One might question the value of paying Beyoncé Knowles $50 million to advertise Pepsi during the Super Bowl; but to question her – or Pepsi’s – right to do so, as the New York Times does today, on the grounds that a), she probably wouldn’t agree to advertise a semi-automatic weapon and b), because Pepsi “may one day be ranked with cigarettes as a killer” is the kind of logic one might ask for protection from.
This judicial, if not judicious, opinion comes from a column by Mark Bittman in today’s Sunday New York Times, headlined “Why Do Stars Think It’s O.K. To Sell Soda?” The obvious rejoinder is why does the New York Times think it’s O.K. to publish writers who suggest that it’s not? Say hello to freedom of speech. Soda is legal; advertising soda is legal; the Super Bowl permits advertising, so do the math safe in the bosom of the constitution.
To suggest curtailing these rights, and the rights of other poor (sic) superstar artists and athletes to promote liquids containing sugar – would, you might think, require a staggeringly learned legal argument, one of such depth and originality that even if it were rejected, it would sway public opinion by the majesty of its logic.
Instead, imagine Bittman presenting his column, as written, to the Supreme Court of the United States? “So, Mr. Bittman, you want Beyoncé to stop advertising Pepsi because such an advertisement might induce someone to harm or kill him or herself, or others, as if she had, in fact, advertised a semi-automatic weapon? Next!”
As for the related claim that Pepsi or Coke – or any liquid with sugar – “may one day be ranked with cigarettes as a killer,” what’s the quantitative probability that such a day will come to pass? C’mon! Anything may happen – just as some things we think may happen most assuredly won’t. As the psychologist Philip Tetlock demonstrated in his magisterial analysis of 20-years of expert prediction, a dart-throwing chimpanzee was a better guide to the future.
To prophesy proof of harm and use it to beat up on Beyoncé (and Madonna and Elton) is not just unfair, it’s a kind of Kafkaesque prior restraint: we might have the evidence next week that what you say tomorrow will be harmful, so we’re going to try and stop you talking now. This kind of nonsense is precisely why we have a First Amendment.
Of course, there are restrictions on some kinds of advertising, and this is what Bittman is aiming at beyond sniping at celebrity product endorsement. He wants to make the case that the US should do to soda what it has done to tobacco, which is to put strict limits on its advertising in the media. For this to be a reasonable argument, however, the harm from soda has to be qualitatively and quantitatively similar to the harm from cigarettes.
It isn’t. And, of course, that’s why Bittman relegates proof to some day in the future. The statistical evidence for an association between smoking and lung cancer is overwhelming: 1,900 percent for those who smoke versus those who don’t (a relative risk of 20). This was established some 50 years ago. As we know from further research, there is no harm-free threshold at which you can smoke safely.
Even as we utilize vastly more scientific knowledge and technical ability than early tobacco researchers could, the evidence that a soda is the equivalent of a cigarette doesn’t even come close. The strongest data, from prospective cohort studies, is a relative risk of 1.26 for consuming a soda a day and developing diabetes. By the conventional standards of epidemiology, this is weak – indeed, weak enough to possibly be a statistical artifact.
On the grounds of curbing the harm from obesity, one might as well argue that we restrict advertising for cheese, which in fact is what Ireland’s broadcasting authority proposed doing last year along with pizza and fries, because cheese is high in saturated fat and salt. This, of course, struck many people as bonkers, but it highlighted the kind of crazed thinking that flows from trying to legislate speech codes on the basis of “unhealthy” foods. Nutritional value is a slippery concept. (Meanwhile, Irish nutritional studies showed no correlation between either cheese or soda consumption and that country’s increased prevalence of obesity.)
One might venture, following Emerson, that a “foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of tiny minds” when it comes to food and to free speech; but arbitrariness is an arch through which liberty goes to die.
Freedom of speech can’t be something you can junk just because you don’t like the fact that someone is getting buckets of money to advertise something you don’t like and you don’t want America to consume – and you have a column on the New York Times from which to pronounce your papal-like bull.
But that’s the point, isn’t it? What’s good for Mark Bittman is also good for Beyoncé, even if he doesn’t quite understand why.
Source: forbes