Daniel Price - Slick

I shook my head at myself. “Right. Of course.”

“But even if both parents are born deaf, there’s still only a twenty-five percent chance that the kid’s born deaf, too.”

“Wow. I didn’t know that. That’s really interesting.”

“Not really.”

Her tense posture was a sign for me to move on from the family thing, but I couldn’t seem to find a new topic.

To my relief, Madison took the reins. “So you’re a publicist.”

“That I am.”

“Tell me about it.”

“What would you like to know?”

“You don’t work for a company or anything, right? You’re totally freelance.”

“Have gun, will travel.”

She smiled. “That is so cool. That’s like my dream life. Hey, you need an intern?”

Before I could say anything, Madison qualified herself. “Look, I’m smart. I’m media-savvy. I can find anything on the Web. And I really want to learn this stuff. You could be my mentor.”

“God. I don’t know….”

“Come on. Why not? It’d be great for both of us. I’d come over after school and on weekends. I’d do all your filing. Answer phones. Office stuff. You wouldn’t even have to pay me. Just teach me.”

As soon as she mentioned school, it finally hit me that her situation wasn’t as dire as I’d been led to believe. Here I was, guarding her like she was about to sprint off to Zurich, when all along she had every intention of going home. I guess she just needed to get away for a bit and torture her mother in the process. Jean called it karma but I didn’t think any non-abusive parent deserved that kind of treatment.

“I don’t think so, Madison. I’m sorry.”

“Why not?”

“Well, first of all, I’m out of the house a lot—”

“So? I’m thirteen. It’s not like I’m going to choke on a toy while you’re gone.”

I laughed. “I don’t have any toys. What I do have are a lot of sensitive documents—”

“I’ll sign any gag agreement you want. You can even give me the one they use for Survivor , where I have to pay you like ten million dollars if I open my mouth.”

Yeah, that would work. Publicist Sues Teenage Girl For Gossip. Demands $10 Million From Deaf Mother.

She wouldn’t relent. “Look, I really want to learn about this stuff. Everywhere I go, I’m hit by all this…I don’t know. I don’t even know what to call it.”

“Corporate conditioning,” I offered.

She snapped her fingers. “Yeah! Exactly! On TV, in movies, in magazines. I can feel it but I can’t see it. And I know there’s like this whole psychological world behind all of it but nobody’s able to tell me anything. But you’re different. You’re like the total insider. I want to learn what they’re doing to me.”

It took a huge effort to hide how impressed I was. It wasn’t every day I came across a thirteen-year-old girl who’d prefer Utne Reader over Tiger Beat . Gracie would have loved her.

I sat back in my seat. “Are you familiar with the expression ‘Ignorance is bliss’?”

“Yes. I’m also familiar with the fact that bliss is bullshit.”

“That’s pretty cynical, don’t you think?”

She shrugged. “I’m a cynic. I admit it.”

“Don’t be. Cynics make the worst publicists. Skeptics, on the other hand, make the best ones.”

“What’s the difference?”

“Let me put it this way. If I told you that George W. Bush has a 160 IQ, would you believe me?”

“Uh, no.”

“Okay. What if I told you he has an 85 IQ and that the White House has spent millions of dollars keeping that information quiet? Would you believe me?”

“Probably.”

“That’s the difference between a cynic and a skeptic. Cynics blindly accept any information that confirms their lack of faith in humanity. Skeptics question everything, even the bad news. Cynics are easy for the media to control. Skeptics aren’t.”

She leaned forward in wide-eyed wonder. I didn’t want to enjoy this. Really.

“So how do I become a skeptic?” she asked.

“It’s not easy. You’ve got over thirteen years of corporate conditioning in you. The U.S. is only six percent of the world’s population, and yet we consume fifty-seven percent of the world’s advertising. And nobody on earth is peddled to more than the American teenager. By the time I was eighteen, I was practically a nihilist.”

“Well how did you change?”

Drea. “Reading. Watching. Listening. Keeping an open mind. If you want a peek behind the curtain, here. Let me show you something.”

From my bookshelf, I pulled a few recent issues of Brandweek . I hunkered down next to her on the couch, flipping through pages.

“This is one of our trade magazines. This is where we get to loosen up and be ourselves. See, behind your back, we don’t call you customers, we call you ‘targets.’ We don’t provide services, we ‘perpetuate campaigns.’ And this is where the media advertises to the advertisers by selling them people. Look at this. ‘The Learning Network: We Have Mothers Coming Out of Our Ears.’ ‘Tripod Delivers Gen-X.’ Oh, here we go. MTV. ‘Buy This 24-Year-Old and Get All His Friends Absolutely Free.’ That’s the practice of targeting audience leaders. In other words, you get the cool kids to follow your orders so the less cool kids will follow theirs. Trickle-down advertising. Tobacco companies do it too.”

She could only gape as I thumbed through ad after ad. “Wow.”

“Oh, it gets better. Here’s one for the Cartoon Network. ‘Today’s kids influence over a hundred and thirty billion of their parents’ spending annually. That makes these little consumers big business.’ Very true. It’s the kids even younger than you who drive the industry now.”

“And this is the kind of stuff you do?”

“No. What I do is worse. Look, here’s a company that sells digital ad space for elevators.”

She closed the magazine. “Hold it. Hold it!”

“I’m sorry. Too much, too fast?”

“Yes. No! I just…” Yup. Too much. Too fast. She fought to put her questions in some kind of order but she was overwhelmed. Giving up, she mimed a pistol to her head, pulled the trigger, and collapsed with her tongue out.

“That’s the problem,” I said. “This is no place for cynics. That’s why our industry, especially mine, has a high burnout rate.’”

“So how do you survive?”

“By keeping perspective. I mean, it’s silly to believe that all the people who work for the Cartoon Network are evil. Or MTV. Or even Philip Morris. Believe me, they don’t run over kittens for fun. They play tennis. And they’re not after your heart or soul. They want your designated spending money, just like the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick maker. The system’s not perfect. Usually it’s underhanded. But when you’re dealing with people who have eight zillion choices, you have to get clever or you just won’t survive. That’s what a free market is all about. Make sense?”

I was her new god. “Scott, I want to learn this.”

“The thing is, you have to be sure. Because once you get that X-ray vision, you can’t turn it off. You’ll see the business angle behind everything. And I mean everything . Not just your TV, movies, and magazines. I’m talking about your news, sports, and weather. That’s my playing field. And once you know what I know, you won’t be able to enjoy any of it the same way ever again. Do you think you’d be able to handle that?”

“Yes.”

“Are you sure? Because it’s not too late to take the blue pill.”

“I’m sure!”

“And if you worked for me, I would need absolute secrecy from you.”

“I promise.”

“I’m serious. If you ever betray my trust, I’ll kill your career before it even starts. You’ll spend the rest of your life working at Hot Dog on a Stick.”