The media is the moron.

There's an article in "Ad Age" this morning on the sort of topic that gets a hipster's "that will change everything" juices gushing. The headline proclaims: "Study: Young Consumers Switch Media 27 Times An Hour."

The opening sentence starts just as you would expect it would: "It's every advertiser's worst nightmare: consumers so distracted by a dizzying array of media choices that they no longer notice the commercials supporting them. And it's time might be closer than you think...."

OMG! OMG! :-(

Advertising as we know it is dead.

Of course, what is dead here are the brains of the reporter doing the reporting and the editor accepting the bs.

Advertising's death knell was based on a study of--get this--30 participants studied by a Boston company called "Innerscope." They sound like they search for polyps in your anus. In any event, Innerscope, according to their website "measures and quantifies an audience's initial unconscious emotions and displays them in easy to interpret "Engagement Maps"--moment by moment analysis of the audiences' emotional response to the media stimuli.

"Using state-of-the-art technology and proprietary methodologies, the audience's emotional reaction (engagement) to any media format or length are measured objectively.

"Innerscope's precise, objective measurement of emotional engagement provides an unbiased look at the consumers' true emotional responses, so that more creative and cost-effective marketing decisions can be made."

Oh. OK.


Now, here are some fragments from Ad Age's superb reporting: "Though it had only 30 participants..." "Though hardly definitive..." And the final caveat, "The people in Innerscope's study were most likely more upscale and familiar with technology than the average person. As sych the findings present only a suggestion of how consumer behaviors might evolve."

In other words a study not worth the binary paper it was printed on being reported on by a magazine with no journalistic integrity.

This one will be quoted widely.

Behavior change.

We are right to express outrage at what seem to be the racially-motivated murders in Tulsa, Oklahoma last week and what seems to be the racially-motivated killing of Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Florida. What shouldn't surprise us, however, is the virulence of race prejudice in our country. For most of our nation's history--save the last 55 years--there was little equality in law, in schools, in marital relations, in our government, in the military, in society and in opportunity.

There were some, of course, after the election of Barack Obama who declared that America was now "post-racial." After 200+ years of having differences and/or hatred drummed into us, somehow those had all or would all evaporate.

But this is not a post that's about race.

What it's about is human nature.

I go on websites, review "slide share" presentations from some punditogarch's conference talk and listen to the general drivel about marketing and human behavior, and I'm told the very way people respond to information, share information and generate information has changed.

We are told that no one listens to messages anymore. That the relationship between people and brands has "fundamentally changed," and so on ad nauseam.

Mostly people who say the relationship between brands and people has fundamentally changed create brand websites that demand more work from consumers than commercials ever did and those sites usually get in the way of what consumers really want, which is to be entertained or left alone or given coupons.

Real behavior change doesn't happen due to the advent of a 99-cent app or an angry bird. Or because some modern-day neo-exhibitionist narcissist has posted photos of his kid's fourth birthday.

Change takes time. If it happens at all.

There will be blood.

There was blood in my apartment yesterday afternoon. Uncle Slappy's blood. And a pretty picture it wasn't.

Here's what happened. Uncle Slappy and I were in the kitchen, fulfilling a request of my daughter for some latkes for lunch.

For those uninitiated in the rites of Jews, it's Passover now and will be for the next week or so. That means, among other things, that Jews can eat nothing that isn't Passover approved. No flour, no leavening. Latkes--potato pancakes made with matzoh meal as an emulsifier, fit the bill. Beyond that, they are delicious and deliciously, gloriously greasy.

Though Uncle Slappy and I are too anti-religious to follow any such strictures--in the words of Uncle Slappy, "a God who cares what you eat, how you dress or how you pray, should have been paying attention during the holocaust," we respect (though we don't understand) those who follow the myriad rules and regulations most religions demand.

In any event, I had bought for Uncle Slappy and Aunt Sylvie a small vegetable grater, slicer and julienne device and we were testing it out on the Idahos. Slappy in his exuberance began slicing a potato without employing the safety device. In just a minute he had removed a cottage-fry-sized slice of his thumb.

There was blood everywhere and an 85 year-old man spurting blood. My wife jumped into action. Sylvie was in full panic, thinking, though it was just the tip of a thumb, that this was the end of Slappy.

My wife brought out bandages.

Slappy, who by now had wrapped his thumb in a couple paper napkins, was possessed by an ethereal calm. "A scratch," he said. "It's just from a bloody part of the body."

"Let's go to the hospital," cried Sylvie.

My wife calmly laid gauze over the wound.

"That gauze," Slappy said looking at vintage Johnson & Johnson packaging "is nearly as old as I am."

My wife--this is her unique and unmatched talent--ignored him completely and continued applying tape to Slappy's thumb.

After about 30 minutes, the blood was staunched. Slappy and I returned to making our latkes.

"I think you lost a pint of blood," Aunt Sylvie said.

Slappy paused for a moment and gave it right back to her, "Can I quart you on that?"

And then, as a coupe de grace he proclaimed, "They're not latkes if they don't have a little blood in them."

