Why Madison Avenue Is Suddenly Ground Zero in the Culture Wars

Just because America is a capitalist society doesn't mean its political battles must be fought through advertising -- what ad manager wants to involve his brands in controversies that have nothing to do with the product? -- but that is what's happening as conservatives and liberals have chosen Madison Avenue as the new Ground Zero of the culture wars.

Consider:

• J. Crew used a gay couple in an online ad that caused some strange headlines about whether it was promoting "gay economics"; the company also caught flak from the right for showing a little boy wearing pink toenail polish in an ad.
• MSNBC has gone from marketing itself as a news channel to overtly positioning itself as the cable TV home of liberal chat.
• The makers of the movie Atlas Shrugged: Part 1, a conservative favorite, were so irked by the film's lousy critical reception, have started criticizing the media for panning the movie in a new piece of satiric web video.
• Groupon pulled its ads from Donald Trump's media properties because his false accusations about President Obama's citizenship went beyond the pale. ThinkProgress called for all advertisers to boycott Trump.
• They were probably inspired by the successful boycott by advertisers of Glenn Beck's show on Fox News Channel. Beck left the show without getting his advertisers back.
• Budweiser created an ad that many believes winks in solidarity at gay men who have served
  in the military.
• McDonald's pulled an ad that showed two children holding hands after it was criticized by the Catholic Church in the Philippines. The takedown followed McD's refusal to air a French commercial featuring a gay teen after the company's Christian COO mumbled something about not wanting to "impose" his beliefs on the U.S. and saying it only aired in France because that's "the cultural norm" there.
• And the Super Bowl has become an annual fight over what is and is not acceptable to promote in front of a mass audience. Certain types of Christians get to advertise, others do not. Ads with gay themes must be extremely subtle to get into the big game. And the NFL censors spots it doesn't like.

There is a lot about advertising for conservatives to focus their anger on: Most of it emerges from the culturally liberal centers of New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Miami. Ad agency staff tend to be a Democratic, tolerant bunch, if only because it is difficult to attract consumers to brands with messages that discriminate against some of them. And executives are often well-educated about the arts, literature, and popular culture (mostly so they can steal from it to use in advertising); Republicans, of late, have pursued anti-intellectual themes.

Liberals, by contrast, are often caught wrong-footed when it comes to criticism of advertising from the right because they don't understand why Republicans would be against the ruthless pursuit of profit.

These things go in cycles. Post Sept. 11, advertisers made an effort to be as somber and serious as possible. The dot-com boom of the late 1990s, by contrast, was a circus of tasteless attention-seeking.

The heat is only likely to increase as we head toward the 2012 presidential election. While companies don't like to become controversies, they sure do like using them to tell another story about their products (that's one reason there were so many ads featuring Osama bin Laden).

So if you're bored by people who expect you to take seriously the idea that a J.Crew catalog might turn a boy into a transexual, you better switch off the TV and unplug the laptop. There is at least another year of this to go.

Related:

• Budweiser Should Keep Quiet About Its Gay Soldier Ad
• Catholics Criticize Ad and McDonald's Caves -- As Usual
• Behind the Bogus J.Crew Controversy Over the Boy With Pink Nail Polish
• Follow the Money: Glenn Beck Is Not Leaving Fox, He's Ending an Ad Boycott
  
• The 9 Biggest Controversies in This Year's Super Bowl Ad Lineup