Selling Words-Free Speech in a Commercial Culture

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Selling Words - Free Speech in a Commercial Culture. R. George Wright. New York, NY: New York University Press, 1997. 244 pp. $30 pbk.

The troubling central thesis of R. George Wright's book is that the sheer weight and extent of commercialism in our culture sets up unspoken expectations that render the public open to increasing intrusiveness by marketers. The author stresses that the public's collective senses have been numbed over time by the flurry of commercial messages to the point that we do not even blink at further incursions of commercialism into our daily lives. Furthermore, we have allowed ubiquitous commercial messages to substitute for and taint our underlying value …