Oh, here we go. MTV. ‘Buy This 24-Year-Old and Get All His Friends Absolutely Free.’ That’s the practice of targeting audience leaders. In other words, you get the cool kids to follow your orders so the less cool kids will follow theirs. Trickle-down advertising. Tobacco companies do it too.”
She could only gape as I thumbed through ad after ad. “Wow.”
“Oh, it gets better. Here’s one for the Cartoon Network. ‘Today’s kids influence over a hundred and thirty billion of their parents’ spending annually. That makes these little consumers big business.’ Very true. It’s the kids even younger than you who drive the industry now.”
“And this is the kind of stuff you do?”
“No. What I do is worse. Look, here’s a company that sells digital ad space for elevators.”
She closed the magazine. “Hold it. Hold it!”
“I’m sorry. Too much, too fast?”
“Yes. No! I just…” Yup. Too much. Too fast. She fought to put her questions in some kind of order but she was overwhelmed. Giving up, she mimed a pistol to her head, pulled the trigger, and collapsed with her tongue out.
“That’s the problem,” I said. “This is no place for cynics. That’s why our industry, especially mine, has a high burnout rate.’”
“So how do you survive?”
“By keeping perspective. I mean, it’s silly to believe that all the people who work for the Cartoon Network are evil. Or MTV. Or even Philip Morris. Believe me, they don’t run over kittens for fun. They play tennis. And they’re not after your heart or soul. They want your designated spending money, just like the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick maker. The system’s not perfect. Usually it’s underhanded. But when you’re dealing with people who have eight zillion choices, you have to get clever or you just won’t survive. That’s what a free market is all about. Make sense?”
I was her new god. “Scott, I want to learn this.”
“The thing is, you have to be sure. Because once you get that X-ray vision, you can’t turn it off. You’ll see the business angle behind everything. And I mean everything. Not just your TV, movies, and magazines. I’m talking about your news, sports, and weather. That’s my playing field. And once you know what I know, you won’t be able to enjoy any of it the same way ever again. Do you think you’d be able to handle that?”
“Yes.”
“Are you sure? Because it’s not too late to take the blue pill.”
“I’m sure!”
“And if you worked for me, I would need absolute secrecy from you.”
“I promise.”
“I’m serious. If you ever betray my trust, I’ll kill your career before it even starts. You’ll spend the rest of your life working at Hot Dog on a Stick.”
“I promise!”
She meant it, too. You couldn’t fake that kind of intensity. I eyed her one last time.
“Okay, then.”
“So I can work for you?”
“I don’t know,” I said, reading Brandweek. “Ask your mother when she gets here.”
________________
Madison’s first lesson under my tutelage: don’t trust anything anyone says, especially about the Japanese stock exchange. Once I clued her in on the gag, her expression chilled so fast, I could practically see her breath.
“I always come back,” she informed me matter-of-factly. “My mom knows that. I don’t know why she freaks out every time.”
“Because she worries about you. It’s not safe out there.”
“It is at the airport.”
“Why do you go to the airport?”
“Because it’s safe. Because it’s always open. Because I like it there.”
“But what do you do there?”
“I watch people. I’m a total people-watcher. Sometimes I talk to them. I always make up different stories. Like this one time, I convinced this old couple that I was flying to Seattle to donate a kidney to my brother. They bought me dinner.”
I grinned, even though I knew I shouldn’t encourage her. “It’s still a bad thing to do to your mother. Don’t do it anymore.”
She shot me a piqued glare. My godlike status had disappeared sometime during the debriefing.
“You know she’s married, right?”
“Yes, I know your mother’s married. What? You think I’m trying to score with her?”
“You wouldn’t be the first.”
I flipped through my newspaper. “Relax. I’m not big on adultery.”
“Just be careful. She has a way of pulling guys in.”
“You two have issues. Leave me out of it.”
“I’m serious. You know how I ruin businesses? Well, she’s the same way with men. She did it to my dad. She’s doing it to my stepfather. I’m just trying to stop you from being next.”
With a sigh, I put down the paper. “Madison, I’ll be honest. You’re starting to give me second thoughts about this whole thing—”
She flipped up her palms. “Wait! Scott. I’m sorry. You’re right. You’re totally right. I was just being stupid.”
“You’re not stupid. I just think you have a lot going on right now—”
“Look, I’m really tired. That’s the last time I’ll bother you with my personal crap ever again. I swear to God. I could have a tumor and you won’t hear about it.”