I’ve just been in the States, which I’ve thoroughly enjoyed, but which did get me wondering about the collective self-respect of the nation. Exhibit A: Auntie Jemima’s Butter Rich Syrup, which I had on my rather large breakfast waffle. Now the label for this is quite illuminating – The “Butter rich” slogan in big letters is backed up by smaller a tagline extolling “Natural butter flavor”. Yes, you think, ‘I’d not unreasonably expect sauce rich in butter to be butter flavo(u)red, so this hardly shocks me’. However, there’s an asterisk denoting a tiny caveat directly below this, which reads “Natural flavor denotes other natural flavorings, contains no butter”. In other words, AUNTIE JEMIMA IS A GREAT BIG FIBBER!
Okay, this is only a little lie, and a bottle of non-butter syrup isn’t going to upset the international relations applecart or cause a worldwide stock market slump, but I think it’s symptomatic. Auntie’s marketing department clearly think that it’s not only just okay to mislead their public, and treat them as stupid, but that their public are so docile and contemptuous they can see the lies, but just choose to ignore them – there’s no need to be bothered to feel embarassed about it and try to cover up the deception. Look at the puppet, don’t look at the hand. A spot of culinary doublethink which might be the thin end of a wedge that leads to a Prez who is slashing welfare in order to give his megarich backers whopping tax cuts, but who gets re-elected on safeguarding ‘moral’ values.
Anyway, that’s enough wildly speculative ranting for the moment – not normally my thing, there must be something in the sauce…