He reached for the platter and put three latkes on his plate.

Uncle Slappy cleans up.

Even after spending an hour or an hour and a half cleaning up after our Seder meal last evening, our kitchen was still a mess. There is only so much our dishwasher can hold, so the sink was full of dishes and the china, which I had washed by hand, was still not put away.

The women in the house did most of the cooking, so that left it up to Uncle Slappy and myself to do most of the cleaning and putting away. I guess that's fair, though truth be told if it were up to me and Slaps, we wouldn't have had anyone over, maybe we'd have had a pizza and watched the BBC's "The World at War" for the 39th time. But I digress.

In any event, this morning, Slappy and I tackled the remainder of the dishes. After emptying the dishwasher and putting away the china, we tackled what was left in the sink, finally draining it of the soapy water that had filled it since last evening.

As the water slurped down the drain, Slappy pulled out a full, sodden bay leaf. The leaf had somehow survived an hour at 350-degrees and Aunt Louise looking for just another little schtickle of white meat. It had survived over night in the water and palmolive dishwashing liquid mix and it looked none the worse for wear.

Slappy held the bay leaf like Hemingway posing with a giant marlin. "You want I should save this," he asked the assembled. "It looks good as new."

Next he brought the leaf to his ample and educated schnozz. He inhaled deeply. "Fresh, it still smells. There's no reason we couldn't blot it dry and use it again." Slappy was now off and running like a Kenyan miler. "When I was a boy," he lied, "my mother would use a bay leaf for ten or twenty chickens."

The assembled, me, my wife and Aunt Sylvie knew better than to intervene.

"That's the trouble with you kids today. That's the trouble with America. It's a disposable society. The bones of the chicken we don't even use again for soup. And who ever heard of a one-and-done bay leaf" he asked wagging the foliage in my face.

Uncle Slappy had gotten his way.

"Why don't you sit down, Uncle Slappy," I told him. "I'll finish up in here."

He shuffled out of the kitchen. The bay leaf safe inside the pocket of his cardigan.

Uncle Slappy is up for Passover.

The Jewish holiday of Passover begins this evening at sundown and kicks off with a feast called the Seder. During this meal Jews all over the world recount the travails and the exodus of Jewish slaves from Egypt. We tell about our forerunner's escape across the Moses-parted Red Sea and their arrival at what we call "the Promised Land."

Uncle Slappy, who for 54 years was Rabbi at a small Upper East Side congregation Beth Youiz Miwo Mannow, is up at our apartment for the holiday with, of course, his wife Aunt Sylvie. They arrived last night after spending nearly 24-hours on the "Palmetto Special," the train up from Boca and an equally harrowing cab from Penn Station.

In short, Slappy and Sylvie arrived at my apartment, god bless them, more than a little worse for wear. I resolved once again to for now on to either pay for their airfare from Boca or meet them down at the train. They are both in their mid-80s, Slappy and Sylvie are. And while both are in excellent health and sprightly (at least for people their age) I've seen Olympic decathletes who appear folded, spindled and mutilated after emerging from America's public transportation system.

Uncle Slappy brushed right by me when he arrived and headed straight for the table in our eat-in-kitchen. He kissed my wife hello and then asked for a little snack. My wife obliged with some smoked salmon salad spread on a piece of matzoh and a mug of black coffee, strong, the way Slappy likes it.

"Black and strong," Slappy said, taking a sip. "That's how I like my women and my coffee." I've heard this quip from him virtually every time I've ever seen Slappy drink coffee.

Feeling revitalized, he began.

"They call matzoh 'the bread of affliction,'" he said. "Let me tell you something. Yesterday I had a glass of orange juice of affliction and a scrambled egg of affliction for breakfast. A turkey sandwich of affliction with cole slaw of affliction for lunch and a Caesar salad of affliction for dinner.

"These days, what isn't affliction? You've got troglodytes running against mediocrity for president. That's affliction. You've got Knicks players with more ink on them than the Library of Congress. That's affliction. You have Sarah Palin on the "Today Show" talking, you should excuse the expression, out of her Republican tuchas. That's affliction."

Uncle Slappy is a lot like a golden retriever puppy. He exerts maximum effort right up to the moment he collapses into a deep slumber.

Slappy finished his snack of affliction and went into our guest room.

He is, now at 7:30 the next morning still in his deep and afflicted nap.

Words. Powerful and wasted.

Alas, I am old-fashioned.

I believe--despite what the the digitalligentsia says--in the power of words. I would bet that whoever runs for president, one of the candidates will say something profound (or more likely stupid) and it will enter our vernacular. It will become a meme. Like 'maverick' did last time and 'Mission Accomplished' did some years earlier.

As someone who believes in this power I find it astonishing how cavalierly words are chosen and used. How insipid and uninspired are so many of our choices.

It seems like half the "Fortune 500" has a tagline that reads something like this:
"The power of connection."

Not only do I have no idea what those words mean, they don't even have the courtesy of telling me what the company does.

