“… when I was younger, … I thought that advertising directed our consumer habits, that rock stars made our mores, and that newspaper people set our political agenda; that they were, all of them, unmoved movers accountable to no one.
“But of course it doesn’t work that way. I eventually discovered that there was something even more important than movies in determining what happens in Washington, and in every town in the United States: profits.
In fact, to try to understand American life without recognizing the significance of business is to deny its essence, its motive force. It is to talk about cars without mentioning motors, or gasoline, or roads.”
— Thomas Frank, “Bully Pulpit,” Harper’s, May 2012
Roland Klose 