Word: tastelessness
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...viewer this year, the ceremony was something like a banquet in a Howard Johnson's. The decor was pleasant, the food we were served, rather tasteless. Bob Hope, "America's Ambassador of Laughter," was there, with his own bland brand of social satire. "It's such a novelty seeing actors and actresses with their clothes on" and "Up until a few months ago, I thought that The Sterile Cuckoo was the story of Tiny Tim" were two of his more biting lines...
Quite a few advertising men apparently accept Mencken's waspish assessment. Though much current advertising is superior by any standards, there is an abundance of tasteless, exaggerated or misleading ads. Today's increasingly sophisticated consumer is exposed to 1,600 selling messages a day, and he feels abused or insulted by many. As a result, shoddy and deceptive advertising is the subject of growing debate inside and outside the profession...
...society it serves. Advertising could be improved, he says, if the agencies refused to knuckle under to insensitive advertisers who think that the only sell is the hard sell. The ad world's most influential innovator, William Bernbach. chairman of Doyle Dane Bernbach, has little patience with tasteless or deceptive ads. "The big thing," he says, "is recognizing that honesty sells. There is no reason why honesty cannot be combined with the skills of persuasion. People are shouted at by so many manufacturers today that they don't know what to believe...
...Shahn's paintings, particularly the series on Sacco and Vanzetti, reveal his concern with social injustice. He stressed the social function of his art rather than its aesthetic value. Photography he regarded purely as a means of documentation. He shot prisons, bales of hay, store fronts and the tasteless side shows at the circus. Never acknowledging their artistic possibilities, he used his photographs as material for his painting. Photographs helped him recall details about the way people looked...
...food is tasteless, monotonous and contains hardly any vitamins," the letter said. "Although we cannot really speak of constant hunger"-the maximum daily ration is 2,413 calories, mostly starch-"constant vitamin hunger is an indisputable fact. It is no accident that in the camps so many people suffer from stomach ailments." Food parcels are forbidden, the men said, and even in the kiosks, where they can buy five rubles' worth of goods a month, "buying green vegetables or other produce containing vitamins is impossible. Any one of us at any minute can be deprived of the right...