Just now I saw a tagline on the side of a white panel truck on Ninth Avenue. It was a truck that belonged to the Transel Elevator Company. It said: "The professional's choice."

It never before occurred to me that anyone but a professional would actually choose an elevator.

Do you have 27 minutes and $9.99?

I am about halfway through Max Hastings new book on World War II, "Inferno. The World at War, 1939-1945." It logs in at 651 densely-packed pages and weighs more than a Thanksgiving turkey or Easter ham. But Hasting is a brilliant historian of the period. He's earned the right to be slogged around like a soldier carries a pack.

Last night I read a few dozen pages on the Siege of Leningrad--a 900-day-long ordeal in which millions of Russians perished. Hastings writes: "At the end of August (1942), the Germans suddenly abandoned their strategy of containment, and launched a major offensive to take Leningrad.  When that failed, the Russians countered with their own attack, which achieved dramatic gains. Some cultural life revived in the city: there were art exhibits, concerts and a performance of Shostakovich's Seventh Symphony in Philharmonic Hall."

This Shostakovich was written in the dark Russian winter of 1941 and was dedicated to the city of Leningrad.

I downloaded it this morning.

Whether or not you like the Russians, or like Classical music, it is worth listening to.

Rarely will you hear something of such intensity.

Something that quickens the blood in your veins.

Something that is deep and sorrowful as a corpse-filled trench.

In the amazing world we live in you can download the Symphony in a minute for less than 10 bucks. The first movement is 27-minutes long and will assault and assuage you with the major themes.

It is ultimately triumph.

On the start of baseball season.

Almost two decades ago, when my daughters were probably around seven and three, the great Ray Charles was playing in the great concert hall, Radio City Music Hall. I have been a Ray Charles fan since I was eight and saw and heard Norman Jewison's "In the Heat of the Night" which features the music of Ray arranged by Quincy Jones.

I had never heard anything like it. So real, so moving, so naturalistic. As different from what I was used to hearing as the American Ash Can School was from the French Impressionists.

In any event, I took my daughters to see Ray Charles because I knew he was on his last legs and believed he was someone who should be seen before either you or he dies.

Forty years later I had a different but similar experience.

The hapless New York Mets--who even when they won somehow managed to be hapless--brought the "Say Hey" Kid, Willie Mays back to New York.

Mays, of course, was one of the greatest ever. Though Hank Aaron--and others--will eventually amass more homers, there was no one like Mays for power, speed, grace and daring. What's more, before the Giants moved west to San Francisco, Mays roamed the vast center field of the Polo Grounds, an ancient stadium in upper Manhattan. Mays was New York, famously playing stickball with kids in Harlem. Playing baseball and enjoying it for what it is, a boys' game.

By the time the Mets brought Mays back he was as creaky as a holding company's grip on finances. But still, me and my friends knew we had to see Mays play in person. So out we sneaked from school. Out to Shea Stadium in Flushing, Queens.

We sat, of course, in the Upper Deck. These weren't the cheapest seats in the ball park, but they were close. We were way out in left field, so far away from the action at either the plate or center field, we could barely see Mays. Nevertheless, there was a little kid up near us with his father who screamed in his pre-teen falsetto when Mays was at bat, "Hey Willie, hit one over here!"

I think one fly ball was hit to Mays. And somehow he gathered it in though it looked like he could no longer run. It was sad to see the great Mays no longer great. But the point is we had seen him. We, in our own small, insignificant way, had paid homage to him.

In advertising, of course, we do not honor our forerunners. In fact, it seems, just the opposite happens. We bury them when they stop accumulating gold or speaking jargon. I used to work at two agencies that were at one time among the most-storied in the industry. They are all but forgotten today.

This is to our industry's detriment. We may never be as good as Charles or Mays. May never vary genres like Charles or make a basket catch like Mays.

But we can enjoy.

More important, we can learn.

Wednesday agenda.

The story of the two wolves.

 In Cherokee Legend, the story goes like this: A grandfather is teaching his grandson about life, about the world, about the nature of good and evil.

The two, one old and one young are sitting around a fire at night. The sky is black, the stars innumerable. The grandfather clears his throat and begins:

“There is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. One is pure evil. He is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority and ego.

“The other is goodness. He is joy, peace, love, hope serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, charity and faith. 

“The two wolves attack each other relentlessly. They fight on the mountains where the trees can’t grow, the mountains that touch the very sky. They fight in the forest, dark and foreboding. They fight by the shores of the big sea water, rousing the fish in the sea, the deer in the wood and the bird in the sky.

“The fight continues when the sun is high and when the moon rules the sky. The fight continues through the cold of the time of no green to the time of the heat of the sand. The fight never ceases.

“My boy,” the old man continued. “Inside every person, inside you, is the same fight.”

The boy sat straight, making himself big like a man. “Grandfather,” the young boy asked, “which wolf will win? Which will prevail?”

The grandfather picked up a stick and poked gently at the fire releasing a galaxy of sparks. The dry wood of the fire cracked against the silence of the dark night.

“Which wolf will win, grandfather?”

And then the grandfather died.