Sunday Rerun: A knife and fork is now a "set of food consumption aids"

One of my favorite teachers from my high school days was getting married, and she told us her husband-to-be was getting in on the ground floor of the burgeoning "marketing" business, which she told us involved figuring how to package stuff for sale to people.

Now, I remember my grandmother saying she "had to do her marketing," which meant going to the farmer's market to stock up on buttermilk, Lebanon bologna, eggs, butter and cheese.

Then marketing became a way to sell Fords to people who had always driven Buicks. And why not? If you have a Ford dealership, you can make more money by selling your cars to people who have hitherto not bought them. And if you can persuade someone that driving a Ford will make them more desirable to others, feel younger, go faster, save gas money, whatever you want, then all the better for the people at Dick Nixon Ford ("Where Dick's Breakin' The Law on Prices!")

And when we say "whatever you want," remember, your subconscious wants things you don't even KNOW about! Think about that.

A large part of marketing is in the nomenclature, the naming of things to give their identity a little boost in desirability.  Think of that old 40-acre lot you used to drive by on the way to that little place where they sold homemade ice cream, the scrabby half-wooded ground that was also half-swamp.

Some clever developer filled in the swamp with half a truckload of peat moss and is now building houses there, and the acreage formerly known as "O'Hoolahan's Bog" is now a development called "Flintlock Ridge," or maybe "The King's Choice."

And I'm sure he is.


I thought of all this because the good folks at Uber, who are willing to send a complete stranger to your house to take you to the airport, are developing a car with no driver to do the same job, only you won't have to listen to his U2 CD on the way. But "driverless car" sounds a bit foolhardy and reckless, like "inexperienced surgeon" or "billionaire real estate magnate," so, instead, they call it an "autonomous" car.

That's the same marketing as calling used cars "pre-owned" or used DVDs "pre-viewed" or liver "meat."

You can dress it up all you like, but it's still liver.