This is what Thomas Carlyle so accurately saw coming: “the triumph of puffery.”
It reminds me of an old college roommate who was dating a girl whose father worked at a Chicago ad agency. Invited to the house for dinner, he listened as the father went on and on about how he was going to remake the image of Pabst beer, an account his agency had just landed.
After listening to this for quite a while, while having a few himself, my old roommate was asked what he thought.
He said: “There’s just one thing I want to know.”
The girl’s father asked: “What’s that?”
“What are you going to do about the taste of Pabst’s beer?
He responded. Actually I kind of used to like Pabst. But the point was well made.
At some point in the not too distant future, the real flavor of what is going on and the cluelessness of the One in dealing with it, is going to become inescapable.
I can’t remember the name of the ad exective, but he wrote a book on marketing and used Gablinger’s beer as an example of failed strategy. He noted that the idea behind the product was good. It was the first light beer. But the product itself was awful. He said that the best marketing strategy would be for the company to sell less of it, therefore it would take longer for everyone to find how bad it was, and the company would remain in business. :)