Rush Limbaugh: Master Creation
By: Terence Ward
Imagine a brain, floating, disembodied. It survives, despite having no connection to the world around it. Surely it must be incredibly intelligent.
Okay, floating brains are pretty damned creepy. You don’t have to think about that anymore. Sorry I mentioned the idea in the first place. This isn’t Creepshow.
So imagine you’re an advertising executive with this assignment: create the packaging for a product that contains actual sentient human intelligence for home consumption. You don’t have any say in the personality; that was created in the lab by a bunch of supply-side economists. You’ve got to whip up a package that accurately reflects what the boys in white coats made. Here’s what you find out by doing some research:
It’s smarter than you are.
It’s really organized - give it a comment or a question and it can recall or locate a relevant fact that it read about the subject once upon a time.
The product comes with a can of compressed air, because the brainpower inside uses a tremendous amount of air.
Even when you’re discussing a topic about which you consider yourself an expert (i.e., advertising), the intelligence in the package is able to rephrase everything you say to make it seem like you’re a flaming idiot.
By the time you realize why you feel like an idiot, your conversation is long since done and it’s very unlikely that you’ll be able to speak again for months, even years.
Given your time researching the product, you create a package that captures the airiness, the strange odor you detected after your discussions were at an end, the firmness that belies an inner flaccidity, and even the inherent pomposity of the personality that the boys in the lab used to manufacture this artificial intelligence product. You add the pinkish hue as a finishing touch, knowing that this color will enhance its ability to make outrageous statements without having them challenged by anyone within earshot until long after the conversation.
You bring your design ideas in to present to your client, who likes them in theory. The packaging for the additional windbag needs to be redesigned, but they like the coloring and the flaccid/firm dichotomy. You go back to the drawing board and come up with a package that earns you tremendous accolades. The world over learns about the product, which the boys in marketing brand based on focus groups that were asked to supply names based on the picture at left. The focus groups quickly embrace the inherent arrogance and pomposity vibes they get off the pictures, and the name “Limbaugh” is used to capture those qualities. Looking to the future, the give it a first name of “Rush” because the consultants from the publishing world express concern over trying to fit two long names on the cover of a paperback book. They prefer a longer first name and shorter last name, but reach a compromise when it’s agreed that in most cases the last name may be dispensed with as soon as the brand is established. Using your packaging, a sensation is born!
Terence P Ward expresses much of his observations about the world through the written word, spoken word, visual media . . . well, any way he damned well pleases. Most of what he’s responsible for can be found at, or through, http://otherlleft.com.