Tom Messner On Politics, The Biz

MMVI marked the unimaginable, unconditional, unadulterated, unremitting victory of sans-serif typefaces. At the same time, the offshoot sect of sans-serif reverse type gained adherents and together they threaten to eradicate literacy and turn the nation and the world into a pack of Monsieur and Madame Magoos.On Dec. 5, I went into surgery for removal of a cataract in my left eye; on the 19th, I return for removal of a cataract in my right eye.Me: Doc, I blame this all on sans-serif reverse type. Especially in ads, but growing in sidebars and even main editorial in magazines such as Card Player, Sporting News and ESPN. Think I'm right?Doc: Not likely. Do you read a lot of ads in sans-serif reverse?Me: Never. Nobody reads copy in sans-serif reverse. David Ogilvy said that with full papal infallibility back in the 13th century. But I struggled through a very long, very well-written article recently in Bluff, a poker publication. A few years ago, I wrote a tribute to Jim Durfee, and Steve Hayden wrote one for Lee Clow for the Creative Hall of Fame dinner; the pieces were set in minuscule sans-serif reverse something-or-other and I read Hayden's piece by candlelight during the dinner. Afterward, I said to Jay Chiat, "Nice piece Hayden did on Lee." Jay said, "Who could read it? I didn't bring my flashlight and telescope."Doc: We already remove the serifs in most eye charts. The famous E chart with the 20-20 line DEFPOTEC has serifs.Me: I just finished doing a new will. Half the legalese boilerplate the attorney uses is now sans serif, making the unreadable more unreadable. In the future, the last remnant of serif typefaces will be screenplays. All agents and producers read are screenplays and log lines so they demand Courier, and Final Draft software gives it to them. Enough of this. Lesser advertising events this year demand remarks:D) Only three advertising print outlets, by my count, showed the Danish cartoons that set off murder, mayhem and much milling about in the streets. Harper's, The Intellectual Activist and The Weekly Standard escaped the wrath of publishing what The New York Times opined was over the line, the line being the artworks Dung Madonna and Piss Christ, the former the gift of Charles Saatchi.E) The Nation, the country's oldest weekly, and The Washington Monthly, a benign old-line liberal Democratic periodical, both have finally brought substantial creativity to their covers. Gene Case is responsible for the often amusing front of The Nation, which for 150 years settled for all-type incendiaries.F) The ferocity of attack ads may have reached its nadir with a radio spot for New York Congresswoman Sue Kelly. She accused her opponent of hypocrisy on environmental issues, since he owned shares of a mutual fund that invested in shares of Schlumberger, which was fined for helping to pollute a stream in North Carolina. Who digs up this kind of dirt?P) John Kerry found a new use for the Web: the unobtrusive apology. No press conference, so no camera crew-filed tape or digital material for future embarrassment on the networks, the owned-and-operateds or the Comedy Channel.O) New York magazine put the Mets' Citi Field on the edge of despicable in its amusing polar matrix. The mag would be right if the place is called Citibank Field, but now it sounds like County Stadium or the like and isn't overbearing. Someone I know thought it reminded him of Bud Abbott's and Lou Costello's TV landlord, Sidney Fields.T) "I'm no copywriter, but …" achieved new renown with consumer-generated advertising. Given the productions on Quiznos' and Doritos' Web sites, the new line could well be: "I'm no consumer, but …"E) Following the 1968 elections, Edith Efron, a great reporter for TV Guide, wrote a book, The News Twisters. Her conclusion: the networks have a pretense about impartiality and lack of bias (which she defined as selection), but rather than lament it, she thought it should be out in the open like newspapers, whose biases everyone knows and endures. It has taken a long time, but no one expects TV to be impartial (exception: Brian Lamb and C-SPAN). Chris, Keith, Matt, Tim, Bill, Sean, Katie all are unabashedly biased advocates. George Stephanopoulos, who worked in the Clinton White House, actually shows the most even hand, letting George Will and Katrina Vanden Heuvel do the debating; they are very civil for TV, as neither raises a voice or interrupts or does silly faces while the other speaks.C) Hyper-impatience seemed to be the theme for 2006. Perhaps it's a lesson learned. Milton Berle, dubbed Mister Television, once signed a 20-year contract with NBC, his popularity into the future beyond question. Three years later, he was off the air. I caught the first two episodes of Kidnapped. It seemed to be shot well and used locations of Astoria to depict Astoria, unlike Kojak, which shot everything in downtown Los Angeles and portrayed it as Queens, N.Y. I think Kidnapped was cancelled, although I'm not sure, as it kind of just disappeared like a freelance copywriter not invited back for a third day. The average longevity of a chief marketing officer, we're told, is now 21 months. This indicates an itchiness you only see in Turbo On-Line Poker tournaments where the blinds go up every three minutes and you better do something quick or face the fact you're FINISHED. A final note: Karl Rove, who began in direct mail, would be better off if Postmaster General still was a cabinet post. ("Politics makes strange postmasters," as Jim Farley, FDR's Rove, put it.) Deciding how many people to add for the Christmas rush or whom to commemorate on the new 45-cent stamp is more appropriate for a political architect than trying to build a new Social Security system or a Sunni-Shia-Sufi-Kurd federalism in a single session of Congress, given the varied interests of each House member dubbed for life, Honorable.

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Tom Messner On Politics, The Biz

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