"And in unraveling the complex we should always be careful not to overlook the obvious." John Kenneth Galbraith - The Affluent Society. - John Kenneth Galbraith

However, Hoover had converted the simple business ritual of reassurance into a major instrument of public policy.

There is an insistent tendency among serious social scientists to think of any institution which features rhymed and singing commercials, intense and lachrymose voices urging highly improbable enjoyment, caricatures of the human esophagus in normal and impaired operation, and which hints implausibly at opportunities for antiseptic seduction as inherently trivial. This is a great mistake. The industrial system is profoundly dependent on commercial television and could not exist in its present form without it.

Why is anything intrinsically so valueless so obviously desirable?