SrR,—1 am a critic of advertising. Henceforth, I shall also
be a critic of a critic of critics of advert- ising. I have virtually no social position to uphold, no vested interests to grovel to, I am not actually a member of any political party; I regard myself as intellectually superior to those who demonstrate that they are intellectually inferior to me and in- tellectually inferior to those who demonstrate that they are intellectually superior to me; in other words, I am a free man.
One of my reasons for objecting to much advert- ising is precisely the same as that for which I object to lying, confidence trickery, drug addiction, drunkenness, slavery, murder, arson, prostitution, obscenity, adultery, fraud, theft, rape, sodomy, incest, nuclear war and cruelty, which, whether democratically disapproved of or not, I regard as inherently evil; advertising, because it stimulates the vices of envy and greed. Another, that much advert- ising is puerile, infantile and inane, an insult to human dignity. Thirdly, that it foists upon the public the banal, degenerate and corrupt ideals of an administration enslaved by Mammon, viz. Macmillan, and his herd of conformist half-wits.
If I am a pharisee, then Brian Copland is a corrupted, characterless, degenerate stooge, a minion of Mammon. I do not mind being a pharisee, since, if the use of such a term is persisted in by such men for long enough, it will ultimately acquire a favourable - connotation. I am not naturally
authoritarian, and have generally been repulsed by the pictures of stern unbending stupidity drawn by dramatists and authors; but, if truth requires it, I shall undoubtedly become so.
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