I kept thinking of another writer, David Foster Wallace. His novel “Infinite Jest,” published in 1996, imagines a tomorrow in which time itself is auctioned off to the highest bidder and the calendar becomes a billboard. There’s the “Year of the Whopper,” the “Year of the Whisper-Quiet Maytag Dishmaster” and even the “Year of the Tucks Medicated Pad” — a 12-month paean to posterior discomfort, 52 weeks in honor of hemorrhoids.
Is that future so far off? While recording devices have liberated many of us from commercials on television, the rest of our lives are awash in ads.
.. Inside the stadium, the Verizon scoreboard was not to be confused with the Bud Light scoreboard or the Pepsi scoreboard.
.. When Americans talk about how crass contemporary life can seem, this advertising onslaught is part of what they’re reacting to. And their growing chilliness toward corporations and sense of capitalism run amok aren’t just about the salaries of chief executives and the tax dodges in play. They’re about the way hucksterism invades everything, scooping up everyone.