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I have fewer sources of hard evidence for the second source of this discomfort with state-sponsored speech. Hopefully I can make the point colloquially. Americans are great at sniffing out bullshit -- it seems to be a byproduct of several generations’ exposure to commercial advertising. Maybe I believe this because of my California heritage -- this state has some of the most highly evolved commercial speech regulation anywhere on the planet. But we all know that a Big Mac doesn’t look the way it does on TV, we all know that if we drink Sprite we won’t suddenly develop the vertical leap of Kobe Bryant, and we all know that purchasing Prell, LaCoste, or Obsession won’t lead to sex. In fact, we’re so comfortable with the exaggerations of advertisers that we expect it. There’s even a defense to those California advertising laws that allows a certain amount of “puffery” to occur before the message constitutes an outright lie. We all know, on a cynical level, that advertising equals deception. In a democracy, however, we don’t want our government to behave deceptively.
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Not my thought, exactly, but I DO find it interesting that we acknowledge and even joke about bullshit in advertising but become downright indignant when it comes to our government using the same PR techniques on us or foreigners. This type of state-sponsored propaganda has been on the down-swing for some time but it seems now, in the absense of "one who shall remain nameless who doesn't speak well publicly and can't field non-prepared, off-the-cuff questions" it is on the rise again. Just sayin'
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